SPOILERS -- My Positive Star Trek Reboot Review
KalElFan
Saw it last night and liked it, would probably rate it somewhere in
the 8 to 9 range out of 10, closer to 9 the more I reflect on it. The
cast is good without exception, the movie never really drags at all
and it sets up a great new rebooted Star Trek universe.
Those who've never seen Star Trek should be able to easily get on
board, in fact might even like it as much or more as longtime fans
like me. The sequels are likewise set up for easily accessible and
standalone new storytelling. A Constellation or similar second ship
series on the TV side would also work well I think. So would an
Enterprise series but the movie sequels are likely to run for several
more installments. Now...
SPOILER warning in the thread title and there are some major
ones here. Primarily they have to do with the reboot compared
to the original Star Trek universe that started in 1966 and ran to
the end of the Enterprise TV series in 2005, so almost 40 years.
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I wasn't really following spoilers in great detail so I didn't know
what's perhaps the most shocking and conspicuous one. Vulcan
(the home planet of Spock for any complete newbies) is destroyed
by the Romulan villain Nero in this. Had this spoiler been widely
out there, I think it would have had a significantly negative effect
and it may yet. But if you see the entire context and reflect on the
fact that this is a reboot, I think it works and works well.
The backstory is that Nero's planet Romulus was destroyed in his
future. Romulus was in the path of a runaway supernova that was
conceptually akin to the Doomsday Machine from the original TV
series. Old Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) designs a device
to destroy it, "red matter" or some such being key to it and capable
of basically imploding stellar- or planet-sized objects into a black
hole or singularity. But it's too late for Romulus by the time Old
Spock's plan works. Nero blames Old Spock for that, and so
he wants to destroy Vulcan in retaliation, and also Earth and all
Federation planets that would still, as Nero sees it, become the
bane of Romulan existence in the new timeline future.
Nero chases Old Spock and his small ship into the portal created
after the Romulus-destroying event. But while Old Spock ends
up circa the time Pike is captain of the just-built Enterprise and
his younger self is First Officer, Nero overshoots the mark and
ends up 25 or so years prior to that, when James T. Kirk is just
being born. At that time, George Kirk and his wife are serving
on board the USS Kelvin, George its first officer and his wife
pregnant and about to give birth. Nero comes through the portal
and the Kelvin is no match, but after the Kelvin's captain dies
George Kirk takes over as Captain. He's able to hold off Nero's
ship and ram the Kelvin into it, which buys just enough time for
almost the entire Kelvin crew (of 700-800 I think) to escape
in pods or shuttles.
Nero realizes he's in the wrong time but will eventually strike again
in the later era, when he destroys Vulcan. Old Spock is at that
time stranded on the ice planet Delta Vega in the Vulcan system.
But key to the reboot here is that the first major divergence takes
place when the Kelvin is destroyed. Kirk's father becomes a hero
and historic figure posthumously, Captain Pike even doing his
dissertation on George Kirk and his sacrifice to save the Kelvin's
crew.
The result of the Kelvin incident and George Kirk's fame, at least
by implication and among other things based on what the movie
portrays, is that baby Jim Kirk's home state of Iowa becomes a
hotspot of Starfleet shipbuilding, and cadets setting off for their
assignments and drinking in cantinas beforehand and such. :-)
So for all those who criticized the design of the Enterprise as
not being right, nyah nyah that nitpick and none of the others
work because the Kelvin event altered history from that point.
Then 25 years later it's what would have been another major
change with Vulcan being destroyed. The overall result, and
it's specifically explained as an "alternate reality" at one point,
is that anything can happen now. The old timeline, at least
post-Kelvin, is irrelevant to storytelling in this one.
The original timeline, the one Old Spock came from, can
still be thought of as existing but Old Spock is cut off from it.
In fact the ending of this one has Old Spock's new role as
establishing a Vulcan colony with those who escaped Vulcan's
destruction, including Spock's father and higher-ups in the
Vulcan hierarchy who know everything about the planet's
history. So Old Spock, played by Nimoy, is available for
sequels.
Also altered is that Captain Pike is available as well, having
been promoted to Admiral and replaced by now Captain
James T. Kirk, several years earlier than Kirk became the
captain in the other timeline. Old Spock also meets both
Young Kirk (played by Chris Pine) and Young Spock
(Zachary Quinto) at separate points in this film. And so
both Young Kirk and Spock now know they were a team
in the other timeline. Also new is that Spock is having a
romantic relationship with Uhura. So there are quite a
number of changes here and the net effect is to make it a
clean reboot of Star Trek, but with the main characters
and Enterprise dynamic intact.
At the end where Captain James T. Kirk is getting a
commendation, Admiral Pike is in a wheelchair but perhaps
only temporally as he's recovering from the torture aboard
Nero's ship. It's a nod to the original TOS pilot and the
two-part episode they adapted it to, but with Pike much
less seriously injured, not disfigured, and again an Admiral.
Bruce Greenwood as Pike was good in this and presumably
signed for sequels. All of the crew also had good moments
and without the origin story eating up time the first sequel
can get right into the next mission or crisis.
Getting back to Vulcan's destruction, Spock and to some
extent his father, as well as Vulcan's heritage and knowledge,
were always the main Vulcan influences on the story going
back to 1966 and all that has been preserved. Vulcan, the
planet itself, while a Federation member, was rarely seen in
the original series. It was never militaristic or in the forefront
of Federation leadership in that sense. So I think the main
effect of this change is to make New Spock and his story a
bit more interesting and compelling. It may be a shock at
first though, and lead to some longtime fans being ticked
off at Paramount and Abrams et al for doing or allowing it.
Since it takes place right near the end of the film, the next
sequel could conceivably involve a quick time travel reversal
of it even as a preamble. But again, on reflection I like the
new dynamic for purposes of this reboot and I think others
will come to like it as well.
Wouter Valentijn
"KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> schreef in bericht
news:76jncsF...@mid.individual.net...
> First some non-spoilery general comments...
>
> Saw it last night and liked it, would probably rate it somewhere in
> the 8 to 9 range out of 10, closer to 9 the more I reflect on it. The
> cast is good without exception, the movie never really drags at all
> and it sets up a great new rebooted Star Trek universe.
>
> Those who've never seen Star Trek should be able to easily get on
> board, in fact might even like it as much or more as longtime fans
> like me. The sequels are likewise set up for easily accessible and
> standalone new storytelling. A Constellation or similar second ship
> series on the TV side would also work well I think. So would an
> Enterprise series but the movie sequels are likely to run for several
> more installments. Now...
Constellation? Decker's ship? (Constitution class).
Or the Constellation class as in the Stargazer (Picard's first command)?
--
Wouter Valentijn www.j3v.net
"In this galaxy there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth
type planets, and in all the universe three million million galaxies like
this, and in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don't
destroy the one named Kirk."
