USS Kelvin - is there an official size?

[Dukhat]

No he's not, dude.

Yes, he is, actually.

The studio did, which is why they included Harrison Ford's narration in the original version.

The studio didn't understand what Scott was doing, so they added the silly narration and the downright stupid "driving through the country" ending scene which took the film totally out of context. The Director's cut doesn't have the narration and the ending because, well, Deckard's a replicant.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No he's not, dude.

Yes, he is, actually.

Nope. That was a possible plot twist in an early version of the script but never made it into the final cut. Something similar happened in the novel too, but even then Deckard wasn't ACTUALLY an android, he just (briefly) thought he was.

They dropped it from the final script because it would be too complicated to setup that kind of plot twist and make it believable (it was hard enough to swallow in the novel even when it was just an android mind game).

Directors generally don't employ subtlety except for easter eggs and in-jokes. Don't confuse plot twists with fridge logic; plot twists aren't meant to be hidden.

 

[Dukhat]

From wikipedia:

Ridley Scott publicly disowned this workprint version of the film as a Director's Cut, citing that it was roughly edited, lacked a key scene, and the climax did not feature the score composed for the film by Vangelis (it was a temp track using Jerry Goldsmith's score from Planet of the Apes).In response to Scott's dissatisfaction, Warners briefly allowed theatrical screenings of the workprint beginning in the fall of 1991, but only at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles and the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. As a response to these sold-out screenings of the workprint (and screenings of the theatrical cut in Houston and Washington, D.C.), in addition to the film's resurgent cult popularity in the early '90s, Warner Bros. decided to assemble a definitive Director's Cut of the film, with direction from Scott, for an official theatrical re-release in 1992. Warners hired Arick, who was already doing consultation work for them, to head the project with Scott. He started by spending several months in London with Les Healey, who had been the assistant editor on Blade Runner, attempting to compile a list of the changes that Scott wanted made to the film. He also received a number of suggestions/directions directly from the director himself. Three major changes were made to the film:

• The removal of Deckard's 13 explanatory voice-overs. As such the blimp promotion sounds different and when Deckard looks up at it.
• The insertion of a dream sequence of a unicorn running through a forest. As a result, the music of Deckard waking up has been changed from a trumpet version of his and Rachel's love theme to a more magical chorus. (The original sequence of Deckard's unicorn dream was not found in a print of sufficient quality; the original scene shows Deckard intercut with the running unicorn. Arick was thus forced to use a different print that shows only the unicorn running, without any intercutting to Deckard. What was used was a slightly extended take of the second shot of the unicorn running placed into what had previously been a continuous tracking shot of Deckard sleeping at the piano, via fade away transition.) The unicorn scene suggests a completely different ending to the film: Gaff's origami unicorn means that Deckard's dreams are known to him, implying that Deckard's memories are artificial, and therefore he would be a replicant of the same generation as Rachael.
• The removal of the studio-imposed "happy ending", including some associated visuals which had originally run under the film's end-credits. This made the film end ambiguously when the elevator doors closed.
• The cut did not include the extra violence included in the "International version" of the film.

 

[T'Girl]

In the movie Deckard isn't a replicant, it wasn't a case of it being too subtle for the audience to pick-up on, it was completely missing from the movie's narrative.

 

[Dukhat]

In the movie Deckard isn't a replicant, it wasn't a case of it being too subtle for the audience to pick-up on, it was completely missing from the movie's narrative.

As I mentioned, I was talking about the Director's cut, not the theatrical release. And it's really not important, because I was just using it as an example of how the people who actually created ST '09 didn't feel the need to beat us over the head with the fact that this was the original TOS universe before Nero mucked things up.

 

[TheSubCommander]

Deckard is a replicant!
Open mouth. Insert foot.

You couldn't have picked a worse analogy for something being undisputed and obvious canon.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In the movie Deckard isn't a replicant, it wasn't a case of it being too subtle for the audience to pick-up on, it was completely missing from the movie's narrative.

As I mentioned, I was talking about the Director's cut, not the theatrical release.

It makes no difference, as the unicorn was meant for Rachel, not for Deckard. That's kind of the point of Gaff's warning "It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?" basically meaning he was all set to terminate Rachel too, but decided not to because she didn't actually have that much time left anyway.

