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I also have fallen into focusing more of my time on the TOS years, even though I’m not as interested in that series as I am in others. It’s just so much more interesting a period because all the chronological details are more flexible and open to interpretation than they become in the 24th century. Especially when you start adding in the books and comics and their varrying and contradictory information.
Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?
I do include them in my headcanon, in part because it always seemed to me like some of the Okudachron's quirks (already discussed extensively in this thread) were meant to make allowances for (some, pre-existing) tie-ins and fanon--since they don't make much sense otherwise. The "star dates equal months and days" thing used to frontload such a big stretch of the FYM to before the series is an(other) example of this that comes to mind.
At any rate, I allowed a generous (but vague) stretch of time between movies because it conveniently allowed for the comics, the William Rotsler stories, and anything else which might be placed there while keeping the Okudachron's dates for each movie. As such, I had TWOK in a vague "Early 2285" slot (without worrying about the exact date for Kirk's birthday, but late enough for events set before the movie but still dated as 2285), the first stretch of comics spread over the rest of the year with TSFS at the tail end of 2285, and the Excelsior comics spread out over the first nine months of 2286. TVH starts "in the third month" of being on Vulcan, allowing for it to be (say) just over two months, giving some wiggle room for the length of that movie to incorporate some short gap at the end.
I never envisioned there being a huge gap between TVH and TFF, but this still allowed the latter to occur in 2287 anyway. To allow for the 1701-A comics in the first DC run, I found a gap between the second run's issues set right after TFF and the ones leading to Sulu's departure and stuck them there (amused at how this created a second "Arex and M'Ress Problem" similar to the one for TAS, but not considering that a dealbreaker). I've become more open to a larger chronological gap, but TFF gets to take place in 2287 either way.
^ And there is that one line of Admiral Kirk's in the film that kinda seems to fly in the face of Greg's retcon ("There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help him"), but I simply squint sideways at it and disregard it as an impromptu, in-the-moment ballpark-rounding by Kirk, in service of harmony of continuity (even though we'd all likely realistically round it upwards, not downwards, to "twenty years").
I will say that I was/am one of the people who put a lot of weight on the "fifteen years" statements, which (in combination with my accepting the Okudachron's date for ST II-VI) settled my placements for TOS. (We'll discount for a moment the later canonical details which make such placements all but impossible.) I placed "Space Seed" in 2270, with the FYM as a whole from 2269-2274. WNMHGB was in 2269, still within (or shortly before) the FYM. Kirk turns 34 in 2271, but becomes captain at 29 (per Enterprise: The First Adventure) in 2266 with McCoy as CMO, which still allows "for the past twenty-seven years" to be true with a brief gap for Piper to be onboard (per Strangers from the Sky). This also allows Kirk and McCoy to be ten years apart in age and for McCoy to be in his forties throughout TOS, which also appeals to me. I placed Spock's birth in 2220, since he's seven years older than McCoy in The Final Reflection.
For myself, probably the most egregious, facepalm-worthy moment in the Okudachron that I can think of right off the top of my head is Okuda's insistence upon taking the rough dating of the S.S. Valiant launch (from "Where No Man Has Gone Before") as holy writ, and literally placing it in 2065, a mere two years after the Vulcan first contact, at a time when the Earth is still radioactively sizzling from nukes and still in a state of barbarism that would persist in some regions until at least 2079. (Maybe a less-devastated country funded and developed the expedition, like Australia, but still.)
What the hell is with Okuda's ongoing refusal to even consider the notion that there probably exists a few years' worth of leeway on either side of any centuries' old onscreen date, and that even most folks in the real world will most likely just say, "200 years ago" instead of "193 years ago" or "203 years ago" or "207 years ago" (for instance) in the patter of casual conversation?
I remember saying this in a different thread, but the Valiant is a uniquely problematic outlier--even if you make its launch fifty years later, that still doesn't track particularly well with what we've since learned about Earth's spaceflight development.
The Okudachron does rely on some quixotic assumptions and rules of thumb. (Things like "TOS was exactly 300 years forward from broadcast" and "TNG's stardates correlate exactly with calendar years" don't make much sense either, for instance.) However, I'll give the Okudas credit for this: they laid their assumptions out very clearly in the book, so at least there was no mystery how they arrived at their dates.
Every methodology is going to have its imperfections, but (as already discussed here) taking references to spans of times as exact is helpful in preventing placements from becoming completely arbitrary--and, as I've learned from creating timelines for franchises with far fewer specific references (the entire run of Firefly only mentions one calendar date, for instance), anything that provides stability is absolutely necessary to make any sort of coherent chronology possible.
