Nimoy/Spock was there at the beginning of the original "Star Trek" and he's there at the end. No one else was except Majel Roddenberry.
Works for me.
Works for me.
New Interview with Bob Orci about Trek XI from the Grand Slam
- Thread starter Phaserman
- Start date
Until Star Trek XII:Another Search For Spock.
Or maybe Search for Another Spock?
Don't bother finding the time, you'll labor in vain. It's not there.
Oh, I recognize that. I have to laugh when Trekkies mention "canon" if only because it's such a fluid concept in this franchise, intentionally or not. I'm more interested in adhering to the spirit of the show than every little trivial factoid.
Since Trek was just establishing itself and its characters, I'd lean more toward labelling TOS as a retooling of The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. But it's hard for me not to see TNG as a reboot of The Cage. I think TNG might have been closer to what Roddenberry had envisioned from the start.
I've always had that impression as well (Think he may have said as much more then once? Do know in later years he wasn't Kirk's biggest fan...) and am glad he didn't get it the first time around as what we actually got was more interesting.
Sharr
I agree with this completely. Roddenberry's ideas, when he was allowed complete and total control over everything, weren't nearly as impressive as he'd have liked us to have believed.
Roddenberry put together a good team of very skilled people, all of whom contributed AT LEAST as much to what "Star Trek" became as he did. And my real disillusionment with him began when I started seeing him claiming credit for things that I KNEW had been the work of others (Gene Coon, John Black... hell, Alexander Courage for that matter!). He tried to build his own myth... apparently he took the JOKE NICKNAME of "Great Bird of the Galaxy" a little too much to heart?
When TNG first came out, I do agree it was much more like he'd originally intended. And honestly, it was AWFUL. Believe it or not, I think Berman SAVED "Star Trek" by treating it like a business. He also eventually nearly killed it, largely due to the same sort of thing that Roddenberry fell into... thinking of it as being "his."
It took a few people who really got it... Michael Pillar key among them... to turn the crap that was S1/S2 TNG into a show worth watching. And when Pillar started to withdraw, the quality got worse, FAST.
As far as I'm concerned, the best of TOS trek was the work of Gene Coon, and the bet of TNG Trek was the work of Michael Pillar.
Why? Because both of these guys were more about telling good stories than about preaching... and I see a lot of the same qualities in Abrams, which is why I'm cautiously optimistic about the upcoming film.
None of the early proposals or story treatments for Trek resemble TNG at all; it was an adventure/drama show built around the Captain.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! No fair! You're trying to use logic here...
And I agree with you completely.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! No fair! You're trying to use logic here...
And I agree with you completely.
Given they've said as much, that no Nimoy, equals no movie its easy enough to conclude he's there for more then set dressing or placating older fans that Nimoy's Spock is infact critical to what we're going to see.
I'm more amazed anyone having not yet seen the film can speak to its originality or the writer's intelligence regarding what they chose to write at this point in the game...
Sharr
Rest assured that this has already been done many times over.
(No, the reference isn't there, either directly or indirectly. Spock is never considered either "first" or "unique" - he's just a run-of-the-mill Vulcan Starfleet officer, even if the only one Kirk and McCoy seem to be familiar with.)Probably this "controversy" played some role in the writers' decision to keep T'Pol an observer serving directly under Vulcan High Command at Subcommander rank for Seasons 1 and 2, and an independent, civilian science consultant no longer under Vulcan command or holding any official rank for Season 3 (although she masqueraded as a yellowstriped Starfleet Commander once, in "Hatchery", to assert control over possessed fellow crewmembers).
At the beginning of Season 4, however, she explicitly became member of Earth's Starfleet, receiving the appropriate rank markings of Commander on her catsuit. There's currently a thread at the ENT forum about why she didn't get a proper uniform at that date...
As said, this has never been suggested on screen. But if Abrams decides he, uh, the new movie becomes richer with the insertion of such a tidbit in the dialogue, there's no canon to directly contradict it, either. And indeed any Academy scenes might gain dramatic value if Spock for once was portrayed as a unique, trailblazing individual.
Timo Saloniemi
You know, I've taken a similar view about the whole Berman deal. He and Piller and Moore saved the franchise. Although I do think they took the basis of Roddenberry's general idea and simply made it work better. I don't mean to overly bash Roddenberry; this was his baby after all, but c'mon. The guy is responsible for one of the worst OS episodes, "The Omega Glory", which was one of the ideas for the second pilot *shudder*.
Reading between the lines in the Orci interview, expect a reboot in the same way that the Harve Bennett movies were a reboot of TMP.
Ok, I'm sure I'm just asking to be bitch-slapped back into Trek-Trivia-Obscurity, but what about the Intrepid? Are you suggesting Spock has been in Star Fleet longer than everyone on that ship?
That has always seemed pretty unlikely to me, too.
number6
Vice Admiral
Of course, it could be argued that Spock was the first/only Half-Vulcan in StarFleet.
Maybe they trained at the Vulcan Science Academy and were absorbed in Starfleet?
Maybe there were Starfleet Academy campuses on Vulcan, Andoria and Tellar Prime as well as San Francisco, and Spock was the first Vulcan to attend Earth's campus?
I dunno, I liked 1&2 better than the rest. I like Pillar most of the time, but I think it started to get mouldy when they decided to make a space soap rather than scifi.
But I think you're right on one thing. Once you start believing your own PR, you're in deep trouble. I mean that's how we got Anakin the pod racer and Jar Jar. And Enterprise. I don't know who did what exactly (I wasn't even conceived yet) so no comment on that end, though I think it looked like West Wing -- it was a huge team of writers, producers, effects guys, coffee fetchers, and whatever else.