It's basically an inversion of the original ending of "Electric Sheep" in which Rachel convinces Deckard to sleep with her, thus forming an empathic bond with her (and by association, ALL androids) which is supposed to make it impossible for him to continue to hunt them anymore. Blade Runner changes that ending so that Deckard stays with her willingly (he's already retired so it's no big deal) where in "Electric Sheep" he's all "Fuck it, I'm gonna go home and sleep this off."

And it's really not important, because I was just using it as an example of how the people who actually created ST '09 didn't feel the need to beat us over the head with the fact that this was the original TOS universe before Nero mucked things up.

But you're again conflating plot background with fridge logic. The story makes the direct implication that the Abramsverse sprang from a variation in the Primeverse, nothing subtle about it.

 

[Dukhat]

Deckard is a replicant!
Open mouth. Insert foot.

You couldn't have picked a worse analogy for something being undisputed and obvious canon.

Wrong. Go and actually watch the director's cut of the film. There's all kinds of clues that point to Deckard being a replicant, even more than the ones I pasted from wikipedia.

The story makes the direct implication that the Abramsverse sprang from a variation in the Primeverse, nothing subtle about it.

No it doesn't. Please provide proof as to why the Abramsverse sprung from a variation of the prime universe and not directly from it.

 

[Kemaiku]

The NX-01 being identical to the one in the primeverse, Admiral Marcus' desk models being a visual indicator for just the fans that it was the same universe up until the Kelvin incident.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The story makes the direct implication that the Abramsverse sprang from a variation in the Primeverse, nothing subtle about it.

No it doesn't. Please provide proof as to why the Abramsverse sprung from a variation of the prime universe and not directly from it.

Why would I provide proof? Read my statement again: the story directly implies that it did. No subtlety, no fridge logic, no digging into director's commentaries, unfilmed scripts or deleted scenes. That's just the way it's written and just the way it's filmed.

Whether it did IN FACT is debatable even within the context of the story (McCoy and Scotty do exactly this in one of the IDW comics). Lots of people -- me included -- believe it sprang from a universe that was already alternate enough to have other differences that can't be traced back to Nero per se.

That doesn't change what is IMPLIED by the setup of the story and its internal dialog. But as even Spock would concede, implication and reality are not always the same thing.

 

[Dukhat]

Why would I provide proof?
Read my statement again: the story directly implies that it did. No subtlety, no fridge logic, no digging into director's commentaries, unfilmed scripts or deleted scenes. That's just the way it's written and just the way it's filmed.

I'm still trying to grasp your point. How does it "directly imply" it? You're not answering the question. Do you mean that the movie implies it because it looked like it was filmed in 2009 instead of 1966? Funny, because ENT looked like it was filmed in 2001, even though it was a prequel set 100 years before TOS.

Please explain to me like I'm five years old how this film implied that it was NOT in fact meant to represent the prime TOS universe up until Nero changes things.

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Going back in time you changed all our lives..."

"Beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents..."

I think those two lines spell it out canonically (and of course is supported by novels, comics and diagrams on the STO and IDW websites). That's not to say fans can't ignore it and read the situation another way if they prefer - in the 80's some were insisting the first few movies weren't a true continuation of TOS and using the term "alternate universe" to describe them - and they had no in-universe time travel justification at all! Or a future Trek production might totally change how it time travels work again (remember "Time Squared"?)

 

[Dukhat]

^That's not what I meant. I know the timeline changed and a new continuity was created when Nero came back in time. My point was that before this incident took place, it was the same prime universe as TOS.

Perhaps that wasn't what Crazy Eddie was arguing; if I misunderstood him, I apologize.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^That's not what I meant. I know the timeline changed and a new continuity was created when Nero came back in time. My point was that before this incident took place, it was the same prime universe as TOS.

Perhaps that wasn't what Crazy Eddie was arguing; if I misunderstood him, I apologize.

I was supporting you in that. Just pointing out that fans have been re-interpreting Trek for decades - if Crazy Eddie wants to see it another way and feature that way in his Illustrated Guide to Starfleet, more power to him.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^That's not what I meant. I know the timeline changed and a new continuity was created when Nero came back in time. My point was that before this incident took place, it was the same prime universe as TOS.

Which, again, the film directly implies through dialog. We don't know that for sure, because the characters who spoke that dialog could easily be wrong. But that's how it was written and presented by the directors.

OTOH, "Deckard is a replicant" is fridge logic loosely based on an unfilmed script and a dream sequence that was never properly developed. "NuTrek is a hard reboot" is fridge logic too, since neither of them actually have any story support within the film.

