• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Are the changes to TOS lore here to stay?

It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea that Vulcan may be blown up ... permanently. But, now that I have, Mintaka III seems to hold the key to Vulcan's salvation. So, I wouldn't mind if Vulcan's NuTREK fate was permanent ...
 
Welcome to the forum.

Thanks :)

There have been a few stories going around concerning Chris Pine's ability to carry a big film.

Can you give some examples?

CBS owns the rights to all the Star Trek TV shows, and it owns the rights to the characters in those shows. In order to make a Star Trek movie, Paramount must license the characters from CBS. Yes, the Abrams films are owned by Paramount, but CBS is making money off of them.

I'm afraid you're wrong here. CBS owns the rights to Star Trek TV shows. Paramount owns the rights to Star Trek movies. There is a difference in brand recognition from the TOS characters Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the JJ Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. They are two totally different series and I'm afraid in the world of intellectual property and licensing, Paramount owns the Abramsverse and CBS owns the TV shows. It's sadly not possible for the Abramsverse to cross over into TV land. :/
 
I'm afraid you're wrong here. CBS owns the rights to Star Trek TV shows. Paramount owns the rights to Star Trek movies. There is a difference in brand recognition from the TOS characters Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the JJ Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. They are two totally different series and I'm afraid in the world of intellectual property and licensing, Paramount owns the Abramsverse and CBS owns the TV shows. It's sadly not possible for the Abramsverse to cross over into TV land. :/

No I'm not wrong. No matter how those characters are represented or who plays them, they're characters from TOS, and as such are owned by CBS. And CBS can damn well make a TV series based on the Abramsverse if they want to.
 
I am told by a very reliable sources ( a former gaffer for Desilu) that CBS also owns the rights to the Borg designations "First of First, Primary Adjunct of Unimatrix 1" through "Seventh of Ten, Quadrupriary Adjunct of Unimatrix 359"...the rest went to Paramount, with the exception of "Zero of Zero, Nothingiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 000" ...something about "alternate timelines" and Nu-ness...

"Quadrupriary" was a lot harder to type than you might think... ;)
 
No way. For me, canon matters and I consider Star Trek canon ended with the end of "Enterprise."

For me I'd say it ended with Voyager. Enterprise probably rewrites the canon as much as the NuTrek movies - at least the movies can have reason to be doing things differently, not pretending to have done everything first. That undermines Kirk's legacy to say he is just following in their footsteps, having an easier ride.

Undoing the movies is easy to do. Just have Kirk go back in time to save his father. Once you introduce the concept of altering time, altering the alteration is fair game. Cheating the cheater.
 
I've recently been reading through some old ScoTpress Trek fanzines and newsletters (online here) and find it amusing to read beneath the editorial, that story submissions would only be accepted for Trek set during the original series era. Why? The editors don't don't buy the movies as real Star Trek. They accept alternate universe-set stories, but even those must be based purely on the series and not the movies (which at the time were I-III)

So those of you who don't think Enterprise or the reboot count as True Trek are f--king amateurs.:p
 
I just hope that the next reboot is a 100% reboot that just starts by saying; "IN A COMPLETELY ALTERNATE UNIVERSE TO PRE-ESTABLISHED CANON..."

"BASED ON STAR TREK" would sufficiently do the job for me
(like they did with ENT). ;)

@ Skywalker

Freakin' cool avatar! :lol:

Bob
 
"BASED ON STAR TREK" would sufficiently do the job for me]

I've long wondered - why is it First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis are "Based on 'Star Trek' created by Gene Roddenberry", rather than "Based on 'Star Trek The Next Generation' created by Gene Roddenberry"?
 
Regarding the original thread question, I don't recognize the JJ films as "changes to TOS lore."

The way I see canon, JJ-Trek is more like various toys that came out in the 1970s, the ones that had nothing to do with Star Trek beyond its name on the packaging:

Helmet_zps78b792e7.jpg



toyTracerGun_zps6080dc58.jpg



The new films are just more merchandise to me. They are external add-ons. Yes, I go see them, but they're not a true part of the fictional universe. And the JJ ships don't have real artificial gravity.

Many will disagree, but I'm Old School when it comes to the 23rd century.
 
I think Gorkon's words in this trailer are quite fitting here.
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgffCdhEQgQ[/YT]
 
Do we even have an idea on whether or not there will be anymore Abramsverse content? I mean, I figured that was dead, now. It's kind of a shame, even given my disappointment with STiD. Two movies and the universe is dead.

They are making a third movie that's still produced by Abrams and Bad Robot and set in the same continuity with the same cast; it's just that Abrams won't be directing it himself this time.

