Favorite version of contradictory stories/ideas.

[Thrawn]

^ JD, this is kind of off-topic, but is there any chance you could stop putting Lost spoilers in your pic, status, and sig? Like, I just watched that episode this morning, but if I hadn't gotten around to it yet I would've been pretty annoyed that you quoted one of the best moments in the episode I hadn't seen yet.

With most shows, that kind of thing wouldn't bother me much, but Lost is so structured around being unexpected that I'm starting to get worried I'm going to see something in your status that messes a real surprise up for me.

 

[JD]

Spoiler: Lost

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

 

[Christopher]

I haven't seen TMP in quite a while; was anyone assigned to deep space exploration at the beginning, before Kirk started gathering them all?

TMP established nothing about what Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel, and Rand had been doing beforehand; they were just there, as part of the crew already assigned to the emergency mission. Scotty was the one in charge of the refit. Spock was pursuing Kolinahr and came of his own initiative. McCoy was the only one Kirk really "gathered," and he was happily retired on Earth.

In Ex Machina, I asserted that Uhura had been a major part of Decker's command crew and had even been offered the first officer post; that Sulu and Chekov had been posted on or around Earth in hopes of being available for the Enterprise when it was ready (an idea I think I cribbed from Traitor Winds); and that McCoy had spent some time on the new Fabrini homeworld (following a suggestion from the TMP novelization) but had retired to Earth after about a year.

John Byrne's next IDW miniseries is called Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor and apparently focuses on McCoy's activities between the 5-year mission and TMP.

Then there's the three (that I can recall) ways that Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru. In my version--"A Test of Character" (SNW VII)--Kirk’s tampering is "cheating without cheating," since Kirk merely creates a level playing-field, where success is not guaranteed. In Julia Ecklar's novel, The Kobayashi Maru, Kirk has the Klingon's fear him because he's already a kick-butt Starfleet Captain. In the 2009 film, Kirk takes down the Klingon's shields and nukes them with one shot.

Your version was my favorite, though Ecklar's is fun too. Ecklar's version is retold in DC's "Star-crossed" storyline by Howard Weinstein, with the dialogue slightly altered.

In Strangers from the Sky, everyone believes that Earth's first contact with extraterrestrials was with people from Alpha Centauri.

But when those events were referred back to in a later novel by Diane Duane (Spock's World, I think), the "official" first contact was retconned from Alpha Centaurians to Andorians. I imagine that Roddenberry or Richard Arnold nixed the idea of Alpha Centauri having humanoid natives rather than being a colony of Earth.

 

[Thrawn]

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

Thanks; I appreciate it.

I love the Andy Botwin avatar anyway, it's fun to see it back.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

This is an international board, dammit.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I imagine that Roddenberry or Richard Arnold nixed the idea of Alpha Centauri having humanoid natives rather than being a colony of Earth.

MWB got her dates and historical events from reading and memorizing pages from Fred & Stan Goldstein's "Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology", IIRC, because she was penniless author at the time.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There had to have been at least a dozen different and mutually incompatible fates for the Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident", but I always liked the way Vulcan's Heart handled it. Charvanek, as they called her, was really cool. She really got to kick some ass. And I like her sense of humor as well (which she didn't get to show onscreen, the only time we saw her).

 

[RookieBatman]

Then there's the three (that I can recall) ways that Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru. In my version--"A Test of Character" (SNW VII)--Kirk’s tampering is "cheating without cheating," since Kirk merely creates a level playing-field, where success is not guaranteed. In Julia Ecklar's novel, The Kobayashi Maru, Kirk has the Klingon's fear him because he's already a kick-butt Starfleet Captain. In the 2009 film, Kirk takes down the Klingon's shields and nukes them with one shot.

Your version was my favorite, though Ecklar's is fun too. Ecklar's version is retold in DC's "Star-crossed" storyline by Howard Weinstein, with the dialogue slightly altered.

In Starfleet Academy, when Cadet Forrester hacks the scenario with a little help from Kirk, the player has the choice of three options, and there is one very much like this where he reprograms it so the Klingons are in awe of him. If I recall correctly, this is also the most effective method, so it's a nice little reference back to that. I wonder if it was intentional.

I've forgotten; how did it go in the movie?

