Star Trek: Alternate Original Series

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Fandom
Name: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series, Star Trek Reboot, Kelvinverse
Abbreviation(s): ST0, ST XI, AOS, STR
Creator: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
Date(s): 8 May 2009 (Star Trek)

17 May 2013 (Star Trek Into Darkness)

July 2016 (Star Trek Beyond)
Medium: Film
Country of Origin: United States
External Links: IMDB, Official Website
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.
Spock and Kirk, "Young Blood," by Lorraine Brevig, displayed at MediaWest*Con, 2009, oil painting on canvas board, 12" - h x 9"-w

Canon

The 11th Star Trek film, titled only Star Trek, was released in May 2009 and follows the youthful adventures of the main original series characters during their time at Starfleet Academy. The film series has an almost entirely new cast: the only original cast member to appear in the reboot is Leonard Nimoy. The movies take place in an alternate timeline, and do not affect the preexisting Star Trek canon during the TOS era, though the destruction of Romulus and the older Spock's travel to the alternate timeline do impact the non-reboot Trek universe after that point in time.

In May 2013, this movie was followed by Star Trek Into Darkness, a What If? retelling of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which "John Harrison", revealed to be Khan Noonien Singh, goes rogue, complicating the evil plans of Starfleet Admiral Marcus, father of Dr Carol Marcus. Spock seeks counsel with his older, Prime Universe self on how to defeat Khan. In this version, it is Kirk who saves the ship and dies in the radiation chamber, and Spock who shouts "Khaaaaaan!" McCoy is able to revive Kirk by using Khan's genetically engineered blood.

Star Trek Beyond arrived in cinemas in July 2016. Spock and Uhura have put their relationship on hold, and it is learned that the elderly Spock Prime has passed away. The USS Enterprise is overwhelmed by a swarm of thousands of small, heavily-armed alien ships, a ploy unleashed upon them by an alien, Krall, who is building a powerful bioweapon. The Enterprise's phasers, navigational deflector, and warp nacelles are destroyed within minutes. The crew escapes to a primitive planet, where an alien scavenger named Jaylah leads Kirk to the crashed Starfleet vessel, USS Franklin. Krall and his crew have a secret link with the century-old Franklin. After saving the personnel of Yorktown (the Federation's newest and most advanced starbase) from the bioweapon, Kirk turns down a promotion and is rewarded with a new Enterprise (NCC-1701-A).

Fandom Reception

Star Trek (2009): Flawed but watchable

Star Trek Into Darkness: A dumpster on fire that contains some random pages of Spirk fan fiction

Star Trek Beyond: Well written characters held together for 2 hours by some string, chewing gum, and one Beastie Boys song[1]

The new movieverse fandom (variously known as Star Trek XI, Star Trek Reboot, AOS[2] or Kelvinverse[3]) took off rapidly after the film's release, attracting both fans of the original series and people new to the franchise. It's notable that there has been some reluctance from more devoted TOS fans to this trilogy by Abrams, especially when it comes to Kirk and Spock fans -- gen or slash relationship.

However like every reboot it brought new souls to the ship it is to be trekker, releasing new pairings and deepening other versions of old ships -- aka. Spirk.

Unfortunately, the second film in the reboot series, Star Trek: Into Darkness, was not as well received by fans and expert critics. But when Star Trek: Beyond was released in 2016 with better reception, mainly for the LGBT performance of the Sulu character -- George Takei actor performing Sulu in TOS disagreed with this re-imagination, saying it went against Gene's original wishes for Sulu.

From the start, there have been criticisms regarding JJ Abrams' handling of the series in particular. Mainly with regard to the presentation of "poor quality" of characters like Kirk and Spock and "sexist" of almost all female characters.[4][5][6]

However, Star Trek fandom is hard to kill, and as of 2019 the fandom continues, with a beautiful restart that once again brought the fans and fandom to infinity and beyond.

