JJ-Trek/ IDW Continuity and Discontinuities

[WebLurker]

Isn't Carol just in the "present-day" frame story around the pre-STID flashbacks?

Anyway, Simon Pegg has just dropped a continuity bombshell of sorts:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/simon-pegg-has-a-canonical-explanation-for-why-sulu-is-1783511576


This may not make a lot of physical sense, but from a creative standpoint, I understand it -- he's saying they decided it was too creatively limiting if they couldn't change things before 2233. (Although he seems to be under the odd impression that Sulu was born before the Kelvin incident, which would make him older than Kirk.) So assuming this is the official policy in the movies now, that pretty much brings them into line with the comics' approach -- well, almost. Johnson's assumption is that the Kelvinverse just happened to be an alternate all along, while Pegg's saying it was created by Nero's incursion but that the changes propagated backward as well as forward. So the cause is different, but the effect is the same: There's no longer any limit on how much the Kelvin Timeline can diverge from the Prime Timeline.

And, you know, after thinking about that for a bit, I can actually buy it. After all, it's always bugged me that the same red-matter wormhole somehow dumped Nero in 2233 also dumped Spock Prime in 2258. But if the wormhole exit was "unstuck in time," it could've popped up at any number of places and times in the past, and its gravity or energy could've affected cosmic events in subtle ways throughout history. Also, there is such a thing in quantum theory as retrocausality, the possibility that some quantum effects could propagate backward in time, so that things in the past could be caused by events in the future.

I honestly don't buy it (at least 99.99% don't buy it) for a few reasons. (P.S.: I tend to take a "Doyle-ist" perspective on Star Trek, so please don't take offense for me rejecting the "it's just a movie that doesn't need to add up 100%." I know it's just a movie and that any franchise will have it's bugs and mistakes, but I'm looking at it "in-universe," as Pegg's explanation is doing, too.)

A.) It doesn't mesh with the explanation and time travel model we were presented with in the '09 movie or with J.J. Abrams original statements about how the two timelines interacted. (Now, neither Abrams or Pegg's comments are canonical, and both are inconsistent with the Star Trek "Laws of Time," so to speak, but since Abrams was the head of the creation of the Kelvin timeline and his version is less convoluted, I think he's earned seniority, for what little non-canon explanations are worth.

B.) As alluded to above, Pegg's version is inconsistent with all forms of time travel we saw in the pre-Kelvin timeline franchise, and, by the onscreen information we were given in the '09 movie; that movie established that the only "legal" changes are ones that can be explained by the Narada incident in 2233; everything else -- whatever scientific laws, geography, genetics, ect. -- that exists in the prime universe (including the physical laws of time travel) have to exist in the Kelvin timeline, too. (So, other changes are mistakes and perfectly fair to call them out on, given that it's simply citing rules that the filmmakers told us applied to this movie series.)

C.) There's no evidence that the red matter wormhole was popping up all over the place. It didn't use antitime, it's not described as a repeated event, etc. It only works by twisting the original movie.

D.) Since Kelvin timeline Sulu's birth is after the Narada incident, there's no need to speculate about the pre-2233 Kelvin timeline being different to justify his becoming gay instead of straight like he was in the original timeline, since things were already changing before the character was born.

(I honestly don't think it makes sense and agree with George Takei in regards to whether it was a good idea in the first place. Now, it could be plausible that a parallel universe with a different history is enough, esp. since the DS9 character Major Kira was straight, but her mirror universe counterpart was bisexual -- assuming that prime universe Kira wasn't bisexual either, but was only seen in straight relationships, which could be said for prime Sulu, but I think those theories don't mesh with the original intents to the characters.)

E.) Pure bias on my part, but it feels like that the real reason is that the Powers That Be want to be able to do anything they want with the franchise, regardless of whether it works within the larger framework of the story. If they had wanted to do that, they should've just just done a clean reboot, instead of establishing a setting that would obligate them to

Now, the 00.01% way that I might buy it; the prime universe established that the timeline hung together by several predestination paradoxes, most of which happened before 2233, and so would still "count" for the Kelvin timeline (if we chose to ignore Pegg); For example:

- The computer revolution of the 1990s was brought about by a time travel accident involving 29th-century technology ("Past Tense, Parts I and II" [VGR]). (P.S., that also strongly implies that that Khan's Botany Bay, was also a product of this paradox, given it's launch in 1996.)

- "Relativity" (VGR) establishes that the Borg's mission in 2373 to prevent First Contact (in the movie of the same name) was a predestination paradox (specifically a pogo paradox), which is supported by "Regeneration" (ENT). This all strongly implies that the TNG's part in patching up the timeline was part of the "original" timeline and was supposed to happen.

- Spock's very existence is dependent on a predestination paradox; with his adult self from 2270 saving his kid self in 2237 from a botched kahs-wan ("Yesteryear" [TAS]). (To be fair, the episode does indicate that the final timeline is not the original chain of events, but a patched-up one that's close enough to not change history beyond that one incident.)

- The 31st century time cops from ENT were heavily involved in Enterprise NX-01's mission in ENT. The Temporal Cold War (which "started" in the far future played a key part, with the time of the NX-01's launch, T'Pol becoming a crew member, the whole Xindi mission, all being important events that arguably wouldn't have happened without it.

Most of these predestination paradoxes have half the incident before the Kelvin timeline begins and half in the old timeline. Since these paradoxes had to have been broken, it does lend credibility that the 2233 incident could've changed the past of the Kelvin timeline. The only problem is that it's hard to imagine how those events could've transpired differently and still given us the Kelvin timeline we got.

 

[ryan123450]

And that also leads to the conclusion that the Prime Universe was overwritten by the '09 film, another thing they asserted wasn't the case at the time.

 

[Jinn]

And that also leads to the conclusion that the Prime Universe was overwritten by the '09 film, another thing they asserted wasn't the case at the time.

Though it would have been hard for them to bascially say "Did ya like the last 43 years of continuity? Well sorry, their gone after one 120 minute movie.. Sorry." Just imagine the fan outrage.

 

[ryan123450]

It's also disheartening to think that all the times our heroes risked everything in the past to save existence, when you take them all away, you end up with a pretty ok existence pre Nero.

 

[Christopher]

Because the temporal effects propagated both forward and backward in time from the instance of incursion, so the part of the movie we saw pre-incursion had already been affected by Nero's arrival that hadn't happened yet. So even though the change was *caused* by Nero's arrival, the universe was also always different... both theories are correct!

It occurs to me we already have a canonical example of a retroactive timeline change, in ENT's "Storm Front." The Na'kuhl had come back to a World War II that was already changed as a result of time travel using a device they hadn't used yet and actually built within that altered timeline. Once Archer & co. prevented that time travel, it retroactively undid the altered history because it kept the Space Nazis from going back even further to alter it in the first place.

