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Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman Talks Star Trek Canon in New Video Interview

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By GustavoLeao / 16:44, 27 August 2008 / Star Trek: Nemesis

Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman recently sat down with Fox Movie Channel's "Life After Film School" series and spoke about being the co-writers of the upcoming Star Trek movie.


They discuss how challenging it can be to deal with the weight of the Star Trek canon which is over 40 years of continuity of television history and why they decided to set the movie storyline at the beginning of The Original Series era and why they decided to tell the story of the original crew first meeting. Here is an excerpt.

"Our version of Star Trek is not exactly a prequel." said Orci "It is in some ways and you will have to see it to label it exactly. Canon, that is a word that was invented for Star Trek, meaning, does it fall within the continuity of this forty-year puzzle. But it was amazing when we went back to look at Star Trek,  no one had ever done the story about how the original crew came together."

"[...] there's five thousand hours of Star Trek and no one ever covered how they all met [laughs]." Orci continued "So in a way that was liberating in that no one had stated how that happened exactly. And because we had been fans truly-who knew all those years sitting in front of the TV watching Transformers and Star Trek that we weren't wasting our time. It was all tax deductible. It was daunting, but we thought, if we can't do it, the no one can! No, not exactly. But it was like we had been called to duty and it woudl have felt cowardly to back away just because ‘it has been forty years, what can we do?'" 

"We, at first, we were scared -- not because we didn't think it was worthy, it was we didn't think we were worthy of it." said Kurtzman "So, it became kind of about thinking, "Alright, well, god, if we're going to do this, what did we really love about it?" What inspired us when we were kids, and how do we get back to that feeling, and what was that feeling about for us? Ultimately, I think it was very much about Kirk and Spock and that bridge crew, that was a big part of it. So, what got us through the fear was the excitement of that opportunity, which really comes probably once in a lifetime."

You can see the interview here.

Thanks to TrekMovie.com and 'TRexx' for the transcript.



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RE: Avoiding a canon prison cell is not dishonarable. | Report this post to moderator
By: Writer4GoodTrek (Odo's file, contact) @ 09:41:46 on Aug 28, 2008

You are right that the continuity of Star Trek has become an anchor to the franchise. That's not to say that it should be cast arise, but clearly some bad business decisions were made in the 90's that lead to the well being tapped too often from too many buckets - and that lead to the franchise's continuity becoming so unweldy. But that is water under the dam; now this film just has to fix it.

Having seen treatments for this thing, and being aware of the business context, I can say that as a point of clarification, the Abrams teams has been given the freedom to reboot the "Star Trek" franchise straight-up a la "Batman Begins" or "Battlestar Galactica", but they have chosen not to. This film is indeed a continuation of the existing "Star Trek" canon.


POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!


That said, this film will establish an alternate timeline that is derived from the events of this film. Romulans and Leonard Nimoy Spock from the 24th century TNG/DS9/Voyager era will alter the course of pre-TOS and thusly create an alternate version of pre-TOS (and therefore the TOS) era in which this fillm will take place. That is how they are staying in continuity for those that care and allowing themselves the freedom to reengineer, recast, reboot, etc. to not be anchored by the need for the audience to otherwise need to know the secret passwords and handshakes the understand what is going on.

Based upon what I have seen, unlike other "Trek" stories like this, the alternate timeline is not ultimately undermined and all not set back to status quo. In other words, the events of this film will undermine the last 45 years of Star Trek lore - cleaning the slate within the context of the Star Trek narrative itself (not like they made "Batman Begins" as if the 60's TV show, comic books, cartoons, or Burton & Schumaker movies never existed). There is the intention of making sequels within this new timeline and thereby allowing some familiar stories to be retold.

Now that said, in the context of this film, there are still certain details that could not change as significantly as will likely be presented in this film. It is these sorts of exceptional suspensions of disbelief that may be required that are concerning some.


END OF POTENTIAL SPOILER


Okay, so geting back to my point, will this film fix the franchise. Probably not. Wiping the slate clean in one form or another will not correct the mistakes of the past and will more than likely just piss a lot of people off. There might be that intial curiousity where people wonder how this is going to work, but once the cat is completely out of the bag and seen there will be a big letdown.

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RE: Avoiding a canon prison cell is not dishonarable. | Report this post to moderator
By: TRexx (Odo's file, contact) @ 00:30:52 on Aug 28, 2008

Quote from cdydatzigs:
By the way, I know the origin of the word canon "argument" was sarcasm TRexx -- my winking smiley implies I am being sarcastic too. So save it.


I wasn't the first to spot "SarcasmAir" flying high over your clueless head.

Good luck, now that you've raised everyone's expectations of your boggle.


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RE: Avoiding a canon prison cell is not dishonarable. by cdydatzigs @ 09:30:20 on Aug 28
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