I'm rewatching Enterprise and I can appreciate it a lot more now than when it was originally run (happens a lot in TV). I was wondering if anyone has a conception of how the original series bridge, halls, engineering, etc. would look from the perspective of Enterprise looking forward a hundred years. Assuming the exterior stays exactly the same, the bridge layout itself stays the same, and the crew, but the uniforms and the interiors are up for grabs, how would you imagine it looking? Would all the controls still be completely unlabeled? The screens at the stations - touchscreens? Would helm and navigation have so few buttons? What would you make the ship's interior look like?
Here is the thing and I should say that this is a spoiler alert if you have not seen the new film. - - - - - - Since the U.S.S. Enterprise from the series Star Trek Enterprise is one of the models on display in one certain scene of Star Trek Into Darkness I feel that there can be no other explanation but to accept the fact that NX-01 is actually a part of the new timeline set forth in the JJ Verse. This being said I would think that it would be hard to conceive what any starship would look like if you wanted to include TOS in this time stream. Yes, this is a work of fiction but JJ has changed all of that.However, one can always still wonder.
One giant clusterfuck tipping it's hat to the other? All that was missing was a model of the Warp 10 lizards to complete that unholy trinity.
"In a Mirror, Darkly" gave us at TOS era Connie that was very true to the TOS sets. There were subtle differences... For instance this one had carpet on every floor. Also the railing on the bridge was circular rather then polyhedral. And they did label every button, but, interestingly, given the lens like properties of the buttons, they could only be read while sitting at the console, from other angles, the lettering disappeared! I would say we need not worry about the JJ-prise, because, the NX-01 would naturally be in that timeline, given that the changes to the timeline from Nero's tomfoolery in Star Trek (2009) happened 70-odd years after NX-01 retired. I suppose that if you took the designs of the TOS sets and detailed them more like, say, the Kelvin, then you might have something. But, I would think that to be unnecessary. YMMV --Alex
TOS reimagined is what we saw in the movies Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Star Trek: Enterprise is part of the shared pre-2233 past common to both the TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY and new movie timelines. As shown in the ENT episodes "In a Mirror, Darkly" (when the USS Defiant from TOS: "The Tholian Web" emerges into the past, complete with NX-01 crew biographies) and "These are the Voyages" (which is a prequel to the TNG episode "The Pegasus" where Riker and Troi are watching Enterprise NX-01's final mission on the holodeck)
My personal fanwank explanation for Enterprise, as well as the rest of the J.J. - verse, is that the whole alternate timeline comes into existence during the events of Star Trek: First Contact. They so totally blew off the Prime Directive in that movie, telling Cochrane all about the future, and even taking part in past historical events, that it drastically changed the original timeline. This explains a historically famous Enterprise that was specifically never mentioned in *any* of the other franchises, and could be folded into the new alternate reality as well. Enterprise really pissed me off because of the contradiction of its very existence, but once that popped into my head, I was able to appreciate it a lot more. Like I said, total fanwank, but it works remarkably well. :-)
I believe that you are right about FC. Not only did the TNG bunch interact with Cochrane and the survivors of his team, there were Borg and Borg tech sprinkled in the Arctic. ENT pics up on this. ALL of this influences the pre-TOS timeline and directly affects everything that follows. Subtle changes take place. ENT and JJ Trek both exist in the Sub-Prime Universe. TOS and everything else exist in the Prime Universe...
Braga specifically said the FC events caused an alternate timeline, but tried to play it both ways: It changed the timeline, but it's still the timeline leading to TOS and TNG+. I can't agree. As a new timeline, ENT is okay, although the Xindi are a problem, in that they didn't exist in the prime timeline. As a reboot, though, ENT works much better, IMO. All continuity issues disappear, and it can be a reinvention, rather than a prequel.