Which... yeah, probably best not to dwell on that one. Still, it's a canonical example of time travel creating a retroactively altered timeline as a result of subsequent time travels that do or do not happen as a result of the alteration.

A.) It doesn't mesh with the explanation and time travel model we were presented with in the '09 movie or with J.J. Abrams original statements about how the two timelines interacted. (Now, neither Abrams or Pegg's comments are canonical, and both are inconsistent with the Star Trek "Laws of Time," so to speak, but since Abrams was the head of the creation of the Kelvin timeline and his version is less convoluted, I think he's earned seniority, for what little non-canon explanations are worth.

There is no "seniority." Fictional works are made up as they go, and creators change their minds all the time, or their successors bring in new ideas and interpretations. As a rule, new content overrides old content, which is why we don't tell stories about James R. Kirk and his part-Vulcanian science officer on a UESPA starship, and why Jadzia Dax didn't have a bumpy forehead and an aversion to transporters.

Abrams is still the producer of Beyond. Bad Robot is still the production company. If Abrams had objected to this new model, he wouldn't have let them do it.

B.) As alluded to above, Pegg's version is inconsistent with all forms of time travel we saw in the pre-Kelvin timeline franchise, and, by the onscreen information we were given in the '09 movie

As I just said, there is a canonical precedent in "Storm Front." Besides, Trek time travel has been portrayed in many different, seemingly inconsistent ways. As I've said before, there's no reason to assume every time travel event must unfold in the same way, any more than it makes sense to assume that every, ohh, formation of a planet would produce the exact same kind of planet. The same physical laws apply, of course, but differing initial conditions can produce wildly different outcomes. So some time travels produce an altered past (e.g. "City on the Edge") while others produce a self-consistent loop (e.g. "Assignment: Earth"). And by the same token, maybe some altered timelines are only altered forward in time, while others are altered in both directions. After all, if backward time travel is possible in the first place, it's rather limited thinking to assume that its effects can only propagate in one direction.

C.) There's no evidence that the red matter wormhole was popping up all over the place.

It is a fact that it appeared in two different places and times, 2233 and 2258. There's no evidence that it didn't appear elsewhere. Indeed, the fact that Nero was even able to calculate where it would reappear in 2258 implies that it did make other appearances, because how could he have extrapolated its pattern from a single example? A single data point can fit any number of patterns. You need multiple data points to define a predictable curve.

E.) Pure bias on my part, but it feels like that the real reason is that the Powers That Be want to be able to do anything they want with the franchise, regardless of whether it works within the larger framework of the story. If they had wanted to do that, they should've just just done a clean reboot, instead of establishing a setting that would obligate them to

I agree. It's what they should've done in the first place. So what's wrong with them acknowledging that and making a course correction? Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody deserves the chance to fix them.

- The computer revolution of the 1990s was brought about by a time travel accident involving 29th-century technology ("Past Tense, Parts I and II" [VGR]).

Except it wasn't. At the end of "Past Tense," that whole timeline was erased. The timeship never went back, and Captain Braxton had no memory of it ever having happened. (Never mind "Relativity" forgetting that fact.)

Most of these predestination paradoxes have half the incident before the Kelvin timeline begins and half in the old timeline. Since these paradoxes had to have been broken, it does lend credibility that the 2233 incident could've changed the past of the Kelvin timeline. The only problem is that it's hard to imagine how those events could've transpired differently and still given us the Kelvin timeline we got.

You could say the same about most of the canonical alternate timelines we've seen, like the Mirror Universe. Ultimately, as much as you try to make sense of it, there comes a point where you just have to choose to suspend disbelief.

 

[WebLurker]

There is no "seniority." Fictional works are made up as they go, and creators change their minds all the time, or their successors bring in new ideas and interpretations. As a rule, new content overrides old content, which is why we don't tell stories about James R. Kirk and his part-Vulcanian science officer on a UESPA starship, and why Jadzia Dax didn't have a bumpy forehead and an aversion to transporters.

Abrams is still the producer of Beyond. Bad Robot is still the production company. If Abrams had objected to this new model, he wouldn't have let them do it.

I don't think Abrams is that worried about what they're saying offscreen, as long as what's onscreen is good. Also, was the new model something that was invented as they were breaking the story, or was it invented after the fact to justify the further changes to the fans? (I don't like the way they're using the "it's a parallel universe, we can do whatever we want" excuse, since it attempts to take away any legitimacy to critique the storytelling process and discuss whether the changes work or not, besides the fact that I don't think all the changes can be explained with that answer.)

As I just said, there is a canonical precedent in "Storm Front." Besides, Trek time travel has been portrayed in many different, seemingly inconsistent ways. As I've said before, there's no reason to assume every time travel event must unfold in the same way, any more than it makes sense to assume that every, ohh, formation of a planet would produce the exact same kind of planet. The same physical laws apply, of course, but differing initial conditions can produce wildly different outcomes. So some time travels produce an altered past (e.g. "City on the Edge") while others produce a self-consistent loop (e.g. "Assignment: Earth"). And by the same token, maybe some altered timelines are only altered forward in time, while others are altered in both directions. After all, if backward time travel is possible in the first place, it's rather limited thinking to assume that its effects can only propagate in one direction.

Sad to say, I haven't seen that episode yet. However, in the original Abrams movie, there's no indication that it's anything but a "normal" time jump (and that only stuff after the accident can be changed), so suddenly saying that it had unusual properties that require special technobabble to justify them in the past (like anti-time in "All Good Things...") without giving them any, seems contrived, at best.

I agree and disagree. There have been differences in the time travel mechanics across the stories (how many of them should be chalked up to natural variation and special circumstances, and how many are just simply changes by mistake or for storytelling purposes is something that I think needs a case-by-case basis). However, a few general policies have been followed consistently enough that I think we can safely call them "laws" (like how scientific laws are formed through repeated observation of patterns). Stuff like time travelers stay in their own universes under normal circumstances, retains the memories of the original timeline, etc. are very consistent. I don't honestly see how the red matter could've affected anything before 2233 (excusing any predestination paradoxes it broke), since the effects were localized.

(Given that creators' comments are not canonical -- which is why the fifth and six movies are still canon, we're not counting it a mistake that T'Pol was the first Vulcan in Starfleet decades before Spock, etc. -- I think that, at the end of the day, Pegg's comments amount to a fan theory, a creative one, but one that doesn't really fit. I actually think that your time travel model from the DTI books works the best at reconciling the intents of the Abrams movies with the time travel info from the prime universe.)

It is a fact that it appeared in two different places and times, 2233 and 2258. There's no evidence that it didn't appear elsewhere. Indeed, the fact that Nero was even able to calculate where it would reappear in 2258 implies that it did make other appearances, because how could he have extrapolated its pattern from a single example? A single data point can fit any number of patterns. You need multiple data points to define a predictable curve.

