^Or like Admiral Morrow referring to the Enterprise being only 20 years old in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in spite of "The Cage". 
In-Universe Explantion For the Change in Tone Between TMP and TWOK
- Thread starter Captain Clark Terrell
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^IIRC, Christopher himself addressed that in The Darkness Drops Again.
--Sran
--Sran
I know, but I think it qualifies as an error on the producers' part.
In light of Enterprise's depiction of the development of warp drive, if nothing else, I'm not sure there's an easy way to reconcile the Valiant, even with a lot of wiggle room. It's a potentially frustrating outlier, so you might as well be exact--because not being exact doesn't really solve the problem.
From your lips to Browncoats' ears.
Actually, I say that, but I don't really need an in-universe justification on a personal level; Occam's Razor and the sensibilities of the series itself are enough. It's like the people who bend over backwards to make "the system" as depicted in Firefly viable in terms of real-life astrophysics--it's just not the sort of thing Joss Whedon cares about, and irrelevant to the show (or, more importantly for this discussion, a timeline of same).
Getting back to Star Trek, I've never been particularly bothered by the "disappearance" of the Organians after "Errand of Mercy," or even taken it as meaning they weren't involved in some way in galactic affairs, despite not preventing various onscreen hostilities with Klingons over the years. (Clearly any number of tie-in writers, from Blish onwards, were with me on that one.) There are a bunch of things with huge implications introduced in the very first season which are never mentioned again (I even blogged about it once), but I don't need to justify them all, any more than I believe the First Federation vanished after "The Corbomite Maneuver."
^Yeah, but that's my point -- it doesn't take any special handwaving to explain the Organians' absence, because it's set up overtly within "Errand of Mercy" itself. Going by the evidence in the episode, we shouldn't have expected to see them again in any case.
Getting back to the matter at hand:
Not only that, but just as Starfleet looks to be getting back on an exploratory footing again with the "Great Experiment" of transwarp drive, another probe shows up to get back at Earth for "its own shortsightedness" in the past, while the Genesis controversy is still raging. Insular forces (you know, the type who might conspire to assassinate a head of state) could readily gain more influence in such a political environment.
There's already something that happened which could motivate Starfleet to act more defensive and less exploratory before TWOK--the V'Ger incident itself, where Federation and Klingon resources paid the price (from a certain POV) for Earth's early efforts at interstellar exploration. Assuming the Klingons ultimately learned the truth about V'Ger's origins, they could've easily increased tensions by blaming humans (and, by extension, the Federation) for the loss of their ships.
Not only that, but just as Starfleet looks to be getting back on an exploratory footing again with the "Great Experiment" of transwarp drive, another probe shows up to get back at Earth for "its own shortsightedness" in the past, while the Genesis controversy is still raging. Insular forces (you know, the type who might conspire to assassinate a head of state) could readily gain more influence in such a political environment.
Despite all the interplanetary relationships that have been debated here, I'm compelled to point out that the whole change could have been made as simply a matter of taste.
From Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise
"Each individual's branch department would no longer be denoted by shirt color, rather, this would be expressed by a colored, circular background on the uniform insignia. The basic uniform became a long-sleeved tunic of grey or tan, with foot coverings built into the uniform pants.
This Uniform, used until 2219, proved unpopular with officers and enlisted personnel alike, as well as with the press and public. In an attempt to get back to the much-liked tunic/pants/boots combination, Star Fleet designers proposed a new concept; a wraparound tunic, maroon in color, would cover a long sleeved undershirt, the color of which would denote branch department. The long standing system of denoting rank by sleeve stripes was dropped in favor of a rank pin to be worn on the shoulder and left sleeve of the proposed tunic. Black pants and boots similiar to those used prior to 2212, and an insignia pin to be worn on the left breast of the tunic were added, as well as a black belt with buckle."
(of course the years don't match up with on-screen dialog but the rest is pretty sound all the folks in Starfleet hated the uniforms and the press and public didn't take to it either so they basically just said...."Back to the drawing board!" (maybe they should let Project runway have a crack at it next time.)
From Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise
"Each individual's branch department would no longer be denoted by shirt color, rather, this would be expressed by a colored, circular background on the uniform insignia. The basic uniform became a long-sleeved tunic of grey or tan, with foot coverings built into the uniform pants.
This Uniform, used until 2219, proved unpopular with officers and enlisted personnel alike, as well as with the press and public. In an attempt to get back to the much-liked tunic/pants/boots combination, Star Fleet designers proposed a new concept; a wraparound tunic, maroon in color, would cover a long sleeved undershirt, the color of which would denote branch department. The long standing system of denoting rank by sleeve stripes was dropped in favor of a rank pin to be worn on the shoulder and left sleeve of the proposed tunic. Black pants and boots similiar to those used prior to 2212, and an insignia pin to be worn on the left breast of the tunic were added, as well as a black belt with buckle."
(of course the years don't match up with on-screen dialog but the rest is pretty sound all the folks in Starfleet hated the uniforms and the press and public didn't take to it either so they basically just said...."Back to the drawing board!" (maybe they should let Project runway have a crack at it next time.)
Well, ultimately it's all just stories filtered through different creators. Harve Bennett and his collaborators had a different vision of Star Trek than Roddenberry did, so it feels like a different work. Putting those different works of fiction in the "same universe" or "different universes" is a conceit applied after the fact -- either you choose to look past the differences as matters of interpretation, or you choose to see the different interpretations as different realities.
