2387

[Avro Arrow]

So to make your hurricane analogy more specific, let's say he's like someone from New Orleans who lost his family to the floods during Hurricane Katrina, blamed the FEMA director for failing to prepare adequately, got arrested and spent 25 years nursing his grudge in prison, and then made the FEMA director watch while he flooded the director's home city in retaliation. (Well, the FEMA director at the time was born in Oklahoma, so maybe flooding isn't a likely option, but hey, it's a hypothetical.) Not the most rational response, but not random either.

Maybe not random... but still kind of unstable, yes?

(And even with the revision above, I still think "nuking Oklahoma" would be a better analogy than "flooding Oklahoma". In the movie, Nero didn't really make any attempt to have Vulcan suffer the same type of destruction as Romulus did. He basically just dropped a WMD onto (well, into) it.)

There's also the fact, of course, that Nero was back in time. He blamed the Federation (irrationally) for Romulus's destruction, and being in the past gave him the chance to destroy the Federation before it could destroy Romulus. Maybe he didn't realize it was a separate timeline, or maybe he wanted to spare this timeline's Romulus from the same fate as his version.

But if the red matter came from the Federation, and he destroyed the Federation, then this timeline's Romulus will still suffer the same fate. More evidence of Nero's instability.

Nero is looking for understanding and empathy, really. He needs his former friend/respectable acquaintance to know his pain.

I'm asking because I honestly don't remember... is there anything in the movie itself that indicated that Spock and Nero even knew each other personally? I thought all the "Spock and Nero are friends" stuff came from Countdown.

 

[Christopher]

But if the red matter came from the Federation, and he destroyed the Federation, then this timeline's Romulus will still suffer the same fate. More evidence of Nero's instability.

Yes, but that instability was created by the actual and unambiguous destruction of his homeworld. The interpretation that he imagined it is ridiculous and based on a very badly mistaken recollection of the film. Can we please just stipulate to that and move on?

I'm asking because I honestly don't remember... is there anything in the movie itself that indicated that Spock and Nero even knew each other personally? I thought all the "Spock and Nero are friends" stuff came from Countdown.

Spock's line in the film's mind meld sequence was "He called himself Nero." That certainly seems to imply that, canonically, they'd never met before that moment. Countdown does not mesh perfectly with the actual film, probably because the film was still being edited and revised after the comic's script and art were locked down.

 

[The Wormhole]

The problem with Veridian is that immediately after Soran shoots his missile into the sun the sky darkens, which it wouldn't do. The Veridian sky should stay as bright as it was right up until the shockwave hits if the shockwave is traveling the speed of light. The fact the sky darkens right away proves there's some FTL phenomenon at work.

This is OT obviously, and has surely been discussed elsewhere, but you're assuming above that the shutdown of nuclear activity in the star has a single output- the cessation of light and the shockwave resulting in from a change in the stars gravity. What the movie implies is a multiphase event- the star reacts to the Trilithium initially by dimming, but retaining the same mass, then contracting rapidly, which results in the shockwave

Well, there's a deeper problem. The sun dims immediately after he launches his missile. Even if it reached the sun instantaneously, Veridian III would still be somewhere around 7-10 light-minutes away from Veridian, and you wouldn't see any change in light level for at least that long if everything was working under normal physics.

Which was actually the point I was trying to make.

 

[trampledamage]

This was just me returning at a later point and automatically quoting anew rather than editing. But thanks.

Short mod note - I don't have a problem with people posting two separate replies on different points raised in a discussion like this - so long as it's continuing the discussion. I think it makes it easier to follow.


More than two replies should be combined, and replies that are just short "agree" posts should also be combined, but longer posts adding to the discussion can be kept separate, if you prefer.

 

[NotLKH]

That said, I don't think there's anything in Countdown that directly contradicts the current novelverse.

There is. It portrays Data's resurrection and subsequent career in an incompatible way. In Countdown, Data's "neural nets" were imprinted onto B-4's positronic brain, so that version is essentially Data's mind walking around in B-4's hijacked body. That's very different from the novels' approach.

Is there anything preventing there actually being 2 Simultaneous versions of Data coexisting in the Novelverse? The current Non B-4 version, plus one based upon Countdown's B-4 version?

 

[Idran]

That said, I don't think there's anything in Countdown that directly contradicts the current novelverse.

There is. It portrays Data's resurrection and subsequent career in an incompatible way. In Countdown, Data's "neural nets" were imprinted onto B-4's positronic brain, so that version is essentially Data's mind walking around in B-4's hijacked body. That's very different from the novels' approach.

Is there anything preventing there actually being 2 Simultaneous versions of Data in the Novelverse? The current Non B-4 version, plus a version based upon Countdown's B-4 version?

B-4's positronic net was explicitly said as not being complex enough to support Data's engrams, and he would've gone into cascade failure if they'd been left there. The novelverse version of B-4 literally isn't advanced enough hardware to support Data.

 

[NotLKH]

I never read Countdown. They ignored B-4's inferior positronic net? They didn't attempt to explain that somehow B-4's positronic net was somehow upgraded to contain Data's engrams?

