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Just how old is Capt Pike? (based on 1 line in Saints of Imperfection)

I think there are three ways you can have canon and they're like the three ways you can have water: ice, liquid, and vapor. Ice is frozen in place. Vapor is something you can't do anything with because it has no coherency. But liquid flows and keeps things hydrated and moving.

You mean Prime continuity? Canon is everything. The Abramsverse films are canon, as is the Mirror Universe.
 
I also consider the Kelvin Films canon. If you thought I thought otherwise, you were under the wrong impression.

I'm just trying to get a feeling for your "canon". Canon wouldn't be fluid, as it is everything made by the studios.
 
I'm just trying to get a feeling for your "canon". Canon wouldn't be fluid, as it is everything made by the studios.

Fair enough. I have to head out the door somewhere soon-ish, so I'll swing back around to this properly at the end of the day, but the short-ish answer for now is:

I consider everything canon, but in a conflict between what's most current and what's not, what's most current wins out, regardless of what I think about it. Also: what's spoken overrides what's on a readout and what's seen overrides what's spoken. In my own view.

So canon would be like genes (no pun intended). When two genes conflict, one becomes dominant and the other becomes recessive. What's dominant and recessive varies from series to series. The look of TOS is recessive in DSC, but the look of DSC is recessive in TOS.
 
I think there are three ways you can have canon and they're like the three ways you can have water: ice, liquid, and vapor. Ice is frozen in place. Vapor is something you can't do anything with because it has no coherency. But liquid flows and keeps things hydrated and moving.
And Star Trek Fans are like the Wind...,
Often they can be a gentle breeze creating ripples on a pond, but most times they range from a good stiff blow through the branches of trees, to a raging tornado tearing everything apart in their path.
:techman:
 
Uggh, how many times to I have to point out that Pegg didn't originate that idea [of the Narada incursion affecting the timeline in both directions]? It came from the Okudas in the revised Encyclopedia, which Pegg presumably got an advance look at. He mentioned the idea some weeks before the equivalent excerpt from the Encyclopedia was posted online, but it takes a long time to write and assemble a book, so it was no doubt written by the Okudas quite a few months before it was publicized by Pegg.
I have no problem sharing the credit as widely as anyone likes... heck, long before the Okudas wrote it down, I recall some of us on these forums discussing the idea years ago. It's just a logical extrapolation from the story. I mentioned Pegg merely because he's the name most prominently associated with popularizing the idea.

The point remains: Kelvinverse!Pike doesn't have to have the same life history as Prime!Pike, because the differences can be explained by (or serve as evidence for, depending on which direction you're looking from) this widely discussed theory of the Kelvinverse time split.

Obviously not, but so what? Any long-running series is going to have different creators with different intentions. Creativity is a dynamic process...

So the hell with original intent. It doesn't matter. Fiction is a cumulative creation. The starting point is not the destination.
Fallacy of the excluded middle here. Sure, creativity is dynamic (as are many other things — I would argue strenuously, for instance, against the proposition that the meaning of the US Constitution should be constrained by the intent of its framers). AT the same time, the overall creative integrity of a creative work (or body of works... or body of laws, to continue the analogy) depends on finding ways to minimize or reconcile internal contradictions. (Many of us find that an entertaining and worthwhile pursuit in itself, present company presumably included.)

Many of the examples of "changed intent" you mention were so early that they never even made it into a story; others can be easily explained away, or are so trivial they can be ignored. The real question is what to do about apparent contradictions that actually matter to the story. It's not clear yet that this is one of those... but it could be, as you yourself suggest:

As I've said, it seems obvious that the purpose is much deeper than that. Emperor Georgiou is an impostor posing as her Prime counterpart. That's a big secret, and it's the nature of fiction that secrets tend to get endangered...
I really kinda hope that's not what this is about, regardless of Pike's age. I think the current use of Mirror!Georgiou is a huge creative misstep on several fronts, for DSC and the entire Trek franchise, and the less attention they draw to its shaky conceptual underpinnings, the better. In this specific case, for instance, M!G's "secret" hardly seems to be anything of the kind. It's known (or at least strongly suspected) by (among others) many if not all crew members of the Discovery, by Sarek, by Adm. Cornwell, by whichever other Starfleet and Federation higher-ups approved her command of the asinine plan at the end of season one, by the PTB in Section 31, by Ash Tyler, and by Klingon Chancellor L'Rell. That's not exactly what I would call secure information. Moreover, as others have pointed out...

