No Borg In Star Trek Sequel. Will it be Kahn?
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2011-08-08 08:53 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
A few thoughts:
1) IMO they should have ended Star Trek with Pike as captain of the Enterprise and Kirk et. al. assigned to the ship in some capacity. Kirk should NOT have been made captain. Who cares what John Q. Public wants? It was the last five minutes of the movie. When the new movie comes out, have it set 3, 4, 5 years after the first one with Kirk NOW in charge of the Enterprise. Still a stretch, but more believable if you ask me.
2) They should skip using Khan in this movie. If they want to use him, save him for the third one. Write a new story where a ship other than the Enterprise finds the Botany Bay and Khan succeeds in taking over that ship. Maybe he heads back to Earth, taking the fleet by surprise and destroying and/or disabling most of it through some plot device. He razes Starfleet HQ and declares himself Emperor of Earth, and it's up to Kirk and the Enterprise to rescue the people of Earth and defeat Khan and his followers. I'm sure a good writer could think of a better story, but the important thing is, do something new and different with the character.
3) I liked the pre-Voyager era Borg, but I hope they don't use them in this new timeline. However, if they do, they could weaken them and easily explain the change. There were 70-80 years between the TOS era and the TNG era, right? That's 70-80 years of the Borg constantly assimilating new races and their technology. Without that 70-80 years of technological advancement, it's easy to make a case for the TOS Borg to be more in like power-wise with TOS Starfleet. I didn't pay much attention to Enterprise, so I don't know if they ever played the Borg card or not, but if they didn't, you could even say that during the Enterprise era, the Borg were just getting started. If they are absorbing and adapting the technology of other races it's not like they have to be a thousands of years old threat to be at the power level we see them in TNG.
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I see quite a few people complaining about Kirk's presumably early promotion to Captain in the Abram's movie. Don't forget that in said film, most of the fleet had been destroyed, a lot of qualified captains, and their entire crews killed. Rebuilding and remanning the fleet requires some early promotions, and while Kirk's promotion was quite quick, even as battlefield promotions go, that's essentially what occured, battlefield promotion.
Also what needs to be taken into account is Pike's perspective of Kirk as captain material. They establish Kirk as a rather brilliant, capable, if brash man early in the film, and Pike quite readily promotes him to be behind spock on a crew of people that mostly just graduated from training. So don't forget that most of those crews still left are all probably inexperienced people having recently graduated, or still in training.
For the second film, I'm hoping they don't go with anything like the borg or Khan. I'm thinking that this time around there'll be encounters with Klingons, whether or not a Klingon is the main antagonist or not.
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I hadn't really thought too much about Kirk's permanent promotion to the captaincy of what they were calling the "flagship of the fleet" but surely they could have found someone more appropriate to permanently take the role given the circumstances.|
Originally Posted by Tannim222
I see quite a few people complaining about Kirk's presumably early promotion to Captain in the Abram's movie. Don't forget that in said film, most of the fleet had been destroyed, a lot of qualified captains, and their entire crews killed. Rebuilding and remanning the fleet requires some early promotions, and while Kirk's promotion was quite quick, even as battlefield promotions go, that's essentially what occured, battlefield promotion.
Also what needs to be taken into account is Pike's perspective of Kirk as captain material. They establish Kirk as a rather brilliant, capable, if brash man early in the film, and Pike quite readily promotes him to be behind spock on a crew of people that mostly just graduated from training. So don't forget that most of those crews still left are all probably inexperienced people having recently graduated, or still in training. |
First of all without even looking too hard you have Spock available. Yes he technically relinquished command to Kirk during a moment of crisis with the whole "emotional attachment to Vulcan" excuse. But after the dust cleared and the emergency was over he's still a more senior officer than Kirk on paper regardless of the "battlefield promotion" situation. If they needed an officer to -permanently- command the Enterprise then Spock would have been (forgive the pun) a logical choice.
