David Marcus - What did Kirk know and when did he know it?

[CorporalCaptain]

When Carol and her father actually encounter each other on the Vengeance, she seems surprised at what's happened to him. I got the distinct impression that something happened after the divergence to make him into the nutbar that we saw. I'm suspecting - hoping, really - that he was a good man up until that point. So if Marcus-prime lived long enough, he could have continued to be that way.

Neither version of Carol appeared to have a problem with Starfleet in general. (Carol-prime defended Starfleet to her Regula I colleagues, and nuCarol was IN Starfleet.) And David's attitude is understandable - he says "scientists have always been pawns of the military". He has no idea what Starfleet is actually like because he's never been around it. He's prejudiced because he doesn't know anything ABOUT Starfleet.

I agree with some of what you're saying, but I don't believe we can conclude that David knows nothing about Starfleet. All of the scientists on Regula I seemed familiar with Starfleet; they were working with Reliant after all.

Marcus (assuming that Carol's father in the Prime timeline was even Marcus Prime) could have exhibited many characteristics short of the nutbar level that would have turned Carol off from wanting David to become more greatly immersed in Starfleet's world. Marcus could have spent a great deal of time away from home, for one thing. He might have tended to be bossy. He might not have been as much of a pacifist as Carol would have preferred.

Obviously getting involved with Kirk meant that she wasn't utterly turned off by people who associated with Starfleet, and she herself was willing to work with Starfleet. But maybe when she really thought about things and looked into the future in terms of raising a child with Jim and someone like her father, she saw complications, potential incompatibilities, and battles that she would prefer not to fight.



People are complicated!

 

[lawman]

I suppose I should start by saying that my original take on it was that Kirk learned he had a son when he met David.
He knew his old girlfriend had had a son in the years since he had last seen her, but did not realize his age.
It seemed like they had a serious relationship, but kind if an on-again/off-again one. But the strain was getting to her, and she finally decided to break it off.
That, in my opinion, is when Carol asked him to "stay away", because she still loved him and tended to fall back into being his girlfriend when he was around.
Later, she learned she was pregnant. And decided not to tell him, mostly for selfish reasons.

I like most of this. The on-again/off-again explanation for Carol's motives is realistic and plausible, and also corresponds with depictions in Trek lit (non-canon of course, but still).

I just can't quite buy the notion that Kirk didn't know at a much earlier date. I read "you asked me to stay away" as implying "from both of you," not just "from you."

After the divergence, yes, they are. Before it, they are ONE timeline.

(I'm deliberately choosing to ignore Simon Pegg's "change the past" theory, because I see no sense in it. And like I said, it's only a theory...not proven, or even canon. )

Whereas I deliberately embrace Pegg's approach, because I see ample sense in it! Especially as the Kelvinverse is full of things that frankly just can't be explained by changes that only postdate 2233 (much less by the relatively insignificant loss of a single starship in that year). As far as I'm concerned, it's both easier and more logical to treat that universe as a completely separate timeline, and therefore to infer nothing from those movies about any aspect of the real Trek universe.

(Regardless, on a more practical real-world level, we know that whatever motivations and backstory the writers had in mind for Carol and David in 1982 cannot possibly have included the influence of an Admiral Marcus who was not dreamed up until over 30 years later. We should be trying to make sense of them on their own terms.)

...(side note: I asked Faran Tahir on Twitter if he'd play Robau-prime in DSC, and he said he'd love to do it). I can only assume that DSC itself is also free to do this. There's no longer anything that I'm aware of which would prevent it.

Okay, let me eat my own words just above and admit that I think it would be kind of cool to see Robau on DSC.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

After the divergence, yes, they are. Before it, they are ONE timeline.

Yeah, I agree. I say they were pretty much the same timeline until the arrival of Nero's ship and its disruption to Kirk's birth. My personal theory is that the divergences gradually increased over time, but early on, the Prime and Kelvin Universes had many of the same events in common.

For instance, the big divergence we see early on is the destruction of of the Kelvin and the deaths of several of its crewmen, including George Kirk and Captain Robau. Obviously that makes Jim Kirk's early life very different, with his mom remarrying when she likely didn't do that in the Prime timeline. So the Kirk we see in the Kelvinverse movies is a rather different character. Angrier & more rebellious than the "positively grim" "stack of books with legs" we were told about in TOS. We know from the recent movies that Kelvinverse Kirk joined Starfleet later and became Captain of the Enterprise sooner. And Spock tells us that George Kirk lived in the Prime timeline long enough to see his son take command of the Enterprise.

