Thread by @stephen_duignan

I was curious about the end of the short film @roddenberry and @OTOY released last week - specifically, the significance of the time jump back to the MOTION PICTURE-era Spock - so I did some homework and this is what I came up with. Thread: 1/36

First of all, here's the film if you haven't seen it yet. It's the third in a series of concept films produced by @OTOY as part of their work on the Roddenberry Archive. (Spoiler alert for the end of the last season of PICARD.) 2/36

The film's release was obviously timed to follow the end of PICARD, which revealed the saucer section of the Enterprise-D had been retrieved from Veridian III, where it crash-landed in GENERATIONS. 3/36

However, the film doesn't just connect GENERATIONS and PICARD - it also adapts a scene previously depicted in both the novel THE ASHES OF EDEN, and the comic miniseries SPOCK: REFLECTIONS... 4/36

...of Spock visiting Kirk's grave on Veridian III. 5/36

And this is where it gets interesting. The film extends the scene past what came before with a match cut to a younger Spock, circa THE MOTION PICTURE, intercut with a brief flash of the destruction of the ENTERPRISE, as originally seen in THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. 6/36

The film is clearly linking the destruction of the two Enterprises in Spock's mind, but *which* Spock? The chronology of events would suggest we're seeing the older Spock recalling history. However… 7/36

...the young Spock's performance reads more like he's experiencing a premonition of what's to come. How could that be possible? The answer is in the last shot, the set of numbers that close each film. These aren't random numbers... 8/36

...but the service number of Yeoman Colt, who appeared in the very first episode of STAR TREK, as well as several books and comics, and features in the other two concept films by @roddenberry and @OTOY. 9/36

If you haven't seen them, here's the first film from last year... 10/36

...and the second: 11/36

Colt's service number appears during a four-issue story from the EARLY VOYAGES comic, which it turns out is the key to understanding all three films. 12/36

EARLY VOYAGES was the STRANGE NEW WORLDS of its day, a prequel series on Pike's Enterprise, taking its cues - and Colt - from the original pilot episode, THE CAGE. 13/36

The relevant story begins in issue #12, FUTURES, PART ONE, in which Colt accidentally time-travels forty years into the future. 14/36

Side note: for some reason the cover art is referencing an unrelated, oft-parodied X-Men cover. Weird. 15/36

Anyway, at the end of issue #12, Colt is sent to the future in a flash of blue energy, as artfully depicted in 765874. 16/36

Issue #13 reveals her destination: forty years into the future, where the Enterprise now rests in the San Francisco Smithsonian Museum of Air, Sea and Space - recreated extremely faithfully in 765874. 17/36

Which brings us to the second film, 765874 - MEMORY WALL, which jumps forward from Colt's CAGE era to the MOTION PICTURE era. 18/36

While 765874 only adapted scenes from EARLY VOYAGES, MEMORY WALL imagines an original scenario where Colt apparently served aboard the Enterprise post-MOTION PICTURE and engaged in a mind meld with Spock. 19/36

If you’re confused, here’s a timeline: Colt travels from 2254 to '93, and MEMORY WALL takes place some time in the 2270s, *after* Colt returns to '54. (We have conflicting dates for THE MOTION PICTURE, but it's generally accepted it took place sometime in the early 2270s.) 20/36

Within Spock and Colt's mind meld, we return to Colt's story from EARLY VOYAGES (where she’s travelled to 2293) and see the Well of Sorrows, an mythical site in the ancient city of Ithahulan, on Algol II. 21/36

In issue #15, Colt returns to 2254 by jumping into the Well, and in the process, sees all possible pasts and futures collide and blend "inside [her] mind". However, MEMORY WALL depicts the experience a little differently. 22/36

At this point it's worth noting the film takes its title from an abandoned sequence from THE MOTION PICTURE where Spock was to travel along a "memory wall" inside the V'ger machine entity and meld with a memory sphere, not unlike the sphere that propelled Colt through time. 23/36

The V'ger connection continues as MEMORY WALL offers a new angle of the Well of Tomorrows, which heavily recalls the distinctive portal Spock enters in THE MOTION PICTURE (dubbed the "space lips" during production) before he melds with V'ger to learns its history. 24/36

Once inside the Well, we see another image original to MEMORY WALL: the earliest space-faring Enterprise, the XCV-330, crashed in an icy waste. First seen in THE MOTION PICTURE, a painting in an episode of ENTERPRISE dates it as pre-2143, firmly in the past for Colt. 25/36

(Crashed Enterprises are a recurring theme, for reasons that should be clear by the end.) 26/36

Here's where MEMORY WALL's portrayal of the Well differs. Instead of a stream of images, Colt makes physical contact, triggering a series of flashing images. We've seen this before in both THE MOTION PICTURE and PICARD when organic minds came into contact with machine life. 27/36

Our first explicit V’ger connection comes in one of the flashing images - the Voyager 6 probe, the oldest part of V’ger. 28/36

And just as Spock saw the machine planet that created V'ger, Colt sees a machine hand, which, if not an intentional V'ger connection, at least suggests the Well of Tomorrows may also be of machine origin, an evolution of the Well's mythology in the comics. 29/36

All of the V’ger parallels suggest a link between Spock and Colt that wasn’t there before, a shared experience that may have something to do with their mind meld. Is Colt aware of the knowledge she carries? Is Spock trying to unburden her mind, or use her to see the future? 30/36

Whatever the case, it’s here that Spock first sees the destruction of the Enterprise roughly a decade from now, as seen in THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. 31/36

An updated timeline. 32/36

Which brings us back to REGENERATION. With the context of the EARLY VOYAGES story, it’s clear that 2270s Spock is foreseeing the destruction of the Enterprise in 2285 - but not only that… 33/36

Deliberately or not, the new visuals of Veridian III are very reminiscent of another film about non-linear time… 34/36

…which ends on a similar note to REGENERATION. The final scene with 2270s Spock isn’t a flashback - the whole film before this has been a premonition, and we’re left with Spock, like Louise in ARRIVAL, contemplating a future of pain and heartbreak… 35/36

…and accepting it. 36/36