Anyway, it's beside the point for this conversation. Even if a given continuity within a franchise ends, that doesn't preclude later continuities from being influenced by its ideas. It's fiction, after all, so any earlier iteration of a concept is fair game for inspiration. Batman: The Brave and the Bold was as much a pastiche of the Adam West Batman and Superfriends as it was of the Silver Age comics of the '40s through '60s, but it also drew on much more modern DC elements like the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle and the Ryan Choi Atom. The Marvel Cinematic Universe draws on ideas from both the main ("Earth-616") Marvel Comics continuity and the Ultimate Marvel Universe, and The Incredible Hulk even borrowed a bit from the Bill Bixby TV series (which was about as far from the comics continuity as you can get).

The creators of future incarnations of Star Trek will probably create their own continuities for the same reason Abrams did: Because it's more liberating than being laden down by decades of past continuity, and because much of original Trek canon is growing increasingly outdated and in need of updating. And like any creators of a new interpretation, they'll draw on whatever past ideas inspire and interest them, or react against them (like the way the Burton Batman films were a reaction against the Adam West series, or the serious '84 Godzilla reboot was a reaction against the silly Godzilla films of the '60s and '70s). It doesn't matter which continuity those ideas come from, because they're all part of the source material.



What I meant is that he'll keep coming back to menace every version of Kirk, just like Moriarty does each incarnation of Sherock or Zod does every Superman.

That's plausible. I'd hope, though, that he'd be joined by characters like Kor and Kang, and maybe the "Enterprise Incident" Romulan Commander.


Isn't it technically an alternate timeline in the same canon? Same universe (with a new lick of paint) but different events post-2233.

Well, really, "canon" does not mean "continuity." It means the original, core work in a franchise as distinct from derivative or pastiche works. A canon can encompass more than one continuity, or be discontinuous to begin with (lots of older TV series had a deliberate lack of continuity between episodes).

For instance, look at the 1988 Mission: Impossible revival. As a product of the writers' strike of that year, it started out by remaking episodes from the original series, though the strike resolved soon enough that it could revise and update them and do mostly original episodes. But it also presented itself as a sequel and continuation of the original, bringing back Peter Graves to star as Jim Phelps and featuring original cast members like Greg Morris and Lynda Day George in guest roles, as well as co-starring Morris's son Phil Morris as his character's son. So it was both a sequel and a partial remake at the same time. And it was from Paramount, an official continuation. So it's part of the canon just as much as ST:TNG is part of Trek canon, but it doesn't reflect a consistent continuity. Because canon and continuity are two different things.

(For that matter, Roddenberry intended TNG itself to be sort of a soft reboot of Trek continuity, but later producers brought it more in line with the original.)


CBS owns the rights to all the Star Trek TV shows, and it owns the rights to the characters in those shows. In order to make a Star Trek movie, Paramount must license the characters from CBS. Yes, the Abrams films are owned by Paramount, but CBS is making money off of them.

Dukhat is correct, and it's easy to prove by looking at the copyright notice on any Abramsverse project. The movies themselves are Copyright Paramount Pictures, but there's also a notation saying "STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios." The movie novelizations, IDW comics, and Starfleet Academy YA novels are copyrighted by both Paramount and CBS.

CBS owns the concept of Star Trek as a whole. Anyone else who wants to make Trek productions for profit has to license them from CBS, because that's the way intellectual property works. A single fictional concept cannot have two separate and independent owners. By analogy, 20th Century Fox owns the copyright to its X-Men and Fantastic Four films, but the actual characters and concepts adapted in those films belong to Marvel, and Fox has to pay for the right to use them (as Sony does for Spider-Man). Fox owns the storyline and actual film footage of, say, X-Men First Class, but Marvel owns the title X-Men and the associated concept, the characters of Xavier and Wolverine and Storm, etc. By the same token, Paramount owns the plots and footage of ST'09 and STID, but CBS owns the title and premise of Star Trek, entities like the Enterprise, the Federation, and Vulcan, characters like Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, and Khan, etc.
 
No way. For me, canon matters and I consider Star Trek canon ended with the end of "Enterprise."

Nah. That particular "canon" ended, but there's no rule that says you can't start another "canon" . . . and another one a generation later. There's always room for a new variation on an old favorite. None of this stuff is set in stone.

You might just as well pretend that no more Tarzan movies were made after the Johnny Weismuller series ended . . . or that no Frankenstein movie made after 1948 is "canon."

Getting back OT, the Khan/Moriarity thing sounds plausible. Moriarity only made one or two appearances in the original Conan Doyle "canon." It was subsequent retellings that built him up into a major recurring character. (Ditto Irene Adler.)

