So if the comics & video game are canon...

[Set Harth]

Some species are just naturally twisted.

Fosh, for example.

 

[Drago-Kazov]

Or some individuals who would cease to be fun if they would become good, nice and clean like Sloan or Garak.

 

[22 Stars]

In Trek, the live-action shows and movies are canon. The animated series is a maybe.

The animated series has been alluded to in various canon productions over the past couple of decades, and tie-ins have been free to reference it for most of that time. I don't think there's any reason at this point to doubt that TAS is effectively part of the canon. The only time it was ever officially treated otherwise was for maybe two years from Roddenberry's 1989 memo to his death in '91. After that, the restriction lingered for a while but by now has eroded away to nothing.

Then there's all the tie-ins which aren't canon. 90% of the novels form an enourmous and insanely intricate shared continuity.

Not that many. Most of the books published since 2000 are in a shared continuity, yes, but there have been exceptions, and lately we're seeing an increasing return to the standalone novels of the past (for instance, one of the TOS novels just announced for 2013 will apparently depict events from around the end of Kirk's 5-year mission in a different way than the main-continuity book Forgotten History did earlier this year).

I certainly want the videogame to be canon.

I'd rather it weren't. The Gorn as an evil race bent on galactic conquest? That's completely inconsistent with how they've been portrayed in the past. Okay, maybe something changed them after the timeline split in 2233; maybe they were taken over by a militant caste, like the coup in the graphic novel The Gorn Crisis but with more success. But the whole thematic point of "Arena" was that it's wrong to judge by appearances -- that just because the Gorn looked like scary alligator-men, that didn't make them evil. It was an allegory about prejudice and fear of the other. So saying "Yeah, the Gorn really are just as evil as our prejudices told us" is pretty enormously missing the point.

How do you know the plot and lessons learned at the end of the new videogame already? The Gorn captain was more willing to fight Kirk than talk to him, so why shouldn't the videogame show Gorn who are willing to fight?

 

[The Wormhole]

The Gorn captain was more willing to fight Kirk than talk to him, so why shouldn't the videogame show Gorn who are willing to fight?

The Gorn captain thought Kirk was the evil invader and felt it his duty to defeat this threat to his people. It's possible had they met under less hostile circumstances he wouldn't be as eager to fight.

 

[Christopher]

^Exactly. There is a vast and fundamental difference between fighting in self-defense and starting a fight with aggressive intent. The Gorn are fierce in protecting their territory; that doesn't make them galactic conquerors. (Especially since we know from DS9 that they actually ceded Cestus III to the Federation even though it was rightfully theirs and they had no reason to give it up!)

 

[RPJOB]

We don't know how the Federation got possession of Cestus III. For all we know the Gorn and the Federation fought a war at some point. All we know is that the Gorn considered the planet to be in their territory. The Federation, despite having rumors of someone existing in the space just beyond the planet, built an armed outpost complete with families. Essentially, a frontier fort, designed to help the Federation colonize the area. You'd think that they'd send some scout craft in to do a through survey first. But, like their policy towards Eminiar VIII, they are convinced of the correctness of their actions, regardless of the wishes of the species already living there.

 

[M'Sharak]

We don't know how the Federation got possession of Cestus III. For all we know the Gorn and the Federation fought a war at some point.

No, it's pretty clear that the Federation hadn't even known about the Gorn. The Feds didn't "get possesion" of Cestus III; they simply assumed that it was unclaimed and uninhabited, and set up an outpost there.

GORN [OC]: We destroyed invaders, as I shall destroy you!
MCCOY: Can that be true? Was Cestus Three an intrusion on their space?
SPOCK: It may well be possible, Doctor. We know very little about that section of the galaxy.
MCCOY: Then we could be in the wrong.
SPOCK: Perhaps. That is something best decided by diplomats.
MCCOY: The Gorn simply might have been trying to protect themselves.
SPOCK: Yes.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/19.htm​

 

[Drago-Kazov]

Christopher posted:

I'd rather it weren't. The Gorn as an evil race bent on galactic conquest? That's completely inconsistent with how they've been portrayed in the past

I don't see why they cannot be reimagined.

