Sundance wrote:Starfleet's always been a military organistion. it holds courts martial, its members wear uniforms, it has a rank structure, it flies around in starships equipped with enough firepower to slag a planet, it defends the state (The United Federation of Planets) against enemies in times of war (The Klingons in "Errand of Mercy", and again in DS9 S4/5 and the Dominion in DS9 S6-7 as well as various incidents involving the Romulans, Gorn, Cardassians, Borg and Talarians as well as the unseen Tzenkethi war) Kirk calls himself a soldier. David Marcus complains scientists are pawns of the military. When they talk of detente and peace with the Klingons in TUC, Cartwright asks if they mean to mothball the fleet. it's clearly a military organisation. it's not militant, but it is military.
In the series bible, Gene Roddenberry was adamant that the crew was NOT military, they belonged to the United Earth Space Probe Agency (a name quoted several times in the earliest episodes), but he gave the crew ranks and uniforms because he was drawing from his experiences as a WWII bomber pilot. He was LIVID with Harve Bennett when he allowed the script for
Star Trek II to describe his characters as "military". This altercation is
well documented.
Malcolm Orr wrote:Well, that argument works amongst Trekkies - you can write a book about Captain Zog on the USS Minutiae and slap Trek on the title and it 'is' Star Trek, however if you look at things from a pop culture or entertainment point of view only TNG and TOS have been stellar successes ratings wise. I'm not equating quality with ratings, but rather making the point that to a lot of people Star Trek is Kirk and Spock or Picard and Data, less so Janeway, and even less so Sisko and Archer. If I stopped 100 people in the street and asked them to name a captain or character from Star Trek that the vast majority would name someone from TOS or TNG.
Critic-wise DS9 is often the one most highly regarded, so whilst your argument is true - Trek doesn't have to be about one crew - the reality is that if Paramount are going to invest in one crew for a big budget film, it'll be TOS or TNG. The film does now mean that a sequel will be made and that it's likely that it will further cement TOS as the main branch of Trek (up until recently TNG was my preferred version).
As for the wiping Trek history, well definately the familiar universe does remain, this is a new branch 'divergent' universe. Though there will likely be a Picard and a Sisko (and unfortunately a Janeway) in the future of this one too. Arguably this is already a divergent universe anyway - one where Starfleet uses the Enterprise insignia for all ships...
I agree with your comments 100 percent, Malcolm. You've reiterated the
exact point I was trying to make earlier.
You're quite right about the ship logos, by the way! That problem first cropped up in
Star Trek II. Even in the first movie, the
Epsilon 9 crew had their own badges.
As for Nero, there's a deleted scene which explains that after the attack on the
Kelvin, he's captured by Klingons and sent to Rura Penthe, which he escapes from almost 25 years later. Nero's appearence in the mind-meld scene was taken from the Rura Penthe footage, as was the moment in the film's trailer where he says "The wait is over!". The Narada destroys the Klingon fleet, as mentioned in the final cut of the film, and Nero is saved... but he's gone completely out of his mind, as evidenced by the rest of the film.
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