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So... Kirk is alive? Kind of? Sort of? Maybe?

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I watched Star Trek Generations yesterday for the first time in years. I remembered not liking it that much back when I first saw it, but it has grown on me.

Of interest to me was when Picard visited the Nexus and sees Guinan there. She describes herself as an "echo" and due to the fact that Picard's fantasy family did not acknowledge her, I thought that she existed pretty much completely in his head.

However, I went online and looked up the script to that movie and in it that scene is extended and Guinan talks about how when she was beamed onto the Enterprise-B the passengers of that vessel were partially in the Nexus. And while she and Sorin were rescued "a part of them" stayed behind.

I had always thought that Sorin had been in the Nexus before the events with the Enterprise-B ever took place, and that he had manipulated the two freighters off screen to intercept the Nexus in an effort to "go back."

But in light of what I read of the script, he had briefly entered the Nexus immediately before being beamed to the Enterprise-B, and since "time has no meaning there" from his perspective he could have been there a very long time, and his frustration of "having to go back" might have been because the Enterprise-B ripped him away from it, not because they prevented him from entering it. That might also be why Guinan seems so lost when Chekhov goes to her on the Enterprise-B, as from her perspective she might have spent years in her little fantasy world before suddenly being ripped away from it.

Since time has no meaning in the Nexus and so the sequence of events have no meaning (you can jump forward, go back, generate completely alternate lives, etc.) that would mean an "echo" of Kirk (and Picard) from before they ever left also would still be in the Nexus.

So, could they not reappear in STO? Provided there was some content involving the Nexus?

Just a thought.

And given that 'Nexus Guinan' seemed to inexplicably share knowledge with her counterpart on the Enterprise. Younger 'Nexus Picard' could still be aware of the political situation of the Klingons and Federation, etc. And Kirk would know that he had died.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I think that the echo of the person in the Nexus cannot leave because they are simply an echo, non-existent. That's just a hypothesis on my part though.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    This was the part from the script that I looked up here

    PICARD
    Guinan, what are you doing here?
    I thought you were on the
    Enterprise.

    GUINAN
    I am on the Enterprise...I am
    also here.
    (off his puzzled look)
    Think of me as... an "echo" of the
    person you know... a part of her
    she left behind...

    PICARD
    Left behind...?

    GUINAN
    When the Enterprise-B beamed us
    off the Lakul, we were partially
    in the Nexus. The transporters
    locked on to us... but somehow
    everyone left a part of themselves
    behind.

    PICARD
    Soran...?

    GUINAN
    All of us.

    PICARD
    Where is he now?

    GUINAN
    Wherever he wanted to be...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    That's what I thought, since they were partially in two places at once they left that echo behind. Kirk and Picard were completely in the Nexus therefore didn't leave that echo.

    Its similar to that episode of TNG when they found a clone or Riker on some base. The transporter beam reflected back causing a Riker to appear on the ship (the Riker that later joined the Enterprise) and the one that stayed on the base (his clone).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    My thought was that if time has no meaning, someone can go into the Nexus and go back in time to when Kirk himself was still in the Nexus, before he left. Then what's to stop him from being convinced to leave at a time before he left with Picard (or after), since Guinan says he can go anywhere, anytime?

    I took it to mean that everyone that entered the Nexus existed in the Nexus indefinitely since they would exist indefinitely during that time before they left.

    When Picard asks where Soran is, Guinan suggests that there's another one of him already in the Nexus that is wherever he wanted to be.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    How about a sweet mission where you use the Nexus to go back in time to kirk, picard and Soran and prevent Kirk's death?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    You are correct, there is no time in the Nexus, which is precisely why you cannot go back to a point before Picard convinced him to leave. Think of the normal universe as a straight line with events happening at each point. The nexus isn't a straight line, it is a point. It exists at that point and there is no before or after.

    It seems like only those who were beamed to the Enterprise B left an echo behind, at least according to what Guinan said
    When the Enterprise-B beamed us
    off the Lakul, we were partially
    in the Nexus. The transporters
    locked on to us... but somehow
    everyone left a part of themselves
    behind.

