A couple 'Prelude to Axanar' nitpicks

[Jedi Marso]

Much of this is sort of a moot point now given the lawsuit and such, but after a recent re-watch of 'Prelude to Axanar' a couple of things sort of jumped out at me that hadn't before.

The first is when exactly in the Trek timeline this is all supposed to be happening. If you go by 'older' canon (stuff not contradicted by the TNG era and Enterprise, basically), first contact with the Klingon Empire happened somewhere in the vicinity of 2200, and then the four years war should have been somewhere around 2251-2254 or thereabouts, or perhaps a little more than a decade before TOS.

At this time, Constitution Class starships were already in service. Pike had the Enterprise for what? Over a decade? And Robert April had her before that. In Prelude, they depict both the Constitution and the Enterprise as being under construction at the end of the 4 Years War AT AXANAR, which is a direct contradiction to Enterprise being built at the 'San Francisco Yards.' That's the first, major nitpick.

The war couldn't have taken place much farther back than that, when you consider Garth was still a middle-aged man when interred in the crazy house. Kirk stated that his battle tactics were 'required reading at the academy,' which might or might not imply that Kirk read them as a cadet. (Could have happened later, though- that's open to interpretation.)

Lastly, one of Kirk's commendations is the 'Palm Leaf of the Axanar Peace Mission,' which I've always interpreted to mean that as a cadet or an ensign he was part of the Starfleet contingent that sealed whatever peace deal was sealed at Axanar following the war.

Anyway the two big contradictions I took away were: a) the timeframe (Constitution Class ships should have fought in the war) and; b) The Enteprise wasn't built at Axanar- she was built at Earth!

Any thoughts?

Too bad CBS nixed it- I totally get why they did, but to quote Kor- it would have been glorious!

 

[YJAGG]

Sorry if this was already mentioned, but found it interesting that Lucas shot down a fan made game for shelved Battlefronts game: http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/1/12340778/galaxy-in-turmoil-shut-down-lucasfilm-frontwire-studios

 

[OpenMaw]

At this time, Constitution Class starships were already in service. Pike had the Enterprise for what? Over a decade? And Robert April had her before that. In Prelude, they depict both the Constitution and the Enterprise as being under construction at the end of the 4 Years War AT AXANAR, which is a direct contradiction to Enterprise being built at the 'San Francisco Yards.' That's the first, major nitpick.

Rewatch Prelude. That's not what's intended by that scene with the Connies.

Remember, Klingon spies "learned" this. Both Alec and Christian were big war history and war documentary fans. The idea is this is part of Garth's strategy to lure the Klingons into an ambush.

Too bad CBS nixed it- I totally get why they did, but to quote Kor- it would have been glorious!

We have no way of knowing that. Lot's of the talent jumped ship when Alec went full control-freak.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Rewatch Prelude. That's not what's intended by that scene with the Connies.

Remember, Klingon spies "learned" this. Both Alec and Christian were big war history and war documentary fans. The idea is this is part of Garth's strategy to lure the Klingons into an ambush.

Will have to rewatch that again, then- totally missed it.

We have no way of knowing that. Lot's of the talent jumped ship when Alec went full control-freak.

Yeah, other than watching Prelude and that there was a lawsuit I know almost nothing about the whole thing. Sounds like the project sort of blew up on itself, huh?

 

[OpenMaw]

Will have to rewatch that again, then- totally missed it.

It's subtly done, and a lot of people ended up missing it on first viewing, but i'm almost 100% certain that's the intention there. I can't remember if it was Alec or Christian, but they were talking a lot about the Pacific Theater during World War 2. Particularly the Battle of Midway and such.

Yeah, other than watching Prelude and that there was a lawsuit I know almost nothing about the whole thing. Sounds like the project sort of blew up on itself, huh?

