Shatner's 'Trial Run'

[RookieBatman]

I think maybe this was the point I was trying to get to. Perhaps Carey and the others (notwithstanding the fact that they may well have simply been influenced by the Carey version) decided that a commander with such an atypical, bending-the-rules type of command style must have been a wild and rebellious kid.

No. Carey explained in the foreword to Best Destiny that she based her version of Kirk's youth on the life story of Ulysses S. Grant. He was largely a failure in everything he tried prior to the Civil War, and Carey wondered if he would've been as driven to succeed if he'd had success early on.

But the fact that she used U.S. Grant as a template isn't mutually exclusive to the suggestion that she may have thought "this type of adult must have been this type of youth." And I'm not really sure whether you mean that the "wild and rebellious" part came from Grant, or exactly what part of the overall equation he inspired.

So that just leaves the question of where Shatner got the idea. But his approach to Kirk is largely autobiographical. So the question is, what were Shatner's formative years like?

I haven't gotten around to reading a Shatner biography yet, so I can't help you there. But maybe it had just become a part of the general consciousness by then. I think I mentioned that the template for wild young Kirk in his Academy days was put forward as a movie script idea in the 90's. Shatner may have heard about it, and used that idea (whether consciously or not) when constructing his story, which had itself been originally pitched as a way to restart the onscreen franchise.

 

[Christopher]

^No, I got the impression from what Carey wrote that the inspiration from Grant's memoir was the opposite of what her default conception of Kirk was -- that left to her own, she would've portrayed him as a brilliant model student. Because, again, let's remember that the hothead/renegade image of Kirk is not accurate. It's a stereotype based pretty much exclusively on him stealing the Enterprise in ST III. Kirk was never portrayed as a screwup or a loose cannon, but as a highly competent, capable, brilliant starship commander. And Diane Carey glorifies him more than most. So it seems likely that her default idea for how to portray the younger Kirk would've been a rather idealized approach. But from what she writes in the BD foreword, the example of Grant's childhood inspired her to go against expectations -- her own and others' -- about what James T. Kirk was like. She wasn't extrapolating from the adult Kirk, she was doing just the opposite.

 

[RookieBatman]

Well, I wasn't talking about portraying him as a brilliant model student, either. I was saying that maybe he could've been a very rigid, repressed young man, with a bit of monomania about achieving his scholastic and future career goals, until he eventually learned to loosen up (through things like Gary setting him up with "that blonde lab technician"). It's still not idealized, but it's a bit more in keeping with those lines from the show. He wouldn't have been a failure like Grant, at least not in "the important things" like academics, work, or even sports, but he probably would've been a social washout (now, that would be going against expectations!), and too by-the-book to make these delightfully unorthodox moves.

I'm not trying to suggest story ideas here, but the differences between my position and hers seemed a little unclear, so I thought an example would help.

 

[Christopher]

I was responding only to your suggestion that Carey may have extrapolated her view of Kirk's teen years from her view of him as an adult. Her own words in the Best Destiny foreword disprove that assumption about her thought process.

 

[Captain Robert April]

From what I recall, Bill Shatner's father, Joseph, was a business man, I think he owned a shoe store, whereas Bill was rather dismal when it came to business matters. He did rather like telling stories around the campfire during his tenure as a camp counselor. Not sure when he got the acting bug, probably in college, helped by his floundering in business-related classes. When he headed out to New York to pursue an acting career, his dad made it clear he was on his own, not in a nasty or vindictive way, but more as a way to make sure Bill was serious about this show business thing and was ready to really dedicate himself to it (and I think he did help out from time to time anyway). Apparently, Joseph Shatner could be a real hard-ass, but not a mean guy. And he did live long enough to see his son become a success on the stage and screen (there's the rather famous story about his dying during the filming of "The Devil In The Dark", forcing Bill to leave for a couple of days to take care of that situation).

 

[seigezunt]

Shat's nickname in high school was "toughy," apparently related to his predilection to getting into fights.

 

[Captain Robert April]

One of two things happen when you're smaller than everyone else in school.

1). You learn to take on adversaries bigger than you on a regular basis. If you can't win, at least make them respect you. This oftentimes forces you to think outside the box and take courses of action that seem unorthodox. You learn to take chances, to say "to hell with the odds," sometimes accomplish some pretty incredible things, sometimes just to rub it in the faces of the naysayers.

Or,

2) Curl into a ball and just try to make it through another day without getting a beatdown.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

Or
3) You join the football team and make friends with some of the biggest and most popular kids in school.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm not the only one who thinks that a Young Kirk portrayed as a Wesley-style goody-two-shoes would be horrible, am I?

How was Kirk portrayed in MJF's Brother's Keeper series? I read them years ago but don't remember a thing, except rubbish "R" gags and that the "stack of books with legs" line was worked in. I'm fairly certain he was less of a loose cannon than either CC or STXI.

