posted
Why could they not be friends from, you know...serving together on a small ship for years at a stretch?!?.
They were the command staff after all: if they did not like each other at least a little, they'd have transferred off.
It doesn't have to be a "and then fate brought them together again on the Enterprise" kinda thing (though it probably will be).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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The problem(s) is (are)... Watch "WNM..." again. Kirk and Gary are friends. Kirk and Spock have just met recently. Presumably when Kirk took command, and Spock remained in his post as Science Officer.
As for McCoy. He was an Earthbound MD, who joined Starfleet as a surgeon to get away from personal problems back home in Georgia. No reason to think he knew any of the others until he was posted to Enterprise.
The early careers of the Big Three, and a lot of the backstory of the supporting characters, and even Pike and April, have been gone into in novels, comics, and role-playing games. I have a fairly detailed picture of the 2250s. Other people have bits and pieces of the same backstory that they cling to. hat's why anything they do in the era which doesn't take into account all that's been written over the last thirty years (HAH!) is going to tick at least SOME people off.
Plus, that whole official timeline is off anyway, but don't get me started...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
I'm not saying they couldn't have just met on the Enterprise. All of them could have met at almost anytime, in any combination for all the show ever said, is my point.
Registered: Mar 1999
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There's a great take on Pike in one of the Captain's table novels. Makes him really unique in that he was never real confortable sending others into danger (or, more to the point, the occasional deaths under his command) and liked serving on Earth.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: The early careers of the Big Three, and a lot of the backstory of the supporting characters, and even Pike and April, have been gone into in novels, comics, and role-playing games. I have a fairly detailed picture of the 2250s. Other people have bits and pieces of the same backstory that they cling to. hat's why anything they do in the era which doesn't take into account all that's been written over the last thirty years (HAH!) is going to tick at least SOME people off.
. . . Actually, this is the best thing about the whole deal: no matter how much we might get pissed off over continuity violations, there are going to be this whole load of noncanon expanded-universe fanwankers who'll be even more pissed off!
All I'm saying is that, as far as I'm concerned, Kirk and Spock met when Kirk took command, or maybe shortly before. Neither met McCoy until he was posted to the Enterprise] about two years into Kirk's command, at the beginning of his Five-Year Mission.
Prior to Enterprise Kirk commanded a Destroyer that he'd taken command of after the Captain died during a battle.
Spock is one of the only -- if not THE only -- Vulcans in Starfleet at the time.
And the problem is compounded by both the official and fanwanker chronologies being significantly off.
And we're probably going to see more of Okuda's retcnning of the registries of the era. Sorry, Mike -- your system didn't start until around 2288 or so...
*sigh*
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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It's great that you believe that. Really, it is. Unfortunately, the percentage of the potential audience that have built up a "detailed image of the 2250s" through the novels is roughly 0.0001%. And I think they can do without the people who declare First Contact the worst Trek film ever because the registries on the new classes are a bit low.
quote:Originally posted by Shik: My objections would be the same that came up with B5's In The Beginning: "If most of them met up before they were on the station, WHY DID NO ONE REMEMBER ANYONE ELSE?!?"
On the other hand, "In the Beginning" is generally considered to be pretty good. Certainly the best of the B5 movies (which, admittedly, isn't saying much.) It's also different than Trek, as there never was a scene where everyone "got together" in TOS. I still don't see how WHMHGB proves that Kirk has just met Spock.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Your mission, should you choose to accept it - support all of your claims made in this thread based SOLELY on FILMED/AIRED material.
Star Trek novels are not canon. There was never as much care taken with the various novels as there has been with the Star Wars novels. That's why in some novels Uhura's first name is Penda.
The information about McCoy joining Starfleet to escape from problems at home in Georgia are through the novels and, perhaps, even from the writer's bible, but I do not recall any on-screen mentions or references to these events. Even the existance of his daughter, Joanna, isn't strictly canon (thanks to changes made to WTE). Is there ever any dialogue stating he's from Georgia? It's obvious he's southern, but that's it, isn't it?
Now, some facts first mentioned in novels have become canon. The T in James T Kirk is Tiberius. Sulu's first name is Hikaru.
Dialogue from WNMHGB implies that Kirk and Spock have only recently met. Nothing is ever stated, but the implication is there.
There is no evidence supporting Spock being the only Vulcan in Starfleet. That was always implied or assumed, but never explicitly stated. In fact, the opposite is implied to be true with the loss of the starship Intrepid manned by over 400 Vulcans. If the Intrepid was a Starfleet vessel, then these Vulcans were part of Starfleet.
If this crew knew each other prior to meeting on the Enterprise, the galaxy is indeed a small place. How many command staffs on a U.S. Navy ship knew each other from their Academy days? And these people are from a much smaller location (the U.S., as opposed to the whole Earth, Luna, Mars area). Credibility is a little strained on this point, and is strained further when you factor in ages (if Kirk, for example, is more than 5 years older than Uhura or Sulu or Chekov).
