I wish when you quote me….. actually QUOTE me. Don’t put words in my mouth.

I actually think those are good ideas. Also Uhura should be a sassy young sister who says, “Oh no he did’nt!” and “You go girl!” because those would be perfect soundbites for the trailer. There should be a running joke involving Sulu’s flatulence. Also the trailer should use James Brown’s “I Feel Good” as the accompanying music.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!!”

I think that’s part of the discussion, and part of the uncertainty. Certainly, on the surface, it seems like they’re not planning on making profound changes. We know the characters are the same people, and I think most folks expect, and accept, that there has to be some level of change in the production design, though of course it’s premature to judge what they’ve done, since we haven’t seen it yet.

What some folks are arguing for is the idea that everything should be wiped away, so that future filmmakers/writers/whoever can tell new stories without regard to what’s come before, and other folks are arguing that if they really want to do that, they should build a new universe and leave Star Trek alone. :)

“I agree that if Kirk and Spock were suddenly brothers and Uhuru could read minds and Chekov had gills and had to gurgle ‘enemy wessel’ from inside a fish tank, then I’d have an issue…. but that’s NOT going to happen.”

Right. It certainly seems thus far that the makers of this film are trying to be true to the existing world. It’s just all the talk of time travel and the potential for alternate continua that might in the future no longer be beholden to what’s already been established that concerns some people, myself among them.

Again, of course, it’s hard to judge what they *have done*, because we don’t know. So instead we’re left to debate the possibilities, and what we feel should or should not happen. I’m sure that aspect will shift as more hard information on the film itself emerges.

“I just get bored of seeing people getting worried over things that don’t matter when they should be happy to see a new Star Trek.”

Well, I am happy, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been seeing new star Trek every single month for years and years and years, irrelevant of whether there was a TV series or a movie in play, so while I look forward to enjoying a new film, it does make a difference to me whether it plays in the same world as 99.95% of all those other stories or not. I mean, if millions of words of storytelling can be written that remain at least broadly consistent, I’d like to think that a few movies wouldn’t find it so hard, assuming the writers of those films care to do so. Right? :)

I just get bored of seeing people getting worried over things that don’t matter when they should be happy to see a new Star Trek.

I personally can’t wait.
My dad was a huge Star Trek fan. When when VCRs came out he had to buy one and start recording each episode. My sister and I got hooked on the show because we’d watch with him. This continued through TNG, DS9, and Voyager, but he died before Enterprise. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but when this new movie comes out I’ll be there with my sister on opening day, and I’m buying three tickets.

But that assumes, again, that maintaining established continuity is a bad thing. I don’t think we benefit at all with a license that says, “Well, we don’t care anymore, so let’s just throw everything out and start over.” If one wants to be free of such things, start one’s own series and thereby don’t worry about what an established one should cover.

“#220 Nothing quite like a little example of how continuity and canon limit what a writer is allowed to write. After 40 years, the box gets smaller and smaller.”

Ahh, so continuity is considered bad because someone should *gasp!* have to do a little homework. This is what some refer to as the “reboot-to-justify-lazy-writing” argument, or “I want to write whatever I want, so we should reboot so I don’t have to care what others do/did”. I suppose some might like that, but it’s a big failure-point in the logic to me.

“#221 Great place to restart. Just don’t box in the rest of the 5 year mission by what we see in the later spin-offs. ”

The later spinoffs rarely addressed the 5-year mission, so there’s precious little that’s uniquely TOS that would be boxed in by them.

So, moving right along… :)

#220 Nothing quite like a little example of how continuity and canon limit what a writer is allowed to write. After 40 years, the box gets smaller and smaller.

#201 Nothing that a little reboot can’t handle. We can get rid of Sybok, bring back Kirk, worry about the fates of our hero’s during every future episode — all because we altered the time line, or at least the bad guys in this movie can do that.

The next movie can open with Kirk and McCoy talking. McCoy is giving Kirk a psychological evaluation after his experience from dealing with Janice Lester.

There is something to be said for continuity and canon and generally I feel the same way as you do on this. It always agravated me how little the writers of VOY knew or cared about what had been established even just a few years before on DS9 or TNG. There was that two-parter “Equinox” which had Janeway explaining that Capt. Ransom had made first contact with the Yridians who were believed to have been extinct which made little sense given how often we met Yridians on TNG and that it was common knowledge they were information brokers. And then they even appeared on ENT… That kind of stuff could’ve been so easily avoided had someone just leaned back and pulled the Star Trek Encyclopedia off a shelf and done some fact-checking then changed the alien name to something else. Yeah that may be nit-picking but you’d think they’d've had a fact-checker on staff.

Excellent points.

I cannot help but think of the many fans who believe that Khan’s recognition of Chekov on Ceti Alpha V was a continuity error, as if the fact that Walter Koenig was not on the show during season one means that the character of Chekov could not have been aboard the Enterprise during the events of “Space Seed”.
I always just imagined that Khan simply memorized the information and images of the non-classified personnel files of the Enterprise during his convalescence in sickbay, and Chekov was simply not yet the ship’s primary navigator. Perhaps he was a junior navigator on the “graveyard shift”, or not yet working on the bridge at all. IMO, that reference in TWOK makes Chekov’s presence aboard the Enterprise at that particular time a part of Star Trek canon. The fact that the television audience never saw him makes no difference.

Furthermore, I believe that too much inclusion of known canon information in the backstory can weigh too heavily upon the story progression of STXI. I don’t need to see Gary Mitchell, Ben Finney, Finnegan, or Carol Marcus to know they exist in canon, and that they once impacted the life and/or career of JTK to one degree or another. It simply is not necessary.