^ Well, The Omega Glory did imply that Earth avoided a nuclear war, then Encounter at Farpoint showed Earth had a nuclear war, so they could be alternate timelines even *before* Trials and Tribble-ations... 
The DTI's Stance on the MU
- Thread starter Captain Clark Terrell
- Start date
On a somewhat related note, Doctor Stephen Hawking has weighed in on the existence of alternate universes:
--Sran
--Sran
Of course I don't believe replacement of an actor creates a different timeline. (Although one might wish that the replacement actor was preferable to the replaced one.)
I would point out that in answer to the point that Christopher made about the more recent event being more salient to current policy, true enough. However, don't forget that the issue of containing the expansion of expansionist Communism was the organizing principle of American foreign policy for better than 70 years.
I also think that there was more going on than just aesthetics regarding the technology of the Kelvin. Remote biometric monitoring of away-team personnel was not something that we saw in the original series, even though the concept certainly was feasible, given its use in the American space program contemporaneously with Trek.
(Of course, a similar concept was used with the transponders in "Patterns of Force", but it was not used routinely.)
Anyway, I've made my arguments and at this point will leave it to others to decide their validity or lack thereof.
I would point out that in answer to the point that Christopher made about the more recent event being more salient to current policy, true enough. However, don't forget that the issue of containing the expansion of expansionist Communism was the organizing principle of American foreign policy for better than 70 years.
I also think that there was more going on than just aesthetics regarding the technology of the Kelvin. Remote biometric monitoring of away-team personnel was not something that we saw in the original series, even though the concept certainly was feasible, given its use in the American space program contemporaneously with Trek.
(Of course, a similar concept was used with the transponders in "Patterns of Force", but it was not used routinely.)
Anyway, I've made my arguments and at this point will leave it to others to decide their validity or lack thereof.
It wasn't, but it should've been. It's the prerogative of a fictional universe to update itself, rather than being forever trapped by decades-old assumptions. The differences are in how the story is told. Since it's all just make-believe anyway, you just pretend that it was always this way. It's no different from Enterprise giving us a female captain in the 22nd century and thereby ignoring "Turnabout Intruder"'s sexist assumptions. It's just updating the fiction. Any long-running series is going to rework certain ideas as it goes, and glossing over the discrepancies is just part of the basic suspension of disbelief that the audience engages in to buy into it.
I'm afraid your 70 years figure is erroneous. George Kennan sent the Long Telegram that became the basis for the Truman Doctrine of Soviet containment in 1946. By most systems of reckoning, the Cold War ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the Malta Summit in December 1989. That's only 43 years during which opposition to Soviet Communism was the driving principle of U.S. foreign policy.
(It is true that U.S. foreign policy was generally opposed to Sovietism from its onset, but this opposition was not the driving force behind most all foreign policy doctrine until 1946. Pre-Pearl Harbor, of course, most U.S. foreign policy was integrated around isolationism; during the war, the U.S. and USSR were of course allies. And, of course, the U.S.'s post-war anti-Sovietism must be taken into context with its other grand unifying doctrine of ensuring the dominance of Western capital in an international capitalist system.)
How DARE you? Star Trek is future history, a blueprint to what will come to pass, not some "make believe"
I was less concerned about Turnabout intruder, a paranoid delisionist with an axe to grind, who had an unrealistic view of starship captains - "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women"
Compare with Pike's "I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge", which can't be explained away, and has to be ignored.
How DARE you? Star Trek is future history, a blueprint to what will come to pass, not some "make believe"
Which reminds me, next year we're coming up on the tenth anniversary of the end of the Eugenics Wars and the mysterious disappearance of Khan and the other Augments. I just know the conspiracy theorists will be all over the Internet talking about how they escaped to space in a sleeper ship. Yeah, right -- we all know the only one of those was used for Shaun Geoffrey Christopher's flight to Saturn. Although I hear that advances in manned spaceflight will render them obsolete within three years.
