Shatner's 'Trial Run'

[ProwlAlpha]

CPL York was promoted to SGT. Then a little later down the line, he was promoted to Colonel of the Tennessee State Militia.

Also, York was not in an officer candidate school and served for only a year before his MOH, while at least Kirk was a three year Academy cadet. So the comparison is a failed attempt. Lt Stephen Decatur was promoted to Captain within a year of leading the raid on the USS Philadelphia in 1803. So there is at least a real world example of it happening.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Its funny on how people think the new Trek movie is hard to believe yet think that a young enlisted non-officer Kirk steal the Enterprise and fight pirates under the nose of Capt Pike and Starfleet.

Well actually Kirk and Spock stealing the Enterprise wasn't a problem when the book flat out said Mallory let them do it and that they weren't fooling anybody.

The NuTrek thing I give some slack to because they were trying to set the crew up for upcoming sequels. Plus as pointed out the only thing you really have to justify is making Kirk first officer.

 

[Captain Robert April]

That only bolsters my point over in the thread on continuity. When you have to throw out wholesale chunks of what's been established about how things work, not to mention about a half a ton of common sense, then you're only justifying a crappy story and it's well past the point where you should've scrapped the whole thing and started over.

Shatner's version had a built-in justification for what happened (Mallory), while JJ's requires logical gymnastics on Cirque du Soleil level to even make halfway palatable.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

ad a built-in justification for what happened (Mallory), while JJ's requires logical gymnastics on Cirque du Soleil level to even make halfway palatable.

No, it doesn't. All it requires is that you watch and enjoy the movie without over analyzing and nitpicking it to death.

And I haven't read Shatner's version, but if its anything like his other Trek novels, I doubt its anywhere near as entertaining as the new movie.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, speaking for myself, as the guy who's helping out with the new Concordance, nitpicking the thing to death is now my job.

Trust me, it's a mess.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Well, speaking for myself, as the guy who's helping out with the new Concordance, nitpicking the thing to death is now my job.

Trust me, it's a mess.

Alright then explain how Shatner can get away with making Kirk smarter than Spock.

 

[Christopher]

Well, speaking for myself, as the guy who's helping out with the new Concordance, nitpicking the thing to death is now my job.

No, it isn't. The Star Trek Concordance has never been a critical work. None of its prior editions have contained reviews, critiques, or judgments of the episodes it documented. It covered them all equally and objectively, reporting on their storylines and cataloguing their details without authorial bias. If you can't live up to those standards of objectivity and keep your own opinions out of it, then you're the wrong person for this job.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Who said anything about a critical review? I'm just talking about getting everything to line up, which is the whole purpose of the Concordance, and as it stands, nothing matches. Every listing that has to do with the film will end up being completely separate from everything else, like the listings for the Mirror Universe entries, only magnified by the bulk of items from the film.

Like this book isn't big enough already...

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, speaking for myself, as the guy who's helping out with the new Concordance, nitpicking the thing to death is now my job.

Trust me, it's a mess.

Alright then explain how Shatner can get away with making Kirk smarter than Spock.

Explain that one.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Well, speaking for myself, as the guy who's helping out with the new Concordance, nitpicking the thing to death is now my job.

Trust me, it's a mess.

Alright then explain how Shatner can get away with making Kirk smarter than Spock.

Explain that one.

Kirk uses some fancy tech and know how to remove his house arrest tracker ankle braclet thing without setting off the alarm that would send Stafleet after him, where as Spock just beams the thing off in the transporter like Starfleet is so stupid not to think of that, becuase he thinks as long as he didn't cut the thing it won't go off.

 

[Count Zero]

Kirk uses some fancy tech and know how to remove his house arrest tracker ankle braclet thing without setting off the alarm that would send Stafleet after him, where as Spock just beams the thing off in the transporter like Starfleet is so stupid not to think of that, becuase he thinks as long as he didn't cut the thing it won't go off.

I read the book a while ago and don't remember all the details anymore but wasn't the reason the alarm went off that both of them took their bracelets off?