 

[Idran]

I never read Countdown. They ignored B-4's inferior positronic net? They didn't attempt to explain that somehow B-4's positronic net was somehow upgraded to contain Data's engrams?

Oh, Countdown-side I don't know; I was just speaking to why it wouldn't work in the novelverse.

 

[E-DUB]

B4 was sufficient to store Data, but not to run Data.

 

[Christopher]

B-4's positronic net was explicitly said as not being complex enough to support Data's engrams, and he would've gone into cascade failure if they'd been left there. The novelverse version of B-4 literally isn't advanced enough hardware to support Data.

That's not just the novelverse version, it's the movie version. The movie stressed quite clearly that B-4 was incapable of supporting Data's programming. That glimmer of Data's memory at the end wasn't meant to presage B-4 turning into Data 2.0 as fans assumed, but merely to suggest that the legacy Data left him might permit him to experience some growth at last - that it would let him fulfill his own potential as an individual more, rather than overwriting him completely and taking over his body.

Countdown rather glossed over the specifics of how B-4's limitations could've been overcome, not to mention the hideous ethics of resurrecting Data by murdering his brother. I think Star Trek Online elaborated it in a way that addressed at least the former issue, and possibly the latter.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Is there anything preventing there actually being 2 Simultaneous versions of Data coexisting in the Novelverse?

A writer doesn't have to hew to the unofficial 'extended continuity' of the current novelverse, so they can write whatever kind of Data they want. But most would choose not to do that.

 

[Idran]

Is there anything preventing there actually being 2 Simultaneous versions of Data coexisting in the Novelverse?

A writer doesn't have to hew to the unofficial 'extended continuity' of the current novelverse, so they can write whatever kind of Data they want. But most would choose not to do that.

A question like that is usually meant diegetically, not narratively. And they explicitly said "in the Novelverse".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ In that case, I'd say no, for whatever reason "diegetically" means.

 

[Idran]

^ In that case, I'd say no, for whatever reason "diegetically" means.

Oh sorry: Within the context of a narrative rather than outside it; like, for example, a diegetic soundtrack is one that exists within the narrative reality of a movie (e.g., much of Guardians of the Galaxy for a recent example) rather than one that's merely for the viewer.

 

[The Wormhole]

Countdown rather glossed over the specifics of how B-4's limitations could've been overcome, not to mention the hideous ethics of resurrecting Data by murdering his brother. I think Star Trek Online elaborated it in a way that addressed at least the former issue, and possibly the latter.

Opposite way around actually, IIRC. While I don't remember if overcoming B-4's limitations is addressed, the ethical quandary of this is sort of addressed in the STO novelization. Basically, when the team of engineers dedicated to awakening Data's consciousness succeeds, Data immediately refuses to live at his brother's expense and tries to purge himself out of B-4's body. Only while he's doing this B-4 catches on and instead purges his own consciousness, essentially sacrificing himself for his brother.

This makes Data's hands clean in the matter, though it is unsettling that Starfleet is okay with giving orders to murder B-4 to bring Data back.

 

[Markonian]

This makes Data's hands clean in the matter, though it is unsettling that Starfleet is okay with giving orders to murder B-4 to bring Data back.

Where does Starfleet do that? They explicitly want to "unlock the Data matrix" and hopefully transfer it out of the body. After B-4 purges himself, the new objective is to retrieve the remains of the B-4 matrix, and put it somewhere.

The Soong Foundation is primarily concerned with the rights of artificial intelligence and wouldn't let murder pass. They advocate for androids, holograms, and exocomps.

 

[The Wormhole]

Admittedly I am working from memory of a novel I read five years ago, but I do remember the engineers awaken Data, who then tries to purge himself out of B-4's body despite this being a form of suicide to stop the engineers from doing the same to B-4.

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

Does this mean that when 2387 rolls around in the novelverse, the people at the Vulcan Science Academy who commission ships will start using the current Terran year as the stardate standard?

 

[laibcoms]

Does this mean that when 2387 rolls around in the novelverse, the people at the Vulcan Science Academy who commission ships will start using the current Terran year as the stardate standard?

I no longer remember much about ST11. But if I remember correctly, it was a narrator that used the Terran year, which probably was someone on Earth at that time?

If not, it can be attributed to other reasons Though it's bordering on ideas so probably not good to share. In any case, I believe there are situations when literary freedom is used. In the Abramverse, the intention was "OOC" (if you will), for the 'new generation', not exactly in-universe.

 

[Christopher]

^The Vulcan ship's computer in the movie did give the stardate of its creation as 2387. But I figure that can be attributed to the computer tapping into local chronological databases and adjusting its format accordingly, like the way a smartphone automatically adjusts to the local time zone when you go traveling.

Then again, I've found it's generally best to ignore the specific numbers used as stardates, because there's no way they can possibly function as a meaningful, coherent timekeeping system. They were, after all, invented by TOS's developers specifically for the sake of obscuring the actual timeframe of the series by conveying no meaningful chronological information whatsoever.