I remember saying this in a different thread, but the Valiant is a uniquely problematic outlier--even if you make its launch fifty years later, that still doesn't track particularly well with what we've since learned about Earth's spaceflight development.
Even aside from the Chronology, the idea of the Valiant makes little sense in the context of what's been established since. If it was an early, pre-NX, pre-Franklin warp ship, only capable of fractional velocities over warp 1, then it could never have made it to the edge of the galaxy nearly 200 years ago. Even if we assume it was the nearest face of the galactic disk, maybe 600-1000 light years from Earth, it could barely have gotten there before the Enterprise did. True, there was a mention of some kind of space storm sweeping them far out toward the edge, but it didn't seem like it was meant to be that great a distance.
And while we're at it, how is there already a lithium-cracking station within impulse range of the edge of the galaxy if no Earth ship has ever been there before???
...I'm going with the original intent of the creators of TOS and having McCoy born in 2220, contemporary with Scotty, the way the actors were in life. I also feel that the relationship between Kirk & McCoy works much better if McCoy is 10-15 years older than Kirk.
...
Believe me, I do my best to forget that. The "137" age given in EAF was an arbitrary number, basically used to establish that McCoy was really old. I don't see why that number has to be carved in stone when Data's comment that he's "Starfleet Class of '78" from that same episode is so casually and commonly discounted. Let's just say that Data's programming was glitching that day.
If they'd happen to say that McCoy was 147 instead, it would've worked a lot better.
Fair enough. We're just working from some different assumptions here; I have no problem accepting that McCoy was in his early 40s during TOS rather than his late 40s. (Is there really any indication that the show's creators intended otherwise?) I also prefer to sustain the validity of on-screen chronological references, unless I have some strong reason they Just Can't Work, so I stick with the "137."
(I have long been intrigued by Data's "class of '78" remark in that same episode, though. It relates to my curiosity upthread about the overall dating of TNG. My supposition — purely speculative of course — is that the whole reason the "78 year gap" from TOS was originally settled on during TNG's planning stages was that they specifically wanted the show to be in the 24th century, and somebody was working from the Goldsteins' Spaceflight Chronology, then current, which placed the events of TWOK and TSFS in 2222... meaning that adding 78 years would put the launch of the Enterprise-D precisely in 2400. In that context, Data's graduation in 2278 would fit his backstory perfectly. But then the thinking changed before the end of the season, and we got the "2364" remark in "Neutral Zone"... so while the timespan between shows had been established and was kept, the chronological scaffolding that had supported it was kicked away and all prior events wound up re-dated!...)
The "18 years" reference in JTB and "The Enterprise Incident" I find problematic, as it makes Spock's Starfleet career improbably short, and practically requires that he spend all of it on the Enterprise.
What's improbable about it? The pieces fit together. He was a young officer under Pike 13 years before "Menagerie," hence 14 years before "Journey to Babel"... and adding four years to that gives the "eighteen years" since he left for the Academy and Sarek stopped speaking with him. It would be perfectly reasonable to me that he could've spent his whole career on the Ent, honestly... but to make room for some earlier assignment, it's easy to assume that he finished the Academy curriculum in just two or three years (being Vulcan and all). (Indeed the 18 years he's been "an officer" as of "Enterprise Incident" another year later would seem to confirm it, or at least confirm a promotion to Ensign while still a student.) The visit home four years before JTB was obviously to see Amanda, and if it also involved an attempted reconciliation with Sarek, that attempt must have failed; otherwise Amanda wouldn't have referred to the 18 years as an unbroken span.
I never liked the "Kirk was so good he became an ensign at the Academy!" thing, as it's more of the "Wunderkind Kirk" stuff I try to avoid. To me it makes much more sense for him to become an ensign at graduation, like most cadets and midshipmen.
It does seem a bit peculiar, but then "peculiar" seems actually to be kind of par-for-the-course with Starfleet's handling of ranks. Kirk wouldn't be the only example (and that's part of what makes me okay with it). Hell, Saavik was a lieutenant while still at the Academy in TWOK, with no explanation offered.
(At least he didn't get promoted straight from cadet to captain before graduation! )
Love your reasoning about Data’s graduation date being derived from the Spaceflight Chronology, @lawman. Does that 22 year gap align with how long Data’s Starfleet career had lasted before TNG was later portrayed?
