"The Holiest Thing" Released

[startrekphase2]

Maurice,
please read the article at www.stnv.de/thtcanon and then explain in regards to canon why this is not possible. Please use direct references to canon as shown on screen. I have looked into every aspect of onscreen canon and found nothing to disprove this.

 

[startrekphase2]

DarKush,
I find Spock ageing in the movie so quickly, or that he was alive at all after the radiation he suffered is much more far fetched, yet it was in the movie so we have to live with it. The same goes for our episode, which was also rewritten by David Gerrold who is an expert on Star Trek and also producer of this episode. David and Carol were not working for Starfleet, but for a top secret research project. His birth date was adjusted in order to keep what happened to him a secret. Otherwise if people saw a person who looked 25, but had an age of say 16, people would ask questions. Much better to adjust the age. For example, how old is Scotty in TNG? His natural age or that plus the 75 years in a transporter buffer? With a boy, it is even harder to explain so adjusting the birth date is the best answer. As it is not mentioned in the film or the episode, one can only guess that he was working on the project as he was fascinated with his mother's work.

 

[urbandefault]

David Marcus was in high school on Earth just before the Genesis project ...

 

[Philip Guyott]

Damm you, now I will have to re-watch TWOK!
To me David sounds older than fourteen:

“Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. We are dealing with something that... could be perverted into a dreadful weapon. Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? That's exactly the kind of man...”

Carol did call him “kiddo”, but I don’t think that makes him fourteen, does it?

“Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!”

If think she was just being affectionate.

Also wasn’t David a doctor?

Kirk: “Where's Dr. Marcus?”
David “I’m Dr. Marcus!”

I suppose that a fourteen year old could hold a doctorate, just seems implausible, although not impossible.
http://www.gradschoolhub.com/10-youngest-people-ever-to-achieve-a-doctorate-degree/

Also memory-alpha and beta states that he was born in 2261.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/David_Marcus
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/David_Marcus

 

[startrekphase2]

Exactly, as we said, his birth date was adjusted back to 2261 to stop people asking the kind of questions they would if they knew we was actually born in 2270 or 71.

 

[Maurice]

Maurice,
please read the article at www.stnv.de/thtcanon and then explain in regards to canon why this is not possible. Please use direct references to canon as shown on screen. I have looked into every aspect of onscreen canon and found nothing to disprove this.

"it becomes obvious that the continued exposure to the Genesis-effect has also caused David to grow at a faster rate than normal"

Obvious? Rubbish. The lack of contradictory evidence ≠ proof. That's like insisting that the lack of evidence that Admiral Nelson was banging Captain Crane means they must have been bunk buddies. That ain't how it works.

 

[startrekphase2]

Maurice,
Not at all. Everything said is directly referenced to what happened in the films, that is solid information. Simply to say something is rubbish does not prove anything. let us keep this scientific. If you have a different opinion, please present your facts. I have presented ours and they are pretty solid, considering this is of course all science fiction...

 

[Philip Guyott]

Perhaps their exposure to protomatter in 'The Holiest Thing' would explain why all the crew look so much older in TMP!

This protomatter also had other weird effects on David!

Merritt Butrick in TNG​

 

[Noname Given]

The DIRECT canon you can't get around:
Kirk: "There's a man I haven't seen in 15 yeas who's trying to kill me. You show me a son who'd be happy to help him."
^^^
That is not an ambiguous line. Given at the time of STII:TWoK it was established Space Seed occurred in 2267 - your reasoning falls flat at that point (and many others.) If you're going to try to use canon to support your story, you can't 'handwave' part of it away by claiming n on screen line in an official production was what's in error.

 

[Philip Guyott]

"...it becomes obvious that the continued exposure to the Genesis-effect has also caused David to grow at a faster rate than normal, an unavoidable side-effect of using proto-matter with this technology."

The biggest flaw in your fan theory is that in ‘The Search for Spock’, David tells Saavik that he used protomatter without his mother knowing about it.

“Only my mother knew nothing about it.”

If protomatter were the cause then you would think that as a scientist Carol might be a little curious as to why her child has suddenly aged 10+ years. Also it’s a little disturbing that a fourteen year old kid would have access to protomatter on the black market!

“This can also explain why Kirk was so surprised, when he first met David in the movie, as he would normally expect him to look much younger.”