    Now what could be done is using the Nexus, or another time travel means, to go back to the time of the Enterprise B and prevent Kirk from going to the ship's deck where he was taken into the Nexus.
    How about a sweet mission where you use the Nexus to go back in time to kirk, picard and Soran and prevent Kirk's death?

    Or that.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I would definitely love to see a mission involving the Nexus, though I don't think the mission itself can really take place there for any prolonged period of time. I don't know what kind of exciting mission can take place in your characters own fantasy land.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    The Nexus article at Memory Alpha has a comment from Ronald D. Moore in the "Background" section:
    "When Kirk is pulled into the Nexus, there's no transporter beam to yank him away and hence, he's completely left inside. When Picard and Soren enter the Nexus years later, they too are pulled in completely and the idea of an "echo" should not apply since it was the direct result of a transporter fluke in a very specific instance."
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    How about a sweet mission where you use the Nexus to go back in time to kirk, picard and Soran and prevent Kirk's death?

    That would only work if we tell Picard to shut up about it and take Kirk back to 2409, otherwise we would completely mess up the timeline. Keeping him from going to the deflector control of the Enterprise-B would be out of the question.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    That whole Nexus thing always seemed like a big logical loophole to me, in dimensions only comparable to the Hobus supernova.

    - Kirk enters the Nexus, wants to be in Iowa, ends up in Iowa, hacking logs. But he's actually in the Nexus.
    - Picard enters the Nexus, wants to be with his family, ends up being with his family. But he's actually in the Nexus.

    ... So what's to say that just because Picard wanted to meet up with Kirk and both of them stopping Soran actually happened? Isn't that just another "I want it this way so the Nexus does it for me" scenario that would end up having no effect on the real world? Theoretically making every Star Trek movie after Generations a fantasy of Picard that only happened in the Nexus? :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Valias wrote:
    That whole Nexus thing always seemed like a big logical loophole to me, in dimensions only comparable to the Hobus supernova.

    - Kirk enters the Nexus, wants to be in Iowa, ends up in Iowa, hacking logs. But he's actually in the Nexus.
    - Picard enters the Nexus, wants to be with his family, ends up being with his family. But he's actually in the Nexus.

    ... So what's to say that just because Picard wanted to meet up with Kirk and both of them stopping Soran actually happened? Isn't that just another "I want it this way so the Nexus does it for me" scenario that would end up having no effect on the real world? Theoretically making every Star Trek movie after Generations a fantasy of Picard that only happened in the Nexus? :p

    Now that's some heavy logic :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Well, apparently I'm wrong about the "echo" idea as someone pointed out the Moore quote.

    Still, I think the presence of the Nexus would allow for Kirk to make an appearance as you could hypothetically go back to the time before he left. But it would probably be like the mission with Spock and the U.S.S. Enterprise where you wouldn't be able to identify yourself for fear of messing with the timeline.

    Or unless Cryptic really went out of there way to do something like you go back, convince Kirk to come back to 2409 and some temporal anomaly shields him from his death on Veridian III in the same way that the crew of the Enterprise was shielded from the altered timeline in which the Borg assimilated Earth.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Valias wrote:
    That whole Nexus thing always seemed like a big logical loophole to me, in dimensions only comparable to the Hobus supernova.

    - Kirk enters the Nexus, wants to be in Iowa, ends up in Iowa, hacking logs. But he's actually in the Nexus.
    - Picard enters the Nexus, wants to be with his family, ends up being with his family. But he's actually in the Nexus.

    ... So what's to say that just because Picard wanted to meet up with Kirk and both of them stopping Soran actually happened? Isn't that just another "I want it this way so the Nexus does it for me" scenario that would end up having no effect on the real world? Theoretically making every Star Trek movie after Generations a fantasy of Picard that only happened in the Nexus? :p

    Make sense, but you also have to realize that their goal wasn't just to stop Soran it was to leave the Nexus then stop him. Therefore the Nexus allowed them to leave and enter normal reality at the moment they wanted to.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    attilio wrote: »
    Make sense, but you also have to realize that their goal wasn't just to stop Soran it was to leave the Nexus then stop him. Therefore the Nexus allowed them to leave and enter normal reality at the moment they wanted to.
    But wouldn't the wish to be in Iowa include passage out of the Nexus as well? Can you actually leave the Nexus, as it was explained, or will you just be led to believe you did? :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    How about a sweet mission where you use the Nexus to go back in time to kirk, picard and Soran and prevent Kirk's death?