Pretty much. I remember from back in the day that he was said to have been activated 26 years before TNG S1; damned if I can recall the original source (a leaked show bible, maybe?), but it was made canonical in the episode "Datalore." That's now held to have been in 2338, though, per the personnel file shown in "Conundrum." His Academy tenure was ultimately tweaked a bit relative to his activation, so it's now 2341-45.
ETA: for what it's worth, here's the final-draft TNG S1 Writer's Bible (dated March 23, 1987), by GR and (uncredited) David Gerrold, which opens by saying (emph. added), "Star Trek: The Next Generation is dated near the beginning of the 24th century. 78 years have passed since the time of Kirk and Spock."
I also have fallen into focusing more of my time on the TOS years, even though I’m not as interested in that series as I am in others. It’s just so much more interesting a period because all the chronological details are more flexible and open to interpretation than they become in the 24th century. Especially when you start adding in the books and comics and their varrying and contradictory information.
Yeah, that's what cool about doing a TOS-era chronology (or a DC chronology as opposed to a Marvel one, or a Sherlock Holmes chronology, with all the contradictions there). It's a fun challenge and a cool exercise in logic & creativity.
I really need to track those books down and read them someday. I have Rotsler's Star Trek II Biographies (which was one of the sources Mike W. Barr was using when he was writing the DC Comics version in the early 80s... Notice that he uses Starfleet Grand Admiral Stephen Turner from the book), and I've read his piece about writing the books in The Best of Trek, but I've never seen a copy of his ST short stories books out in the wild. He also wrote a Blackhawk novel around the same time that Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle had revived the comic book for DC.
FYI, Barr was also working from Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance when writing the DC comic, which is why he perpetuated a couple of that book's errors... Like Dr. Boyce's first name being listed as "Joe" instead of "Phillip."
Every methodology is going to have its imperfections, but (as already discussed here) taking references to spans of times as exact is helpful in preventing placements from becoming completely arbitrary--and, as I've learned from creating timelines for franchises with far fewer specific references (the entire run of Firefly only mentions one calendar date, for instance), anything that provides stability is absolutely necessary to make any sort of coherent chronology possible.
And while we're at it, how is there already a lithium-cracking station within impulse range of the edge of the galaxy if no Earth ship has ever been there before???
I read a fan theory somewhere that "Class of 78" meant that there were only 78 students in Data's graduating class for some reason. Like, the rest all died in some great calamity and the class became known by that name for some reason. No idea where I read that, though. It's certainly a creative idea!
...And this is where I start to disagree. Spock leaving for the Academy in 2250 means that there's basically no room for him to ever serve on a ship before the Enterprise, and I find the more varied service record that D.C. Fontana gave Spock in Vulcan's Glory to be much more plausible. And since she's the same person who wrote JTB in the first place, I'm good with the retcon.
(Indeed the 18 years he's been "an officer" as of "Enterprise Incident" another year later would seem to confirm it, or at least confirm a promotion to Ensign while still a student.)
...And this is where it really breaks down for me. Obviously when they were writing/revising the TOS Writer's Guide, they just stuck with the "Spock has been in Starfleet for 18 years" bit and never bothered to update it from season to season. I fudge that slightly by saying that Spock was still undercover when he told the Romulan Commander that, and he was lying about lots of stuff at the time. Why bother giving an enemy commander accurate information about your service record?
The visit home four years before JTB was obviously to see Amanda, and if it also involved an attempted reconciliation with Sarek, that attempt must have failed; otherwise Amanda wouldn't have referred to the 18 years as an unbroken span.
Yeah. In my timeline it's definitely a failed attempt. I figure that Spock and Sarek didn't speak for 18 years (2246-2264), they made an effort for Amanda's sake in 2264 while Spock was on leave, it obviously didn't work, and then Spock and Sarek went right back to the silent treatment for another 4 years until JTB. As Kirk said in that episode, they're both stubborn.
Or, if you dislike that, you could interpret the 18 year-estrangement as starting as soon as Spock graduated the Academy around 2249-50. That could work. Like, they're just barely speaking to each other while Spock is undergoing his studies, with Sarek offering logical counterarguments against Starfleet whenever Spock is home on leave, but as soon as Spock graduates & ships out... Finito.
But basically, I liked the service record that Fontana created for Spock in VG, and the only real way to incorporate it into my timeline was to work backwards from when Spock came aboard the Enterprise in Dec. 2253. Something had to give, and in this case, it was the "18 years" figure. That's one of the few times I gave info from a novel priority over info from the show. If the novel in question hadn't been written by one of the show's writers (and the person who established a great deal of Spock's backstory), I probably wouldn't have gone to the effort. YMMV.