McCoy to Kirk, in the episode "Balance of Terror"
liam=mail
Dan Lanciani
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| Nero blames Old Spock for that, and so
| he wants to destroy Vulcan in retaliation, and also Earth and all
| Federation planets that would still, as Nero sees it, become the
| bane of Romulan existence in the new timeline future.
|
| Nero chases Old Spock and his small ship into the portal created
| after the Romulus-destroying event. But while Old Spock ends
| up circa the time Pike is captain of the just-built Enterprise and
| his younger self is First Officer, Nero overshoots the mark and
| ends up 25 or so years prior to that, when James T. Kirk is just
| being born.
The Romulus-destroying event created a portal that was well enough
understood for time travel purposes that ships entering could aim
for a specific time? Did Nero know about the Guardian? If not it
might have remained undiscovered at the time of Spock's arrival and
presumably he could have used it to fix things.
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com
Anim8rFSK
ddl@danlan.*com (Dan Lanciani) wrote:
IIRC, in the prequel comic book, story by Orci, being sent back in time
is just an unplanned coinky-dink. As was Nero handely reading up on
Kirk just before hand, for no discernable reason.
--
Bad Reboot's 'Crap Trek' 2009: "No Shat, No Show"
Rated "least anticipated film of 2009" by ETOnline
rms
> (the home planet of Spock for any complete newbies) is destroyed
Doesn't Uhuru stress that this new series in fact takes place in an
alternate reality, one in which vulcan is destroyed, so all the old rules
and tv series can be ignored or changed as desired by the scriptwriters.
rms
Brian Thorn
<kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
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>I wasn't really following spoilers in great detail so I didn't know
>what's perhaps the most shocking and conspicuous one. Vulcan
>(the home planet of Spock for any complete newbies) is destroyed
>by the Romulan villain Nero in this.
Yes, that is my main complaint with the film. It's just too massive a
change to the Star Trek universe. Otherwise, the movie is sensational.
>Old Spock is at that
>time stranded on the ice planet Delta Vega in the Vulcan system.
That's my other complaint. So Vulcan orbits Vega now? It always been
around either Epsilon Eridani or 40 Eridani in the past. My problem
isn't with the ice planet, just its name. For starters, the name was
already taken... for a much more remote planet at the edge of the
galaxy in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The world in the new movie
really should have been Delta Vulcanus or Episode Eridani 4 or
something to make it more obvious where it was. I had no clue it was
in the Vulcan system until Spock looked up and saw Vulcan being
consumed.
Brian
Brian Thorn
wrote:
>> The Romulus-destroying event created a portal that was well enough
>> understood for time travel purposes that ships entering could aim
>> for a specific time? Did Nero know about the Guardian? If not it
>> might have remained undiscovered at the time of Spock's arrival and
>> presumably he could have used it to fix things.
>
>
>IIRC, in the prequel comic book, story by Orci, being sent back in time
>is just an unplanned coinky-dink.
This part of the story is actually told in flashback in the movie, and
it isn't coincidence, it's a result of the black hole. Both Spock's
and Nero's ships are caught in the gravity of the black hole and are
thrown back in time (the same thing happens to the Enterprise in
"Tomorrow is Yesterday" by the way.) The big dramatic moment at the
end of the movie is the Enterprise desperately trying to get out of
the black hole left by Nero's exploding ship (and Scotty saves the
day, of course.)
>As was Nero handely reading up on
>Kirk just before hand, for no discernable reason.
This is the most confusing part of the movie. I'll need to see it a
second time to see if I can make sense of it. On first viewing, I
think Spock's ship was supposed to insert a black hole into Romulus's
sun to prevent it going supernova (an event which would have wiped out
many surrounding star systems as well as Romulus, Spock says.) But the
sun went supernova before Spock was ready, and he was only able to
save the other star systems, not Romulus. But Nero blames Spock for
not saving Romulus, too, and somehow both Spock's and Nero's ships get
sucked into the black hole and thrown back in time.
This seems like a lot going on in a very short period of time in the
midst of Romulus's sun going supernova. I must have missed some
dialogue or maybe a scene was deleted elaborating on this.
Spock gets out of the black hole sooner than Nero, so Nero's ship
travels 25 years farther back than Spock. Nero then has to wait 25
years for Spock to show up. What Nero did all this time, isn't clear,
but he didn't age much and he sometime recently was in Klingon space.
Nero knows when Spock will show up (presumably calculated by noting
when Spock left the timestream on the trip back) and attacks Spock
ship to get the black-hole machine (a very silly-looking "red matter"
device), which he then plans to use to destroy all the Federation
planets.
Brian
Anlatt the Builder
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Overall I quite enjoyed it. Zachary Quinto was incredible. The movie
looked good, was well paced, and had a good story. It was respectful
of past incarnations of ST without being unduly worshipful.
I was a little confused by the (non-time-travel) chronology. How long
does it take to get to Vulcan? How far away had the Enterprise got
before Kirk and Scotty teleported onto it? That kind of thing. But it
wasn't a big deal.
There were two points in the plot - almost identical points - that
just seemed dumb to me:
(1) Kirk is mouthing off to Acting Captain Spock, so Spock has him
thrown off the ship??!? Tossed down in a pod onto a dangerous planet
with a Star Fleet station (occupied by a whole two people) 14
kilometers away? (They couldn't even get closer with the pod?) This
doesn't make any sense at all. Put him in the brig. Lock him in a
room. "Get him off the ship?" That's got to be against every
regulation in the book, and not particularly logical or decent.
(2) Nero wants Old Spock to to witness Nero's terrible revenge against
the Federation. So he strands him on an incredibly convenient
dangerous ice planet that's within naked-eye viewing range of Vulcan
(but that we've never heard of before). Very close, it seems - Vulcan
looks as big as Earth's moon in the sky. Oh, and there's a Star Fleet
engineering station on the planet. With a lot of equipment. That a
scientific genius from the future may be able to make use of.
Surely Nero would have kept Old Spock on the Romulan ship, tied up,
where he could keep an eye on him and where he could make him watch,
not just the destruction of Vulcan, but of Earth and the other
Federation planets.
I realize the writers needed for Kirk and Old Spock to meet each other
in an isolated setting. But I just feel like they didn't bother to
think very hard about getting that done. "Hey, let's have Young Spock
do something dumb and out of character and very convenient, and Nero
do something dumb and out of character and very convenient, and - wow!
- we get Kirk chased by snow monsters and rescued by Old Spock!"
Surely they got paid enough to think of something more convincing than
that.
***
While watching the movie, I waffled between "they're going to hit the
Big Time-Travel Reset Button" (I mean, they had to - they blew up
Vulcan! And Amanda!) and "no, they're really going to go the divergent-
timeline route." In the end, I was impressed that they took the route
they did. Talk about boldly going where no one has gone before...! It
was a nervy choice, and I think the right one, although I'm sure
they'll get some flak.