 

[Therin of Andor]

except rubbish "R" gags

How are the authors ever to win? The issue had to be addressed. Fans expected it to be addressed. A series of "**** is my middle name" gags was humorous and seemed to do the job.

To dismiss it as "rubbish" is unfair.

 

[RookieBatman]

I'm not the only one who thinks that a Young Kirk portrayed as a Wesley-style goody-two-shoes would be horrible, am I?

Is that in response to my comments? Because I wasn't saying that at all.

How was Kirk portrayed in MJF's Brother's Keeper series? I read them years ago but don't remember a thing, except rubbish "R" gags and that the "stack of books with legs" line was worked in. I'm fairly certain he was less of a loose cannon than either CC or STXI.

My personal opinion of the Brother's Keeper novels is that the characters had about as much depth as a YA book. I don't remember Kirk having any distinctive personality traits.

I do agree with Therin that, despite my dislike of the books, the "R" gag was perfectly fair, and even maybe warranted. There are some continuity jokes that grate on me too. (Like when somebody in ENT/TOS says "Someday we'll have [some concept from TNG/VOY/DS9]." Those really annoy me, and they did that way too much on ENT, so I know how you feel.) But I think this one was actually pretty reasonable. Just my opinion.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, the Wesley comment wasn't directed at you specifically RookieBatman. It was my way of saying the rebellious young Kirk is more interesting to me than Diane Carey's Plan A (see: The forward to Best Destiny)

The "R" thing? I tend to think most goofs in Trek are "best left unsolved" rather then spending pages and pages explaining them away.

I used to get irked by Enterprise's OTT 'hints' at future Trek events too, and before that I got annoyed by repeated attempts in novels to explain away stuff like Romulan ships only having impulse engines, or that big Vulcan non-moon in TMP. More recently my eyes glazed over during Greater Than the Sum's attempt to reconcile each and every differing interpretation of the Borg (no offence, Christopher). IMO these things, unless integral to the story, aren't necessary.

 

[RookieBatman]

The "R" thing? I tend to think most goofs in Trek are "best left unsolved" rather then spending pages and pages explaining them away.

Did he spend pages and pages? It's been many years since I read this, but I thought it was more of a one-off thing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, it was just a couple of lines thoughout the trilogy.

I was referring to all the various "fixes" in the novels for the various problems put together. I shouldn't have had that paragraph-break straight afterwards. It would have been clearer.

The thing is, most of the people who obsess over glitches and errors in Star Trek would dismiss any solutions postulated in a novel simply because the novels are "non-canon".

 

[Christopher]

No, the Wesley comment wasn't directed at you specifically RookieBatman. It was my way of saying the rebellious young Kirk is more interesting to me than Diane Carey's Plan A (see: The forward to Best Destiny)

But those aren't the only alternatives by a long shot. It's certainly possible to portray a Cadet Kirk who is neither a dissolute rebel nor a Wesley Crusher clone. See Peter David's Starfleet Academy annual for DC Comics or the Kirk flashbacks in the TOS novel The Kobayashi Maru (not to be confused with the ENT novel Kobayashi Maru), or the SNW story that takes a different angle on Kirk's Kobayashi Maru solution.

I tend to think most goofs in Trek are "best left unsolved" rather then spending pages and pages explaining them away.

Which is why I try to explain them away in a sentence or two, in a way that satisfies those who are curious but doesn't distract from the story for those who aren't. Better to try to strike a balance than to cater solely to one side of the issue.

More recently my eyes glazed over during Greater Than the Sum's attempt to reconcile each and every differing interpretation of the Borg (no offence, Christopher). IMO these things, unless integral to the story, aren't necessary.

To me, worldbuilding is always integral to the story. I'm a student of history as well as physics, so my approach to a story topic is to research the available evidence, construct a model that incorporates that evidence in a consistent whole, and use that understanding as the basis for constructing the tale. If that available evidence includes inconsistencies, then I need to find a way to reconcile those inconsistencies for the sake of building a viable model. That's what I do when I'm researching a topic from real science (such as the theoretical work on ocean planets that informed Over a Torrent Sea), and that's what I do when I'm researching a topic from Star Trek in preparation for writing about it. It's just the way I work. I need to understand, at least in broad terms, how something works before I can write about it. Not just because I need to be able to believe in what I write, but because that understanding can provide inspiration and point me to new ideas.

For instance, without the explanation I devised to reconcile TNG-style incubated Borg with FC/VGR-style assimilated Borg, I wouldn't have come up with the subplot pertaining to Hugh, Rebekah, and the Liberated in GTTS. So explaining those things wasn't just reconciling continuity glitches for its own sake, it was establishing things the audience needed to know in order to follow that subplot and the motivations of the characters involved. Integral to the story? I'd say so.

