(All my posts contain spoilers! You have been warned.)
Welcome to my new Star Trek reviews blog. Here I am going to be reviewing the episodes
and movies from every version on Star Trek on screen. I may eventually expand into my Star Trek
book collection and other areas of science fiction but right now my main focus
is just going to be in the series and films.
I started a blog about the Ghostbusters in
2016 in anticipation for the new movie, it was fun but I feel like it was a rushed
job. I am going to be taken my time here
trying to get one review posted a week, hopefully not any more than two weeks
between posts.
As I write this, the
latest series Star Trek: Discovery has had its second season wrapped up for a
few months. When Discovery started it
caused a divide in the Star Trek fan community.
A large enough divide that even though I plan to review things “in
order” and won’t be getting to Discovery in quite some time I feel I must
address it as a start this blog. If I
don’t the first thing any potential reader who comes along to my blog will ask
would be “So what does he make about the issues with Discovery?”
The fact that Discovery has caused
a ripple effect across the fandom isn’t alone unusual. When Star Trek: The Next Generation first premiered
there was a segment of the fan base unwilling to accept what was ultimately the Star Trek franchise’s most successful series. This time was a little different because the environment in which it was
produced. An environment that started to
develop in 2009 with a new series of Star Trek movies with its opening film
titled simply Star Trek.
The new movie would do something
that no installment of the Star Trek franchise had ever done before: re-cast
classical roles. Every other time a new
Star Trek franchise was created a new crew and ship were made for that
series. This however was an attempt to
recreate what had been done before. I
wasn’t entirely against it. The original
series was on a five year mission but it only had three seasons. It also started already into the mission so we
never saw the beginning. There were lots
of these holes some big enough to fill two more five year missions. This
was the one the things that made me enjoy so many Star Trek novels. There was so much space for them to make a
great movie from that time period. There
even rumors that Matt Damon was going to up for the role of Captain Kirk.[1]
Of course there was also a potential downside with rumors ever since the early
1990s for a Starfleet Academy movie with younger versions of all the characters. That would have been a ridiculous idea, for
one the original characters weren’t all the same age.
 |
| Star Trek (2009) |
When the new film began it was
clear within the first ten minutes of watching it that something very different
was going on. The villain, a Romulan
named Nero showed up in giant ship from the future chasing Leonard Nimoy’s Mr.
Spock. He fails to get Spock but in a
battle with a Federation Starship USS Kelvin that ship is destroyed and among
the causalities is Lt. George Samuel Kirk. The pre-mature death of his father sends the
character of James T. Kirk down a much different path. Instead a military brat who followed his
father into the service he was a juvenile delinquent who loved getting into bar
fights. This Kirk joins Starfleet not out of inspiration but because Captain
Pike dared him. Among other changes the
USS Enterprise was built decades later and made a lot bigger, Spock became an
instructor at the Academy at a different point in his career and already a full
commander, McCoy joining Starfleet was delayed for some reason, and Sulu was now
gay[2]. What the 2009 film made clear was this movie
and the two that would follow it take place in new Star Trek universe that
would become known as the Kelvin timeline.
With the establishment of the new
universe I was rather pleased. I was
able to enjoy the films without having to worry about where fit with the larger
overall story. But it would also create
a problem from here on if anything Star Trek would be produced the fans first
question would be Prime or Kelvin. If
the answer the producers came up with was neither than the fans would view the
new creation as a different Star Trek reality.
So the fanbase could begin counting the universes that made up a new
multiverse. I think this attitude that this
new climate creates is in the long-term problematic.
When Discovery, a new Star Trek
series that would be available on the CBS streaming services, was announced, because
of the aforementioned climate the first question asked was: is it Prime or Kelvin? Well CBS had an answer: it was Prime or more to
the point it was Prime in the past. The
new series was to take place ten years prior the original series but after the
first pilot. The problem was that when the images came in the fans saw
something that didn’t really look Prime.
The Star Wars franchise had pulled off Rouge One: A Star Wars Story that match perfectly with their
established universe but for some reason Star Trek was presenting something
entirely different.