Things peaked right after Prelude came out, and then very sharply nose-dived behind the scenes as Alec kept ballooning the objectives, and then not properly spending the money. They lost Tony Todd( Ramirez ) six months before the court debacle started, due to Alec being an "amateur" who couldn't act or take criticism.

It is a damn shame. The Four Years War had a lot of potential, this movie had a lot of potential. Unfortunately ego happened.

 

[Philip Guyott]

The first is when exactly in the Trek timeline this is all supposed to be happening

2245, 21 years before the events of “Where no Man Has Gone Before”.

If you go by 'older' canon (stuff not contradicted by the TNG era and Enterprise, basically), first contact with the Klingon Empire happened somewhere in the vicinity of 2200, and then the four years war should have been somewhere around 2251-2254 or thereabouts, or perhaps a little more than a decade before TOS.

I don't know what year the Battle of Axanar would have taken place but it is unlikely that Garth fought the Klingons. In the TOS episode ‘Whom Gods Destroy” it was never established who the opponent was. Alec Peters only speculated that Garth fought the Klingon’s. He actually stole the idea from the FASA source book ‘The Four Years War’, however FASA is not canonical. Memory Alpha explains pretty well why it would have been unlikely that the battle of Axanar was against the Klingons:

"This is also highly unlikely, as the history implied by TOS: "Errand of Mercy" indicates that the Federation had been involved in a strictly "cold" war with the Klingons during that time. In addition, Garth's reaction to the fact that Kirk seems to have successfully made peace with the Federation's opponents in the battle would exclude the Klingons as a potential enemy."

And Robert April had her before that

We were going to see Captain Robert April in the film as the first captain of the Enterprise.

In Prelude, they depict both the Constitution and the Enterprise as being under construction at the end of the 4 Years War AT AXANAR, which is a direct contradiction to Enterprise being built at the 'San Francisco Yards.' That's the first, major nitpick.

That was later revealed to be an intentional misdirect. They leaked false information to the Klingon’s that the ship was being built at Axanar to lure them to attack. In actuality the Enterprise had been built at Earth and would have been with the fleet at Axanar ready to attack. It was an ambush devised by Garth. The shot you see in Prelude was of a shipyard in orbit of Earth.

Lastly, one of Kirk's commendations is the 'Palm Leaf of the Axanar Peace Mission,' which I've always interpreted to mean that as a cadet or an ensign he was part of the Starfleet contingent that sealed whatever peace deal was sealed at Axanar following the war.

According to memory Alpha:

"The Axanar Peace Mission was a diplomatic operation at the planet Axanar in the mid-23rd century, in which Starfleet took part. It was designed to bring peaceful resolution to a conflict involving the Federation, with Garth of Izar winning a major victory in the Battle of Axanar. Kirk participated in the peace mission as a "new-fledged cadet".
For his work during the mission, he was awarded the Palm Leaf of Axanar Peace Mission. (TOS: "Court Martial", "Whom Gods Destroy")."

The Question is how old was he? According to Memory Alpha Kirk was born 2233 and Axanar Productions says the Battle of Axanar was 2245, so Kirk would have been 12 at the time. In 2245 Kirk would have been living on Tarsus IV, where he witnessed the massacre of the colonists at the hands of Governor Kodos a year later in 2246. Alec Peters had clearly forgotten about the 'Palm Leaf' issue.

 

[Warped9]

Considering this is a now dead project, and AP never held the rights to the Trek materiel anyway, is there really anything stopping someone else from telling this story albeit in a different way?

It's all based on a handful of generalized references from "Whom Gods Destroy." That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't know what year the Battle of Axanar would have taken place but it is unlikely that Garth fought the Klingons. In the TOS episode ‘Whom Gods Destroy” it was never established who the opponent was. Alec Peters only speculated that Garth fought the Klingon’s. He actually stole the idea from the FASA source book ‘The Four Years War’, however FASA is not canonical. Memory Alpha explains pretty well why it would have been unlikely that the battle of Axanar was against the Klingons:

"This is also highly unlikely, as the history implied by TOS: "Errand of Mercy" indicates that the Federation had been involved in a strictly "cold" war with the Klingons during that time.

