[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Not that it's a bad plot device, but Voyage Home went BEYOND that. It was about the human condition as much as anything else, which is what Trek is theoretically ABOUT. There was a message behind it that spoke in terms that didn't require a Ph.D. in scifi to understand. Loyalty, environmentalism, humor, a desire to help others even at grave personal risk.

I keep forgetting you haven't seen this movie, which is why everything you say about comes across as so stupid.

See it, then tell me you didn't see loyalty, humor, a desire to help others even at grave personal risk, plus humility, a nice (if understated) dialogue between reason and passion, and more humor.

Star Trek IV was shallow compared to other films (particularly: TWOK, TMP, TUC, INS), but managed to be excellent by throwing its characters into an outrageous situation and watching those characters work it out with difficulty and an irrepressible humor.

That is this movie.

How does chronological placement have ANYTHING to do with fitting into film-based canon? At all? Giving a year only means that events happened within that year, not that said events fit into prior canon.

Chronological placement does not have anything to do with fitting into film-based canon. Causal placement has everything to do with fitting in. TSFS is part of canon because its events follow on and are caused by the events of TWOK. TVH builds on TSFS. TFF builds on TVH (badly). TMP, in turn, is directly caused by TOS. The causal links are greater or lesser from movie to movie, but they are always there. TUC causes GEN. TWOK is caused as much by "Space Seed" (an episode) as by any movie.

Star Trek 2009 does not cause, nor is it caused by, TOS. Star Trek 2009 is linked to the canon not by TOS but by NEM, "Unification I" and "Unification II" from STNG. It does fit into the canon -- just not in the way you want it to fit in your fanboy rage.

And by the way, "2233-2258" and "after Nemesis" are CONTRADICTORY. Yes, you're referring to time periods before and after a time travel, but if I'm going to be flamed for being an obsessive fanboy I demand the right to flame for grammatical inaccuracy.

There was no grammatical inaccuracy. The one was a chronological placement, the other a causal placement. Consider your flametaliation dampered.

Yes, I'm a minority of one. Everybody on the planet is a minority of one. Our opinions are what makes us individuals and not drones.

I wasn't criticizing your individual opinion. I was observing that Orci and Kurtzman's justification for spinning off a new timeline -- that it would restore dramatic tension, therefore making an objectively better movie, therefore bringing in more theatergoers -- seems to have been correct. Now, you may value meticulous preservation of (your particular filtered version of) the original timeline more than having a good movie, and that's fine, but my point is that the writers did not arbitrarily change timelines. They were faced with a choice between two positive values (canon worship vs. excellent writing) and selected the latter. Your insistence on assigning evil motives to that decision is misdirected and unjust. And that's why I'm still in this thread.

How does eliminating the time travel and saying "this movie is a reboot in another timeline" terminate the use of the original timeline in marketing, etc.? In this very thread people have pointed out that the original timeline is still used in novels and computer games. It's another continuity! What does an Iron Man movie have to do with an Iron Man animated series or an Iron Man comic line? NONE! Toys are sold for all three, adaptations are made of all three, all three COEXIST!

Wait. So, aside from the fact that Iron Man and Star Trek are radically different properties with radically different marketing possibilities... it's okay with you to have two divergent continuities being marketed at the same time, with one (the movies) getting the vast, vast majority of money and fans while the comics are left behind as a tiny preserve for the hardcore nerd fans?

What's wrong, then, in your opinion, with doing the same thing for two divergent timelines? Not that I think that's what's going to happen to Star Trek, as we've already seen an uptick in interest in the several TV series thanks to this new movie, but, as far as I can tell, your whole argument against the divergent timelines is that splitting the timeline will ghettoize us just as it's ghettoized the comic book world!

But the original timeline WAS present, and now it's GONE. There's a big difference between "the original timeline is elsewhere in the multiverse" and "we rewrote history in front of your very eyes."

Alright. Time for you to read this, Nate:

http://trekmovie.com/2008/12/11/bob-...-real-science/

I'm sorry, but when I see history rewritten in front of my eyes without being restored before the end of the movie, I get the crazy idea that the creators don't care about the old timeline. This is another reason why I didn't like Cinderella III.

So you ignore everything the creators have said, thought, written, shown on the subject and ascribe your own motives to them despite all evidence to the contrary.

If that's your principle, then there's very little I can say to change your mind.