Now you know that other than you, and Uta that works in the grocery store down the street (and I doubt it’s that important to ask her), who am I going to ask to translate this. You remember that my German cultural knowledge is all learned from Hogan’s Heroes. Don’t have time right now to figure it out.

A lot of people seem to be upset because kirk et all were assigned to the Enterprise as cadets. How could kirk and checkov be assigned at the same time? And on the surface, I would totally agree.

I am thinking that the reason kirk and checkov were at the acadamy at the same time and then posted to the Enterprise at the same time was because kirk was there for command training. He could have already been a commissioned officer previously serving aboard the faragaut but, just like Savik in Trek II, he was there for training like the Kobiashi Maru, and was wearing an acadamy uniform for his time spent there.

Checkov on the other hand was there for his regular training and graduated as an ensign. Checkov could have been a wiz kid like Wesley and went there early and graduated early, explaining the age discrepency. Didn’t someone say Pike referred to him as a “wiz kid”? We don’t know how much time has passed between the bar scene and the enterprise scene. And I’m not totally convinced what we saw was the initial launch of the enterprise.

McCoy would have been there for graduate training as a doctor just like kirk was there for command. Its sort of like when you have an MD in another country. You may have the training and the MD, but when you come to the US to practice, you need to go through the MCATS all over again (i think).

uhura and Sulu might have gone to the academy at the same time, but I think thats ok, because kirk was the youngest captain in starfleet history so it might make sense that where they are leutenants, he is a captain.

Also, the time that kirk would have been aboard the faragaut give time for Pike, Number one, Spock et all to have gone through the events of the cage.

Just a thought :-)

“The past iterations where Product Placement also existed? Apple? Michelob? Commodore Computers? Kraft “Marshmellon” Dispenser? Steppenwolf and Roy Orbison songs? Yeah…… so what now?”

None of these were overly obtrusive or out of place. Apple, Michelob, and the songs were in the Earth past. It didn’t jar you out of the story and it wasn’t obnoxiously in your fast.

To my knowledge the “marshmellon” dispenser did not bear a huge Kraft logo. It was a movie tie-in product. The Commodore Computer was deep in the background of Kirk’s apartment in Trek II. Given Kirk’s fondness for antiques you could even justify it as a story item.

In a contemporary movie where it makes sense and it isn’t ridiculously in your face I can understand and even excuse it. No sense going to all the effort to create fake brands or blot out brands if our characters are having pizza in a 21st century restaurant. But not in the 23rd century that is on its way to some sort of alternative economy. That is what I hated in the Wars prequels, the jarring references to 1950s diners and obnoxious sports announcers in the galaxy far, far away. Seemed like an attempt at some sort of sophomoric humor.

At least the way things were described the BMW logo, thankfully omitted, was going to hog a lot of screen real estate (buy an f’ng ad, I say). The description of the Bud Classic sounds similar. Yuk!

I heard people in the theater getting excited and several people around me saying, “no way!”

JJ and crew say that their going completely by canon, and here are contradicting quotes from memory-alpha.org and JJ.
Memory-Alpha.org: “Looking back from the perspective of years, Kirk described himself as “positively grim” during that [Starfleet Academy] era.”
JJ: “So Kirk joins Starfleet and immediately he’s there he gets in trouble.”

Definitely sounds like alternate realities

According to the synopsis of the 20 minutes of footage reviewed, the attack upon the USS Kelvin occurs 4 days before Kirk is born. That makes it some dozen or so years before the Enterprise is even launched.

Anything seemingly contradictory to the bits of backstory described in episodes like “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, “The Menagerie”, “Obsession”, “The Conscience Of The King”, and “Court-Martial”, can easily be attributed to the ripple efffects of the timeline incursion.

The existence and possibility of alternate timelines due to timeline interference is legitimate and concrete ‘canon’, and has been since episodes like “Tommorow Is Yesterday”, “City On The Edge Of Forever”, and “Assignment: Earth”.

In order for you to claim that they are somehow “violating canon”, you would have to invalidate the very ‘canon’ those episodes established more than four decades ago.

Is that what you are saying?