Do fans want the prime timeline back? Part 2: Poll edition.
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I think The Cage is improved by being a part of The Menagerie.
As to the OP question, do I want the prime timeline back? No, it was beaten to death, sometime during the run of DS9, VOY, ENT, GEN, FC, INS, and NEM. Really, the prime timeline was showing signs of emotional distress during the latter seasons of TNG, but there were acute warning signs as early as the first season of TNG, as well as in TFF. I will always love the prime timeline, but I think it's best that she rest in peace. Else, brains.
As to the OP question, do I want the prime timeline back? No, it was beaten to death, sometime during the run of DS9, VOY, ENT, GEN, FC, INS, and NEM. Really, the prime timeline was showing signs of emotional distress during the latter seasons of TNG, but there were acute warning signs as early as the first season of TNG, as well as in TFF. I will always love the prime timeline, but I think it's best that she rest in peace. Else, brains.
Sounds about right.
Agreed with GoRe Star, I think a lot of the fondness for "The Cage" really just comes of its being the pilot ep... I've never really been that into it.
I wouldn't mind the Prime Timeline coming back on Television - provided that the show be given the Battlestar Galactica reboot treatment. I would love to see a Girl J. T. Kirk and girl Spock and all that ... set in the universe we otherwise know and love. Having said that, I think J.J. Abrams was the right man for the right job, as far as the movies are concerned. Nicely done ...
I don't believe a "prime" timeline even exists. I take "prime timeline" to mean "timeline created for the Rick Berman-produced Star Trek spinoffs," which were derivative works created by (mostly) other people based on Star Trek, but no more "prime" than any other work derived from the original Star Trek.
There is quite a difference between the Berman-era Trek universe and the TOS one. In TOS, Kirk met androids and shapeshifters, journeyed to the edge and the centre of the galaxy and kicked a ton of ass along the way. Then, in BermanTrek, the only android known is Data (+family) and the only shapeshifters are the Changelings (because apparently "The Dauphin" and "Aquiel" didn't really happen, or someone would have told Odo that he's not alone in "The Emissary"
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It's confusing, and I think fair to say that there's nothing they can do to please everybody.
)It's confusing, and I think fair to say that there's nothing they can do to please everybody.
There is quite a difference between the Berman-era Trek universe and the TOS one. In TOS, Kirk met androids and shapeshifters, journeyed to the edge and the centre of the galaxy and kicked a ton of ass along the way. Then, in BermanTrek, the only android known is Data (+family) and the only shapeshifters are the Changelings (because apparently "The Dauphin" and "Aquiel" didn't really happen, or someone would have told Odo that he's not alone in "The Emissary"
It's confusing, and I think fair to say that there's nothing they can do to please everybody.
Neither of those episodes seem to provide a likely candidate for being 'like Odo'. Species that are able to (usually in limited ways) change form are old hat in Star Trek, but that doesn't make any of them 'Changelings' in the same way that Odo is. The only serious possibility I can think of is Marta from TUC, whose actual form was never shown. So, even assuming anyone knew specifically about any particular incident, why would they tell Odo about creatures that probably had nothing to do with him or his people anyway?
If you were a reptilian race and had seen a handful of mammal species over the years and you found a new mammal species that had never been seen before wouldn't you, when talking about his uniqueness to him, reference the other mammals you knew of who shared similar qualities?
Absolutely.
Continuity porn is of course one of the creeping problems that TNG+ Trek suffered from, but at the same time, blatantly ignoring old continuity was also a problem. Episodes such as TNG: Home Soil could have been resolved so much easier, if only the characters had watched TOS: The Devil in the Dark. This dilemma, of whether to ignore or to bow to old continuity, put all the later series in a lose/lose position.
Remember that at the time when Gene Roddenberry et. al were creating Star Trek, the written science fiction genre was undergoing a change. The '60s was a time when there was a trend toward publishing whole novels or anthologies in paperback form, instead of in the pulp magazines. However, it wasn't yet so prevalent that Roddenberry would have been that familiar with anything but the pulp magazines (and of course SF wasn't the only genre that had its own magazines - crime and western stories had theirs too).
This is most of the reason I can't stand nuBSG. The pointless sex changes for some of the characters made it seem as though all the producers wanted was the character names as a hook to get the original BSG fans to tune in, and otherwise they'd make up any damn thing whether it had to do with the original characters or not.
