Shatner's 'Trial Run'

[F. King Daniel]

You're entitled to think what you want, but surely by the same criteria "Where No Man...", "The Alternative Factor" and others have to be alternate universes too, because of goofs or invalidated premises?

Not to mention all those fancy warp-speed FX from TMP onwards. A different universe for each effect?

 

[JD]

That doesn't explain the rest of the laundry list.

Well pardon me. I answered the one I thought I could do well.

I see no problem with there being large UFP ships before the NCC-1701. The Kelvin was probably transporting colonists to and fro, seeing how Winona should have been heading home for an Iowa birth before it got waylaid by the lightning storm.

Bev Crusher's medical ship in "All Good Things..." was based on a very early pre-TOS ship design and it seemed pretty big.

The assumption during TOS was that the Constitution was the largest class of starship Earth had ever built, as per "The Making of Star Trek" (and yes, the term "Constitution class" dates back to the time of the series; it showed up on a graphic Scotty was studying in "The Trouble With Tribbles" and was incorporated into the 1968 version of the Concordance).

Previous slip-ups in continuity have generally been around the margins, minor details that don't effect the story and can be worked around. This movie blows big honking holes in the continuity that you can't just squint and pretend aren't there. And that's before Nero blows up the Kelvin.

So, sorry, but it's one big alternate timeline, beginning to end, Nimoy's Spock included.

In your opinion.

 

[Dayton Ward]

So, we can go with what the creators put forth in interviews or a behind-the-scenes book - rather than stating outright on screen as holy writ - only when it helps our case?

I'm so confuzzled.

 

[Christopher]

Previous slip-ups in continuity have generally been around the margins, minor details that don't effect the story and can be worked around. This movie blows big honking holes in the continuity that you can't just squint and pretend aren't there.

Bull. Roddenberry blew big honking holes in the continuity as soon as he gave Klingons ridges and asked us to pretend they'd always had them. Hell, for that matter, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed" blew holes in continuity when they claimed the show was only 200 years in the future, when "The Squire of Gothos" had placed it 700 years ahead. "The Immunity Syndrome" blew holes in continuity when it resurrected Mr. Leslie after his unambiguous onscreen death in "Obsession" the week before.

It's easy to work around the continuity issues in the new movie. When I had my initial exposure to the new movie, my initial thought was that it had some pretty major inconsistencies that would be tough to resolve -- but it took me less than a minute to think up a fix for every one. And you know why? Because I have decades of experience rationalizing the enormous, pervasive contradictions and logic holes that have been part of the Star Trek canon since the beginning. It's no harder to reconcile the new movie than it is to reconcile any of the previous ones. You just don't want to try because of your prejudices.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Previous slip-ups in continuity have generally been around the margins, minor details that don't effect the story and can be worked around.

Hehehehe. That's not what the anti Berman & Braga Brigade were saying about ENT only a few years earlier. And TNG made more changes to canon than ENT ever did.

 

[Herbert1]

It really depends on the continuity error or canon violation committed by the producers or the film makers and whether the story or the end result appeals to my personal tastes and judgment or if it seems true or credible to the fictional world.

I like what I heard on one of the commentary tracks on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as part of the recent DVD/Blu-Ray release, either Roberto Orci or Alex Kurtzman said that the Star Trek continuity should not be seen as canon, but as something akin to common law. There is precedent that should be affirmed by reference in future Star Trek filmed and licensed products and precedent that should be overturned or just ignored. Star Trek shown on film/television has higher continuity authority than backstage information or production memos.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Whatever, the movie is still crap and I refuse to make excuses for it.

 

[elaithin]

Captain Robert April, that really suggests you shouldn't be working on the new Concordance, as Christopher says. A reference work needs to be created by an objective, open mind, particularly something like the Concordance, whose role is to reconcile all these sorts of things.

Truthfully, there's not that much to reconcile, if you eliminate fan expectations - including your own - as a factor.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

elaithin and Christopher are right. Captain Robert April, you're trying to twist the Concordance to your own purposes rather than serving the purpose of the Concordance.