But you know, it's not like they've totally freed themselves from
continuity. Anything that happened before Kirk's birth should still
have happened. (Unless you belong to the back-and-forth-ripples theory
of time travel, which is hard to even think about.) Khan's still out
on that planet; the Borg are still out there; the Guardian of Forever
is still waiting.
And, what's more complicated, Old Spock knows all this stuff. He's
like an oracle now. Since he's living in an alternate timline and
cannot create a paradox, he has no reason not to warn the Federation
about what they will probably run into, or to help them with new
technology. He doesn't seem worried about any Prime Directive issues
with respect to timelines. After all, he taught Scotty an equation
that Scotty wouldn't have discovered for years (which, by the way,
could really advance Star Fleet transporter tech); he manipulated
Young Spock and Young Kirk in a variety of ways; and, at the end, he
directly influenced Young Spock's choices for the future. He's alos
helping out the dispossessed Vulcans.
Given all that, Old Spock is set up to become a major, influential
figure in the progress of the Federation in this new timeline. He
knows a lot - maybe too much.
KalElFan
news:4a04aad0$0$189$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
>
> "KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> schreef in bericht
> news:76jncsF...@mid.individual.net...
>
>> First some non-spoilery general comments...
>>
>> Saw it last night and liked it, would probably rate it somewhere in
>> the 8 to 9 range out of 10, closer to 9 the more I reflect on it. The
>> cast is good without exception, the movie never really drags at all
>> and it sets up a great new rebooted Star Trek universe.
>>
>> Those who've never seen Star Trek should be able to easily get on
>> board, in fact might even like it as much or more as longtime fans
>> like me. The sequels are likewise set up for easily accessible and
>> standalone new storytelling. A Constellation or similar second ship
>> series on the TV side would also work well I think. So would an
>> Enterprise series but the movie sequels are likely to run for several
>> more installments. Now...
>
> Constellation? Decker's ship?
Yes. I mentioned the possibility in one or more posts a while back,
based on this movie being billed as a reboot. The new timeline is
not tied to Decker's Constellation, just like Pike only commanded
the Enterprise for part of one mission here. It's a new timeline or
"alternate reality" as a line in the movie characterized it.
The movie series will be too lucrative to stop, so CBS Television's
best choice would be a second ship series I think. They could set
it contemporaneously with the Enterprise in this new rebooted Star
Trek 2 universe.
KalElFan
news:GB3Nl.18164$D32....@flpi146.ffdc.sbc.com...
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[KalElFan wrote]:
I can't recall if Uhura used the phrase, but it was part of a conversation
on the bridge as I recall and I mentioned the "alternate reality" phrase
later in the post. So yes, that's what it is and because it's that it isn't
in conflict with the Old Trek Universe that Old Spock comes from.
It just sets up the rebooted universe with Vulcan destroyed from this
point on, and Old Spock helping found a colony of survivors.
The issue is whether that's J.J. and Paramount going too far or not
in rebooting. Initially I didn't like it but on brief reflection (as in by
yesterday when I made the original post) I think it's a good choice.
It very clearly conveys the "Reboot" aspect of this new alternate
reality, an approach that already existed in Trek with the mirror
universe and that TNG ep where the multiple quantum realities
were revealed including the memorable one with Riker that had
been overrun by the Borg. This movie has established the Trek-2
universe, where Spock's planet is destroyed at this point.
KalElFan
news:135...@news1.IPSWITCHS.CMM...
No, the 25 years was by accident, Spock was being pursued into the
portal I believe but he exits 25 years sooner. Nero overshoots the
mark and goes the 25 years further back. It's a total contrivance that
Nero happens to arrive when Jim Kirk is being born on the Kelvin,
but that's the kind of Cosmic Irony if you want to call it that J.J. Abrams
deals in. It's great drama at the start there and it does the job setting
things up for the reboot, so I don't mind the contrivance.
KalElFan
news:rdv905psl09losknp...@4ax.com...
[snip parts of the description I mostly agree with]
> This seems like a lot going on in a very short period of time in the
> midst of Romulus's sun going supernova...
Was it Romulus's sun? I got the impression it might be some kind
of runaway supernova phenomenon that was threatening Romulus
first and would destroy many other systems as well.
> Spock gets out of the black hole sooner than Nero, so Nero's ship
> travels 25 years farther back than Spock. Nero then has to wait 25
> years for Spock to show up. What Nero did all this time, isn't clear,
> but he didn't age much...
Perhaps Nero spent most of the 25 years just close enough to the
black hole or portal for time dilation to kick in. So it seemed like
less than 25 years to him.
While the backstory is complex and contrived, at least it's dispensed
with quickly and I think it achieves the desired reboot result.
KalElFan
> On Fri, 8 May 2009 17:42:08 -0400, "KalElFan"
> <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
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>>I wasn't really following spoilers in great detail so I didn't know
>>what's perhaps the most shocking and conspicuous one. Vulcan
>>(the home planet of Spock for any complete newbies) is destroyed
>>by the Romulan villain Nero in this.
>
> Yes, that is my main complaint with the film. It's just too massive a
> change to the Star Trek universe. Otherwise, the movie is sensational.
Again, I didn't like it at first but for the reasons I set out in a couple
of posts now I've come to like it. As PR I think it would have been
bad though, and still might be as word of it leaks out.
If the response was overwhelmingly negative, they could reverse it
in the sequel's preamble with a quick circling back by Kirk, Spock
et al to thwart Nero just a bit earlier. It wouldn't alter much else
since the destruction happened near the very end of the movie. But
I think they should stick with it as is. The colony stuff seems intended
to mitigate it substantially.
>>Old Spock is at that
>>time stranded on the ice planet Delta Vega in the Vulcan system.
>
> That's my other complaint. So Vulcan orbits Vega now? It always
> been around either Epsilon Eridani or 40 Eridani in the past...
I didn't much care about that per se, in fact wasn't even aware of
it. But it was part of that whole contrived nature of the devices and
backstory that got us from A to B. The idea that Kirk just happens
to land on Delta Vega and get pursued by that predator and then by
its predator, only to find a cave and then get saved by Old Spock,
is inherently a ludicrous a contrivance obviously. Again one just has
to write it off to J.J.'s inexplicable love of stuff like that. There'd be
contrivances no matter what, but at least they were rolled out quickly
here and it was mostly in the service of an overall good story and
end result.
Arthur Lipscomb
> <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
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>>I wasn't really following spoilers in great detail so I didn't know
>>what's perhaps the most shocking and conspicuous one. Vulcan
>>(the home planet of Spock for any complete newbies) is destroyed
>>by the Romulan villain Nero in this.
>
> Yes, that is my main complaint with the film. It's just too massive a
> change to the Star Trek universe. Otherwise, the movie is sensational.
