What's in YOUR 'head canon'?

[Tenacity]

The academy we see in San Fransisco is only one campus of many ... Otherwise you would think there would have to be about 100,000 grads per class.

Depends on how large Starfleet is, if there are ten million people in Starfleet (which might be on the low side), and twenty years is a average career, the academy would have to complete training on about forty-two thousand people a month.

and assume that McCoy was friends with Kirk's dad

I like this idea, make McCoy about twenty or twenty-five years older than Kirk. So, during TOS McCoy would be mid/late fifties to Kirk's thirty-four.

 

[Nerys Myk]

TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, the movies and this

 

[MAGolding]

How can a global government rule a whole planet without being united? Isn't that what "global" means in this case?

It seems what you are describing a is a type of global or united government. Federal, European Union, Serfdom, etc... Regardless of how the government is structured, it's all a global, unified government. The Federal Government of the UAS is united. If one or a group of states rebels and secedes to form a new government, then there is no longer a unified government over the whole. To apply this on a global scale, there is no longer one global government.

The same with all your examples. As long as they recognize the sovereignty of the head global government, they are unified. That's what unified means. They can still be a loose confederacy, a union, or whatever the structure is, but they all are united in recognizing the sovereignty of the global government.

Shawnster is being illogical.

Serfdom has no place in a discussion of forms of government. It is true that I mentioned feudalism as a form of government and many European feudal regimes had serfdom. But it is perfectly possible for there to be feudal type government in non medieval and non European realms and it is also possible to have serfdom in non medieval and non European realms. Serfdom as a personal legal status started to flourish in eastern Europe, for example, about the time of the Renaissance at the same time it died out in western Europe. Serfdom was not abolished in the highly centralized and bureaucratic and non feudal Russian Empire until the 1860s. Feudalism and serfdom do not have to go together.

There is a difference between a planet being unified or united and having a unitary government.

This is a definition of a unitary state from Wikipedia:

A unitary state is a state governed as a single power in which the central government is ultimately supreme and any administrative divisions (sub-national units) exercise only powers that the central government chooses to delegate. The majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government. Of the 193 UN member states, 165 of them are governed as unitary states.

Unitary states are contrasted with federal states (federations).

In a unitary state, sub-national units are created and abolished, and their powers may be broadened and narrowed, by the central government. Although political power may be delegated through devolution to local governments by statute, the central government remains supreme; it may abrogate the acts of devolved governments or curtail their powers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state

So it is possible for the united government of a unified planet or solar system to not be a unitary state but instead be a federal government or a federation or a confederation or a feudal state, etc., like the 28 UN members (including the United States of America) that are not unitary states.

And in the present day Earth it is possible for sub-national units or administrative divisions to be monarchies like the traditional kingdoms in Uganda, a unitary state, or the nine monarchies in the Federation of Malaysia, a federal state.

 

[MAGolding]

Andorians come from the planet "Andor," as used in Trek fic for 40 years before Enterprise came up up "Andoria," which just makes me think of a sinking ocean liner.

"Vulcanian" was just a word we used for a while before "Vulcan" came into popular use. For a while the two may have been interchangeable. Perhaps, at some point, Vulcans simply let the rest of us know they preferred one over the other.

When Hoshi whined about the stars going the wrong way out her cabin window, Archer confined her to that very cabin for a week and disabled her window shades.

In English "Andor" and "Andoria" would seem to be merely 2 different forms of the same name.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I can't recall the name of the episode. Geordi was trapped with one Romulan on the planet Galornden Core. Another Romulan who had been injured was being treated by Crusher on the ship. She needed Worf to donate something to repair the man's damaged cells (why a donation from a Vulcan wouldn't make more sense, I don't understand). Worf refused and then Picard talked to him and said he wouldn't order him. My head canon is that Worf was considering it until the man said he would rather die than be helped by Worf.

