I just do not see how it easily fits in to the Trek Universe(multiverse) or why it necessarily should.
"Forbidden Planet" as TOS prequel?
- Thread starter TOS Purist
- Start date
Okay, suddenly "Forbidden Planet" has taken on a whole other implication here...
Nice to have your stamp of approval!!
We get whatever chance we want, Mr. Dictator, because it's all fiction anyway. FP doesn't stand as far apart from Star Trek as ENT did - hell, if you read the early interviews with B&B from the old TV Guide magazine (which I have), Braga mentions how ENT was supposed to be "...not like other Trek shows, almost an alternate reality. We want viewers to see it as just another sci-fi show, that just happens to be Star Trek related. Which is why Star Trek isn't in the title."
That's a paraphrase, but I don't have to accept ENT at all, because it's clear they weren't concerned with sticking to canon when they made the show...not until ratings started to fall and Paramount forced them to put "Star Trek" in the title and awkwardly shoehorn it into continuity. It's easier to fit "Forbidden Planet" into TOS's continuity than it is to fit in ENT.
TELL IT LIKE IT IS, WARPED!!!
Because I can never resist:
STAR TREK 0: THE FORBIDDEN PLANET
Naw... you want to put Pike and Colt in there!
Or better yet: Roddenberry as April!
Maybe somewhere in Engineering. The Kelvin bridge is actually a more sophisticated set than any in previous Trek productions.
I took Orcus's comment to be more about the deliberately retro look of the Kelvin uniforms than a comment on the set design.
Oh, is that what a "uni" is? I thought it was a typo for unit.
That's the one!
When I first saw the movie, the Kelvin uniforms (henceforth known as "unis") made me think of Forbidden Planet......come to think of it: I'm disappointed Leslie Nielson didn't turn up on the Kelvin...
I thought the point of this thread was something like a thought experiment. Of course FP isn't part of continuity. My point was that FP made more sense (as much as it can) as pre TOS history than ENT. And, no, ENT has never been proven without question that it's TOS' pre history except in the eyes of some who'll swallow anything TPTB peddle. They've fucked around with alternate timeline shit so much that they easily cut themselves off.
Well, you don't get a choice in terms of actual continuity: Forbidden Planet stands forever apart from Star Trek and at least equal to it in depth of imagination, while TOS and Enterprise are both actually chapters in Trek.
Remarkably, the number of rewatchable episodes in both TOS and any one of the sequel shows are pretty similar - the later shows just each took four to seven years of fitful improvement to produce fifteen or twenty good ones, while TOS did it in about a season and a half.
ENT doesn't count and never will as actual TOS prehistory--far too many divergences. It made its bed so now it can rot in it.
And I'm ashamed with myself for getting into this debate again, about a fucking series that I absolutely loathe in every way. What a lousy work of trash. Yech! It makes my skin crawl just to think of it.
Huh? What have you been doing on these boards for so long, then? Or do you mean ENT only...?
^^ I'm talking about ENT.
And I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
FP seems more credible as TOS prehistory more because how it's executed rather than in actual ideas and concepts I think. Granted I haven't given it a lot of thought, but it does feel more like something pre TOS or more exactly more pre The Cage. The only real sticking point for me is the UFP reference which I don't buy as being established a century earlier than TOS. There's anecdotal evidence and subtext in TOS that supports the idea that the UFP may only be about fifty or so years old tops.
Yeah, yeah, I know that isn't in the "official" encyclopedia and chronology, but then I don't give a rat's ass about the "official" stamp-of-approval.
And I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
FP seems more credible as TOS prehistory more because how it's executed rather than in actual ideas and concepts I think. Granted I haven't given it a lot of thought, but it does feel more like something pre TOS or more exactly more pre The Cage. The only real sticking point for me is the UFP reference which I don't buy as being established a century earlier than TOS. There's anecdotal evidence and subtext in TOS that supports the idea that the UFP may only be about fifty or so years old tops.
Yeah, yeah, I know that isn't in the "official" encyclopedia and chronology, but then I don't give a rat's ass about the "official" stamp-of-approval.
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Oh I see your point then.
Well... whatever about the "official" blah, blah, blah. I've always thought Forbidden Planet worked as a proto-Trek thing (albeit, a highly intellectual one) for the past twenty years or so since I first saw it. Forbidden Planet really works for me as a fantastic piece of storytelling that bridges the gap between Flash Gordon of the 1930s and later SF storytelling of the 1960s - with a large dollop of Shakespeare into the bargain...
Well... whatever about the "official" blah, blah, blah. I've always thought Forbidden Planet worked as a proto-Trek thing (albeit, a highly intellectual one) for the past twenty years or so since I first saw it. Forbidden Planet really works for me as a fantastic piece of storytelling that bridges the gap between Flash Gordon of the 1930s and later SF storytelling of the 1960s - with a large dollop of Shakespeare into the bargain...
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I feel similarly...it's really impossible to have a worthwhile discussion about Trek, including TOS, based on the premise that there's some "pure form" of it centered only on the original series - yet I get into it again and again...
I dislike a good part of Trek TOS's third year about as badly as I dislike anything else in the canon - there's just brain dead crap going on in episodes like "Plato's Stepchildren," and the notion that because such episodes feature Shatner and Nimoy in their technicolor teeshirts instead of Bakula in his garage overalls they're somehow elevated is not sustainable IMAO.
But then, since this discussion centers on Forbidden Planet's workability as backstory to Star Trek there's no way to avoid the existence of an already existing backstory that contradicts it - both in the form of Enterprise and in TOS's internal references.
FP first brought the spirit and many of the specifics of the sf pulps that had defined science fiction in America during the 1930s and 1940s into the cinema. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were both derived from material that had been visualized and mostly developed in the medium of comics (though Rogers at least had its earliest origins in prose storytelling). The previously most ambitious sf movies had been derived from slightly more literarily "respectable" sources, such as Well's Things To Come.
Fast forward ten years or so and Star Trek is using the same pulp material, filtered through Forbidden Planet while not updating it conceptually in any real way. Trek is more modern than FP with respect to those aspects owing to network TV storytelling tropes and structure and production technique, not really more modern or advanced in terms of its imaginative content.
Copy the address and paste it into your address bar. The site doesn't allow hotlinking (or whatever the terminology is).
This WAS supposed to be a thought experiment - thank you for being able to pick that up. I think Star Trek as a whole would be better off if people didn't mindlessly accept whatever Paramount pukes out with "Star Trek" plastered on the title (even though "Enterprise" didn't even have Star Trek in it's title until ratings started to fall...). What's even more pathetic is when fans try to rationalize the discrepancies between the original source material and the divergent, cheesy spin-offs; the writers should have been competent enough to not make the obvious and easily-avoidable discrepancies in the first place, and not rely on fan imagination to cover their asses.
Whether you agree or not, you have to admit that "Forbidden Planet" looks and feels (and works pretty well) as a prequel to "The Cage," which is what a proper Trek prequel should work from in the first place.
Really? Because they just made me think of bad TNG uniform rip-offs.
Can't ignore that, can't ignore "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," can't ignore Star Trek Enterprise - otherwise we're just playing craps with blank dice. That's a game for suckers.
"I had the spots removed for luck," said Big Julie, "but I remember where the spots formerly were."
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