 

[Christopher]

^As Kevin said, Kirk reprogrammed the simulator so that the Klingons' shields suddenly went down, allowing them to be easily picked off. A blunter approach than those proposed by Kevin and by Julia Ecklar, but then, this is a different Kirk with a rougher upbringing. (Since it's an alternate timeline, we can still assume either the Lauderdale version or the Ecklar version is true in the Prime timeline. Maybe all three are true in three different histories. Or rather, four histories, though the "Star-crossed" version is almost identical to the Ecklar version aside from some slight differences in dialogue.)

 

[David cgc]

In Starfleet Academy, when Cadet Forrester hacks the scenario with a little help from Kirk, the player has the choice of three options, and there is one very much like this where he reprograms it so the Klingons are in awe of him. If I recall correctly, this is also the most effective method, so it's a nice little reference back to that. I wonder if it was intentional.

I'm sure it was. The novelization was a bit more interesting, though. As in the game, Kirk found out Forester was trying to figure out how Kirk beat the scenario, and Forester figured out it was by giving himself a pre-programed record. However, Kirk re-reprogramed the simulation after Forester got his hands on it, so instead of being intimidated by Forester's impressive reputation, the captains of the Klingon ships all went wild, each wanting to be the one who had the glory of killing such a great warrior. Forester then had to improvise a way to use the fact that the Klingons weren't coordinating anymore to escape alive, by tricking the ships into firing on each other.

Then there was a bit with a klingon dreadnaught. In a nutshell, it was a lot more fun and involved than the milk-run in the game.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Mind you, it would have caused a lot of problems (not to mention royalty payments) had they used material from Diane Duane's and J.M. Ford's works, but still...

No, it really wouldn't, as Paramount (then; CBS now) already holds ownership over everything in the novels, comics, games, and so on. Not that it matters, as it's doubtful anyone attached to the actual production of the show even read the novels. They were pretty busy doing their own thing.

Ronald D. Moore indicated that he had read The Final Reflection and some other Trek novels back when he had his AOL board during his DS9 days. He just chose to go in another direction when he did Klingon worldbuilding on TNG.

The whole thing still holds together if you consider:

Pre TOS Klingons= Czarist Russia (noble houses, Kahless worship, etc)

TOS Klingons= Communist Russia (no mention of Kahless worship/"atheism", paranoid police state surveillance, etc)

Post TOS Klingons = post Communist Russia (return to "faith"/Kahless worship, noble houses once again important, et al)

 

[Rosalind]

Spoiler: Lost

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

JD, I just spoiler coded your post, there's a "one year from first aired" guide to spoilers on this board. Just before the episode has been aired in the US doesn't mean everyone has seen it, even people in the US might not have seen it for various reasons. So it's better to be on the safe side.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Spoiler: Lost

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

Thanks; I appreciate it.

I love the Andy Botwin avatar anyway, it's fun to see it back.

Over in the Lost forum I actually asked this same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I just started watching the show last year and when season 5 started there were quite a few avatars that were giving stuff away but I didn't really know it at the time. Then I'd see an episode and think Oh, so that's what that guy's avatar meant

 

[F. King Daniel]

I can’t believe I forgot Diane Duane’s version of Star Trek! I love her crazy aliens, her version of the Federation (several orders of magnitude bigger than the TV/film version, which she calls the “human arm” of the Federation), the Defender-class USS Inaieu (a multi-hulled, mile-long Federation ship powered by four warp cores and crewed by elephant-sized slugs that like to rush around), her Rihannsu (far more interesting then the generic villain Romulans on TV). Not to mention Nahrat and the rest of her recurring characters.

I couldn’t understand how the moronic Klingons ever made it into space until I read the Karsid/Klingon backstory from Ishmael.

John M. Ford’s Klingons > TNG/DS9 style Klingons. (incidentally, the STXI deleted scene Klingons give me hope for the future of Trek’s iconic baddies)

I also like some of the other versions of the Andorians – Bloodthirst (backstory of plague, death and repopulating the species), and the Theskians (antenna damage = fatal, red blood, “do *not* resuscitate!”), but that’s not to say I dislike the current versions, nor do I think they’re entirely incompatible (at least not to those of us who don’t care if things don’t add up 100%)

FASA came up with some cool background for background aliens and worlds in their Trek sourcebooks (particularly the colourful background aliens in STIV). The “triangle” (lawless space intersecting Federation, Romulan and Klingon space, with a backstory stretching back to a crashed Earth ship during the Romulan War) was a neat idea, too.

I prefer every prior version of the Romulan War over the current one.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Spoiler: Lost

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

Thanks; I appreciate it.