But it wouldn't just be Kirk's life who was affected. Maybe one of those crewmen on the Kelvin who died was the person responsible for the Starfleet design aesthetic we saw in TOS. (We'll call him Lt. Matt Jefferies. ) If he's gone, the look and technology evolves in a different way, to what we saw in the Kelvinverse movies. Maybe Captain Robau's death inspired a friend or relative to join Starfleet when they didn't in the Prime timeline.

Roberto Orci stated that the Iowa Shipyards we see in ST09 were built in memorial to the Kelvin. That means there's a whole bunch of Starfleet personnel assigned there that would be assigned somewhere else in the Prime timeline. Likewise with the Kelvin Memorial Archive seen in Into Darkness. And that's to say nothing of the 800 Kelvin crewman that George Kirk saved. All of those people would be reassigned elsewhere, where in the Prime timeline, they would just continue serving on the Kelvin. Maybe one of them felt their brush with death was enough to get them to resign from Starfleet.

But conservatively, let's say that the Kelvinverse has 1000-2000 Starfleet personnel doing something different than what they did in the Prime timeline. Those lives touch other lives, and those lives touch other lives, and different outcomes occur. Couples get together that didn't get together in the other timeline, and vice versa. (We see this in Into Darkness where Kelvinverse Kirk apparently had a thing with Christine Chapel, but didn't with Carol Marcus.)

So the two timelines grow further apart. I personally doubt that Prime Universe Scotty was ever assigned to that station on Delta Vega, for instance. Thus, he never met Kessner. Kelvinverse Pike wrote his thesis on the Kelvin. Obviously, he wrote it about something else in the Prime timeline. Kelvinverse Pike may not have ever visited Talos IV, and definitely didn't get crippled rescuing cadets from Delta radiation on an old class-J Starship. There may not be a space station named Yorktown in the Prime timeline. The USS Farragut is still around in 2258, while in the Prime timeline it was destroyed in 2257.

But there were likely some things that still happened the same way in both timelines, even with the divergence of the Narada. I have no problem believing the scenes of young Spock getting teased or of Spock refusing to join the Vulcan Science Academy happened the same way in both timelines. I don't see any huge contradictions there. The timeline differences just hadn't affected Vulcan in a big way yet. I personally think that the Prime Universe's McCoy probably also had his marriage fall apart in 2255. YMMV.

Yeah, there's some weird stuff, like the system of stardates being different, Chekov's age being off, or Sulu's sexuality being different, but overall I think most of the differences in the timelines can be explained by the divergences growing larger and larger with each passing year. The more time that passes, the further apart the two timelines grow.

In the end, Admiral Marcus is only irrelevant because we have no idea what his prime counterpart was like. We don't know what happened post-2233 to turn him into the lunatic we saw in STID, or whether Marcus-prime even lived long enough to meet his grandson. It's a blank slate, really. So in THAT sense, yes, Marcus is irrelevant, because for all we know, he died in the prime timeline before even knowing about David.

Yeah. But I personally don't think it's too big of a leap to say that Prime timeline Carol had a father who was in Starfleet, or even that she served in Starfleet for a few years herself.

 

[Timewalker]

1. It is relevant to me
2. Typo

It may be relevant to you, but overall, it's just not relevant. These are two completely separate timelines.

What typo? Your post about Immortals requiring offspring makes no sense. What are you trying to say?

After the divergence, yes, they are. Before it, they are ONE timeline.

(I'm deliberately choosing to ignore Simon Pegg's "change the past" theory, because I see no sense in it. And like I said, it's only a theory...not proven, or even canon. )

In the end, Admiral Marcus is only irrelevant because we have no idea what his prime counterpart was like. We don't know what happened post-2233 to turn him into the lunatic we saw in STID, or whether Marcus-prime even lived long enough to meet his grandson. It's a blank slate, really. So in THAT sense, yes, Marcus is irrelevant, because for all we know, he died in the prime timeline before even knowing about David.

Admiral Marcus is not relevant because he's not a TOS/TOS movie character. And more to the point, David is not only not a nuTrek character, but it is impossible for him to be a nuTrek character at the time of the first three nuTrek movies.

They decided to rip off TWoK before nuKirk and nuCarol had even met, and I'm fairly sure that just looking at a woman posing in her underwear while she's getting huffy that he's looking at her is not going to cause her to get pregnant. Even if it was, nuDavid would have to have gone through gestation, birth, growing up, becoming educated to the point of receiving a doctorate, and beginning his career (which seemed fairly well established in TWoK), all in some offscreen moment in the second nuTrek movie. Maybe it all happened during one of the lens flares?

