Alternate reality vs. altered timeline

[OneBuckFilms]

The change in skyline, Vulcan and the other thousand or so inconsistencies is the result of the writers fucking it up and/or taking artistic and creative liberties as opposed to respecting what had come before.

Okay, then the Enterprise should be lit with Primary colors, and Vulcan should look exactly like the lit-walled set we saw in Amok Time.

The respected it by knowing what had to change to make it more convincing on screen.

ie. creative liberties. Like I said.

: |

I got that. But it was not out of disrespect that the changes were made, as your post indicated.

 

[JarodRussell]

It is a pretty hard fact. But not in the Alternate Reality.

How much of 23rd-24th Century San Francisco did we see?

How many times have we seen San Francisco in 2258?

Yeah, but what is supposed to change the skyline in the Alternate Reality (except the concept artist, lol)? In my opinion, Nero's attack is not enough. The Kelvin is just a spaceship with 800 officers. If you sink an aircraft carrier, it will have no effect on how the skyline of New York will look.

There's more to it than that:
- Kelvin has shuttles
- Shuttles have sensors
- Starfleet has investigators and Engineers
- Engineers can look at those scans and get ideas
- The ideas mean different individuals are doing different things
- That leads to all of the differences seen over 25 years since.

This is not as far-fetched as the sudden appearances of Ridges on Klingons, or Starfleet's change of style to the point of being almost unrecognizable in 6 years.

Why do you accept one, but not the other? That is illogical, and strikes me as being based on a personal bias.

If past Trek is the standard, let it BE the standard.

Personally, I am not happy at all that the TOS design still exists. The proper visual existance of Star Trek starts with The Motion Picture for me. Which is why Klingons without ridges shouldn't exist in my opinion (and as far as I know, Roddenberry was fine with that, too). And everything was perfectly fine, until they decided to let TOS design appear in TNG/DS9 episodes. There we suddenly had Worf with ridges, altogether with smooth forehead Klingons, in one scene. Bad move. And it got even worse when they made this virus explanation. I really don't like that.


Same goes for Starfleet's style. I find it reasonable that they sometimes change their uniform designs. It happens in real life, too (not that often, though). Ship designs are pretty much consistent anyway. The change from TOS to TMP design has been explained with a refit. But in a way, it's just like the Klingon ridges: they were always supposed to look like that, but the budget wasn't there.


But I really can't think of a reasonable connection between the Kelvin's destruction and the look of the San Francisco skyline. The construction of buildings comes with population growth, the style of administration of the city, and so forth. The destruction of a space ship doesn't change that. And it also makes no sense to have huge 5th element style skyscrapers in the 2250s, and have them completely removed in the 2270s.

You could argue that's also a budget issue. But they had plently of opportunities to create matte paintings of a much, much different skyline, and they didn't. And then there's such things like Sulu's comment on the look of the city, and the idea that Earth is an utopic paradise where there are no such things as megacities.

 

[OneBuckFilms]

Yeah, but what is supposed to change the skyline in the Alternate Reality (except the concept artist, lol)? In my opinion, Nero's attack is not enough. The Kelvin is just a spaceship with 800 officers. If you sink an aircraft carrier, it will have no effect on how the skyline of New York will look.

There's more to it than that:
- Kelvin has shuttles
- Shuttles have sensors
- Starfleet has investigators and Engineers
- Engineers can look at those scans and get ideas
- The ideas mean different individuals are doing different things
- That leads to all of the differences seen over 25 years since.

This is not as far-fetched as the sudden appearances of Ridges on Klingons, or Starfleet's change of style to the point of being almost unrecognizable in 6 years.

Why do you accept one, but not the other? That is illogical, and strikes me as being based on a personal bias.

If past Trek is the standard, let it BE the standard.

Personally, I am not happy at all that the TOS design still exists. The proper visual existance of Star Trek starts with The Motion Picture for me. Which is why Klingons without ridges shouldn't exist in my opinion (and as far as I know, Roddenberry was fine with that, too). And everything was perfectly fine, until they decided to let TOS design appear in TNG/DS9 episodes. There we suddenly had Worf with ridges, altogether with smooth forehead Klingons, in one scene. Bad move. And it got even worse when they made this virus explanation. I really don't like that.


Same goes for Starfleet's style. I find it reasonable that they sometimes change their uniform designs. It happens in real life, too (not that often, though). Ship designs are pretty much consistent anyway. The change from TOS to TMP design has been explained with a refit. But in a way, it's just like the Klingon ridges: they were always supposed to look like that, but the budget wasn't there.


But I really can't think of a reasonable connection between the Kelvin's destruction and the look of the San Francisco skyline. The construction of buildings comes with population growth, the style of administration of the city, and so forth. The destruction of a space ship doesn't change that. And it also makes no sense to have huge 5th element style skyscrapers in the 2250s, and have them completely removed in the 2270s.