Pairings

Kirk/Spock is the most popular pairing in Star Trek: The Original Series, and a classic slash pairing. Kirk/Spock is also the most popular in the movieverse fandom, although it doesn't dominate the fandom. Traditionally, name order in pairings is determined by rank, with Kirk/Spock being shortened to K/S. Some movieverse fans have embraced portmanteaux such as "Spirk" and "Kock." [7]

Kirk/McCoy is another popular slash ship. (The Kirk/McCoy ship comm on LJ has just over 2300 members as of July 2010, slightly less than kirkspock, both of which are open to TOS as well as XI in principle). Sulu/Chekov also has a small but active fandom. (just over 800 members in the main LJ comm in July 2010)

The most popular het ship is Spock/Uhura. While some fans noted flirtatious moments between Spock and Uhura in TOS[8], a romantic relationship is new, and unique to the movie's canon. The Spock/Uhura Shippers community is highly active, with more than 1000 members in May 2009, rising to over 1900 members by July 2010.

However, many of the most active communities are open for all pairings as well as gen such as the st_reboot LJ Comm (over 2500 members in July 2010) or the very popular first Reboot kink meme community st_xi_kink [2] that ran for fifteen rounds (closed October 2009), and was replaced by st_xi_kink_meme[3] which ran for twelve rounds til January 2011.

The third movie, Star Trek: Beyond presented Sulu as having a male partner, called Ben, and a young daughter Demora. In Star Trek: Generations (1994), Demora Sulu was the helmsman aboard the Enterprise-B, and continued her father's legacy.

Fanworks

Fans started creating fanworks almost immediately after the film's release. An ezine Universal Constant was released in January 2011.

Fanfiction

For a full listing of AOS fanfiction on Fanlore, see Category:Star Trek AOS Fanfiction

Fanvid examples

Art

Zines

Communities

For a list of STXI communities see: List of Star Trek (2009) Communities

Conflict

While many TOS fans welcomed newcomers, others regard movieverse fans with dislike. [9] [10] In the months following the movie's release, members of some TOS discussion lists debated the place of reboot in long-standing fandoms such as K/S, with some lists, such as KirkSpockCentral on Yahoo choosing to remain focused on TOS, stating that 'reboot' K/S is regarded as an entirely different fandom, while others such as Kirk-and-Spock on Yahoo and kirkspock on LJ opened their doors to all incarnations of K/S (TOS, TAS and AOS).

When the film came out in 2009, Uhura was been heavily criticized by some segments of fandom. Some fans feel that Uhura is nothing more than "The Girl," and serves no purpose outside of her romance with Spock. Other fans claim that Uhura is nothing more than a Mary Sue (some people having gone so far as to call her a "whore"). [11] [12] [13] However, Rawles pointed out that the "reduced to The Girlfriend" interpretation ignores the fact that "Nyota Uhura is not a white girl"; during (but not limited to) the era of the original show's run, black women were not seen as legitimate objects of romantic interest, so Uhura's relationship with Spock represents a step forward.[14]

The SEE controversy

There has been conflict between the slash shippers, those who ship Kirk/Spock vs Kirk/McCoy or Spock/Uhura. With the former, the movie had built Kirk and McCoy as best friends that many new fans caught the subtext and made them become a popular ship. With the latter, Spock is in a canon relationship with Uhura (leaving out Kirk).

After the movie came out an online petition was created to promote LGBT issues by pushing for a gay couple in the next movie. The petition is called "Social Equality Effort"(SEE)[15][16].
The idea seemingly came out from a thread in one of the main star trek fanboards over the fanfiction.net site in which some dedicated K/S fans, upon reading a popular K/S slash fanfiction ("Home"), decided to take some action in attempt to convince the writers of the potential of a gay relationship between K/S in the next movies. [4]. The online petition, that was originally supposed to be called "K/S Mainstream Effort" was in fact named "The Social Equality Effort" instead.
Initially focused on the inclusion of a same-sex relationship, the petition soon started to be perceived by the fans (including many slash fans) and many members of the LGBT community itself as an ill disguised attempt to make Kirk/Spock canon. Many raised concerns about the petition as it asked to break up an interracial couple (Spock/Uhura) that is already canon just to pair Spock with Kirk even though the writers could include other gay relationships/characters without having to sacrifice an existing canon pair. [17], [18], [19], [20]

"Instead of getting racism activists on board, we are forcing them to choose between supporting an interracial (and yes, also interspecies) relationship and supporting a gay one. Are we really going to make people choose? Uhura is an important character, not only by being a person of colour but also one of the few main female characters, and how other characters interact with her is also important" - A K/S fan that disagreed with the petition[20].

