Could this be set in the Kelvin timeline?

Except I saw a B&W version of The Cage in early 1981, when Gene Roddenberry came to give a talk about Television Writing at Union College here in Schenectady, NY.
He use to show a copy of it he had on film when he was doing the college lecture circuit back in the 80's.

 

Most Trek fans that I conversed with back then (and it was quite a few as I was heavily into the Convention circuit back then), were waaay more excited about Mark Lenard playing one of those Klingons than disturbed by the new ridges.

 

Its interesting how much the importance fandom has put on things has changed in 40 years.

 

It was because his mom secretly humped a Reman and got pregnant but never let on.
She told everybody it was just a birth defect.

 

Isn't that from "CATSPAW" ???
Never mind ... another senior moment.

 

Is it? Kirk could have simply been picked up by forward cameras.

 

Um... no. In 2254 during The Cage you have a uniform design, a ship design, etc. In WNMHGB you have a very similar uniform, ship, etc. It's been over 10 years so things have changed. Then between WNMHGB and The Corbomite Maneuver, the ship gets a refit and the uniforms are completely changed, as well as the phasers. It all fits nicely together. Then you have Enterprise revisit that and show us basically the same thing. Visually identical to what we'd seen before. As we also saw in TNG Relics and DS9 Trials and Tribbleations.

Skip to today. We have a big network now owning the property and no one seems to care about continuity and a show set between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before comes out with a production design that isn't even remotely in line with either of those and is claiming to be in the same timeline. So no, it isn't. It is a visual reboot and more because the facts that they have put forward and the things they have put on the sets as Easter eggs counter so many points in the TOS timeline that there is no way it is not just a visual reboot but a total reboot. While it is sticking close to the original storyline, it is not letting the original stop any creative decisions they decide to make. They are paying lip-service to some fans who don't mind and totally blowing off those of us who have noticed and do mind. Frankly I really don't care what they do, but they need to stop pretending it is part of the original TOS timeline. They have made it clear it is not, both visually and factually. There is nothing about Discovery that can coexist with TOS.

Elsewhere on this site are deep and in depth discussions about the size of the TOS Enterprise and how you fit the sets inside with beautiful CG renderings of those sets inside the ships. There are hundreds of ways to tweak and update those sets and ships without totally revamping them. There are so many resources to stay on target with the original timeline and not throw in so many mistakes. The only explanation is that they don't want to follow that and that is what a reboot does. They pay homage to the original without copying it. That is what Discovery is doing (badly in season 1). But it is just as different a universe as we see in the Kelvin timeline. Where Enterprise fits I will not guess, but as far as TOS, the movies, TNG, DS9, and Voyager are concerned, Discovery is in a different timeline all together. What CBS or the producers say about it is irrelevant. Their decisions and actions have made it so.

So as far as I'm concerned there is the original timeline, the Kelvin original timeline, the Kelvin corrupted timeline, and the Discovery timeline. Enterprise can fit with any of them. The only one I consider truly Star Trek is the original.

 

The ship and crew were frozen, as I recall. So, cameras shouldn't have been functioning.

I'm sure you know quite well what the point of the scene was supposed to be: Kirk peeks in the bridge to see them. Devil's advocate doesn't work here.

 

That's because it is the only true "Star Trek." Not TMP, TNG, or any of the rest.

 

But... but... Abram's movie is called "Star Trek" as well!!

 

That's fake Star Trek.

 

Here is the shot in context:





Whether Kirk is looking in through a window, being picked up by a camera, or both, it's obviously not one facing the front of the ship. (More likely the transparent dome as shown in "The Cage," I'd say.) And while the crew was frozen, the equipment was all still functioning, bridge displays still blinking away, etc.

None of this ultimately matters though, since ST'09 shows us that the Kelvin, a pre-TOS Prime Universe ship, had a bridge window—one that could be "polarized," i.e. turned opaque from the outside in the same way that Scott Schneider posited the DSC Enterprise's could be. (Sure, it could be argued that this was one of Okuda/Pegg's hypothetical backward-rippling effects of Nero's incursion, but that hardly seems necessary or desirable to me in light of DSC, and I highly doubt it was intended at the time any more than it was intended that the Enterprise had one in "Requiem For Methuseleh" [TOS].)

-MMoM