Kelvin Timeline all but confirmed

[Kor]

Ah yes, the old Trek communicator vs. smartphone comparison.

But will Starfleet technology in the future be like our consumer gadgets of the present day, with so much varied functionality crammed into one device that sometimes it's impossible to actually make a simple phone call?

Or... will it be more along the lines of utilitarian, functional and robust military tech, in which each device serves a single purpose? This advanced tactical communications system, for example, is just for communication: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/whetstone.html

Is that thing considered "primitive" because it's lacking a touchscreen and a hundred apps that have nothing to do with two-way communications?

Kor

 

[Prax]

I'd imagine SF equipment would be utilitarian, which is how it's usually depicted anyway. Driving a Humvee, is like driving an old tractor. It's nothing like a "Hummer." Using a dagr(gps) is nothing like using a civilian gps device. It's rugged, bulky, no color screen, no touch screen, etc.

SF equipment looks pretty utilitarian, even in Enterprise.

 

[uniderth]

Is that thing considered "primitive" because it's lacking a touchscreen and a hundred apps that have nothing to do with two-way communications?

That's why Ensign Ricky keeps getting killed. He's too busy playing angry birds on his iCommunicator946xS.

 

[Michael]

I think there's a line though. Otherwise you lose internal consistency to the narrative. You can't have an episode based on Kirk's brother one week, then one on him being an only child the next week, and follow up next season where he goes to his sisters wedding and never had a brother.

Which reminds me of Deep Space Nine, where in an early episode Sisko outright mentions that his father is dead, only to have him as a semi-regular guest character a few seasons later.

Also, he apparently has a sister we never see in the series.

 

[Mr Awe]

I honestly think they wouldn't give a fuck. They are just trying to produce a good show, as they should be. They are not trying recreate a “historically faithful” look and feel of Star Trek from 1964. They only come out with the prime timeline answers, because interviewers pester them about it and because they don't want to offend the perceived desire of the True Fans™. But I'm sure if you'd ask them privately they'd confirm that they don't really care. Again, as they shouldn't be.

That's one interpretation. Or, maybe they actually mean it. You don't know. I don't know. Let's wait and see.

 

[Mr Awe]

View attachment 2422

They're telling the truth "from a certain point of view" - you know, like when Obi Wan told Luke that Darth Vader had murdered his father.

That old Nope meme was used a lot around here by former posters. It's pretty much derided for not making sense for one thing. And, it doesn't make your case at all. It's actually a crutch for a lack of a case.

At any rate, I'm just saying, let's wait and see. Or, is that to reasonable for the Internet?

 

[Mr Awe]

Yeah, that was kinda the point. If you'd bothered to continue reading the thread, you'd have known this.

I'm not going to read the entire thread to check on the off chance that you clarified a previous comment. Especially when it wasn't clear that there was anything to clarify.

It's no big deal. We're cool.

 

[Greg Cox]

Is there any literature or other canon sources on what TV shows Spock watched? Other than Richard Attenborough specials?

I hear he's a fan of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann. So maybe adaptations of their work?

 

[jaime]

Is there any literature or other canon sources on what TV shows Spock watched? Other than Richard Attenborough specials?

I think he was watching the history channel in City on the Edge of Forever...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Two of them can work together to create a sonic disruption, the sound beams of which can produce a sympathetic vibration and cause a landslide.

Basically they can do or not do what ever the script calls for. But at the basic level it's a walkie-talkie

 

[Nerys Myk]

I know. My point was that nowadays the go-to explanation for any discrepancy in the perceived continuity is an alternate timeline. It's become too easy to ditch the Prime timeline and give up trying to make it fit together.

But the argument here is it is the Prime Timeline. They just modernized the look.

 

[captainkirk]

Which reminds me of Deep Space Nine, where in an early episode Sisko outright mentions that his father is dead, only to have him as a semi-regular guest character a few seasons later.

Also, he apparently has a sister we never see in the series.

He doesn't outright say his father died:

When my father got ill... I remember thinking how small and weak he looked lying there in the bed. He'd been so strong... independent... to me it always seemed there was nothing he couldn't do. In the end, I realized that there was nothing he could do. And nothing I could do to help him.

The intention behind that line was obvious but there was enough room for interpretation that they were able to bring his father in later, and explain that he'd been gravely ill and almost died. It's still better than Ian Malcolm in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books who definitely dies at the end of the first one, and is then the protagonist in the second one.

 

[Greg Cox]

My favorite continuity glitch: In the original Universal MUMMY movies, a small town in New England mysterious shifts to Louisiana between movies.

 

[marillion]

Uniform design isn't a big deal. In most modern militaries there's a wide diversity of uniform styles; no reason Starfleet of 2254 would be any different.

While I tend to agree and despite the fact that I really like the new uniform design, I don't see why they couldn't be closer to the TOS style uniforms.. The JJ-Verse movies proved you could still use that design and make it look "modern"...

 

[dahj]

My favorite continuity glitch: In the original Universal MUMMY movies, a small town in New England mysterious shifts to Louisiana between movies. )

That's one hell of a landslide...

 

[cultcross]

But those "interferences" were already part of the past for the 24rd century. So they didn't really interfere, they just were part of the past events as the occurred.

A predestination paradox is not explicitly shown, and the opposite is actually implied - the Borg are able to change the appearance of the 24th century Earth by altering it's history, showing that they could change the timeline despite the fact that history should 'know' that the E-E would go back and 'fix' it. After all, the fixing occurred in the past from the perspective of the "Captain... Earth" scene, so the Earth they see with 9 billion Borg shouldn't exist to be viewed - the fix was already incorporated into its history by your logic. The film in fact strongly supports a theory of time travel where you can alter history. In fact, the whole premise kinda rests on it. Trek usually takes that approach to time travel whenever it is explicit about the mechanics of it - you see the same thing in Past Tense and City on the Edge of Forever. The most logically consistent interpretation of ST09 is that the Kelvin event changed the existing timeline, but in order to placate fans, they sold it as an AU instead. Once you open that can of worms, there are suddenly an absolute myriad of Trek timelines, to the point that charting them is nigh on impossible, as someone who tried mentioned upthread.

 

[Greg Cox]

That's one hell of a landslide...

And it took a buried Mummy with it . . . .

 

[Kor]

He doesn't outright say his father died:

The intention behind that line was obvious but there was enough room for interpretation that they were able to bring his father in later, and explain that he'd been gravely ill and almost died. It's still better than Ian Malcolm in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books who definitely dies at the end of the first one, and is then the protagonist in the second one.

There was also Sisko's line in Emissary, "My father was a gourmet chef." He must have been retired for a while, but by the time we saw him, he came out of retirement to be a gourmet chef again.

Kor

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Then again, when "Emissary" was originally on, the writers probably didn't know they would ever actually get to use Sisko's father on the show.

 

[jaime]

There was also Sisko's line in Emissary, "My father was a gourmet chef." He must have been retired for a while, but by the time we saw him, he came out of retirement to be a gourmet chef again.

Kor

Or his cooking got worse.