TATV - in TOS

[Wingsley]

Assume that the STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE finale "These Are the Voyages" were, in-universe, a best-selling book in the 2260s that became a blockbuster historical serialized movie series about Jonathan Archer's role in ushering in the birth of the Federation.

That's how I see Kirk and his crew observing their own history. I would imagine the Enterprise crewmembers sitting in the rec lounge, watching the movie on the big screen. What do we know about 2260s popular sentiments that would guide what the crew of Kirk's Enterprise would say about those events, 105+ years later?

I do not think any of the TOS characters would refer to Archer or his contemporaries as "founding fathers" or anything like that. But, just as the veterans of World War II were rapidly becoming the good-op' boys in the 1960s, so Archer and his peers would have been seen as the heroes that stopped the Romulans and forged a valuable alliance of that day. Would Kirk and company regard them the same way as the people responsible for the Treaty of Axanar? ("Whom Gods Destroy")

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I wonder if a lot of TOS fans on this board never even saw the Enterprise finale. I saw the whole series in first run but never revisited it, apart from having "In a Mirror Darkly" on DVD in the Alternate Realities box set.

I'd watch Enterprise again if I found it on the dial, but it seems like none of the spin-off series are showing in re-runs.

 

[Vger23]

I've repeatedly tried to watch ENT and VOY on Netflix. I just cannot sustain interest. I don't dislike them...I just find them unengaging.

 

[Lance]

I reckon the academy probably taught about Archer's missions -- "Earth's first foray into deep space" kind of thing -- but whether the NCC-1701 crew would have had reverence for them is another matter. If we go by the alternate universe, then Archer's still knocking about in the TOS time period (and pissed at Scotty for transporting his beagle ).

I'm no fan of Enterprise, unfortunately. But even I would admit that, in universe, Archer's adventures are probably one of the most important historically. More so maybe that Kirk's or Picard's.

 

[Warped9]

I was never an ENT fan (to say the least), but I have seen TATV. I could see why a lot of fans were miffed with it.

Something that happened a century in the past might not even register all that much with people later if we can use contemporary people as a yard stick. To many of them it's just text in a history book.

If you were alive during the '60's space program and when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon then that could well resonate for you because you witnessed it yourself. For those born afterward comparatively few will likely be impressed much. If you're a child of the Depression and lived through WW2 then that influenced you directly. But for most of later generations it's just something they have to get through in history class.

 

[PCz911]

I've repeatedly tried to watch ENT and VOY on Netflix. I just cannot sustain interest. I don't dislike them...I just find them unengaging.

Totally agree. I had such high hopes for ENT, but it was a complete let down.

 

[F. King Daniel]

At least according to the 2009 movie, Kirk and Scotty knew (now Admiral) Archer at the academy. I'd imagine he's something of a living legend, having saved Earth and helped bring the Federation together.

I wonder how much of Archer's missions (or Kirk's, or Picard's etc) were public knowledge in Kirk's time.

 

[johnnybear]

I've always assumed that ENT was set like the JJ movies in an alternate timeline! Infact ENT might have caused JJs Trek to be born! I mean when The Romulans came back in time do we really believe what we saw took place before Kirk's time and the fact that kirk was an only child and a father in starfleet must mean something was wrong before Nero arrived anyway!
On the reality front I watched ENT from the first show but found it very disappointing (I wanted a Sulu series myself and found a pre-Kirk show to be a silly idea) I did see it through and apart from The Borg and Defiant episodes found it typical of modern television, stretched out and dull!
JB

 

[Lance]

At least according to the 2009 movie, Kirk and Scotty knew (now Admiral) Archer at the academy. I'd imagine he's something of a living legend, having saved Earth and helped bring the Federation together.

I wonder how much of Archer's missions (or Kirk's, or Picard's etc) were public knowledge in Kirk's time.

On the other hand, do any of us really recognise those qualities in a 'present sense'? To Kirk's generation, Archer might have some sort of notoriety, but he might not be held in the same absolute "legend" status that Riker's generation have had drilled into them mostly through book learning.

Because to Kirk, Archer is still alive, still a tangible person in a very 'real' sense, not simply a name in a history book. To Riker, Archer is a part of the mythology of the Federation, somebody he's been *told* was a legend, and he believes it. Two very different perspectives.

History tends to glorify in retrospect. Never meet your heroes.

I've often thought that the version of events in TATV are suspect, simply because the holodeck recreation might be playing up to Archer's historical perception more than to the reality. Specifically in terms of the founding of the Federation... would any of us *really* be able to historically recreate something like the First Constitutional Convention of the United States? We can dramatize it, we can base our recreation on the notes we have of those events, but we will always, to some extent, glorify the characters more than they ever would have been at the time, in real-life. The noble painting of Washington crossing the Delaware negates to show his men facing hypothermia at Valley Forge and dropping dead before they even saw the battlefield.