Upon seeing the previews I was
aghast. This was supposed to be a
prequel to the original series. Nothing
looked right. What was up with these strange uniforms? Why were all these high ranking aliens doing
in Starfleet when Spock was the first non-human to join? Why are they all wearing the classic symbol
that at this point should only be on the Enterprise? Why don’t any of these starships look familiar? Are those supposed to be Klingons? The absolute dumbest part was on the preview
when the new character, who I would later learn was called Saru, told his
captain that his people have the ability to sense the coming of death. That is worst super power you could ever
have. “Hey, Captain! My powers are
telling me we are about die! That is why
we have explosions on the bridge. I am
no more useless than Deanna Troi eighty years from now. She will just tell her
captain their enemies are angry, you’re lucky I am telling you we’re
finished.”
However as I began to watch the
first season—I had to as dedicated Star Trek fan if only to tell people how
much I hated it—something happened. I
found I actually liked it. It was
different but I liked it in spite of myself.
I was brought in by the incredible acting, intriguing stories, and the
fast pace action. I had a Star Trek
series again and I was enjoying it. My
concerns however didn’t go away they just became less important, but they were
still there. So the question became how
do I reconcile this?
At the time the answer seemed simple. Like with the new Star Trek films I just
counted universes. The new films were in
the Kelvin timeline and this new Star Trek series was in a different one as
well. It is like the Prime universe but
a little different. And I also decided
to include Star Trek: Enterprise in the universe with Discovery while leaving
the first four franchises as the Prime Star Trek universe. To be
fair Enterprise did (at times) try to bend over backwards to make itself
fit. “Kirk’s ship is called the original
Enterprise in every other series that followed the classic? That’s okay this is the pre-Federation Starfleet’s Enterprise. That is the reason it isn’t counted with the
others, it is kind or like NFL Championships before the creation of the Super
Bowl or the 19th century World Series. They just don’t count. Spock was the first non-human in
Starfleet? That’s okay we our
pre-Federation Starfleet’s Enterprise just borrowed some officers in an
exchange program. The doctor’s from a
species you never heard of before and our sexy cat suit Seven of Nine
replacement is a Vulcan like Spock but we’re borrowing them so it doesn’t
count. “
 |
| No Pre-Federation starships here! Random aircraft carrier (CV-6 or CVN-65?) |
I am sorry but I just can’t accept
that the 22nd century starship named Enterprise that was so
important to the history of the establishment of the Federation yet it didn’t
earn a model in the conference room of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next
Generation. Also Discovery played so
nicely with some of the themes and episodes from Enterprise and their uniforms
look kind of similar. Clearly these two
series are from the same alternate reality one slightly different from the
prime timeline that we saw on TV from the 1960s to the early 2000s. However as Discovery got into its second
season there was the awesome performance of Anson Mount as Captain Christopher
Pike with story lines coming full circle with Pike’s role in the original
series. I started to reconsider my position,
but how do I reconcile such glaring inconsistencies? At which point it all came to me.
HOW ALL OF IT CAN BE PRIME EVEN WITH THE
CONFUSING CONTRADICTING PARTS
So my new view is when Star Trek (2009) came out
it showed an historical event change that was so enormous there was no choice
for the universe except for the creation of an alternate reality in order to
compensate. The destruction of a
starship carrying among its crew and passengers the parents so a historical
figure so important by changing the course of his life you naturally would
drastically alter the course of the known galaxy. Not mentioned reappearing in few decades to
take Vulcan out of the sky.
But what about mini changes, tiny
butterfly effects, caused by time travel not large enough to mandate the
creation of new alternate reality but just cosmetic changes onto the Prime one[3]?
