ST XI ships
- Thread starter Timo
- Start date
Although judging from the news about the movie, it now looks as though Sulu started out at the helm and only took a brief side trip into astrophysics. Maybe he was filling in for someone else. And Piper was filling in for McCoy, and Alden was filling in for Uhura, and Mitchell and a whole string of navigators were filling in for Chekov...
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
I submit that the position of helm officer is substantially less demanding than that of chief engineer, which would have left Sulu sufficient spare time to dabble in astrophysics at the professional level before moving on to exobotany. After all, the helmsman only requires good reflexes and hand-eye coordination (while leaving the icky mathematical stuff to the navigator), while the chief engineer is required to have an encyclopedic grasp of starship systems considering he is invariably obliged to pull unorthodox repair procedures out of his ass in emergencies.
TGT
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Which might indeed happen, much the way TGT describes it, and much the way Vonda McIntyre spins the yarn in Enterprise: The First Adventure. While in TNG era, helm duties are just a springboard for those destined to command, in the TOS era the art might be more demanding, a career unto itself, and would call for the sort of astrogation competence where a PhD or MSc in astrophysics would help.
Many novels also make enjoyable if not quite convincing cases of a McCoy-Piper-McCoy succession, if not in the CMO position of the Enterprise, then at least in the parade of sawbones that Kirk worked with.
However, agreed that it would take some doing to make a case for Chekov's or Uhura's triumphant "return" to their "old" jobs...
Timo Saloniemi
Not necessarily. There were a few episodes where Palmer or Angela Martine was sitting in for Uhura without explanation. Alden could've been just another temporary fill-in. And there was a swath of 9 consecutive second-season episodes ("Trouble with Tribbles" through "By Any Other Name") where Sulu was absent from the helm (due to Takei filming The Green Berets). Maybe Sulu was off the ship during that time, or maybe he'd taken a temporary transfer to another department. Either way, it's precedent for an officer being away from a position for a while and then returning to it. (Heck, there's precedent for that with Chekov himself. He was security chief in the first three movies, but was back at navigation thereafter.)
Much to Walter Koenig's consternation...
Even though the ship's rim may be thicker than 2 decks, it doesn't really look like this saucer has more decks total.
--Bridge: 1
--Upper bubble thing (how's that for technical jargon?): 2 decks
--Upper saucer: 2 decks
--Rim: 3 decks
--Say the lower saucer is about the same as the top: 3 decks
That's still 11 decks. But each deck will be much bigger. No problems cramming the bridge into this monster, baby.
ETA:
Say the actual rim and diameter are in about the same proportion to the original ENT. Then the ship's saucer would be 3/2 (150%) as big as the original ENT saucer. The top and bottom structures are then more flattened looking, since they are wider but not thicker. (They have about the same number of decks as the original ENT saucer.)
--Bridge: 1
--Upper bubble thing (how's that for technical jargon?): 2 decks
--Upper saucer: 2 decks
--Rim: 3 decks
--Say the lower saucer is about the same as the top: 3 decks
That's still 11 decks. But each deck will be much bigger. No problems cramming the bridge into this monster, baby.
ETA:
Say the actual rim and diameter are in about the same proportion to the original ENT. Then the ship's saucer would be 3/2 (150%) as big as the original ENT saucer. The top and bottom structures are then more flattened looking, since they are wider but not thicker. (They have about the same number of decks as the original ENT saucer.)
So what about the size of the Kelvin? One deck for bridge, one for its pedestal, perhaps just one for the very flat saucer, perhaps two. The ship might be significantly smaller than a Saladin. Or then just contoured slightly differently, with fairly tall decks - which in turn might jibe with the above interpretation of the enlarged NCC-1701 saucer as still an eleven-decker.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Although it might be attributable to hyperbole, Sulu tells Chuckey Evans that it would take over 20 years of training to be able to pilot the helm of a starship in Blish's adaptation of CHARLIE X.
Don't know if that was taken from an early script (it has been decades since I read it, but I'm pretty sure it was called CHARLIE'S LAW instead of CHARLIE X) or was just Blish embellishing (not likely since the first adaptations are pretty thin), but I doubt Sulu began training for the helm in 2nd Grade, unless of course he was in a special vocational program.
Perhaps it is too much speculation, but some of what has been released does not seem to be highly consistant with TOS+movies canon.
Oh. you noticed that?
Rumors, yes, but when Harry Knowles pens an article saying J.J. Abrams himself sat him down in the editing room and showed him 7 minutes or so of footage, its pretty damn reliable.
I agree that such a thing would be preposterous, but we don't know quite what they're doing with this movie, yet. I find it highly unlikely they'll be showing us some scenes right out of the academy, and others 10 or 12 years later during the TOS 5-year mission. Doesn't make sense, either.