Which is not to say I wasn't trying to provide explanations for their own sake to some extent. We all essentially write for ourselves, and I wanted to address all the lingering issues about the Borg that wouldn't be resolved in the previous novels or in Destiny, because it was my one chance to do so. But the trick is to do it in a way that is integral to the story so that people who don't know or care about the continuity issues can still appreciate the work as a cohesive story in its own right. It's not about serving only those people who want explanations or only those people who don't. It's about striking a balance that will work for readers of different tastes. Did I succeed in achieving that balance in Greater Than the Sum? Probably not. Even I think I went a bit overboard on some of the exposition early on. But I was still trying to give it a story purpose.

The thing is, most of the people who obsess over glitches and errors in Star Trek would dismiss any solutions postulated in a novel simply because the novels are "non-canon".

But many of us who write the novels are people who obsess over glitches and errors in ST. And the need to find answers to those lingering questions stimulates our creativity. A lot of creativity is problem-solving. That's why creativity evolved in the first place, as a mechanism for devising solutions to problems or imagining ways of reconciling conflicting information.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It can be lots of fun to try and reconcile conflicting stories or events in Star Trek, and I do enjoy it when it doesn't take precedence over the story (I liked your Delta Vega corporation idea a lot), but at some point on the bigger things you've (or at least I've) just got to throw in the towel, like (to pick but one example) how San Fancisco can't possibly go from how it looks in STXI to how it looks in TMP in the space of 13 (or 38) years. We just say "different interpretation" and carry on (while a few people loudly lose their minds over it in the background!)

And maybe I overstated by saying "most people" on my point about canon.

 

[Therin of Andor]

how San Fancisco can't possibly go from how it looks in STXI to how it looks in TMP in the space of 13 (or 38) years. We just say "different interpretation" and carry on (while a few people loudly lose their minds over it in the background!)

A few people. Or maybe just you and The God-Thing.

How would you like to be the matt painter (or CGI painter) on JJ's film and be told you had to replicate the painting from ST:TMP and add only a few minor changes? Not much of a challenge, and they don't give out SPFX awards to people who simply replicate a design from a previous movie designed by other FX companies.

The glimpses of San Francisco are fleeting in both TMP and JJ's movie. It's not like it was being used as a permanent set where they could undergo close scrutiny. I often used to read, bewilderedly, The God-Thing's rants about how badly the TMP-DE screwed up San Francisco. It's like he can see things in the original SPFX that no one else can. Did he put the damn thing on freeze frame and go through it pixel by pixel?

In any case, SF is adjacent to an earthquake fault line, isn't it? One major tremor could cause a massive rebuilding program between the movies' events, which could be done very quickly with 23rd century building prowess.

Were you also annoyed by the look of the Golden Gate Bridge on the cover of "Academy: Collision Course"?

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah... when even different version of the same story (such as TMP theatrical and DE and TOS original and Remastered) depict the same cities, planets, ships, etc. in different ways, you pretty much have to chalk it up to artistic license and not take it so darn literally when different Trek productions by different crews choose to interpret the appearance of this fictional future in different ways.

I mean, I don't hear people demanding explanations for why the appearance of Vulcan changes between TOS, the movies, and TNG, or why Earth in TOS looks like a fake globe with no vegetation to speak of but later on looks more like the real Earth. Some things are just accepted as stylistic refinements.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Therin, you've completely misinterpreted my point. In a discussion of reconciling the odds and ends of Star Treks I said that sometimes it's impossible to make everything fit, and gave an example. I never said reimagining or reinterpreting something was wrong. It's not.

Don't put words in my mouth, and don't compare me to people I don't know and have never even shared a thread with because I don't give a shit if they change how the city or spaceship or whatever looks like. It's the same place in any incarnation and it's just a TV show (or film or book).

It can be fun to pick holes sometimes (like what I said about San Fran in the first place), but you won't see me getting wound up or moaning about it. When I said "people loudly lose their minds over it" I was referring to the website Ex Astris Scientia which went to pieces over the last film, and stuff like James Dixon's timeline. Not me.

I thought STXI was amazing. I thought it looked amazing. I loved the scale, the ships, everything. Ok?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Therin, you've completely misinterpreted my point.

It must have been when you said, "how San Fancisco can't possibly go from how it looks in STXI to how it looks in TMP in the space of 13 (or 38) years."

Don't put words in my mouth, and don't compare me to people I don't know and have never even shared a thread with

What words did I put in your mouth? My apologies that you never met The God-Thing.

I don't give a shit if they change how the city or spaceship or whatever looks like. It's the same place in any incarnation and it's just a TV show (or film or book).

Then it's hardly my fault that your previous post looked like you did.

you won't see me getting wound up or moaning about it.

Ok.

Then please don't get so wound up if someone misinterprets your posts.

When I said "people loudly lose their minds over it" I was referring to the website Ex Astris Scientia which went to pieces over the last film, and stuff like James Dixon's timeline. Not me.

Unless you've never shared a thread with them and then I can't mention them either?

Welcome to the Internet, where someone will misinterpret you every time.