LOL. As for TOS, if we go from Enterprise forward, do you think we'd get all those huge technicolor, unlabeled buttons all over the place, or perhaps some minimal labelling to make it all make sense? More helm/nav buttons so it doesn't look like flying a ship the size of NCC-1701 only needs 16 or so buttons to work? Would the halls not be so cavernous? I'm going more for a thought as to what the original series would look like without it going with the ultra-lens-flare-in-everyone's-eyes, extra-stations, iPhone bridge of Trek '09. How would we structure engineering, sickbay, the transporter room, crew quarters, etc? That's what I'm wondering.
Have you got a link to that? I hear it a LOT, but no-one can ever show me the interview it's supposedly from. They weren't featured in a prior episode or movie, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. We've seen hundreds of species once and then they vanish in Trek (especially in the movies), and the universe is so big I have no trouble with a few previously unheard of aliens cropping up. ENT also did a nice job of putting faces to races previously only mentioned, like the Axanar. Technology-wise, they also established the TOS helm/nav station, blue TOS phasers and energy shields are all Andorian designs. The round screens and computer graphics from the TOS movies were Vulcan (as are the mandarin collars of TNG). The blinking coloured squares of TOS are from Earth (see how they go from a couple in the first season to full-on TOS by the end) as is the general layout of future starships.
That's so long ago, I'm not sure where I'd have that anymore. Not in this case. You don't control that big a chunk of space that close to Terra without some mention. The Xindi were too big and too close to disappear. Which is why I don't include the Denobulans in the previous complaint. They didn't make an enormous footprint all over Earth space and then >poof!<. Never saw that - not having tv, I stopped making the effort to catch the show in the 2nd season. I really liked Northstar, and hated SG1's anti-slavery ep, but much of the rest of the show just didn't work for me - and the "prime directive" ep was purely offensive. None of which makes sense to me. Technical architecture is more about the compatibility of software. The color of a beam weapon, the kind of collar worn, etc, are piddly, and reinvented by everybody, so nobody really gets credit. Though none of that matters if ENT is a new timeline or a reboot.
The Xindi weren't big, and they didn't control any kind of empire - they were pretty much on par with Earth of the 2150's, having a couple of colony worlds and trading with their neighbours. They were nomads without a homeworld, and barely able to work together long enough to pose a threat to Earth. Random pawns turned against Earth as part of a war through time. Earth went on to found the Federation and become a big deal. The Xindi didn't. In a future timeline Archer was shown, the Xindi were part of the Federation in the 26th century. The Axanar were in one of the early first season episodes - they were the aliens on the derelict ship, strung up in the ceiling. It freaked Hoshi out. A few other "name only" TOS aliens were seen as well. Continuity issues and retcons aside, you can't call Enterprise a reboot without ignoring the Mirror Universe two parter (which crossed over TOS and ENT) or the (admittedly awful) final episode, played out on the Enterprise-D's holodeck just prior to and between early scenes of "The Pegasus". Whatever Braga said early on, he either changed his mind, was overruled or was bullshitting (like his more recent outlandish claim that Future Guy was Archer)
The Xindi would be akin to a history of Pennsylvania which does not mention New York, until a later volume in which some colonists sneak over the wall around the state and bring it down, and negotiate a truce. So, yes, too big and too close. Had they been in a Yonada-like ark passing through, i'd grant your argument. As for the Mirror universe argument, consider the interphase as a nexus between the original verse and reboot verse which spawns a third. Besides, a clean reboot is a much better idea than a mucky half-reboot, half-prequel. It completely avoids continuity issues.
But how often has the period immediately preceeding the Romulan War been discussed in other Treks? As far as I'm aware, it's zero. I could make the exact same argument in reverse, and complain that because TNG never showed us a Tellarite despite several episodes set among the core worlds of the Federation, and since we saw Andorians (like Tellarites, another founding member of the Federation) on only two occasions (and in both they looked so very different to TOS and the early movies), I could make a case that TNG is an alternate reality to TOS.
There are numerous persons who actually feel this way exactly. I myself am kinda okay with this idea. --Alex