Star Trek

[Jazzman]

I haven't really gotten around to checking out the remastered TOS, but knowing that it passed the iSm test definitely intrigues me. Have to get on that.


After a couple of weeks now since seeing it, and also after repeatedly having to straighten out the time travel, alternate timeline/reality plot to numerous people who were confused as frack, I have to amend my initial review and simply say that, though I still absolutely love the film, the time travel bit was totally stupid and they would have been better served to just straight up reboot the series. We all knew it was a reboot, so why not? What was there to lose?

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, true. But, heck, why not time travel. It's a trek thing. They've done it like 6 times, twice in the movies alone.

And even though Alternate Universe was done only once TOS (though also once or twice on spin-off series), it's become the pop-cultural template for all Alternate Universe fictions ... and so I believe is widely accepted and understood.

Combining the two (i.e., having an alternate timeline that, so as not to freak out fans, can leave the original time line still in existence on some other plane of time/space/dimension/fiction) is Star Trek 101, and I thought would be easily understood and accepted.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Speaking for myself, a hopeless nitpicker as previously admitted in this thread and demonstrated in countless movie discussions, the time travel gimmick was absolutely instrumental in my enjoyment of the film, more than any reboot without it could have possibly been. It worked for me, it accomplished precisely what Abrams set out to do with it, abruptly, explicitly, and (to be melodramatic about it) viscerally saying, "Don't even bother trying to fit this all in to what you already know."

There have been 40+ years of "consistent" pieces of this universe's storyline presented to its audience. It's hardwired into fans' brains to be beyond picky about it, especially when talking about the original characters. To my mind, a complete reboot, without the time travel schtick to tie it into that 40 year history, would have just left me feeling like it was trying to compete with what we already know for my love and attention. Whereas this way allowed me to accept it as another chapter, still connected to the series and the movies, despite the radical changes it involves. It maintained that link that I've become acustom to in the 25 or so years that I've been a fan. And yet still gave a Star-Trek-plausible (lord knows that in the 40+ years there's plenty of precedent to set the bar of plausibility pretty low) reason to indulge the new elements that he wanted to bring to it.

[mousepod]

See, GD, that's what I don't buy. You claim to get your cake and eat it too, but if you're going to call yourself a nitpicker, what about the fact that time travel in this movie resulted in a completely different result than time travel in any other instance of the Star Trek universe?

As a nitpicker, you're fine with a deus ex machina "fix" for some crazy inconsistencies in character-based storytelling even if it changes the physics that was underlying the entire world.

That seems just silly.

In my opinion, of course.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I don't understand what you mean about it being completely different than any other instance. The only difference is that they didn't do something at the end of the movie to reverse the change. That doesn't change the physics. Hell, if anything, it's far more believable than the fact that every time some previously unknown physical phenomenon rips through the fabric of space and time, them clever Federation folk manage to find a way to reverse it within hours or days.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I won't, by the way, defend it as perfectly executed. But the question was asked as to why he even had to bother resorting to the deus ex machina method. I gave the reason I think they did, it was to bridge that gulf. It was a little clunky and sloppy, but it's presence was enough for me to forgive that because I got what he was going for with it. I can certainly understand how it might not have worked for everyone, but it worked for me. And I know I would not have been as forgiving of such sloppiness had it not been there.

[mousepod]

I'm just saying that in the various Star Trek series and movies, the concept of time travel has occurred almost 50 times, and never (in my memory) did it conveniently create an alternate universe the way it did in this movie.

If that's the case, then the device of time travel to appease nitpickers doesn't work, because it would create the biggest "nit" ever.

If I'm wrong, and I admit that I'm not able to recite chapter and verse all of the ST episodes where time travel happened, then I'll be more forgiving.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Time travel/alternate universes (I'd lump the two devices together) have happened many times that created different versions of the characters (most notably, the evil beard versions, or Q turning Picard into a pussy). The only difference in this case is that it wasn't all put back together again in the end. That doesn't violate anything.

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by mousepod

the concept of time travel has occurred almost 50 times, and never ... did it conveniently create an alternate universe the way it did in this movie.

No, they just didn't feature that as a story point ... because those particular stories didn't require it - - meaning the change of everything going forward from the way it "was."

This story, of course, required that. And the completely Star Trekian trope of time travel provided a great way to handle it.

And yes, add a new and obviously time travelish quirk to the 51st Star Trek time travel story. Finally. Better late than never. Am I to now to complain that Star Trek never addressed the paradoxes of time travel satisfactorily in its other outings, so is now precluded from doing so because of tradition?



And did they ever say anything to explicity assert the universe was unaffected by all that constant time travel?

For instance, there were only two more episodes of Next Generation after they time traveled in the First Contact movie. Who's to say the future of the universe came out Exactly As It Was before Zefrem Cochrane knew the future?

I'm sure we could find little butterfly-effect potentials in all the time travel episodes. So why didn't we think the altered time line might somehow be different?


Because it was never shown to affect what the characters did from that point on. Star Trek episodes always moved linearly into the future. This is the first one to go back and start over, so to speak. Now's the time to tell you .... they've been changing the future all along!

[mousepod]

OK... I've been doing a little more reading. GD is talking about the "Mirror Universe"... and there are plenty of other "parallel" universes in Star Trek canon.

So given all that... doesn't that just mean that the characters in the movie we just watched are parallel versions of the characters we knew and loved from TOS?

If that's so (and now I'm going back to the point I initially made in this thread), why should I be automatically emotionally attached to the crew of this parallel Enterprise? Any more than the bearded Spock from the Mirror Universe, for example?