A fairly thorough piece.
Whatever your view on whether it’s a pro or con for the ensemble and storytelling, SNW ‘Lost in Translation’ having covered off the ‘met him when he made fleet captain’ reference to Pike in TOS, there seems to be a great deal of flexibility for SNW to keep bringing Jim Kirk into its stories.
Here’s one unexpected take.
So what does that mean for Kirk? We have to wait until 2265 for him to take over as captain of the Enterprise, right? Well, maybe not. Canon is oddly vague on the handover from Pike to Kirk. In fact, only one episode of TOS actually takes place in 2265: “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second pilot. There’s also nothing that indicates Kirk didn’t serve on the Enterprise in another role before getting promoted. If, in theory, Pike were to step down and someone else became an interim captain, then nothing is stopping Kirk from serving on the Enterprise before 2265.
Interesting headcanon, but headcanon nevertheless. I’d wager heavily that neither the First Contact nor Enterprise production staff share this interpretation, much less intended it.
I’d take up that wager they used the same actor for zefram cochrane to do the traditional new series handoff, they cast him as involved in the NX-01’s multi decade development program before he disappeared.
How does Cromwell reprising Cochrane in “Broken Bow” support the notion that Enterprise is in a different timeline from all previous Star Trek? I don’t see how these things are connected at all.
That is a strawman argument, I didn’t claim this is a different timeline, in fact I claimed just the opposite. Altered is not the same as Alternate. Key events that are remembered and influential are still intact, while superficial details like whether NX-01 was named Dauntless or Enterprise deviate with little consequence.
