Robau stories would be in a great place in terms of timeline and canon. Are you allowed to pitch the USS Kelvin? I personally would like to see a Stargazer style Robau series.
^ This one I heartily agree with. I find myself having little interest in the TOS crew reboot personally (beyond the "I will go see it anyway, because I'm a fan" factor), but I wouldn't mind exploring the timeline split from the perspective of a new crew, and Robau certainly set the imagination on fire in the 2009 movie. Tahir was so great for what little screen time he had to work with.
Well, you can't really explore the timeline split from the perspective of Captain Robau and the crew of the U.S.S. Kelvin, because Robau dies and the Kelvin is destroyed as soon as the timeline split occurs. But I certainly agree that exploring the adventures of Captain Robau and the Kelvin prior to the timeline split, or after the timeline split but in the Prime Universe, would be fascinating!
^I'd imagine that's what Sho meant -- "explore the timeline split" in the sense of showing us what the "other side" of the split looked like, what happened to Robau, the Kirks, and the Kelvin after that point in the Prime universe. Although I'm not sure that's feasible, since the idea was that the Kelvin was on its way back to Earth and that in the Prime history, Jim Kirk was born on Earth just after they got back (so alternate Kirk was born a bit prematurely due to Nero's attack). So probably the Kelvin's mission was over anyway and the crew might've been reassigned, and the Kirks would've probably stayed in Iowa for a while to raise their new baby boy. So any stories with Robau and the Kirks aboard that particular ship might have to be before the timeline split in any case.
Yeah, this one doesn't interest me much. The set, crew, and casting choice were all cool but just based upon that one act in ST09, I don't know why fans think there is something about the Kelvin that would be especially special. For a prequel story, I'd rather have an adventure aboard the XCV-300 Enterprise. Get some REALLY gritty bare-bones space travel stories in the early days of deep space space exploration. But I dare not say more than that.
It's a window into a new era of Trek history that hasn't been explored before. What's special isn't what's already on the screen, it's what isn't there, the possibilities only hinted at by what we saw. That's the thinking behind a lot of Trek Lit. What happened after DS9 or VGR ended? What happened after TMP? What might've been happening elsewhere during TOS that influenced some of the events we saw in the show or movies? What's the job of the Federation president or those two DTI agents really like? Star Trek's characters are motivated by curiosity about unknown and uncharted territories, and many of its fans are as well.
But the era of the Kelvin wouldn't be too different than that of TOS. Any plot you could do with the Kelvin, you could probably do with the Enterprise. The difference is in the new characters and in my opinion there was nothing about the characters that was very fascinating. When it comes to a "new era", I think the era of ENT and of the XCV-300 would be more interesting because the technology is far more basic, the quadrant less explored, and the crew more raw and dependant on each other for survival. That said, the readability of a novel is mostly based upon the plot, characters, and quality of the author. The right story, intriguing characters, and an author who I know only writes good books would be enough for me to pick up any star trek book.
Well, for one thing, the loss of the Kelvin seems to have been a major event in the history of the Abramsverse. They went so far as to build a new major starship construction facility in George Kirk's hometown in his memory, and to adopt the Kelvin's mission patch as the mission patch for the entire Federation Starfleet. (And, for the Prime Universe, we know that the Kelvin's mission patch from circa 2233 was later adopted as the Enterprise's mission patch circa 2245-2270.) So to me, that implies that the U.S.S. Kelvin was probably already a very well-respected ship by 2233. But more importantly: I think a lot of fans are intrigued by the early Federation era. We've seen a lot set between 2151 and 2161, and a lot set around 2254 (the time of Pike's Enterprise), and obviously we've seen a lot of the 2260s. But the years between 2161 and the 2250s have not been well-explored at all, and it may well make for fascinating stories. What was the Federation like in the era when its constituent members were only just starting to integrate with one-another? What was Starfleet like when its attempts to unite the different space forces was still in its infancy? What was it like for the Federation to go through such a period of rapid expansion as more and more worlds decided to join it? What were Federation relations with the Klingons like? What prompted all that expansion -- worlds deciding the UFP was their best safeguard against an expanding Klingon Empire? What were early Federation exploration missions like? What was the Mission at Axanar? How did the early Federation balance power and authority between the Federation government in Paris and the Member governments locally? What kinds of conflicts occurred WITHIN the early Federation? Etc. If we were to compare this to a TV series about the history of the United States, it would be the equivalent of showing the Declaration of Independence and winning the Revolutionary War, and showing us the settling of the Wild West and the closing of the Frontier, but never showing us the