'Cause that is the only way that Admiral Marcus could possibly be relevant to this family issue - if it also happened in the nuTrek universe, and it couldn't possibly have.

@SpyOne: As I understand it, the Trek novels are now free to mention characters and events that were first depicted in a Kelvin film.

I see that I'm going to be buying a lot fewer novels, in that case, if everything can just be thrown into a blender.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I'm fairly sure that just looking at a woman posing in her underwear while she's getting huffy that he's looking at her is not going to cause her to get pregnant.

I dunno, man. I think you're underestimating just how potent Kirk could be.

 

[lawman]

Yeah, I agree. I say they were pretty much the same timeline until the arrival of Nero's ship and its disruption to Kirk's birth. My personal theory is that the divergences gradually increased over time, but early on, the Prime and Kelvin Universes had many of the same events in common.
...
So the two timelines grow further apart...
...
But there were likely some things that still happened the same way in both timelines, even with the divergence of the Narada. I have no problem believing the scenes of young Spock getting teased or of Spock refusing to join the Vulcan Science Academy happened the same way in both timelines. I don't see any huge contradictions there. The timeline differences just hadn't affected Vulcan in a big way yet. I personally think that the Prime Universe's McCoy probably also had his marriage fall apart in 2255. YMMV.

Yeah, there's some weird stuff, like the system of stardates being different, Chekov's age being off, or Sulu's sexuality being different, but overall I think most of the differences in the timelines can be explained by the divergences growing larger and larger with each passing year.

Lots and lots of "maybes" in that post!... not to mention your "pretty much" in the beginning and "most of" at the end. It winds up being a free-for-all, with ample room for judgment calls and disagreements among different fans (and writers!) as to what elements of the Kelvinverse "belong" in prime Trek.

Which I why I much prefer Pegg's notion that the intervention caused ripples both forward and backward in time (at the very least due to various other future trips to the past which would no longer happen as they once had!), ultimately stabilizing as a distinctly different timeline. This allows writers to use K-verse elements insofar as they want to (insofar as they fit), without being bound by them. As far as I'm concerned, unless we actually see something in a prime-timeline story, we don't know that it's part of the continuity. More clarity and less confusion that way.

(None of which is to say that I disagree about Carol... I think it's more than likely that she served at least briefly in Starfleet, and that it's probably where she met Jim.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Which I why I much prefer Pegg's notion that the intervention caused ripples both forward and backward in time

See, I have a problem with that. It just doesn't make logical sense.

(at the very least due to various other future trips to the past which would no longer happen as they once had!)

Not true. Those future trips to the past will still happen. Remember, the prime timeline was not erased - it still exists, alongside the Kelvin timeline. So any trips from the prime future will still occur.

Prior to 2233, when the divergence occurs, both the prime and Kelvin timelines are possible futures. Characters from either of those timelines can travel back (to before the divergence) and even meet each other.

For instance, if characters from the Kelvin timeline travel back to, say, 19th-century San Francisco, they could conceivably find Data's head...

 

[lawman]

That is not a can of worms I'd think any of us would like to open up. Just another reason for treating them as separate futures and, at this point, separate pasts. Any points of convergence should be strictly optional.

 

[Brennyren]

That is not a can of worms I'd think any of us would like to open up.

Agree. I think this thread has gotten complicated enough already!

 

[Shawnster]

I agree with some of what you're saying, but I don't believe we can conclude that David knows nothing about Starfleet. All of the scientists on Regula I seemed familiar with Starfleet; they were working with Reliant after all.

It seems they worked with Starfleet even prior to the Reliant and Genesis.

DAVID: Well, don't have kittens. Genesis is going to work. They'll remember you in one breath with Newton, Einstein, Surak.
CAROL: Thanks a lot. No respect from my offspring.
DAVID: Par for the course. Are you teaming up with me for bridge after dinner?
CAROL: Maybe. ...What is it?
DAVID: Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. ... We are dealing with something that could be perverted into a dreadful weapon. Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? That's exactly the kind of man...
CAROL: Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It seems they worked with Starfleet even prior to the Reliant and Genesis.

DAVID: Well, don't have kittens. Genesis is going to work. They'll remember you in one breath with Newton, Einstein, Surak.
CAROL: Thanks a lot. No respect from my offspring.
DAVID: Par for the course. Are you teaming up with me for bridge after dinner?
CAROL: Maybe. ...What is it?
DAVID: Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. ... We are dealing with something that could be perverted into a dreadful weapon. Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? That's exactly the kind of man...
CAROL: Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!

Right-O!

 

[MAGolding]

If Flint claimed to be Galileo (let's leave Moses out of it, since there isn't any ironclad evidence that he really existed), then he had children.