That's where my "Starfleet Command School" conjecture also comes in handy. Saavik, like Kirk before her, was in Starfleet Command School when she was taking the Kobayashi Maru test. So if you're a Lieutenant and you want to make Lt. Commander with an eye towards making Captain someday, you put in another year or two towards Command studies, either right after your four years at the Academy or after you put in a few years of service on a starship or starbase.
This can also solve another couple of chronological conundrums:
"Bread and Circuses" - R.M. Merik washing out of the Academy in his fifth year when he failed the psycho-simulator test? The fifth year was a Command School year.
"Star Trek VI" - Lt. Valeris being "The first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at the Academy"? That doesn't make much sense considering that Vulcans are supposed to be the intellectual giants of the Federation. But if she was the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at Command School, it suddenly makes a lot more sense. Craving command isn't an especially Vulcan trait, after all.
...Starfleet Command School!Your one-stop shopping for solving TOS-era chronology problems! Ask for it by name!
You're right. I stand corrected. I made my post this morning less than an hour after waking up, and my math skills weren't 100% awake yet.
So yeah, that still tracks with McCoy meeting Kirk around 2254 or 2255. In my mind, Kirk and McCoy's first meeting was something similar to the shuttlecraft encounter we saw in ST09, just because I love that scene so much. And it's cool to think that despite the divergences between the Prime and Kelvin timelines, certain things still happened the same way.
But hey, I also like the first meeting Kirk and McCoy had in The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, where they first bonded over the fact that
they both had children that the mothers weren't allowing them to see.
I think that was a really cool extrapolation on author David A. Goodman's part (as was his origin of McCoy's "Bones" nickname.) The main reason I didn't go with that on my timeline is that it depends on Kirk being aware
that he's David's father during TOS,
and we never see any indication of that. So I figure that Kirk first found out sometime between TOS and TMP. I think one of the novels goes into that, but I'm forgetting which one right now. (The Better Man? Faces of Fire? One of those, I think.)
I generally dislike the notion of Kirk & Spock meeting as anything more than passing acquaintances before Kirk assumes command of the Enterprise, though. It takes too much of the drama away from those early episodes for me if we're not seeing the real beginning of Kirk & Spock's friendship. One of the things I like about my timeline is that Kirk & Spock just missed each other at the Academy (with Spock going from 2246-2249 and Kirk going from 2250-2254). This also conforms to a Canonical fact we're given in "Patterns of Force" - Kirk studied under John Gill directly while Spock only studied from the curriculum that Gill had prepared. So at the very least, Kirk & Spock weren't in the same history class.
But I did think that the ST09 version of Spock being the designer of the Kobayashi Maru test who called Kirk out on his cheating was an exceptionally clever way to have them meet. So that's why Spock never took the test!
...basically, I liked the service record that Fontana created for Spock in VG, and the only real way to incorporate it into my timeline was to work backwards from when Spock came aboard the Enterprise in Dec. 2253. Something had to give, and in this case, it was the "18 years" figure. That's one of the few times I gave info from a novel priority over info from the show. If the novel in question hadn't been written by one of the show's writers (and the person who established a great deal of Spock's backstory), I probably wouldn't have gone to the effort. YMMV.
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I didn't like the book that much, so it doesn't motivate me to violate my usual rule of thumb (i.e., canonical evidence comes first whenever possible).
That's where my "Starfleet Command School" conjecture also comes in handy. Saavik, like Kirk before her, was in Starfleet Command School when she was taking the Kobayashi Maru test. So if you're a Lieutenant and you want to make Lt. Commander with an eye towards making Captain someday, you put in another year or two towards Command studies, either right after your four years at the Academy or after you put in a few years of service on a starship or starbase.
This can also solve another couple of chronological conundrums:
"Bread and Circuses" - R.M. Merik washing out of the Academy in his fifth year when he failed the psycho-simulator test? The fifth year was a Command School year.
... ...Starfleet Command School!Your one-stop shopping for solving TOS-era chronology problems! Ask for it by name!
You know, the more I think about it, the more I really like this concept! It's pure headcanon, but it's the best kind — it makes perfect logical sense of canonical conundrums without contradicting anything.
