Star Trek... Timline Shift?

[Silver Fox]

So, I finally sat down and watched the movie. I'm a life-long fan, and while things have changed... I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and want to see more.

I am curious though... When did the break in timelines between Star Trek TOS and this Trek occur?

The easy answer is the day Nero arrives and Kirk is born, easy but wrong. Kirk is known to have been born in Iowa, and medical shuttle 37 is not Iowa. :)

My own speculation is the the break occured somewhere at least as far back as the 'Enterprise' era temporal war involving the Suliban. Perhaps as far back as 'First Contact' and Zephram Cochrane's first warp flight in the Phoenix. Cochrane remained in the Warp 5 Complex on Earth, instead of moving to Alpha Centauri as known from TOS.

Thoughts?

[Lionheart]

Man, SF...

You have really been thinking this over.

Some nice, yet very deep realizations there..

My hopes were that they would repair the timeline in the next movie and Vulcan would be restored. I cannot see how they could destroy that planet in a fresh new episode of an entire series...



Bill

[Dain Arns]

I am curious though... When did the break in timelines between Star Trek TOS and this Trek occur?

Thoughts?


When Paramount decided it was just too hard to keep writing for Star Trek fans, threw out everything that was known, and started making up whatever they wanted for this movie.
Paramount called it a fresh start. I call it cheating. :icon_lol:

[Silver Fox]

LOL Bill, I had it running through my mind while watching the movie. I saw the chasm where Kirk dropped the 'Vette and immediately wondered if it was natural or a scar left from the Xindi prototype weapon. That started me wondering when the split occured.

After that... took all of 10 minutes to suspect the temporal war or something even further back. After that... just look for an early violation of canon that might lead to the new timeline.

Gawd! Wouldn't it annoy all those rabid Trekkies, living in their parent's basements, if Enterprise is now canon and TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and the movies are all discarded! :)

Restore the timeline and Vulcan? I hope not. A restored timeline means restoring canon, and Star Trek is better off without that baggage. A partial restoration, somewhere after the major break and before the destruction of Vulcan, would be OK... but how do you do it?

[Silver Fox]

When Paramount decided it was just too hard to keep writing for Star Trek fans, threw out everything that was known, and started making up whatever they wanted for this movie.
Paramount called it a fresh start. I call it cheating. :icon_lol:

Ya really want to keep canon? All that contradictory and non-sensical baggage? The Romulan Neutral Zone is dozens of light-years from Earth. How did the war get fought? In generation ships? :)

The back-story was rich, but not well thought out. Parts never made sense, and because of the Trekkies, can't be fixed. Better to trash it and build new, as long as you avoid making the same mistakes.

[Panther_99FS]

Where's that original thread that explains this all :ques:

[Dain Arns]

Ya really want to keep canon? All that contradictory and non-sensical baggage? The Romulan Neutral Zone is dozens of light-years from Earth. How did the war get fought? In generation ships? :)

The back-story was rich, but not well thought out. Parts never made sense, and because of the Trekkies, can't be fixed. Better to trash it and build new, as long as you avoid making the same mistakes.

Yes, it makes perfect sense economically. You shake things up, upset the old fans, make new ones, get everyone excited about your product around the office. Lot's of "word of mouth", lots of debate. You add more action and sex, less talk, less preachy. Explosions! Humor! Give the audience what they really want.
But we know it's short term. You get two, three movies tops. Your new fan base gets bored quickly these days, and moves on because they want to see something different. But who cares, you've made billions. :ernae:

[yank51]

When Paramount decided it was just too hard to keep writing for Star Trek fans, threw out everything that was known, and started making up whatever they wanted for this movie.
Paramount called it a fresh start. I call it cheating. :icon_lol:

Nah, just known as "Science Fiction" is all...:applause:

[Dain Arns]

Nah, just known as "Science Fiction" is all...:applause:


Yeah, use science fiction on itself. Was probably a selling point during the pitch for the movie. :icon_lol:

[Silver Fox]

We've wandered a bit off the original topic...

Sure, at some point in our timeline Paramount decided to 'Star Trek' things to clean up the pesky issue if canon.

The original intent though was an exploration of where in the Trek universe the timeline split occurs. How much of Star Trek canon is gone? What do we still know?

