Sure, it might come off as gimmicky, what with Takei and Nichols already having done so. But who else could play Sylar’s Grandpa?

I mean, Trek is already flexible enough that you can get a bats**t crazy episode like Spock’s Brain existing alongside City on the Edge of Forever. The Cage exists as an anomalous parallel tale to The Menagerie, with lots of bits that were cut in the two-parter that show a different approach to (quire-newly-developed) warp travel and so on! Roddenberry in the early days of TNG was quite happy to contradict TOS if he needed to. Not to mention all different producers have different approaches to the source material.

In The X Files, as a prime example of ’stretchy’ canon, you can have crazy and hilarious one-off stories like Post-Modern Prometheus or Humbug existing alongside dark arc-related tales such as The Erlenmeyer Flask.

If you just approach Star Trek fromthis point of view, they’re just stories. We know the characters and the writer does a particular thing with them in a particular story. If we’re flexible about ‘canon’ pretty much anything can be accomodated.

The point is that despite what ANYONE to do with this Movie’s production says, ‘we people’ can ALL have a CHOICE where so-called onscreen ‘canon’ is concerned. Now that this whole ‘alternative’ timeline stuff has been brought up in the first place about this Movie’s storyline, it DOESN’T need to stop there! We don’t need to accept ANYTHING, but can IMAGINE what we wish. Those, that like J.J.’s version, can happily see it as part ‘official’ Star Trek ‘canon’ if they wish, and others that end up NOT liking it, can happily IMAGINE it as being a DIFFERENT Star Trek ‘canon’ if THEY wish. Which also means that TOS fans that truly dislike TNG (and what came afterwards), can ‘imagine it as being a DIFFERENT ‘canon’ to TOS if they wish, and this can work equally well for any fans of TNG (and what came afterwards) that truly dislike TOS, if they wish….

Some can say ‘tomato’, and some can say ‘tomato’….except that doesn’t work so well when typed…. By the way, the article above states that Nimoy will be interacting with more than one ‘TOS’ character in this, and therefore might have a bigger role than you think. I do however agree with your speculation (b) at this point.

#42 What is it with you?

Interesting. But if the supposed ‘old TOS crew’ are somehow brought FORWARD in time in this thing, then this will REALLY get more confusing than it already ’seems’ to be!

Probably the scene I’m most looking forward too!

Is that ruled out?