Did anyone really care that the X-Men movies reset everything but First Class, or that Terminator Genysis is resetting back to T1? (Wow, it seems ST'09 began quite a trend of in-universe resets!)
Time Time and more Time
- Thread starter mahler
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I don't watch the Terminator movies (I dislike action flicks) so I can't say anything about them, but the X-Men movies are not nearly the cultural phenomena ST or Doctor Who are (Doctor Who in Britain at least, don't know about the US) so one is not really comparable to the other and I think neither (again not sure of the Terminator movies) have an expanded universe as large as the ST one.
This is the theory I suscribe to.
An acute example occurs in the episodes where Sisko 'becomes' Gabriel Bell. We see the after effects in "Little Green Men", where a photo of Sisko replaces Bell in Starfleet's records, but how are we to know that every event in the ensuring three hundred years proceeded exactly the same despite Sisko doing his very best to fill in for Bell? The fact is, we don't know for sure. We just assume. In reality there are probably multitudes of things that went differently (aka the butterfly effect), we just don't get to see them. And the timeline that our heroes "return" to at the end of those episodes is clearly not the timeline that they left...
An alternative take is that when they leave the future, the unaltered timeline simply continues without them. So, we see two versions of events in "The Trouble With Tribbles", one where Sisko and his crew are present, and one where they are not. Presumably Sisko and the Defiant came from the timeline where they were not present at those events, but the timeline where they are present clearly must go on without them even when they return to the 24th century... so what happens to the original timeline? Does it create a splinter universe ala ST'09? Is it the altered reality they return to, not their original universe? Does the original universe still happen parallel to the "new" one, up to and including the point where Darvin takes the Defiant back in time, after which that universe simply continues on without the DS9 crew and diverges further? I'd argue this is all very plausible.
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I'm sure some cared, but I suspect more were happy that the events of X3 had been erased.
Once upon a time(line) movies would have been satisfied to just start again with a full reboot.
But these days, we live in a world where it's fashionable for them to actually remove unfavoured instalments from the new timeline. Canonically denying their very existence, while keeping the elements that they want to keep.
'Superman Returns' muddied the waters by seemingly not being sure whether it was a true sequel to the original movies or not, but if it'd only been made a short half-decade later, then it would've been confident enough to state outright that it was not counting SIII and SIV, and to even make the change in the timeline a part of the actual storyline.
I do honestly think ST'09 broke new ground in fully establishing the "Soft Reboot" approach to reviving ailing franchises: simply use time travel as a means of plausible deniability.
But these days, we live in a world where it's fashionable for them to actually remove unfavoured instalments from the new timeline. Canonically denying their very existence, while keeping the elements that they want to keep.
'Superman Returns' muddied the waters by seemingly not being sure whether it was a true sequel to the original movies or not, but if it'd only been made a short half-decade later, then it would've been confident enough to state outright that it was not counting SIII and SIV, and to even make the change in the timeline a part of the actual storyline.
I do honestly think ST'09 broke new ground in fully establishing the "Soft Reboot" approach to reviving ailing franchises: simply use time travel as a means of plausible deniability.
Even though there are some dumb bits in the movie, the premise of Star Trek really was very well done, and doesn't get enough credit for it. Probably because it's so polarising with †he fans.
Which doesn't make sense...
Even in a single-timeline scenario where the one timeline gets overwritten, all of that would have still happened in the timeline before the timeline was changed.
Oh god are we taking the timey wimey ball out now?
In my understanding if a timeline is erased, nothing in it ever happened and being erased from time would be worse than death actually.
Hmm. One could argue that The Sarah Connor Chronicles used this trick first, playing games with time to bring the characters up to the present AND setting up a new TV timeline that was separate and distinct from the ongoing movie continuity.
And, to answer an earlier query, Terminator is a expansive franchise at this point: five movies, a TV series, umpteen novels and comic books and games.
(True story: When I wrote my Terminator Salvation tie-in novel, I was told explicitly that I could not reference the TV show since that was a completely different continuity.)
way ive always looked at it is thus:
for hardcore fans who check out Trek sites, forums, TM.com on a daily basis, grew up with Trek, seen every ep/movie (know about 'Parallels'), buy all the stuff over the years (and bought 'Countdown') etc - its what the writer intended - a Many Worlds QM approach to time travel. the 'Prime' universe is still there. so for them ST09 played like more of a sequel/prequel (and lastly a reboot)
to casual/non fans with just a vague recollection of what came before, saw the odd few eps and movies over the years but never really got into Trek - its a traditional time travel movie like Back to the Future - one timeline where everything is changed/wiped/rebooted (even though it can be argued by the end of those movies the central characters are in alternate realities like Spock in ST09 due to the QM theory) . the original trek universe never happened (expect Enterprise but non fans probably wouldn't even be aware of that show). so for them it was more of a reboot like Batman Begins/Casino Royale (they know its got some kind of a vague connection to the original Trek series/movies due to Nimoy but thats about it)
for hardcore fans who check out Trek sites, forums, TM.com on a daily basis, grew up with Trek, seen every ep/movie (know about 'Parallels'), buy all the stuff over the years (and bought 'Countdown') etc - its what the writer intended - a Many Worlds QM approach to time travel. the 'Prime' universe is still there. so for them ST09 played like more of a sequel/prequel (and lastly a reboot)
to casual/non fans with just a vague recollection of what came before, saw the odd few eps and movies over the years but never really got into Trek - its a traditional time travel movie like Back to the Future - one timeline where everything is changed/wiped/rebooted (even though it can be argued by the end of those movies the central characters are in alternate realities like Spock in ST09 due to the QM theory) . the original trek universe never happened (expect Enterprise but non fans probably wouldn't even be aware of that show). so for them it was more of a reboot like Batman Begins/Casino Royale (they know its got some kind of a vague connection to the original Trek series/movies due to Nimoy but thats about it)
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Pretty much, although I tend to think of fandom as a spectrum rather than either/or. At one end, you have the hardcore fans who know every episode by heart and at the other end are the folks who have never seen a Star Trek movie before and have no idea who the guy with the pointed ears is.
But the vast majority of the audience is somewhere in-between, and that's who STAR TREK has always been intended for. Not "the fans" or "the non-fans," but people who like watching STAR TREK to varying degrees . . .
Yes. For an intellectual/entertainment property like Star Trek to work, and to stay viable, it needs to appeal to those people.
