Australian News Site Issues Apology and Correction For Inaccurate Star Trek Article (and still gets it wrong)

Star Trek fans are notoriously nitpicky and an Australian news site found that out this week and went so far as to publish an apology for getting their facts wrong in an article talking about Enterprises.  

 

How many Enterprises?

On Tuesday Australian news site news.com.au (Australia’s 3rd biggest news site) ran an article about the new Haynes Guide to the USS Enterprise (reviewed at TrekMovie on Monday). The news.com.au article contained this passage:

The 160-page guide covers the entire range of USS Enterprise models, from Captain Jonathan Archer’s original NX-01 from the most recent TV series through to the NCC-1701 under the control of Captain Kirk and her replacement, the NCC-1701-E.

Clearly this is inaccurate. In fact, the book cover (which is in the same article), lists all the Enterprises in the manual: "(NX-01, NCC-1701, NCC-1701-A to NCC-1701-E)".


News.com.au gets nitpicked over article about news Haynes guide.

This error was pointed out in the comments and the editors decided to have some fun with it and issued an apology yesterday titled "We’re sorry for claiming Captain Kirk was in Command of Captain Picard’s starship", and the article starts with these mea culpas

  • There were many USS Enterprises
  • Kirk didn’t captain them all
  • Patrick Stewart is handsome
  • The article goes on to say that "news.com.au apologises unreservedly" for the mix-up and for using the term "hyperspace" instead of "warp". Unfortunately news.com.au decided to use one of the comments to correct the record on the history of the Enterprise, noting:

    User "Your Mum’s Lunch" led the charge of those who correctly pointed out that after losing the original Enterprise to the Klingons, Captain Kirk was given the Excelsior Class Enterprise-B as a stop-gap measure until the refit of the Enterprise-A was completed.

    Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E were in fact, the first of the Galaxy Class models and were under the command of Captain Picard.

    Inaccurate

    So even in their apology they got a number of things wrong, so to nitpick the nitpick and set the record straight:

    • In the DC Star Trek comic books from the mid 80’s (following the destruction of the NCC-1701 in Star Trek III and before being handed the NCC-1701-A in Star Trek IV) Kirk was given command of the actual USS Excelsior, the USS Enterprise-B was not launched until years later under the command of Capt. Harriman (and comics don’t count as canon anyway)
    • The Enterprise-E is a Sovereign class and not a Galaxy class (like the D)


    Star Trek comics bridged gap between Star Trek III & IV with Kirk in command of the USS Excelsior (seen on these covers)

    However news.com.au covered themselves and bought some goodwill by saying:

    We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man, a sentiment expressed by several readers.

    Addendum – We’re also sorry for any errors in this apology"

    So we will let that all slide.

     

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    Love the pic of Picard flipping the bird!

    I miss those comics. :)

    Where did you get that picture of Picard?

    The site was clearly taking the piss out of nerdy nitpickers, and rightly so.

    It’s pathetic how serious some fans get over it all….and some wonder what orginally promoted the “Get a Life” sketch.

    lol

    Furthermore, the Enterprise-D was not the 1st Galaxy-class ship. The USS Galaxy NCC-70637 was.

    Also, books and comics aren’t canon so none of that Kirk/Excelsior stuff is relevant.

    What IS canon is that Harriman is a DOUCHE

    “NNC-1701-E” ? *snicker*

    “Make it so…and swivel!”

    Is that Vampira from Ed Wood on the left hand comic?

    The article was in good humour on both sides.

    As an Australian I can say it’s just part of our humour. We get a good laugh out of taking the piss out of ourselves…we’re not all perfect.

    I would say though that it was the most widely read article on that day too.

    It’s good that Trek still commands this kind of attention.

    How does A come before B>

    If I were them, I’d write an article with at least one Trek error a week and then apologize with more errors.

    haha, i’m here in Australia and read news.com.au every day. I read both the original article and the apology which I found pretty funny! Can’t believe it made it all the way to Trekmovie.com that Awesome!! :-)

    Let it go trekkies, we can accept a mistake or two.

    Really does it matter?

    I love been an Aussie, we don’t take things to seriously, in fact we love taking the piss out of almost anything, including ourselves, most other countries don’t get our sense of humour or ability to totaly bag each other out and still be mates.

    “Appology” – brilliant! :D

    Man, those DC comics were a lot of fun. They weaved a whole separate continuity during the two years between ST III & IV so they could continue to have brand new adventures while waiting for ST IV. From what I recall, Spock even commanded his own science vessel during that period while Kirk and co. had their own adventures on Excelsior. And then they managed to tie things up leading seamlessly into the beginning of ST IV. It wasn’t canon, but those stories were still great fun. At 75 cents a copy, how could you go wrong?

    it also says “Kirk’s last ship was the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C.”. Whoopsy!

    Funny stuff though//

    Fascinating. When I saw ‘Independence Day’ in 1996, I saw the teaser trailer of ‘Star Trek: First Contact’. It made wonder, ‘Would the Enterprise-D footage be reused as the Enterprise-E?’ It made me wonder, ‘Would the Enterprise-E be a galaxy class ship?’ Of course, I already knew the E-E is Sovereign class.

    @2 …The Picard pic is a manip of him from the episode “Devil’s Due”.