Over the years, however, I've come to think of "Requiem For Methuselah" as a precursor to the Highlander TV series, and the reason no sword was used in the Star Trek episode is because Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are not Immortals.


The "Earth is a utopia" thing is TNG's schtick. Obviously there is crime in the 23rd century.

Actually Flint didn't claim he was Galileo. I might as well quote the dialog.

FLINT: I am Brahms.
SPOCK: And da Vinci?
FLINT: Yes.
SPOCK: How many other names shall we call you?
FLINT: Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson. A hundred other names you do not know.

And:

SPOCK: Your wealth and your intellect are the product of centuries of acquisition. You knew the greatest minds in history.
FLINT: Galileo, Socrates, Moses. I have married a hundred times, Captain. Selected, loved, cherished. Caressed a smoothness, inhaled a brief fragrance. Then age, death, the taste of dust. Do you understand?
SPOCK: You wanted a perfect, ultimate woman, as brilliant, as immortal as yourself. Your mate for all time.

Flint claimed that he merely knew Galileo, Socrates, and Moses.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) never married and apparently had no children.

Merlin is more or less based on Mryddin Wyllt, a British bard who went insane after his lord was defeated and killed at the Battle of Arfderyddd (which the Annales Cambriae say happened about 573) and lived in the Caledonian Forest, and on Aurelius Ambrosius, who would have lived a century or more earlier. I find no mention of Mryddin Wyllt having children, but Aurelius Ambrosius might have become the ancestor of later British kings.

Abramson is probably a future person so we can't know anything about his hypothetical children.

Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Mary and Martha, died during the 30s AD and was brought back to life by Jesus according to chapter 11 of the Gospel of John, and there seems to be no tradition of him having children in either of his lives.

According to Judeo-Christian-Islamic lore, Methuselah lived 969 years, and was the father of Lamech and the grandfather of Noah. Thus Methuselah would be the ancestor of everyone alive after the Biblical Flood.

King Solomon supposedly reigned from about 970-931 BC, and is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and probably other children beside his son and successor Rehoboam.

Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) had a posthumous son, Alexander IV (323-309 BC) and an alleged illegitimate son Heracles (c. 327-309 BC).

Thus it seems that if Flint was the famous historical persons he claimed he was he could and did have children. So after 6,000 years Flint should have been an ancestor of most of the humans alive in Kirk's era, but we don't know how good or bad a parent he was to his children.

 

[Timewalker]

Actually Flint didn't claim he was Galileo.

Flint claimed that he merely knew Galileo, Socrates, and Moses.

Okay, thanks for the correction. It's been a long time since I saw that episode, and I'm fuzzy on some details.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Lots and lots of "maybes" in that post!... not to mention your "pretty much" in the beginning and "most of" at the end.

Well, I said "maybe" because it's pure speculation on my part. I wouldn't read phrases like "pretty much" and "most of" as a lack of confidence in my theory, though. It's just the way I talk. After all, only a Sith speaks in absolutes.

Which I why I much prefer Pegg's notion that the intervention caused ripples both forward and backward in time

See, I have a problem with that. It just doesn't make logical sense.

Yeah, agreed. The forwards/backwards theory doesn't make much sense to me, and it was basically just Pegg's justification for making the Kelvinverse Sulu gay. He needed some justification, after all, as the Prime Sulu is by all appearances heterosexual, and all scientific evidence shows that homosexuality is caused by biological, and not environmental, factors.

This allows writers to use K-verse elements insofar as they want to (insofar as they fit), without being bound by them.

That's pretty much the case no matter how the timeline works, though, no?

As far as I'm concerned, unless we actually see something in a prime-timeline story, we don't know that it's part of the continuity. More clarity and less confusion that way.

Well, yeah. We don't really know anything about the ST universe until we're told or shown it in no uncertain terms. That's always been the case. And even then, things can be overturned by later revelations. All of the available evidence suggested that Chekov wasn't aboard the Enterprise during "Space Seed"... until TWOK was made and showed us that apparently he was on board, but just not shown on screen until the second season.

But I definitely think that you can make educated guesses and creative deductions about certain things. That's what the fun of creating a timeline is -- It's a cool mixture of logic and creativity.

(None of which is to say that I disagree about Carol... I think it's more than likely that she served at least briefly in Starfleet, and that it's probably where she met Jim.)

Yeah, that seems like a logical leap to me. It would explain how she met Kirk, how she knows Spock & McCoy, why she seems to have a generally favorable opinion of Starfleet, and yes, why her Kelvinverse counterpart is in Starfleet in her younger days.