If they did that to Star Trek... well, it would pretty much be like the fanfic that already explored this concept over 30 years ago.
Well, nuBSG was a straight-up no-bones-about-it reboot. They weren't trying to set it in the original continuity or sell themselves as an alternate universe thereof. So they were actually quite free to make up any damn thing whether it had to do with the original characters or not.
It can admittedly seem cheap to just plaster the old names on completely different characters, but I wouldn't accuse nuBSG of doing so or of gender-switching purely for its own sake. Most of the decisions they made added considerable dramatic depth to the characters and interesting complications and tensions to relationships that were straightforward and really quite bland in the original product; gender-switched Starbuck was (albeit a bit too heavy on the angst at times) a million times more dramatically interesting than the original article. Gender-switching purely as a form of cheesy fanwank would be awful, of course, but it can be done in more interesting ways, and for my money nuBSG is one of the best examples of that.
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A couple of things.
1. The fact that oldBSG fans stomped off in a huff didn't hurt either the ratings or critical reception of nuBSG in the slightest.
2. Changing the gender of characters such as Starbuck and Boomer didn't hurt nuBSG in the slightest.
Getting back oldTrek vs. nuTrek, Uhura's character has only benefited from having greater dimension and definition. The Prime Universe was played out and stale. At least nuTrek is trying new things, and a careful analysis shows that they generally aren't really random new things at all. And, similarly to the situation with oldBSG, the fact that certain fans of oldTrek aren't satisfied isn't really hurting nuTrek, either at the box office or in the overall critical reception.2. Changing the gender of characters such as Starbuck and Boomer didn't hurt nuBSG in the slightest.
- In the case of Boomer, a new character (actually, many new characters) were created to occupy the spot of an original character, who basically had no character at all.
- In the case of Starbuck, making her female gave added dimension to her relationship with all of the Adamas, from Zak, to Bill, to Lee.
Also this, yes.
I voted for no, keep the nu timeline going. And here's why:
The timeline as I see it goes right along happily until First Contact. That trip back in time by the Borg and Picard's crew screwed the timeline in the direction of Enterprise. Ever wonder why the Vulcans kept holding the humans back in relation to technology? Forget the horsesh-t about "not being ready", its that the Vulcans knew about the bits of Borg in the Arctic circle and wanted to make sure we could handle that kind of threat instead of allowing us to send spindly little speed machines into the great unknown. Anyway, since the timeline was already messed up by First Contact, ST09 didn't *actually* reboot anything. *THE REBOOT WAS ENTERPRISE*. Yes, the Narada's arrival messed things up too, but at that point, the alternate timeline was already 172 years old, so calling it an alternate alternate is pointless when we don't know how the NX-01 would have altered things before the Narada arrived.
On that note, notice how Kirk's crew was so much better at resetting the timeline BY SHEER LUCK than Picard's crew was when they actually tried to set things straight?
The timeline as I see it goes right along happily until First Contact. That trip back in time by the Borg and Picard's crew screwed the timeline in the direction of Enterprise. Ever wonder why the Vulcans kept holding the humans back in relation to technology? Forget the horsesh-t about "not being ready", its that the Vulcans knew about the bits of Borg in the Arctic circle and wanted to make sure we could handle that kind of threat instead of allowing us to send spindly little speed machines into the great unknown. Anyway, since the timeline was already messed up by First Contact, ST09 didn't *actually* reboot anything. *THE REBOOT WAS ENTERPRISE*. Yes, the Narada's arrival messed things up too, but at that point, the alternate timeline was already 172 years old, so calling it an alternate alternate is pointless when we don't know how the NX-01 would have altered things before the Narada arrived.
On that note, notice how Kirk's crew was so much better at resetting the timeline BY SHEER LUCK than Picard's crew was when they actually tried to set things straight?
And some of us old-timers are perfectly fine with the new Trek doing things differently. Trek was never meant to be some sacred cow that can only be approached in a strict, fundamentalist fashion. Ditto for BSG.
It's an interesting theory, but not one I buy. Seven referred to First Contact's events in Relativity so she had knowledge. That alone connects First Contact to the rest of the "prime" universe and with Enterprise being they sent the signal out.
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