Interesting point about the impact of the destruction of Vulcan. It effectively means that it loses a founding member of the Federation and the first ever world that Earth had contact with, including personel, scientists, equipment, and resources have been wiped out. This leaves the federation vulnerable to attacks from the Klingons and the Romulans, who at the time of the movie were still in exile.

The logical conclusion is that the Federation will lose the next war that it has to fight, unless the loss of the Vulcans means that the Federation can make an alliance with either the Romulans or Klingons that would not have been possible had the Vulcans survived.

I agree with most of your other commentators: this is a fork, and it’s an appropriate fork. Moving further down the main timeline just adds to the pain of consistency checking (within a universe that is not 100% consistent with itself!) and from an artistic viewpoint leads to material that’s increasingly either (a) only comprehensible to the fans, who know the background, or (b) boring to those same fans because too much background has to be recapped for the newbies.

It’s been a long, long time since 1966 (personally I didn’t start watching regularly till 1969, though I did see the original broadcast of “The Trouble with Tribbles” on NBC in 1967, more or less by accident (Who is that guy, and why is he green?)). This movie keeps the core of the original characters and their personality conflicts, and transplants them into a strange new world, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before. And S’ keeps just enough continuity with the old timeline to help us old farts adjust.

I have mixed feelings about this. It is an opportunity to reboot the whole thing in a way that DS9 and Voyager were never able to do to my satisfaction. And I am very chagrined by the destruction of Vulcan.

But while I’m old enough to have sat live in front of the very first episode of Star Trek in the 1960s, I don’t feel the religious annoyance expressed here. And, I am religious: you should have watched the steam rise from my ears leaving LOTR I after Liv Tyler saved Frodo at the ford in place of Glorfindel (actually, the steam was already rising much earlier in the movie) and LOTR II after watching Faramir drag Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath. LOTR III didn’t help either. Aargh!

I’m strangely calm about Star Trek–just a reed bending in the wind.

Anyway, Spock and Uhura? Who would have thought?!

Rewinding some eventful decades of Federation history isn’t a retcon at all, only a logical consequence of a time travel event that takes place in the Star trek continuity, after the events in the canon, and brings the same tale “forward”. It is the most respectful device that allows the films and/or TV series that will hopefully follow to tell new stories with familiar old characters (the Enterprise crew in their youth) and old situations (Romulan and Klingon wars) rather than unnecessarily diluting Star Trek with new characters and places. Future Star Trek productions are set up to be directly compared with earlier work rather than different for novelty’s sake: what could be more respectful of the work of Roddenberry & co.?

Finally, the grim predictions about the differences between the film’s outcome and the previous timeline are reasonable but irrelevant; between the events in the film and their “logical conclusion” there is an ocean of screenwriter fiat. For example modest technological improvements like faster warp or better cloaking can allow the seemingly weakened Federation to perform as well as it did the “first time” it fought the mentioned wars.

In assembling an all new generation cast to portray those characters, obviously it would be problematic to carry them forward within the same Star Trek universe and try to weave new stories while working around the baggage of all the past Star Trek media history.

J.J. Abrams have cleverly conceived a plot device to escape that conundrum. Now this new cast of the “old characters” can truly take us again boldly where none have gone before. In the realm of entertainment this practically borders on genius.

There is precedent for this in canon. The Mirror Universe is a fork that apparently started at the moment of first contact with the Vulcans. Also, remember that NextGen episode where dozens of Enterprises appeared, from alternate universes, in some of which the Borg had conquered the Federation? Different timelines exist in parallel, and the old universe still exists — elsewhere.

That said… I have nearly as long a history as a Trekkie as you do, Elliotte, and I think that the Trek franchise as it stood had jumped the shark some time ago, maybe around the time of Insurrection or Voyager. That the fourth season of Enterprise was so good was nothing short of a miracle, and one unlikely to be repeated. The comics and novels were still going on, mainly because they could survive on a much smaller audience than a live-action production; as a movie/TV franchise, Trek was over.

So a reboot is a good thing, as long as it’s done by people who love and respect the original — and there were so many nods to TOS in the new movie that it was obvious that they do. (Including the novels: they made canon of the names Diane Carey chose for Kirk’s parents.) For the first time in a long time, I want another Trek movie, ASAP.