A TMP "What If"
- Thread starter Bry_Sinclair
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Okay, some of this is from previous postings.
8 years before TMP, after the first five year mission the Enterprise undergoes a short refurbishment, there is a general crew rotation. The ship departs on a second (anticipated) five year mission. Kirk is promoted to Fleet Captain at this time, on several occasions he commands small fleets of starships in battle. Three years into the mission Kirk becomes a Commodore, this gives him administrative responsibility over a dozen starships and their crews. Christine Chapel leaves the ship to attend medical school at this point
4 years before TMP, Commodore Kirk turns over command of the Enterprise to Captain Decker at a outlying starbase. After a brief standard resupply Decker took the Enterprise out on what was anticipated to be a three plus year mission. The extensive refit was already scheduled. At this time the Enterprise is no longer considered by Starfleet to be a "front line" vessel and Decker's mission is heavy on survey, exploration and diplomacy, light on border patrol and confrontation assignments.
Spock deactivates his commission and returns to Vulcan. McCoy resigns his commission and goes into private medical research.
Upon arriving on Earth Commodore Kirk takes a few weeks leave and then reports to Starfleet Command to a position on the operations staff.
2.5 years before TMP, Kirk is assigned as Starfleet Chief of Operations. at this time he is promoted to Rear Admiral (note; Chief of Operations in Starfleet is not the top position that it is in the US Navy).
1.5 years before TMP, Starfleet begins redesigning the Enterprise. Scotty returns to Earth as one of the engineers assigned. Pavel Chekov returns to the academy for advanced officer training and then to attend tactical security school.
8 months before TMP, the Enterprise returns to Earth orbit and the refit begins. Decker, Sulu and Uhura remains with the ship during the refit.
Decker at this point has been in command of the Enterprise for less than four years, while there have been rare low-level skirmishes in that time, Decker never commanded the ship in full combat nor handled a major crisis, and is still considered by some to be "untried."
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Oh, the "What if's?" What if TMP was actually a good movie? For one, their uniforms wouldn't be skin tight pajamas. Voyager would have come no where's near a black hole yet. Humans wouldn't be having affairs with robots. Cats and dogs wouldn't get along. etc.
How about a good old fashioned stand off between the Enterprise crew and Klingons? Revive Kor or one of the other classic TOS Klingon villains. Almost anything would be better than a cloud of gas.
Sure, it would have fallen through the wormhole near Saturn, and found Gargantua...
Of course, what the writers really meant was that Voyager passed through a wormhole, not a black hole (as the latter would have placed it in another universe... assuming it wasn't stretched and crushed first).
TO: Admiral Heihachiro Nogura
FROM: Admiral James T. Kirk
RE: The Enterprise Shakedown: Some Notes
Having finished my impromptu shakedown cruise aboard the Enterprise, I have some notes about the refit design, which to be honest is full of major oversights.
Let's start with the idiotic idea of running phasers through the warp engine ....
... And a final thing -- who's brilliant idea was it to place the science officer behind the captain's chair? Didn't anyone realize what a pain in the ass it is to rotate the chair 180 degrees every time you want a report? The last thing a starship needs in a crisis is the captain getting dizzy. Move the damn science console back to the starboard side of the bridge where it belongs!
Ah, but TMP was a good movie. It just wasn't what Star Trek fans expected to see from a Star Trek movie.
fonzob1 said:
My case in point.
In the original 79 episodes, we were presented with a certain type of thing. TMP was something different to that, and I think there are people who to this day hold those differences against it. Unfairly, IMHO. It's not exactly a rock 'em sock 'em action movie (which TOS would have us expect), but that doesn't make it 'bad'.
Except for the fact that the Comm station and Uhura should be between the turbolifts, right behind the captain's chair, as it was in TOS. It got moved to where the bridge engineering station used to be, and where that went I never did figure out.
Am I alone in actually liking the TMP uniforms? Ok the colour scheme could've been different, but the diversity of styles was great to see, as well as the department badge colours rather than just three.
I actually like that placement better, and how the rear of the bridge became a little conference area for Kirk, Spock and Decker.
While I have my quibbles about certain elements of the TMP uniforms I like their overall concept much better than those of TWOK onward. I thought the maroons were a horrible design and totally unbelievable as regular duty wear.
But the TMP one-piece (worn by Decker) was a poor idea.
