New Treks Timeline, what can't change?

[Stark]

Stark, none of those things figured into the movie, so how can you tell? Although the Kelvin is huge, but that's not necessarily impossible, just not a scale shown in TOS stories before.

You're one of THOSE people. Impossilol.

[VT-16]

Yeah, I'm one of those morons who expect more than "lol it's because I say so lol". I didn't see any sign the early history was different in this movie. Maybe the Beastie Boys song, but, hey, who knows, they might have been a popular group during WWIII in Trek history. 8D

[Stark]

You're right, you're far more based on evidence mindlessly accepting everything Abrams says to court the obsessive audience than all those people who noticed the setting is significantly different. What evidence is there that the 'original' timeline is the TOS timeline again? Oh right.

FUCKING ZERO.

Who knewpossible!?

[VT-16]

So an older Starfleet vessel is bigger and there's a Beastie Boys song. Real compelling evidence.

[Stark]

So an older Starfleet vessel is bigger and there's a Beastie Boys song. Real compelling evidence.

You're hilarious.

Notice one side has what you consider not 'compelling' evidence, whereas the other side has FUCKING ZERO evidence. Hmmm. Hmmm. What argument to go with?

Oh yeah, the one where we mindlessly accept out-of-universe explanations.

Go on, prove Old Spock comes from the TNG universe.

[Patrick Degan]

So an older Starfleet vessel is bigger and there's a Beastie Boys song. Real compelling evidence.

Earth corporations from the 20th/21st centuries still exist in the 23rd. Earth's industrial base quite evidently can support the construction of much larger and more technologically-advanced starships than what were seen in TOS. Neither of these would be extant if Earth had suffered a period of post-atomic devastation from which it would have had to recover before regaining minimal spaceflight capability or even the economic level necessary to finance such efforts.

[VT-16]

But that's just conjecture based on not seeing much industrial advertising in previous films or episodes set in the TOS era. It could be an indication, but it's not conclusive. And even if we never saw ships that big in TOS before, you have to remember we hardly saw any ships at all beyond the Enterprise. Who's to say pre-TOS Starfleet explorer designs weren't larger, clunkier designs when we haven't seen any dedicated to this role before TNG? And the series had several space stations significantly larger than the Constitution-class, while the movie-era had the huge Spacedock. It's not impossible for their engineers to come up with spacecraft of that size and beyond.

[Bounty]

Neither of these would be extant if Earth had suffered a period of post-atomic devastation

That's a really flimsy argument to make. Even before the new movie, WW3 was presented as an event that left large swathes of the industrialized world untouched and one that took "only" decades for the planet to fully recover from; indeed, TOS itself shows that mere decades after the end of the war Earth was launching advanced FTL spacecraft and colonizing other star systems.

There are better ways to prove that new-Trek didn't split from old-Trek than "but they have companies and progress ergo no WW3". It's a huge leap of logic based on very little concrete evidence. By saying WW3 didn't take place you're just saying the exact same thing as the split-timeline argument, but moving the point of divergence back a century.

[VT-16]

You're hilarious.

Notice one side has what you consider not 'compelling' evidence, whereas the other side has FUCKING ZERO evidence. Hmmm. Hmmm. What argument to go with?

Gee, I tend to follow what the people who made the film itself go with, rather than fans who spout "You dumb, lol" as an argument. At least Patrick Degan brought up something specific, although I disagree with his conclusion.

Oh yeah, the one where we mindlessly accept out-of-universe explanations.

The one which said the Kelvin exists in two timelines, the TOS one and the new movie, you mean?

Go on, prove Old Spock comes from the TNG universe.

What does the TNG universe have to do with the TOS one, which we are discussing?

[FSTargetDrone]

Is it ever addressed anywhere in the original canon how the Golden Gate Bridge survived a "World War III" type event? Was it a reconstruction?

In any case, with newTrek, I for one do not want to see a re-hash of V'Ger, Doomsday Machines, Tribbles, Khan, the whale probe, not any of it. I want to see new things, not do-overs of the oldTrek.

[VT-16]

Too late, there's a Tribble somewhere in Scotty's ice station. :3

[Connor MacLeod]

I don't think we can really make a great many predictions about what is happening in the new Star Trek aside from a single movie. Hell, do we ever see much of anything yet that is indicative of say, firepower?

That said, you always have to take with a grain of salt all the "off-screen" commentary because as a rule it won't neccesarily match up with what we see onscreen. Intentions are all well and good but that's all they are, intentions, and they are "out of universe" ones at that. If they help explain things we see onscreen that's fine, but they aren't straightjackets. (Caes in point, you run up against this A LOT in B5, and evne Star Wars.)

I will also say there is enough reason to believe that the new Trek is a completely new timeline with little or no bearing on the "old" ones. And frankly I don't see much point in nitpicking over timelines.. given the way trek time travel works (or must work, given all the fucked up stuff we've seen anytime time travel becomes involved, and how often it happens) the difference between a "completely new" timeline/continuity or something that is "linked" in some bizarre manner to the old is going to be insignificant (that is, its going to basically BE a new timeline regardless.)