...she basically winks at the camera as she bats her eyelashes and introduces herself as '"retired" captain'. Shit, I want her to use air quotes next time too.

...the Emperor, demonstrating the competence and thoughtfulness we've all come to expect from autocrats given their job solely because they were squirted out of the correct parents, walked on to the Discovery's bridge with a wildly implausible story right after they left the universe of the doppelgängers and immediately began acting like a huge racist, and expected no one would suspect her of anything odd.

Indeed, she practically waves a flag over her head while shouting "I'm not the person I look like." If Pike (and anyone else who ever knew her) didn't suspect something, he'd be an idiot.

I consider everything canon, but in a conflict between what's most current and what's not, what's most current wins out, regardless of what I think about it. Also: what's spoken overrides what's on a readout and what's seen overrides what's spoken. In my own view.
Canon is canon — "it's all valid." Continuity is a trickier matter, of course. My own take is that when contradictions arise, the "most current" narrative element isn't necessarily what prevails... rather, it's the most widely and consistently established. (That, for instance, helps to explain why even DSC Klingons now have hair again.)
 
The idea that you need to have gone to the academy together to have an established bond is beyond absurd. O'brien had an established bond with worf on ds9 despite him being an enlisted man. They could have had a service history between georgiou and Pike established in the opening instead of the cringey academy drinking line.

Aside from mucking with Pike's age, the line also undermines the Academy's reputation on strict military regimen by showing that "cool" students like Pike and Georgiou were doing heavy alcohol drinking.

Considering this is a ridiculous stereotype that unfortunately influences young people in the real world (look no further than the news that drunken incidents, sometimes resulting in death, are a real problem in fraternities, universities, and even the military), the last thing we need is this ridiculous stereotype perpetuated further. Least of all from Star Trek. :(
 
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The idea that you need to have gone to the academy together to have an established bond is beyond absurd. O'brien had an established bond with worf on ds9 despite him being an enlisted man. They could have had a service history between georgiou and Pike established in the opening instead of the cringey academy drinking line.
Huh? Was there a bond between the two? I just though Pike was just telling a story about a classmate. They weren't best mates or anything
 
Huh? Was there a bond between the two? I just though Pike was just telling a story about a classmate. They weren't best mates or anything
My post was more of a reply to the implication by @Christopher that Pike needed to be a classmate instead of a shipmate for him to realistically detect the replacement of Georgiou.
Of course it couldn't, because there's a huge difference between having met someone briefly and really knowing them well. For a story like this, you want someone who's close to the person in question, someone who can't be fooled by an impostor the way a more casual acquaintance could -- and more importantly, someone who would have a greater emotional stake in the matter, who'd feel it more keenly upon learning that his old friend was dead and an evil twin had taken her place. Because stories are not about dates and numbers, they're about feelings.
 
Back. I did a shoot and made a new business connection. A pretty major one that opened up some new doors. Anyway, quoting myself from earlier today...

I have to head out the door somewhere soon-ish, so I'll swing back around to this properly at the end of the day

So, yeah, no. Sorry me of this morning. Things just came into alignment. So I'm understandably in a celebratory mood right now. But, what the heck? I don't have anything else to add, except...

Canon is canon — "it's all valid." Continuity is a trickier matter, of course.

This gets straight to the heart of the matter.
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If I could, I'd buy all of you a round. Things are good. Over and out.
 
Aside from mucking with Pike's age, the line also undermines the Academy's reputation on strict military regimen by showing that "cool" students like Pike and Georgiou were doing heavy alcohol drinking.

Considering this is a ridiculous stereotype that unfortunately influences young people in the real world (look no further than the news that drunken incidents, sometimes resulting in death, are a real problem in fraternities, universities, and even the military), the last thing we need is this ridiculous stereotype perpetuated further. Least of all from Star Trek. :(

Sigh. And I suppose the barroom brawl in "The Trouble with Tribbles" sends a bad message, too.

I get what you're saying about binge-drinking in real life, but, honestly, when did we decide that STAR TREK is supposed to be a squeaky-clean Sunday school lesson, let alone a Very Special Episode of The Brady Bunch teaching proper behavior and good conduct at all times?
 
Intent was already thrown out the window with Discovery. Show the Cage to anyone and then tell them the captain is 52 years old and the same age as the doctor.

For all we know, Pike found a Vampire Alien who de-aged him 10 years as thanks for saving their people.

Exploring strange new worlds and all.
 
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