The very definition of the word concordance is "an alphabetical index of the principal words of a book, as of the Bible, with a reference to the passage in which each occurs. " You don't want to do that. You want to cherry pick what you like and ignore what you don't. That's not a concordance. It's something akin to a critique.

Don't disgrace the good name of the Star Trek Concordance by slinging your own sour grapes all over it.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The Concordance is not an objective piece of work. It has a point of view, Bjo's. Trust me, she editorializes all through it. I'm working more as an archeologist and fact checker, and when it comes to the new movie, which is still a long ways off at this stage, I will provide my take on the matter, especially with the massive discrepancies and the irreconcilable nature of the beast, but what goes into the final text is Bjo's decision, not mine.

By the same token, excuses should not be made in a reference book for a sloppily written story that plays so fast and loose with the details that it's not even consistent with itself, never mind the greater environment that it's a part of, just because you had a good time at the theatre.

 

[elaithin]

The problem is that that's your interpretation of the film. Others disagree. I have my own issues with the movie, which I enjoyed greatly. Most of them revolve around Delta Vega, the "black hole", and the Hobus "supernova".

What's questionable is your irrational insistence that the difference in technologies can't be reconciled - mostly in regards to the Kelvin and your comments that Spock Prime simply can't be the original Spock. There is no reason why he shouldn't be, and creator intention has been blatantly stated that the Nimoy Spock is the same one we've seen ever since "The Cage".

As for the crew size of the Kelvin, that's easily accounted for. Kelvin is a ship with less automation than the Enterprise - either version. Or it had extra personell aboard for an assignment.

Frankly, the small crew sizes of Star Trek ships have always been a little baffling to me. These ships are enormous. There's no reason they can't accomodate a large shuttle fleet, for example (though I'll grant, not quite as large as the Kelvin's) . The design of Starfleet ships actually makes more sense if the majority of the secondary hull is given over to EVA craft storage an maintenance. A huge section of the internal volume of the Enterprise-D was supposed to be dedicated to the same thing.

There is a precept here that because the sets are different, they could not be contained inside the original volume of the Enterprise. Has anyone actually bothered to work the math to state that definitively? I don't feel like working it out myself, but I'm fairly certain there wouldn't be a lot of problem even on the Prime Constitution Class of fitting in a large shuttlebay, or the cavernous Brewery-Engineering design (which makes a lot more sense to me than a room around a big glowing column.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

There is no way the STXI innards would fit in a TOS Connie. The bridge might, but the whole deck behind it? Nope. Shuttlebay? Nope. Brewery? Nope. People in other threads have gone over it time and again (that is, after all, why they made it bigger - so it would make a little sense) I listed a few other reasons earlier.

 

[Christopher]

^Why does it even matter that the new-timeline E's sets couldn't fit in the Prime E? In both timelines, the design and construction of the Constitution Class postdates the point of divergence. And the new-timeline E was launched considerably later than the Prime E is generally assumed to have been launched. It's easy enough to assume that the apparent new Romulan threat suggested by Nero's attack prompted Starfleet to revise its shipbuilding plans, leading to the postponement and redesign of the Connies as a larger class of ship. There's no contradiction whatsoever, because the timelines diverged before either version of the ship was built. So we're really talking about two separate starships named Enterprise, ships that evidently share a common design lineage and probably some common designers but that ended up with significantly different designs due to the different priorities of Starfleet in the two different timelines.

And I could complain plenty about the black holes, the supernova, etc. in the new movie, but it's ultimately no sillier than the Genesis Device or the duplicate Earths of TOS.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I thought the duplicate Earths thing was dealt with really well in the second Shatnerverse trilogy. I remember thinking "why didn't they ever do that on TV?"

 

[Steve Roby]

The Concordance is not an objective piece of work. It has a point of view, Bjo's. Trust me, she editorializes all through it. I'm working more as an archeologist and fact checker, and when it comes to the new movie, which is still a long ways off at this stage, I will provide my take on the matter

You're not Bjo and if I should buy this, I don't want your take on the matter to be part of it. Your opinion about the movie is irrelevant to any fact-checking you may be doing.

