They appear to be Kirk and Spock and McCoy and the rest. I'm about as concerned about this as I am the number of versions there have been of James Bond. In neither case is there either a "true" or consistent history.
Alternate timeline = Not the same Kirk, Spock, et al.??
- Thread starter Jackson_Roykirk
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Rii
Rear Admiral
In some ways I'd prefer this to be the case. I'd like the creators of this film (particularly if it goes beyond a single film) to have the freedom to kill off established characters and promote others in their place. If it makes sense, dramatically, to kill Scotty or Sulu, why not do that?
Frankly, they could make everything post-XI a completely clean slate and I would be happy. I think the idea of not having all that canon to try to respect is exactly what Star Trek needs to get things going again.
I will be MASSIVELY disappointed with this movie if the main players don't 'feel' right, as far as their personalities and the way the actors present themselves. The Big 3, especially, have to be right. I think this is going to be very hard to do. And, I will be extraordinarily disappointed if the new film doesn't promote all the great ideals and ideas that make Star Trek what it is. I don't give a rats ass how great this movie is, if those two things aren't in it I am gong to hate it.
But if it does have those two things, I think nothing would be better than a completely clean slate. The writers can borrow what they like from canon and fandom, or they can come up with entirely new avenues to explore.
Let the raping begin, is basically what I'm saying here.
I will be MASSIVELY disappointed with this movie if the main players don't 'feel' right, as far as their personalities and the way the actors present themselves. The Big 3, especially, have to be right. I think this is going to be very hard to do. And, I will be extraordinarily disappointed if the new film doesn't promote all the great ideals and ideas that make Star Trek what it is. I don't give a rats ass how great this movie is, if those two things aren't in it I am gong to hate it.
But if it does have those two things, I think nothing would be better than a completely clean slate. The writers can borrow what they like from canon and fandom, or they can come up with entirely new avenues to explore.
Let the raping begin, is basically what I'm saying here.
This is how I also feel. If Kirk, Spock and McCoy don't 'feel' like Kirk, Spock and McCoy, then I will not be happy with the movie. If they do 'feel' right, then I don't care much if the Enterprise looks different or the technical details have changed. For me, it's all about the characters, and mostly just the Big 3.
I suppose it might be possible that Nero's time travelling is a predestination paradox. Meaning, even in TOS as we saw it then, that timeline was still a result of Nero. We just don't know - hell, I don't think we even know for sure who raised Kirk in the TOS timeline (it could still have been Uncle Frank; we have no canon info as to when Kirk's parents died).
Guess we'll just have to find out what eventually happens to Vulcan and San Francisco in the film. If either are destroyed, then all bets are off, because they both exist in future time frames that we are familiar with.
Guess we'll just have to find out what eventually happens to Vulcan and San Francisco in the film. If either are destroyed, then all bets are off, because they both exist in future time frames that we are familiar with.
Absolutely Right.
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You're both right -- From what I've seen and heard so far, the characters do seem to be like the originals, and that's a good thing. If their personalities are what they should be, and the story is interesting, then I should enjoy the film.
However, I'm specifically talking about an "origin film". If this film is truly about an alternate timeline as the rumors say (although the rumors can be wrong), then we will not be getting a "TOS characters origin film" but rather a film depicting the origins of these other people (who very well may have the exact same personalities, but with different past experiences).
I'm not saying I won't like what we do get, I'm just saying I would have liked to see the origins of the TOS characters in the "real" TOS timeline.
That would be like seeing the exploits of the "Ragged-looking" Riker we saw on the main viewscreen in the TNG episode Parallels -- the one that didn't want to go back to his own universe because the Borg had over run their Federation. If we saw his origin story to that, it would not be the origin of the Riker from the "real" TNG universe.
But, maybe the "timeline" will not be as screwed up as the plot rumors would have us believe. Orci did say that things we see as very different now will make canonical sense in the context of the film.
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You're both right -- From what I've seen and heard so far, the characters do seem to be like the originals, and that's a good thing. If their personalities are what they should be, and the story is interesting, then I should enjoy the film.
However, I'm specifically talking about an "origin film". If this film is truly about an alternate timeline as the rumors say (although the rumors can be wrong), then we will not be getting a "TOS characters origin film" but rather a film depicting the origins of these other people (who very well may have the exact same personalities, but with different past experiences).
I'm not saying I won't like what we do get, I'm just saying I would have liked to see the origins of the TOS characters in the "real" TOS timeline.
That would be like seeing the exploits of the "Ragged-looking" Riker we saw on the main viewscreen in the TNG episode Parallels -- the one that didn't want to go back to his own universe because the Borg had over run their Federation. If we saw his origin story to that, it would not be the origin of the Riker from the "real" TNG universe.
But, maybe the "timeline" will not be as screwed up as the plot rumors would have us believe. Orci did say that things we see as very different now will make canonical sense in the context of the film.
Since virtually nothing has been established about the origins of these characters, and because as you say we've never seen an "origin story" for them, there's nothing for this film to be an "alternate timeline" to.