Then even with most of the fleet destroyed you'd think they'd still have a handful of older Commodores and Admirals who had been relegated to deskjobs available to be pressed back into service as line officers. Let's put it this way: which would you put in charge of your flagship - an older officer who may be ready to retire but at least had previous experience in space or a rookie hotshot cadet? I think the choice would be simple in a real Starfleet.
Clearly Abrams let Kirk have the Enterprise because that's what everyone expected to happen movie-wise. But if the whole Starfleet thing presented in this movie were a real life organization I think Kirk would have been just about the last person to get the chair at that point. Sure he may still get to be captain someday, but not -when- he did at any rate.
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Most, not all. Spock was a capable commander in his own right with many years more experience. Spinning it doesn't make it any less of a weak plot concept. Promoting Kirk like that cheapens the character IMO.
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Originally Posted by Tannim222
Don't forget that in said film, most of the fleet had been destroyed,
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Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno
I just assumed that they rebooted Star Trek to undo the damage that Scott Bakula did with Enterprise.
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They only undid the good series. And Voyager.
Goodbye, I guess.
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xD
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Originally Posted by Lord_Nightblade
They only undid the good series. And Voyager. |
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Interesting thing is, how old the actor is isn't relevant if they write the right story. Khan is in suspended animation. Thaw him out earlier and he's older by the time Kirk is captain of the Enterprise.|
Originally Posted by Rodoan
scarey, I had the exact same thought before I read your note. He may be a bit long in the tooth to play the younger Khan though.
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If we accept the premise of the JJ-verse trek, the timeline divergence begins at the events around Kirk's birth, and they basically have his entire lifespan to monkey around in.
Just as a thought experiment (because I don't think they should use Khan) but let me posit how I'd do things:
Step 1- sign Javier Bardem to play Khan. A far more dangerous feeling and serious choice than Banderas.
Step 2- Khan and company are found several years earlier. I think it would be cool if they were found by Klingons and sent to a gulag world. Alternatively they could crash land alone on a more hospitable planet than Ceti Alpha turned out to be (what was originally a near miss is this time a crash landing).
Step 3- develop the nightmare scenario that almost happened on Earth and led to Khan's exile. The survivors/prisoners thrive and are in a state of perpetual war, either with each other or their captors.
Step 4- Starfleet gets intel that there are humans on a Klingon gulag world and the Enterprise is sent to help. The meat of the movie and the climax is the war and eventual rescue of Khan at the hands of Kirk. Have them clash, but have a much older and craftier Khan not do anything so preciptous as mutiny. The movie ends with Kirk and Khan as something approaching friends.
Step 5- Khan and his surviving cohort end up concealing their origins and spending the span between the 2nd and 3rd movie learning all about the modern Federation universe. From that point on, anything is possible. A 3rd movie could be an epic betrayal and in this universe, it's Kirk who ends up with the all consuming vendetta against Khan.
This is nearly appealing enough to me to want to see it happen. It's excellent juxtaposition and has the feel of telling a much more epic Kirk v Khan story than any single movie could.
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What do you guys think?
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A) That show wasn't Bakula's fault. I mean, come on.|
Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno
I just assumed that they rebooted Star Trek to undo the damage that Scott Bakula did with Enterprise.
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and
B) They specifically mentioned Archer and his beagle. Scotty is on the space equivalent of Antarctica because he murdered Archer's dog.
which is why
C) Scotty should be murdered right in his brogue-spewing face.
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That's not bad, but it seems like something more suited to a TV series than movies. IMO, the payoff would take too long for movies.|
Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
Interesting thing is, how old the actor is isn't relevant if they write the right story. Khan is in suspended animation. Thaw him out earlier and he's older by the time Kirk is captain of the Enterprise.
