Trailer Reaction...authors?

[Nerys Ghemor]

The fact that it's an old-style gas-burning car in the future? I hadn't thought about it in that context, but I can certainly go with it.

Cool. It's not just that, though--if you listen to the "Red Barchetta" lyrics, the guy in that story gets chased by the cops in a flying vehicle. A larger vehicle, but still...it's the exact premise.

It's funny--I'd always wanted to see someone do a really good production of what I picture when I hear that song. Now--surprisingly enough--I may be getting my wish in a roundabout way.

See, people who are complaining--this is called looking on the bright side of things. Try it. It feels good.

My problem with the car sequence isn't that Kirk's driving a car - it's that there is a car chase in a Star Trek movie and the vehicle is a traditional four wheeled car, not a flying one! I want my flying car, dammit!

Hey, you'd have it if Kirk actually obeyed the Motor Law...

 

[Timo]

So what happens to the characters of Robert and Sarah April, that Robert was the first captain, or their five years aboard the Enterprise as stated in the animated series episode "The Counter-Clock Incident"?

Just to counter-nitpick, the TAS episode speaks nothing of a five-year mission. Robert is established as the first captain, but he might have served for all the two weeks that the shakedown took. Sarah is established as the CMO, and supposedly she spent enough time there to be able to develop pathfinding procedures and such, but that isn't contradicted by anything we know yet, either.

The one thing we know about the new movie, based on the trailer, is that it will proceed in leaps and bounds across several decades of story. Captain April could easily fall in one of the crevasses in between. From his lines in "Counter-Clock", it sounds as if he were mainly involved in the construction of the ship, and perhaps not in the actual operations; the movie could well skip that stage, and go straight to the years that have Pike already in command of the ship.

I don't think any onscreen Trek character has ever been eliminated from existence before, by being "overwritten" by a later onscreen factoid. And I don't think there's much reason to fear that April would be eliminated, either.

His perceived role might be narrowed a little bit, of course - perhaps being limited to that secret mission described in Carey's Final Frontier? Also, speaking of that book, Carey seemed to assume that the ship was built a decade or two earlier than the Okudas place it. Perhaps this remains true - perhaps the ship isn't new and under construction in STXI, but rather is being torn down after April's tenure and rebuilt to more, uh, interesting specs?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

Jeez, am I more up-to-date on the cast than you, Ian?

Obviously not.

And I'm wrong.

Well, you're one up on the Fonz, because he was only ever wr-, wr-...

 

[Therin of Andor]

i'm just pissed they totalled a classic car...

[Monty Python]"It's only a model."[/Monty Python]

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Now JJ says that both of Kirk's parents die on the Kelvin. I guess that's a few more classic Trek novels sent into the Shatnerverse of canonicity.

 

[Timo]

(Now does he? There's this "JJ Abrams trailer commentary" thing, but the part where it's said that Kirk's parentS meet a "sticky end" isn't really in Abrams quotation marks. Perhaps it's as erroneous as a couple of other things in that non-Abrams part of the commentary.)

Anyway... Time for a KRADlist. Which novels do have Winona Kirk as a character?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

His perceived role might be narrowed a little bit, of course - perhaps being limited to that secret mission described in Carey's Final Frontier? Also, speaking of that book, Carey seemed to assume that the ship was built a decade or two earlier than the Okudas place it. Perhaps this remains true - perhaps the ship isn't new and under construction in STXI, but rather is being torn down after April's tenure and rebuilt to more, uh, interesting specs?

More like six decades. FF's dating was based on the Goldsteins' Spaceflight Chronology version of Trek history, which put TOS in the first decade of the 2200s (as a way of reconciling the "200 years" references in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed" with the "23rd century" reference in TWOK -- though it was irreconcilable with the "over 300 years ago" from TMP and would've required Cochrane to have been born in 1970). That was one of two warring schools of thought on Trek chronology, and it wasn't until "The Neutral Zone" explicitly set the year as 2364 that the debate was resolved, scuttling the Goldstein chronology. So if you want to try to reconcile Final Frontier/Best Destiny with modern Trek chronology, you have to add about 60 years to the listed dates. (I believe that's what the novel timeline does.) Although that would be difficult, since Carey insisted on saying that NCC-1701 was the very first spacecraft ever to be called a "starship," and seemed to imply that the Federation and warp drive were themselves still fairly new at the time of FF. There's no way to reconcile that with ENT.

