JJ Abrams: Trek XI NOT a reboot.

You've never been to a Star Trek convention, have you?

No, I pretty much agree with you. If Adams can reboot and update the franchise as well as NuBSG did, I'm all for it.

Problem there is, we may ignore it, but that doesn't mean future producers/writers/etc. will.

That doesn't mean you have to give them your money or even acknowledge it. Just consider it to be bad fan fiction backed by money and ignore it completely.

As far as I'm concerned, Star Wars is the six films and the six films only. I realize that there is an entire universe of novels, games, cartoons, TV shows, backstories for characters that were one screen for one frame, and so on, but I ignore them. I pretend they never happened and even though I am aware of their existance, they don't affect my enjoyment of the six films in the least.

As far as I'm concerned, by the time A New Hope happens, every last Jedi except for Obi-Wan and Yoda had been hunted down by Vader. None went into hiding, none trained new padawans on the side, none joined the Rebellion. Every single survivor of Order 66 was hunted down between ROTS and ANH, except for Obi-Wan and Yoda. Boba Fett got taken out like a total bitch by a blind man and was eaten alive by a giant pussy in the middle of a desert. He didn't fix his jetpack, he didn't get out, he had no further adventures. At the end of ROTJ, Palaptine got chucked down an elevator shaft, Good wins, Evil is punished, and there is no remnant of the Empire that sticks around for decades to come.

I am aware that Offical Lucas stuff says otherwise, but I ignore it, inspite of the fact that it is out there. I suggest you do the same with Star Trek. Stick to the stuff that you like and fits in with your liking of Star Trek, let them make bad fan fiction backed by money, and if someone brings up this film or follow on films, just tell them as far as you're concerned, it never happened.

-So who REALLY shot first? Greedo or Han?
-Did Jabba really meet up with Han in episode 4?
-Does Boba Fett have a real menacing voice or does he sound like Jango?
-Does Anakin look young or old as a spirit?

I don't dig the EU stuff either. Don't forget that Darth Maul died when he was cut in half. He never survived to confront Obi-wan on Tattoine.

As far as I'm concerned, George Lucas died in a car crash shortly after the release of ESB.

Data is alive, dammit, and he most certainly didn't die because there was only one prototype of a portable transporter in existence, on a non-scientific vessel too!

Nemesis was bad fanfic.

Han shot. There was no first or second shot. Just Han doing the shooting and Greedo doing the dying.

Yes. And Boba Fett was with Jabba when Jabba was reminding Han to pay his bills or else.

Like Jango. Given how little Boba said in the Original Trilogy, I'm okay with it. I mean his lines were "As you wish", "He's no good to me dead", "Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold", and "Arrrggghhhh!", so it's no great change to me.

I got used to seeing Hayden Christianson as Anakin, so I'm perfectly okay seeing him as Ghost Anakin.

Don't get me started on how bad the EU junk is.

The only changes I liked to the Original Trilogy were the Jabba scene in Episode 4 and the redone emperor scene in Episode 5. The rest I could have done without.

Warning, the following clip may contain content that could be deemed due any of the following: Foul language and / or an appearance by Ben Affleck.

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What's a trailer for? A trailer is to show you enough parts of a film to let you judge whether you might like it or not. We've seen the trailer. The trailer I've seen, I saw a LOT I didn't like.

And, by your logic, that's either enough to make you not go to see the film or it isn't. If it's the former, just say you're gonna pass and have done with it. If the latter, by all means bitch after watching it.

You must be new to the internet.

But he has a point. Fanboys go on and on about films they don't like. Why go on and on about a film that one doesn't like? Why go on and on about a film that one has already decided is rubbish and one will not see? Why not just shut up about it and leave the conversations to people that will see it and/or enjoy it?

I think it is part and parcel to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Why would you want to censor other peoples' opinions, or deny them the right of conversing about something?

Im not, but what's the point of going on and on about a movie that sucks or that you think is going to suck? I got the opinion the first time. It only gets worse when you consider the way fanboys go about it.

I had a discussion about SW:TPM a while back and this guy went on and on and on about how bad it sucked, how much of a hack Lucas is, how bad it sucked, how much it looked like a cartoon, how bad it sucked. This is a movie that is now almost a decade old. At some point wouldn't he get sick of discussing a ten year old stinky cinematic suppository and discuss something else? I get it, he didn't like TPM when I did. Okay, now leave me the fuck alone about it.

I'm going to see Star Trek because I think it looks interesting. You're not going to see it because you don't. I think it's just entertainment. Fanboy Joe thinks it's nothing more than raping Roddenberry's corpse and outranks the Holocaust on the level of causing human suffering. What else is there to discuss? Why keep going round and round the same arguments?

