The fact that TMP is set two years after TOS is mentioned quite frequently in TMP, and was even mentioned again in the Voyager episode Q2.
Is Commodore still a rank post-TOS?
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The fact that TMP is set two years after TOS is mentioned quite frequently in TMP, and was even mentioned again in the Voyager episode Q2.
TMP never explicitly says that it's been 2 1/2 years since TOS. Decker says that Kirk hasn't logged a single star hour in 2 1/2 years, and Kirk refers to spending "Five years out there" in passing. There's also a reference to the Enterprise's refit taking 18 months. That's it. The most you can say from that information is that it's been at least 2 1/2 years since the series, but it could've easily been more. They just didn't want to get bogged down in explanations about what everybody had been doing for the last decade.
The VOY reference to the 5YM ending in 2270 is just the current Trek writers sneaking in a reference to the Okuda Chronology to make his dates "official." It has nothing to do with what the intent behind TMP was, or what was actually said in the movie.
The question was if there was ever an on-screen confirmation. Even if there's wiggle room with what was said in TMP, the line on Voyager is on-screen confirmation.
No, there was a non-speaking extra in TVH with a commodore's insignia on his sleeve, another extra in the senior officer briefing scene in TUC was a commodore.
I may be mission something obvious, but... how? According to chakoteya.net, the line is:
Q2 said:
That doesn't seem to indicate anything about the amount of time between TOS and TMP.
I may be mission something obvious, but... how? According to chakoteya.net, the line is:
Q2 said:
That doesn't seem to indicate anything about the amount of time between TOS and TMP.
Bingo. And there's also that wonderful revisionist history of Kirk committing a "blatant violation" of the Prime Directive at the end of the 5YM. TOS Kirk really wasn't the rulebreaker that the cliched fan stereotype paints him as.
Did Kirk think outside the box and come up with ingenious solutions? Absolutely! Did he routinely disobey orders? Not really. And on the the rare occasions that he did ( like in "Amok Time"), it was usually his last resort, not his first.
So yeah, I don't tend to put much stock in what VOY writers had to say about Kirk or the 5YM. They don't understand the character at all, IMO.
That would depend on knowing the rules. TOS never tells us what they are, only that Kirk acknowledges their existence and then dismisses them as irrelevant to the matter at hand. Did he really have the authority to do so? Since we never hear a point of view other than his own, we can't tell. Not until "Q2"...
But yeah, no episode or movie has ever established when ST:TMP takes place, either in absolute terms of fictional dates, or in relative terms of years-after-TOS or years-before-TWoK or the like. Indeed, nobody ever mentions the events of ST:TMP, making it seem as if all the subsequent writers were ashamed of this "false start"... But, as with the Commodore rank, absence of evidence isn't solid evidence of absence. Perhaps the reason ST:TMP isn't worth future mention is that Earth gets attacked by supercreatures twice a decade, any decade, ho-hum, do we really have to panic this time around?
That Kirk has reached Rear Admiral rank, seemingly skipping Commodore, could be taken as evidence that the movie takes place late in the game and Kirk has in fact spent quite a few years at Commodore rank already.
Timo Saloniemi
One wonders... Did anybody not in the audience even notice? Would V'Ger have made news on Earth? Or would the government have held back on information to avoid panic, and after the whole thing whittled down to minor fireworks in orbit, released a vague statement to the effect of there having been an alien visitation handled by Starfleet?
And how much say would the Chief of Starfleet Operations have had on that?
Timo Saloniemi
And how much say would the Chief of Starfleet Operations have had on that?
Timo Saloniemi
While watching TOS for the first time over the past 1 to 2 years, I've noticed that Kirk also isn't nearly the womanizer people make him out to be. At least he's not in the first two seasons (haven't watched season three yet). Yes, he has quite a few romantic relationships and kisses with guest stars, but he's actually a lot more restrained and professional (most of the time anyway) than he gets credit. In Mudd's Women, for example, the entire male crew of the Enterprise that comes in contact with the title characters are acting like horny, unprofessional teenagers. It's only Kirk in that episode that remains professional and restrains his lusts.