    Oh heck yeah.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Bring Back Kirk!

    This is what I always think of when I hear about bringing back Kirk.

    It always sounds like some horrible horrible fanfiction gone wrong.

    The only thing Im waiting for is the appearance of the Enterprise A-A, its exactly like the connie refit but five times larger with one hundred times the weaponry.

    /endthread
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Kirk died under a rail girder.

    Picard and Kirk left the nexus on magical white ponies in a brilliant flash of light.

    Way to go writers!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Kirk's been divided in two before...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I always like Shatner's book where Kirk is resurrected by the Borg Romulan Alliance and sent to hunt down Picard. :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    LotD wrote:
    I always like Shatner's book where Kirk is resurrected by the Borg Romulan Alliance and sent to hunt down Picard. :D

    I really enjoyed the first few Shatner books. They lost me when you had mirror Kirk kill Kirk's wife around the time Shatner's wife died and the stuff with Kirk's quarter Klingon, quarter Romulan hermaphrodite son merging with the galactic barrier just seemed to stretch far too far in the wrong direction.

    Kirk's death was probably the worst handled moment in Trek history and was such an irrelevant part of an otherwise okay TNG film.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I really enjoyed the first few Shatner books. They lost me when you had mirror Kirk kill Kirk's wife around the time Shatner's wife died and the stuff with Kirk's quarter Klingon, quarter Romulan hermaphrodite son merging with the galactic barrier just seemed to stretch far too far in the wrong direction.

    Kirk's death was probably the worst handled moment in Trek history and was such an irrelevant part of an otherwise okay (EDITED) TOS-PRE-TNG film.

    This... not an TNG, but close.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    How about a sweet mission where you use the Nexus to go back in time to kirk, picard and Soran and prevent Kirk's death?

    WINWINWINWINWINWINWIN
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I really enjoyed the first few Shatner books. They lost me when you had mirror Kirk kill Kirk's wife around the time Shatner's wife died and the stuff with Kirk's quarter Klingon, quarter Romulan hermaphrodite son merging with the galactic barrier just seemed to stretch far too far in the wrong direction.

    Kirk's death was probably the worst handled moment in Trek history and was such an irrelevant part of an otherwise okay TNG film.

    I agree. I only got as far as his wife getting killed because I missed the next few books coming out, but even then it was getting kind of ridiculous.

    I think The Return is basically the best possible retcon of a character's death one could hope for. I wouldn't have minded if he had died on the Enterprise B, that was a good death worthy of the character, but the whole bridge collapse thing was ridiculous, particularly since they just did the whole "oh no, I might fall!" bit a minute before it happens.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I watched Star Trek Generations yesterday for the first time in years. I remembered not liking it that much back when I first saw it, but it has grown on me.

    Of interest to me was when Picard visited the Nexus and sees Guinan there. She describes herself as an "echo" and due to the fact that Picard's fantasy family did not acknowledge her, I thought that she existed pretty much completely in his head.

    However, I went online and looked up the script to that movie and in it that scene is extended and Guinan talks about how when she was beamed onto the Enterprise-B the passengers of that vessel were partially in the Nexus. And while she and Sorin were rescued "a part of them" stayed behind.

    I had always thought that Sorin had been in the Nexus before the events with the Enterprise-B ever took place, and that he had manipulated the two freighters off screen to intercept the Nexus in an effort to "go back."