By the same token, excuses should not be made in a reference book for a sloppily written story that plays so fast and loose with the details that it's not even consistent with itself, never mind the greater environment that it's a part of, just because you had a good time at the theatre.

Well, that eliminates pretty much all the original series movies. And a fair number of TV episodes. Looks like this'll be the shortest Concordance ever.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm fairly certain there wouldn't be a lot of problem even on the Prime Constitution Class of fitting in a large shuttlebay, or the cavernous Brewery-Engineering design

Don't forget, the internal set for the Galileo shuttlecraft on TOS was taller that the external shell would allow.

 

[Captain Robert April]

There is no way the STXI innards would fit in a TOS Connie. The bridge might, but the whole deck behind it? Nope. Shuttlebay? Nope. Brewery? Nope. People in other threads have gone over it time and again (that is, after all, why they made it bigger - so it would make a little sense) I listed a few other reasons earlier.

The original bridge takes a little bit of creativity to fit into the hull in a logical manner (pointing it thirty-some degrees to port is not logical, but that's another argument). JJ's bridge is easily twice the size of the original, so no freakin' way is that fitting inside the original hull any higher than Deck 5. JJ's shuttlebay would take up over half of the original ship's secondary hull, and his engineering set is a mess no matter how you slice it.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, that eliminates pretty much all the original series movies. And a fair number of TV episodes. Looks like this'll be the shortest Concordance ever.

I defy you to go through the various series and movies and find one that matches JJ's film for the level, and amount, of sheer stupidity. Not even "Threshold", "Spock's Brain", or "The Alternative Factor" reach this level of brainlessness.

Now, before we go through this same flame war again, I recommend any further comments along these lines be moved to the proper thread (I seem to recall one over in the Trek XI forum that would be appropriate) and this one be allowed to return to discussing Shatner's books, 'kay?

 

[F. King Daniel]

^If it really is as difficult as you say to fit STXI in with the rest, then how on Earth did Memory Alpha (y'know, that thing online that's like the Concordance but far bigger and more complex) manage it so easily?

Oh wait, it's not hard at all. They just put "(alternate)" after all the new universe stuff.

...just like the old Concordance put "Kirk-2" or whatever for alternate versions of people.

This, truly, is no different.

Perhaps you should move your "STXI sucks" rant to your sig, to save you having to type it out again and again?

 

[Christopher]

It's missing the point of the Concordance to think that it even matters whether you can reconcile the in-universe continuity. Because the Concordance doesn't claim to be an in-universe reference like the Okuda tech manuals or Chronology. It's simply an extended episode guide and reference work for a television show, or in the revised editions, a TV/movie franchise. Its brief is to cover Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and every other ST production featuring guest appearances by cast members from TOS reprising their roles. Star Trek (2009) is a motion picture based on the television series Star Trek and co-starring its cast member Leonard Nimoy as his character Spock. Therefore, it warrants inclusion in the Chronology just like any other relevant episode or film.

After all, the extant editions of the Chronology already encompass works that contradict each other. "The Alternative Factor" contradicts many other episodes in its depiction of the physics of antimatter and the role of dilithium in the ship's engines. "The Squire of Gothos" contradicts "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Space Seed," TMP, TWOK, and others on the question of how far in the future the series is set. TWOK contradicts "Space Seed" in its portrayal of the age and ethnic diversity of Khan's followers. "Balance of Terror," "Arena," and "Obsession" all give Spock mutually contradictory statements about what the hardest known substance is. "The Magicks of Megas-tu" contradicts ST V in its depiction of the galactic center.

And yet the past editions of the Concordance have covered all those episodes and films without comment about their inconsistencies. Because questions of continuity or contradiction have never been relevant to the Concordance. Its job is merely to catalog installments in a television franchise, and it has always included every relevant installment and treated them equally regardless of continuity issues.