So yeah, that still tracks with McCoy meeting Kirk around 2254 or 2255. In my mind, Kirk and McCoy's first meeting was something similar to the shuttlecraft encounter we saw in ST09, just because I love that scene so much.
Well, at least it tracks with them knowing each other around then, or with McCoy knowing Kirk's personal history. FWIW, I absolutely fucking loathe that scene in ST09, though, so I have no desire to retain anything like it.
But hey, I also like the first meeting Kirk and McCoy had in The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, where they first bonded...
Goodman did have some nice moments in that book. Taken as a whole, though, I just can't think of it as something worth including in my headcanon. (Among other reasons, it's at odds with a lot of the novels.)
...The main reason I didn't go with that on my timeline is that it depends on Kirk being aware
Hmm. I wouldn't have any problem with that; indeed I'd be surprised if it were otherwise. I'm pretty sure I've read a story or two somewhere establishing that he knew.
I generally dislike the notion of Kirk & Spock meeting as anything more than passing acquaintances before Kirk assumes command of the Enterprise, though. It takes too much of the drama away from those early episodes for me if we're not seeing the real beginning of Kirk & Spock's friendship.
On this we definitely agree. I think most authors do as well, as while they've briefly crossed paths at earlier dates in various novels, they never bonded in any of them. At the beginning of TOS, it's pretty clear that Kirk is closer to McCoy than to Spock; it's interesting seeing that change.
But I did think that the ST09 version of Spock being the designer of the Kobayashi Maru test who called Kirk out on his cheating was an exceptionally clever way to have them meet. So that's why Spock never took the test!
Meh, I really don't like that bit either. (Smacks too much of "small universe syndrome," IMHO.) But then, there's so much that I don't like about that movie that it's pretty safe to say the same about almost every scene...
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I didn't like the book that much, so it doesn't motivate me to violate my usual rule of thumb (i.e., canonical evidence comes first whenever possible).
You know, the more I think about it, the more I really like this concept! It's pure headcanon, but it's the best kind — it makes perfect logical sense of canonical conundrums without contradicting anything.
Thanks very much! A high compliment coming from you!
BTW, I just remembered that I started a thread here on the BBS floating my Starfleet Command School idea when I first came up with it. You might enjoy reading it, as I go into more of my reasoning there.
Yeah, they certainly could've met even earlier than that.
When I met John Byrne at ST Mission NY in Sept. 2016, one of the things I asked him about was why he chose to say in New Visions that McCoy hadn't met Kirk until McCoy was assigned to the Enterprise. I cited McCoy's "Bailey reminds you of yourself, 11 years ago" line from "The Corbomite Maneuver" as evidence for my POV. Byrne, of course, had thought this through himself, and he came back at me with McCoy's "Is that how you get the girls to like you? By bribing them?" line from "The Man Trap" as evidence that Kirk & McCoy were still getting to know each other at that point. I always took that line as friendly joking between two old friends, but I can see Byrne's POV now.
It was fun talking Trek with him for a bit, anyway.
How come? The only thing I really dislike about it is the contrived & rather clunky "All she left me with is my bones" line. Which... The ship's doctor is nicknamed "Sawbones," man!
Goodman did have some nice moments in that book. Taken as a whole, though, I just can't think of it as something worth including in my headcanon. (Among other reasons, it's at odds with a lot of the novels.)
See, that's the big difference between my approach and yours. If I see a bit or an idea that I like, I'm fine with just cherry-picking it and using it in insolation in my timeline. I really liked Goodman's idea of Kirk & Mitchell being involved in the shuttlepod accident described in TNG's "The First Duty," so I made that a part of my headcanon as soon as I read it. Other stuff, like his version of Kirk & McCoy's first meeting, contradicted ideas I had about the characters & their histories, so I didn't use those concepts. (It can be confusing, I know.)
Your more comprehensive approach, like what you did in your DCU Timeline, I find impressive as hell, but for me, I'd have to include too much stuff that I actively dislike in my timeline. I'm not really going to bend over backwards to accommodate stuff I find less than decent. (If you look carefully at my Trek Timeline on Sutori.com, you'll notice that I never mention anything about Sybok being Spock's brother. I just say that a renegade Vulcan by that name hijacked the Enterprise in 2287 and, since Sybok was never mentioned before or after TFF, it really doesn't affect anything else at all.)
Hmm. I wouldn't have any problem with that; indeed I'd be surprised if it were otherwise. I'm pretty sure I've read a story or two somewhere establishing that he knew.