The "massive" part is really the only thing that needed to go. The concept is sound, and I wish they had done something like in in TNG. But yeah, as is it wasn't a good idea.
Here's a thought. Introduce it as part of the comm badge.
One thing with TMP is that in some ways it seems like the overall look was designed without really considering the starting point: TOS.
Matt Jefferies based the Phase II refit right on the TOS E so it looked like a slightly modified version of the same ship. But the TMP refit (as really nice at it is) looks more like following the general MJ concept, but not based on the same original.
The same goes for the uniforms. They're nice and conceptually interesting in a science fiction way, but they seem a bit too divergent from what TOS had.
The result was more than "this is what it should always have looked like" because it didn't seem consistent enough with what came before.
Matt Jefferies based the Phase II refit right on the TOS E so it looked like a slightly modified version of the same ship. But the TMP refit (as really nice at it is) looks more like following the general MJ concept, but not based on the same original.
The same goes for the uniforms. They're nice and conceptually interesting in a science fiction way, but they seem a bit too divergent from what TOS had.
The result was more than "this is what it should always have looked like" because it didn't seem consistent enough with what came before.
It's interesting to look at the test footage shot for Phase II, and notice how the new costumes in the engineering test harken back more closely to the TOS color scheme. And that, although the sets are the same as in TMP, the finishing details like the colors of the doors and so on are more in keeping with the 'TOS asthetic' too. So, it seems as though the aborted Phase II was always intended to look and feel more like TOS than TMP did, which makes sense given it was intended to feel like a refit of the same ship from TOS. When Phase II got moved to the big screen and turned into TMP, they obviously re-evaluated these aspects and decided to try something different. I've heard it said Robert Wise himself stated he wanted to bring a more neutral palette to the overall design.
I think with shoulder pads like TNG season 3+ and some proper boots we'd have something more like SW imperial officer uniforms, which is ok as far as I'm concerned. I didn't dislike the colour scheme so much as dislike the randomness. Rank and department should be clearly visible in all versions. I like epaulets since every version has shoulders.
The belt buckle idea was incorporated into the TNG comm badge. The concept was great but yeah, they were too clunky. The TWoK jackets would have been great for away team wear.
Interesting idea.
TMP explicitly takes place two years after the five year mission, but you're quite right in saying that the exact amount of time since the end of TOS is still pretty ambiguous (ie, "Turnabout Intruder" could still be some way short of the end of the five year mission). A lot of what we now accept as 'fact' is really just historical revisionism: a case of 'fanon' becoming 'canon' as more people have come to accept it over time. And the 'fanon' has tended to be that "Turnabout Intruder" was near the end of the five year mission, and that instead we had two years of unscreened adventures before "The Corbomite Maneuver".Of course, the sad fact is that the weight of the franchise now pushes in the direction of confirming the fanon, as future productions set the timeframe in stone. But I like the idea that, taken on their own merits, there's a lot of different interpretations that can be made. Yours makes a lot more sense than the 'official' timeframe, IMHO.
Given Paramount now endorses the Animated Series, I'd personally love to see fandom embrace the idea that there was a further two years after TOS but before the end of the five year mission, and see the official time-date of the V'ger crisis pushed back accordingly. That'd give us nearly half a decade of off-screen time between "Turnabout Intruder" and TMP, which is easier to accept given everybody looks much older than the alleged two years that we are supposed to accept. But I'm not sure how likely that'd be to happen after all this time.....
TMP takes place 2-1/2 years after Kirk last logged a star hour. That is the ONLY explicit reference to time passing. For all we know, the Enterprise continued for several years beyond the end of the 5-year mission before being put in for refit. Nothing else is said on screen.
As for uniforms, I really like the TMP unis. I know that, in reality, they were difficult and cumbersome. However, they LOOK like comfortable daily wear one might expect of a futuristic society. Heck, they already wear polo shirts and track pants now on the ISS. The other great thing about the TMP uniforms are that there was a variety for different situations. Trek productions always suffer from the silly "why do they wear the same clothes all the time" criticism, especially from new viewers.
As for uniforms, I really like the TMP unis. I know that, in reality, they were difficult and cumbersome. However, they LOOK like comfortable daily wear one might expect of a futuristic society. Heck, they already wear polo shirts and track pants now on the ISS. The other great thing about the TMP uniforms are that there was a variety for different situations. Trek productions always suffer from the silly "why do they wear the same clothes all the time" criticism, especially from new viewers.
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