I thought the only reasons that it appeared were because of the ship's exiting it. Since the Narada and the Jellyfish were the only ships caught up in it, it only came twice. As far as the Narada's calculations, I think that's a simple filming mistake of having the Narada go in first, instead of second (where it would make more sense that they could calculate the Jellyfish's trajectory, since the sensors could've seen it). On the other hand, did the movie indicate that they calculated anything? It has been awhile since I've seen it, but I thought that Nero and company were just waiting until Spock showed up, without any idea how long the wait would be.

Finally, Starfleet didn't seem to know much about the "lightning storm," much less understand what it was (Kirk only knew about it because of hearing the stories about his father's death), which strongly suggests that the Kelvin's encounter was the only one they had. ("The Loreli Signal," "The Time Trap" [TAS], and Generations show Starfleet does keep tabs on recurring patterns of oddities in space.)

I agree. It's what they should've done in the first place. So what's wrong with them acknowledging that and making a course correction? Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody deserves the chance to fix them.

I'm reminded of that quote from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where Hammond comments that he's not making the same mistakes again, and Malcolm retorts: "No, you're making new ones." Besides, nothing is being "corrected." Pegg is not saying that: "This is a clean reboot." He's saying: "This is still that parallel universe and we can change this stuff because of [insert technobabble]." They're staying the course and making a simple idea (that had a few flawed premises, but could be fixed to work) and making it even more convoluted and even less plausible (IMHO).

I found this editorial online, which I generally agree with.

Except it wasn't. At the end of "Past Tense," that whole timeline was erased. The timeship never went back, and Captain Braxton had no memory of it ever having happened. (Never mind "Relativity" forgetting that fact.)

I don't think so; at the very end of the episode, the Doctor got to keep the mobile emitter he was given. Wouldn't that emitter have vanished if the Chronowerx timeline had been completely re-set? There's also the detail in the first episode, when Janeway and Chakotay are infiltrating Chronowerx and putting the puzzle together, Janeway realizes that Starling used Braxton's tech to jumpstart the computer revolution of the '90s she remembers from her history lessons before the whole accident began (Braxton tried to destroy Voyager before it could play it's part in the disaster, only to set things into motion), meaning that the "original" timeline had Starling finding the ship and building his tech empire.

Also, "11:59" (VGR), has a Chronowerx web browser still in use in 1999, meaning that the company was in existence after all time traveling had been sorted out.

I will agree that it's messy, but I think that it seems to be an instance were only part of the paradox (Starling going to the future and destroying everything) was the averted part and everything else happened. It's also possible that the Braxton we got at the end of the show was one from earlier in her personal timeline, explaining why he had no memory of anything, but there was still another one of himself who had experienced Starling's schemes and went to play his part in "Relativity."

You could say the same about most of the canonical alternate timelines we've seen, like the Mirror Universe. Ultimately, as much as you try to make sense of it, there comes a point where you just have to choose to suspend disbelief.

Unless I'm mistaken, the mirror universe wasn't created by a time travel accident (unless you're reading the Shatnerverse novels ).

That's a fair point, though, but at least the other ones are either shown to be close enough that we can assume that the same predestination paradox incidents also happened there (like many of Worf's quantum realities in "Parallels" [TNG]), or are different enough that we can assume that they didn't need to happen (like how the mirror universe has a very different timeline than the prime universe, esp. after "Mirror, Mirror" [TOS]). I do understand suspending disbelief, but is there a point where one can say: "This doesn't work. There's no way these two items can fit together like I'm being told they do?"

 

[Christopher]

I don't think Abrams is that worried about what they're saying offscreen, as long as what's onscreen is good. Also, was the new model something that was invented as they were breaking the story, or was it invented after the fact to justify the further changes to the fans?

I don't think it was about "justifying" anything to anyone. The only obligation the creators have is to tell the story in the way that feels right to them. The fact of the matter is, since these are all just stories, the filmmakers have always been free to reinvent things however they wanted. Continuity is not an absolute mandate, it's a storytelling device. It exists to serve the narrative, not the other way around. Any handwave to the fans to explain the changes is just bonus content to supplement the stories. Only a small percentage of us really care about the reason for the changes anyway.

And it's just a fact of life that different people approaching the same problem will see it a bit differently. Kurtzman & Orci had one idea for how to explain the timeline changes, while Pegg and maybe Jung and Lin had a slightly different way of approaching the matter. I mean, heck, some fans have spent the past seven years complaining "But that doesn't explain this change and that change and the other change!" Can you really blame the filmmakers for trying to offer a bit more of a sop to the fans who weren't satisfied with the existing explanation?

(I don't like the way they're using the "it's a parallel universe, we can do whatever we want" excuse, since it attempts to take away any legitimacy to critique the storytelling process and discuss whether the changes work or not, besides the fact that I don't think all the changes can be explained with that answer.)

Every new incarnation of Star Trek has made changes that have been more or less awkwardly handwaved away. The TMP Klingons and totally redesigned Starfleet tech. Chekov retconned into "Space Seed" and Khan's followers changed from multiethnic to uniformly Nordic. Klingons suddenly becoming honorable and Romulans treacherous when we always thought it was the other way around. Data routinely using contractions until suddenly he retroactively didn't. TNG spending its first two years showing us a peacetime Starfleet to which militarism was largely alien, then suddenly telling us the Federation had been at war with the Cardassians that whole time. The wormhole aliens having no idea who or what Sisko was in "Emissary," yet later turning out to have arranged his birth. Star Trek is full of huge, absurd, totally unexplained retcons and massive changes of intention that the fans just gloss over and don't even pay attention to -- and yet whenever the producers make the effort to actually explain something, all the fans can do is condemn them for the effort.

However, in the original Abrams movie, there's no indication that it's anything but a "normal" time jump (and that only stuff after the accident can be changed), so suddenly saying that it had unusual properties that require special technobabble to justify them in the past (like anti-time in "All Good Things...") without giving them any, seems contrived, at best.

Of course it's contrived. The real explanation is that this is a fictional franchise that's been rebooted and that they're free to change anything and everything they want. Any attempt to rationalize that in in-story terms is going to be a contrivance. But it's just a means to an end. They didn't need to do it. Most franchises don't bother to explain such changes.

I agree and disagree. There have been differences in the time travel mechanics across the stories (how many of them should be chalked up to natural variation and special circumstances, and how many are just simply changes by mistake or for storytelling purposes is something that I think needs a case-by-case basis). However, a few general policies have been followed consistently enough that I think we can safely call them "laws" (like how scientific laws are formed through repeated observation of patterns). Stuff like time travelers stay in their own universes under normal circumstances, retains the memories of the original timeline, etc. are very consistent. I don't honestly see how the red matter could've affected anything before 2233 (excusing any predestination paradoxes it broke), since the effects were localized.