If that were true you would think that that would be a talking point for Kirk while he is talking to Carol in the Genesis cave.

You could have still have done a Carol and Kirk romance story and for it still to be in keeping with canon. You could have had their paths cross together for the first time since they broke up (2260-61) and we could have met David as a young boy. Kirk could have tried to persuade Carol to change her mind and allow his son to be part of his life only to have Carol leave him for a second time. Now that would have been good drama.

I still think that you guys made a mistake and are trying to use an outlandish theory to cover up that fact. But as I said earlier THT is not canon anyway so it does not really matter. Its still a good fan film.

 

[S'kai]

Will we be seeing the 24th century Scott again?

Yes! if you come to Trekonderoga!

 

[FormerLurker]

The biggest flaw in your fan theory is that in ‘The Search for Spock’, David tells Saavik that he used protomatter without his mother knowing about it.

If protomatter were the cause then you would think that as a scientist Carol might be a little curious as to why her child has suddenly aged 10+ years. Also it’s a little disturbing that a fourteen year old kid would have access to protomatter on the black market!

If that were true you would think that that would be a talking point for Kirk while he is talking to Carol in the Genesis cave.

You could have still have done a Carol and Kirk romance story and for it still to be in keeping with canon. You could have had their paths cross together for the first time since they broke up (2260-61) and we could have met David as a young boy. Kirk could have tried to persuade Carol to change her mind and allow his son to be part of his life only to have Carol leave him for a second time. Now that would have been good drama.

I still think that you guys made a mistake and are trying to use an outlandish theory to cover up that fact. But as I said earlier THT is not canon anyway so it does not really matter. Its still a good fan film.

I have to agree with this. Such a story, the ill-fated reunion, and David is saved from the explosion of the research facility by merest chance, makes much more sense, and would be highly dramatic. It would also play more into the appalling idea that David used the protomatter, as he had seen what it would do when he was young.

And Carol could have easily been a pretty young lab technician without having ever attended Starfleet Academy. Saying otherwise is ludicrous.

 

[Philip Guyott]

David would have been 9 or 10 in THT and could have been saved from the explosion by taking a ride on the shuttle with his mother. Perhaps Carol had never told Kirk he had a son until now and finds out for the first time in THT. David would have still have been young enough that Kirk would not recognize him straight away in TWOK. I also get the impression in TWOK that David had seen his father before and remembers him somewhat.

David in TWOK: “Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with?”

 

[USS Intrepid]

The story is what it is, either you enjoy it or you don't. While I understand the desire to try and connect all the dots, I think it's unnecessary. Personally, I'd rather just think that Scotty got some things wrong, or it's an alternate universe or some such, than to try and explain it all with even more fanciful explanations.

And honestly, the idea that David is a young teen who has been artificially aged just doesn't work for me. Sorry.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The story is what it is, either you enjoy it or you don't. While I understand the desire to try and connect all the dots, I think it's unnecessary.

Agreed. While I didn't like this story, I am for stories that don't feel beholden to the so-called canon. I want stories that matter, that reveal something about a character. This story tries to have its cake and eat it too, however, with the connecting-the-dots but not connecting them at the same time.

There certainly is a much more interesting story here to be told.

Rather than a paint-by-numbers meeting with Carol, there's a better story about Kirk. A Kirk that's at the tipping point of his loneliness. A Kirk with deep-seated regrets at not having a family. That it's all coming to the surface and he sees a chance to correct that with Carol.

Heck, there could be a moment where Kirk laments that Starfleet doesn't allow for families and Bones calling him out on that BS.

"Jim, Starfleet isn't why you don't have a family. You simply chose not to have one. And that's a choice you have to live with."

But then again, this is me searching for a theme in this episode. My desire to find something underneath the technobabble procedural that this episode mostly is.

 

[Ronald Held]

Yes! if you come to Trekonderoga!

That is my plan.
Hmm Johnny Slash underwent an aging spurt right before TWOK?
I might buy that but Carol would have taken notice. Did she also get exposed? What about the selective memory of not knowing about the use of protomatter on her project?
I could see Starfleet classifying the Ferengi encounter so even Data was unaware of 23d century contacts.