It seems they worked with Starfleet even prior to the Reliant and Genesis.
...
DAVID: Well, don't have kittens. Genesis is going to work. They'll remember you in one breath with Newton, Einstein, Surak.
CAROL: Thanks a lot. No respect from my offspring.
DAVID: Par for the course. Are you teaming up with me for bridge after dinner?
CAROL: Maybe. ...What is it?
DAVID: Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous.

I always took that line to mean that they had frequent dealings with Starfleet as a part of the Genesis Project. I'd imagine that Carol had to jump through a few hoops to get approval or backing from the Federation, and the negotiations took some time. And the Reliant was apparently looking for lifeless planets to use as potential testing sites for a while, probably several months. Certainly long enough for Terrell to become a bit bored with the monotony of the assignment, and for Chekov to be apprehensive about reporting their findings to Carol Marcus. ("You know what she'll say...") They've apparently been down this road with Carol a few times before, to disappointing results. ("...Does it have to be completely lifeless?" and "You boys have to be clear on this. There can't be so much as a microbe, or the show's off!")

I'd imagine that the Reliant was stopping by Regula I every few months as a part of the project for the better part of a year, and that's certainly enough time for both David to get consistently nervous around Starfleet and for the Reliant crew to get a bit blase about their monotonous assignment.

The bit I'm really curious about is the offhand reference to Surak as a great scientist, as "The Savage Curtain" seemed to imply that he was more of a philosopher.

 

[Timewalker]

The bit I'm really curious about is the offhand reference to Surak as a great scientist, as "The Savage Curtain" seemed to imply that he was more of a philosopher.

If some of the ancient Greeks on Earth could be both philosophers and scientists at the same time, why couldn't Surak?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

If some of the ancient Greeks on Earth could be both philosophers and scientists at the same time, why couldn't Surak?

Just because it's needlessly confusing to offhandedly refer to a famous Vulcan named Surak if he's not supposed to be the same guy as the previously-established famous Vulcan named Surak. It's a throwaway line, so why not just make up a new name if it's not meant to be the same person?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Oh, wait, I was misreading your post. I thought you were saying that the scientist Surak was a different guy than the philosopher Surak, but you were saying the opposite, that it was one guy who was both things. I was reading "at the same time" as "with the same name."

Sorry. It's late.

 

[Timewalker]

Oh, wait, I was misreading your post. I thought you were saying that the scientist Surak was a different guy than the philosopher Surak, but you were saying the opposite, that it was one guy who was both things. I was reading "at the same time" as "with the same name."

Sorry. It's late.

My thinking at the time of writing that post was that Surak was probably a multi-tasker, and like the ancient Greeks of Earth, he could easily have handled working in two different disciplines simultaneously.

Of course I'm thinking of the Surak we met in "The Savage Curtain." The only other version I'm familiar with is in Diane Duane's novel Spock's World; there's a chapter about Surak in that book.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

My thinking at the time of writing that post was that Surak was probably a multi-tasker, and like the ancient Greeks of Earth, he could easily have handled working in two different disciplines simultaneously.

Yeah, I like that comparison.

I just wonder what big scientific breakthrough Surak was responsible for. It had to be on the order of discovering gravity or the theory of relativity. I'd say discovery of warp drive, but I feel like that would've been mentioned in either "Metamorphosis" or "The Savage Curtain" if it were true.

 

[Brennyren]

The forwards/backwards theory doesn't make much sense to me, and it was basically just Pegg's justification for making the Kelvinverse Sulu gay. He needed some justification, after all, as the Prime Sulu is by all appearances heterosexual, and all scientific evidence shows that homosexuality is caused by biological, and not environmental, factors.

That seems like an unnecessarily complicated explanation to me. Why would the ripples have to go backward to affect Sulu? Sulu Prime is younger than Kirk. If Kelvinverse Sulu is also younger than his Kirk (and it would only have to be by nine months!), as he appears to be, then he was affected by the timeline change going forward, like everyone else in the Kelvinverse. Mama and Papa Sulu did "the deed" at a different time than Sulu Prime's parents did; a different sperm fertilized Mama's egg (might have been a different egg, too!), and created a different Hikaru.

Even if we postulate that nuSulu is the same guy as Sulu Prime, there's still a simpler explanation: both Sulus are actually bisexual. In the Prime Universe, he never met the guy who became his Kelvinverse husband, instead hooking up with (or marrying; it's never made clear in canon) the woman who became Demora's mother.

(I could have sworn I said I didn't want the conversation to continue in this vein, and yet, here I am. Oh well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and all that....)