If anything, Star Trek has been kind of unusual among media franchises in that it's traditionally treated all its different pieces as part of a single continuity instead of a series of reinventions, which is what they really were. You don't routinely see that with concepts that get relaunched after a lengthy absence, or that get turned from TV shows into movies or vice-versa. Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman wasn't supposed to be in continuity with the preceding syndicated Superboy series or with the '50s George Reeves series. The Burton Batman movies weren't sequels to the Adam West series. The reboot of Kolchak: The Night Stalker some years back wasn't a sequel to the Darren McGavin original (though I think there was an X-Files episode that implicitly was). And there have been seven different canonical Godzilla universes in the Japanese film series alone.
It's not unique to Star Trek -- Doctor Who has also done it, and it's become more common in recent years -- but there are plenty of examples of franchises that don't pretend their various revivals and reinventions are in continuity with each other. Even Star Wars has given up on that pretense, retroactively decanonizing things that used to count, like the Ewok TV movies and the '80s cartoon shows. Star Trek, though, has mostly gone with the pretense that everything onscreen fits together despite all the variant interpretations and reinventions (though it's been ambivalent about the animated series). I think that's why a lot of fans have had such a problem with the Abrams reboot -- it's novel in their experience to have a reinvention of Trek that doesn't pretend to be in continuity with the rest.
But even with the pretense of continuity, they're still stories from different creators with different views of what Trek should be. So in a creative sense, they are different "realities" even when they pretend they go together.
Post deleted; I didn't realize I'd already said it months ago.
And given that Doohan personally despised it, I tend to regard Mr. Scott's Guide . . . as being "deprecated with extreme prejudice," the same way the 1980 TMP tie-in Spaceflight Chronology has been generally regarded as deprecated for the past few decades.
And given that Doohan personally despised it, I tend to regard Mr. Scott's Guide . . . as being "deprecated with extreme prejudice," the same way the 1980 TMP tie-in Spaceflight Chronology has been generally regarded as deprecated for the past few decades.
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The TMP uniforms fit in much better with a climate-controlled futuristic setting in which lots of things are computer-controlled and your clothes are beamed directly on and off of you.
I can't imagine sitting there in one of those stiff, heavy wool multi-layered Dudley Do-Right suits in a starship all day long.
Kor
I can't imagine sitting there in one of those stiff, heavy wool multi-layered Dudley Do-Right suits in a starship all day long.
Kor
Why did Doohan dislike the book?
Wild guess: Maybe because he had nothing to do with it and didn't get any royalties, despite it being attributed to his character?
Or maybe it was just that too many clueless fans assumed that he'd written it, missing the distinction between "Mr. Scott" (the character) and "James Doohan" (the actor)?
My understanding is that it was a little bit of both. I remember one of his convention appearances (it was a Creation con in Pasadena, back in the day when the Pasadena Convention Center was mostly underground, and the ice rink was still in the old Grand Ballroom building), in which a fan brought the subject up, and Doohan was not the least bit shy about his complete and utter contempt for the book. I seem to recall that he had a certain amount of interest in engineering in general.
Regarding the change in uniforms: Could it be something as simple as the introduction of an evolutionary improvement in the technology used to produce the uniforms? A little move up from whatever they were using on TOS that still required the ship to have a laundry area, toward replicators? It seems to me that if you gained the ability to generate a new uniform on a regular basis (using an auto-tailor? replimat? whatever-you-call-it) then it might inspire some Admiral to go, "Hey! We could really get elaborate with our uniforms now, and there would be no actual cost. Design us up something snazzy - and make it red to hide blood, there might be a war with the Klingons soon, and we don't want to show weakness even when injured."
^"Elaborate" is fine for a dress uniform, but it's stupid for everyday fatigues that people have to move freely in and work comfortably in on a daily basis. Any such plan shouldn't have lasted long, because of the sheer impracticality of it. That's the problem with the TWOK uniforms. It would've been fine if they'd saved the Hornblower-cosplay jackets for full-dress occasions and made the underlying turtlenecks the everyday duty uniform (like the pilot uniforms).
I agree, even though the Monster Maroons are sharp, they're impractical. But man, the Admiral who had 'em whipped up? He's kind of an a*hole, man. He just don't care.
But man, the Admiral who had 'em whipped up? He's kind of an a*hole, man. He just don't care.
I wonder if he's the same guy who came up with the miniskirts...
Regarding the TWOK uniforms, they don't strike me as being any more "elaborate" than several of the DS9/VOY uniform designs.
Nor any more elaborate than what I wear 365 days a year: a shirt (LS dress, SS dress, golf, or even Aloha-print) with buttons, over a heavy white undershirt, and trousers. And I'll note that by the Bozeman era, the TWOK-era uniform tunics were being worn without the turtlenecks (the equivalent of my not bothering with an undershirt, or of wearing a "gray undershirt" DS9/VOY uniform tunic without the gray undershirt).
Nor any more elaborate than what I wear 365 days a year: a shirt (LS dress, SS dress, golf, or even Aloha-print) with buttons, over a heavy white undershirt, and trousers. And I'll note that by the Bozeman era, the TWOK-era uniform tunics were being worn without the turtlenecks (the equivalent of my not bothering with an undershirt, or of wearing a "gray undershirt" DS9/VOY uniform tunic without the gray undershirt).
They're essentially two piece suits (jacket over a shirt and pants.) and contain a lot of decoration. More than previous and subsequent duty uniforms