>
Yeah, just about any other Federation planet wouldn't have bothered me. I
*like* Vulcan. They're probably my favorite Star Trek aliens. I was
thinking the perfect planet to destroy would have been Denobula. It would
have explained why they were featured on Enterprise but disapeared from the
Star Trek universe never to be spoken of again by Kirk's time. They could
have even set up Dr. McCoy's introduction by having him initially on the
planet being taught alien biology by an ancient Dr. Phlox.
>>Old Spock is at that
>>time stranded on the ice planet Delta Vega in the Vulcan system.
>
> That's my other complaint. So Vulcan orbits Vega now?
That's your other complaint about Old Spock on the ice planet? Not that of
all the planets in the universe young Spock just happens to drop Kirk off on
the exact same planet that Nero stranded Old Spock and by further
coincidence within walking distance of each other (and Scotty)?
David / Amicus
The Xindi homeworld in "Enterprise" and Odo's homeworld in "DS9".
Wouter Valentijn
Indeed!
They might even choose the Exeter.
Did you see the 'amateur' version of that one?
Wouter Valentijn
The name could be a coincidence?
Like Paris France and Paris Texas?
Did it have an automated station?
Brian Thorn
<art...@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
>"Brian Thorn" <btho...@suddenlink.net> wrote in message
>news:8su905p4jthvcfbev...@4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 8 May 2009 17:42:08 -0400, "KalElFan"
>> <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>>
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>> That's my other complaint. So Vulcan orbits Vega now?
>
>That's your other complaint about Old Spock on the ice planet? Not that of
>all the planets in the universe young Spock just happens to drop Kirk off on
>the exact same planet that Nero stranded Old Spock and by further
>coincidence within walking distance of each other (and Scotty)?
I don't think that's as wild a coincidence as you make it out to be.
It wasn't coincidence that Old Spock is on Delta Vega, which is (now)
another planet in the Vulcan system (probably one of the two we saw in
Vulcan's sky in "Amok Time") Nero wanted Spock to be able to see
Vulcan's destruction, so one of the other planets in the system was
the best bet (they're close by, judging from "Amok Time".)
Again, my problem isn't the planet, but its name. Vega is a real star
that has never been associated with Vulcan in Star Trek lore. And
Delta Vega is home to a Lithium Cracking Station at the edge of the
galaxy (where Kirk tries to maroon super-powered Gary Mitchell), not
next door in Vulcan's star system.
Nero wanted Spock to see Vulcan's destruction, but not be able to do
anything about it. Nero probably also wasn't finished with Spock and
wanted to be able to find him again to torment him later, a remote
base on a barely habitable planet fits the bill.
If Young Spock wanted Kirk off the Enterprise before going to warp,
another planet in the Vulcan system was the only option, and dumping
him near an existing base was necessary, because Spock wouldn't go so
far as to sentence Kirk to death.
Kirk running into Old Spock and Scotty being there was the
coincidence, but not much more than "We're the only ship in the
quadrant," which is almost used in the new movie again, since the rest
of Starfleet is inexplicably off in "the Laurentian Sector" or
whatever.
Brian
Brian Thorn
Except this would be more like two different Paris, Frances.
The original Star Trek had a lot of goofy planet names, particularly
in the earlier episodes, that sounded astronomical but really didn't
say anything about where they were (like Psi 2000 in "Naked Time" or
Beta III in "Return of the Archons".) And when they did use real star
names, as in Delta Vega, they got the terminology wrong. Delta would
refer to the fourth brightest star in a constellation, but Vega is a
star (Alpha Lyra) not a constellation. Trek eventually standardized
around using a number to identify a planet around a star, i.e., Altair
4 or Gamma Hydra 2. But that leaves Delta Vega as an odd man out, made
worse by the fact it has been used twice for two very different, very
far apart planets.
>Did it have an automated station?
Yes, but it wasn't an ice-planet.
Brian
David Johnston
Well you know, real planets have climate zones.
KalElFan
estimates. Star Trek made $7 million for the Thursday night showings,
about $25 million on Friday, and the 3 1/2 day weekend total is
expected to be $72 million or so. This is about what the HSX players
had been predicting. In that game a movie adjusts in price on the
Sunday when the weekend estimates are announced and it may come
within a few dollars of the HSX price.
http://movies.hsx.com/servlet/SecurityDetail?symbol=TRK11&day_span=all
This will be 2 to 3 times as successful as any Star Trek opening
and the reviews suggest it will have strong enough legs to become
one of the highest-grossing movies of the year..
You can see from the graph down the page at the above link that
it was not always thus. Star Trek was given up for dead and now
it's headed up, up and away. :-)
"Wouter Valentijn" <li...@valentijn.nu> wrote in message
news:4a058525$0$195$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
No, hadn't heard of that, just that New Voyages one where the web
site had amateurs continuing the five year mission or whatever it was.
I saw a few clips of that on an SF news show once.
The Constellation was arguably the most iconic ship after Enterprise
in the original series. In the US Navy it's also the aircraft supercarrier
commissioned just before Enterprise, both in 1961 and numbered
CV-64 and CVN-65 respectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy
So it's the perfect fit I think for a series titled Star Trek:
Constellation. It could start from it being launched out of space
dock, and the ship Captain needn't be Decker. There could be
some remake episodes of the better or more memorable Original
Series episodes though.
KalElFan
news:gu397v$hr9$1...@news.motzarella.org...
> disappeared from the Star Trek universe never to be spoken of again
> by Kirk's time. They could have even set up Dr. McCoy's introduction
> by having him initially on the planet being taught alien biology by an
> ancient Dr. Phlox.
That would have been dreadful for trying to refute the interpretation
that Enterprise was Spock's Training Program at the academy. :-)
Vulcan is undoubtedly the most iconic other planet in the Federation,
because of Spock. But really it's a relatively minor player except for
Spock (still alive), Spock's father (still alive) and its heritage (still
alive). So I think the dislike of this will tend to diminish as people
realize it's much more about defining the new rebooted timeline
and Spock's character this new round of storytelling.
At one point Spock has a line admitting rage at Nero for having
effectively killed his mother. That moment plays as worse to most
viewers I think, because again it's much more about the Spock
character, his loss, how he reacts to it and so on. It was more J.J.
irony as well, because of Spock's comments about the purpose of
the Kobayashi Maru program he designed.
>>>Old Spock is at that
>>>time stranded on the ice planet Delta Vega in the Vulcan system.
>>
>> That's my other complaint. So Vulcan orbits Vega now?
>
> That's your other complaint about Old Spock on the ice planet?
> Not that of all the planets in the universe young Spock just happens
> to drop Kirk off on the exact same planet that Nero stranded Old
> Spock and by further coincidence within walking distance of each
> other (and Scotty)?