If we accept the premise of the JJ-verse trek, the timeline divergence begins at the events around Kirk's birth, and they basically have his entire lifespan to monkey around in. Just as a thought experiment (because I don't think they should use Khan) but let me posit how I'd do things: Step 1- sign Javier Bardem to play Khan. A far more dangerous feeling and serious choice than Banderas. Step 2- Khan and company are found several years earlier. I think it would be cool if they were found by Klingons and sent to a gulag world. Alternatively they could crash land alone on a more hospitable planet than Ceti Alpha turned out to be (what was originally a near miss is this time a crash landing). Step 3- develop the nightmare scenario that almost happened on Earth and led to Khan's exile. The survivors/prisoners thrive and are in a state of perpetual war, either with each other or their captors. Step 4- Starfleet gets intel that there are humans on a Klingon gulag world and the Enterprise is sent to help. The meat of the movie and the climax is the war and eventual rescue of Khan at the hands of Kirk. Have them clash, but have a much older and craftier Khan not do anything so preciptous as mutiny. The movie ends with Kirk and Khan as something approaching friends. Step 5- Khan and his surviving cohort end up concealing their origins and spending the span between the 2nd and 3rd movie learning all about the modern Federation universe. From that point on, anything is possible. A 3rd movie could be an epic betrayal and in this universe, it's Kirk who ends up with the all consuming vendetta against Khan. This is nearly appealing enough to me to want to see it happen. It's excellent juxtaposition and has the feel of telling a much more epic Kirk v Khan story than any single movie could. |
Personally, I would settle for a throw away line in a Kirk/Spock conversation. Like they found the debris of the Bottany Bay in an asteroid field or something and it looked like it was thrown wildly off course by all of the black hole shenanigans from the last movie.
Goodbye, I guess.
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Its obviously a weak plot point, but I think people harp on it too much. There's enough latitude for this to be reasonable enough for Star Trek. First of all, even in the era of TOS, and even TNG, there aren't actually all that many people vying for command. Picard gave Data, a Lt. Commander, command of the Sutherland, who was himself replacing a Lt. Starfleet Academy even in TNG times was graduating numbers seemingly only in the hundreds, and not all of them were command officers. At the time of TOS, there seemed to be even less people qualified to command starships, and starship captains seemed to get into more scrapes than the most decorated World War 2 veterans - think Kirk's service record in the episode Court Martial|
Originally Posted by Lothic
I hadn't really thought too much about Kirk's permanent promotion to the captaincy of what they were calling the "flagship of the fleet" but surely they could have found someone more appropriate to permanently take the role given the circumstances.
First of all without even looking too hard you have Spock available. Yes he technically relinquished command to Kirk during a moment of crisis with the whole "emotional attachment to Vulcan" excuse. But after the dust cleared and the emergency was over he's still a more senior officer than Kirk on paper regardless of the "battlefield promotion" situation. If they needed an officer to -permanently- command the Enterprise then Spock would have been (forgive the pun) a logical choice. Then even with most of the fleet destroyed you'd think they'd still have a handful of older Commodores and Admirals who had been relegated to deskjobs available to be pressed back into service as line officers. Let's put it this way: which would you put in charge of your flagship - an older officer who may be ready to retire but at least had previous experience in space or a rookie hotshot cadet? I think the choice would be simple in a real Starfleet. Clearly Abrams let Kirk have the Enterprise because that's what everyone expected to happen movie-wise. But if the whole Starfleet thing presented in this movie were a real life organization I think Kirk would have been just about the last person to get the chair at that point. Sure he may still get to be captain someday, but not -when- he did at any rate. |
Then extrapolate backwards even further, to Pike's time, which was the era of the Abrams Trek. Pike seems to have had an even more wild career; Pike's era was the real wild west of Federation history. Remember this quote from The Cage:
"Oh, I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armour. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors."
Uh, yeah. Anyway, Pike in Abrams Trek also hints that at this moment in history, starfleet isn't exactly overflowing with cadets: he seems to hint to Kirk that he should join Starfleet because Starfleet *needs* people like him, because it doesn't actually get very many applicants that are as good.
When you combine the facts that Starfleet really *doesn't* have command candidates coming out of their ears at this point in history, and Kirk just saved Earth from annihilation, *and* he might have gotten a good word from the Vulcans, *and* he was recommended for field promotion by possibly the most respected field captain of the age (he was practically revered by the time of TOS), *and* the fact that Spock himself clearly had no ambition for permanent command (at the time of TOS he had been Kirk's first officer for at least a little while since they seemed to know each other and had been Pike's first officer for eleven years), and its not impossible that every cadet that might have been better suited was dead, every live Captain needed to continue to command the crews they were at for continuity's sake, and Pike's recommendation was enough to override shifting another junior officer from another post.
