There’s also another feature of Star Trek: The Beginning that while I didn’t post anything, I thought seemed to violate canon was the existence of United Earth Stellar Navy (UESN). However, again, upon further thought, I realized there was a reasonable explanation why it wasn’t mentioned or shown during Enterprise (especially during the Xindi Crisis), Malcolm Reed didn’t join it instead of Starfleet, and why it would start being mentioned during the Earth-Romulan War. My explanation is simply that before the Xindi attack the UESN was quite small compared to Starfleet and was more or less just a planetary defense force guarding Earth from alien attack and lacked any engines which would go above warp 3 thusly making the UESN unable to help search for the Xindi weapon. After the Xindi attack, it was realized that the UESN was far too weak to defend Earth and thusly a large effort was made to strengthen the UESN. However, the creation of the Coalition of Planets would take place during this same time and this would cause talk about merging the UESN with Starfleet. Now, this is just an educated guess but this explanation works. I’ll admit that I’m not sure how wise it would be to try to shoehorn the UESN into canon, but it can be done relatively smoothly. In fact, the existence of the UESN might explain the large gap between the mothballing of the Enterprise (NX-01) in 2161 and the planning of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) which would have occured no earlier than 2240 (assuming the 1701 was first launched in 2245) by having the UESN not merge into Starfleet immediately after the creation of the Federation and having the UESN name a ship Enterprise at some point during the gap.

Saying all this, there is a problem with canon and that would be Shran leading the Andorian forces. In TATV which occured in 2161, Shran had faked his death about 3 years before which would be around 2158. Plus, it should be assumed Shran left the Andorian Imperial Guard around a year before faking his death so that would make the year most likely to be 2157. Now, The Beginning has the Earth-Romulan War start in 2159, so, there’s no way Shran should be leading the Andorians. The simple solution would simply be to change the year the movie occurs in.

Apart from all that, I would be interested in seeing a movie, series, or mini-series about the Romulan War. By all accounts, it was very brutal. If they take a Battlestar Galactica approach to it rather than than the squeaky-clean TNG style, it would be very interesting.

When a ‘universe’ gets as big and (mostly) interesting as Trek’s it’s easy to get lost in the details of the place rather than look at the what the idea of Trek is about. Increasingly Trek fell into self-referential territory.

It’s a bit like taking a journey with a destination in mind, but stopping off along the way, getting caught up in things and forgetting you still have to get somewhere!

Enterprise fell into this trap, as did the TNG films. Even STV and STVI did a little bit. JJ Abram’s film is treading that thin line between making a film about the origins of the TOS crew ***and*** telling a rollicking good Star Trek story! TWOK was a great example of expanding the mythology of Trek without alienating the uninitiated – when I was a kid, I hadn’t seen Space Seed, but TWOK still made perfect sense!

If anyone can do it Abrams and his team can! Look at how they set up the whole concept of Alias and introduced all the characters in the space of a sixty-three minute pilot show!! Same goes for the superb opening episode of Lost!

God that was awful.