When I wrote my DTI novels and researched all the Trek time-travel episodes in depth, I found multiple cases where the "rules" didn't work the way they worked in any other episode. In those cases, I had to concoct explanations for why those incidents were exceptional. This seems no different to me.

(Given that creators' comments are not canonical -- which is why the fifth and six movies are still canon, we're not counting it a mistake that T'Pol was the first Vulcan in Starfleet decades before Spock, etc.

Ah, ah, ah -- no fair citing canon and then perpetuating a totally non-canonical fan myth. It was never actually stated anywhere official that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Indeed, the existence of the Intrepid and its all-Vulcan crew argue strongly against that idea. I don't even know where that bit of fan lore came from, unless it's a misreading of The Making of Star Trek's statement that Spock was the only Vulcan on the Enterprise and that Sarek thought joining Starfleet defied Vulcan tradition.

-- I think that, at the end of the day, Pegg's comments amount to a fan theory, a creative one, but one that doesn't really fit.

He wrote the damn movie. I don't think you have any business elevating your right to judge above his.

I actually think that your time travel model from the DTI books works the best at reconciling the intents of the Abrams movies with the time travel info from the prime universe.)

And like I said, I've had to make plenty of special-case exceptions for that "model." There's no real way to make every Trek time-travel story mutually consistent, and I should know. I had to tack on a lot of extra provisions to make sense of some of the crazier episodes. This is actually easier to justify than something like "Shattered," say, or "All Good Things...".

I thought the only reasons that it appeared were because of the ship's exiting it. Since the Narada and the Jellyfish were the only ships caught up in it, it only came twice.

Sure, obvious first impression. But a first impression does not rule out alternative possibilities. Your first hypothesis is just the beginning of the process, not the end. You test that hypothesis against the evidence, and if new evidence comes to light that the hypothesis doesn't explain, you change your hypothesis.

After all, in physical terms, what we call "ships" are just ensembles of subatomic particles and energy fields. The space in which the wormhole opened was loaded with particles and energy from the supernova, immensely outweighing the mass and energy contained in the ships. Logically, we should've considered that from the start. The fact that we didn't just means there was an oversight in our thinking. This is how science works. You form an idea, you test it, you find the holes, you change your idea, you test that, etc. You don't just close your mind completely after your first idea and summarily reject any new information that doesn't fit it.

As far as the Narada's calculations, I think that's a simple filming mistake of having the Narada go in first, instead of second (where it would make more sense that they could calculate the Jellyfish's trajectory, since the sensors could've seen it).

But we're talking about time travel. "First" and "second" do not have to come in sequence. "Before" and "after" are arbitrary matters of perspective. I'm actually kicking myself that I didn't see that before, that I just blindly assumed any timeline changes would have to propagate forward in time only. I should've known better. In retrospect, the limitation in that way of thinking seems obvious to me.

On the other hand, did the movie indicate that they calculated anything? It has been awhile since I've seen it, but I thought that Nero and company were just waiting until Spock showed up, without any idea how long the wait would be.

Space is immense. How the hell did they know where to look? Besides, deleted material (and the comic based on it) established that Nero and crew were held in Rura Penthe for 25 years and broke out once they found out where and when the wormhole would reopen.

Finally, Starfleet didn't seem to know much about the "lightning storm," much less understand what it was (Kirk only knew about it because of hearing the stories about his father's death), which strongly suggests that the Kelvin's encounter was the only one they had. ("The Loreli Signal," "The Time Trap" [TAS], and Generations show Starfleet does keep tabs on recurring patterns of oddities in space.)

Again -- space is not a small place. Starfleet occupies a tiny, tiny fraction of the galaxy. They don't know everything that happens everywhere.

I'm reminded of that quote from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where Hammond comments that he's not making the same mistakes again, and Malcolm retorts: "No, you're making new ones." Besides, nothing is being "corrected." Pegg is not saying that: "This is a clean reboot." He's saying: "This is still that parallel universe and we can change this stuff because of [insert technobabble]." They're staying the course and making a simple idea (that had a few flawed premises, but could be fixed to work) and making it even more convoluted and even less plausible (IMHO).

I think that, storywise, they're doing the same thing they've always done, which is to depict and change the universe however they choose. This is just a slight tweak in how they rationalize it. Orci and Kurtzman were content to chalk a lot of the changes up to poetic license, while Pegg has found a way to justify them in-universe. I actually prefer Pegg's model. It makes more sense of the larger Kelvin, the more built-up San Francisco, the decade-older PIke, and other things that just had to be shrugged away under the old model. I think it makes things less convoluted. I mean, sure, the specific technobabble Pegg offered to justify it was nonsense, but that's beside the point. What matters is that, whatever the reason, we've been given permission to believe that the timeline differences predate 2233, and that makes things so much simpler.

I don't think so; at the very end of the episode, the Doctor got to keep the mobile emitter he was given. Wouldn't that emitter have vanished if the Chronowerx timeline had been completely re-set?

Of course not. That's a trope from some other time-travel stories, but it's not how Trek time travel usually works. Alternate Tasha of "Yesterday's Enterprise" didn't cease to exist when her timeline was undone; she remained in the Prime timeline for years and had a daughter there. Slightly-future O'Brien in "Visionary" didn't vanish when his timeline was erased, because he'd time-traveled out of that potential future. Spock in "Yesteryear" didn't vanish when his past was erased, because he'd been traveling through the Guardian at the time. And of course, time travelers always remember the events they experienced in alternate timelines, and that information stored in their neurons is as physically real as any solid object or person.

As a rule, as long as you've traveled outside your original timeline, you're unaffected by its changes. The only instances where something was shown to disappear was when there were two identical ones in the same timeline, like the two Picards in "Time Squared." (In fact, that's the only instance I can think of where that happened in Trek.)

There's also the detail in the first episode, when Janeway and Chakotay are infiltrating Chronowerx and putting the puzzle together, Janeway realizes that Starling used Braxton's tech to jumpstart the computer revolution of the '90s she remembers from her history lessons before the whole accident began

That was her hypothesis. Hypotheses can be wrong. After all, she's not a historian, so her opinion hardly counts as expert testimony.

I do understand suspending disbelief, but is there a point where one can say: "This doesn't work. There's no way these two items can fit together like I'm being told they do?"

Of course, but there are already hundreds of cases in Trek history where that's already happened. It's never fit together nearly as well as we like to pretend.

 

[Leto_II]

Speaking of nerd canon-fights, there's a fun one shaping up over on Devin Faraci's site right now, in the comments section of an article about the "re-canonization" of Grand Admiral Thrawn on the Star Wars: Rebels TV show:

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/07/16/admiral-thrawn-becomes-canon-in-star-wars-rebels

 

[Jinn]

"re-canonization" of Grand Admiral Thrawn on the Star Wars: Rebels TV show

Wait wait wait wait... Thrawn is "Re-canonized"?! I really gotta watch that show..