    But in light of what I read of the script, he had briefly entered the Nexus immediately before being beamed to the Enterprise-B, and since "time has no meaning there" from his perspective he could have been there a very long time, and his frustration of "having to go back" might have been because the Enterprise-B ripped him away from it, not because they prevented him from entering it. That might also be why Guinan seems so lost when Chekhov goes to her on the Enterprise-B, as from her perspective she might have spent years in her little fantasy world before suddenly being ripped away from it.

    Since time has no meaning in the Nexus and so the sequence of events have no meaning (you can jump forward, go back, generate completely alternate lives, etc.) that would mean an "echo" of Kirk (and Picard) from before they ever left also would still be in the Nexus.

    So, could they not reappear in STO? Provided there was some content involving the Nexus?

    Just a thought.

    And given that 'Nexus Guinan' seemed to inexplicably share knowledge with her counterpart on the Enterprise. Younger 'Nexus Picard' could still be aware of the political situation of the Klingons and Federation, etc. And Kirk would know that he had died.


    Shut it, man. You are stealing my idea for one of my Foundry missions.... I alreday have a mission on test that is leading to this! :mad:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    LotD wrote:
    I always like Shatner's book where Kirk is resurrected by the Borg Romulan Alliance and sent to hunt down Picard. :D
    I really enjoyed the first few Shatner books. They lost me when you had mirror Kirk kill Kirk's wife around the time Shatner's wife died and the stuff with Kirk's quarter Klingon, quarter Romulan hermaphrodite son merging with the galactic barrier just seemed to stretch far too far in the wrong direction.

    Kirk's death was probably the worst handled moment in Trek history and was such an irrelevant part of an otherwise okay TNG film.

    I have Ashes of Eden up to Preserver. I read descriptions of the novels after that and decided I had enough :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Generations was such a botch job.... some really rubbish plot holes; if Picard can go back any time/where why not go back and stop Soran on the Observatory - that would save Geordi some pain..or once it was obvious that he could not stop Soran on the planet, let the Nexus come again since he knows how to get out - rinse/repeat until he does beat Soran.....

    Its not as if Picard has no form in changing the timeline - see All Good Things...

    Personally I think Generations would have been better without the ending with Kirk - just have Picard find a way to stop Soran on the planet if he must come out there (and change the line so he can only come out where he went in) perhaps by calling down a bombardment from the Enterprise?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Hah. Yes.

    I highly recommend sfdebris' review of Generations, where he also talks about the movie was supposed to end at first ...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDU7ELK7Zh8#t=03m40s

    Worth it!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I think the scenes in the Nexus between Kirk and Picard are great, but they go to waste because of the whole mountain fight ending nonsense.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    ogrebear wrote: »
    Generations was such a botch job.... some really rubbish plot holes; if Picard can go back any time/where why not go back and stop Soran on the Observatory - that would save Geordi some pain..or once it was obvious that he could not stop Soran on the planet, let the Nexus come again since he knows how to get out - rinse/repeat until he does beat Soran.....

    Its not as if Picard has no form in changing the timeline - see All Good Things...

    Personally I think Generations would have been better without the ending with Kirk - just have Picard find a way to stop Soran on the planet if he must come out there (and change the line so he can only come out where he went in) perhaps by calling down a bombardment from the Enterprise?

    I agree mostly. I think you do need some closure for Picard losing his brother and nephew but I think the whole movie would be better (and better paced) starting with Worf's promotion ceremony and omitting Kirk.

    And I LIKE Kirk. But, really, I'd rather they gave Picard a chance to say goodbye to his brother.

    Say, imagine he'd had the choice to leave the Nexus any time he'd wanted and he could save his brother or stop Soran and he chose to stop Soran.

    Kirk had no arc in the movie and anybody else could have done what he did. As noted before, Picard could have gone to any place and time so he didn't have to pull Kirk out.

    And if he had to pull Kirk out, I think a better scenario would have been one where the everyone on the Enterprise-D is blacked out and Kirk leaves the Nexus THERE to take command and save the ship, taking out the Klingons at the cost of his life somehow.

    Kirk was always a brawler, sure, but that was generally a pretty laughable side of his character that fans recognized as silly, whereas his skills as a bluffer and tactician were more respected and made more sense for a guy his age.
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