But the whole thematic point of "Arena" was that it's wrong to judge by appearances -- that just because the Gorn looked like scary alligator-men, that didn't make them evil. It was an allegory about prejudice and fear of the other. So saying "Yeah, the Gorn really are just as evil as our prejudices told us" is pretty enormously missing the point.

It would not change the message of the original epsiode.

 

[Christopher]

We don't know how the Federation got possession of Cestus III. For all we know the Gorn and the Federation fought a war at some point.

No, it's pretty clear that the Federation hadn't even known about the Gorn. The Feds didn't "get possesion" of Cestus III; they simply assumed that it was unclaimed and uninhabited, and set up an outpost there.

No, I think he's referring to how it got possession of Cestus III by the time of DS9, when Kasidy Yates's family lived there.

But I don't buy the war explanation. The Federation wouldn't fight a war of aggression to capture territory, and even if the Gorn did start a war for some reason, it seems equally out of character for the UFP to punish them by taking territory that it's already acknowledged was rightfully theirs to begin with.

Anyway, most tie-ins over the past few decades have understood the message of "Arena" that the Gorn weren't really bad guys, and it rubs me the wrong way when a tie-in forgets that. (I was bothered by the graphic novel The Gorn Crisis, depicting a Gorn invasion of Federation space, until I discovered it was just a fringe faction.)

Christopher posted:

I'd rather it weren't. The Gorn as an evil race bent on galactic conquest? That's completely inconsistent with how they've been portrayed in the past

I don't see why they cannot be reimagined.

Because the Abramsverse is supposed to have branched off from the Prime Universe in 2233. Everything before that point is supposed to be exactly the same in both. So any wholesale change in the Gorn would've had to happen in the quarter-century between Nero's arrival and the events of the film and game. Not impossible, no, but it's a pretty narrow window for such a radical alteration.

 

[RPJOB]

No, I think he's referring to how it got possession of Cestus III by the time of DS9, when Kasidy Yates's family lived there.

But I don't buy the war explanation. The Federation wouldn't fight a war of aggression to capture territory, and even if the Gorn did start a war for some reason, it seems equally out of character for the UFP to punish them by taking territory that it's already acknowledged was rightfully theirs to begin with.

Anyway, most tie-ins over the past few decades have understood the message of "Arena" that the Gorn weren't really bad guys, and it rubs me the wrong way when a tie-in forgets that. (I was bothered by the graphic novel The Gorn Crisis, depicting a Gorn invasion of Federation space, until I discovered it was just a fringe faction.)

Quite right. However, we saw the Federation and the Cardassians sign a treaty that involved several planets changing hands in response to the new border. Something similar may have happened with the Gorn.

All we really know about them, according to the shows, is that there's some that are large, slow moving and have multifaceted eyes (Arena) and others that are faster and have more humanlike eyes (IAMD). We also know that the Federation eventually ended up in possession of the planet that their outpost was stationed on. For all we know the Gorn didn't want it back, feeling it had been tainted.

Kirk learns a lesson during Arena but we really don't know what the Gorn reaction was. They could have felt insulted by Kirk showing mercy and letting their captain live. When the Gorn mentioned mercy it was to offer Kirk a quick death. Being aliens their concepts of mercy could be very different than ours.

 

[Drago-Kazov]

Because the Abramsverse is supposed to have branched off from the Prime Universe in 2233. Everything before that point is supposed to be exactly the same in both. So any wholesale change in the Gorn would've had to happen in the quarter-century between Nero's arrival and the events of the film and game. Not impossible, no, but it's a pretty narrow window for such a radical alteration

Since there are no canon Gorn before could it be the case that the Gorn were evil originally then they changed?

 

[Therin of Andor]

No Star Trek races are evil, just a few of the show's fans.

 

[Drago-Kazov]

I think the cloud that killed Kirk's mates earlier in his career would beg to differ.