Sure its weak, but its not impossible. John Paul Jones' career was stranger.
Also, he probably does in the Abrams timeline but just to close the thought, we don't actually know that Kirk currently holds the rank of Captain. He currently holds the assignment of Captain of Enterprise. That doesn't mean they promoted him to the actual rank of Captain in Starfleet. And the notion that it was unreasonable for Kirk to serve as Captain of Enterprise is actually itself a weak argument: when Pike made Kirk the first officer of Enterprise (Spock's first officer) and Spock relinquished command, that made Kirk Enterprise's Captain from that point onward. The only question is whether Kirk would *retain* command of Enterprise, not whether its reasonable he ever got it. He had it for half the movie under unimpeachable circumstances.
Did Pike have the authority to relinquish command of Enterprise directly to Spock, and make Kirk the first officer of Enterprise by battlefield order? Hard to say. In the current modern US military, he would not. In earlier times, he would have. And Captains of starships have been shown throughout Trek to have far more authority than any naval captain of any modern navy. In the episode The Doomsday Machine Kirk calls upon his "personal authority as Captain of the Enterprise" to order Spock to relieve Commodore Decker. There is no such personal authority in the modern navy, but there apparently is in Star Trek, or Spock would not have done it. It was questionable, but it was enough of an ambiguity for Spock to act, so the authority exists.
As I said, its weak, but I don't think its weak for Trek. Trek is not an analog for a modern military, its more of a wild west environment, and Trek was never air tight with its dramatic license even at the best of times - in fact, sometimes in the best of times its dramatic license is most stretched. The Doomsday Machine, which I mentioned above, is considered one of the best TOS episodes. Its plot is actually very flimsy when you stare at it too long, but its a great piece of dramatic Trek - if you don't stare at the pieces too long.
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Caused him to disappear. He reappears aboard the Enterprise, alive and well, at the end of the movie novelization, which I thought would have made a nice after-credits stinger. :)
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Originally Posted by Ironik
A)B) They specifically mentioned Archer and his beagle. Scotty is on the space equivalent of Antarctica because he murdered Archer's dog.
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Exactly Arcana, you get the entire point of it.
I wonder (and this isn't meant as a jab toward Lothic or anyone else), but I wonder if this is a sign of the times where films are created with a more "realistic attitude". It seems that more often than not, people want everything the see in film or read in a book to "make sense" in terms of the current understanding of things and not "does it make sense in the world represented?".
Yes, as you stated, it's a weak plot point. Deconstructing almost any story, it's easy to say "hey look this is a weak plot point", but when taking into consideration the story as a whole, not just it's basic elements, but the world created therin, the characters, their actions, etc...then a weak plot point while remaining weak, simply ends up making sense.
The Death Star having an exhaust port with a straight channel to it's power core can be a weak plot point. Darth Stewie even mentions the fact that they could have at least placed a screen over it (or something to that effect). But it's there, and it works even if all reasoning screams otherwise. I wonder if a story like the original Star Wars would even fly with today's movie going crowd.
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See: The Prequels. |
Originally Posted by Tannim222
I wonder if a story like the original Star Wars would even fly with today's movie going crowd.
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Uh oh, I can hear the mob forming now to come get me.
For what it's worth I never claimed that Starfleet was ever held the same exact policy standards that exist in current modern navies. As we all know artistic license has always trumped absolute realism in Star Trek. I never really cared about this particular "captaincy" plot point very much until it was raised in this thread. I basically glossed over it in favor of trying to enjoy the movie.
I will simply summarize my position on the matter by saying that Kirk realistically speaking would probably have not been left in command of the Enterprise based solely on the events of the movie. I have no problem with his heroic "field promotion" during the events we saw. I simply have a quibble with the premise that -after- all the excitement he would be left in permanent command. He's simply too raw out of the gate no matter how cool or brilliant he is.
