DON'T SAY THAT NAME.
Is it possible to whittle down all the Canon Issues down to 3x Time Lines?
- Thread starter Kamen Rider Blade
- Start date
Long gone!
There's at least one more timeline, one where Captain Kirk's middle name starts with an 'R'.
I had a great grandmother whose birth name was Anne Frances Veronica Hurst. She married Jacob Demuth and had nine children. She was a widow for about 26 years, and was often mentioned in contemporary records such as census, city directories, probate papers, etc., etc. Sometimes she is referred to as plain Mrs. Demuth or Widow Demuth, but often one or more of her personal names and/or initials are given in various combinations. She is recorded with various combinations of persona names and initials, and it would be very easy to believe that the records refer to several different women instead of the same one.
And she is not unique in having more than two personal names. You might have heard of a fantasy writer and language professor named J.R.R. Tolkien, for example.
So I find it very easy to believe that Captain Kirk might have had three or more personal names and that Starfleet regulations may have allowed him to choose an official form of his name. So when Kirk entered Starfleet he may have decided that James R. Kirk, using the initial of one of his middle names, would be his official Starfleet name.
Then on Delta Vega Kirk's best friend tried to kill him and created a tombstone saying "James R. Kirk". And every time that Kirk said or saw his official name "James R.Kirk" it reminded him of that tragedy. So Kirk decided to change his offiicial Starfleet name to James Tiberius Kirk or James T. Kirk.
Of course it is also possible that "where No Man Has Gone before" happens in an alternate universe to those TOS episodes and movies where Kirk is named James T. Kirk or James Tiberius Kirk.
It is my belief that it is logical to believe that almost every episode in a highly episodic series like TOS happens in an separate alternate universe, different from the universes of almost every other episode. With the exception of episodes which are sequels to other episodes, of course.
So with about 800 or more Star Trek episodes and movies, there should be many hundreds of episodes which happen in their own separate alternate universes or in alternate universes shared with only a very few other episodes, and then a group of maybe 100 or 200 episodes that share the same alternate universe due to being parts of a number of overlapping story arcs. This last universe could be considered the main timeline or main alternate universe of Star Trek, even though the only thing which makes it special is the much larger than usual number of episodes and movies in it.
I created a thread a while ago asking which Star Trek episodes were in the same alternate universes as other episodes.
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whi...iverses-as-others.298962/page-2#post-12885054
And fans who consider various novels, novelizations, comics, and other parts of the Star Trek extended universe to be part of their personal canon even if not of the official canon, can consider the possibility that the multiverse of Star Trek alternate universes might be part of an even bigger and more multi multiverse with other movies, television programs, novels, etc., etc.
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-is-part-of-mcu.293148/page-3#post-12916938
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/ridiculous-crossovers-youd-like-to-see.268483/page-21#post-12913966
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Even though Gene Roddenberry was a vile human being, I tend to prefer his take on Trek as opposed to others. For all the guff we give "Gene's Vision", it seems he did have an actual hope for a positive future.
Yep, which is what I meant when I said Gene Canon can also be known as "Stinky Canon."
Ahhh, that guy’s user name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t remember his canon argument.
If we go down that road, I actually think that only the first TNG season (and maybe half of the second) really has a Roddenberry feel - full Berman seems to be in effect by Season 3.
By the third season, Roddenberry stopped having any kind of relevant involvement with TNG beyond visiting set and chatting with the actors.
I do wonder how much of TNG was actually Roddenberry's, and how much was other people? We know he had TOS production folks (Fontana, Gerrold, Justman, Milkis) on the early part of season one. We also know his attorney was running a lot of interference between Gene and the production, and even allegedly was rewriting scripts.
There is the Chaos on the Bridge documentary done by Shatner. But I would be interested in a book by some of the folks that were there early in season one.
Yeah, most of Roddenberry's contributions in TNG's first season were him meddling. Like with the episode Justice, which the writer originally envisioned as a rather dark story about a totalitarian society's strict law enforcement. But Roddenberry kept asking while discussing the episode "could we maybe include a lesbian orgy that scene?" and as a result, we ended up with the episode we got about half-naked flakes who execute people for tripping and falling on flowers.
I like "Justice" and wouldn't change a thing about it. "Death for flower stomping" is what ends up making for an enjoyable discussion.
I can't actually find a flaw with that statement.
Since David Gerrold wrote the Series Bible, I like to think of him as more the creator of TNG than Gene Roddenberry. In a TNG to Batman analogy, I think Gene Roddenberry is Bob Kane to David Gerrold's Bill Finger. I bet most of what Gene Roddenberry contributed was just carried over from Phase II and re-purposed.
I like this theory. Given that I once wrote a story in which The NX-01 was originally named Dauntless and that changed as a result of "First Contact". The memories of the Voyager crew (and their computer memory banks) were unaffected as they were in the past themselves "when" that happened (1996-"Future's End). No correction mission was undertaken because Dulmer and Lucsly determined that the changes to the timeline were minimal and that further interference at that point in time carried too much risk of further changes. They did, however, give Picard a gold-plated model of the NX-01 to display with his "little ships" and a new dedication plaque for the "E" indicating that it was the seventh" starship to bear the name.
His attorney was writing scripts?
Certainly the TNG Companion and other tie in work gave the impression that a lot of what Gene wanted to do was quietly ignored or fudged into something quite different. There seems to be some agreement that the 'no internal conflict' rule was his.
As for the theory, I've always liked the idea that STFC created a branch in the timeline, and it helps explain a lot in one go. However, the movie doesn't really allow for this, not because the TNG crew would have noticed on their return (that can be explained by them going back up a different branch) but because at the start of the film, the Borg going back in time instantaneously alters the Earth of Picard's timeline in Picard's POV. It is made clear that the Borg, and therefore the E-E, changed the history of what we would now call the Prime timeline.
Personally, I'm happy to ignore that little wrinkle because I like the theory overall, but it does mean it is undermined by the very movie that gave rise to it.
So it was altered once to massive changes, and then a second time, to something similar to yet different from the original.