Well, at least the Millennium Gate opened on schedule back in '12. And the London Kings are having a good year, thanks to Buck Bokai.
The "Turnabout" bit is easier to rationalize, true, but it's pretty clear that the writers' underlying intent was that women couldn't and shouldn't be starship captains, because they were intrinsically overemotional and unstable creatures who couldn't handle the strain, and any sane woman would be happy to settle for a subordinate role. Modern viewers are able to interpret it as "Janice thought women couldn't be captains because she was crazy," but its writers most likely meant it as "Janice was crazy because she thought women could be captains."
Either way, whether it comes from the fans or the writers, retcons happen in any long-running universe. The virtue of fiction is that we can rewrite the bits of history that turned out badly. So any long-running series will have inconsistencies, but we gloss over those inconsistencies and pretend it's all the same reality.
But people who dislike a particular iteration of Trek will always latch onto a few minor inconsistencies and claim they require it to be in a separate continuity, even though they're happy to explain away other, even bigger inconsistencies in prior Trek in order to pretend it's a single continuity. I saw people using that double standard a decade ago to deny that Enterprise could be part of the Trek history they knew, and now the same double-standard arguments are being used with the Abrams movies. And I've seen quotes of one or two old letters back from '82 where people were insisting the same thing about TMP and TWOK. It's never really about continuity and timeline logic, it's just about what people want to include or exclude and the excuses they make for doing so.
Aside from being one of those "messages" that work on both sides of the divide, relevant in-universe and in real-life - and so rather ambiguous in how "canonical" its claims of non-canonicity are, so to speak (
Who played the Markab? Humans in rubber costume?
Maybe it was all a holodeck program, like Daniel's scenes in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars". So nobody would have "played" anyone else, in-universe.
Did they? I honestly never really took either of the two interpretations you guys are talking about. I mean, looking at the quote in context, going off Chakoteya's transcript:
I always thought that what Janice meant was a repetition of the whole "Kirk can't have a stable relationship with women because he loves his ship too much" theme. That Kirk's world of starship captains doesn't admit women into it, because he doesn't have room for them long term. Not just reframing it, I always thought that that was the intent of the line.
^ Agreed.
Not just because it actually makes logical sense (as opposed to Roddenberry's wonderful utopia suddenly becoming sexist), but also because Janice says it right after Kirk's line about "I never stopped you..."
Not just because it actually makes logical sense (as opposed to Roddenberry's wonderful utopia suddenly becoming sexist), but also because Janice says it right after Kirk's line about "I never stopped you..."
Sure, that's how it sounds to modern ears, because we're not thinking in '60s terms. But you have to look at the whole episode, and consider it in the context of the stereotypes that existed at the time. The final line is telling, when Kirk says that Janice could've been as happy as any woman, if only. Which means if only she'd accepted her place, had been content to be a woman and settle for a woman's role, rather than resenting her femininity and wanting to fill a man's role -- something the episode made literal with the body swap. There's a subtext there that's mercifully easy to overlook from a modern standpoint, but if you understand the mentality of '60s gender attitudes, it's unpleasantly clear.
Now that you can point it out, yeah, I can see that; I'd forgotten about the last line, that definitely points it in a different direction that I hadn't connected before. Shame, but at least it's easy enough to reinterpret as you and Paul have been saying (and as I inadvertently had been).
If only she wasn't a NUTBAR.
^ It's both. She's wrong because she's nuts, yes, and because she has unrealistic perspectives on Kirk himself, but she's also presented as wrong for desiring something external to what would be considered reasonable or logical for one of her sex. Trying to be something you're not, indeed longing to be something you're not - here, that something involving traits and attributes that are associated by the writing with one side of the sexual binary and not the other. Male and female are different; since the traits required by a Starfleet captain are considered masculine, it's foolish for a female to seek the role. That's pretty clear in the subtext.
