Spoilers ST: Beyond - Surprising fact about Sulu

[Christopher]

Just to veer off a bit, it's not always about hiding it or being closeted and posing as an orientation you're not either. Like I mentioned before, there are people that openly identify as gay and yet also have had or are in romantic/sexual heterosexual relationships (or vice versa) while openly identifying as gay. If a man's generally attracted to men and generally has no interest in women, but there's one or two specific women that they're attracted to, they might identify as gay completely reasonably.

Right. Like I said, one person who does that might consider themselves bisexual, while another might consider themselves gay with one or two exceptions. Or hetero with exceptions. Like Ianto in Torchwood: Children of Earth, explaining to his family that he didn't fancy men in general, he just fancied Captain Jack. Some people can fall for someone outside their normal preference and consider them an exception, rather than something that changes their overall preference.

Really, the research shows that very few people are purely one orientation or the other. Most people who favor one sex are at least occasionally capable of interest in the other. So it's really illegitimate to think of orientation in all-or-nothing or "one drop" terms. That's not how human sexuality works. It's more a matter of the overall, lifelong trend. And just about what identity you choose to associate with.

 

[Sci]

... but Pegg has said they considered that TOS was straight and whatever factors were different (prenatal hormones or whatever) led to new Sulu to be gay,

Simon Pegg also said something else I quite like: That to him, this implies that somewhere out there in the multiverse, we're all LGBT in one timeline or another.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Just to veer off a bit, it's not always about hiding it or being closeted and posing as an orientation you're not either. Like I mentioned before, there are people that openly identify as gay and yet also have had or are in romantic/sexual heterosexual relationships (or vice versa) while openly identifying as gay. If a man's generally attracted to men and generally has no interest in women, but there's one or two specific women that they're attracted to, they might identify as gay completely reasonably. Check out Erika Moen's DAR, for example; it's amazing and goes into a lot of detail about the struggle with identity she's had both internally and from other people as a woman that publicly and openly identifies as a lesbian while being in a relationship with a man in just such a situation, having only ever felt any degree of sexual attraction to just one or two men.

Not only have I known any number of people in my life who've dealt with such internal/community identity issues, it's also a significant part of the premise to Chasing Amy--so it's not as if mainstream popular culture hasn't had examples acknowledging this for a long time now.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Sometimes I wish the Kelvin Timeline had been a pure reboot, so that we didn't have to concoct handwaves to reconcile the discrepancies.

But if it were a "pure reboot," there's no reason for it to be Star Trek. There are plenty of science fiction milieux that share Star Trek's optimism that we'll eventually outgrow petty divisiveness, and make the universe our home. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing ADF's Humanx Commonwealth make the jump from the printed page to the screen (small or large), so long as ADF has a say in how it's done. Especially given that CGI has reached a point where we could have Thranx, AAnn, Tolians, Tran, and so forth, that look like ADF's descriptions, rather than like people in suits.

As to Sulu's sexual orientation, that's his own business. And as to sexual orientation in general, we mustn't forget that before Peter David gave us Burgoyne 172, there was Adam Quark's chief engineer, Gene/Jean.

 

[Idran]

That's gender, James, not orientation.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

That's true, you're absolutely right. (And no, I'm not suffering from quintlexia)

But the way this thread was going, I couldn't help but think of hermaphrodites whose sexual orientations raise the bar for what is considered "unusual."

I've always wondered if Peter David was thinking of Gene/Jean when he created Burgy.

And now, I find my thoughts drifting to a short story that made the jump from fanfic to profic in New Voyages 2, two decades before SNW made that relatively commonplace. A short story that was probably the best thing to come out of Marshak and Culbreath (not that that's much of an achievement), "The Procrustean Petard."

 

[Christopher]

But if it were a "pure reboot," there's no reason for it to be Star Trek.

What??? How does that make sense? By that logic, there'd be no Ron Moore Galactica, no Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett or Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, no Batman: The Animated Series or The Dark Knight, no Marvel Cinematic Universe, no Arrowverse, none of the seven or eight different reboots of Godzilla, no superlative Gamera trilogy in the '90s -- hell, no Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet or King Lear. There is every reason to revive an existing concept in a new form. It's one of the most fundamental practices of human creativity and it always has been, and there has never, ever been anything wrong with it. A reboot of a concept can let you keep all the best parts of it while casting aside the outdated and problematical elements, or the parts that a modern audience wouldn't understand or relate to. It helps keep an idea alive and engaging and allows it to be explored in new ways that can enrich it. There are as many reasons to rework an existing concept as there are to create a new one, and there is more than enough room in the creative landscape for both. It's like the difference between rearranging a well-known song in a new style and writing a whole new song. One is not a substitute for the other. Both things serve their own worthwhile purposes, and doing one does not prevent anyone from doing the other.