I've always thought Spock was older than Kirk. Again, if their ages are more than 5 years apart, then it's less likely they new each other at the academy, unless one was an instructor.
In fact, Spock's death scene in STII:TWOK implies Kirk didn't know much about Spock's Academy experience (Spock had to tell Kirk; "I never took the Kobyashi Maru. What did you think of my solution?") Of course, you could take that line as Spock stating/reminding Kirk of already known information.
But the casual fan won't pay attention to continuity point any more than they do on any other show. And the casual fan is where the big bucks are earned, not the hard-core ones.
Romulans COULD be used in a movie set during the Academy days. Mr. Stiles from BOT had family that fought the Romulans and he definitely seemed to have heard first-hand accounts of those battles.
I used to be of the opinion that a Starfleet Academy concept wouldn't work all that well, but, after reading Heinlin's Starship Troopers and Space Cadet, I've changed my mind somewhat. I think they could do a viable series based around the Academy and different training situations, but I'm still not sold on a movie idea. Some concepts work better on the small screen than the large.
Registered: Feb 2004
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The blessing and curse of the movie format is that there will have to be a Big Story, High Intrigue Thing to drive the events.
This means that there is less room for fluff - so there are less chances for the writers to get details wrong, and less reason to insist that we should see Finnegan or Ben Finney or Carol Marcus or Mallory or Garrovick. Those people could have been present during the events, but would not have warranted a mention because the Big Story, High Intrigue Thing was so much more prominent.
Unfortunately, this also means that the writers have to come up with said story. Will it be cliched and dull "teens (or young adults, or whatever you call hot bodies nowadays) struggle with Issues while supposedly studying" stuff? Or will it be such a galaxy-shattering event that the audience cannot suspend disbelief that the meddling kids and their Vulcan solved it all?
I'd perhaps take the latter if I could choose. But I fear the answer could be "both of the above".
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump: But the casual fan won't pay attention to continuity point any more than they do on any other show. And the casual fan is where the big bucks are earned, not the hard-core ones.
You raise many god points, Herb, but I don't feel this is one of them. That's where the bucks are for a MEDIOCRE film, as the hard-core fans either see it once and then stomp off in a huff, or stay away altogether.
My parents are divorced, and each has remarried. My dad saw all three of the Lord of the Rings movies once at the cinema, with my step-mother and a couple friends. I rousted my mom and step-dad to out of the house to go see Return of the King (they had only seen the other two on DVD). For the trilogy? A grand total of fourteen ticket sold to six different people.
I will leave my girlfriend and other friends I saw those movies with out of this equation. I personally say the three movies a grand total of ten times in the cinema.
For six casual fans, they sold fourteen tickets. For one hard-core fan, they sold ten. Good story and good film-making get a response from the people who care about the subject matter. Even Revenge of the Sith, with all its continuity issues, I saw five times before it left theatres. If George had assistance with the script, and hired a better director, it probably would have been more.
The only Trek movie I've seen more than once was TVH. Which I saw twice. I probably would have seen TWOK more than once, were I not seven at the time. *shrug*
New Line and Twentieth-Century Fox took a gamble and decided to spend what they needed to get a quality porduct (LOTR, X-Men), and it paid off big time. Paramount cuts as many budgetary corners as it can, and ends up with an adequate (barely) product THAT WILL NEVER BRING THEM IN IN DROVES! You need to go balls-to-the-wall with science fiction or it will seem at least a little... off.
I even saw Insurrection twice, despite my problems with it, because I liked he story and I wanted to support Trek at a time when viewership was flagging. My reward? They gave me Nemesis -- the only movie I've ever walked out in the middle of IN MY LIFE, and my movie-viewing life goes back to when I was two-and-a-half years old.
So, to wrap up this rather-longer-than-I-intended post, make a movie that appeals to both the casual fans AND the hard-core ones. THAT's where the big bucks are -- not in alienating a potentially very lucrative minority. If my parents had been serious Tolkien fans like me... Six casual fans and me = twenty-four tickets sold to seven people; seven me's = sixty tickets sold to seven people.
Seems simple enough...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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How is hiring a production team with huge buzz behind them "cutting corners?"
Also, fans are worth nothing. Zero. Possibly they're even a detriment to a movie's success. (Serenity. What happened? The world is run by the Devil, is what.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Even Revenge of the Sith, with all its continuity issues, I saw five times before it left theatres.
But but but but but... you are so far in the minority here it's almost impossible to make you out. Of all the things in that film that annoy people (Hayden's super acting, "oh, I've killed Mace I'd better be evil now", gratuatous Chewie stuff, younglings as a word for children, "noooooooo!") you were annoyed by the continuity issues?
(And I actually dread to ask this, but...what were they? Cos I can't really think of anything.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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