Star Trek XI to embrace canon.

Watch that.

^ Good God, you are exactly right. I'm hopeful that this movie is good, and that it gets Trek back to telling great stories again. I would never allow something so meager and so minor as the possibility that Kirk and Spock never knew one another at the academy to completely destroy my ability to be sucked into a great Trek film.

This kind of reminds me of the people who utterly and completely dismissed the new Battlestar Galactica soely on the basis of Starbuck being a woman.

Aye. I shall.

See my new avatar for my take on what TPTB embracing canon is most likely to entail.

I honestly don't think Paramount or anyone working for Paramount understands the concept of canon. If you're a canon buff, the best you can reasonably hope for is that the movie won't actively seek to contradict major events from previous Trek; hoping for it to actively seek consistancy and to build upon what's come before is too much.

I've got a cannon.

[Fez]And it's in my pants![/Fez]

Let's put it this way - Kirk and Spock didn't meet at the Academy as fellow cadets.
How about that?
That lets us speculate about Spock being a teaching fellow, about Kirk serving on a ship where Spock was an officer etc etc.
There is no canon that they didn't meet before WNMHGB - but the reaction and behavior that exists in that episode indicates that neither Kirk nor Spock were close, or had much of a background together; at least nothing like the background inferred by what Gary and Kirk talk about.

^ This and bo's first paragraph sum my attitude up nicely, I think.

I'm pretty sure that the only ship Spock has served on (as an officer in the 23rd century) is the Enterprise.

For over 40 years he was on that ship.

I'd be willing to accept the Enterprise interacting with the USS Republic/Farragut when Kirk served on it, though.

Then again, the Enterprise's mission to Rigel and subsequent detour to Talos set them over a year away from Earth at high warp.

And I'm simply saying that - BY DEFINITION - that which is an "interpretation"....ANY ONE'S interpretation...is NOT "hard evidence".

Everyone knows that. Where Kirk served before Enterprise is not and never has been at issue.

Incorrectly. BY DEFINITION, "fuzzy bits" are not "on screen evidence"...when they appear on screen, they are no longer fuzzy (except when the contridict what has already been seen on screen) - just ask anyone who's ever tried to rationalize UESPA.

Bad form. Assertions must be proven. Not negatives. You have asserted that said meeting is not POSSIBLE. Thus, the burden is on you.
and...

....THIS does not prove your case since if one takes every word you copied from that site as gospel, it STILL does not prove a meeting was impossible. There are scenerios which fit within their stated time frames which make a meeting at the very least, plausable. The very MOST you can rule out from that site - if even this - is that they were classmates.

No. But if that remark is made on January 2, it could mean anything from 2 days ago to 366 days ago.

If a character says "The Klingon's attacked us a decade ago" it could mean anything more than nine years or less than 11...throw in an "about" as in "about a decade ago" and that gets bigger. If they say "almost a decade ago" then you could have a 2-3 year window likewise if they say "more than a decade ago" the window could be 4-5 years.

Unless the speaker is a Vulcan...
Spock: "The Klingon's attacked us 11 years, five months, 3 days, and 16 hours ago."
McCoy: "the Klingons attacked us over a decade ago."

Then the statement have some vaugness to them. this precedent is WELL established in the sources you cite.

from your own link to Memory Alpha:

"Sometime in the early 2250's Spock was assigned to...."

I don't think so. Because the anal crowd is, despite their volume, a relatively small minority of the overall fanbase. the movie MAY fail - but not because someone refuses to see it based on their objections to when Kirk met Spock.

..............................
Now - having said all that (FAR too much!)

Let me just say that I just today came across a quote which - if we had noted and heeded it early - would have put this discussion to bed yesterday:

One of her most profound observations.

Can we all just give a hearty "amen" (and "a-women" too if it helps) and aknowledge the wisdom of that observation?

King Arthur is no less compelling because of the variation in the various accounts. Nor is Tarzan. Nor is Bond. Nor is Jim Kirk.

End transmission.

And that's the only thing I've said from the beginning, that they couldn't have been classmates. Looking at their DOBs, even, shows that they would be at least a year apart.

I never said it wouldn't be possible for them to meet as cadets/officers still completing training aboard their respective starships, just that it would be highly improbably because Spock was away from Earth for at least 2 years along with the Enterprise during the time of The Cage (Rigel and Talos are about 1 year away from Earth/core Federation boundary at high warp). And since in The Menagerie they stated the events of The Cage took place in 2254, and they were on their way back from Rigel, that means they left around 2253.

It's even more likely that they met each other over the next 11 years, though their relationship in WNMHGB indicated somewhat differently.

Where did you get that info from? I can't seem to find any canonical evidence for such a claim.

So such thing happened. In TOS the only way we knew what year ANY OF IT took place was Kirk telling Khan that he was "two hundred years" from his own time. So tell me, did Star Trek take place in the 2260's or the 2190's?

Wikipedia sez Rigel is about 800 l.y. away.

VOY was based on a ship being able to make only about 1,000 l.y. per year, right? That much sounds about right, then.

True enough, but then in Enterprise we had Rigel being just a couple days away at Warp 5.

TOS: Shore Leave, Wolf in the Fold, Journey to Babel, The Cage, The Menagerie, Mudd's Women; TNG: Tapestry, All Good Things, Half a Life; DS9: The Passenger

Are you seriously claiming that TOS took place in the 2190s? That "200 years" quote (if it was indeed said) is the same thing Shadow mentioned. Khan left Earth a little before 2000, and Kirk could have said over 200 years. Unless it was Spock saying exactly 200 years, well...