^That's not what I meant. I know the timeline changed and a new continuity was created when Nero came back in time. My point was that before this incident took place, it was the same prime universe as TOS.

Perhaps that wasn't what Crazy Eddie was arguing; if I misunderstood him, I apologize.

I was supporting you in that. Just pointing out that fans have been re-interpreting Trek for decades - if Crazy Eddie wants to see it another way and feature that way in his Illustrated Guide to Starfleet, more power to him.

Actually the way I wrote up the Guide was a way of explaining exactly HOW it diverged from the TOS timeline. Obviously it has to do with the destruction of the Kelvin, but I felt the "Starfleet builds bigger ships to deal with the threat" explanation was way too simplistic.

My thinking was that the Kelvin was actually a relatively major starship for its time -- sort of a supercarrier of the TOS world -- the loss of which would have had serious implications for Starfleet's R&D priorities. Politics is sensitive to unexpected shocks like that.

 

[Dukhat]

Which, again, the film directly implies through dialog. We don't know that for sure, because the characters who spoke that dialog could easily be wrong. But that's how it was written and presented by the directors.

The only thing established in dialogue was that the timeline changed after Nero's incursion. There's nothing in the dialogue that implies or otherwise states that anything before that point wasn't the same as the prime TOS universe, unless you can give me an example of dialogue that I might have forgotten. That is, unless your above quote means that you're agreeing with me, in which case, never mind

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Which, again, the film directly implies through dialog. We don't know that for sure, because the characters who spoke that dialog could easily be wrong. But that's how it was written and presented by the directors.

The only thing established in dialogue was that the timeline changed after Nero's incursion.

Yes. And the change is implied to be a diversion from the TOS timeline.

There's nothing in the dialogue that implies

Of course there is. Spock's statement "Whatever else our lives might have been, our destinies have changed." You know and I know and the writers know that the "whatever else" Spock refers to is TOS; really, the only one who DOESN'T know that is Spock. Moreover, the presence of Spock Prime and his familiarity with the crew of the Enterprise and particularly with Khan implies that Spock Prime originally came from the TOS/Normal timeline.

Of course, as I said, the implication is flexible enough that one could ignore it if one were so inclined, since nothing in the storyline actually depends on the original timeline really being the TOS background. Suffice to say, it's what the writers want their audience to think, but it isn't necessarily true, and could change in future movies:

Abrams: How come half the fanboys are expecting me to reboot TNG all of a sudden?
Orci: They inferred that the new timeline we're working with branches from the original in such a way that it wouldn't have been different at all except for Nero's incursion.
Abrams: You lied.
Orci: Noooooo... I implied.

 

[Dukhat]

^Again, I think we're miscommunicating with each other.

1. I know that the timeline changed in 2233, creating the alternate universe we see in the films.

2. Everything (offscreen) before the 2233 diverging point was taking place in the prime TOS universe.

So I'm agreeing with you...I think.

I originally brought this up because someone else was saying that everything before 2233 was actually in some other universe, not the prime TOS one, mainly because of the size of the Kelvin. To which I say that there's no canonical evidence that Starfleet didn't produce very large ships pre-2233, since we've never seen that period of time on screen until ST '09.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^Again, I think we're miscommunicating with each other.

1. I know that the timeline changed in 2233, creating the alternate universe we see in the films.

2. Everything (offscreen) before the 2233 diverging point was taking place in the prime TOS universe.

So I'm agreeing with you...I think.

I originally brought this up because someone else was saying that everything before 2233 was actually in some other universe, not the prime TOS one, mainly because of the size of the Kelvin. To which I say that there's no canonical evidence that Starfleet didn't produce very large ships pre-2233, since we've never seen that period of time on screen until ST '09.

Actually we were talking about the directors not beating their audience over the head with plot background because they respect their viewers enough to make that connection for themselves. Thus the dialog strongly implies it's the TOS timeline that it diverged from (you agree, obviously) without needing to actually make the Kelvin look like a TOS ship.

But as you are fond of pointing out, the film doesn't establish it either way, it just implies it.

 

[Dukhat]

Thus the dialog strongly implies it's the TOS timeline that it diverged from (you agree, obviously) without needing to actually make the Kelvin look like a TOS ship.

But the Kelvin does look like a TOS ship...if TOS had been produced in 2009.