But the movie does seem to be showing the Enterprise being built about a decade later than the Okudas conjectured, so it's possible your hypothesis could be worked into an explanation for that.

 

[Timo]

I was not really talking about the Gregorian dates bandied about in Final Frontier and Best Destiny - those can be dismissed outright, in light of Okudaic counting. What I meant was that Kirk is very young during his adventures aboard April's Enterprise, or rather, aboard the cutter from April's ship. That's not in fitting with STXI, and it's not entirely in fitting with Okudaic launch dates for the ship, either - but OTOH, it's also at odds with the original Goldstein chronology idea, adopted by much of fandom, that in Okudaic terms would translate to a 2220s rather than 2240s launch.

So perhaps a happy medium would work. A 2220s launch for a class of curiously familiar-looking heavy cruisers, the name of which we don't know, with relatively low registries (lower than 1017 or 1371, say). Then a 2240s introduction of a new standard, to which some of the very latest examples of the original class are refitted, known as Constitution class as per the first modernized ship NCC-1700. The second ship NCC-1701 finishes modernizing right in time to take part in Abrams' movie. But soon thereafter, Starfleet designs something even better, and NCC-1701 is refitted to these specs in time for Kirk's "Where No Man" mission.

Essentially, then, the Ships of the Star Fleet approach is adopted - only, the Bonhomme Richard subclass of TOS isn't preceded by the Constitution subclass of "The Cage" fame, but by two generations of ships, the later of which is the neo-Constitution of STXI fame and the former is an ur-class of unknown name but with the original Constitution looks. If we jiggle this right, Pike has time to fly the ur-class NCC-1701 for "The Cage" before that one gets torn down and rebuilt in the movie - and the class named Constitution is still born when the Okudas want it to be born.

Plus, the ship really is about 20 years old when Morrow yells about it - not counting from the TMP refit, but from the even bigger refit just before "Where No Man".



Timo Saloniemi

 

[tranya]

Maybe what threw the older Kirk off was that the "action" on that car's clutch was wrong.

So, let me get this straight -- Kirk was having a hard time getting "a piece of the action" of that car?

 

[Man of Steel]

Maybe what threw the older Kirk off was that the "action" on that car's clutch was wrong.

So, let me get this straight -- Kirk was having a hard time getting "a piece of the action" of that car?

Or did he get a piece of the action with the ladies in the car.. ...

 

[Rat Boy]

Now JJ says that both of Kirk's parents die on the Kelvin. I guess that's a few more classic Trek novels sent into the Shatnerverse of canonicity.

Both? There were a couple spy photos from a few months back showing Jennifer "Mother Kirk" Morrison driving around the Kirk boys in the aforementioned 'vette. Were they being driven around by a ghost?

 

[David Mack]

Maybe what threw the older Kirk off was that the "action" on that car's clutch was wrong.

So, let me get this straight -- Kirk was having a hard time getting "a piece of the action" of that car?

Thank you for picking up on that. Nice to see my efforts were not in vain.

 

[JD]

Now JJ says that both of Kirk's parents die on the Kelvin. I guess that's a few more classic Trek novels sent into the Shatnerverse of canonicity.

Both? There were a couple spy photos from a few months back showing Jennifer "Mother Kirk" Morrison driving around the Kirk boys in the aforementioned 'vette. Were they being driven around by a ghost?

Not necessarily, we still don't know exactly where the destruction of the Kelvin falls in the timeline. We don't even know if the movie moves linearly for that matter.

 

[Herbert1]

I was not really talking about the Gregorian dates bandied about in Final Frontier and Best Destiny - those can be dismissed outright, in light of Okudaic counting. What I meant was that Kirk is very young during his adventures aboard April's Enterprise, or rather, aboard the cutter from April's ship. That's not in fitting with STXI, and it's not entirely in fitting with Okudaic launch dates for the ship, either - but OTOH, it's also at odds with the original Goldstein chronology idea, adopted by much of fandom, that in Okudaic terms would translate to a 2220s rather than 2240s launch.