 

[Enterprise1701]

On the subject of Thrawn stories, can someone tell me who the guy at the center of the cover of Heir to the Empire is?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Empire

 

[The Wormhole]

Wait, wait, this Thrawn news actually official? It's actually happening? Hasn't it always been SW fanboys' wet dream that Thrawn will be added to Rebels/Clone Wars/Prequel Trilogy/Special Editions? Wow, SW fandom must be having their own Ewok celebration right now.

On the subject of Thrawn stories, can someone tell me who the guy at the center of the cover of Heir to the Empire is?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Empire

Joruus C'Baoth(sp), a central character to the Thrawn trilogy.

 

[Jinn]

On the subject of Thrawn stories, can someone tell me who the guy at the center of the cover of Heir to the Empire is?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Empire

I think it's Joruus C'baoth but is it just me or does he have the same Teigu as Lubbock from Akame Ga Kill...

Spoiler: Comparison

 

[mattman8907]

After Beyond comes out they are releasing another comic series called Star Trek: Boldly Go (which I was hoping was going to be the title of the fourth movie) and i'm hoping they'll be no continuity issues in this series like there was in the original comic series. Hopefully they also bring back characters like 0718, Carol Marcus and Sarek. especially Carol since she just plain fell off the grid after Eurydice.

 

[The Wormhole]

i'm hoping they'll be no continuity issues in this series like there was in the original comic series.

If anything, things could get worse regarding continuity between the comics and the movies. Orci's no longer involved with the franchise, and he was the "consultant" for the comics. So if anything the comics will probably go back to the status of regular tie-in material without the benefit of coordination, not that that really helped the Ongoing series anyway.

 

[WebLurker]

[

I don't think it was about "justifying" anything to anyone. The only obligation the creators have is to tell the story in the way that feels right to them. The fact of the matter is, since these are all just stories, the filmmakers have always been free to reinvent things however they wanted. Continuity is not an absolute mandate, it's a storytelling device. It exists to serve the narrative, not the other way around. Any handwave to the fans to explain the changes is just bonus content to supplement the stories. Only a small percentage of us really care about the reason for the changes anyway.

However, the point of a series is that the different elements build on each other, usually with the intent that they can be seen together as one mega-story. Making internal contradictions undermines that. (Case in point, compare the MCU with the X-Men film series. The former holds up while the other doesn't as a series since X-Men movies ignore different elements on a case by case basis. For example, First Class pretends that The Last Stand didn't happen, but it's direct sequel, Days of Future Past uses The Last Stand as part of it's backstory. It's a mess and it makes trying to piece together how everything lines up -- which is part of the fun of these long-running series -- an impossible task. Conversely, the MCU has far fewer internal problems and the few it does have -- when S.H.I.E.L.D. adopted it's acronym name, fitting the Hulk movie in with later events, and the occasional recast, do not affect the series overall, since everything is still treated as having happened. And you know what? It's considered the gold standard today on how to make a movie franchise.)

I get the who "creators should be free to change their minds" thing to an extent (esp. really early on when stuff is still being developed, like how I think the first few TOS episodes deserve a pass on some of the oddities, like Spock being emotional). However, there reaches a point where if changes keep piling up, I have no reason to trust you, the authors, about anything you write for the series in the future, or to get invested in the story, since I don't know how much of it will be ignored later down the line.

Also, since Pegg is trying to explain how the two pieces of the franchise fit together, this's just my two cents on how well his explanation works. Your mileage will vary.

And it's just a fact of life that different people approaching the same problem will see it a bit differently. Kurtzman & Orci had one idea for how to explain the timeline changes, while Pegg and maybe Jung and Lin had a slightly different way of approaching the matter.

Fair enough. But, when its part of the same series, shouldn't the backstory details like that be hammered out beforehand? Even if its okay to retcon stuff, internal consistency makes the suspension of disbelief easer to take on and for the reader to get into the story (which is another reason I don't like retcons that pretend previous material never happened so much, since they destroy this).

I mean, heck, some fans have spent the past seven years complaining "But that doesn't explain this change and that change and the other change!" Can you really blame the filmmakers for trying to offer a bit more of a sop to the fans who weren't satisfied with the existing explanation?

Fair enough. But, as the viewer, I feel that I should be able to say: "You know, I don't think that that idea works because of such and such reasons."

Every new incarnation of Star Trek has made changes that have been more or less awkwardly handwaved away. The TMP Klingons and totally redesigned Starfleet tech.

The TMP Klingons were addressed in ENT in a way that preserved both versions (and before that "Trials and Tribble-lations" [DS9] partially addressed it by a non-answer that Klingons refuse to discuss it). The TOS movie tech was also partially explained by the passage of time and the Enterprise's refit. On top of that, we'd never been to 23rd century Earth before at that point in the franchise, so there's no reason to not believe that stuff like "Centroplex" and Earth Spacedock looked just like that during TOS.

Chekov retconned into "Space Seed" and Khan's followers changed from multiethnic to uniformly Nordic.

It was never said when Chekov joined the crew (except that it was after "Mudd's Women" [TOS]), so there's no conflict with Khan recalling him, if Chekov was not a bridge member at the time and they met offscreen. We never saw all of Khan's followers in one room at the same time, so why is this a problem that the TV and movie follower characters couldn't have been on the same crew?

Klingons suddenly becoming honorable and Romulans treacherous when we always thought it was the other way around.

A.) we've seen honorable Romulans after the fact ("The Defector" [TNG], for example) and plenty of Klingons closer to the TOS mode (like TNG/DS9's Gowron). Heck, ENT even addressed the Klingon question in "Judgement" and the Augment trilogy, once again not by replacing or removing information, but by adding more information that left everything intact.

Data routinely using contractions until suddenly he retroactively didn't.

Early installment weirdness that deserves grace? Or a script error? (I think some mistakes can be dismissed as simple filming errors, and I'd put this as one of them. Also, I believe that somewhere it was stated that Data has "difficulty" using contractions. Wasn't the idea that he didn't arise from the rest of the crew, since he so rarely tried to use them that it was out of character?)

TNG spending its first two years showing us a peacetime Starfleet to which militarism was largely alien, then suddenly telling us the Federation had been at war with the Cardassians that whole time.

Good one, never noticed it. I enjoy reading your posts partially because of the information about the stories that you're able to bring to the conversation; I find that kind of stuff really fun.

(It's been awhile since I've seen "The Wounded" [TNG]. Was it specifically said if the war had just ended, or was it left open that the fighting had stopped before season one, but the treaty was only now just signed?)

The wormhole aliens having no idea who or what Sisko was in "Emissary," yet later turning out to have arranged his birth.

Given how hard it is to make sense of the aliens' thoughts and comments sometimes, I'd personally let this slide as something we misunderstood, but I'm not going to be dogmatic about it. (We're also assuming that they weren't faking not knowing him as a test of sorts, given that they frequently give him other tests or visions to guide him along on his path.)

