Where did Spock go?

[DevilEyes]

^^ Actually I remember James Blish addressing that very issue way back in 1970 with his novel Spock Must Die!

Eh, it's a fan idea to use it one time, say if it's a character in-universe thinking "I don't want to use a transporter, what if it kills me and makes a copy of me?" (I haven't read the novel so I don't know if that was the case or not, but I doubt that the entire novel is build around that idea.)

It would have worked as an interesting idea to have a fun discussion for a couple of pages. But 17 pages of people going back and forth and very seriously debating if all the characters in the fictional Trek world have actually been dying and replaced by their copies in every episode - in other words, people seriously arguing that they have discovered the truth about a fictional world that its writers, producers and actors have no idea about?

Hey, maybe someone will use that as the explanation of the Trek inconsistencies? Spock from STXI isn't the Spock from TUC who isn't the Spock(s) from TOS, and in TOS there were a bunch of different Spocks in every episode - because he died every time he was beamed up and got replaced with another Spock. Therefore his changes in personality, so we get Shouting Spock, Smiling Spock, Inappropriate Sexist Spock, etc.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Shaw, the STXI writers also write Fringe. They can be smart when they want to.

They wrote Transformers too (and Transformers 2 ), but that was always intended to be a special effects bonanza for children.

Saying "we didn't gain any new fans" when we've had exactly one movie in the new franchise and exactly nothing else is silly. Until the next dose of Trek nobody knows. There's nothing to measure against (except maybe the faliure of the action figures which can hardly be used as definitive evidence that the next movie will fail at the box office).

The DVD and Bluray sold millions, despite STXI being the most heavily pirated film of 2009. Maybe that's an indication.

 

[Shazam!]

I believe it was indeed TOS Spock, but he (and Nero) emerged into the past of an alternate universe. This is because of the black hole. It wasn't simple time travel, it was inter-universal travel as well. It would explain how the original timeline can continue to exist even now.

There's also precedent for travelling backwards in time into an alternate universe in In A Mirror Darkly.

If there is one argument I'm willing to give credence, it's the the above.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The "alternate universe" thing is simply a changed premise based on more modern scientific theories.

By going back in time and altering things Nero created a divergence point in the timeline. The timeline was the Prime one until it split. It wasn't previously existing, like "In a Mirror" (which would have created a split in the Mirror Universe when Defiant arrived)

By "old" Trek time-travel rules STXI would have erased TOS (which is probably why Warped9 wants to "prove" this couldn't be the case). By the new, based on real-life theories (no matter how bizarre it sounds) every trip back in time creates a new branch on the timeline tree.

Most of prior Trek can, just about, fit into this system (albiet impractically). Thus Janeway didn't "undo" anything in the Voyager finale, she just created an alternate timeline where events unfolded differently. STIV returned not to the future they left, but to one where two whales and a research biologist were stolen and a whaling ship was was spooked.

 

[Shazam!]

By going back in time and altering things Nero created a divergence point in the timeline. The timeline was the Prime one until it split. It wasn't previously existing, like "In a Mirror" (which would have created a split in the Mirror Universe when Defiant arrived)

Yeah, I agree that pre-Nero arriving it was TOS.

I was just saying that the alternate universe all along angle is much more sensible than TOS Spock goes into a black and hole and is replaced by a different Spock from a different universe who arrives in a different universe that was triggered when Nero had arrived in a different universe and created a different universe when he destroyed the Kelvin.

 

[Lord Garth]

By the new, based on real-life theories (no matter how bizarre it sounds) every trip back in time creates a new branch on the timeline tree.

Yes, exactly. I subscribe to the theory of timelines in this universe branching out from a common origin billions of years ago.

Say you start with one timeline and someone has to make a choice between two things. If realities branch out, then you have a timeline where this someone decides to do A and a timeline where they decide to do B. Two realities branching out from one origin point. Now let's say in both realities, this someone has two choices to make once again. Two timelines have now become four.

There are many possible futures but, if we look backwards, then the further back we go, the more in common these futures have with each other.

That's how, in science fiction, characters can travel into the future and then, ultimately, the future doesn't turn out to be that way.

It's also why the further into the future we try to predict, the more improbable it becomes. The slightest difference can affect everything else.

 

[RAMA]

There is an ongoing debate about whether ST09 is connected to TOS or whether it's a clean reboot. I think the latter and here's why: the onscreen evidence as opposed to whatever the filmmaker may or may not have intended.

In the far future TOS' Spock may have gone into a black hole and went somewhere. We needn't speak to that because we don't know.

What I do know is that future TOS Spock didn't emerge into the Abramsverse. Simply because TOS Spock well knows that Kirk didn't command the Enterprise until his early thirties. And for him to express surprise that young, barely out of Academy, nuKirk is not already in command of the Enterprise clearly illustrates that the Spock that emerges into the Abramsverse isn't TOS Spock.