Cosmic Irony again, or Twisted Implausible Fate or whatever you want
to call that thing you get some of when J.J. Abrams is behind it. He's all
about the journey and not elaborate explanations or answers or plausible
setup for why stuff happens, stuff just happens. Hence all three of the
iconic crew end up on the Ice Planet Delta Vega, when even one of them
being there is an enormous contrivance because it just happens to be in
viewing distance of Vulcan, when it's destroyed no less. Hurley in the
Lost series had a much better chance hitting that lottery three weeks
running with the same numbers. :-)
It's so contrived that it's really beyond contrivance and just becomes a
premise of the new Star Trek 2 universe. The whole initial sequence with
the birth of Kirk, same thing. But it's good drama and we know these
characters and how they're supposed to end up the crew of the Starship
Enterprise, so it's easier to become inoculated to this J.J. element and
it just becomes part of the furniture in a way. Maybe a few leave solely
because of that but I think most stick with it if they find it otherwise
good and entertaining and like the cast and so on, which I think most
do. Complete newbies won't even notice the contrivances much if at
all, it's mainly the longtimers who do.
David Johnston
wrote:
>Planets get destroyed? Ho hum, been there, done that.
>
>
>The Xindi homeworld in "Enterprise" and Odo's homeworld in "DS9".
The Xindi homeworld was not destroyed in Enterprise and so far as I
know, Odo's homeworld was not destroyed in DS9
Wouter Valentijn
<snip>
> You can see from the graph down the page at the above link that
> it was not always thus. Star Trek was given up for dead and now
> it's headed up, up and away. :-)
Hmmm.... 'up, up and away....' That sounds so familiar, but I just can't
place it.... ;-)
<snip>
>> Indeed!
>> They might even choose the Exeter.
>> Did you see the 'amateur' version of that one?
>
> No, hadn't heard of that, just that New Voyages one where the web
> site had amateurs continuing the five year mission or whatever it was.
> I saw a few clips of that on an SF news show once.
They (the Exeter people) have some difficulties putting the final touches of
their latest filmed episode together, but it really looks cool.
The first episode wasn't so great, but the second was fantastic: The
Tressaurian Intersection.
http://www.starshipexeter.com/
New Voyages had some original actors:
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
And the same goes for: Of Gods And Men.
http://startrekofgodsandmen.com/main/
>
> The Constellation was arguably the most iconic ship after Enterprise
> in the original series.
I can agree with that.
> In the US Navy it's also the aircraft
> supercarrier commissioned just before Enterprise, both in 1961 and
> numbered CV-64 and CVN-65 respectively.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy
>
> So it's the perfect fit I think for a series titled Star Trek:
> Constellation. It could start from it being launched out of space
> dock, and the ship Captain needn't be Decker. There could be
> some remake episodes of the better or more memorable Original
> Series episodes though.
Or maybe the name orignally intended: Yorktown.
tv...@smallville.kansas
> ...it sets up a great new rebooted Star Trek universe.
If it changes the future (due to changes in the past) then, maybe Kirk,
didn't die in Generations and can return in the new sequels.
David / Amicus
know, Odo's homeworld was not destroyed in DS9>>
The whole premise of why the Xindi attacked the earth was because the
Suliban lied and told them that in the future that it was the Federation
that destroyed their homeworld. The Xindi attack on the earth was a
pre-emtive strike.
Odo's race was of the Dominion and I remember his people had to find a
new world after their old one was destroyed in the war.
Dan Lanciani
I understand that the 25 year differential was an accident, but what
was the "mark" that they were shooting for in the first place and how
were they doing that?
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com
KalElFan
I only used the overshooting the mark phrase for Nero, who was in
pursuit of Old Spock. I don't think Old Spock was shooting for any
particular time, he was just evading Nero. Nero presumably had a
way of tracking Old Spock on sensors as he was pursuing through
the portal. Spock then abruptly drops out and Nero just can't react
quickly enough, overshooting the mark (Old Spock's exit point) by
25 years. After waiting 25 years (perhaps some of it time dilated),
Nero positions himself at the same point he exited presumably, or
perhaps elsewhere if the phenomenon has moved in the interim.
Most of that is fill in the blanks, because again this technobabble
recounting (we never actually see it) all blows by very quickly
and doesn't grind everything to a halt the way Usenet discussion
of it can seem to. :-)
Maybe some deleted scenes on the DVD will elaborate on some
of this, but I think the movie is much better for having not dwelled
on it. It moves along at a brisk pace and doesn't drag, and the
two-hour length (excluding the credits or some of them) seemed
just about perfect.
David Cheatham
> s
> p
> o
> i
> l
> e
> r
> s
> p
> a
> c
> e
>
> Overall I quite enjoyed it. Zachary Quinto was incredible. The movie
> looked good, was well paced, and had a good story. It was respectful
> of past incarnations of ST without being unduly worshipful.
>
> I was a little confused by the (non-time-travel) chronology. How long
> does it take to get to Vulcan? How far away had the Enterprise got
> before Kirk and Scotty teleported onto it? That kind of thing. But it
> wasn't a big deal.
Vulcan's sun is normally considered to be Epsilon Eridani, 10 light
years away, the closest 'earth like' star to Earth. Which is a
heartbeat at warp. (In fact, it's a little *too* close, and raises
questions about why SETI never discovered them.)
So, in actuality, you can travel between them that fast.
OTOH, how Scotty was able to beam that far is unknown. Warp beaming has
happened before, but by beaming from warp-to-warp, or warp-to-planet,
not planet-to-warp. By that time the Enterprise should have been
lightyears away.
Seriously, if you can beam that far, they really should replace
starships with beaming relay stations.
> There were two points in the plot - almost identical points - that
> just seemed dumb to me:
>
> (1) Kirk is mouthing off to Acting Captain Spock, so Spock has him
> thrown off the ship??!? Tossed down in a pod onto a dangerous planet
> with a Star Fleet station (occupied by a whole two people) 14
> kilometers away? (They couldn't even get closer with the pod?) This
> doesn't make any sense at all. Put him in the brig. Lock him in a
> room. "Get him off the ship?" That's got to be against every
> regulation in the book, and not particularly logical or decent.
Kirk actually said he was pretty sure throwing a prisoner off a ship
was against regulations, so you're probably right.
OTOH, the planet was only dangerous if you got out of your pod and
wandered around like an idiot. He should have been rescued by Scotty,
but Scotty was too busy screwing around to answer distress calls, or,
you know, notice when the next-door neighbor imploded.
> (2) Nero wants Old Spock to to witness Nero's terrible revenge against
> the Federation. So he strands him on an incredibly convenient
> dangerous ice planet that's within naked-eye viewing range of Vulcan
> (but that we've never heard of before). Very close, it seems - Vulcan
> looks as big as Earth's moon in the sky. Oh, and there's a Star Fleet
> engineering station on the planet. With a lot of equipment. That a
> scientific genius from the future may be able to make use of.
We've actually see, from the POV of people on Vulcan, that you can see
other planets in the sky.
Yes, this makes no sense. No planets can possibly be that close without
crashing into each other. But it's already been determine to be true of
Vulcan.