Star Trek is full of huge, absurd, totally unexplained retcons and massive changes of intention that the fans just gloss over and don't even pay attention to -- and yet whenever the producers make the effort to actually explain something, all the fans can do is condemn them for the effort.

I'm "condemning" them because I'm not sure that the explanation is a good one. Most of the other retcons are either presented in more logical methods and/or preserve both versions rather than eliminating them (I'm sure there are some really bad ones, but I can't recall any right now). And yes, I may be giving some of the prime universe stuff some slack, but since nine times out of ten, that material holds together and is designed to do so. The '09 movie set the ground rules for its universe and, even under the original administration, ignored them, so I think it's perfectly fair to call them out on that.

Of course it's contrived. The real explanation is that this is a fictional franchise that's been rebooted and that they're free to change anything and everything they want. Any attempt to rationalize that in in-story terms is going to be a contrivance. But it's just a means to an end. They didn't need to do it. Most franchises don't bother to explain such changes.

That's why, in this case, I think a clean reboot was what they should've done, since obviously they wanted the freedom that that would give. However, since they're the ones invoking in-universe, why can't we the viewers examine and discuss the merits of it, esp. when we're using actual canon to discuss the theory.

When I wrote my DTI novels and researched all the Trek time-travel episodes in depth, I found multiple cases where the "rules" didn't work the way they worked in any other episode. In those cases, I had to concoct explanations for why those incidents were exceptional. This seems no different to me.

Sure, I have no problem with some being special cases that adjust the rules -- although I don't think there's sufficient evidence that the red matter black hole worked the way that Pegg wants it it (like you had Spock say in your second DTI novel, that fantastic claims require fantastic proof, or something like that).

It's been awhile since I read any of those novels. Was "Past Tense, Parts I and II" (DS9) (the Bell Riots episode) addressed? (If I recall correctly, after Sisko, Bashir, and Dax were time-warped, the original timeline in the show's present remained intact until the part of the show were Bell was killed, as if the two timeframes were happening at the same time, while most other shows suggest that once a time traveler changes the past, the present is instantly morphed to the new status quo.)

Ah, ah, ah -- no fair citing canon and then perpetuating a totally non-canonical fan myth. It was never actually stated anywhere official that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Indeed, the existence of the Intrepid and its all-Vulcan crew argue strongly against that idea. I don't even know where that bit of fan lore came from, unless it's a misreading of The Making of Star Trek's statement that Spock was the only Vulcan on the Enterprise and that Sarek thought joining Starfleet defied Vulcan tradition.

Okay. I'd seen the "Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet" "fact" cited in numerous licensed tie-in materials and reference books (specifically the first edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia) and was pretty sure that Roddenberry had been the advocate for that idea. I certainly didn't realize that it was a fan theory that had no basis in any official decree or idea. (I never bought the idea myself, even before T'Pol's commission, because of the Intrepid, too.)

Then what do you think would be a fair example?

He wrote the damn movie. I don't think you have any business elevating your right to judge above his.

Movies are a collaborative process, with a wide range of people contributing. For example, a movie's director (who in this case is not Pegg) is often cited as the person directing the vision of what the movie is supposed to be (with the approval of the producers and executives). The actors need to come up with the delivery of the lines. The script gets revised a number of times by people other than the original author. Scenes from it get edited down and/or cut entirely, by select people. So, I'm not sure that we can assign one person as being the be-all-end-all authority for how the movie is supposed to be interpreted, since there's no one person who's has 100% complete creative control (the way a novelist writing an original piece of work does, like JK Rowling and Harry Potter, baring publishers). And even if there was, I'd argue that Justin Lin, not Pegg, is that person for Star Trek Beyond, since Lin is the director.

Even if that view is not accurate, Pegg did not create Star Trek. He didn't even create this branch of it. The guy is working in a pre-existing sandbox.

Now, George Lucas could be an exception to the argument I'm making about no one person being the authority on a franchise. However, unlike Pegg, he did created Star Wars, was involved with the storytelling process for each version, and managed it for years after (with the Special Editions, his work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, tie-in writers consulting him for permission on specific elements they wanted to include, etc.). There is no doubt that the franchise is his baby. Even though Lucas is no longer that, with LucasFilm's "Story Group" committee now being responsible for directing the future of the franchise in his stead, as direct successors.


Does Pegg really have the "authority" to make such broad statements about how this franchise works, esp. when it runs counter to a lot of on-screen evidence? Isn't he essentially a freelancer in this franchise, not a member of the "Supreme Court" that were ostensibly directing this show? Even if so, we have a long history of statements like his being treated as suggestions, at best; the original explanation for the Kelvin timeline has been rejected. It’s been my understanding that Nicholas Meyer went on record that Spock died for good in Wrath of Khan. None of them are binding, and often ignored. Also, regardless of whether Pegg wrote the movie or not, his views on the franchise are not canonical, unless they make it onscreen.

And like I said, I've had to make plenty of special-case exceptions for that "model." There's no real way to make every Trek time-travel story mutually consistent, and I should know. I had to tack on a lot of extra provisions to make sense of some of the crazier episodes. This is actually easier to justify than something like "Shattered," say, or "All Good Things...".

If you wouldn't mind extrapolating on that thought (why Pegg's model is easer to work with than those other examples) I'd enjoy hearing it. Personally, I think that "All Good Things..." worked fine and makes more sense. I might agree with "Shattered," but I did appreciate that the mechanics of the incident were addressed, whereas with the Kelvin timeline, we need someone on the production team to tell us this stuff.

Sure, obvious first impression. But a first impression does not rule out alternative possibilities. Your first hypothesis is just the beginning of the process, not the end. You test that hypothesis against the evidence, and if new evidence comes to light that the hypothesis doesn't explain, you change your hypothesis.

After all, in physical terms, what we call "ships" are just ensembles of subatomic particles and energy fields. The space in which the wormhole opened was loaded with particles and energy from the supernova, immensely outweighing the mass and energy contained in the ships. Logically, we should've considered that from the start. The fact that we didn't just means there was an oversight in our thinking. This is how science works. You form an idea, you test it, you find the holes, you change your idea, you test that, etc. You don't just close your mind completely after your first idea and summarily reject any new information that doesn't fit it.

Okay, fair points. The thing is though, that real life science observes stuff that happens in the real world, which puts boundaries on what can and can't be used. Theories need to be tested against the natural world. Wouldn't make sense then, that any theories about the movies' time travel need to stack up with the evidence we see in the films? Once we start adding unseen stuff behind-the-scenes that was never hinted at in the movie, we're moving into theory and speculation that can't be proven.

Also, we haven't been given any new information within the movies itself. We've only been given a writer's "this's how I think it happened," and that's far less reliable (since this explanation itself is ostensibly overturning the original explanation, which was also provided by the original writers of the '09 movie).

