We wouldn't be having this discussion if Chekov weren't one of the very few TOS characters who had an established birthdate. He says he's 22 in "Who Mourns for Adonais", which takes place in the second season, within ten stardates of "The Deadly Years" where we learn Kirk is 34.
We have no idea how old Uhura or Sulu might be. But Chekov's age is well known in TOS, if not in terms of calendar dates, then in terms of how it compares to Kirk's. So if the movie Kirk and movie Chekov aren't separated by twelve years of age, then there's cause to get nerdy...
Of course, the bulk of the action takes place in 2258, when Kirk is twenty-five, so Pavel Chekov should be thirteen rather than seventeen in order to meet the exacting TOS criteria. Since he doesn't, well, he's a somewhat different person. Which is perfectly okay as such. We might just as well argue that we are indeed looking at the older brother, who in this universe wasn't named Piotr but Pavel, and that both universes always featured both brothers despite Sulu's ignorance of the fact in "Day of the Dove".
For me, the angle of interest here is whether we can use STXI to provide further information about our TOS heroes, or whether we have to accept said heroes as completely different characters of the same name in the movie. Kirk, Spock and McCoy would be "biologically established" (i.e. born) before Nero's time travel mucked up things, so the movie should be valid for giving us further dirt on their age, parentage and so forth. Scotty, too. But Sulu and Uhura and Chekov would be subject to Nero-mucking, and none of them might share a birthdate with his or her TOS counterpart.
Timo Saloniemi
We have no idea how old Uhura or Sulu might be. But Chekov's age is well known in TOS, if not in terms of calendar dates, then in terms of how it compares to Kirk's. So if the movie Kirk and movie Chekov aren't separated by twelve years of age, then there's cause to get nerdy...
Of course, the bulk of the action takes place in 2258, when Kirk is twenty-five, so Pavel Chekov should be thirteen rather than seventeen in order to meet the exacting TOS criteria. Since he doesn't, well, he's a somewhat different person. Which is perfectly okay as such. We might just as well argue that we are indeed looking at the older brother, who in this universe wasn't named Piotr but Pavel, and that both universes always featured both brothers despite Sulu's ignorance of the fact in "Day of the Dove".
For me, the angle of interest here is whether we can use STXI to provide further information about our TOS heroes, or whether we have to accept said heroes as completely different characters of the same name in the movie. Kirk, Spock and McCoy would be "biologically established" (i.e. born) before Nero's time travel mucked up things, so the movie should be valid for giving us further dirt on their age, parentage and so forth. Scotty, too. But Sulu and Uhura and Chekov would be subject to Nero-mucking, and none of them might share a birthdate with his or her TOS counterpart.
Timo Saloniemi
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