OTOH, the Battle of Donatu V took place in 2245... against the Klingons.

 

[Warped9]

And with Garth's shape changing ability he might have looked younger in WGD than he actually was.

 

[Sgt_G]

Hopefully people named Garth simply age well.

Spoiler

Garth is my given name. For real.

 

[OpenMaw]

OTOH, the Battle of Donatu V took place in 2245... against the Klingons.

Yeah. I never took anything said in Errand of Mercy to imply that all out conflict hadn't happened before. Just that the current round of talks was on the verge of a breakdown.

Incidentally, that's one of my favorite parts of that episode. We hear some vague bits and pieces about what they are having issue over "Withdraw from the disputed territories." "They are not disputed! They are clearly ours!" The way the story frames that, it's actually entirely possible that the Federation are antagonistic to the Klingons in some way.

 

[somebuddyX]

I thought it was weird in Prelude to Axanar when Captain Martok is talking about getting his best captains together to come up with some war plans. I thought all that stuff would be done at Starfleet HQ

 

[Jedi_Master]

I love the lens flares.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The biggest nitpick in Prelude is that the entire war hinges on whether the Klingons get their D7 launched before the Constitution-class (in 2245), but Star Trek Enterprise showed that Klingons have been using the D7 since 2151 and probably earlier.

That said (and Axanar's massive financial dodgyness and lawsuit aside), it's fanfiction and free to ignore and reinterpret canon however they see fit.

 

[steam235]

Remember, Klingon spies "learned" this. Both Alec and Christian were big war history and war documentary fans. The idea is this is part of Garth's strategy to lure the Klingons into an ambush.

The Klingon rebels launch a final offensive to destroy the federation super weapons. They warp into the system, and begin an attack, the Klingon Commandos on Axanar haven't been able to shut down the shield generator.

Alec turns to Karn, captured and brought to the bridge, "Oh the Enterprise will be quite operational when your friends arrive."

Chancellor Akbar yells, "It's a Trap!"

 

[Sgt_G]

One of my biggest issues with Prelude was the scene of the Klingon attack on the colony that opened the war. From a military point of view, nothing about it made any sense at all. It was reckless and wasteful.

The Klingons aren't stupid, and they know how to fight a war or at least a battle. Here they had their ships down in the atmosphere randomly firing at anything and everything. Stupid. They should have stayed in orbit and used selective Shock & Awe** targeting to take out any defensive facilities, and then dropped a crap-load of infantry to do a proper occupation.

In Prelude, they put their ships at risk to more types of defensive weapons, such as SAMs, that could never touch them in orbit. They left the civilian cities a burning pile of rubble. Very wasteful. Even if they didn't plan to colonize the planet themselves (and why wouldn't they? Class-M planets are hard to come by), they just destroyed perfectly good facilities they could have used when making the planet a supply base to extend their reach deeper into Federation space.

No, Prelude did that only to implant the idea that Klingons are ruthless, merciless, and completely evil. But if Alec Peters and crew are the history/war buffs them claim to be, they should have seen just how stupid it all was.


** Many people dismiss the Shock & Awe of the Second Gulf War as meaningless hype. Far from it. For most civilians, the reaction was "That's it? That was the big Shock and Awe?" From a military point of view, it was "Holy Crap, they did WHAT?!?" The US Air Force sent 12 F-117 stealth planes in each with four bombs, and bull's-eyed 48 high-value targets (mainly radar sites to blind the defenses). The next day, the coalition sent in about 100 planes and took out some 400-500 military targets with unprecedented accuracy. Over the following several days, they completely gutted anything of military significance. And it all happened with very little collateral damage to the surrounding civilian infrastructure. It wasn't like the random damage of the Blitz attacks on London or the totally leveling of Dresden in WW-2 when we had to drop 50 bombs to get one single hit on a specific target. It was unlike any air campaign in history, not even the First Gulf War. For the first time ever, we could say "I want that building taken out" and do it without touching any of the other buildings on the block. Even during Operation Just Cause we had to drop three or four bombs just to make sure we hit the right building once.