Don't count on it.
Might be something like that, but this all exists hundreds of years in the future with a different kind of military and a different kind of society. Who knows? Might account for McCoy's rank, though.
We have few, if any, real details on plot. So far the "violations" are purely cosmetic, and questionable at that when you consider that nothing in this era has ever appeared on screen before. Why couldn't the Kelvin be from an older generation of ships than the Enterprise? Because it has grid lines and the E didn't get them til TMP? Lame.
This, I guess, is something we just have to interpret differently from now on.
"Obsession" establishes that Garrovick was Kirk's CO from the day he left Academy. Yet other episodes such as "Where No Man" establish that Kirk didn't exactly leave the Academy when graduating, but rather stayed as an instructor till reaching Lieutenant rank. So basically this allows Kirk to have other commanding officers before Garrovick, including Pike on the Enterprise and some other bloke or broad on the Republic.
I think the bigger problem comes from the idea that Kirk would have met Pike during the events of the movie. Wording in "The Menagerie" suggests that Kirk had not met Pike before the latter's graduation to Fleet Captain, nor after that event. So if Pike's promotion happens before or during the movie, Kirk should not meet him ever again - and if it happens after the movie, canon is violated, sort of.
Timo Saloniemi
What? We know that we'll be seeing scenes of Kirk and Spock as young children, so there's no question that the film spans decades. If it covers them from childhood to Academy, why is it remotely unlikely that they'd cover a span of a decade or more from Academy to pre-TOS?
There's also the fact that Bruce Greenwood, the actor playing Captain Pike, is 52 years old. That's 14 years older than Jeffrey Hunter was in "The Cage." That, along with the lack of mention of Number One, Boyce, Tyler, etc. in the cast, strongly suggests that the Pike scenes will take place a decade or so after "The Cage," i.e. in the early 2260s.
We're bound to get the same kind of reactions Enterprise got, with fans getting confused about what's actually canonical and what's just conventional wisdom from offscreen sources. Like ENT, the movie is bound to contradict a lot of things that fans wrongly believe are canonical, even if it remains entirely consistent with the actual letter of canon.
Saavik was a lieutenant in TWOK even though she was still in the Academy. Nog earned ensign's and then lieutenant's rank and he never even finished the Academy. So there's canonical precedent for the idea that Kirk could've been a lieutenant while still attending the Academy.
But there is no reason to believe Saavik or Nog would not have graduated from the Academy, despite still lingering about. That's a distinction that should be made, also in the case of Kirk, lest people be left in the belief that Academy students can attain commission before graduating.
I mean, a fictional futuristic organization could give commissions to undergraduates. But a fictional futuristic organization based on a distinct real-world model should not do that. And nothing in aired Trek so far indicates that this would happen - so let's hope STXI won't change that.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, a fictional futuristic organization could give commissions to undergraduates. But a fictional futuristic organization based on a distinct real-world model should not do that. And nothing in aired Trek so far indicates that this would happen - so let's hope STXI won't change that.
Timo Saloniemi
We'll see. You might be right, but I don't think that's what they're doing here.
I read but cannot site a link, that there will be various time periods covered, from Kirk and Spock as children until at least around TWOK.
Saavik was wearing the red undershirt of a cadet in TWOK, though she'd switched to command white in TSFS. She was also taking the Kobayashi Maru simulation, a training exercise for cadets, for what was clearly her first time.
As for Nog, he entered the Academy in 2372, and was assigned to DS9 for sophomore-year field training in 2373. He was then given a field commission to ensign in 2374 and promoted to lieutenant at the end of 2375 -- after technically having less than two years' worth of actual Academy training. He never graduated. Technically he never even attended for a third or fourth year, since the war got in the way.
Except for everything I just mentioned above. And nobody ever claimed that Starfleet was "based on a distinct real-world model." That's an unwise assumption to make.
Around TWOK? I doubt that very much, given that the actors are in their 20s-30s, or late teens in Anton Yelchin's case. You're probably misremembering a comment from the filmmakers about how TWOK was a major inspiration for them.
JJ & Co. have got to dump this secrecy crap and start some serious tapdancing if they want to have anything resembling a decent opening weekend. Too many fans have been pushed into the, at best, "wait and see" area to, at worst, "no way in hell" position. Either one means that fans that otherwise would be there opening night are gonna choose to wait a week or so until the words gets out as to whether or not this is a reboot or a botched origin story or an alternate timeline that gets negated by a big fat reset button at the end.
We're fans. We are, by nature, NOT the wait-and-see sort. The public will be attracted by the blockbuster spectacle. All will be as it should opening weekend. The only X factor is if J.J. and crew have managed to make a really good movie that'll keep people coming. From what we've heard, everyone who's seen the movie has showered it with praise.
