He captained two and it was his last official billet.I get why, but kind of weird to see CAPTAIN, U.S.S. ENTERPRISE on it.
At the time of his death, he hadn't been captain of an Enterprise in nearly eighty years.
William Shatner Confirms Talks for Star Trek Return at 93 Years Old
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^^^ Yep, this.
Potentially three, as I got the impression that Harriman gave Kirk temporary Captaincy to help get them away from the Nexus. Kirk gave it back to him when he went down to the nav array control room.
Potentially three, as I got the impression that Harriman gave Kirk temporary Captaincy to help get them away from the Nexus. Kirk gave it back to him when he went down to the nav array control room.
Could have sworn I read that in one of the interviews, but can't find it now. Huh.
Eh, having command of the bridge in the Captain's absence doesn't really count as a "Captaincy."
All of this Picard/OTOY/STD/Abrams Trek stuff reads like really, REALLY bad fanfic, and I know bad fanfic, as I've been a Trek fan for over forty years.
William Shatner is a personal hero of mine and James T. Kirk is my favorite character in all of science fiction, but I don't want to see Kirk's return if it's anywhere near as messy and convoluted as what's being discussed in this thread. I guess it ultimately doesn't matter since in my head canon, Kirk didn't get trapped in the Nexus and Scotty didn't get stuck in a transporter beam for almost eighty years. Both are truly awful fates for two legendary characters.
William Shatner is a personal hero of mine and James T. Kirk is my favorite character in all of science fiction, but I don't want to see Kirk's return if it's anywhere near as messy and convoluted as what's being discussed in this thread. I guess it ultimately doesn't matter since in my head canon, Kirk didn't get trapped in the Nexus and Scotty didn't get stuck in a transporter beam for almost eighty years. Both are truly awful fates for two legendary characters.
Bad fan fic doesn't kill off main characters.
Well, it can, but nobody would care. 
That's the ending of A Trekkie's Tale, from where we get the term Mary Sue. Poor Ensign Mary Sue dies and everyone talks about how she was too good for this sinful galaxy. It's a parody, of course, but it was parodying actual fandom trends at the time, I assume including the endings.
Was she a red shirt?
The bestest, most perfect, smartest and attractive redshirt ever!!!
Take a look for yourselves (It's all online as a webcomic):
I hear you. I didn't want to do an explicit resurrection/retcon for Unification, as I would agree many of the tropes that come with that approach don't properly reflect the respect I think the character deserves.
Thank you for responding. At this point, the only thing that I personally think would fully respect the character would be to undo Generations. This would also go a long way for the other characters in that film. It has only become a bigger disappointment in the three decades since its release.
^^^ While I am diametrically opposed to the notion that OTOY's short film could be considered "bad fan fic", I don't disagree with the above statement. GEN really was a lousy way to kill a beloved hero character, IMO. It was "heroic" to a degree, but did he really need to be squashed by a freakin' steel bridge span? Righteous deaths for heroes has always been a common trope out there, but that was just a sad let-down.
Unbelievably deploying an inexperienced captain on the E-B (with no critical systems installed on it "until Tuesday"), leaving out the other legacy characters, destroying the E-D with a 100-year-old BOP, etc,, all put quite a damper on the experience. Sadly, it has been fully engrained in the canon. However, saying Kirk survived in the Nexus, or was saved by S-31 and held in stasis at Daystrom would go a long way in undoing Generations, FWIW. I, for one, applaud the OTOY folks for coming up with this ingenious and touching way of accomplishing that very goal, whether they realized they were doing it consciously or not.
Unbelievably deploying an inexperienced captain on the E-B (with no critical systems installed on it "until Tuesday"), leaving out the other legacy characters, destroying the E-D with a 100-year-old BOP, etc,, all put quite a damper on the experience. Sadly, it has been fully engrained in the canon. However, saying Kirk survived in the Nexus, or was saved by S-31 and held in stasis at Daystrom would go a long way in undoing Generations, FWIW. I, for one, applaud the OTOY folks for coming up with this ingenious and touching way of accomplishing that very goal, whether they realized they were doing it consciously or not.
I, for one, absolutely loved Unification. Sure, one can argue that it's full of fanwank. But I actually cried while watching it, which I haven't done with a Star Trek production since DS9's "The Visitor." Any 'fanwank' issues I might have had (which I really didn't) were blown away. I had a chance to briefly chat with Robin Curtis on the Star Trek cruise about it and she was a pleasure to talk to.
,^
Well I agree that Harriman came off as a little inexperienced, I don't necessarily put the "until Tuesday" thing on him. This was clearly a publicity event planned by the higher-ups at Starfleet and if they had wanted to, they could have postponed the ceremony until Wednesday.
Well I agree that Harriman came off as a little inexperienced, I don't necessarily put the "until Tuesday" thing on him. This was clearly a publicity event planned by the higher-ups at Starfleet and if they had wanted to, they could have postponed the ceremony until Wednesday.
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I agree. It was more a function of bad writing for the sake of some cheap chuckles than it was the fault of any particular character. I was just sort of listing some different random things that honked me off about that movie. I honestly expected more from RDM in that context. Not sure which silliness he was responsible for, but he did cop to being somewhat proud of being the guy who killed Kirk. If I were in his shoes, I would have dreaded that (honestly, impossible-to-do-correctly) assignment and maybe even told Berman to go fuck himself as I walked out the Stage 9 door. I gather he seems to have some regret over the whole thing, but that’s long water that had flowed under the burnt cinders of that old bridge.
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I just posted some BTS on Unification from a talk I did a few weeks ago (link to full cast BTS at the end of the first video), with Adam Nimoy, Rod and others:
Here's what I think was so great about Unification: It was clearly set up to be ambiguous enough for the audience to make their own conclusions about what was going on. Is this Kirk's afterlife? Was it just a Nexus-infused fantasy? Was Kirk resurrected and now on the Enterprise-J in the 26th century before Yor sent him back in time to the Kelvin timeline? I'm sure a lot of people didn't know any of the background material that Unification uses for the story, and just assumed that it was a nice tribute to Shatner & Nimoy without knowing the deeper intentions of the story (which is totally fine, because one doesn't need to know any of that to enjoy it. I myself, who does know the deeper intent, enjoyed it all the more.)
You bring up one of the issues I have with Unification, namely, that this "background material" was not pointed out before this film was released. I'm no doubt out of the loop as I have no use for Abrams/Kurtz Dreck, but you'd think backstory that might even be somewhat important would be explained beforehand to provide context. For example, what does the Enterprise-J have to do with any of this?
That's just it. The way they did it makes you either want to do more research into the backstory, or just be blissfully ignorant of it. Either way works. How many people who saw TWOK in the theaters saw Space Seed first? How many really needed to watch it in order to understand TWOK’s story? And of those who did go back and watch Space Seed afterwards, how many people discovered TOS that way?
In my opinion, how OTOY did this tribute was perfect. Bogging things down with unnecessary backstory would have just been confusing.
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