Your mistake is that you're confusing continuity with concept. These are two different things. Rebooting a series doesn't mean changing everything. It means keeping the core conceptual elements that define it -- the main characters, their roles and relationships, their environment, often some of the specific storylines they were involved in -- but just starting over from scratch and telling them in your own way without worrying about consistency with the details of an earlier version. Star Trek is not about, oh, whether Sulu checked out Uhura in "The Naked Time" or whether a certain Starfleet insignia was used in a certain year. It's about the adventures of the Enterprise and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and their crew (or Picard and Riker and their crew, or whoever) in an optimistic future. As long as it has the same concept, it's obviously still Star Trek even if the continuity is changed, even if the details are remixed or reinvented.

 

[Markonian]

But if it were a "pure reboot," there's no reason for it to be Star Trek. There are plenty of science fiction milieux that share Star Trek's optimism that we'll eventually outgrow petty divisiveness, and make the universe our home.

Oh, please. I'm not going to the cinema to see some random sci-fi a la Firefly and Stargate. I want to see a ship with twin nacelles, Vulcans, white gleaming Starfleet vessels, phasers and torps with that inimical sound. Not the Tuturian-Human Alliance US navy vs the Space-Cat empire.

And that doesn't mean is has be one continuity of Star Trek. I'm in love with the storylines of TrekLit and STO, and find comics tolerable. Doesn't matter their universes are imcompatible.

So, in one Sulu has a boyfriend, in another continuity a woman. An explanation is welcome, but not vital. I love both depictions of Landru and Beta III. Wouldn't care about Alderaan, tough. And so on.

 

[Enterprise1701]

But if it were a "pure reboot," there's no reason for it to be Star Trek.

That literally makes no sense to me. By that line of thinking, the Arrowverse shows on TV aren't DC.

 

[Paris]

But if it were a "pure reboot," there's no reason for it to be Star Trek.

Pure Poppycock! Then it would be a whole new property. If it's a reboot, then it would have to be Star Trek still...or it wouldn't be rebooting anything

 

[Idran]

Yes James has very weird views on reboots but does no one else find his praise for "The Procrustean Petard" in the modern day (even if just in backhanded compliment form) equally weird

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

^ What? That it managed to "go where no one had gone before" (not even Arthur Singer, in Turnabout: Intruder) with regard to the sexuality of characters?

Or that it was the one thing I've read by that pair that wasn't both confusing and unnecessarily verbose?

I love both depictions of Landru and Beta III.

Huh?

 

[Idran]

^ What? That it managed to "go where no one had gone before" (not even Arthur Singer, in Turnabout: Intruder) with regard to the sexuality of characters?

More that it implied that women were naturally unfit for command and naturally demure and submissive. And also it was frankly strange that when Kirk was physically transformed into a woman, he was suddenly interested in men and went off to almost sleep with Kang.

Huh?

One of the Kelvin Universe comics had an alternate take on "Return of the Archons".

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

^ Well, one must consider the source (the same people who brought us The Price of the Phoenix, The Fate of the Phoenix, The Prometheus Design, and the ever-popular Triangle). And the time: this was before Garrett, before Janeway, before Hernandez, and before the general consensus about Janice Lester was that her whole sob story about a "world of starship captains that doesn't admit women" was the delusion of a nutjob.

And I would say my comment about The Procrustean Petard being about the best thing to come out of Marshak and Culbreath is not so much a backhanded compliment as "damning with faint praise."

And thanks for the clarification about Landru. I figured it had to be something like that; the only thing I could find in Memory Beta was a reference to a SCE novella (that I must have read at some point, given that I have all of the hardcopy editions) about a Ferengi who'd bought Landru cheap, only to find that the real price was a good deal higher.

 

[borgboy]

More that it implied that women were naturally unfit for command and naturally demure and submissive. And also it was frankly strange that when Kirk was physically transformed into a woman, he was suddenly interested in men and went off to almost sleep with Kang.



One of the Kelvin Universe comics had an alternate take on "Return of the Archons".

