Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof should not Return.

A person born into a Sikh family but who does not practice the religion is not an "ethnic Sikh" but rather is simply a non-practicing Sikh. It wouldn't make much sense to identify me as an "ethnic Christian," by your measure. Whether it is common to erroneously identify Punjabi Sikhs as "ethnic Sikhs" in your part of the world has no bearing on its incorrectness; after all, many people do not understand what terms like ethnicity, nationality, race, and so on, actually mean, and mistakenly use them interchangeably.

 

You'd better hop a plane to India and inform the ethnic Sikhs that they're mislabeling themselves, then. Let me know how that goes.

(The circumstances in which religious identifications can become "ethnicized" are interesting and varied and probably deserve their own thread.)

 

Here you're describing a person who does not practice the Sikh religion yet is still considered a Sikh. How can this be?

 

Honestly, if your proof that Sikh is an ethnic group amounts to some reporter misusing the word (as many people are wont to do with many of these terms) then you are grasping at straws and this is getting pointless. I think you should just admit that you are wrong and get on with it instead of doubling down on your mistake.

A person can identify as a member of a religious community without practicing the religion. Most Canadians, for instance, identify as some kind of Christian, even though church attendance is at an all-time low in this country.

 

I also know a lot of Jews and Muslim who don't practise huge chunks of their religion. And still, they consider themselves Jews and Muslims.

And McGivers did paint Khan with a turban.

No one doubted Khan Noonien Singh was a Sikh from India for decades, until some dudes messed it up. Desperate reconciliation attempts of continuity errors has to stop at some point. And this is the point.

Heck, even the tie in comics acknowledge his face lift in universe.

 

We should simply say that Khan is Sikh, but is not practicing, or that he is but is not particularly committed to his religion. Many Sikhs, especially those who are part of the Sikh diaspora in the West, don't obey the Kesh for a variety of reasons, and Khan could simply be one of those. To get hung up on his lack of facial hair or a turban is to be rather pedantic in defending the decision to cast Benedict Cumberbatch in the role, when they should have made at least some minimal effort to cast an actor who resembled Ricardo Montalban, considering that, as others have pointed out, the two Khans are the same person.

It is all a problem resulting from this whole parallel timeline nonsense. Though I was opposed to the idea of "rebooting" Star Trek in the first place, they should have simply gone for a full reboot instead of half-assing it the way they have. Abrams, Orci, and the rest can't say they were concerned about the fans taking issue with the idea of a full reboot as since they took over control of the franchise they've made perfectly their disdain for those fans who would care about such a thing.

 

No. Both sides to the question of whether Khan is Sihk have plausible arguments. Since it could go either way in canon continuity without introducing more problems than were present in Space Seed regardless, we won't know unless and until it's mentioned on screen in a future episode or film.

Agreed. Since Khan claims that Harrison is an identity invented by Admiral Marcus, it would be reasonable if his entire appearance was altered. This has been pointed out many times on the board already.

No. That is to say, Cumberbatch was not miscast. If you don't think he looks enough like Montalban, see above.

No. That is to say, most of the parallel timeline episodes of Star Trek have been excellent. Since parallel timelines are a standard trope of Star Trek, one can't say that it is intrinsically nonsensical, unless one also finds these other episodes which comprise a lot of canon continuity nonsensical as well. Orci et al. simply elected to handle the problem of how to move forward via the Star Trek way. It's super-hard to fault them for handling things in a way that could be reasonably characterized as the Star Trek way, since it's Star Trek.

So, you are recommending that they should have done something you were opposed to. There's just no pleasing you is there!

I don't make it a habit to put words in peoples' mouths, or to read people's minds, so I can't say what they can't say.

 

If you can find any on-screen evidence that Khan had reconstructive surgery to give him a completely new look then I would be glad to hear it and I might concede the point. It doesn't even make sense for Admiral Marcus to alter Khan's appearance since, unless I'm forgetting some obscure line here or there, Marcus never intended for Khan to live as a member of the general population and tried to keep him essentially in prison while putting him to work. Besides, an altered appearance cannot explain why, for instance, his voice sounds completely different and why he uses completely different speech mannerisms. I prefer simply to imagine that they look alike, in much the same way that we might imagine that the Klingon vessel in ENT "Unexpected" does not look exactly like a vessel still in service more than 200 years later.

And yes, their attempts to "preserve" the old canon by way of a divergent timeline is nonsense, especially when they immediately set themselves about the task of ignoring the implications of it. It is not sufficient an explanation, for example, for things like the design of the USS Kelvin, which, except for its basic layout, does not resemble any vessel from the prime universe which is silly when you consider that the vessel predates the divergent timeline. It's actually quite easy to fault them for this. As I said, I don't think they should've rebooted the franchise, but if they were going to they should've gone full reboot and completely ignored the original canon.

 

Admiral Marcus furnished a room full of captains and first officers with the photographic identity of Harrison. Assuming that he wants Khan's identity kept a secret, then that's an awfully big risk, if facial recognition software would identify him as Khan. Since Marcus is later surprised to learn that Kirk knows that Harrison is Khan, and evidently deduces from that knowledge that Khan must have talked, we can deduce that Marcus wished his identity kept secret and that his looks alone couldn't have been enough of a clue to reveal his identity. Ergo, Harrison's appearance must serve as a disguise. Also, Khan claims in dialog that the identity of Harrison is invented. All of this comprises the best argument I am aware of, for why his features might be altered in-universe.

Sure, I can go along with that, but I can go further. TV/film production standards change with each passing year. There's no reason to require that a new film must slavishly follow the production design of The Cage. In 2001, the designs in ENT sure as heck didn't look like they were literally leading towards those in The Cage, so why should those in a theatrical film released in 2009?