Christopher isn't the best ambassador for it, since his personal emotional responses get in the way (and, yes, I'm aware that your old friends Captain Kettle and Admiral Pot are likely appropriate here), but in terms of simple intent he's quite right in identifying the implicit message that accompanies the madness. There's a very strong implication that Janice was incorrect in pursuing a role for which it's believed females are unsuited; that her tragedy is the rejection of her female nature in a pursuit of a role in the male sphere, and that she can wear the clothing but never be the person that role requires, because her sex is considered unsuitable.
Christopher isn't the best ambassador for it, since his personal emotional responses get in the way (and, yes, I'm aware that your old friends Captain Kettle and Admiral Pot are likely appropriate here), but in terms of simple intent he's quite right in identifying the implicit message that accompanies the madness. There's a very strong implication that Janice was incorrect in pursuing a role for which it's believed females are unsuited; that her tragedy is the rejection of her female nature in a pursuit of a role in the male sphere, and that she can wear the clothing but never be the person that role requires, because her sex is considered unsuitable.
Thankfully, it's a line that's sufficiently ambiguous (if only just barely so) that it can be reinterpreted in light of her mental illnesses (and I have little doubt that the plural is appropriate), while still being a reminder of the era whence* the episode came.
(And I rather like the way Uhura and Chapel took command in The Lorelei Signal.)
____
*subtle not-quite-a-pun intended.
(And I rather like the way Uhura and Chapel took command in The Lorelei Signal.)
____
*subtle not-quite-a-pun intended.
In its own misguided way, I think, "Turnabout Intruder" was trying to be pro-female. The message was, "Men and women have different natural roles, but they're both equally noble and valuable, so women should be proud of their femininity instead of feeling they have to adopt masculine roles to be valued." Which we now know to be nonsense, of course; whatever differences may exist between men and women do not preclude them both doing the same jobs. But in its writers' minds, it was seen as an empowering statement, at least in theory.
Of course, where that theory falls apart is in the unfilmed scene at the end of Roddenberry's original episode outline, in which the restored Kirk gets nervous and defensive at the suggestion that he may have retained some feminine traits and reassures himself of his manliness by ogling a yeoman. That part doesn't fit the "women have value in their own separate way" narrative.
Of course, where that theory falls apart is in the unfilmed scene at the end of Roddenberry's original episode outline, in which the restored Kirk gets nervous and defensive at the suggestion that he may have retained some feminine traits and reassures himself of his manliness by ogling a yeoman. That part doesn't fit the "women have value in their own separate way" narrative.
Well, yes, obviously it's the era in which it's written and the particular form in which assumptions regarding sexual distinctions and appropriate gender roles were often expressed, but I think there's a sensible case to be made for why parts of the Federation - not the Federation as a whole but parts of it - might embrace a more divisive and pigeon-holed attitude toward gender in the mid-23rd Century. Such that sexist assumptions would crop up in some cases or be reasonably prevalent in certain regions. Novels like Vanguard: Harbinger and Vanguard: Summon the Thunder have suggested this, with reference to attitudes in some quarters (again, some, not a majority) toward extremes of supposed sexual compatibility and incompatibility with, say, command. Probably just an effort to justify some of those moments from the TV show and help the whole thing hang together, but still making it a part of the fabric of this society, evident in some of its facets. I'm having a lot of fun in my chronology thread trying to get a grip on the various forces at work within the Federation in the 2260s, and I can see plenty of reason for why such ideas and attitudes might emerge in places, justifying (for example) Harbinger's mention of occasional sexist attitudes regarding command ability.
Yes it does. Of course Kirk would, under this binary model of gender attributes, be nervous about retaining feminine traits. He's not female; such traits would be at odds with what he's supposed to be and what/who he is. A feminine man isn't a woman, he's a woman without the womb, unable to fill either a female or a male role. Female traits may be valueless in a male, but that doesn't mean they're perceived as valueless in their "rightful" place.
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