You could argue that's also a budget issue. But they had plently of opportunities to create matte paintings of a much, much different skyline, and they didn't. And then there's such things like Sulu's comment on the look of the city, and the idea that Earth is an utopic paradise where there are no such things as megacities.

The thing is, the difference with the San Francisco skyline is something which is irrelevent. An alternate reality started, and a lot of technicians and architects made different choices. Not all of them can, not should, be explained, and we've never seen San Francisco in 2258.

How do you explain how Vulcan's appearance changed so completely between ST: TMP and Star Trek III, and IV?

If the movies are the true starting point, this must be addressed before the San Francisco argument can really be applied.

I do not see the presense of large buildings in a city that is the heart of Starfleet, and all of the supporting infrastructure necessary for that, precludes Earth being a virtual paradise.

For all we know, San Francisco may have looked like that gradually over time, but an accident occurred where the seismic controls that prevent Earthquakes may have failed, and the buildings devastated.

Then, the city decides to pay homage to it's past and rebuild the city in an older style, recreating much of what we've seen in the rest of Trek.

If it really needs addressing, there are creative ways to explain the inconsistency.

Looking at Vulcan:

It is possible that in the few occasions we have seen vulcan, it could have been during more stormy seasons, during which the Red sky is almost always present.

During events of the movie, Vulcan's position in it's orbit may have placed it at a slightly more distant point from it's star, allowing the storms to settle, and the skies to clear.

This might also explain how Vulcan has changed appearance so often when seen from Space, and would not be that unreasonable when one looks at Mars.

You may be right in that not everything can be explained by the Narada altering the timeline, but with a little imagination, the differences are still plausible, even if not explained.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The change in skyline, Vulcan and the other thousand or so inconsistencies is the result of the writers fucking it up and/or taking artistic and creative liberties as opposed to respecting what had come before.

Okay, then the Enterprise should be lit with Primary colors, and Vulcan should look exactly like the lit-walled set we saw in Amok Time.

The respected it by knowing what had to change to make it more convincing on screen.

ie. creative liberties. Like I said.

: |

Every film takes those liberties to some degree.

You should hear SF natives talk about some of the wacky geography in Star Trek's version of San Francisco.

 

[Disillusioned]

Okay, Vulcan: Buy it or not, we haven't seen as much of the planet as would be necessary to conclude either way.

Yeah we have. And every time we've seen it it's been fairly consistent.

Besides, ST:TMP had a VERY different take on it (How many moons? Where's the atmosphere?), though the Directors Edition corrected it.

Which is why I put a lot more stock in the Director's Edition.

Sulu described the San Francisco he knew from the other reality. His description is irrelelvent.

No, you said that we didn't know what San Fransisco was "supposed" to look like and I pointed out that we had a description, even if it was brief. His description is entirely relevant.

The Narada's appearance COULD in theory change things a great deal. Again, we don't know what happened to the architects, engineers etc. who were inspired by things indirectly over the 25 years since it appeared.

And how would a giant space octopus inspire them to do any of the things we saw were different?

It's the Butterfly Effect.

You should never use such a horrible movie to justify anything.

The reasons the Enterprise was different do not need to be spelled out,

They do if you're going to sell me on the idea.

and you can't tell me that between TOS and TMP, a space of 6 years, all of Starfleet made a massive migration fromt he primary colors to what we saw after the Refit, and the Enterprise looking so COMPLETELY different in many ways.

And this is just something else that's always bothered me, even if I do like the look of the refit.

Suddenly, the Klingons had ridges !!!

Personally for as much flak as it gets, I think the ENT episodes that dealt with it works pretty well as an explanation.

Starfleet had metallic walls everywhere !!!

Or they just stopped slapping a crap-load of paint on everything. Or we just thank our lucky stars they got a better budget and were able to improve how things looked. It's not like in STXI that they couldn't have updated the designs by making things look more realistic without completely changing everything to look like Apple made it.

The computer and signing style completely changed !!!

A new operating system and a decision made by top brass, so?

Uniforms everywhere changed from the TOS Colored Shirt/Pants to Gray/Brown jumpsuits !!!

The USAF changed their uniforms once to look more like the Navy's for only a few years. All the armed forces have changed their uniforms more than once, including some recent changes made in pretty much all of them again. In none of these cases did it take very long for the change to be put into effect service-wide.

And how many looks has Vulcan had when seen from Orbit?

It hasn't looked all that different, actually.

If we can accept THESE changes, then the Enterprise size/style change suddenly is not that implausible.

Yeah, it still is. Frankly you can point at any other inconsistency and that just doesn't cut it as an excuse to create another one. You and others seem to think that people who make an issue of these things don't notice and have never been bothered by anything done previously, but that simply isn't the case. Considering the reputation Star Trek fans have for nitpicking the shows, I'm a little surprised anyone would think that we're only concerned with things from this movie.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

You should hear SF natives talk about some of the wacky geography in Star Trek's version of San Francisco.

I bet Los Angelenos do the same thing for 24...