The origins we see may contradict some things that have been said in the past. That's not such a big deal, IMAO.
All I want to see is Leonard Nimoy going back in time and telling Kirk one of or both of the following two things:
1. "Don't ever agree to board the Enterprise B".
2. "If anyone ever approaches you to help him stop someone named Soran, please politely refuse".
Seriously. If they just do those two things, I'll be happy.
1. "Don't ever agree to board the Enterprise B".
2. "If anyone ever approaches you to help him stop someone named Soran, please politely refuse".
Seriously. If they just do those two things, I'll be happy.
Actually, "Star Trek: First Contact" depicted three different timelines:
1. It started in the alternate timeline Picard and Kirk created in "Star Trek Generations" (when they went back in time via the Nexus and prevented Soran from blowing up the sun, thus preventing Picard from entering the Nexus in the first place, thus creating a timeline different than the one Picard came from).
2. Then the Borg went back in time, killed Cochrane, prevented First Contact, and assimilated Earth. They had planned to change history, and they succeded in carrying out that plan. The Enterprise-E crew is sucked into that second timeline, 300 years after Cochrane was killed, where there is no Federation, and there are 10 billion Borg living on Earth. This timeline is definitely a new and distinct timeline than the one they were in before.
3. Picard, of his own free will, decides to leave the timeline he is in (where Earth is assimilated and the Federation never existed) and go back in time to create a new timeline, where the Borg do NOT kill Cochrane, where Riker and Geordi help Cochrane complete his warp flight, and First Contact is made on schedule.
This third timeline is the one to whose future they "returned" at the end, and where they remained in "Star Trek: Insurrection."
And since there are not two Enterprise-E crews flying around in "Star Trek: Insurrection," we can assume that when the Enterprise-E crew "returned" to the future after "First Contact," it was to an identical future to the one they had started in, but after the Borg created a time vortex that sucked the Enterprise-E into the Borg-assimilated timeline. So the future was "repaired" and history was as they remembered it at the start of the movie.
They returned to an identical timeline, but not the same timeline.
Think about the end of "Back to the Future." Marty returns to the future after meddling in the history of his parents first meeting (but then "fixing" history). He arrives "home" in 1985 just in time to see "himself" going back in time.
But when Marty returns to his house, he finds his parents are happy and successful, his siblings have different careers, and Marty now owns a new truck. So he did not actually return to his own future, but to the future of that other Marty whom he saw disappearing into the past (let's call him Marty 2).
Let's also assume that when Marty 2 went to the past, events played out exactly as they were depicted in the movie with Marty 1, and Marty 2 "returned" "home" to 1985, to find his parents still happy and successful, his siblings with their same careers, and his new truck still in the garage. Marty 2 would obviously think he is in a time loop, and that he returned back where he started, since everything is the same as he remembered.
But we know for a fact that Marty 2 never returned home to the same 1985 timeline that he left, since Marty 1 is now driving around in Marty 2's new truck, and living with Marty 2's father, the famous and successful author. Marty 2 never came back to this timeline after Marty 1 saw him disappear into the past at the Lone Pine Mall parking lot. (Marty 1 had actually departed from the Twin Pines Mall parking lot in his original timeline, before crashing into a pine tree in 1955 of Marty 2's past.)
Why am I talking about "Back to the Future"? To make the point that even if the new timeline you "return" to is identical to yours, it is not necessarily the same one you left. (Just like if you clone your dead dog, the clone may be identical, but it is not the same dog.) If you think about "Back to the Future," Marty 1 didn't see himself go back in time at the end, but a totally different Marty whose life Marty 1 then took over for himself.
Maybe when the Enterprise-E "returned" to the 24th century at the end of "First Contact," it looked so similar to their own that they just assumed that it was a predestination paradox and that nothing had changed, but they were actually just replacing their counterparts in a totally new timeline, like Marty 1 did at the end of "Back to the Future."
Well, I haven't seen the movie, and I don't know how it will end, but if he goes back in time, screws up hisotry, and then someone else goes back in time and "fixes" history, then like Marty 1 in "Back to the Future" and Picard in "First Contact," "Star Trek XI" will see history "restored" by the end, so that there is still a Captain Kirk, a Federation, and a starship Enterprise. It's not "predestination" as depicted in the "Time's Arrow" causality-loop sense, but if the future is "close enough," then to us viewers and to the characters, it might as well be.
They re-designed (or "improved") the Enterprise, the props and the costumes in EVERY ONE of the previous ten films. That has nothing to do with alternate timelines.
I suspect that Vulcan and San Francisco will still be around at the end of the movie -- Unless the producers abandon the past 40 years of reset-button storytelling and actually spin the movie series off into a new timeline where Vulcan does not exist, but I find this highly unlikely. I predict they'll take the "Back to the Future" route and history will be "restored" to a "close enough" state by the end, with only a few trivial details in a few characters' pasts being different.
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