Let’s make a small list:
·
All the times you mix matter/antimatter cold
causing implosion that results in backward time warp
·
Go normal warp speed around a star for time
travel in any direction
·
Jump through great giant donut, the Guardian of
Forever
·
Chase life force vampires through their own time
portal
·
Random temporal rifts
·
Popping in and out of the Nexis whenever it
suits you
·
When a Voyager crew member randomly decides
fifteen to twenty-five years later to
change history because they didn’t like what happened the first time
·
Temporal Cold Wars
·
Red angels
 |
| Make sure Edith Keeler dies but don't worry about the random guy who disintegrated himself with a phaser! |
Seen in this light conflicts
between older series and episodes with newer series and episodes can be
easily explained. Neither is wrong just
the earlier version is from a less altered time line where the later episodes
are on a more alternated. What fictional
date the series or episode is set in is irrelevant when the newer the product
the more altered the time line[4]. It important to emphasis that there is no cut
off point. The “old” universe doesn’t end with the last
episode of Voyager and the “new” universe doesn’t begin with the start of
Enterprise like I use to think. It’s a
circle that ever continuous. That
doesn’t mean that the events of the earlier Star Trek series didn’t happen,
they did but they may have happened a little differently.
As Seen Elsewhere
This level of flexible continuity
is difficult for some to grasp there is already some great examples in other
genres and the one that comes first to my mind is comics. If you follow any comic book character
chances are they star in a book that comes out about once a month. So that is only twelve appearances a year. Have multi-part story that takes place all on
the same day? In short amount of comic
time and entire year goes by in the real world. Yet most comics always take place in current
day so ten years go by but no character seems to notice even as the world
changes around them.
I first got into comic books in
1992 when I was brought into the genre when my favorite childhood hero was
going to be slaughtered by a monster.
The comic story line was called The
Death of Superman it was the first in a trilogy that included Funeral for a Friend and The Reign of Supermen. These were such classics that not only did it
create a lifelong comic fan in myself and many others they also became part
Superman’s permanent history. Decades later when new eras of Superman have
come and gone the Death Trilogy is almost always part of his backstory. In the current comics it happened about 12
years ago, about two years before his son Jon was born.
 |
| Superman #75 final issue of the even that got me into comics |
In the Death Trilogy, President
Bill Clinton and First Lady Hilary Clinton deliver the eulogy to bereaved
citizens of Metropolis. In the opening
chapter Lois Lane needs to get a message to Superman—who she knows is her
fiancée Clark—so she decides to get leave a message on his computer. This not an e-mail, she literally turns on
his computer writes a message on it and turns it off. When Clark hears about it he is very
impressed with his intended’s use of “Hi-Tech” skills. He can’t get the message though because of a
power failure throughout the city. He
can’t pull the message off his cell phone because in the early 1990s people
didn’t have such things, at least most people.
 |
| Story line still in canon yet very dated imagery |
Now if the current year is 2019 and
the Death and Return of Superman was an event that happened in Superman’s
history about 12 years ago then it that would place it around 2007. So if all the events that occurred in the Death
Trilogy still happened, then it must have happened a tad bit different than it was
presented in the comics at the time. When characters talk about that event they may say things that are “wrong” if
you read the actually issues but “right” in order to fit in the modem era.
 |
| Computer messaging 1992 style |
 |
| Won't get the message |
At this point I want to be clear
about something that is important.
Although I think having a semi-flexible continuity is necessary in
fiction when dealing with an expansive universe, it should never become an excuse
for writer laziness to details. I tend
to get annoyed with writers complaining that history or canon of a particular
series or character gets in the way of their story telling. If that’s the case than maybe you suck as a
writer. Small mistakes will happen all
over the place and so long as they happen in good faith that is no big
deal. In fact half the fun of fandom is
coming up excuses to why and how it all fits. I still feel that Star Trek Discovery had
made some serious mistakes in the beginning.
Primarily presenting a visual image that was completely unfamiliar and
insisted to anyone who complained that there were five lights. However as I will discuss in this ongoing
blog, all the series made mistakes. Some at the beginning of their series and some during their later seasons and that didn’t prevent them from being fun and enjoyable to people.
So welcome to my blog I hope I
haven’t scared you away from wanting to stick around.
[1] I
like Matt Damon so don’t be a hater.
[2] I’m
not sure how the destruction of the USS Kelvin actually affected those last two
[3]
Yes I realize in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Parallels showed us that even small
decisions such as what type of dessert to get at a party can create a new
alternate universe, but if we refer to that too often every episode we tend to not like would be in “alternate universe.”
[4]
Unless of course the author specifies their tale is from an unaltered time line
for the purpose of the story. Maybe they
are trying to create a feel similar to the Original Series or The Next
Generation for example.
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