    12. We can do…..what? Acept a mistake?! LOL

    just kiddin’ :)

    If there was an error, it was in grammar, not in Trek lore — the sentence would have been accurate if it read like this: “from Captain Jonathan Archer’s original NX-01 from the most recent TV series through to the NCC-1701 under the control of Captain Kirk, and her replacement, the NCC-1701-E.” Note the comma between “Kirk” and “and”, separating the two clauses.

    To answer #7’s question, that female figure was actually the entity that fed on fear in “Wolf in the Fold” – yep, that was Jack the Ripper.

    Nice to see the “Back to Vulcan” cover, too – that was the issue with my letter (telexed to DC from Saipan, where I was stationed at the time) as the lead in the lettercol!

    I love how the they mention Archer. and Kirk but not Picard, arguably, Picard and Kirk are the most well known Captains.

    Boy, what an ENORMOUS mistake! I’m never watching a Paul Hogan movie again. Take that, Australia! ;)

    @23: They did say that Patrick Stewart was handsome, so it evens out.

    All of this nitpicking is why the mainstream views “Star Wars” as the superior franchise.

    I agree with #3, this was all done in good humor. Because most authentic news sites do research before reporting on something. Though mistakes do happen from time to time.

    It boils down to what any writer shouldn’t do: Write about things they don’t understand.

    So I’m wonder why this gets an article (albeit it was funny to read) but Bob Orci’s twitter post on how the Talosians aren’t the next villain doesn’t get a front page anything.

    Sure, it wasn’t anything big but some of us don’t really haunt the forums.

    Slow news day, eh Anthony. :-)

    The original text was just ambiguous, really. Not too big a deal. It’s oddly phrased–I mean, you probably wouldn’t see a reference to “George Washington and his replacement, John F. Kennedy,” but eh.

    Those DC comics from the 80s, though–from what I’ve read about them, it seems like the editors were just thinking, “Okay, well, that movie’s over, here’s how we think it’ll go from here on out,” and then they’d turn out to be utterly wrong and have to backpedal at warp speed. Repeatedly. I wonder if people at Paramount/Bad Robot/wherever were thinking of the DC line when they tabled the Abramsverse novels scheduled for this year.

    Sorry Pat on comment 21. You can’t put a comma before an and. It is bad Grammar.

    annoying nitpicking.

    Using the term “hyperspace” instead of “warp” is a definite no-no. However, when people talk about all the different starships, I get a bit lost. Blasphemy, I know, but most of the ships look the same to me. I guess they are a bit like cars to me. As long as they can safely get me from A to B with a reasonable level of comfort, the fact they are this model and year, rather than that model and year, is neither here nor there to me.

    Star Trek fans are so perdantic lol. Loved the artical

    You think this was bad? You should have seen the “Attack of the Show” segment hosted by Chris Gore where he reviewed the MST3K 20th Anniversary Box Set.

    Ho hum. That photo of Picard is very funny, though ;)

    By the way, “Happy Diwali” to any Sikhs or Hindus reading the blog.

    @1

    Well, I find that photo incredibly offensive!

    …No kid. :) It’s awesome.

    Hey, I have one of those comics! Cool!

    @ #4

    I just laughed myself silly. Bravo.

    Anyone remember “Get a life.”? First thing that came to my mind when I read this.

    Wow…no one crashed the boards on this…this…well, much ado about nothing.

    #18 – “It made wonder, ‘Would the Enterprise-D footage be reused as the Enterprise-E?’ It made me wonder, ‘Would the Enterprise-E be a galaxy class ship?”

    At some point during the recent STAR TREK auctions — where they sold everything (my opinion — to quote Indy, “That belongs in a museum!”), there was a picture of the filming model of the TNG ENTERPRISE (1701-D) but the picture of the saucer said USS ENTERPRISE, NCC-1701-E, and there was a note from Okuda that they briefly toyed with the idea of giving them another Galaxy-class ship when working the script for FIRST CONTACT (as with all things, the budget would decide if they got a new ship or not, since there was a lot more than just a new model to pay for — if they kept the Galaxy-class, for instance, they could re-use the standing sets from GENERATIONS).

    #6 LOL!

    #7: “Is that Vampira from Ed Wood on the left hand comic?”

    it looks like helena bonham carter. crazy!

    I have ALL of those comics. Are they worth anything?

    This article was worth it if only for just the pic of Picard.

    @26 That’s a bunch of BANTHA SHAT!

    Han shot first! Star Wars isn’t superior to Trek when it comes to nitpicking.

    Star Wars just tries to cover its tracks by releasing new versions of old crap and claiming it’s “how it was supposed to be”.

    To paraphrase the Talosians, SW fans have their illusions, and we ST fans have ours. The mainstream looks at all of us and rolls their eyes.

    @28 The Talosians aren’t the villain. Doesn’t mean that they’re not in it…. after all, from their p.o.v. they were just working with animals in their zoological gardens. Not that different from Jack Hanna in a way. I’m sure everyone would enjoy seeing Chris Pine in leather on a leash on the Tonight Show as Jack Hanna demonstrates the human species, eh? j/k

    Hey, apparently NBC just cancelled JJ’s show “Undercovers”!

    Wonder what took them so long?

    Damn I am glad that the new Star Trek’s time line blew away all that nonsense about the different Enterprises. I’ve been a Star Trek fan since 1970 and even I can’t keep track of all the different versions of the Entrerprise and every excuse they find after blowing it up to bring it back. The US Navy typically names carriers after presidents or admirals. It is time to retire the Enterprise name and follow the US Navy and name the next big starship the U.S.S. Kirk!!!