 

[GSchnitzer]

For what it's worth, the "problem" here are the "fifteen years ago" lines in "The Wrath of Khan." James has indicated that, in his opinion, based on the change in art design from TOS to the TMP-era and the look of the ships, props, costumes, and overall "look" in general, far more than fifteen years must have elapsed between "Space Seed" and "The Wrath of Khan." When Khan says that he had been "marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk," and when Kirk says "there's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years," those were simple production mistakes--scripting errors to be ignored, and understood to be errors to be disregarded. No fancy post-hoc protomatter aging justification is needed here. The elapsed time between "The Holiest Thing" and "The Wrath of Khan" is something on the order of 20 to 25 years (not fifteen years)--plenty of time to allow Dr. David Marcus to age to the Merritt Butrick age of 23-ish.

 

[Noname Given]

For what it's worth, the "problem" here are the "fifteen years ago" lines in "The Wrath of Khan." James has indicated that, in his opinion, based on the change in art design from TOS to the TMP-era and the look of the ships, props, costumes, and overall "look" in general, far more than fifteen years must have elapsed between "Space Seed" and "The Wrath of Khan." When Khan says that he had been "marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk," and when Kirk says "there's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years," those were simple production mistakes--scripting errors to be ignored, and understood to be errors to be disregarded. No fancy post-hoc protomatter aging justification is needed here. The elapsed time between "The Holiest Thing" and "The Wrath of Khan" is something on the order of 20 to 25 years (not fifteen years)--plenty of time to allow Dr. David Marcus to age to the Merritt Butrick age of 23-ish.

No, I get it, BUT honestly going by that logic, I'd say trying to claim the story you guys made actually 'fits in with Star Trek cannon' and it's somehow the Scriptwriter of STII:TWoK (an actual official production) that made a 'production mistake' is ludicrous. You guys could have done a story more in line with actual Star Trek screen canon IF that was your intent but it wasn't. You wanted to tell a story that does in a sense 'connect the dots' - but you also needed to handwave one aspect on screen canon (David's age) to make your story fit the wanted you wanted it to.
^^^
I'd have a lot more respect for you guys if you just up and admitted that instead of Mr. Crawley making a ridiculous post rationalizing your story as the one that "really fits canon"; and claiming it's the production staff of TWoK that dropped the ball.
Again, overall I LIKED what you did here for the most part - but you need to get over yourselves and just be upfront and admit "Yeah, on screen canon did <X>... but to make the story we wanted to tell work for us, we did <Y> and ignored aspects of <X>>"

There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that and over the years in EVERY official Star Trek series, from TOS to ENT, the various production teams have done that as well. It's how the Star Trek fan term YATI that's been around for 40+ years (Yet another Trek Inconsistency) was born. It happens. Just own it and move on. If you REALLY want to make a story that fits in 100% with Star trek canon you can (and have); but it's all made up fiction. You guys know how technical and minutiae elements of Star trek fandom (and many that make up your core audience) are. Since you know that, at least do us the favor of admitting when you decide to do that and viewers point it out. Don't sit their and come up with numerous ridiculous rationalizations and then say "Oh not, it was Paramount/Desilu who messed up." Own up to your own production and writing decisions and let the audience take it for what it's worth.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Oh, I think we all do own up to our own production and writing decisions. What you might not understand is that "our own" decisions--whatever they might be--are sometimes overruled unilaterally by James' preferences and Executive Producer decisions--regardless of what other cast and crewmembers believe. "We" don't come up with "ridiculous rationalizations;" some decisions are solely James'. I would understand objecting to some after-the-fact "TWOK was wrong" justification. But in our case, all the inconsistencies were brought to James' attention early in the scriptwriting process. His defense was that he didn't care what they said in TWOK and that it must have been a scripting error back in 1982. "TWOK is simply wrong--and let's move forward with filming this script later this year--despite the fact that our episode won't jibe with information in TWOK; that information is wrong." Or in other words: "On-screen 'canon' did <X> but to make the story we wanted to tell work for us, we did <Y> and ignored aspects of (erroneous) <X>"--just as you wish us to "admit."

Say what you want about whether it's a sufficient "explanation." But don't say it's some after-the-fact justification; we were well-aware of (and James didn't care about) the seeming canon "violations"--months before we ever started shooting the script. We went into it with open eyes; we weren't caught flat-footed.

 

[Philip Guyott]

Uh-oh, I sense some tension there!
James got this one wrong in my opinion. First time for everything I suppose!
I appreciate what you guys do for us fans. I look forward to your next episode.