 

[MAGolding]

Unless it doesn't take that long to rise in the ranks in Starfleet. Kirk, for example, went from "Lieutenant on his first deep space assignment" to Captaincy in 11 years, so Spock could have been just six or seven years (or less) out of the academy at the time of "The Cage."


Or my aunt, who had her first child at 19 and and then went on to teach elementary school for 42 years.

In "Journey to Babel" Amanda said that Spock's decision to join Starfleet kept him and Sarek from speaking as father and son for 18 years. Spock said that "The Cage" when he was already third in command of the Enterprise was 13 years before "Menagerie" which should be about a year before "Journey to Babel". Even if you assume that Spock and Sarek stopped speaking 18 years ago after Spock graduated and was commissioned that still gives only about four years for Spock to rise to be third in command in "the Cage", not six or seven years.

Amanda was only about 58 according to the script of "Journey to Babel" and no longer a school teacher according to Spock in "This Side of Paradise" the previous season so her career must have been at least a little bit different from your aunt's.

 

[MAGolding]

This is the first time I've heard this suggested, is there anything to back up Spock being the second officer?

Thee are scenes in the original pilot film "The Cage" that didn't make "the cut" into "The Menagerie". After Number One and Colt find themselves in the cage with Pike and Vina and bicker, the scene in "The Cage" cuts back to the bridge:

[Bridge]

SPOCK: Address intercraft.
GARISON: Open, sir.
SPOCK: This is the acting captain speaking. We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel and the remainder of the crew. We're leaving. All decks prepare for hyperdrive. Time warp factor.
TYLER: Mister Spock, the ship's controls have gone dead.
(The lights go out)
SPOCK: Engine room!
GARISON: Open.
SPOCK: Mister Spock here. Switch to rockets. We're blasting out.
PITCAIRN [OC]: All systems are out, bridge. We've got nothing.
TYLER: There's nothing. Every system aboard is fading out.

And in a later scene:

Bridge]

(The senior officers have taken the navigation console apart)
SPOCK: Nothing. But for the batteries we'd lose gravitation and oxygen.
TYLER: The computers!
(The monitor shows a montage of images - space capsules, the Moon, maps of Earth)
TYLER: I can't shut it off. It's running through our library. Tapes, micro-records, everything. It doesn't make sense.
SPOCK: Could be we've waited too long. It's collecting all the information stored in this fly. They've decided to swat us.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/1.htm

Clearly Spock is the senior officer in command, and he even calls himself the "acting captain". Thus he must be a more senior lieutenant than Jose Tyler and any other lieutenant aboard as a line officer. Dr. Boyce probably doesn't have any command rights and thus could have a higher rank than Spock.

A small indication that Spock is in command after Pike and Number One are captured survives in "the Menageire":

[Transporter room]

PITCAIRN: Sir, it just came on. We can't shut the power off.
SPOCK: Mister Spock here.
TYLER [OC]: All power has come on, Mister Spock. The helm is answering to control.
(first Colt, then Number One are beamed aboard)
??: The captain.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/16b.htm

So certainly anyone who accepts "The Cage" as canon, and it seems to be included in official canon, has to accept that somehow Spock was already third in command by then, probably just four years after first being commissioned an ensign.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In "Journey to Babel" Amanda said that Spock's decision to join Starfleet kept him and Sarek from speaking as father and son for 18 years. Spock said that "The Cage" when he was already third in command of the Enterprise was 13 years before "Menagerie" which should be about a year before "Journey to Babel". Even if you assume that Spock and Sarek stopped speaking 18 years ago after Spock graduated and was commissioned that still gives only about four years for Spock to rise to be third in command in "the Cage", not six or seven years.

Still not seeing the problem. Spock's qualifications and abilities have been spoken off in very high terms pretty much forever. Also, the real trick was going from third to second in command; THAT probably took quite a bit longer since the person in front of him was a woman named "Number One."

Amanda was only about 58 according to the script of "Journey to Babel" and no longer a school teacher according to Spock in "This Side of Paradise" the previous season so her career must have been at least a little bit different from your aunt's.

