Date: 06 Jul 2014 18:48 Title: Chapter 2
Yes. Thank you. Kirk SHOULD be questioning himself.
That said, this is a very different Kirk than we've ever seen before, so his actions may prove very unpredictable. I'm looking forward to seeing Pike as captain and how he handles his broken young XO.
Date: 06 Jul 2014 18:42 Title: Chapter 1
I knew he was the same species as the nurse! So glad I guessed right. :). So Rhhan is Section 31. Of course he is. Because come on, there had to be somebody evil on this ship. ;-).
I like this AU. I like seeing the Defiant find the Botany Bay, I like the banter between the officers. All good stuff. Onward!
Date: 20 May 2014 21:39 Title: Chapter 2
Yeah, the angst and crisis of confidence is totally appropriate considering this kid was a cadet until recently. Nice job of tying in some TOS elments and turning them on their head. Instead of an ingenious bluff with a non existent element, this Kirk got people killed. That's not going to help his self esteem any. Good thing he's got at least one friend in Bones on board to at least try and build him up a bit.
Also good to see Carols Marcus is back. And there better be an entirely arbitrary scene in this story in which she needs to strip down to her underwear.
Author's Response: Glad you liked it, I was worried people wouldn't necessarily get on board with this version of Kirk, so I'm glad at least one person likes it! :) I definitely wanted to play around with the TOS elements and I tried to make the beginning of this a throwback to the beginning of WoK but with Bones coming to see Kirk for a different problem.
As for arbitrary Carol Marcus in her underwear scenes... We shall see... :D
Date: 20 May 2014 03:50 Title: Chapter 1
And so it begins.
The discovery of the Botany Bay as you depicted it here could as easily serve as an unseen background event to the movie. We already know that Marcus will try to capitalize from this discovery. I wonder if things will actually go Marcus' way here or if Harrison's climb to power was an unintended side effect.
And what about Khan? How easily will he fall in line with Section 31, if at all? And will Defiant's captain have her hands full with having to fight off his supermen?
Looking forward to find out.
Author's Response: Confession time - the idea for this scene was inspired by the Khan comic book that was released after the movie. I thought it was a shame that we never saw anything like it in the movie and so decided I needed to include it in my version. As to what will happen next... well Chapter 2 has just been posted, so... :)
Date: 20 May 2014 02:09 Title: Prologue
Wow, that was quite the opening! I'm hooked. Great job.
Author's Response: Thanks kes! I thought I'd start off with a bang! :)
Date: 18 May 2014 20:45 Title: Chapter 1
Actually, there was hardly a need for the footnote as you conveyed quite well Mallard and i loved the extrapolation of his visual abilities. Apart from that, this piece really did invibe the whole NuTrek feel into it. Really well done. From differing aliens to the different mindset of the mission it fits quite well with the established NuTrek verse.
I cannot help but feel that we are pushing too fast and too far. We were not meant to be out this way for years yet. Who knows what we have missed in our haste to protect ourselves...
Ain't that the truth. I love the ominous nature of this sentiment. It really stands to reason that something may have been missed - such as the Planet Killer, the Whale Probe or that certain timetables may have escalated in this verse - from meeting the Cardassians to making contact with the Borg, all those potentials are there and yet not belaboured by you. These are also surely thoughts shared by those in the know of this new timelines such as Spock and Kirk. And I actually thought the opening log were his words.
I like too how the focus is another ship finding the Botony Bay and it serves to pay homage to Space Seed and yet differentiates it. It also serves to fill in a gap not given in the movie and how S31 saw an opportunity in the eugenics programme for their own sinister ends. I like.
Author's Response: I hesitated to put the footnote but thought the character was such a brief one in the first film that some people might not realise that I was borrowing from it. Glad you liked what I did with it - I did some research on internet and there is nothing anywhere about the race, so I made it all up! :) I took a lot of the inspiration for this scene from the Khan comic book published by IDW. A lot of my take on Into Darkness derives from that, a great comic which actually answers a hell of a lot of plotholes left in the movie itself. The ship, crew and scenes were all mine, but the idea for a S31 dispatched ship finding the Botany Bay is from that comic. Thanks for the second comment! :)
Date: 18 May 2014 20:34 Title: Prologue
Wow. What the heck has brought this about? There's something very off or something very bad has happened to justify Kirk's actions here. What I love is the fact it kinda pays homage to TUC with the assassination scene, only this time it isn't Kirk stopping it or taking the 'bullet'. This time he's the one with the finger on the trigger. Fascinating.
I'm very intrigued as to where you are going to go with this and how your take will differ to the movie. The movie had many merits. It was entertaining and it had lots of spectacle and damn it Trek should have all of that. However, the personal motivations of characters and why they do what they do is perhaps most important of all. Leaving us hankering as to why Kirk is doing what he is doing is an immediate step up ahead of simple revenge. I mean, one of the most famous scenes from TWoK is Kirk's roar of KHANNN! KHANNN! echoing, echoing. Yet this was Kirk actually hiding the truth and playing with Khan as he had an escape route all worked out with Spock. Ahem. Back on track, can't wait to see where you go with this.
Author's Response: Wow, I didn't even think about TUC. But yeah, definitely. From now on I'm claiming this as a direct homage... :) I agree, Into Darkness worked as an entertaining scifi spectacle. Every single non-Trek fan I have talked to about it loved the movie, which is a great thing. My main gripe was actually more with how the lead-up to the film was handled. Orci and co promised that Harrison was Harrison, and not playing a different character. Even when it became clear he was Khan, I realised there was a way that they could have had their cake and eaten it too and given the Khan character even more depth. I also have a hard time getting my head round Kirk going from the Academy to the center chair in a couple of months. Those are the main things I wanted to address. As with anything, though, the story has progressed beyond that as I have written it. Thanks for your indepth comment man!
Date: 17 May 2014 19:38 Title: Prologue
Well, that's certainly opening up things with a bang.
I enjoyed Star Trek: Into Darkness for what it was, an action-packed space adventure movie based on Star Trek. This is clearly something more and no less intriguing. I'm assuming we'll learn in the next chapters what has led Kirk to this point of having to resort to assassination to keep the 'bad guy' from becoming the most powerful person in the Federation. Sounds like one hell of story in the making.
Author's Response: I'm the same CeJay - when people ask me my opinion of the film I tell them it is a great fun sci-fi movie, just not necessarily a great fun Star Trek movie. I thought the idea of using Khan was really interesting and the premise that he would show up this way as a direct reaction to the destruction of Vulcan was a good one. I just don't think it held up in the execution the way I personally would have enjoyed to see it happen.