I've read it both ways in different places. Personally, I like it much better if Kirk doesn't know about David in the TOS era. It makes him less of a deadbeat dad.
On this we definitely agree. I think most authors do as well, as while they've briefly crossed paths at earlier dates in various novels, they never bonded in any of them. At the beginning of TOS, it's pretty clear that Kirk is closer to McCoy than to Spock; it's interesting seeing that change.
Meh, I really don't like that bit either. (Smacks too much of "small universe syndrome," IMHO.) But then, there's so much that I don't like about that movie that it's pretty safe to say the same about almost every scene...
Yeah, the "small universe syndrome" is a definite trap if you try to incorporate too many neat bits and connections between characters. Hopefully I avoid that.
For me, the ST09 movie is a mixed bag. Some ideas in it I really like, other stuff in it I hate. But overall, I enjoyed it enough to buy on DVD.
I forgot to reply to this comment before. The idea of Spock being older than he appears, while a very neat idea, is pretty much blown to smithereens by the appearance of his mother Amanda in "Journey to Babel." Jane Wyatt's age pretty much set in stone that Spock is still in his 30s during TOS. If Amanda had been dead by the time of JTB, I'd certainly find it easier to believe that Spock is seven years older than McCoy.
...See, that's the big difference between my approach and yours. If I see a bit or an idea that I like, I'm fine with just cherry-picking it using it in insolation in my timeline. I really liked Goodman's idea of Kirk & Mitchell being involved in the shuttlepod accident described in TNG's "The First Duty," so I made that a part of my headcanon as soon as I read it. Other stuff, like his version of Kirk & McCoy's first meeting, contradicted ideas I had about the characters & their histories, so I didn't use those concepts. (It can be confusing, I know.)
Your more comprehensive approach, like what you did in your DCU Timeline, I find impressive as hell, but for me, I'd have to include too much stuff that I actively dislike in my timeline. I'm not really going to bend over backwards to accommodate stuff I find less than decent. (If you look carefully at my Trek Timeline on Sutori.com, you'll notice that I never mention anything about Sybok being Spock's brother. I just say that a renegade Vulcan by that name hijacked the Enterprise in 2287 and, since Sybok was never mentioned before or after TFF, it really doesn't affect anything else at all.)
In all honesty, I do much the same thing, at least when it comes to the licensed fiction. As Christopher Bennett is always quick to point out, there's a lot in many of the novels (more in the older ones) that contradicts either later-established canon or other novels. If I like one as a whole, though, I'll incorporate it, even if that means eliding certain details for the sake of making it dovetail with the larger continuity.
(For example, take Michael Jan Friedman's My Brother's Keeper trilogy, about Kirk's history with Gary Mitchell. It includes Kirk's teaching as a lieutenant at the Academy from the very moment the two met, as students — with a couple of years between them, despire Kirk having known Gary for "fifteen years" in "WNM" — and places the Ben Finney incident on the Republic even earlier than that, near the very beginning of Kirk's Academy career — despite Kirk recalling it as "some years later" in his testimony in "Court Martial." I can't and don't take these books' interpretation of canon at face value... but the additional material they add is pretty good, and I want to have it in there.
By way of contrast, the Autobiography just didn't make much of an impression on me. It had a few nice moments (e.g., Scotty's encouragement to Kirk on his first assignment), but mostly it just seemed like a thin thread of narrative stitching together familiar incidents from canon. It fleshed them out a bit, but didn't really add anything of interest beyond them. There's no central story there for me to hold on to, and I'm not going to cherry-pick specific incidents and leave the rest.)
How come? The only thing I really dislike about it is the contrived & rather clunky "All she left me with is my bones" line. Which... The ship's doctor is nicknamed "Sawbones," man!
Let's see... what did I dislike about that scene? The line you mention was the worst of it, yes, a painfully contrived explanation for something that never required one. But beyond that? The bizarre notion that one can just up and enlist in Starfleet Academy, rather than applying to be accepted as a cadet (as apparently everyone else on that shuttle, in uniform, had already done). The slapstick way Kirk bumps his head when boarding the shuttle. McCoy's over-the-top agitated behavior when boarding and his scuffle with the shuttle attendant, which should really have gotten him removed before takeoff. His overblown fears, especially his scientific illiteracy about the effects of decompression. The implication that he, even more than Kirk, is joining Starfleet as a last resort, rather than out of any ideals or aspirations. The way Kirk immediately warms up to this apparently unhinged guy. Basically, the whole scene (like much of the movie) just has an air of artificiality, and does not represent the way real people would behave. (I did like Karl Urban as McCoy overall... IMHO he was one of the highlights of the movie. In this scene, however, he was at the mercy of the terrible writing.)