On July 24, 2009 It was decided to change the focus of the campaign away from specifically Kirk/Spock due to all of this criticism.[21] The result is that the petition itself was re-worded. However, most of the comments on the site left by the people that signed the petition still specifically ask for Kirk/Spock only.

Meta

Archives and Links

References

  1. ^ alyseofwonderland, Tumblr post from January 2018 (Archived)
  2. ^ The AOS acronym originated on ASC, but is in use elsewhere. See "ADMIN: Request For Comment Codes as a result of Star Trek (2009)". 2009-05-13. Archived from the original on 2021-09-04. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  3. ^ The following statement was made by a fan and has not been officially confirmed by CBS, as noted in the response tweets on the link "FYI, 'Kelvin Timeline' is the official name for that universe timeline according to CBS by " Rivera, Al, aka CaptainGeko, Head Developer of "Star Trek Online", on "Twitter", June 21, 2016, 1:29 PM". Retrieved September 4, 2021.
  4. ^ lieutenant-sapphic, Tumblr post, July 2017: in all honesty i think the ‘fuck you j.j. abrams’ sentiment is essentially the fandom’s pure pissed-off energy at how the reboots have been bigoted (against women in particular). i am not sure – and have never been sure – exactly how much of it is j.j. abrams’s specific fault. in fact, i think a lot of the blame should be on the writers – but i’ll give a general overview of the concerns i’ve seen expressed. (Archived)
  5. ^ hipsterhanzo, Tumblr post, February 27, 2016: honestly jj abrams has had 2 movies to give star trek an openly lgbtq character and instead he spent it making sure everyone knew spock was Straight and making jim kirk a womanizer who disregarded christine chapel (who was played by gene roddenberry’s WIFE) with a single line of dialogue (Archived)
  6. ^ kirkspocks, Tumblr post, February 27, 2016: and jj didn’t do SHIT with that! he turned it into a fucking action movie!!! maybe it’s more paramount’s fault, i dont know, but he didnt even try to turn it into what star trek is actually all about but he can do it for star wars. and i’m so glad he’s doing it for star wars, but like… jj abrams, WERE U ASLEEP? WERE U LITERALLY ASLEEP WHILE REBOOTING STAR TREK? (Archived)
  7. ^ I kind of miss the days when everyone knew the difference between "P/C" and "C/P." (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  8. ^ Why Spock/Uhura now? 'Tis a tradition. (Accessed May 21, 2009)
  9. ^ Teenagers Who Have Recently Seen Star Trek. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  10. ^ At the Star Trek Fandom In General. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  11. ^ Because all the Uhura bashing is pissing me off. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  12. ^ On Uhura and the whole "Mary Sue" thing. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  13. ^ So, there's one thing about Star Trek XI fandom. (Accessed May 20, 2009)
  14. ^ rawles. now that we've got that clear, and you know that i'm not here..., posted to livejournal 2009-07-29. (Accessed August 19, 2009)
  15. ^ Website is defunct, but was at www.seetreklove.com.
  16. ^ Social Equality Effort entry at Fanhistory, originally written by a regular contributor[1], but then substantially edited by someone connected with the project. (archived link; December 2012)
  17. ^ Fandom fail...the blackout Bingo edition
  18. ^ Delusions of...something
  19. ^ Stop Being On My Side
  20. ^ a b let's try to SEE this clearly
  21. ^ SEE chat log - the organizers decide to re-word the petition
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