You're not a lifelong Trekkie, I guess?

I know some of us take it TOO seriously, but it's a very cherished hobby to a lot of people, and part of that hobby is 40 years of studying the technical aspects of the ship, and the established backstories of the characters and the universe's history.

Somebody now comes along and tells us they're throwing out everything we knew because they don't care, and fucking with the classic lines of our beautiful ship...

Well, it's as if someone rewrote Jeff Cooper's biography to make it "more exciting," told you he preferred a Vespa .25 auto and liked to sneak up behind bad guys to pop them in the back of the head while drunk off his ass.

^ But all that stuff doesn't go together in the first place anyway. The problem is, hardcore fans interpret too much into the tech and the characters. If it was for them, Trek would have died a long time ago because 'canon' would have choked the writers to death. I mean, without going into details I can't remember (is there anything the dish thingy on most ships can't do?!), let's look at the big metastories:

TOS wasn't even sure what organization they were flying for. Federation? United Stars whatever? Earth Space Agency? There was no continuity whatsoever.

TNG 'forgot' about its movies entirely. Borg invasion in FC and in their next adventure, they go on a bona fide pleasure trip with a captain's yacht that hasn't existed until that point? Also, wouldn't there be, kinda, more to do at and around Earth? And NEM... where's the Prime Directive? It's suddenly considered fun to land on some planet without scanning it for life - in a 4WD buggy that hasn't even been mentioned before? Haven't we suffered thru the minutiae of scanning for life in countless episodes before?

DS9... just wow. And there I thought large Starfleet vessels were in the dozens, maybe in the hundreds. Suddenly there's fleets of thousands nobody really misses when annihilated? And where's their shields? Also, don't even think about the Klingons.

VOY never even thought about going to the bloody Gamma quadrant and using the bloody wormhole to jump a few thousand light years. Also, for a ship that far away it had surprisingly lots of contact with home and yet, no help could be given?

ENT was surprisingly faithful to 'canon' as far as I can remember. Well, except for them conveniently forgetting the Romulans, Borg and Ferengi until the time of TOS and TNG where those species were 'rediscovered'.

And guess what? I don't care. I think Trek is good when it tells engaging stories and is entertaining. Yes, it should certainly follow a timeline. Yes, there should be defined points in time that are part of the universe. But I don't care in the least if screw ZZ9 Plural Z is on the bridge or in engineering. Because, really, it's unimportant. It adds nothing to the story, to the contrary: people complain about technobabble, but in the same sentence about the writers getting some miniscule detail, some throwaway line from 40 years ago wrong. Who the fuck cares if fictional Phaser Induction Matrix 22 is located starboard or in the back when we get the same old, tired alien-comes-aboard-and-isn't-what-it-seems story? Isn't it more important to find new ways of creating 'tension' than counting down how much energy the shields have left?

I have faith in JJ Abrams to address exactly those problems Trek has had for decades now. The formula has become stale. This looks like a bold new beginning, and if anything, bold new beginnings are the heart of Star Trek.

[/nerd mode]

Which is all well and good, but it's just make-beleive and you are more than welcome to take and leave whichever parts you want. That doesn't mean that you somehow have to bash this film for people that want to watch or enjoy it.

You mean like Roddenberry did with the Starflight Cronology and Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual? Or like Paramount did with the FASA materials when it came time to create TNG? Or like how Paramount did when they released the TOS Remastered?

The difference of course is Jeff Cooper was a real person that did real things. This author can't just make up stuff about him on the spot and call it real and how it always was.

J.J. Abrams isn't going to take away your TOS DVDs. Just ignore anything he puts out and watch those old shows without ruining for me with incessent calls of "canon! He's violating canon!" because frankly, I heard tha argument the first time and don't care in the least.

I was reading the wiki on Star Trek Chronology last night (for lack of anything better...) and one of the things it describes is how often the dates for various events had to be changed (i.e. the original - FASA? - chronology had Kirk & Co. 50 years earlier than what is canon now) ...and even the "official" chronologyhas things that don't add up -
Kirk born in '33, celebrating 50th birthday in - according to Okuda - '85
First mission ends in 69 >> Kirk says in TMP "2 and a half years" >> Okuda puts TMP in '71....all kinds of little shit like that.

And that's before you get to the things said on-screen (and not just in the early days when they thought no one cared.....even in the later shows when they KNEW nerds were keeping up with it) that contradict.