I forgot to reply to this comment before. The idea of Spock being older than he appears, while a very neat idea, is pretty much blown to smithereens by the appearance of his mother Amanda in "Journey to Babel." Jane Wyatt's age pretty much set in stone that Spock is still in his 30s during TOS. If Amanda had been dead by the time of JTB, I'd certainly find it easier to believe that Spock is seven years older than McCoy.
Thanks for the link to the other thread, BTW; I'm giving it a look! (One minor question: how the heck do you figure that Carol could get three or four months into her pregnancy before she discovered it?)
If I like one as a whole, though, I'll incorporate it, even if that means eliding certain details for the sake of making it dovetail with the larger continuity.
Here's my obligatory mention that I used to do it that way, until I realized that I was doing a disservice to the books I liked by trying to change them into something they weren't. I realized that quality and continuity were two completely unrelated issues. Trying to treat what was enjoyable and what was consistent as the same thing was harmful to both considerations, because forcing a book to fit when it really didn't was a sloppy exercise, while choosing to ignore portions of a book and mentally rewriting it just got in the way of enjoyment. It didn't make sense to say "I'm putting this book in continuity because I like it" and then hack away parts of what I liked about it in order to make it fit. If it was just about liking the book, then it was better to let it be true to itself, and only put it in continuity if that was what served it best as its own entity.
Thanks for the link to the other thread, BTW; I'm giving it a look! (One minor question: how the heck do you figure that Carol could get three or four months into her pregnancy before she discovered it?)
Here's my obligatory mention that I used to do it that way, until I realized that I was doing a disservice to the books I liked by trying to change them into something they weren't. ... because forcing a book to fit when it really didn't was a sloppy exercise, while choosing to ignore portions of a book and mentally rewriting it just got in the way of enjoyment. It didn't make sense to say "I'm putting this book in continuity because I like it" and then hack away parts of what I liked about it in order to make it fit.
On the one hand, while I can see where you're coming from here, I can't quite agree, because it's really a matter of degree rather than of kind. It's not a dichotomous thing where any given story clearly either "fits" or "doesn't fit"... there's almost always some extent to which one has to elide minor details to keep a story consistent with the larger continuity, even when we're talking about actual episodes, not licensed fiction. The question (and it's a subjective one) is where one draws the line, where we reach the point that we're making so many exceptions for a given story that it's obviously more "out" than "in." (It's kind of like fuzzy set logic, if you're familiar with that.)
On the other hand, when the degree of not-fitting-ness does cross that line, I do in fact agree... the effort involved in "mentally rewriting" something to fit the continuity is more trouble than it's worth, and can undermine what makes it enjoyable in the first place. (And therein lies the heart of the ongoing argument over in That Other Thread about whether DSC really fits in the prime timeline!...)
I forgot to reply to this comment before. The idea of Spock being older than he appears, while a very neat idea, is pretty much blown to smithereens by the appearance of his mother Amanda in "Journey to Babel." Jane Wyatt's age pretty much set in stone that Spock is still in his 30s during TOS. If Amanda had been dead by the time of JTB, I'd certainly find it easier to believe that Spock is seven years older than McCoy.
Taken at its most literal, aligning Jane Wyatt's age with the Okudachron means that Spock was conceived when Amanda was 19 and Sarek was 64.
Now, I realise that Sarek is robbing the cradle to a certain extent even with some stretched numbers, but that specific disparity has never sat well with me--so in a world where Patrick Stewart can play a character in his sixties whilst still in his forties, I'm willing to think of Amanda as a phenomenal-looking woman in her eighties in "Journey to Babel," if only to reduce the cringe factor.
On the one hand, while I can see where you're coming from here, I can't quite agree, because it's really a matter of degree rather than of kind. It's not a dichotomous thing where any given story clearly either "fits" or "doesn't fit"... there's almost always some extent to which one has to elide minor details to keep a story consistent with the larger continuity, even when we're talking about actual episodes, not licensed fiction. The question (and it's a subjective one) is where one draws the line, where we reach the point that we're making so many exceptions for a given story that it's obviously more "out" than "in."
You're right, of course, but what I'm addressing specifically is the notion of deciding to make something fit because you like it. I feel it's best to see consistency as something unrelated to desirability, as just a matter of classification rather than value.