> But you know, it's not like they've totally freed themselves from
> continuity. Anything that happened before Kirk's birth should still
> have happened. (Unless you belong to the back-and-forth-ripples theory
> of time travel, which is hard to even think about.) Khan's still out
> on that planet; the Borg are still out there; the Guardian of Forever
> is still waiting.
Ah, but *are* the Borg out there?
Didn't they only show up because of the crashed Borg ship that summoned
them on Enterprise? The crash ship that went back in time when the Borg
attacked Earth, because they had been summoned? So the Borg are out
there, but possible have no intent on coming to earth.
Thanks to the temporal meddling of various things, including the now
possibly non-existence Temporal Cold war, the reboot really has the
freedom to ignore anything they want from Enterprise also.
And plus, according to the EU, the only reason the Borg exist is
because of something that happened in Enterprise's time...
I was actually hoping there would be some sort of nod as to the events
that happened in the EU after all the movies ended. A mention of the
Federation being allied with the 'Imperial Romulan State' when trying
to save them, or something.
Which most viewers would have missed, a few fans would have said "Huh?
The name of the Romulan government is the 'Romulan Star Empire'.", and
other people would have said "Hey! EU reference to the Romulan civil
war!".
I mean, if they're going to reset the timeline anyway, and not have
anything from that point forward, might as well make the current books
quasi-ex-canon.
Come on, let's have an offhanded reference in the extended DVD or the
next movie from Spock.
And now I'm wondering how they'll deal with this in the EU, considering
all they're doing with the Romulans.
> And, what's more complicated, Old Spock knows all this stuff. He's
> like an oracle now. Since he's living in an alternate timline and
> cannot create a paradox, he has no reason not to warn the Federation
> about what they will probably run into, or to help them with new
> technology. He doesn't seem worried about any Prime Directive issues
> with respect to timelines. After all, he taught Scotty an equation
> that Scotty wouldn't have discovered for years (which, by the way,
> could really advance Star Fleet transporter tech); he manipulated
> Young Spock and Young Kirk in a variety of ways; and, at the end, he
> directly influenced Young Spock's choices for the future. He's alos
> helping out the dispossessed Vulcans.
>
> Given all that, Old Spock is set up to become a major, influential
> figure in the progress of the Federation in this new timeline. He
> knows a lot - maybe too much.
And, incidentally, can fix *everything*. He just need to track down
some red matter and black hole a single star so that, much later, it
doesn't blow up...
I actually thought that was where the movie was going, but then they
apparently blew up all the red matter. (And made a black hole just a
few minutes at warp away from the earth...ugh.)
Thanatos
franchise.
The casting was great in general. Loved Uhura. The only character
casting choice I didn't like was Chekov. He was just off somehow. Simon
Pegg was fine as Scotty but I have a hard time seeing anyone but "Sean
of the Dead" beating zombies in the head with a cricket bat whenever
he's on screen. But that's my deal. As an actor, he did fine with the
role. (And his accent was actually authentic, as opposed to James
Doohan's, which came and went depending on whether he was concentrating
or not.)
I like that the ship was more industrial and not so clean and sterile. I
know a lot of that was the product of budget back in the 60s but even
when they got to the Next Generation era, one thing that always bugged
me was the way it seemed more like a cruise ship than a working military
vessel.
I remember asking myself what a mining ship was doing armed to the teeth
with weapons but I finally just assumed that they added the weapons
after Romulus was destroyed and Nero went on his mission of vengeance.
However I would like to know what all those weird tentacles on the front
of the ship were for. How does that help you with mining?
Ejecting the warp core: I want to know how long they had to wait out
there for Starfleet to get them a new warp drive. Without one, they'd
have been decades away from Earth. And I got the impression that most of
the other ships in the fleet were destroyed by the Romulans, so waiting
for AAA to arrive might take a while.
My overall biggest nitpick was the use of the transporters. Scotty
beaming Kirk and Spock onto a Romulan ship over Earth while the
Enterprise was all the way out at Saturn, for example. Even Picard's era
didn't have that level of technology. Their transporters were limited to
something like 50,000 miles. Now we've suddenly upped that to
900,000,000 miles? And how do you even figure your destination
coordinates from that distance with any degree of accuracy?
But that pales in comparison to how Scotty got them off the ice planet
and back onto the Enterprise. Even with Spock's help providing
future-tech, it strained credibility that Scotty would be able to take
an abstract mathematical concept that he's never heard of before and
within minutes put it into practice with no trial and error whatsoever.
And even assuming he could do that, how the heck could he know exactly
where the Enterprise was at that precise second to program the
destination coordinates into the transporter? (And at the same time, the
transporters are so finicky that they can't lock onto Sulu and Kirk or
Spock's mother because they're falling at a couple hundred feet per
second?)
But the biggest problem with them beaming from the ice planet to the
Enterprise is that it effectively renders starships obsolete. I would
estimate the time that elapsed between Spock shooting Kirk down onto the
surface of the ice planet, Kirk's encounter with the Ravenous
Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal, his fireside chat and mind-meld with Spock
in the ice cave, the two of them trekking across the plains to the
Starbase and the time it took Scotty to rig up the transporter to be at
least 10 hours, minimum. Since it took the ship no more than five
minutes to warp from Earth to Vulcan, in ten hours, the Enterprise would
have been halfway across the galaxy. Hundreds of light years. Trillions
of miles. But Scotty needs nothing but a shuttlecraft transporter and an
equation from Spock to get them there? With that level of transporter
technology, ships become irrelevant. Why bother with starships when you
can just beam everywhere in the galaxy?
Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
even close to being destroyed.
And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well in
advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like these
things aren't predictable even now with 21st century technology. They'd
have had centuries to evacuate to another planet and re-establish their
society.
And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
Spock was offering to help, for goodness sake. The fact that he failed
doesn't mean he was the cause of the tragedy. Given Nero's stated
motivation, if Spock had never offered to help at all, Nero wouldn't
have come after Vulcan. I guess it's true what they say-- no good deed
goes unpunished.
Also, the Federation ought to be making spectacular advancements in
technology now that they have Future Spock to draw from as a resource.
He apparently has no compunctions about polluting the timeline by
revealing stuff like that-- he gave Scotty advanced transporter
technology without hesitation.
Steven L.
> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
> supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
> planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
> that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
> recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
> even close to being destroyed.
One theory I've heard is that in a sufficiently dense star cluster, if
one star goes supernova, the extra radiation will heat up the
neighboring stars, and cause them to go supernova, and so on--a chain
reaction.
The total radiation flux from such a chain reaction of supernovae could
wipe out all life within a wide area in the Galaxy.
> And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well in
> advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like these
> things aren't predictable even now with 21st century technology. They'd
> have had centuries to evacuate to another planet and re-establish their
> society.