I write TOS a blank check on that stuff because they couldn't have known anyone would analyze the show that much, but I do admit I wish that - once Trek was re-born and they knew the stakes, that they had made more of an effort to be consistent - how hard can it be?
But they didn't.

I do also wish this film would make an effort to hith the right canon knows when it makes no difference to the story which it SEEMS (and spoilers could give a false impression) they haven't...

BUT

I'm a lot more interested in that they tell a good story and that it is internally consistent and believable. I share Paladin's concern about a cadet going straight to command of the flagship (and sincerely hope they rationalize it on-screen) but i don't care too much at all about things like where the ship was built or whether Kirk ever served under Pike.

I'm gonna go thru this just for fun - not actually trying to argue here, but just because I am a nerd.

They took a few episodes to establish that in the beginning. It was mentioned in Tomorrow is Yesterday that they reported to the United Earth Space Probe Agency. In the same episode, they sent a message to Star Fleet Command. After this, they settled on Star Fleet Command and left it that way for the rest of the series and sequels. It was just a case of the early series finding its bearings.

I completely agree. The TNG movies also mostly ignored what was happening in the concurrent TV series. It pissed me off no end. btw, the Captain's Yacht was in existance since TNG episode 1, docked to the bottom center of the saucer on the D. It's discussed in the TNG tech manual, the ST Encyclopedia, and featured in one of the calendars in a painting by Andy Probert himself. They just never used it in the series. The Enterprise E apparently didn't have one until they needed it for a plot point, though.

Yeah, that was kinda odd considering they could only get 40 ships together to fight the Borg and had to "rebuild the fleet" after that! DS9 made a lot of mistakes, but when they featured points from previous series, like Trials and Tribblations, they respected TOS so much that they built a whole new model of the old Enterprise, and modelmaker Greg Jein was as faithful as he could get to the original, plus a little extra detail and weathering to suit the higher res of modern TV. It was an emotional and breathtaking moment when she showed up on screen, and I was grateful to see Trek history and the design respected.

If you check Star Trek Star Charts, you'll see the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran wormhole is almost the same distance from where Voyager ended up as Earth was. It really wouldn't have helped. As for the series itself, well, it's pretty much a great example of how to do everything wrong.

Enterprise threw Canon out the window at every opportunity for its first three seasons. Cloaking Romulans, Emotional Vulcans, too-modern-looking ships, regular time travel, meeting aliens that aren't supposed to show up till TNG's time as ratings stunts... not only a great example of how to do everything wrong, but how to go even beyond that and into negative values. Manny Coto tried to turn things around in the last season, and succeeded in using some canon (and some fanon!), but the damage was done. Personally, I have removed the show from my "personal canon."

I completely agree!

And they shouldn't be ignored any more than if one was writing a fictional historical novel set in the real world.

And some THAT minute is not what I'm talking about. The whole shape of the whole ship is not minutea.

People tend to use Balance of Terror when referring to throwaway lines. It wasn't a throwaway line that the Federation didn't know about the ability to cloak, it was a major plot point of that episode. It wasn't a throwaway line that humans had never seen a Romulan before, it was a major plot point of that episode. Technobabble is another issue entirely

Yes, agreed. Again, the phaser thing isn't the kind of minor detail I'm worried about. It's things like changing the whole look of the main ship, and altering established backstory for no good reason.

[/quote]I have faith in JJ Abrams to address exactly those problems Trek has had for decades now. The formula has become stale. This looks like a bold new beginning, and if anything, bold new beginnings are the heart of Star Trek.

[/nerd mode][/QUOTE]

I agree the formula is stale. V'ger and Boobyprize proved that again and again. But there isn't much in the trailer to show this is going to be anything but a formula action film. And he's using time travel, which Brannon Braga turned into the worst Trek formula story device ever!

Plus, the industry's track record with remakes and prequels frankly stinks. In the last few decades the only good remakes IMHO were The Addams Family and NuBSG, and I can't think of one prequel I liked. I think my cinicism is well founded in experience.

But hey, we'll see. So far I'm only able to revile the ugly redesign of the iconic starship, and decry the altering of the backstory. I won't say anything about the story or the performances until I see the film, which all seems fair enough to me.

I remain cautiously optimistic about the new movie, but I have to admit some of the things that I have seen/heard have bugged me.

Things I like:

The cast looks really, really good.
The action and special effects look top-notch.
Old Spock.

Things that trouble me:

Time travel again?
Bizarre supposed plot points like Spock "banishing" Kirk to the snow planet. Huh?
Little Kirk driving the car over the cliff.
Would have preferred a more faithful to the original Enterprise.