writing of the Constitution, the consolidation of federal authority over states, the conquest of Central North America, and the Civil War. So what we have in ST09 is, we get an interesting glimpse at these characters played by these very charismatic actors in Faran Tahir's Robau and Chris Helmsworth's George Kirk, and we get this glimpse of this interesting ship doing interesting things, in this part of Trek history about which we know little. Naturally, it's going to inspire a lot of people's imaginations and make them want to see the early 23rd Century through the Kelvin's eyes. The problem with this is that ENT very firmly established that Enterprise NX-01 was Earth's first true deep space exploration mission. The only things that preceded the NX-01 were the ships of the Earth Cargo Authority -- which might themselves make for an interesting series, too -- and the ships that helped establish and supply the earliest extrasolar colonies like Alpha Centauri. But there's no really any room in the established Star Trek timeline for the XCV-300 -- which has never, by the way, been established in dialogue -- to play a major role. She would almost by necessity be relegated to stories about early Earth technological development, and/or support for the earliest of nearby extrasolar colonies. That's a bit like saying a story set in the 1820s-1830s can't be too different from a story set in the 1860s. I've already listed numerous ways in which a story set in the early 23rd Century would by necessity differ from one set in the mid-23rd Century. No, because the Enterprise came from an era where the Federation was basically taking the last steps in unifying its Members and consolidating Federation authority. But you could do a lot of interesting stories about cultures coming together, and clashing, within the framework of a Federation that's not quite real, not quite legitimate yet, to these people for whom it is new. And that's to say nothing of the fact that, frankly, nice computer displays aside, the Kelvin set design actually succeeds in making the ship feel a lot more primitive, a lot more bare-bones, than the TOS Enterprise set designs. It feels more cramped, more basic; you walk along gangways and see components exposed. It's more raw, even in the areas where the sophistication of technology itself isn't that different. The difference between the Kelvin and the Enterprise is like the difference between seeing the bridge of a submarine and the bridge of the RMS Queen Mary 2. Well, that's subjective and there's no way to argue that. But a lot of people--myself included--found Faran Tahir's portrayal of Captain Robau to be charismatic and intriguing. "Full of potential" is how I'd describe it. See, I think the opening sequence of ST09 made it very clear that the Kelvin's technology is more basic, the quadrant less explored, and the crew more raw and dependent upon one-another for survival, than what we saw in TOS.
Well, no. Canonically, the familiar arrowhead insignia's first chronological appearance was as the United Earth Space Probe Agency logo on the Friendship 1 probe launched in 2067. So it evidently originated as the UESPA logo and was later adopted as the Starfleet logo. (Or at least a Starfleet logo. Given the references to UESPA in early TOS, it's possible that UESPA still existed as a subdivision of Starfleet, and the ships bearing that logo -- and we know it was ships, plural, because the logo was seen on non-Enterprise crew in "Court-martial" -- were attached to it, while ships bearing other logos in that era may have answered to different subdivisions.)
Fair point on the Friendship 1 arrowhead -- but I don't think that invalidates my speculation about the Kelvin's mission patch. One could interpret the scenario as being as follows: The Kelvin adopts the Friendship 1 arrowhead in honor of early Earth extrasolar missions (perhaps in conjunction with sister ships that adopt as their mission patches the designs of early Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, etc., missions); the Kelvin, having been retired from service (or lost) by 2245, inspires the Starfleet to assign that arrowhead to the Enterprise and other ships by the 2240s; those other ships and especially the Enterprise herself become so well-known and accomplished that by the 2280s, Starfleet adopts it as its overall emblem. So I still think my speculation that the Kelvin's use of the arrowhead inspired its use on the Enterprise is consistent with the canon and could suggest that the Kelvin was considered a special ship, even in the Prime Universe history.
I disagree. I've come up with a few plots and a general setting/style involving the XCV-300 which I think would make a great story and help develop the star trek universe as a prequel to ENT. Since the ship appears in canonical art work, clearly the ship plays an important role in history. Since a painting of it appears aboard the 1701 in TMP but the NX-01 does not, I suppose one could speculate that the XCV-300 was considered more important in the 23rd centruy than the NX-01 was. But as I said, we all have personal opinions and one person's opinion on this subject is no more vlid than anothers. What would make a Kelvin book great is the author, not anthing that came from ST09 which would merely be the inspiration. The great historical value of the Kelvin is the act of valor belonging to George Kirk. Everthing you mentioned as resulting from the destruction of the Kelvin is speculation and most of it makes little sense. All the rationale provided for why the Abramsprise is so different is a bunch of silliness to me.
