this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023

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Jim Kirk on Pike’s Enterprise - Inverse dives into an analysis of canon constraints and lack thereof (www.inverse.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A fairly thorough piece.

Whatever your view on whether it’s a pro or con for the ensemble and storytelling, SNW ‘Lost in Translation’ having covered off the ‘met him when he made fleet captain’ reference to Pike in TOS, there seems to be a great deal of flexibility for SNW to keep bringing Jim Kirk into its stories.

Here’s one unexpected take.

So what does that mean for Kirk? We have to wait until 2265 for him to take over as captain of the Enterprise, right? Well, maybe not. Canon is oddly vague on the handover from Pike to Kirk. In fact, only one episode of TOS actually takes place in 2265: “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second pilot. There’s also nothing that indicates Kirk didn’t serve on the Enterprise in another role before getting promoted. If, in theory, Pike were to step down and someone else became an interim captain, then nothing is stopping Kirk from serving on the Enterprise before 2265.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In The Original Series episode “The Menagerie,” Kirk noted he’d met Pike only once, “when he was promoted to Fleet Captain.”

Well, no.

MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?

KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.

MENDEZ: About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active.

KIRK: I took over the Enterprise from him. Spock served with him for several years.

Kirk says he met Pike when he was promoted to fleet captain, and also that he took over the Enterprise from him. Those could have been separate occasions, and there's no real reason there couldn't be others in between that he didn't mention to Mendez.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I was wondering about that!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find it weakens the storytelling on SNW. If I wanted to watch Kirk, I’d tune into TOS or one of the many movies he’s featured in. I also think the actor they’ve hired to portray him isn’t channeling the existing character very well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

He really isn't. I can see Ethan Peck as a younger Spock and Celia Rose Gooding as a younger Uhura, but Paul Wesley doesn't bring to mind Kirk at all.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There’s also nothing that indicates Kirk didn’t serve on the Enterprise in another role before getting promoted

Hm, here's an interesting formulation for all or part of a final season:

Pike leaves, becomes an Academy instructor
Una becomes captain of the Enterprise
Kirk transfers in to be her XO

Kirk and Spock working together for a year or so would give us a chance to explain the unusual situation where Spock is simultaneously science officer and XO. By the end of this season you'd have the full TOS crew in place. (Minus perhaps Chekov, or maybe he's a cadet like Uhura was in season 1.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Funny ... maybe I'm alone in this ... but I really am not that interested in SNW transitioning into TOS as a clear prequel.

I like the prequel dimension being in the background, and the canon consistency, but I want SNW to focus on itself and its own characters.

I'm not sure how the show should end, but I feel like it should end, not just slide into TOS like Rogue One into A New Hope.

If Kirk is going to be a mainstay, as it seems he will, I hope it focuses on "young Kirk" in the same way we've got "young" Spock without taking focus away from the SNW characters with the Spock-Chapel relationship being a nice example. I guess the canon flexibility the article talks about opens up possibilities there. But still, I don't want the focus to be on ... "how does this lead to TOS".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I agree completely. I don’t want all TOS characters to take over, at least for another 2-3 seasons. I’m loving M’Benga’s character and would hate for a McCoy to come in to replace him. There’s a nice opening for Scotty to come into the picture without any character currently in that role but I also want this series to stand on its own. I love how the writers have gone back to an episodic series. It just works so well for trek

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If there were 15 episodes per season, a few TOS bridges would be ok. But at ten? It is very tight, there is only so much story that fits.

I like how SNW is exploring the world, both inside the Enterprise and outside. There are more trees to set on fire with the current cast climbing them, more science fiction to explore, more places to discover.

If that includes some ”These Old Scientist” links, so be it—but I do like the word New in the title!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would surmise that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has somewhat altered the main timeline, and there could be some minor adjustments with the characters to accommodate the story that showrunners want to tell.

I'd consider the Pike/Kirk relationship to be a minor thing. If they meet again, I'd be okay with it if the story broke some of the canon. I mean, they already changed the timeline of the Eugenics War, so is it a huge deal if Pike and Kirk come face to face a couple more times throughout the series?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

and there could be some minor adjustments with the characters to accommodate the story that showrunners want to tell.

Other than the Kelvin timeline where they said up front "THIS IS A DIFFERENT TIMELINE," when has that ever happened?

Keep in mind, we're talking about showrunners who contrived a reason for Pike to be "fleet captain" for a single episode just so they could have Kirk and Pike interact without invalidating one line from TOS: "Court Martial." These are not the type of Star Trek fans who are going to make "minor adjustments" and justify it with "well you see back in S02E03 we changed the timeline, so now we can do whatever we want!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm all for keeping canon intact if its possible. But I hope they don't get trigger happy with contrivances just to keep a line from the 60's intact that more or less doesn't matter too much. Does it really matter how much Kirk and Pike interacted? No, not really. But I can say I trust these writers, this show seems to care about Trek and what made it good a lot more than doing their own thing 100% (looking at you Disco).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't really care if they mess around with continuity if continuity is interfering with a good story they want to tell. My point is that the SNW writers are making a clear and concerted effort to maintain continuity.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

100% agree with you. The TOS loyalists are going out of their way to find excuses to hate this show. It's the best series I have seen since TNG and I am not saying the others were bad. I actually like all of them with the exception of Discovery because it focuses so heavily on one plotline and one character.