It may be that Abrams wants to suggest that, but that isn't the evidence on the screen. That it isn't onscreen shows that Abrams either didn't really know and/or care about the original continuity and or he was just sloppy. Either way the onscreen evidence (or lack thereof) trumps whatever his intent.

The age of some of the characters are wrong as well. Most particularly Chekov. In the TOS universe Chekov comes aboard the Enterprise somewhere around the age 21 or 22. In the Abramsverse he is 17, and he's 17 not when Kirk is in his early thirties (as in TOS), but when nuKirk is in his early twenties. It means that nuChekov is born easily a decade earlier. In TOS Scotty and McCoy are easily about a decade older than Kirk, but in the Abramsverse nuScotty doesn't appear that much older than nuKirk. In TOS Kirk is older and attends the Academy several years before Uhura and Sulu, and yet in the Abramsverse they're all at the Academy at the same time.

The argument that the Abramsverse is TOS but altered at some point doesn't work either. No one expects a 2009 film production to look anything like a 1965 television production, but still there isn't one single nod to what things looked like during the TOS Pike era. And also in TOS no one in the Federation knows what Romulans look like until they're encountered in "Balance of Terror." But that's definately not the case in the Abramsverse.

One may try to argue that everything changed after the Nerada emerges from the future. But what is the present like when it does emerge? It doesn't look much like the Pike era even without considering production values. One can argue that the timeline was changed any number of times and most particularly during FC. But all of that is irrelevant because Abrams wants to suggest a connection between TOS and ST09. Whatever happens to Spock in the far future he must clearly remember his history and what he experienced, and most particularly Kirk's history. That the older Abrams' Spock remembers something distinctly different than what TOS Spock would certainly know clearly illustrates that the two are not the same person and not from the same place.

This isn't about whether you enjoyed the film or not. It's a question of the story's internal logic.

They rightly choose not to acknowledge it...much like STTMP didnt acknowledge a lot of changes to TOS.

I think we have a case where a parallel universe met a parallel universe...AND a reboot overlaid a remake. Does that make sense?

Of course it does..

RAMA

 

[Dukhat]

But that's not what you said. You said "The writers and the actor were smart enough to keep him consistent." You're inferring that he was consistent throughout the entire series, and he wasn't. His character changed from the beginning of the series to the end because of character development. His character changed throughout the TOS movies as well. His character changed yet again in "Unification," and finally changed again in Star Trek '09. The only consistent thing about Spock's character is its inconsistency

You're associating development with inconsistency. It's not inconsistency if the development is happening along a curve. There's a difference between randomness and progression.

Spock smiles in "The Cage" but the reason for that is solely behind the scenes. Spock was not established as the analytical emotionless character. Number One was supposed to be the analytical one. Spock gained the analytic and emotionless demeanor only beginning with "Where No Man Has Gone Before". So that was inconsistency because the character's parameters had not yet been established. It was simply a reality of television production.

Now, setting aside "The Cage", if we look at Spock's development over the course of three seasons, he mellows a bit. Kirk used to rib him in the first season for becoming more human all the time. Spock did tell Rand a joke in poor taste but Spock did have a sense of humor throughout TOS, a dry sense of humor and Spock would deny it, but it was there.

After the five-year mission, Spock probably felt that he had spent too much time around humans and that it had affected him, and it would make sense for that to prompt him to wish to attain Kholinar to purge all emotion. To "purge" all emotion instead of just submerging it would mean control tighter than ever before. When he doesn't attain Kholinar, returns to the Enterprise, and makes contact with V'Ger he has the equivalent of an emotional release. The reason why he couldn't attain Kholinar is because he could never purge the emotional pressures he wanted to submerge.

By TWOK, he's clearly accepted his two halves. That's not inconsistency. That's character development, getting older, maturing, and reconciling the different parts of who you are.

This all gets reset by TSFS so it takes until TUC to get back to where he was at TWOK and then move on from there.

But Spock's development after "The Cage", when the writers and Leonard Nimoy figured out who the character was, was not inconsistent at all. It's called growth. It happens to all of us. It happens to you, it happens to me, and it even happens to Spock, fictional or not.

OK, fine. We can substitute "development" for "inconsistency" (And I happen to agree with your post, so I'm not trying to make an argument), but the end result is still the same: Spock as a character goes through changes from one aspect of Trek (TOS, the films, TNG, ST'09) to the other. So why is it so hard for one or two people here to accept that Spock Prime is the same as the TOS Spock? It wasn't difficult for me to accept it, and I'm just as much a fan as Warped9.

(Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.)

 

[Lord Garth]

OK, fine. We can substitute "development" for "inconsistency" (And I happen to agree with your post, so I'm not trying to make an argument)

Don't worry about it, I'm a former mod. I've really just been killing some time.