So perhaps a happy medium would work. A 2220s launch for a class of curiously familiar-looking heavy cruisers, the name of which we don't know, with relatively low registries (lower than 1017 or 1371, say). Then a 2240s introduction of a new standard, to which some of the very latest examples of the original class are refitted, known as Constitution class as per the first modernized ship NCC-1700. The second ship NCC-1701 finishes modernizing right in time to take part in Abrams' movie. But soon thereafter, Starfleet designs something even better, and NCC-1701 is refitted to these specs in time for Kirk's "Where No Man" mission.

Essentially, then, the Ships of the Star Fleet approach is adopted - only, the Bonhomme Richard subclass of TOS isn't preceded by the Constitution subclass of "The Cage" fame, but by two generations of ships, the later of which is the neo-Constitution of STXI fame and the former is an ur-class of unknown name but with the original Constitution looks. If we jiggle this right, Pike has time to fly the ur-class NCC-1701 for "The Cage" before that one gets torn down and rebuilt in the movie - and the class named Constitution is still born when the Okudas want it to be born.

Plus, the ship really is about 20 years old when Morrow yells about it - not counting from the TMP refit, but from the even bigger refit just before "Where No Man".



Timo Saloniemi

LOL! You prove Christopher's point about the inventiveness of writers and their ability to rationalize and reconcile seemingly contradictory information. Nicely done.

Thanks for your correction concerning "The Counter-Clock Incident".

 

[Christopher]

I was not really talking about the Gregorian dates bandied about in Final Frontier and Best Destiny - those can be dismissed outright, in light of Okudaic counting. What I meant was that Kirk is very young during his adventures aboard April's Enterprise, or rather, aboard the cutter from April's ship. That's not in fitting with STXI, and it's not entirely in fitting with Okudaic launch dates for the ship, either - but OTOH, it's also at odds with the original Goldstein chronology idea, adopted by much of fandom, that in Okudaic terms would translate to a 2220s rather than 2240s launch.

According to Final Frontier, the Enterprise's maiden voyage occurred sometime around Jim Kirk's 10th birthday -- which in Okuda terms would be March 2243. The Okudachron conjectures the launch of the Enterprise as occurring in 2245. So it's pretty close.

I don't recall the specifics of the Goldstein chronology, but it was generally Okuda - 60 years, right? So are you saying it had the Enterprise launched in the 2160s? (FF puts it in 2183.)

 

[Lorraine Anderson]

Actually, I'm not a stickler on canon, I just hope we're not getting Trek 90210...

 

[Dark Gilligan]

Add to that the possibility that the Iotians mimicked perfectly the form but not necessarily the function of the vehicle.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been wanting to point this out as well. The Iotians had one book about Chicago gangsters as their starting point. Clearly they mimicked the outward designs of the things photographed in the book's pages, but a tome about gansters wouldn't describe the inner workings of machines like an automobile. They improvised. I'm surprised Kirk was able to drive the car at all.

 

[David Mack]

^ Glad you agree.

Also, it occurs to me that I've never answered the OP's question. In short, I like the look of the new film. I get a chill when I watch the trailer.

I was less than enthused when I first saw static images of the bridge, interiors, and exterior of the new ship, but I've decided to let that go; no point insisting on a slavish devotion to 40-year-old aesthetics.

Building a starship in a gravity well? Seems odd to me, but I get the sense that Abrams wanted the emotional-impact moment for young Kirk, and, pardon the pun, he wanted it "grounded" in the familiar context of the real world. So I'll let it go. Looks cool, so the heck with it.

Love the new transporter effect on Spock. It just feels right. It all looks and feels epic.

That said, there is little by which to gauge the story or the character work, which will be the real test for this film. If the writing is there, if the story is solid, then we'll have a winner. If not, it will look good but be dead inside, just like [insert celebrity you wish to insult here].

Bottom line: Cool trailer. I will see the film with an open mind and a hopeful expectation.

 

[JD]

From what everyone has aid about the clips that JJ Abrams has been traveling through Europe and the US showing, he seems to have done a pretty good job with the characters.

 

[tranya]

Love the new transporter effect on Spock. It just feels right. It all looks and feels epic.

Totally agree. I never thought a revision of a transporter effect could get me so excited, but the first time I saw the trailer I squealed like a targ getting oo-moxed. Or something.