A while back, I came to appreciate that the 5YM is just a setting, like Riverdale High or Springfield, or Gotham or Metropolis. It's a point of departure for storytelling, and if we're being honest then the actual period of time was filled to realistic levels decades ago. I quit worrying so much about how to make it all fit, because it's not possible without making contortions or rationalizations or interpretations, or deciding which stories stay and which go, and all of that involves reaching into subjective territory that'll never make everyone happy.
While I've no objections to additional 5YM stories, as I love the era also, at some point you can't possibly fit them all into a five year period.
I feel the same way. The 5YM has pretty much passed into the realm of modern mythology now, with all the loose continuity and contradictions that implies. Heck, I suppose you could think of the Kelvin Timeline crew as the Roman equivalents to the TOS crew's Greek Gods.
Also, more importantly to my mind, there are so many years of adventures with the original crew outside of the 5YM that are largely unchronicled, relatively speaking. In comparison, we've barely scratched the surface on the post-TMP 5YM, and there is still room for plenty of adventures in the post-TFF, pre-TUC era.
I agree, but I think (for me anyway) a large part of the appeal of the 5YM era is that all the major characters are still in their prime. And it also has a certain iconic appeal in that you don't have to waste any time describing the current
status quo ("Kirk is still at Starfleet Academy, Spock is commanding the
Enterprise on training missions, and Sulu has the flu that he caught from a Denebian Slime Devil...") and you can just dive right in to your story.
for being such a purported uberfan, Arnold certainly didn't think certain things through all that particularly well from time to time.
From what I've read about him, it seems like one of Arnold's big handicaps was being too literal with the ST Universe. Like, if a certain thing wasn't specifically mentioned, it didn't exist. No one on Kirk's
Enterprise ever mentioned getting a haircut, so therefore there was no barber on the
Enterprise. Ever hear Michael Jan Friedman's stardate story?
just taking a look at the episodes, analyzing how much time certain eps took up. "City on the Edge of Forever" or "Mirror, Mirror" take up so much less time than other episodes.
It's funny to think that those two episodes only spanned a few hours for most of our heroes. Kirk and Spock spend about a week in 1930 in COTEOF, but they return to their present only a few seconds after they left! And "Mirror, Mirror" takes up, what, like 4 hours, max? Hardly more time than it takes for us to watch it!
On the flip side, episodes like "The Paradise Syndrome" take up a huge amount of time.
I think that one still holds the record for the TOS episode that spans the longest amount of time.
are there any episodes that could be safely omitted to free up time? Or at this point has everything down to "The Alternative Factor" been referenced in some other episode or modern-continuity novel?
...If "The Alternative Factor" isn't ever referenced in a novel, does it make a sound?
Absolutely -- if anyone wants a copy of it, just shoot me a PM, and I can e-mail it to you.
Will do! My own TOS timeline isn't currently available due to some external hard drive issues I'm having, but you can see the broad strokes of mine here:
https://www.sutori.com/timeline/star-trek-timeline
There of course, I'm mainly limiting myself to entries I can illustrate with a decent graphic, and I don't have much novelverse continuity incorporated in. Feel free to give me any feedback you'd like, either here or via PM.