[cheezyflier]

Yeah, use science fiction on itself. Was probably a selling point during the pitch for the movie. :icon_lol:

didn't l. ron hubbard do that? :icon_lol:

[MaddogK]

We've wandered a bit off the original topic...

Sure, at some point in our timeline Paramount decided to 'Star Trek' things to clean up the pesky issue if canon.

The original intent though was an exploration of where in the Trek universe the timeline split occurs. How much of Star Trek canon is gone? What do we still know?

We know nothing, or everything. I'm waiting for three films down this timeline, we'll see Kirk wake up from a dream, or watch him leave 'the Ribbon' for a time before he 'was', and he changes EVERYTHING to suit himself.

'Life is but a dream'

[PRB]

On this whole concept of “canon”. Does it not apply more to science fiction writing, than movie making? Hollywood producers do not care about, and are not bound by, any notion of so-called “canon”, if there even is such a thing when talking about Star Trek. Will it sell? That, is the only question. Trying to make sense of it, and how it “fits” into a “canon” of Star Trek is like herding cats... Just my 1.2 pesos. :icon_lol:

[Silver Fox]

PRB, canon is the heart of Star Trek...

Rabid fans know the detailed layout of every starship to bear the name Enterprise. They know the controls, StarFleet General Orders... virtually everything there is to know. Some of them probably know enough that they could graduate StarFleet Academy with only a refresher course on the advances of science. Canon is the intellectual property known as Star Trek, producers tamper with it at their own peril. They screw it up and several million fans will declare them heretics and demand a witch burning. :)

We don't need Kirk coming out of the Ribbon, or a Dallas-like dream sequence to restore the timeline. Spock Prime simply goes to The Guardian of Forever, picks his moment and steps through in time to save Romulus. No Nero, Vulcan is saved... and the timeline proceeds.

Canon had to change anyway... Unless I missed it, we didn't fight the Eugenics War in the 90's... and Khan Noonian Singh was not launched toward Ceti Alpha on a DY-100 sublight freighter. :)

[PRB]

Well, I can “hang” with the “hard core” Trekkies, if I have too. All I have to do is show these two items around and I'm “in”! :icon_lol: All I'm saying is that you could ask these questions of yours to the producers of the movie and they wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”. That's the extent of their understanding of this “canon” business. They just wanted to make an action/adventure movie that sold tickets. I haven't seen this new movie, but my understanding, from reading various opinions, is that this movie took the canon and tossed it over the rail along with the anchor and the ship's bell...

[Silver Fox]

Don't confuse disregarding canon because they were unaware with pushing it aside because it was in the way. It wasn't pushed aside for the movie... it went out the window around the time of the 'Enterprise' episode 'Broken Bow'.

[Wulf190]

..... I liked the new Movie....


As for the whole time line thing... I dunno I liked the new movie...

... Now wheres my Lightsaber.... :bump:

[hewman100]

'Canon' has not been thrown out of the window at all. The past 40+ years of work is still valid. How many times has time travel been used as a plot device in all incarnations?

In some cases 'the loop has been closed'. TNG's 'Time's Arrow' comes to mind, as does a certain incident dealing with transparent aluminium.

Others haven't. Voyager travelled back to a 1990s where it was clear the Eugenics Wars hadn't happened. No Khan Noonian Singh!

The Star Trek 'Universe' is a Multiverse, how else do you account for the Mirror Universe and the TNG episode 'Parallels' where Worf jumps between varying different ones.

Personally seeing how the Federation progresses without the steadying influence of the Vulcans fascinates me. Will the more militaristic Andorians fill the void?

[cheezyflier]

Well, I can “hang” with the “hard core” Trekkies, if I have too. All I have to do is show these two items around and I'm “in”

i once had 3-d autocad dwgs that i downloaded off the net for the tos enterprise and a romulan warbird. i wish i had saved the files. i think they were autocad r-12 :icon_lol:

[Silver Fox]

Quite true that canon hasn't been discarded... just stepped around so that it doesn't apply 'here'. :)

For me, there is one overriding reason to say the change was neccessary... hope. Star Trek offered hope for our future. That hope no longer applies if we can definitively prove it is not our timeline.

Now, once again, we can hope that shining future is ours... different from the previous vision, but still worthy. We have something to aim for.

[Gdavis101]

They needed something they could sell to the non-fans of Star Trek and from the way it looks it worked.