Sure based on his exploits he'd most certainly be fast-tracked to the captain's chair. I could see promoting him directly to LtCmdr or even Cmdr and maybe even formalizing his position as first officer on the Enterprise at least to start so that he could get some real space experience under his belt from a working mentor other than Pike. But going so far as to make a cadet fresh out of school the permanent captain of your flagship heavy cruiser? No, that's just not going to happen instantly no matter which timeline you're talking about.
Once again I realize for the simple purposes of the movie Kirk was going to end up being the "captain" regardless. I'm just pointing out that if you bother to scratch the surface for even a moment you see there's a working difference between what's "necessary for a epic summer blockbuster" and what "would happen if this were real".
It's not like Abrams isn't going to bend the rules for whatever he wants regardless.
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I think to believe that after saving Earth, they see the potential and thusly put him in charge. |
Originally Posted by Lothic
For what it's worth I never claimed that Starfleet was ever held the same exact policy standards that exist in current modern navies. As we all know artistic license has always trumped absolute realism in Star Trek. I never really cared about this particular "captaincy" plot point very much until it was raised in this thread. I basically glossed over it in favor of trying to enjoy the movie.
I will simply summarize my position on the matter by saying that Kirk realistically speaking would probably have not been left in command of the Enterprise based solely on the events of the movie. I have no problem with his heroic "field promotion" during the events we saw. I simply have a quibble with the premise that -after- all the excitement he would be left in permanent command. He's simply too raw out of the gate no matter how cool or brilliant he is. Sure based on his exploits he'd most certainly be fast-tracked to the captain's chair. I could see promoting him directly to LtCmdr or even Cmdr and maybe even formalizing his position as first officer on the Enterprise at least to start so that he could get some real space experience under his belt from a working mentor other than Pike. But going so far as to make a cadet fresh out of school the permanent captain of your flagship heavy cruiser? No, that's just not going to happen instantly no matter which timeline you're talking about. Once again I realize for the simple purposes of the movie Kirk was going to end up being the "captain" regardless. I'm just pointing out that if you bother to scratch the surface for even a moment you see there's a working difference between what's "necessary for a epic summer blockbuster" and what "would happen if this were real". It's not like Abrams isn't going to bend the rules for whatever he wants regardless. |
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
Caused him to disappear. He reappears aboard the Enterprise, alive and well, at the end of the movie novelization, which I thought would have made a nice after-credits stinger.
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Yeah but he didn't save Vulcan so 1 planet saved and 1 planet destroyed equals a wash. He get's a spiffy medal to wear, a pat on the head, and a promotion to Lt. Cmdr. |
Originally Posted by BrandX
I think to believe that after saving Earth, they see the potential and thusly put him in charge.
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Never questioned the potential. Only the implausibility of putting a cadet permanently in charge of a flagship. If Starfleet is corrupt enough to give him a pass and officially give him the captain's chair after a scandalously short period of time that's their problem. |
Originally Posted by BrandX
I think to believe that after saving Earth, they see the potential and thusly put him in charge.
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Well to be honest, traditionally the position of ship's captain does not have to hold the rank of Captain. The Captain of a vessel is merely the person who is put in charge of the ship. Usually the smaller the vessel the more likely you will find the ship's captain to have a lower rank, especially in times of war.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
Never questioned the potential. Only the implausibility of putting a cadet permanently in charge of a flagship. If Starfleet is corrupt enough to give him a pass and officially give him the captain's chair after a scandalously short period of time that's their problem.
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During peacetime the number of ship's reduce and there are fewer Captain's slots to be filled so the positions tend to go to the officers with higher rank.
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You're watching Star Trek, which is even more preposterous than Star Wars, and *this* is what you complain about?|
Originally Posted by Lothic
Never questioned the potential. Only the implausibility of putting a cadet permanently in charge of a flagship. If Starfleet is corrupt enough to give him a pass and officially give him the captain's chair after a scandalously short period of time that's their problem.
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