Star Trek never got the scientific idea of supernovae right. A star
massive enough to go supernova doesn't exist long enough for life to
develop on one of its planets. It lasts maybe a few tens of millions of
years, and then BOOM.
> Also, the Federation ought to be making spectacular advancements in
> technology now that they have Future Spock to draw from as a resource.
> He apparently has no compunctions about polluting the timeline by
> revealing stuff like that-- he gave Scotty advanced transporter
> technology without hesitation.
The only reason Old Spock was even in this movie was to create a plot
device (time travel) to explain the reboot.
Now that the reboot is under way, I expect that the sequel movie will
either kill off Old Spock, or put him on some Vulcan colony to undergo
Kolinahr or something else. But he'll be out of the picture from now on.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
clouddreamer
> Thanatos wrote:
>
>> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
>> supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
>> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
>> planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes
>> but that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky
>> Way in recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming
>> along. Not even close to being destroyed.
>
> One theory I've heard is that in a sufficiently dense star cluster, if
> one star goes supernova, the extra radiation will heat up the
> neighboring stars, and cause them to go supernova, and so on--a chain
> reaction.
>
> The total radiation flux from such a chain reaction of supernovae could
> wipe out all life within a wide area in the Galaxy.
>
>
>> And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well
>> in advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like
>> these things aren't predictable even now with 21st century technology.
>> They'd have had centuries to evacuate to another planet and
>> re-establish their society.
>
> Star Trek never got the scientific idea of supernovae right. A star
> massive enough to go supernova doesn't exist long enough for life to
> develop on one of its planets. It lasts maybe a few tens of millions of
> years, and then BOOM.
>
But, AFAIK, the Romulans are not native to Romulus. They are Vulcans who
left Vulcan long ago.
..
--
We must change the way we live
Or the climate will do it for us.
Wouter Valentijn
This is true. They are an offshoot of the Vulcan people.
Anim8rFSK
Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> Overall, I very much enjoyed it as well. Breathed new life into the
> franchise.
>
> The casting was great in general. Loved Uhura. The only character
> casting choice I didn't like was Chekov. He was just off somehow. Simon
> Pegg was fine as Scotty but I have a hard time seeing anyone but "Sean
> of the Dead" beating zombies in the head with a cricket bat whenever
> he's on screen. But that's my deal. As an actor, he did fine with the
> role. (And his accent was actually authentic, as opposed to James
> Doohan's, which came and went depending on whether he was concentrating
> or not.)
>
> I like that the ship was more industrial and not so clean and sterile. I
> know a lot of that was the product of budget back in the 60s but even
> when they got to the Next Generation era, one thing that always bugged
> me was the way it seemed more like a cruise ship than a working military
> vessel.
>
> I remember asking myself what a mining ship was doing armed to the teeth
> with weapons but I finally just assumed that they added the weapons
> after Romulus was destroyed and Nero went on his mission of vengeance.
Yeah, that's in the comic book prequel, story by Orci.
> However I would like to know what all those weird tentacles on the front
> of the ship were for. How does that help you with mining?
The tentacles aren't from the mining ship, they're from the weapons he
added later as you surmised above. I have no idea what they do.
>
> Ejecting the warp core: I want to know how long they had to wait out
> there for Starfleet to get them a new warp drive. Without one, they'd
> have been decades away from Earth. And I got the impression that most of
> the other ships in the fleet were destroyed by the Romulans, so waiting
> for AAA to arrive might take a while.
>
> My overall biggest nitpick was the use of the transporters. Scotty
> beaming Kirk and Spock onto a Romulan ship over Earth while the
> Enterprise was all the way out at Saturn, for example. Even Picard's era
> didn't have that level of technology. Their transporters were limited to
> something like 50,000 miles. Now we've suddenly upped that to
> 900,000,000 miles? And how do you even figure your destination
> coordinates from that distance with any degree of accuracy?
Gary Seven had a transporter that could send him 1000 light years and as
Scotty said "Could have brought him back through great distances or back
through time."
>
> But that pales in comparison to how Scotty got them off the ice planet
> and back onto the Enterprise. Even with Spock's help providing
> future-tech, it strained credibility that Scotty would be able to take
> an abstract mathematical concept that he's never heard of before and
> within minutes put it into practice with no trial and error whatsoever.
> And even assuming he could do that, how the heck could he know exactly
> where the Enterprise was at that precise second to program the
> destination coordinates into the transporter? (And at the same time, the
> transporters are so finicky that they can't lock onto Sulu and Kirk or
> Spock's mother because they're falling at a couple hundred feet per
> second?)
>
> But the biggest problem with them beaming from the ice planet to the
> Enterprise is that it effectively renders starships obsolete. I would
Gary Seven didn't use ships at all that we know of. :)
> estimate the time that elapsed between Spock shooting Kirk down onto the
> surface of the ice planet, Kirk's encounter with the Ravenous
> Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal, his fireside chat and mind-meld with Spock
> in the ice cave, the two of them trekking across the plains to the
> Starbase and the time it took Scotty to rig up the transporter to be at
> least 10 hours, minimum. Since it took the ship no more than five
> minutes to warp from Earth to Vulcan, in ten hours, the Enterprise would
> have been halfway across the galaxy. Hundreds of light years. Trillions
> of miles. But Scotty needs nothing but a shuttlecraft transporter and an
> equation from Spock to get them there? With that level of transporter
> technology, ships become irrelevant. Why bother with starships when you
> can just beam everywhere in the galaxy?
>
> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
> supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
> planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
> that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
> recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
> even close to being destroyed.
Again, see the comic book prequel. It's a superduper nova. Instead of
burning itself out like a regular nova, it becomes more intense with
every planet it eats. Need I comment on how galactically stupid you'd
have to be to come up with that one? I didn't think so.
>
> And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well in
> advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like these
> things aren't predictable even now with 21st century technology. They'd
> have had centuries to evacuate to another planet and re-establish their
> society.
The great Kryptonian council refused to heed Spock-El's warnings.
Really. Nero was there, heard Spock give the warning, confirmed Spock's
report, believed Spock, and now blames Spock for . . . what, I don't
know.
>
> And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
> seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
> people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
Yeah, even in the prequel with lots of explanation it made no sense.
Of course, randomly occuring superduper novas that take out the galaxy
are a problem. You pretty much only need one. Ever.
> Spock was offering to help, for goodness sake. The fact that he failed
> doesn't mean he was the cause of the tragedy. Given Nero's stated
> motivation, if Spock had never offered to help at all, Nero wouldn't
> have come after Vulcan. I guess it's true what they say-- no good deed
> goes unpunished.
>
> Also, the Federation ought to be making spectacular advancements in
> technology now that they have Future Spock to draw from as a resource.
> He apparently has no compunctions about polluting the timeline by
> revealing stuff like that-- he gave Scotty advanced transporter
> technology without hesitation.
