Random Musings - 3 geeks on life, the universe and everything.

Star Trek-in across the universe… (Spoilers)

Written on June 2, 2009 at 9:01 pm about Films by Chris

Okay, so I’ve seen Star Trek now. 4 times, in fact. And my opinion?

It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, never mind ‘of the year’. It captures the essence of what the original ‘trek’ was about, without caricaturing it.

But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post. I want to look at the ‘in universe’ ramifications of this film’s plot.

So, let’s go from point 1:

First of all, all the time travel that’s already occurred in the past, prior to the destruction of the Kelvin? Because it’s before the branch point, it still occurs. The Enterprise E still helps with the first Human warp flight. Voyager still goes back and alters the 20th century’s computer age. And so on and so forth.

Secondly, after the Kelvin was destroyed, Starfleet obviously ordered a much more powerful technological advancement rate than occurred in the original series. Evidence for this can be taken from the fact the Enterprise in this time-line uses a variant on the pulse phasers previously only seen in Deep Space Nine, on the Defiant. Additionally, this explains the Enterprise’s late launch date (she should have been launched 11 years prior, but obviously, new developments resulted in delays and re-fits), as well as why she appears to have already undergone the refit that in the original universe, she wouldn’t have until shortly before the Wrath of Khan.

Along side this, in this time-line, she’s a heavy cruiser in both name and design, rather than an exploratory vessel first and foremost. She’s heavier armoured, and designed to be more manoeuvrable. She has better main phasers, and revolver launch torpedo tubes allowing for each tube to fire 6 torpedoes, one after the other. Even the Enterprise D, with it’s forward firing torpedo bays, could only fire 2 torpedoes from each launcher in sequence before needing reloading.

So, the destruction of the Kelvin acts as the first key point in this new time-line, and results in Starfleet going for a more advanced, more technologically powerful fleet. But neither the Romulan Empire nor Klingon Empire (the two major antagonists of the time period) are doing the same. Thus, Starfleet holds technological superiority in this time-line, as opposed to simple equality.

Third on our list is Kirk himself. In this time-line, he spent time as a delinquent for much longer, rather than joining the academy when he was 18. As such, he has a much more brash and aggressive personality, as he lacks his father’s influence. This is evidenced in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, where, in the original time-line, while he did reprogram the simulator, it was to make the Klingons respect his reputation, at which point he roped them into helping him conduct the rescue. This time round, however, his more aggressive and hot headed personality resulted in him simply altering the scenario so it would allow him to kill all of the Klingon ships with 1 shot each. As such, this Kirk is more aggressive, and thus, ironically, more likely to get the reputation that his original self attempted to garner.

Fourth comes in the form of ship losses and what that means for the time-line. To start with, in the original time-line, at this particular point in history, the Romulans were forced to purchase decommissioned Klingon ships in order to supplement their own forces, where as in this timeline, the Klingons have lost 47 ships to what they think is Romulan aggression, and thus will have no inclination to sell ships to them, and may even be recommissioning those vessels themselves to use as a stopgap. This leaves the Romulan empire seriously under-powered militarily and with the fact that the elder Spock has 20 odd years of manipulating the Romulans and their politics, he may be able to use this to result in a more Federation friendly Romulan government, which also allows him to increase the available gene-base for the Vulcans to rebuild with. At the same time, even with recommissioning of old ships, the Klingons are weakened militarily. While their attitude towards this may not result in increased friendly actions from them, the fact the Romulan ship guilty of attacking their fleet and doing so much damage was destroyed by a single Starfleet Vessel, along side the fact Starfleet lost a significantly smaller fraction of it’s fleet to this attack overall, may result in a Klingon Empire more inclined towards political combat than all out warfare.

And this leads us on to politics. The Vulcans were always the Federation’s voice of reason and stability in the prime universe. In this universe, their influence is greatly reduced. As such, the Humans and Andorians have a much greater influence, and both are more aggressive species than their Vulcan counterparts, the Andorians especially. As such, the Federation is going to be more expansionist and aggressive, while, ironically, being more able to forge treaties with their former enemies.

As such, this results in a universe with a much stronger United Federation of Planets, which may even result in the whole of the Undiscovered Country’s plot-line of a peace treaty with the Klingons occurring early.

And this is all before we account for the fact that A), in San Francisco Bay is a 24th century Mining Phaser, which uses technology developed during the course of the original series to start with. And B) There’s the elder Spock, again, who’s demonstrated he has considerable scientific and technological knowledge of the future, and who therefore can ensure that the Federation has several elements of it’s 24th century tech early, as well as warn them of the approaching Borg threat, and prepare them for the existence of enemies such as the Dominion.

And to leave you all with a happy thought: The movie has a few contrived co-incidences, correct? We’re talking a setting with the Q in it, though. And we all know how our friend Q likes to bother Picard and Janeway. They can’t very well exist if Earth is destroyed, can they? As such, perhaps these co-incidences aren’t so co-incidental.