The Rigel in Enterprise was first mentioned by Klingons, who would have no idea how we name our stars, and it was only 15 light years away. It was a different Rigel.

That, or we chalk it up to ENT regularly shitting all over canon.

Could you maybe quote me a line of dialogue?

No. Way to miss the point.

Again, way to miss the point. You said that "The Menagerie" established that "The Cage" took place in 2254. I say you are mistaken because no such year was ever stated in the episode "The Menagerie". In fact, until The Motion Picture there was no canonical evidence that TOS actually took place in the 23rd Century at all!

No evidence is given onscreen to indicate that for some reason the Klingons called some other place "Rigel" when we humans have a "Rigel" of our own.

THERE you go. THAT'S the right answer. The writers of that episode definitely intended the the Rigel in the episode be the "real" Rigel. The writers just happened to have their astronomy all wrong.

I don't have the episodes available to watch and the transcripts Shadow provided are only for TOS. But in All Good Things, I remember future-Picard making a comment to future-Geordi about him not coming all the way from Rigel to Earth, stating that it's not just "dropping by."

Rigel is a colony of Earth, and has seemingly always been regarded as quite far away.

Even a quote in The Cage implies that both Talos and Rigel are quite far away (I don't know who said what, it's from The Shadow's link a few pages back):

Edit: It took 18 years for the SOS to travel from Talos to the area around Rigel, but they still didn't have colonies that far out.

2254

OK, I guess I am mistaken. But The Menagerie established that The Cage took place 11 (or was it 13?) years prior. So taking that into account, as well as the dates established in TMP, we know that TOS didn't take place in 2190.

Edit: Here is a list of various Trek distances.

Well, I know I'll be screaming at woman pitch and hurling things at the screen if they don't get the distance to Rigel right in this new flick.

You've missed my point entirely, so I'll restate it again.

If JJ makes an Academy movie with Kirk and Spock hanging out together at Starfleet Academy, after promising to adhere to canon, that will make him a liar. Because TPTB have established that Kirk and Spock spent little time at the Academy, and never overlapped, and because JJ is now a member of TPTB and has promised to adhere to their canon, that would make him a liar.

It would be much more likely, and would make for a much better movie, if it were set in the 11 or so years between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. But during Spock's first few years on the Enterprise, he was some 800 lightyears (about 1 year at high warp) away from Earth, so that would be a bad time to set it in.

I'm still hoping that they set it in the beginning/remaining two years of their five year mission.

I didn't miss it, I just think it's dumb, and unfounded, and thus I disagree.

It's called saying one thing and doing another. TPTB say Kirk and Spock never attended the Academy together, but if they make a movie saying they attended the Academy together they're violating canon.

I'll use a Gene Roddenberry reference again.

In several TOS episodes, Spock's blood is referenced as being green. Would it all of a sudden be canon if, from TMP onward, Spock's blood is blue?

Yeah, yeah, I get you, I get you, and I'd agree if I agreed with this part...

....but I don't, so you can say all the other stuff 'til you're blue in the face.

You even agreed that TPTB claim that they never attended the Academy together, back when you were complaining that they didn't consider TAS canon.

Show me where.
I only said that based on the whole TAS thing, they're not an ironclad carved in stone source.

Mmm hmm, one doesn't necessarily have to do with another.
You were merely claiming they were an impeccable unimpeachable source.
I showed why this is not so.

As for the information itself, Shadow and myself showed how the dates of past events can be a bit fuzzy.

So Kirk was a cadet from 2250-2254, getting a field promotion to ensign and later teaching at the academy.

Spock we know was assigned to Pike as a Cadet in 2252, and then got a field promotion to ensign in 2253.

So it's been established they were both Starfleet cadets at the same time. We know Spock went to Starfleet Academy, but have no information as to the specific time period, only that as a cadet still in starfleet academy he gets assigned to Pike.

In no way is it impossible for them to be both at the academy at the same time. In fact, both being cadets in 2252-2253 time period, it's LIKELY they were there together. Unless you assume neither one of them spent any time at the academy itself, which is friggin' silly.

But see, TMP didn't establish a date. It established a century. Based solely on the evidence onscreen in TOS and TMP, it could have taken place anytime from 2201 to 2300.

My point isn't that TOS could have happened in 2190 or 2265 or 9765, but rather that the dates according to "canon" are not clearly defined. This was done ON PURPOSE just to avoid the sort of narrative handcuffs that so many people seem to want to put on.

So Kirk spent little time at the Academy before that peace mission when he was a 1st year. And after that peace mission, he was posted on the USS Republic and didn't return to Starfleet Academy as a student instructor until after Spock was already serving on the Enterprise.

Considering Startrek.com doesn't give a point in time for when Kirk returned to the academy as an instructor I'd have to say you are being intentionally obtuse.

He is assigned to the Republic as an ensign in 2250, he graduates in 2254. Sometime between there it says he returned to the academy as an instructor - he'd also have to have time to take the Kobayahsi Maru scenario three times, per TWOK.

And again, it's never said explicitly that he spent any specific length of time on his training cruise on the Republic - he could have been sent back to the academy at any point in time during that time frame ANYWAY.

So unless you can point to a specific reference that says Kirk wasn't at the academy between 2252 and 2253 AT ALL, you are just wasting electrons.

Maybe that's your interpretation, but it isn't canon.