Regarding our lack of information on the pre-Pike UFP, there have been several references in Trek lit to a more interventionist period in the late 22nd century, before the Prime Directive was introduced (or before it shifted into a form more familiar to us). The Nachri Empire in SCE: Aftermath, which had its leadership overthrown by Starfleet, is one example, and I'm pretty sure there was another reference to "22nd-century Federation rearranging alien government" (anyone have any ideas? I know there was another because reading of it I remember thinking "this is similar to what happened at Nachros around the same time period, that's a nice bit of trivia". Possibly the disputes with the Nalori (SCE and Vanguard) might fall into the same category? So the novel continuity has given us some nice hooks for stories focused on the early Federation's identity issues, how it related to its neighbours and the potential uncertainties in how it should operate. And obviously any issue relating to how the Federation interacts with its neighbours hints at interesting internal disagreements or legal and political conundrums that presumably had to be worked out at length, causing many headaches (and arguments and Civil Conversation and perhaps an Ushaan or two).
Maybe. Big maybe there -- being the subject of a work of art doesn't automatically make a ship important to history. But even if the XCV-300 was important to history, she may have been important in ways that aren't conductive to all that many good stories. She may have been important because she was the first Earth ship to exceed Warp 1.5, for instance. (We already know from ENT's "First Flight" that the NX Alpha was the first Earth ship to reach Warp 2, and that the NX Beta was the first Earth ship to reach Warp 2.5. And we know that no Earth ship ever reached Warp 2 before 2143.) You could so speculate, but I think the preponderance of evidence would be against such an interpretation. The NX-01 made United Earth an important interstellar power and paved the way for the establishment of the United Federation of Planets. It's pretty hard for a 22nd Century ship from Earth to be any more important than that. Yeah, but we've seen other Starfleet officers display similar feats of valor without it prompting such radical displays of honor and commemoration. I mean, hell, they were literally using Kelvin-shaped salt shakers -- I think it's safe to say the Kelvin was a bit more than Just Another Ship. Do tell. Why's that? I can easily see where the loss of a well-respected ship to a mysterious, uber-powerful ship that subsequently disappears, and the premature revelation of the Romulans' relationship to Vulcans decades before the Romulans were supposed to leave their isolation behind the Neutral Zone, could set in motion chains of events that could change a lot of things. The Butterfly Effect, to invoke a cliche. Fascinating!
I just don't think it makes sense to think that a single ship's patch would be adopted fleetwide to "honor its accomplishments" or whatever. Isn't that kind of a slight to all the other ships and crews in service at the same time? It seems quite petty to me. It's one thing to honor the best; it's something very different to treat everyone else as though they don't even count. Besides, has that ever actually happened in reality? The entire organization adopting the insignia of just one vessel within it? I can think of analogies in the corporate world -- National Comics renaming itself DC after the initials of its most successful title Detective Comics, or Warner Bros. Pictures using an arrangement of "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca as its title-card music (or using Bugs Bunny and "Merrily We Roll Along" on its younger-skewing movies' title cards for a while), or various companies that own TV networks renaming themselves and some of their other holdings after those networks. But every NASA logo has been for the agency as a whole, and each NASA space mission has had its own distinct logo. And every US Navy logo has been for the Navy as a whole. And so on. To me, it just makes far more sense for the general insignia of the institution to be something that was created specifically for that purpose, either for the agency itself or for a precursor agency. There's no appeal to me in these notions that any single ship was so much better or more important than every other one that it deserved special recognition in that way. I think it's far more likely that while we're watching a TV show that focuses on one particular ship and its crew doing heroic and important things, what we're not seeing are the numerous other ships and crews that are doing equally heroic and important things elsewhere in the galaxy. If Starfleet is an organization capable of producing officers as gifted as the ones we see on the Enterprise or whatever, surely it wouldn't concentrate them all on a single ship. The very existence of the ultracompetent crews we see pretty much mandates the existence of other equally gifted and noteworthy crews. So I'm sorry, but the idea of the whole organization adopting the insignia of a single ship as some kind of special "honor" strikes me as not merely ridiculous, but downright distasteful.
Note how the stakes keep going up. I'm waiting for the next question to be 'Christopher, would you do a Kelvin story if asked and paid and given cocaine and hookers?'!