If you look at Chris Pine's interpretation (which I do like, by the way), he's much more overt in his sexual and romantic advances and can be unprofessional sometimes when it comes to that. He fits the mold of what I think people think Kirk was like. I still like Pine, but he's playing to more of the caricature side of Kirk when it comes to his relationship with women he wants to sleep with.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. Don't want to totally derail this topic.
V'ger killed everyone on that communications station, plus two more on the Enterprise. I've noticed that it varies around America, but here we get the news of every serviceman who dies on a operational mission, or in training. There's also the social media of service families (which I'm a part).
V'ger shut down Earth's defenses, that by itself should have reach public awareness relatively quickly.
There actually are commodores in the US navy. It's not a rank, but a position. When you have more than one boat in a task force and a captain has authority over the others, then he's a commodore.
By that logic Sisko would have been serving as a commodore during the Dominion war.
By that logic Sisko would have been serving as a commodore during the Dominion war.
On the other hand the amount of old friends he bumped into that were usually attractive women that he used to be involved with (According to Courtmartial it happened enough for McCoy to comment about it) kind of implies he may have been in the past.
When I was putting together my own TOS Chronology, I did wonder just what the heck Kirk was doing that made these women count the days since they'd seen him last (Areel Shaw and Janet Wallace both say something like "It's been 4 years, 7 months, and an odd number of days").
But generally, I'd say that the TOS Kirk was more of a serial monogamist than a full-blown womanizer. Not quite the same thing.
To be fair, the Kirk we see in the Abrams movies has more to do with how he's written then with Pine's performance. Pine isn't actually a bad actor, unfortunately the character written for him isn't really written that well. The writers really don't seem to understand anything about Captain Kirk the character or being a captain in general. As you say, they write Kirk the stereotype known to the general public, the rowdy ladies man who makes his own rules. In TOS Kirk was in fact a very professional and intelligent officer and leader, and while he wouldn't rigidly follow the rules if there was a better option, he was still very disciplined and held a high standard for his crew and a higher one for himself.
Of course these are the same movies where Kirk doesn't graduate the Academy, spends a day as a Lieutenant, and is then promoted to command the Enterprise. I really shouldn't expect these writers to understand the nuances of what makes someone a good captain.
The real question is, would people care? Outside the circle of the families, that is. If TOS is any indication, soldiers of the UFP die every day, often en masse. And Epsilon 9 would seem to have been out in the sticks. Would these deaths register in terms of "public awareness"?
It's not that the V'Ger intrusion would be a state secret. It's just that it would be downplayed rather than highlighted, especially as nothing really happened.
Why? The military would be interested in keeping that part a state secret!
That's a nice way of putting it. OTOH, he was also a ruthless exploiter of women, seducing them for tactical gain in, say, "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" and "Requiem for Methuselah", let alone in situations where the women were adversarial to begin with. Doesn't mean he would have been the slightest bit misogynic - he just wasn't equally skilled in seducing and then exploiting men, creating a bit of a bias there.
Timo Saloniemi
It went both ways - while "barely more than a teenager" himself, he went for the thirty-something Ruth.
We might surmise that age taboos are not part of the 23rd century sexual mores, even if most other 20th century taboos survive. (Not that a decade would be much of a difference, though, and "barely more than a teenager" has typically carried little or no taboo value in any era anyway. Heck, at times it would have been considered odd for somebody of that age not to have five kids.)
Timo Saloniemi
We might surmise that age taboos are not part of the 23rd century sexual mores, even if most other 20th century taboos survive. (Not that a decade would be much of a difference, though, and "barely more than a teenager" has typically carried little or no taboo value in any era anyway. Heck, at times it would have been considered odd for somebody of that age not to have five kids.)
Timo Saloniemi
I get the impression that most, if not all, of the battle-hardened ship captains were probably wiped out by the Nerada on the way to Vulcan, leaving Pike the only surviving Captain, due solely to Kirk's warning that it was a trap. Those two things were the most likely contributors to their otherwise semi-unrealistic promotions in the following movie, IMO.
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