I love the Andy Botwin avatar anyway, it's fun to see it back.

Over in the Lost forum I actually asked this same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I just started watching the show last year and when season 5 started there were quite a few avatars that were giving stuff away but I didn't really know it at the time. Then I'd see an episode and think Oh, so that's what that guy's avatar meant

Those of us with a thread over in the Lost forum about just being hooked on season 1 and avoiding spoilers are, however, a bit fucked here.

 

[Christopher]

I prefer every prior version of the Romulan War over the current one.

What prior versions? There's a brief summary of it in The Romulan Way and a passing reference to it in DC's Mirror Universe Saga, but it's never been depicted in detail before as far as I know.

 

[JD]

Spoiler: Lost

Sure. I figured since we knew Locke was dead, and we already knew Ben killed him it would be ok. I figured as long as the episode had aired it would be ok. Sorry.

JD, I just spoiler coded your post, there's a "one year from first aired" guide to spoilers on this board. Just before the episode has been aired in the US doesn't mean everyone has seen it, even people in the US might not have seen it for various reasons. So it's better to be on the safe side.

Oh, I didn't realize that. I would just like to wholeheartedly apologize again, I admit I didn't think. All I thought was that it was that I thought it was a really funny line, and that it would make a cool signature on here.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Agreed. In The Final Voyage, he just accepts his promotion like nothing happened, despite his well-known dislike for a desk job.

That gets me wondering. Was it ever really overtly stated in TOS that Kirk had a dislike for desk jobs? Yes, in "The Deadly Years" he showed disdain for a "chair-bound paper-pusher," but he wasn't quite himself at the time. And just because, as a line commander, he was often impatient with the decisions of the people back home giving him orders, that doesn't necessarily translate to an unwillingness to accept promotion to a position of greater authority. Lots of people grumble about their bosses but then accept promotion to the same positions when it comes their way.

I think that, like many "well-known" qualities ascribed to Kirk, this disdain may be something that was established more in the movies, after he'd been in a desk job and decided he didn't like it. And it was the novelization of TMP, not any canonical work, that introduced the idea that he had to be manipulated or tricked into taking a promotion.

I just did a keyword search through Chakoteya's TOS transcript site, and I find no instances in TOS of Kirk ever saying anything to the effect that he was unwilling to take a promotion or a desk job. The phrase "desk job" never appears in TOS at all.

So I don't think there's enough evidence in TOS per se to conclude that he would've been particularly resistant to taking a promotion to the admiralty or would've needed some special incentive for it. It could be that he simply didn't have a problem with taking a promotion at the time, that he was tired after five years out there and wanted a break, and that after a couple of years at a desk, he decided he'd made a terrible mistake and from then on had a problem with the idea of a desk job. So I think a "final mission" story that has Kirk just accepting the promotion without any special reason for it is just as valid as one that shows him resistant to promotion and needing a special reason. There's nothing in canon to rule out either approach.

I think it's something of an instinctual reaction on the part of the audience. We know & love Kirk best as the swashbuckling man of action. To see him in an older, more sedate position just doesn't work. The audience doesn't like it at all and that dislike is immediately projected onto the character. Kirk can't possibly like having a desk job because the audience doesn't like it.

^Iirc, Decker and the original crew less Spock and McCoy were on their way out, once the E-refit was completed. It may have only been an assumption I made, though.

Agreed. I was always under the impression that Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, Chapel, & Rand were already assigned to Decker's crew on the Enterprise even before the V'Ger emergency arose.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I prefer every prior version of the Romulan War over the current one.

What prior versions? There's a brief summary of it in The Romulan Way and a passing reference to it in DC's Mirror Universe Saga, but it's never been depicted in detail before as far as I know.

The Romulan Way and the unmade Star Trek: The Begining were what i was thinking of.

 

[lawman]

Fascinating thread! I've read some of these (multiple comics versions of the first and last voyages; Federation; Strangers; Ford's Klingons and Duane's Romulans), but not others (the various Mirror Universes; Starfleet: Year One), and honestly hadn't thought about some in years until they were mentioned here.

Is there perchance a site anywhere where someone has catalogued or listed all of these "variant" versions of key Trek moments/concepts? We mostly seem just to be reaching for memories here, and in some cases it's not self-evident what the incompatibilities are. For instance, I'm trying to remember how Chris Claremont's "Debt of Honor" graphic novel treated Klingon history...