Abrams: ST Movie is Not a Traditional Prequel

[Franklin]

Within the context of what Abrams is saying it doesn't make sense to think it's old Spock. There's no reason to expect old Spock to be alive at the end of the movie.
However, wouldn't we expect the seven main characters to live? Especially in a movie that is supposed to be about how they came together to form a legendary crew? That's what I thought Abrams meant. Who really knows what to expect?
The more things leak out, the more muddied things actually become.

 

[wamdue]

actually if James Doohan wasnt dead, do you think its possible he could be in the movie?

I dobut McCoy lived much longer after his TNG appearance, whilst Scotty cheated time in a transporter buffer, could still be alive (depending on when this movie fits in the timeline) he could have had another 20 years in him.

 

[FordSVT]

^As I'm sure Abrams intended.

 

[archeryguy1701]

Franklin said:
The more things leak out, the more muddied things actually become.

And JJ's sinister plans continue right on schedule...
I'm trying to think of who could die in this in our real timeline that they could get away with. I'm leaning towards Kirk's parents, but that would seem almost too cliche for Abrams.

 

[wamdue]

Sharr Khan said:

Mr J said:

wamdue said:
the death of Nimoy/Spock seems like a good idea to me. Ive always wondered what happened to him post his appearance in TNG, I hope the movie will answer that question.

I agree with that, Spock's fate has always been kind of left hanging in the air since 'Unification'. It would be quite cool for him to die saving his own younger self and the life he had.

I'm going with option 1 & 3 combined. Someone mentioned something a few months back about Old Spock giving his younger self his katra - I think that would be interesting if it turned out that way.

Sharr

I was going to make a post about this movie ending up with a Time Crash like paradox, but that would be so much cooler

 

[Franklin]

archeryguy1701 said:

Franklin said:
The more things leak out, the more muddied things actually become.

And JJ's sinister plans continue right on schedule...
I'm trying to think of who could die in this in our real timeline that they could get away with. I'm leaning towards Kirk's parents, but that would seem almost too cliche for Abrams.

I can see what you're saying, but I think it has to be a character we KNOW should be alive at the end based on TOS canon. That leaves the original seven and Pike.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" is said to have had an influence on Orci. The movie involves alternate timelines. Perhaps Pike became aware of his grim fate, and in the course of how the plot unfolds, decides to take a more heroic way out.

Pike is also a one-off character. I doubt he figures in any second movie. Otherwise, we're left with deciding which of the original seven is the most expendable.

 

[Nowhere Man]

If it is anything like other Star Trek episodes or movies, or any other kind of scifi incarnation that involves time travel, then Old Spok will return to the future of the future and probably die on Vulcan or he may even die on The E-E with Picard present.As far as the alternate timeline theory goes, I dought that will happen unless it's like BTF2 and Old Spock comes back and everthing has changed, so he has to go back agian.

 

[thumbtack]

Old Spock and young Spock are entirely separate characters? One can die without the other? Really? I say Chekov bites it. The movie could open in current continuity and end with a whole new continuity established, freeing them to make sequels with the new cast (minus Chekov).

 

[Stardate]

I do not think Abrams was saying that someone is going to die from the 7-main cast but stated it wont be hammered by same weakness as Star Wars prequel( knowing what characters was going to survive and who wasn't.) For me, it killed of the excitement.
Abrams sees that(kudos to him :thumbsup and dosent want that kind of prequel so he is going for alternative time-line.
Personally,i would have told Abrams to reboot Star Trek franchise and modernize it and say fuck to Star Trek cluttered canon .

 

[EnsignRicky]

The more I read about this film, the more I really, really wish that they would have just gone the full reboot route. It may very well turn out to be good movie, but if not, it will be full of enough references to drag everything that has come before with it; I'll withhold my obligitory ENT remarks on this one. Everyone seems to be up in arms over Shatner's exclusion; My feelings are that they should have left Nimoy out of it as well. Even if it's the best Trek ever, I would still like to have seen the film achive that goal on it's own. And a major plus would have been the diminished odds that the word "time Travel" would have popped up in pitch meetings.

 

[Nowhere Man]

Well, the way I understand it is like Old Biff and Young Biff from Back to the Future, they are one in the same, but 2 seperate Characters . If young Biff dies then so does old Biff, but Old Biff dies then it doesent effect Young Biff. becouse he's already lived his life, Young Biff has not.

