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Musings about Sulu's deleted TWOK scene; Enterprise-A/Yorktown thing
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: [QB] I was just thinking idly about stuff and I got some interesting ideas. Nothing spectacular or hugely original, mind you, but interesting. I was cosnidering my shiplist (I really should get back to work on that :o ) and my policy of counting deleted scenes and shooting scripts as being canon. I was thinking about whether there were cases in which this would become awkward or contradictory. Particularly, I was running over the dropped dialogue between Kirk and Sulu in the travel pod sequence from TWOK, where it's mentioned that Sulu is going to be promoted to Captain and assume command of the [i]Excelsior[/i]. As I'm sure most of us know, Sulu's mention of his upcoming promotion was in fact filmed, but cut because (of all things) William Shatner complained about having more than one captain among the main cast. (He obviously forgot about Spock... :rolleyes: ) You can see in the final film exactly where the pertinent dialogue was cut. As I said, it's during the travel pod sequence when Kirk and the gang are being brought over to the [i]Enterprise[/i] in drydock. Right after Sulu says "I'm delighted. Any chance to go aboard the [i]Enterprise[/i]---" and then is abruptly cut off, even though you can see his mouth still moving. The original scene, before being edited, played out like this: [CODE] KIRK I really must thank you. SULU (embarrassed) I am delighted; any chance to go aboard Enterprise, however briefly, is always an excuse for nostalgia. KIRK I cut your new orders personally. By the end of the month, you'll have your first command: USS EXCELSIOR. SULU Thank you, sir. I've looked forward to this for a long time. KIRK You've earned it. But I'm still grateful to have you at the helm for three weeks. I don't believe these kids can steer. [/CODE]That's from the shooting script. Now obviously, Sulu was still a commander up until at least the time of STV, as he wore the Cmdr rank pin and was repeatedly referred to as "Commander Sulu." But there's still no real contradiction with the deleted scene from TWOK, if you take into account the fact that immediately following TWOK (which occurs a month before Sulu was to be promoted) the [i]Enterprise[/i] returns to Earth and a few days later is stolen from Spacedock by, among others, Sulu. (Who also assaulted a Starfleet security guard and aided in the jailbreak of a Federation prisoner in the process, not the best citations the Starfleet Promotion & Command Review Board like to see on your record.) She is pusued breifly by the newly-completed [i]U.S.S. Excelsior[/i], which had been placed under the "command" of one Captain Styles during her construction and test-run phase. The [i]Enterprise[/i] is soon after destroyed by her hijackers, who proceed to Vulcan aboard a captured Klingon vessel and spend the next three months there in self-imposed exile before deciding to return home to face court martial. (This already puts us at least two months after Sulu was to be promoted.) It just so happens that they end up making a side trip to the late 20th century and ultimately saving Earth from the devastation of a gigantic alien probe. Only after all of this does the crew actually face trial. Fortuantely, any charges against Sulu are dropped. But the poor [i]Excelsior[/i] is still non-operational, so Sulu's promotion and command must be postponed. Due to the delay, Sulu is reassigned to the [i]U.S.S. Enterprise-A[/i] along with his shipmates. The [i]Excelsior[/i] is [i]still[/i] languishing in Spacedock some time later, when the whole Nimbus III crisis occurs, and so Sulu is still serving as helmsman aboard the [i]Enterprise[/i] (albeit enjoying some well-deserved planetside R & R) when the ship is scrambled unexpectedly to deal with the situation. Ultimately, it's not until 2290 (three years before TUC) that Commander Sulu finally becomes Captain Sulu and accepts command of the [i]Excelsior[/i]. (Starfleet finally having given up on trying to make the transwarp drive work after Scotty trashed it way back in STIII, and having refitted the ship as a conventional warp vessel and assigning her to some nice gaseous anomaly surveying in the Beta Quadrant, where poor Sulu can finally enjoy some peace and quiet and some quality tea-totalling time. ;) ) Of course then those damned Klingons had to go and overmine their moon and...well, that's another story... :D The other thing I was thinking about was the oft-debated issue of whether the [i]Enterprise[/i]-A was in fact the renamed [i]U.S.S. Yorktown[/i] NCC-1717 that was disabled by the Probe in TVH. I've always said that she was, since I generally consider the Encyclopedia and Tech Manuals to be canon sources. It's been pointed out to me by Spikey and others, however, that she is referred to as a "new" ship in TFF. Which, admittedly, is quite true. So I was thinking about this and then I remembered something that I'd forgotten for quite some time, and which apparently everyone else has too. The Encyclopedia presents [i]two[/i] scenarios---two sets of circumstances under which the postulated re-naming of the ship might have taken place. Okuda says: "...[i]Roddenberry reportedly suggested that the second [/i]Starship Enterprise[i], NCC-1701-A, launched at the end of [/i]Star Trek IV[i], had previously been named the [/i]Yorktown[i], since it seems unlikely that Starfleet could have built an all-new ship so quickly. If this was the case, the [/i]Yorktown[i] [NCC-1717] may have made it safely back to Earth and been repaired and renamed, or perhaps there was a newer, replacement [/i]Yorktown[i] alredy under construction at the time of the probe crisis."[/i] It's that second part that I had forgotten about. The book never specifies which of these scenarios is what "really" happened, and neither does the TNG Tech Manual, which simply says that the NCC-1701-A had previously been named [i]Yorktown[/i]. Yet everyone seems to have latched on to the first story and left the alternative by the wayside. But what if the second option [i]was[/i] the correct one. Then all conflicts are resolved. The [i]Enterprise[/i] can be a new ship in TFF [i]and[/i] still have been named [i]Yorktown[/i], just as the official sources say. Starfleet had a new ship on hand that had either just been completed or maybe even hadn't been totally finished yet (witness the glitches seen in TFF) that was to be named [i]Yorktown[/i], but was instead renamed [i]Enterprise[/i] to honor Kirk & co. How about it? -[b]MMoM[/b] :D [/QB][/QUOTE]
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