It's not as if the change in look would have any impact on any TOS story, anyway. I do believe that every TOS episode could be retrofitted with the new look, while retaining the same teleplay. So, what's the big deal with the look of the Kelvin? Assuming one thinks its look is so incompatible with the original show that it has to be dealt with somehow, can't one just imagine that it's revealing a "more accurate" depiction of the Prime Universe, sorta like we've already had to do in the case of ENT?

 

Even once identified as Khan, the crew still don't really know who he was. How does this theory account for why nuSpock had to get on the line to prime Spock to ask him who Khan was? If there was a need to conceal Khan's identity to the extent of completely altering his appearance, then surely nuSpock would know who Khan was. It's not as if Khan was some obscure figure; he was a major leader in a political conflict that left millions dead. And yet, even once in possession of incontrovertible proof of Khan's true identity, Spock still hasn't the foggiest notion of who he was and what he was responsible for. So why bother going to the extent of completely altering his appearance? If his identity is not known even once revealed to Spock then surely there would be no need to conceal it in the first place. Of course we know the real-world reason; the people who made the movie want it to be a sophisticated mystery plot. But what can you offer that provides an in-universe explanation for that? Besides, as I've said, this cannot account for why his voice sounds completely different and for why he has completely different speech mannerisms.

Additionally, it seems rather odd that Marcus would go to the trouble of creating a new identity in order to keep Khan's true identity a secret but wouldn't bother to create a complete life for that identity; I recall it is mentioned in dialogue that John Harrison's identity didn't go back further than one year. So now Marcus is going to the trouble of completely altering Khan's appearance but doesn't bother himself to fudge the paperwork? It seems like the opposite would be the way to go, given that Marcus never intended for Khan to live as a member of the general public anyways. It is not necessary for Khan's appearance to be altered in order for his identity to be kept a secret. (Unless, again, I'm forgetting some line of dialogue somewhere or something from some comic I haven't read).

And let's not forget that Admiral Marcus is the same guy who openly displays models of top-secret warships designed exclusively to participate in an aggressive and illegal war, and constructs said warship in plain view in what is surely one of the busiest star systems in the Federation. It would seem that his efforts to conceal his plans are...inconsistent.

 

What are your thoughts on Wrath of Khan, where they dropped Montelban's skin darkening makeup and changed all his followers into Aryan youths with no explanation?

The Kelvin looks as much like a ship from TOS as the Enterprise from TMP does - and that's a wholesale change which supposedly occurred in just 2.5 years and preserves the basic layout of the ship only. The Kelvin is from 30 years prior to TOS.

 

I sense moving goalposts....

 

^ Could we really say that originalPike's Enterprise looked much like originalKirk's internally, though? 'In universe', I mean. Obviously the layout of the bridge and transporter room are broadly the same, but the tone of both rooms is more of a 'battleship gray' than anything seen on Kirk's Enterprise. And it could apparently only hold half as many crew, so one might suspect that there was quite a refit that went on between Pike's tour of duty and Kirk's one (although possibly not as extensive a refit as the one seen in TMP). I'd like to think that refits/technological upgrades are a fairly common thing during the service of any vessel, especially one with the service life of the original Enterprise. Maybe the Kelvin is fairly typical of what Starships looked like during the originalPike era?

I do tend to agree with Pasi Nurminen though, having a 'clean' reboot would wipe the slate of any problems, and a part of me wishes they'd done that. But the fact that they felt the need to incorporate the original canon just opens up this kind of continuity error. I've often felt the same way about the new Doctor Who. Making it a continuation of the original rather than a reboot does mean there are problems with reconciling certain things that just don't match.

 

I'm with you so far.

Yeah but you've still not explained your comment. From an in-universe perspective, sure, but even without reboot or whatever you want to call the 2009 movie, characters have been changed in fiction according to the needs of the writers, so I ask again: why shouldn't they make changes ?

What's an ethnic Sikh ? It's not an ethnicity.

 

At this point, the goal posts have been put on a truck and moved to another town.

 

I wonder if people would be complaining if Khanberbatch were seen wearing his snazzy gold jacket from "Space Seed"? The guy was being used and manipulated in ID, he was never really in a position to dress as he'd have liked. First he was seen under his John Harrison persona in London, then dressed for the harsh weather on Kronos, and finally a Starfleet uniform.

 

As I've said, I would've preferred that they'd cast an actor who resembles Ricardo Montalban, but it is not really that big a deal since it's easy for me to imagine they look alike as they should. I don't think people who complain about the character's whitewashing are really all that concerned with continuity in the same way that we are. Besides, it's not like Benedict Cumberbutch's appearance was the movie's biggest flaw...

 

I wanted a good actor playing Khan and Cumberbatch fit the bill. Anyone can come up with ways to address the discrepancy in appearance in their own mind. Which for me, is the absolute best way Abrams and Company could handle it in the film.

As far as casting Cumberbatch vs. a dark skinned actor, I think that there may have been some concerns about casting a dark-skinned person as a terrorist.

 

It would have been their chance to actually cast an Indian actor.

 

If you don't like the term "ethnic Sikh" then I suppose we should come up with a different collection of letters to convey a similar idea. But as has been said here, one can be a child of a Sikh family who chooses not to follow the religion, yet that person is still called a Sikh for some reason. Certain Sikhs see their group as having a racial identity, not just a religious one, and this does not appear to be something invented by journalists.

I agree. But what, if anything, is gained by this? In movie-land, must all terrorists be Caucasian?