I imagine Kirk just sees Archer as one more obstructive bureaucrat in the Admiralty. Certainly, Scotty doesn't seem to give a shit about him. Or his beagle.

 

[Nebusj]

We can dramatize it, we can base our recreation on the notes we have of those events, but we will always, to some extent, glorify the characters more than they ever would have been at the time, in real-life. The noble painting of Washington crossing the Delaware negates to show his men facing hypothermia at Valley Forge and dropping dead before they even saw the battlefield.

Well, that's unavoidable: Washington had been encamped at McKonkey's Ferry before crossing the Delaware, and after the attacks on Trenton and Princeton, and aborting the attack New Brunswick, he settled in at Morristown, New Jersey. Valley Forge was the encampment for the winter of 1777-78.

 

[Lance]

I admit, my grasp of American history isn't very good. But you'll see the general point I was making... namely, how a person is perceived in retrospect isn't necessarily how they are perceived in the reality of the moment.

To Kirk and company, Archer is still a real person. Somebody they may even have met personally. That doesn't negate the importance of what he did, but it does mean he's not this mythological hero. To the TOS crew he's just Admiral Jonathan Archer, that old guy with a thing for Beagles.

By the time Riker is doing holodeck cosplays in the NX-01, Archer (and the rest of his crew) have become a thing of legend. Somehow, they aren't real people anymore, and what they did gets magnified to the Nth degree.

Realistically, I'm not sure there would ever be an occasion where Kirk and his crew would be like, "Isn't this kewl, we're walking around on the NX-01".

 

[Ronald Held]

Archer's deeds from his time on the NX-01 to his administrative jobs were important. At SFA I would expect coverage from the exploration and military aspects.
Kirk is a history buff so he should be acquainted with Archer.

 

[Warped9]

Archer's deeds from his time on the NX-01 to his administrative jobs were important. At SFA I would expect coverage from the exploration and military aspects.
Kirk is a history buff so he should be acquainted with Archer.

From the point of JJtrek that's possible. In the TOS universe Archer was more likely piloting a moon shuttle if he even existed.

 

[Wingsley]

From the standpoint of TOS-in-isolation, as if it were still 1969, we really knew very little about the origins of the Federation or of what Earth was doing in space prior to the Federation. We can make inferences and assumptions based on fragmentary bits and pieces in "Balance of Terror" about the Earth-Romulan conflict, but since ENT showed us what happened years before and years after that conflict, and not the conflict itself, it is sketchy at best.

An Earth starship captain named Jonathan Archer could well have been a key figure in Earth's space exploration effort then, and a crude prototype starship named Enterprise could easily have been the beginnings of a major exploration effort that would indirectly led to the foundation of the Federation.

The specifics of ENT, the characters, the relationships, and the adventures, may be controversial. (At least, to an extent.) But hand-waving the whole thing as somehow completely anathema to TOS history seems pretty extreme.

 

[Warped9]

The specifics of ENT, the characters, the relationships, and the adventures, may be controversial. (At least, to an extent.) But hand-waving the whole thing as somehow completely anathema to TOS history seems pretty extreme.

Not for some. It's actually quite easy.

 

[GNDN18]

These Are the Voyages. Required reading at the Academy, Mr. Spock.

Given the way contemporary figures were lionzed -Garth, Korby, Gill, and T'Pau, to name a few- it seems likely that Archer would have been remembered as a legendary figure.

 

[Lance]

I don't doubt Archer/NX-01's historical significance. But I also don't buy that he was as big a deal to the likes of Kirk as he was later to Riker. Because in the subsequent time there was the chance for revisionist history to kick in (in universe) to make Archer out to be "The Big I Am" (whereas to some of Kirk's crew, Archer would still have been in living memory, if not as the JJmovies suggest actually still alive and kicking, so perhaps not quite as much a 'legend' as he was to Riker).

To maybe do my political/historical analogy from earlier properly this time, almost nobody recognises a legacy at the time when it is happening, or even in the decades afterwards. All they see is the man, and his achievements/failures. This kind of "Hero Status" comes much later, after he or she is long dead and buried. That's how I see the NX-01 crew. They became more immortalised as time went on and all that was left was the written accord of what they did. Kind of like Zephram Cochrane himself. The TNG crew couldn't believe this womanizing drunk was the foundation of their entire society, but there he was, throwing up in front of their very eyes.

 

[Wingsley]

^ I'm not so sure about that. Ike was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WWII, and obviously rode his "legacy" into the White House for two terms.