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PotionMistress, @
CessnaDriver, @
CutThumb... What you guys have said? I feel that to the marrow. I, like others in this thread, feel like the people making this haven't watched Star Trek -- beyond maybe some gif-sets that gave them some tropes to work in to make it "look like Star Trek". There are so many things that people think they "know" about Star Trek from public zeitgeist. Kirk the womanizer, the Vulcan death grip, "Beam me up, Scotty"... And then are amazed when it's pointed out them that there is no Vulcan death grip, "Beam me up, Scotty" was never uttered in the entire series, and Kirk...
Kirk is one of the most romantically tragic figures I've ever run across. He was so focused on being in Starfleet he hardly left his room when he didn't need to be in class. He had to be fixed up on dates and was an utter bookworm. Somewhere in there, he met and dated Ruth, but left her for his career, a choice which haunted him for over a decade. He got together with Carol Marcus, but she broke things off with him over philosophical differences. He fell in love with Edith Keeler and had to watch her die in order to save his whole reality. He fell in love with Miramanee, and had to watch her die when the two of them got stoned (in a bad way) by the other villagers. He fell in love with Rayna, and had to watch her die when she couldn't cope with the emotional conflict she was going through over both him and Methuselah. He loved and married Lori Ciana, only to watch her die in a transporter malfunction (TMP). He retired from Starfleet, met and took up with Antonia, and -- as with Ruth years before -- felt he had to leave her to go back to Starfleet.
In several instances in TOS, he
did take advantage of various female heads-of-state or otherwise useful positions who were attracted to him in order to save his ship and/or crew. A couple he was actually fond of, but not to the point he felt the need to invite them to come with.
But one thing he
wasn't was how he was presented in JJ-Trek. He's frikkin' Horatio Hornblower.
I say all this because there
is a way to present the period, in line with what is already known, and have it be good. And they're
not. It's agonizing. First and foremost, they need to reach some kind of agreement where they can actually frikkin' use TOS imagery -- the consoles, the uniforms, the props... That'd go a long way. But... *thinks* ...Start in the 2220s with the "disastrous" First Contact with the Klingons, with whatever reciprocal misunderstandings were involved.
Southern, Chang-style, smoother-headed Klingons. Around the same time is when the Starship Project was initiated, which would lead to the
Constitution class in another twenty years.
Or else start in the 2240s, where that's already happened, and the
Constitution is just being launched (or, per the lore, the
Enterprise, under Captain April, as the
Constitution had construction delays that resulted in it being launched second). Show the conflict between April's idealism and the deteriorating relations with the Klingons.
Or else, as Discovery is
trying to do, as Axanar was purporting to be intending to do... Start it in the 2250s. Pike and the
Enterprise are off somewhere else. But, even with the high rate of attrition, there are other
Constitution class vessels around. You know, big, well-equipped starships with warp-8 engines and lots of defensive and scientific systems, intended to go out and explore unknown space? But there's plenty to mine. Things are tense with the Klingons. They attack a Federation colony on Archanis IV. Captain Garth of the USS
Xenophon tracks the raiding force back to Axanar and counterattacks. This leads to open war, later known as the Four Years War. The Andorians get closer to the Humans at this time, being a warrior race. They become more participatory in Starfleet, culminating in the Andorian-designed
Loknar class Frigate. The Vulcans are coldly disapproving of the conflict, and refuse Starfleet's attempts to get them involved (echoes of the Romulans in the Dominion War?). Ultimately, the Humans pull themselves back and end things diplomatically. "Newly fledged cadet" James Kirk is part of the Axanar Peace Mission, and is awarded the Palm Leaf of Axanar (all that can be utterly easter-egg cameo level content).
War, in and of itself, isn't "un-Star Trek". How it's handled is important, though. How it starts and why, how it's waged, how we wrestle with it, how it's ended. It's actually a spectacular way to grapple with moral and philosophical questions. At least as good as juxtaposing us against new alien races we encounter. In both cases, if it's handled well. When it's handled badly... Well, IMO, we get Enterprise, Discovery, and JJ-Trek. No offense to those who like those series, but I feel they drop the ball, and hard.
The best part of the Four Years War would be the denoument. A little while after, Starfleet gets exasperated at the Vulcans
still not acknowledging that they ended the war diplomatically rather than militarily, and sent an expeditionary force to their world. They sent all their newest and best starships, showing off their science labs and sensors and science specialists... Laid out for them the notion of the Five Year Missions, of discovery and peaceful exploration. And
finally getting them to participate. Spock enrolling in Starfleet preceded this, yes, but we know that story -- he wasn't representative of his people or their attitudes. No, the immediate result of the Vulcanian Expedition would be the entirely-Vulcan-crewed
Miranda class Starfleet science vessel USS
Intrepid. The first step toward the cooperation we see over the next century-plus.
The scaffolding of the story is already there. No torture. No bad science. No unlikable characters. No Idiot Plots. No redundant hero ship. No Human raised on Vulcan (so far, I'm not seeing what relevance that adds to Michael's character at all). I've seen people argue that the Prime Directive doesn't exist yet. I call BS on that. It's Starfleet's General Order #1. #7 forbids contact with Talos IV and doesn't exist yet, but will soon. General Order #1 would have been codified around the Founding of the Federation, or Chartering of Starfleet, adapted from the Vulcans' own non-interference guidelines. At any rate, it's been around for a while by this point, so there's no excuse or justification for Our Heroes to be acting like thugs and war-criminals right out of the gate.
--Jonah