[Oskuro]

The key concept here is that the movies are set at the beggining of the TOS era. This gives the writers a big fat span of time to do whatever they want before they need to address events like V'ger or the Whale Probe.

Is it wrong that I want to see Tribbles in this continuity?

[Bounty]

Like VT-16 said, there was a Tribble on Scotty's desk

[Oskuro]

There was? awesome!

[FSTargetDrone]

There was? awesome!

That was news to me, too!

I just found this... If you squint really hard, you can kind of see it:



The full size is available here.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, I'm one of those morons who expect more than "lol it's because I say so lol". I didn't see any sign the early history was different in this movie. Maybe the Beastie Boys song, but, hey, who knows, they might have been a popular group during WWIII in Trek history. 8D

Oh yeah, because it isn't hugely more difficult and costly to make a starship twice as big, right? All you have to do is say "You know what, let's make it twice as big!" and it will just happen, right?

Moron. So what timeline change would you make in order to suddenly cause all real-life naval ships to be twice their present size?

[Darth Wong]

And the series had several space stations significantly larger than the Constitution-class, while the movie-era had the huge Spacedock. It's not impossible for their engineers to come up with spacecraft of that size and beyond.

Don't be so goddamned stupid. It's much easier to make a large structure when it can't move.

As far as the timeline goes, don't you get it? The whole point of the reboot is that the producers now have the freedom to say "We now get to decide what parts of the old show we're constrained to follow, not the fans." How annoying do you think it must be, after three decades, to be forced to worry about the fans and their slavish worship of The Continuity? And don't kid yourself into thinking that they will treat the technical parts of the old Continuity with more reverence than the story parts. If anything, they care less about that stuff.

[VT-16]

We see one huge ship prior to the timeline change and then get a statement from the film's script writers saying that based on intel on the Narada, the Federation began massive upscalings of warship designs. We don't know the absolute capacity of the main timeline Federation to say if they could create these designs or not, in the original series timeline. Course I know it takes more effort to make a ship twice as long, it's 8 times as much in terms of volume, at least.

With the insistence of the script writers that the Kelvin was an original series design, we have an answer, the Federation could make ships of that size, so early on. The difference being that the main focus of their navy was ships of the type of the Constitution, leaving larger projects as relatively immobile space stations. We don't know if the Kelvin functioned as little more than a space station with a warp drive, compared to the rest of the pre-2233 navy designs. It could be slow and unwieldy and only suited to long-term pleasure cruises, leaving smaller designs to do any real battle, which is what we had until the timeline split.

I'm not saying it makes much sense, I'm just noting this is what the script writers wanted. My opinion of how dumb or smart it is, doesn't factor into it. I do think it's dumb and just a change made for the sake of it, no real thought on the part of the production team if it'd make sense.

[Darth Wong]

You don't seriously think the only problem is that it's 8 times the volume, do you? Coming up with the materials is the least of their problems. The real problem is that the ship is going to be structurally weaker if we are stuck with the same technology base.

[Solauren]

It occurs to me that alot of the events in TOS had driving factors that occured centuries earlier, and even outside of the galaxy. Considering those are all 'pre-Nero', they should be unaffected.

How (and even if) they are dealt with, however, probably would/will be.

i.e The Doomsday Machine (Extra-Galactic), Space Seed (Pre-Warp), By Any other Name (Extra-Galactic), That Which Survives (Implied Extra-Galactic), numerous others.

[VT-16]

The real problem is that the ship is going to be structurally weaker if we are stuck with the same technology base.

I never said it wouldn't be. For all we know, other, smaller, more dedicated warships could have done better against the Narada or at least lasted longer. But in 2233, the Kelvin is all we have and it's primarily a survey vessel.

[Darth Wong]

Why the hell would a "survey vessel" have more than twice the crew of a subsequent ship of the line, and more weapons and shuttles to boot? The saucer had gun turrets all over its perimeter, whereas the TOS E-Nil had much fewer weapons than that.

You can explore much more efficiently with larger numbers of smaller ships than a smaller number of larger ships, unless you feel the need to design them for battle, in which case they are not just weak survey vessels: they have the same mission as the original E-Nil.

[VT-16]

True, I didn't think of that. Unless each gun is weaker, the Constitution-class is more automated and the Kelvin's engine is more inefficient and needed to be larger, then it's definitely an error, which the writers see fit to compound. Just to make sure, is there any reference to the original Constitution-class as the largest class in Federation history in its career?

Though, it's not the first time things have been changed within the same series (Spock's mother being dead, and then not being dead, from "Where No Man Has Gone Before to Journey To Babel, for example).

[CDiehl]

It occurs to me that alot of the events in TOS had driving factors that occured centuries earlier, and even outside of the galaxy. Considering those are all 'pre-Nero', they should be unaffected.

Considering that this universe is not the one in which the original series took place, why do you assume that those "driving factors" exist in it as they did in the original? Even if they really do exist in this universe also, I truly hope we don't have to watch it, because I have no interest in watching remakes of 40-year-old TV episodes.