For instance, my favorite version of Kirk's Kobayashi Maru is the one in Kevin Lauderdale's SNW story "A Test of Character," but the one I count in continuity is the one from the novel The Kobayashi Maru, because I count that overall novel in my main continuity, along with the DC "Star-crossed" comic that uses the same version of the tale. So I determine what fits based on value-neutral matters of interconnectedness and consistency, even if it ends up favoring the version I like less. After all, the version I like is still there to be read and enjoyed as a story, regardless of what other stories it does or doesn't connect to.
That's a completely different matter, because that decision is not up to us, it's up to the people making future Star Trek TV and film productions. Tie-ins are apocryphal as a rule, having no impact on future screen canon, so whether or not we think they fit is a matter of individual preference. They don't "count" to the canon, so we can do with them as we please in our own personal, individual expanded universes. But canonical episodes and films, as a rule, "count" by default. They are always going to be treated as real by the makers of later canon regardless of any inconsistencies (with a few egregious exceptions like "The Alternative Factor," ST V, and "Threshold"), and we spectators have no control over that. The most we can do is try to rationalize the inconsistencies.
It's like the difference between controlling the temperature inside your house and controlling the temperature outside your house. You can do the former by adjusting your thermostat or air conditioner or whatever, because it applies only to a space that you have control over. But that control over your own space does not give you control over the larger world. You can only observe the larger world's conditions and try to cope with that reality.
Well, not completely different. We're talking personal continuity here, not canon. The show is what it is, but whether the mental effort it takes to make it "fit" is worth the effort is a subjective matter. That's what most of that now 120-page-long thread boils down to... basically, arguments over whether DSC season 1 is one of those "egregious exceptions." It engages in a level of retconning that Trek really hasn't done before (not even in ENT), and IMHO there's no surprise it's controversial.
(FWIW, I do include it in my timeline. But how much of it I'll have to mentally elide in the long run remains to be seen...)
And to tie things together here!... I find it interesting that (at least according to my timeline), the period when the Klingon War takes place in DSC is pretty much exactly the period when Kirk is back on Earth, teaching at the Academy after the Farragut disaster!...
Well, not completely different. We're talking personal continuity here, not canon. The show is what it is, but whether the mental effort it takes to make it "fit" is worth the effort is a subjective matter.
But whatever shows and movies come next are going to acknowledge it as part of Prime. That's just the way it is now. I mean, heck, if I thought it were up to me, I'd probably want to exclude Discovery too. But I know that it isn't up to me. It's not an aspect of the continuity I have any power to influence, because I can't stand before the wind and make it respect me.
If anything, I think we're getting to a point where TOS is going to be seen as the imprecise rough draft of the Prime universe, superseded by more modern, updated versions that are more plausibly futuristic. That's probably the way Roddenberry would've wanted it, judging from the approach he took with TMP and TNG and the things he said about continuity over the years. And it makes sense to see the later version of a thing as superseding the earlier version, which is why we don't talk about James R. Kirk and his part-Vulcanian first officer, or about "Bill" Riker and the emotional, contraction-using Data.
And to tie things together here!... I find it interesting that (at least according to my timeline), the period when the Klingon War takes place in DSC is pretty much exactly the period when Kirk is back on Earth, teaching at the Academy after the Farragut disaster!...
How do you figure that? The Farragut incident was 11 years before "Obsession," which works out to late 2256 or early '57. The Klingon war begins in May 2256 and continues until at least October '57. As I figure it, the vampire cloud incident had to be during the war.
I figure it thusly: I have "Obsession" placed in 2267, which puts the Farragut incident in 2256. (Not necessarily "late," as the episode's references weren't that precise; merely some time that year.) If we posit, as in the discussion with @JonnyQuest037 above, that the aftermath of that is when Kirk spent some time back on Earth teaching at the Academy (and possibly attending Command School), then it makes sense to consider that the '56-'57 academic year, meaning the Farragut incident occurred no later than summer '56 and his next starship assignment no earlier than summer '57. That doesn't necessarily cover the war precisely (which spans May '56 to Oct '57, as you note), but it's a significant overlap.
I'm surprised at the question, actually: even if you put the Farragut incident sometime during the (early months of the) war, it looks like we're still in the same ballpark. At the very least, the incident is in the past as of DSC's "present day." And it's entirely plausible to surmise that Kirk actually sat out all or most of the war.
)
It's pure headcanon, but it's the best kind — it makes perfect logical sense of canonical conundrums without contradicting anything.