 

[wamdue]

EnsignRicky I tend to agree, a straight revamp would seem to be the best thing, and TBH the only thing which makes me think this isnt the case, is Nimoy being in the movie, of course his being in it is part of the reason why im excited about this movie, which explains why he is in the movie

 

[FordSVT]

EnsignRicky said:Everyone seems to be up in arms over Shatner's exclusion;

"Everyone"? No, definitely not everyone. Mostly Shatner as far as I can tell. Most of the fans around here seem pretty nonchalant about the hole thing. No one wants him there just because he's the Shat, if he's in he's in and if not... then he's not. If the story doesn't necessitate his being there it shouldn't be tailored just to squeeze him in at the expense of story.

 

[blockaderunner]

Franklin said:
Within the context of what Abrams is saying it doesn't make sense to think it's old Spock. There's no reason to expect old Spock to be alive at the end of the movie.

Oh, methinks I sense a bit of the old Grandfather Paradox rearing its head. Gotta love time travel. Why don't they go hog wild and throw in Future Guy, Daniels and the timeship Relativety for good measure? Also have Dan Vassar lurking in the background.

 

[TigerBait]

Starship Polaris said:
After Old Spock "fixes" the timeline to the best of his ability, he ceases to exist - because the new version of the timeline is just different enough that rather than him some other "Old Spock" exists in the future under somewhat different circumstances.

I know this is science fiction and all, but i just dont see how someone ceases to exist, can matter break down like that, even with temporal changes. I'd just think that 'old Spock' would just become another member of the altered timeline.

People in time travel movies that 'cease to exist' a la marty mcfly, just doesnt seem realistic if there is such a thing in these movies. Regardless, it would pull me right out of the movie and i'd be royally pissed.

 

[Delta1]

EnsignRicky said:
The more I read about this film, the more I really, really wish that they would have just gone the full reboot route.

I kind of agree, except for inclining in the exact opposite direction. I wish they had just done a straight prequel without time travel, alternate timelines, or doppelganger characters. Stick it into the Star Trek canon and play nice with the established continuity. Don't kill people who are alive later; kill secondary characters, or find some other source of drama. Audiences know that some characters are going to survive to the end of the story; creating an alternate timeline just to place them in jeopardy is a cheap way of creating drama.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

FordSVT said:

EnsignRicky said:Everyone seems to be up in arms over Shatner's exclusion;

"Everyone"? No, definitely not everyone. Mostly Shatner as far as I can tell. Most of the fans around here seem pretty nonchalant about the hole thing. No one wants him there just because he's the Shat, if he's in he's in and if not... then he's not. If the story doesn't necessitate his being there it shouldn't be tailored just to squeeze him in at the expense of story.

Shatner's not "up in arms" over it. If anything, it seems that people WANT him to be more "upset" about it than he really is... and one time (just ONCE, mind you!) he decided to "tweak" a particularly aggressive interviewer... and it fed fuel into the fires already burning in the imagination of some folks on the 'net.

 

[wamdue]

what they should do is build up a character, who the audience thinks will die, but then not kill him, then s/he can appear in any sequel movies, and die in the last one.

 

[Sharr Khan]

People in time travel movies that 'cease to exist' a la marty mcfly, just doesnt seem realistic

Well if they have no starting point, and under no circumstances did their parents come together to mix the
DNA which composed said individual, then yes its reasonable to think they would "fade out" of reality since they're not so much fading away as never having been at all the matter that composed them became something else.

Sharr

 

[trevanian]

I'm wondering which other ST novels this Orci guy read. There certainly seem to be some similarities to the first Pocket original, Vonda McIntyre's ENTROPY EFFECT, as well as Della Van Hise's KILLING TIME. Come to think of it, Chris Pike is a character in KILLING TIME as well, I believe Spock's former XO in another timeline. Hmmm ... Killing Time has some good character bits, but the thing I remember best is when Kirk, who is some Ensign in Security, starts to pull on a costume for landing party duty when he is stopped by his roommmate, who picks another color for him and says 'red isn't lucky on this ship.'

I think they get around the 'fading out' of the changed timeline thing in ENTROPY in a kind of WTF way, but that novel has got some powerful stuff, like Kirk being killed on the bridge with a handgun that leaves ... lemme see, it is something like 'blood-spatters covered the illuminated data banks' or along those lines.

Now I gotta admit I'm a little interested in this, if for no other reason than to see where they drew from. I remember writing up this thing that showed god knows how many points of similarity between Diane Duane's MY ENEMY MY ALLY and Ron Moore's Romulan defector epsiode of TNG. That never bothered me too much, because he actually improved on a couple of the plot point payoffs, but I still wonder how much of it was consciously borrowed from the novel, which was about 5 years old at that point.