I LOVE the interactions between fem Kirk and Spock, especially the hand holding when Spock takes Kirk from the quarters he's being held in. I have no idea if the physicality between them was directed to them or if the actors took the initiative, or if anyone really thought out the implications of it all. It's not as if Kirk and Spock were ever seen holding hands before.
This is done just after they mind melded and I always thought the scene had a post coital vibe to it.
I am a fan of the works of Marshack and Culbreath. It's pulpy and a little trashy, and I'm convinced their novels had deleted scenes of slash actually written, but I am an unapologetic slash fan. For a long time there was little to no gay sci fi outside of slash.

 

[Markonian]

One of the Kelvin Universe comics had an alternate take on "Return of the Archons".

^ Yup. Beta III in the comics was not just visited by the Archon, but also colonised the planet. Starfleet Doctor Landru added his flavour to the computer-controlled Betan society. Whereas in the novels, the Landru computer had been in place unchanged for 6k years.

 

[Christopher]

Reposting what I just wrote in the "JJ-Trek/ IDW Continuity and Discontinuities" thread:

Simon Pegg has just dropped a continuity bombshell of sorts:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/simon-pegg-has-a-canonical-explanation-for-why-sulu-is-1783511576

Sure, we experience time as a contiguous series of cascading events but perception and reality aren’t always the same thing. Spock’s incursion from the Prime Universe created a multidimensional reality shift. The rift in space/time created an entirely new reality in all directions, top to bottom, from the Big Bang to the end of everything. As such this reality was, is and always will be subtly different from the Prime Universe. I don’t believe for one second that Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t have loved the idea of an alternate reality (Mirror, Mirror anyone?).

This means, and this is absolutely key, the Kelvin universe can evolve and change in ways that don’t necessarily have to follow the Prime Universe at any point in history, before or after the events of Star Trek ‘09, it can mutate and subvert, it is a playground for the new and the progressive...

This may not make a lot of physical sense, but from a creative standpoint, I understand it -- he's saying they decided it was too creatively limiting if they couldn't change things before 2233. (Although he seems to be under the odd impression that Sulu was born before the Kelvin incident, which would make him older than Kirk.) So assuming this is the official policy in the movies now, that pretty much brings them into line with the comics' approach -- well, almost. Johnson's assumption is that the Kelvinverse just happened to be an alternate all along, while Pegg's saying it was created by Nero's incursion but that the changes propagated backward as well as forward. So the cause is different, but the effect is the same: There's no longer any limit on how much the Kelvin Timeline can diverge from the Prime Timeline.

And, you know, after thinking about that for a bit, I can actually buy it. After all, it's always bugged me that the same red-matter wormhole that dumped Nero in 2233 somehow also dumped Spock Prime in 2258. But if the wormhole exit was "unstuck in time," it could've popped up at any number of places and times in the past, and its gravity or energy could've affected cosmic events in subtle ways throughout history. Also, there is such a thing in quantum theory as retrocausality, the possibility that some quantum effects could propagate backward in time, so that things in the past could be caused by events in the future.

 

[Greg Cox]

That literally makes no sense to me. By that line of thinking, the Arrowverse shows on TV aren't DC.

Yeah, if the THE FLASH isn't a continuation of the nineties TV version, how can it really be THE FLASH? And what about those new PLANET OF THE APES movies . . . if they're a "pure reboot," why do they even need to be about a planet of apes?

As Christopher already noted, concept is not the same as continuity. A STAR TREK show is still STAR TREK even if it has its own continuity.

 

[Kor]

Oh, please. I'm not going to the cinema to see some random sci-fi a la Firefly and Stargate. I want to see a ship with twin nacelles, Vulcans, white gleaming Starfleet vessels, phasers and torps with that inimical sound. Not the Tuturian-Human Alliance US navy vs the Space-Cat empire.

If Bad Robot had made some generic new space opera in 2009 instead of Abrams' Star Trek, I probably would have been only vaguely interested.

Kor

 

[Greg Cox]

If Bad Robot had made some generic new space opera in 2009 instead of Abrams' Star Trek, I probably would have been only vaguely interested.

Kor

Exactly. And if the new GODZILLA movie had been about a giant radioactive lizard named NUKESAURUS it wouldn't have been the same.

I belabor this point not to pile on, but only because I've seen this argument before, in other contexts, and it never holds up. "But why call it SPACE VIXENS if it's not the original SPACE VIXENS?"

Because, um, this is a new version of SPACE VIXENS that's recognizably the same idea?

Another consideration: If you make a new series that's pretty much STAR TREK in all but name and continuity, you leave yourself open to being accused of ripping off STAR TREK!