But we're talking about time travel. "First" and "second" do not have to come in sequence. "Before" and "after" are arbitrary matters of perspective. I'm actually kicking myself that I didn't see that before, that I just blindly assumed any timeline changes would have to propagate forward in time only. I should've known better. In retrospect, the limitation in that way of thinking seems obvious to me.

I will concede that time travel can shuffle the order of cause and effect around, depending on the circumstances. However, if we were to assume that the original Narada incident also affected the past up till the Bing Bang and on beyond past Daniels' time cop home in the future, how do you think that could have happened exactly? Like, what would've the black hole needed to do to cause that?

Space is immense. How the hell did they know where to look? Besides, deleted material (and the comic based on it) established that Nero and crew were held in Rura Penthe for 25 years and broke out once they found out where and when the wormhole would reopen.

I don't think deleted scenes are canon and I know for a fact that Star Trek Countdown is not. It's been awhile since I've seen the movie, but I thought that Spock Prime came through the exact same spot that the Narada had decades earlier and that Nero guessed that's what would happen.

Now, your theory that the wormhole was opening and closing often on in the meantime is an interesting theory, but, it does raise the question how that would help the Romulans know which one was the one that Spock was in (esp. if we do indeed assume that they were in prison at the time). I mean, how would the calculations work?

I think that, storywise, they're doing the same thing they've always done, which is to depict and change the universe however they choose. This is just a slight tweak in how they rationalize it. Orci and Kurtzman were content to chalk a lot of the changes up to poetic license, while Pegg has found a way to justify them in-universe.

If Pegg is trying to explain it "in-universe," wouldn't it be fair to expect it to make sense in-universe and jibe with the rest of the in-universe information we have? Also, if the original explanation that Orci and Kurtzman provided was just scrapped, how does that mean we should handle Pegg's, since it would follow that his explanation has the same authoritative weight behind it (namely, not a frakking lot of it).

I actually prefer Pegg's model. It makes more sense of the larger Kelvin, the more built-up San Francisco, the decade-older PIke, and other things that just had to be shrugged away under the old model. I think it makes things less convoluted. I mean, sure, the specific technobabble Pegg offered to justify it was nonsense, but that's beside the point. What matters is that, whatever the reason, we've been given permission to believe that the timeline differences predate 2233, and that makes things so much simpler.

I've kinda-sorta gotten to like the idea on paper (although I question how it would work). If they had given us this explanation from the get go (and added the proviso that the prime universe was protected from the changes somehow) I would probably be a little more welcoming to the idea.

However, if we assume that all traces of the original continuity have been wiped, then a lot of the meaning of the old movies is lost. Namely, none of the characters can be the same ones from the original franchise, just new characters with different names. Nothing we know can be taken for granted. The original backstory has been lost, meaning that the new universe is a lot smaller than it could've been. It may also mean that the series now has to stand on its own two feet, and I honestly don't think it has the substance to stand the test of time the way most of its predecessors do.)

Also, how is Pegg's time travel model simpler? It depends on information that can't be gotten from the movies, that have little to no precedence in any preexisting materials, and is a little headache-inducing to try and work out the process that it happened.

 

[WebLurker]

Sorry about the double-post, but I ran out of characters before:

Of course not. That's a trope from some other time-travel stories, but it's not how Trek time travel usually works. Alternate Tasha of "Yesterday's Enterprise" didn't cease to exist when her timeline was undone; she remained in the Prime timeline for years and had a daughter there. Slightly-future O'Brien in "Visionary" didn't vanish when his timeline was erased, because he'd time-traveled out of that potential future. Spock in "Yesteryear" didn't vanish when his past was erased, because he'd been traveling through the Guardian at the time. And of course, time travelers always remember the events they experienced in alternate timelines, and that information stored in their neurons is as physically real as any solid object or person.

I do get that (in fact that is one of the time travel details that is pretty consistent in the franchise). But then, shouldn't we expect that Braxton would've recalled the Chronowerx events, too, since he was also a time traveler from the past and it would seen would've been "protected" just like the VGR crew? Maybe, to put my question a better way, if they hadn't made "Relativity," just based on the original episode, what parts of the original time travel incident do you think should've been reset and which ones would've still happened in the final timeline?

As a rule, as long as you've traveled outside your original timeline, you're unaffected by its changes. The only instances where something was shown to disappear was when there were two identical ones in the same timeline, like the two Picards in "Time Squared." (In fact, that's the only instance I can think of where that happened in Trek.)

In "E Squared" [ENT], Lorien's Enterprise was technically a time-traveled ship from the future and when it was MIA at the end, the possibility of it being erased from existence (presumably since the NX-01 missed the time warp and so broke the loop that created it in the first place) was considered a viable possibility to what happened. (Granted, Starfleet and Vulcan knowledge of temporal mechanics was not very developed when the story took place and it's heavily caveated that we don't know if it was erased or simply destroyed in combat but it's still a borderline case.)

That was her hypothesis. Hypotheses can be wrong. After all, she's not a historian, so her opinion hardly counts as expert testimony.

Janeway: "Incredible. Starling's computer designs were inspired by technology from the timeship. He introduced the very first isograted circuit in 1969, two years after Braxton's ship crash-landed." Chakotay: "Any every few years there's been an equally revolutionary advance in computers, all from Chronowerx Industries, all based on Starling's crude understanding of twenty ninth century technology." Janeway: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Chakotay?"

Chakotay: "I wish I weren't."

Janeway: "The computer age of the late twentieth century..."

Chakotay: "Shouldn't have happened."

Janeway: "But it did, and it's part a of our history. All because of that timeship."

Starling: "You just don't get it, do you? I created the microcomputer revolution.

Janeway: "Using technology you never should have had."

Starling: "Irrelevant. My products benefit the entire world. Without me there would be no laptops, no internet, no barcode readers. What's good for Chronowerx is good for everybody. I can't stop now. One trip to the twenty ninth century and I can bring back enough technology to start the next ten computer revolutions." - "Future's End, Part II" [VGR]

I don't know, it sounds pretty definitive. Also, is there ay reason to disbelieve that answer? (The idea that the Botany Bay needed Starling's future tech to be build is not from canon, but an idea from the late, lamented LUG Star Trek RPG series, specifically the time travel rule book. That suggestion was used as an example of a predestination paradox. While it makes a lot of sense, I don't see any reason to be dogmatic about that.)

Of course, but there are already hundreds of cases in Trek history where that's already happened. It's never fit together nearly as well as we like to pretend.

Sure, but since they're trying to offer an in-universe explanation (except giving it out of universe), I'm setting aside the reality that it's just a movie for the sake of asking how the explanation would or would not work in-universe.

 

[Christopher]

However, the point of a series is that the different elements build on each other, usually with the intent that they can be seen together as one mega-story. Making internal contradictions undermines that.