One would presume that Starfleet and the Klingon Imperial Fleet would both have even better targeting systems two hundred years from now. There should be no logical reason to burn whole cities to the ground. This all should be so very obvious to anyone who likes sci-fi/Trek and likes war history. Alec Peters claims to be such a person. So why did he write such a stupid, totally unrealistic scene????

 

[uniderth]

If I was to do Axanar I would have it be a Federation civil war. This from the line that the dream established at Axanar made it possible for Kirk and Spock to be brothers. Also I would have put Garth in command of a Constitution class ship, maybe the U.S.S. Constitution NCC-1700 herself.

However, my original (before I heard of the fanfilm) idea was to have Axanar be a three part season finale to a Captain April-era TV series.

 

[Sgt_G]

For what it's worth, I just picked up the FASA books Four Years War and Back To Axanar from eBay. I thought I'd read up on the inspirational source material and see if it makes any more sense then these films.

 

[cultcross]

One of my biggest issues with Prelude was the scene of the Klingon attack on the colony that opened the war. From a military point of view, nothing about it made any sense at all. It was reckless and wasteful.

The Klingons aren't stupid, and they know how to fight a war or at least a battle. Here they had their ships down in the atmosphere randomly firing at anything and everything. Stupid. They should have stayed in orbit and used selective Shock & Awe** targeting to take out any defensive facilities, and then dropped a crap-load of infantry to do a proper occupation.

In Prelude, they put their ships at risk to more types of defensive weapons, such as SAMs, that could never touch them in orbit. They left the civilian cities a burning pile of rubble. Very wasteful. Even if they didn't plan to colonize the planet themselves (and why wouldn't they? Class-M planets are hard to come by), they just destroyed perfectly good facilities they could have used when making the planet a supply base to extend their reach deeper into Federation space.

No, Prelude did that only to implant the idea that Klingons are ruthless, merciless, and completely evil. But if Alec Peters and crew are the history/war buffs them claim to be, they should have seen just how stupid it all was.


** Many people dismiss the Shock & Awe of the Second Gulf War as meaningless hype. Far from it. For most civilians, the reaction was "That's it? That was the big Shock and Awe?" From a military point of view, it was "Holy Crap, they did WHAT?!?" The US Air Force sent 12 F-117 stealth planes in each with four bombs, and bull's-eyed 48 high-value targets (mainly radar sites to blind the defenses). The next day, the coalition sent in about 100 planes and took out some 400-500 military targets with unprecedented accuracy. Over the following several days, they completely gutted anything of military significance. And it all happened with very little collateral damage to the surrounding civilian infrastructure. It wasn't like the random damage of the Blitz attacks on London or the totally leveling of Dresden in WW-2 when we had to drop 50 bombs to get one single hit on a specific target. It was unlike any air campaign in history, not even the First Gulf War. For the first time ever, we could say "I want that building taken out" and do it without touching any of the other buildings on the block. Even during Operation Just Cause we had to drop three or four bombs just to make sure we hit the right building once.

One would presume that Starfleet and the Klingon Imperial Fleet would both have even better targeting systems two hundred years from now. There should be no logical reason to burn whole cities to the ground. This all should be so very obvious to anyone who likes sci-fi/Trek and likes war history. Alec Peters claims to be such a person. So why did he write such a stupid, totally unrealistic scene????

Stories by civilians about war seem to have the same problem as police procedurals by people who read detective novels but have never worked in the field (and I daresay hospital dramas). The basic concepts are there, but a lack of specific subject knowledge leads to an unrealistic depiction. AP's research seems lacking.

 

[JE Smith]