This is an ensemble with humor when it needs it and is more true to the heart of Trek than people are giving it credit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It is truly a return to the Golden Age of TNG/DS9/Voy and I'm all here for it. I missed the episode adventures. The way Disco does it is not it with the stories taking the whole season and the characters taking a back seat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This timeline is Altered not Alternate They did the same thing for First Contact, and ENT add just enough time travel to excuse not making the show into a history documentary yet none the less its considered part of the same story as everything that was made before but came later in the timeline.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Has the writing staff of First Contact ever confirmed, on the record, that it was their intent to alter the timeline? Has the writing staff for Enterprise ever indicated that they intended to depict an "altered" timeline?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're moving the goalposts asking for such explicits beyond what is reasonable. Why would they need to spell it out for you in an interview when they have the actors say "these events weren't supposed to happen" repeatedly on screen? Are all viewers expected to familiarize themselves with every entertainment news article around and about a film or TV show in order to understand it? These things should be intuitive, and if what is intuitive isn't the writer's intent then that's just a failure on the writer's part.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they have the actors say “these events weren’t supposed to happen” repeatedly on screen?

The purpose of the "time has been altered and we need to fix the timeline" conversation that occurs near the beginning of every time travel story is definitely not to inform the audience that every subsequent installment of Star Trek will occur in an altered timeline.

In fact, it's just the opposite. The entire reason the characters are so concerned with restoring the timeline is that they want to return to their lives in an unaltered timeline.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except total unaltering is impossible you can put the big history book events back into place (ie zefram cochrane invented the human iteration of warp drive) but the butterflies are still set loose (ie zefram cochrane was told about the enterprise-E by time travelers and was shown it through a telescope in order to gain his trust and cooperation, a century later a hitherto unmentioned ship of the same name and rough silhouette would be launched supplanting Dauntless as the name associated with the NX-01 registry.) Our time travelers don't notice the differences when they return home because they are so far removed from the altered events that the fog of history essentially covers things up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting headcanon, but headcanon nevertheless. I'd wager heavily that neither the First Contact nor Enterprise production staff share this interpretation, much less intended it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd take up that wager they used the same actor for zefram cochrane to do the traditional new series handoff, they cast him as involved in the NX-01's multi decade development program before he disappeared.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does Cromwell reprising Cochrane in "Broken Bow" support the notion that Enterprise is in a different timeline from all previous Star Trek? I don't see how these things are connected at all.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is a strawman argument, I didn't claim this is a different timeline, in fact I claimed just the opposite. Altered is not the same as Alternate. Key events that are remembered and influential are still intact, while superficial details like whether NX-01 was named Dauntless or Enterprise deviate with little consequence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But again, the notion that NX-01 was called "Dauntless" before the Borg First Contact incursion is your headcanon. No one working on Enterprise ever attested to that, and Cromwell's casting as Cochrane is certainly not evidence of this alteration.

You started this conversation by saying "They did the same thing for First Contact" and I just want to know who "they" is and what the "same thing" that "they did" is. You've brought up this Dauntless/Enterprise theory twice now but that's certainly not evidence that any "they" did any "thing." As far as I can tell it is your headcanon for a relatively minor inconsistency that could have any number of other explanations, the most obvious one being that Arturis got a detail wrong.

I just find it incredibly hard to believe that anyone working on Enterprise was working on the assumption that they were creating a show in a timeline that was "altered" by the events of First Contact. That was never alluded to in the show's four year run and as far as I know no one working on that show ever said anything of the sort.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Again you're moving the goalposts demanding greater and greater explicits not because you'd be convinced but because you'd expect the explicit doesn't explicitly exists. This is a low stakes conversation about a fictional universe intuition reinforced by references is sufficient, and if in subsequent series writers forget these details or go another way well then that's just how the cookie crumbles.

Though I don't know why you don't find this very intuitive the episode Regeneration featured borg drones from the events of First Contact, sure you may be entitled to your wishful thinking but to claim its never alluded to or incredibly hard to believe that first contact one of the more successful startrek films was an influence on enterprise is itself incredibly hard to believe.

As for Dauntless I'd say the screen canon speaks for itself why would I need characters to constantly break "show don't tell" and hold my hand every step of the way?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you'll find the crossover of last week to be indicative that SNW is again in a different universe from TOS. Spock's changes were notable to characters who studied his past.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The timeline is more robust than that. We’re not in the Marvel or DC comic or EEAAO infinitely branching universes concept of a multiverse.

There can be branching events like the one that established the Kelvin universe but they are rare and take something of the order of the Romulan Supernova to create.

This is the prime universe of TOS and the other shows. It’s the same wide river of time, but the layers of temporal incursions - both seen in shows and movies and reported by temporal agents - accumulate changes. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow confirmed this.

The key events and their sequences do not change. The kind of differences that are discernible only by deep study are not sufficiently material to be necessary to protect against.