 

[Luther Sloan]

The Major Star Trek Time Lines:

Time Line A:
(Prime Time)

The Original Series Season's 1-3 - And it's 6 Films.
The Next Generation Season's 1-7 - And Generations
Deep Space Nine Season's 1-4
Deep Space Nine Season 5: "Apocalypse Rising" to "Blaze of Glory"
Voyager Season's 1-2
Voyager Season 3: "Basics Part ll" to "Distant Origin"

Time Line B:
(Prime Time: Nearly Identical But Slightly Different)

First Contact
Deep Space Nine Season 5: "Empok Nor" to "Call to Arms"
Deep Space Nine Season's 6-7
Voyager Season 3: "Displaced" to "Scorpion Part l"
Voyager Season's 4-7
Insurrection
Nemesis

Time Line C:
(Separate Alternate Time Line)

Star Trek (2009)

Time Line D:
(Unexplained First Contact / Temporal Cold War Time Line)

Enterprise Season's 1-4

Time Line E:
(Unexplained TOS time line)

The Animated Series Season's 1-2



In other words:
Old Spock comes from Time Line B. A time line that is nearly identical to Time Line A (The Prime Time Line), but slightly different.

 

[xortex]

The prime time line starts with TOS Spock, why doesn't it end that way?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Luther Sloan, exactly how did you decide those were alternate timelines? They look totally random to me.

Or is what the point?

 

[Ronald Held]

Character development is not the same as inconsistant writing. Spock did evolve over the decades, and was reasonable at a high level.
To Warped9 and others: Are the producers and writers for the film that sloppy or not highly competent, or did they decide to change what we know about the prime universe to suit their needs???

 

[Warped9]

Character development is not the same as inconsistant writing. Spock did evolve over the decades, and was reasonable at a high level.
To Warped9 and others: Are the producers and writers for the film that sloppy or not highly competent, or did they decide to change what we know about the prime universe to suit their needs???

Either way what they claim isn't consistent with what they put onscreen.

 

[Dukhat]

Character development is not the same as inconsistant writing. Spock did evolve over the decades, and was reasonable at a high level.
To Warped9 and others: Are the producers and writers for the film that sloppy or not highly competent, or did they decide to change what we know about the prime universe to suit their needs???

Either way what they claim isn't consistent with what they put onscreen.

And what exactly do they claim? That Spock Prime is the same Spock as the TOS Spock? Well, this whole thread is full of people who have given you reasons why it's the same guy, the producers of the movie state it's the same guy, even Nimoy knows it's the same guy, and yet you've simply ignored everyone just because they're not telling you the answer you want to hear. Well, this has now pretty much become your problem, not anyone else's. But you're welcome to your opinion. Not many people are going to agree with it, though.

 

[Warped9]

Character development is not the same as inconsistant writing. Spock did evolve over the decades, and was reasonable at a high level.
To Warped9 and others: Are the producers and writers for the film that sloppy or not highly competent, or did they decide to change what we know about the prime universe to suit their needs???

Either way what they claim isn't consistent with what they put onscreen.

Spoken like someone whose opinion will never be changed no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

No, spoken like someone who hasn't been offered one shred of evidence to the contrary other than, "Oh, but that's not what they meant."

 

[Joker]

"They should do what I want, not what they want!"

Good luck.

 

[Dukhat]

Sorry, I edited my post after you replied to it. Here's the edit:

And what exactly do they claim? That Spock Prime is the same Spock as the TOS Spock? Well, this whole thread is full of people who have given you reasons why it's the same guy, the producers of the movie state it's the same guy, even Nimoy knows it's the same guy, and yet you've simply ignored everyone just because they're not telling you the answer you want to hear. Well, this has now pretty much become your problem, not anyone else's. But you're welcome to your opinion. Not many people are going to agree with it, though.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Warped old friend, I hate to do this to you, but...
the Spock of the movie is the Spock of TOS. Because that's what the writers intended.

By the same token, the Spock of TOS is not the Spock of the movie. Just because Nimoy happened to be the actor playing him doesn't make the 2009 film any more authoritative with regard to the events and characters of TOS than the series Enterprise was. TOS was a complete work in 1969. That has not changed.
Abrams and Nimoy really have nothing to say about it.

 

[Warped9]

Warped old friend, I hate to do this to you, but...
the Spock of the movie is the Spock of TOS. Because that's what the writers intended.

By the same token, the Spock of TOS is not the Spock of the movie. Just because Nimoy happened to be the actor playing him doesn't make the 2009 film any more authoritative with regard to the events and characters of TOS than the series Enterprise was. TOS was a complete work in 1969. That has not changed.
Abrams and Nimoy really have nothing to say about it.

And there ya go.