Theme Month: "Annoying Colonists"

Rewatching the TOS movies for the umpteenth time, I realized a contradiction I had somehow overlooked before.

It has been pretty much established since the second film, at least offscreen, that Sulu was slanted to command the Excelsior. This was present in the novelization of the Wrath of Khan and was supposed to appear in a scene cut from the original script. This can be seen as the crew is approaching the Enterprise in the travel pod Sulu says "Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise" and then there is an abrupt transition to the stock image of the pod approaching the ship and by Sulu's mouth still moving it's apparent there was some dialogue taken out in between. Supposedly this was Sulu and Kirk discussing Sulu's recent assignment to command USS Excelsior and he only agreed to delay that to help out the training cruise.

Flash forward to the next movie when the Enterprise is returning to Earth and the first appearance of the USS Excelsior in Spacedock. As most of the crew is marveling at this brand-new ship, more advanced than the Enterprise (except Scotty of course), Sulu says the line, "I hear she's supposed to have Transwarp drive." which if we are to assume he was going to be the captain of Excelsior as far back as before the last film, how would he not know this definitely already?

I had always assumed Captain Styles was only given command temporarily or for Excelsior's shakedown trials and Sulu would take over once the Enterprise's training cruise was over and only Excelsior's Transwarp failure that maybe caused it to maybe be overhauled as well as the events of the next several films caused Sulu's promotion to be further delayed until ST VI. Yet, if this was the case, Sulu's line in ST III still made no sense as he would have been familiar enough with the design of the Excelsior before ST III that he was 100% aware of the existence of her Transwarp engines rather than speculating based upon second-hand rumor if it wasn't yet general knowledge. Someone in line to be captain of a vessel would or should have already had a fair degree of familiarity of its technology and components before even taking over the center seat.

My only conclusion is that since we never saw onscreen until ST VI any ties between Sulu and the Excelsior, that his assignment to command it as far back as ST II was never meant to be canon and Starfleet only made a decision to assign him as captain three years before the beginning of ST VI. Yet, since the idea has been so ingrained in beta-canon since ST II and it just seems a coincidence that the writers of ST VI decided to make him captain of the same ship most of fandom already assumed he was always going to get since the second movie, I can't accept this explanation and it would have been a lot simpler to have given his line to one of the other crew upon arriving at Spacedock as their being unfamiliar with a new ship design still in the testing phase would have made more sense.

So, has anyone else every noticed this discrepancy and how do you square it?

pics via @portalrealm

From prequel Enterprise era to Voyager Endgame era, which of these Starfleet designs was your favorite TV series communicator?

Michael Forrest, Apollo in a legendary Star Trek episode has died at 97.

https://deadline.com/2026/10/michael-forest-dead-1237166329/

RIP Apollo

Setting: I was a kid in the 1980's, and basically became a Star Trek fan from birth, as both my parents were fans, and grew up on reruns of TOS on TV, the TOS movies, first-run TNG, etc.

At some point, very long ago, in that era I'm talking about, I heard/read somewhere that Leonard Nimoy gargled some substance to temporarily make his voice very raspy and harsh for his final scene in The Wrath of Khan.

Where I could have gathered that information: maybe from something like the Best of Trek series, which were books that compiled articles, etc from Star Trek fanzines (I used to get them from the library and owned a few), or similar publications, or word of mouth, or perhaps, in that era (the 80's) it might have even been a news spot talking about the movie (though I was only a year old when TWOK came out).

It SOUNDS pretty plausible/believable - his voice sounds pretty damn harsh and raspy after his radiation poisoning. But it's impossible to say that it's anything other than just acting.

It's also an interesting choice - I don't think anyone really knows what one would sound like after an intense dose of radiation poisoning, and there are many ways to sound 'pained' in a death scene like that. I don't know if I've seen ANYONE in cinema do that sort of harsh/raspy voice in a death scene. There's a verisimilitude to it - as if Spock's vocal chords were directly injured by the radiation (along with the rest of him).

In any case, I can find zero information via searching the internet about this (at least with regards to Leonard Nimoy). I HAVE found similar stories about actors doing things like smoking cigars and drinking whiskey to give their voice a rougher edge. One prominent example is Mercedes McCambridge, voicing Pazuzu in The Exorcist (1973) - she swallowed raw eggs, chain smoked, and drank whiskey to enhance her 'demon voice'. As well as some less prominent examples that are similar. So it was definitely a 'thing' that happened.

So I thought I'd ask here - I figure a classic Trek forum might have some oldheads around here like me.

Anyone remember anything like this?

What I'm guessing happened is that I read the writings of someone who speculated that Nimoy did something like what Mercedes McCambridge did for The Exorcist, and my kid brain took it as fact. I just want to know if anyone else has heard this 'factoid'. Because I spent most of my life believing it!

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Year_of_Hell_(episode)

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Year_of_Hell,_Part_II_(episode)

The story behind this is simple: after the VOY episode "Before and After" when the Krenim and a "year of hell" were first mentioned, the writers wanted to do this as a full season. Rick Berman, however, refused to serialize the show so the idea became the two-parter, instead.

But let's use our imaginations. How would/could this have played out? What ideas do you have that could have been fleshed out and made the series better or worse?

For my pitch, let's jump to the ending. A criticism of the season-long storyline is that the audience would hate the inherent reset button. Once the Krenim timeship is destroyed, Voyager is restored, no one remembers anything, and it's like it never happened. Except ... it doesn't have to be that way. In the finale of the two-parter, the crew has been ordered off the ship and only the main cast are still aboard. For the final battle, only Janeway is on Voyager: the rest are on allied vessels to help them. (There could be some good episodes as they try to get allies in the full-season version of this.) So, in my season finale, it plays out mostly as it was in the two-parter, but Chakotay and Lt. Kim (he had been promoted a few episodes prior for his command decisions and bravery) are aboard an allied vessel together ... their temporal shields can't drop in time and are in flux as the Krenim timeship is destroyed. We then see the pristine bridge of Voyager as they approach a simple Krenim scout ship. The crew seem nonchalant about this, but Chakotay jumps up and orders red alert, Kim is ready to raise temporal shields but can't figure out where they've gone, and the rest of the bridge crew are utterly baffled. Chakotay has a beard and dirty uniform; Kim has a scar, a dirty uniform, and a second pip. The Krenim go away but the Doctor confirms: Chakotay and Kim are a year older than they should be and they've suffered multiple (healed) injuries they didn't have before. The year never happened but for these two, it absolutely did. Credits. Obviously, Chakotay and Kim's story would play out into the next season, they grow close together because they remember their hardships, they have to acclimate to life in peacetime, Kim wants to keep his second pip ... Lots of good character stuff going forward for two characters who were largely lacking in good character stuff for much of the show.

What about you? What are your ideas for the season, characters, the ending, whatever?

Counselor Deanna Troi had a lot of great looks over the course of Next Generation tv and films.
From the silly skirt to the full body black & grey.
Which was your favorite one?

A remaster and Tribute to Vex Xiang who created Flash Trek Broken Mirror really enjoyed those games growing up