 

[F. King Daniel]

But it wasn't evil, it was simply feeding. Hitler was evil. A hungry lion that kills for food is not.

 

[starburst]

What if it were the Hitler of cloud creatures?

 

[Christopher]

What if it were the Hitler of cloud creatures?

Then only that individual would be evil, not the entire species. Our species produced Hitler, but it also produced Gandhi and everything in between.

"Evil" means the deliberate choice to cause harm and destruction, or to place self-interest above the safety, freedom, and survival of others. The key is that it's a choice, a decision made by a sentient being. If a species is sentient and capable of choice, then it follows that some of its members will choose evil, others will choose good, and others will be somewhere in between. Or, more likely, that each individual will make a variety of good, evil, and neutral choices over a lifetime, with just the ratios differing. (Even Hitler was kind to animals.) Conversely, if a species isn't sentient, if it kills solely out of instinct or hunger, then its actions cannot be called good or evil, because there's no choice involved, no capacity for moral judgment.

So any way you slice it, it is meaningless and foolish to describe an entire species as good or evil. That formulation simply has no meaning.

 

[Mars]

Oh I totally agree that catering to Fan expectations can be disastrous... but then again, I think it's too early to be tackling Khan in the first place. Though I assume they are only targeting a Trilogy with this cast instead of an ongoing franchise, so they may just be "hitting the highlights" story wise.

The problem with Khan is that he comes from an era in the 20th century that never happened, he escaped in a starship that we never built nor did we ever have the technology to build. The SS Botany Bay could not be built today, even with the slower than light drive that it had, sending a manned vessel out of the Solar System would have been tremendously expensive, and we don't have the suspended animation technology to put Khan into deep freeze, so it really is hard to explain him coming from 1997.

 

[Mars]

What if it were the Hitler of cloud creatures?

Then only that individual would be evil, not the entire species. Our species produced Hitler, but it also produced Gandhi and everything in between.

"Evil" means the deliberate choice to cause harm and destruction, or to place self-interest above the safety, freedom, and survival of others. The key is that it's a choice, a decision made by a sentient being. If a species is sentient and capable of choice, then it follows that some of its members will choose evil, others will choose good, and others will be somewhere in between. Or, more likely, that each individual will make a variety of good, evil, and neutral choices over a lifetime, with just the ratios differing. (Even Hitler was kind to animals.) Conversely, if a species isn't sentient, if it kills solely out of instinct or hunger, then its actions cannot be called good or evil, because there's no choice involved, no capacity for moral judgment.

So any way you slice it, it is meaningless and foolish to describe an entire species as good or evil. That formulation simply has no meaning.

What about the Borg? The Borg could certainly be encountered earlier. All that has to happen is that someone finds out about what happened to Voyager in the other Universe and goes to where the caretaker would snatch him to the Delta Quadrant, and there we have encounters with the Borg. There is also potential for using the Bajoran Wormhole for reaching the Mirror Universe. If Spock knows how Kira did it, he might attempt to make the journey himself, there he would enounter A vulcan that is oppressed by the Terran Empire instead of destroyed by Nero. What if the Terran Empire followed him and his renagade Vulcans back through the Bajoran Wormhole into Federation Space? Now wouldn't that be an interesting encounter.

 

[Set Harth]

Kirk vs. Borg needs to happen.

 

[BillJ]

Oh I totally agree that catering to Fan expectations can be disastrous... but then again, I think it's too early to be tackling Khan in the first place. Though I assume they are only targeting a Trilogy with this cast instead of an ongoing franchise, so they may just be "hitting the highlights" story wise.

The problem with Khan is that he comes from an era in the 20th century that never happened, he escaped in a starship that we never built nor did we ever have the technology to build. The SS Botany Bay could not be built today, even with the slower than light drive that it had, sending a manned vessel out of the Solar System would have been tremendously expensive, and we don't have the suspended animation technology to put Khan into deep freeze, so it really is hard to explain him coming from 1997.

Why? The entire new universe is an alternate timeline. There's no reason that Trek's 1996 has to match our 1996.