I can see Khan going the same route . . . and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Borg turn up in some future iteration of TOS. They're too popular to leave on the shelf for long.

Exactly so, every word of it.
 
I can see Khan going the same route . . . and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Borg turn up in some future iteration of TOS. They're too popular to leave on the shelf for long.

Do we even have an idea on whether or not there will be anymore Abramsverse content? I mean, I figured that was dead, now. It's kind of a shame, even given my disappointment with STiD. Two movies and the universe is dead.

Why would you think it was dead? It did well at the box-office and, according to a quick glance at wikipedia, is the highest-grossing Trek movie to date (not adjusting for inflation). You make it sound like it was a tremendous financial flop.

Of course there will be another one.
 
Last edited:
If Abrams has proven anything it's that Star Trek is here to stay. Now that Paramount knows Star Trek will sell tickets regardless of the cast, and once this reboot runs its course, we should expect to see other reboots in the future.

Just as 1980's British series Robin of Sherwood effectively added new elements to the Robin Hood legend which have endured in every version of Robin Hood since, so too has Abrams' movies introduced new elements to TOS's lore.

Anyone care to speculate on which changes they think are likely to survive into future versions of Star Trek, and which are likely to go the way of the dodo bird? For example, the Spock/Uhura relationship, should it stay or should it go?

(I wasn't sure if I should post this thread here or over in the Star Trek Movies XI+ section. I decided to post it here because the topic seemed to me to be more about TOS lore in general than about the new movies.)

That's an excellent question albion432. :techman:

Firstly, I'd like to say I'm really surprised (and delighted) to see an American who knows about 'Robin of Sherwood', and how influential it was to the Robin Hood mythology and all subsequent incarnations of such on film and television. 1980s mullets aside, of course. :D

Secondly, I'd say that yes, I could see certain elements established within JJTrek being adopted permanently into the canon ala 'Robin of Sherwood', even retroactively applied to "prime" Trek. For example, many elements of the TOS characters were surprisingly scarce on information in the "Prime" Star Trek, most of what we assume is either background from bibles that never made it to screen, or else nothing other than ascended 'fanon' that most of us accept as true despite no screen evidence of such. An example of former would be McCoy's backstory: most of us accepted his divorce and his teenage daughter, despite neither being given lip-service on screen at any point (his daughter was a near-miss; almost written into a script, and later given a namecheck in an episode of The Animated Series, but otherwise entirely absent). JJTrek went back to the source and officially 'canonized' the McCoy backstory. I can totally see elements of Chekov or Uhura or Kirk as first established on-screen in JJTrek becoming important to future portrayals of those characters, in ways that even the TOS originals weren't.

I think it is inevitable that, retroactively, later biographies of these characters, indeed later Reboots of the franchise using Kirk & Spock et al, will almost certainly incorporate/absorb elements of JJTrek as being 'fact'. Just like the way 'Robin of Sherwood' established Robin with a Saracen companion, and all subsequent portrayals of the character in many media thought that was a neat idea and took it on-board also, despite it not being a part of the 'classic' telling of the Robin Hood legend. :)

Christopher said:
I think it's natural for ideas from various iterations of a series to accrete onto the mythos over time. For instance, the '40s Batman serials introduced the Batcave and skinny Alfred (replacing the chubby, comic-relief Alfred of previous comics); the '60s TV series introduced Mr. Freeze (he'd been Mr. Zero before) and sort of introduced the Barbara Gordon Batgirl (in that the show's producers asked the comic's makers to create the character so she could be adapted to the screen); the Burton films introduced a retro/Gothic aesthetic; Batman: The Animated Series introduced Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya; and the Nolan films elevated Lucius Fox to a more central role that's been emulated by other adaptations.
Another great example. Or indeed the way the 'original' Superman was said to be unable to fly (merely "leap tall buildings in a single bound") and was at one stage grew up at an orphanage after his being discovered, before the Ma and Pa Kent backstory was added by later productions and became Supes' official backstory. And then there's Kryptonite, invented for one of the adaptations (the radio serial?), and then retroactively imported back into the comic book after-the-fact...
 
Last edited:
Unfortunately, none of the subsequent takes on Robin Hood have been anywhere as good as Robin of Sherwood...
 
Unfortunately, none of the subsequent takes on Robin Hood have been anywhere as good as Robin of Sherwood...

Agreed 100%. :techman: I think of it as being the definitive telling of the Robin Hood story, but it was seen as something of a genre-buster at the time, taking great liberties with aspects of what we thought we 'knew' about the legend... while also doing very, very clever things with other parts of it.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top