 

[Captain Robert April]

That doesn't strike me as Kirk being smarter, just that he approaches problems from a different perspective and comes up with different solutions. Spock, especially at that point in his life, was more inclined to use what's at hand, and it probably would never occur to him to seek out assistance from some seedy underworld type, whereas Kirk is much more of an outside-the-box kind of guy.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Kirk uses some fancy tech and know how to remove his house arrest tracker ankle braclet thing without setting off the alarm that would send Stafleet after him, where as Spock just beams the thing off in the transporter like Starfleet is so stupid not to think of that, becuase he thinks as long as he didn't cut the thing it won't go off.

I read the book a while ago and don't remember all the details anymore but wasn't the reason the alarm went off that both of them took their bracelets off?

Actually Kirk riged his to fool the thing by sharing the signal from Spock's or something like that so that when Spock took his off it looked like they both took them off at the same time.

 

[Captain Robert April]

That doesn't strike me as Kirk being smarter, just that he approaches problems from a different perspective and comes up with different solutions. Spock, especially at that point in his life, was more inclined to use what's at hand, and it probably would never occur to him to seek out assistance from some seedy underworld type, whereas Kirk is much more of an outside-the-box kind of guy.

 

[Procutus]

I just finished the book and really enjoyed it, despite the heavy anti-Starfleet attitude Kirk was sporting at the beginning. Nor did I have a problem with the idea of them taking the Enterprise out of Spacedock with less than a skeleton crew, as it was pointed out that Mallory allowed it to happen.

I'm really disappointed that we'll most likely not see further volumes. I'd like to see the Shats/Reeves-Stevens take on Kirk meeting Gary Mitchell, Lt. Kirk as an instructor, his time on the Republic and Farragut, more of Finnegan, meeting Carol Marcus, and some of the other missing elements of Kirk's career before he became captain of the Enterprise.

Just my .02 worth.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm really disappointed that we'll most likely not see further volumes.

I'm sure Shatner is welcome to pitch "Trial Run" to the new editor. He simply mentioned a sequel title that had not yet been contracted, and sales of "Academy: Collision Course" were supposedly disappointing. However, it still went to a MMPB reprint a year later, and there was no attempt to remove the line promoting "Trial Run" from that edition.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^would a re-release featuring new cover art (the STXI crew in their cadet gear) and a tiny note saying "this book is nothing to do with that film, even though they share a similar vibe" on the back page be considered false advertising?
Maybe if they photoshopped Pine and Quinto into the white-shirted uniforms described in the book?

 

[Christopher]

^would a re-release featuring new cover art (the STXI crew in their cadet gear) and a tiny note saying "this book is nothing to do with that film, even though they share a similar vibe" on the back page be considered false advertising?

I find it profoundly unlikely that William Shatner would allow a cover that depicted Kirk as anyone other than William Shatner. And I don't think Pocket would want to confuse things by putting Abramsverse covers on non-Abramsverse books.

 

[RookieBatman]

Who said anything about a critical review? I'm just talking about getting everything to line up, which is the whole purpose of the Concordance, and as it stands, nothing matches. Every listing that has to do with the film will end up being completely separate from everything else, like the listings for the Mirror Universe entries, only magnified by the bulk of items from the film.

Like this book isn't big enough already...

Not to be inflammatory, but why don't you just leave it out, then? It's not even a value judgment, it's just that the book has a focus on the classic series, so why would it need to include the movie, just because that involves versions of the same characters? To me, it seems to have little difference from including any of the other series'.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, the second edition of the Concordance included non-TOS movies and episodes that featured guest appearances by TOS actors in their original roles (e.g. Generations, "Unification," "Relics," and "Blood Oath"). Since Leonard Nimoy reprised the role of Spock in the 2009 film, that makes it fair game for inclusion.

Treating the film's timeline equivalently to the Mirror Universe makes sense, since of course it's meant to be just as separate. However, it's incorrect to say that every listing should be separate, since the timelines only diverged in 2233, and anything that the film established about things that existed before that time -- such as the Kelvin, Captain Robau, George and Winona Kirk's service aboard that ship, the existence of a Laurentian system, etc. -- would be canonical for the Prime timeline, as would Spock Prime's experiences in 2387. Analogously, the Halkans in "Mirror, Mirror" exist in both the Prime and Mirror Universes, so they should be listed as part of the Prime universe.