"There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute." Every long-running canon has adjustments and course corrections here and there, because writers are human beings and are thus incapable of absolute perfection. Keep in mind that fiction is illusion. The goal is not actually perfect consistency, it's just a reasonably convincing illusion of consistency. There will always, always be some tweaks along the way, but if you work them in subtly enough, they can be overlooked or forgiven.

I get the who "creators should be free to change their minds" thing to an extent (esp. really early on when stuff is still being developed, like how I think the first few TOS episodes deserve a pass on some of the oddities, like Spock being emotional). However, there reaches a point where if changes keep piling up, I have no reason to trust you, the authors, about anything you write for the series in the future, or to get invested in the story, since I don't know how much of it will be ignored later down the line.

Well, that's bizarrely confrontational. Why drag "trust" into it? What a ridiculous standard. Why should you trust us? We're career liars! We make up untrue stories for a living! And we admit freely that what we're telling you is not true. You don't have to "trust" us one bit. You just have to be entertained by the tall tales we spin.

And yes, of course, an extended lie is more entertaining if it maintains a reasonable degree of internal consistency. But that's not about "trust." You're not staking your life or your job or your future on our performance. We're just entertainers.

Fair enough. But, when its part of the same series, shouldn't the backstory details like that be hammered out beforehand?

You keep demanding impossible, inhuman standards of perfection. How in the hell is anyone supposed to have foreknowledge of what will happen nine years in the future? Kurtzman & Orci & Lindelof had no way of knowing they wouldn't be the ones making the third movie.

And again, people have the right to correct their mistakes. Trying to pretend this was only a half-reboot didn't do much good. It created more complaints from fans rather than less, and it put too many limits on their creativity. And it never adequately explained things like Pike being older or Earth's cities being so different. This "new" explanation actually makes a lot more sense of the first two movies. So there is no inconsistency here. Just a better explanation of what we've already seen.

The TMP Klingons were addressed in ENT in a way that preserved both versions (and before that "Trials and Tribble-lations" [DS9] partially addressed it by a non-answer that Klingons refuse to discuss it). The TOS movie tech was also partially explained by the passage of time and the Enterprise's refit. On top of that, we'd never been to 23rd century Earth before at that point in the franchise, so there's no reason to not believe that stuff like "Centroplex" and Earth Spacedock looked just like that during TOS.

You can rationalize these and the other things after the fact all you want, but the point is that the filmmakers felt free to change things without explaining the changes themselves. That's why we needed to invent a thousand fan-scuses for everything -- because they were changed. Because the continuity was not absolutely letter-perfect from the word go.

(It's been awhile since I've seen "The Wounded" [TNG]. Was it specifically said if the war had just ended, or was it left open that the fighting had stopped before season one, but the treaty was only now just signed?)

It was said that the war had ended a year ago.

And yes, I may be giving some of the prime universe stuff some slack, but since nine times out of ten, that material holds together and is designed to do so.

Oh, bull. The only reason it seems to us like it fits together nearly that well is because we've had decades to rationalize away all the contradictions and convince ourselves they aren't really contradictions (as you demonstrated through your litany above). It's the same quirk of human psychology that creates the illusion of nostalgia -- the more we rehearse past memories, the more we gloss over the problems and build a smoother narrative, so that it seems the more recent frustrations and problems are a novelty.

That's why, in this case, I think a clean reboot was what they should've done, since obviously they wanted the freedom that that would give. However, since they're the ones invoking in-universe, why can't we the viewers examine and discuss the merits of it, esp. when we're using actual canon to discuss the theory.

Different "they," though. Abrams, Lindelof, Kurtzman, and Orci had a plan that they followed, imperfectly, for two movies. Now the last three are gone and Abrams has moved back to a supervisory capacity, and Lin, Pegg, and Jung are running the show now. It's not quite as big a change as Harve Bennett taking the reins from Roddenberry, but it's close. (Maybe more like Ira Behr taking over DS9 from Michael Piller, or Brannon Braga taking over VGR from Jeri Taylor.) Again, you have to consider the personhood of the creators. Any two different people are going to have different approaches to the same problem. Even someone trying to faithfully continue a predecessor's work is going to come at it from a slightly different angle, because that's how human beings work.

Sure, I have no problem with some being special cases that adjust the rules -- although I don't think there's sufficient evidence that the red matter black hole worked the way that Pegg wants it it (like you had Spock say in your second DTI novel, that fantastic claims require fantastic proof, or something like that).

That's about things that are real. This is fiction. We're not talking about some provable objective reality. We're talking about what Pegg has declared to be his approach to telling stories.

Even if that view is not accurate, Pegg did not create Star Trek. He didn't even create this branch of it. The guy is working in a pre-existing sandbox.

I have no clue what your point is. Okay, he's not a solo act. He's the spokesperson for the team that made this movie. But since he was on that team in a central role, where is the sense in assuming that he isn't accurately relating the creative approach of that team? He doesn't have to be "the authority" to be a spokesperson for the group. He just has to be part of the core group, which he is now.

And you know who else didn't create Star Trek? Gene L. Coon. Fred Freiberger. D. C. Fontana. Harve Bennett. Nicholas Meyer. Maurice Hurley. Rick Berman. Michael Piller. Jeri Taylor. Ira Steven Behr. Brannon Braga. Manny Coto. Bryan Fuller. None of them created the thing, but they were all in charge of creating the current iteration of it at one point or another. And that meant they were responsible for deciding where it would go next. So saying that Gene Roddenberry is the only person who should ever have been allowed to even describe what the creators of the show were doing is... Well, just, huh?

As for the rest... I'm too tired, and it's all just rehashing points we've already covered.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And it never adequately explained things like Pike being older or Earth's cities being so different.

Yeah, because we saw so many Earth cities in the original Trek timeline.

As for Pike, who the hell cares? We really have no idea how old he was in TOS anyway. So Bruce Greenwood looks older than Jeffrey Hunter did? BIG. FUCKING. DEAL.

We're talking about what Pegg has declared to be his approach to telling stories.

And since Pegg only wrote this film, and is not going to be writing more of them? Again, B. F. D.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Some of us are detail-oriented.

 

[Jsplinis]

I really like the idea of Pegg's 2-way time change and how freeing it can be for the new movies. It also makes since when you consider the explanation a previous poster had about changing the future will also change the circumstances of time travels who have affected the past.

But this leads to a question.

We've been told that in Star Trek '09 that certain elements can be taken as canon for both the Prime Timeline and Kelvin Timeline. If Pegg's theory is accepted then doesn't that mean this is no longer the case? In other words, Kirk's mother's name, the design of the Kelvin, the Starfleet uniforms in 2233, etc. would not be automatic canon for the Prime universe. So, websites like Memeory Alpha would have to stop acknowledging these details in Prime articles.