Obviously. The point, if you missed it, is that being a young mother is not incompatible with having a career in education.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This is the first time I've heard this suggested, is there anything to back up Spock being the second officer?

In the original outline, reprinted in The Making of Star Trek, Spock's position is that of First Lieutenant
The Captain's right hand man,the working level commander of all the ship's functions--ranging from manning the Bridge to supervising lowliest level scrub detail.
At that stage, I don't think Spock was a Science Officer. He might not have been one in WNMHGB, either since Sulu is on the bridge as the head of Astrophysics.

 

[Finn]

Also: in the TNG era, phaser beams are only visible when they actually hit something; the red glow you see isn't the beam, but a kind of feedback from the target to the emitter (like a lightning bolt hitting the ground). Those phaser arrays actually fire DOZENS of different beams but you only ever see the one that makes contact.

Except we've seen phasers used as warning shots...

 

[Tenacity]

never mind

 

[BobtheGunslinge]

I like to believe that Stiles was given command of Excelsior because he was an accomplished and respected captain. He must have been promoted to vacate the seat for Sulu.

Also, the Excelsior's transparent drive was a success, and the reason for the warp scale change.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I like to believe that Stiles was given command of Excelsior because he was an accomplished and respected captain.

Then something must have happened, to turn him into the arrogant jackass we actually SAW.

Oh, here's another thing for my head canon:

Jack, the teenage kid from ENT's "Carbon Creek", is Jackson Roykirk, who will one day invent the space probe Nomad.

As for Styles: Is it possible he is the same character as Lt. Stiles from TOS? I know the spelling is different, but did we ever actually SEE that spelling onscreen?

 

[The Old Mixer]

TNG had references to the common cold having been cured. According to McCoy, it was still around in the 23rd. In my head canon, he's the one who cured it.

 

[Lieut. Arex]

TAS FJ's ships and numbering scheme, Roddenberry's TMP novelization, all the make-up department's notes on the TMP aliens those are Caitians in the ST IV council scene the Lincoln Enterprises Bios of Arex and M'Ress Zefram Cochrane and humanity developed Warp drive before any contemporary species in Earth's general neighborhood as they traveled and spread this technology it opened the galaxy and lead to the formation of the Federation(which is a young loose alliance when TOS begins)

 

[Tracy Trek]

As for Styles: Is it possible he is the same character as Lt. Stiles from TOS? I know the spelling is different, but did we ever actually SEE that spelling onscreen?

And Lt. Stiles was kind of a jerk, wasn't he? He was the one that made an issue about Romulans looking like Vulcans, right?

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

And Lt. Stiles was kind of a jerk, wasn't he? He was the one that made an issue about Romulans looking like Vulcans, right?

Yes, he was. He even suggested that Spock would have no problem decoding Romulan transmissions merely because the two races were so similar.

 

[maneth]

I don't exclude anything made by the studio from my personal head canon. Peole do misremember or intentionally misrepresent things to make things look better for themselves (I completely disregard that stupid comment in Turnabout Intruder about women not being Starfleet captains). That said, I can't reconcile ENT, much as I enjoy the show, with the rest of the franchise, unless Picard spawned a new timeline in First Contact. That's why Borg have been found on ENT-era Earth. In addition to the official productions, I also count STC in my head canon. Heck, Rod Roddenberry does, so who am I to argue?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I don't exclude anything made by the studio from my personal head canon.

That said, I can't reconcile ENT, much as I enjoy the show, with the rest of the franchise...

In addition to the official productions, I also count STC in my head canon

So you totally accept the official canon except when you don't, then?

 

[maneth]

So you totally accept the official canon except when you don't, then?

Isn't that what head canon means, fudging things around in one's head until they fit? AFAIK the execs never actually said that ENT is a direct prequel to TOS, just that events in it happen before those in TOS are supposed to. So make of it what you will.