--
Bad Reboot's 'Crap Trek' 2009: "No Shat, No Show"
Rated "least anticipated film of 2009" by ETOnline
Brian Thorn
wrote:
Be that as it may, it's not the Delta Vega from WNMHGB. That planet
was at the edge of the galaxy, where "bases that were one days away
are now years in the distance" without warp speed. This Delta Vega
looked close enough to Vulcan than an Apollo spacecraft could make the
flight.
Brian
sarah...@gmail.com
- When Starfleet discovers that Vulcan is in trouble, they don't just
send one or two ships to investigate - they send about THIRTY very,
very expensive ships into warp, and of course they all get destroyed.
That's a gazillion dollars' worth of technology gone. Why take the
risk in lives and equipment? Wouldn't just one or two ships be
sufficient?
- Given the climate of the ice planet Kirk is on, the second monster
that chases him has the entirely wrong skin. It looks like a big
lizard-thing, and lizards aren't found in arctic climates; their skin
is designed to tranfer extreme heat, not extreme cold. The second
monster should have been covered with thick fur, just like the first
monster was; otherwise its species should have died out long ago
because of incompatibility with the climate.
I also hope Chekov doesn't turn out to be a slightly older Wesley
Crusher wunderkind character. I sort of missed Walter Koenig's
nationalistic swagger. "Wodka was inwented by a little old lady from
Leningrad" sort of thing...
David Johnston
>I saw the movie and enjoyed it as well, just had a few nitpicks:
>
>- When Starfleet discovers that Vulcan is in trouble, they don't just
>send one or two ships to investigate - they send about THIRTY very,
>very expensive ships into warp, and of course they all get destroyed.
>That's a gazillion dollars' worth of technology gone. Why take the
>risk in lives and equipment? Wouldn't just one or two ships be
>sufficient?
>
>- Given the climate of the ice planet Kirk is on, the second monster
>that chases him has the entirely wrong skin. It looks like a big
>lizard-thing, and lizards aren't found in arctic climates; their skin
>is designed to tranfer extreme heat, not extreme cold. The second
>monster should have been covered with thick fur, just like the first
>monster was; otherwise its species should have died out long ago
>because of incompatibility with the climate.
Like walruses and penguins did?
ToolPackinMama
> And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
> seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
> people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
> Spock was offering to help, for goodness sake. The fact that he failed
> doesn't mean he was the cause of the tragedy.
What I don't get is why bother to save the planet at all? They have no
sun! What's the point!?
Seamus MacRae
If it's slowly freezing, you have a heck of a lot more time to evacuate
people than if it's rapidly blowing up.
David Cheatham
> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that
> the supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize
> any planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that
> explodes but that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in
> the Milky Way in recorded human history and the Milky Way is still
> humming along. Not even close to being destroyed.
Erm, actually, supernovas tend to take out neighboring planets, too. If
a star went supernova near earth, it would irradiate the planet.
Although not blow it up, and planets in Federation time should be able
to create some sort of shield.
Not that it would threaten 'the galaxy'. One going off near Earth could
threaten the core worlds of the Federation, but it could hardly
threaten Romulus at the same time.
> And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well
> in advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like
> these things aren't predictable even now with 21st century
> technology. They'd have had centuries to evacuate to another planet
> and re-establish their society.
If we assume it was Romulus's star, perhaps it was not natural causes.
Although, incidentally, a decade or two mightwould not be long enough
to evacuate billions of people.
If you had 7 billion people, you'd have to pull off a million people a
day, to do it in a decade. (And a million people a day is insane.)
OTOH, it has been mentioned that steller phenomenon also travels
through subspace. OTOH, considering gravity operates at the speed of
light, it doesn't make any sense that you could collapse an explosing
star into a blackhole and save them...the subspace wave is already gone.
> And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
> seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
> people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
> Spock was offering to help, for goodness sake. The fact that he
> failed doesn't mean he was the cause of the tragedy. Given Nero's
> stated motivation, if Spock had never offered to help at all, Nero
> wouldn't have come after Vulcan. I guess it's true what they say-- no
> good deed goes unpunished.
Nero probably was operating on the assumption that Spock wasn't
*actually* attempting to help Romulus. Spock does have a rather large
set of enemies there thanks to his 'reunification' work, and it's
entirely possible he's regarded as a Federation lackey attempting to
destroy them.
I was actually waiting for there to be a mention of the Klingons,
because the Federation *did* save them when *their* homeworld was in
danger. (And that was their own fault!)
Thanatos
"Steven L." <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Thanatos wrote:
>
> > Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
> > supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> > galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
> > planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
> > that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
> > recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
> > even close to being destroyed.
>
> One theory I've heard is that in a sufficiently dense star cluster, if
> one star goes supernova, the extra radiation will heat up the
> neighboring stars, and cause them to go supernova, and so on--a chain
> reaction.
Well, stars don't go nova because of heat. The go nova because they've
used up all their lighter fuels, causing the balance between the
explosive force of the fusion reaction and the gravitational force of
the star's mass to go wonky.
> > Also, the Federation ought to be making spectacular advancements in
> > technology now that they have Future Spock to draw from as a resource.
> > He apparently has no compunctions about polluting the timeline by
> > revealing stuff like that-- he gave Scotty advanced transporter
> > technology without hesitation.
>
> The only reason Old Spock was even in this movie was to create a plot
> device (time travel) to explain the reboot.
>
> Now that the reboot is under way, I expect that the sequel movie will
> either kill off Old Spock, or put him on some Vulcan colony to undergo
> Kolinahr or something else. But he'll be out of the picture from now on.
But presumably the Federation would be debriefing the hell out of him in
the interim.
Thanatos
Anim8rFSK <ANIM...@cox.net> wrote:
> In article <atropos-41580D...@news.giganews.com>,
> Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> > And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
> > seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
> > people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
>
> Yeah, even in the prequel with lots of explanation it made no sense.
>
> Of course, randomly occuring superduper novas that take out the galaxy
> are a problem. You pretty much only need one. Ever.
One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the trouble of
drilling into the planet's core to plant his black hole bombs. Would a
black hole really cause any less damage to a planet if it popped into
existence on the surface, rather than at the core?
As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
destruction is assured.
Kevin Reilly
> Again, see the comic book prequel. It's a superduper nova. Instead of
> burning itself out like a regular nova, it becomes more intense with
> every planet it eats. Need I comment on how galactically stupid you'd
> have to be to come up with that one? I didn't think so.
There's something very odd about my reaction to the new Star Trek, and I'm
wondering if anyone else feels the same way. While I enjoyed the movie
immensely, and feel it definitely hit its mark in terms of revitalising a
stale franchise, I also find myself in full agreement with almost every
criticism I've read.
My days of posting long, detailed, nitpicking rants to usenet groups are
long behind me but I'm quite confident that if I were to sit down and
compose a list of problems this movie had it would be exhaustive.
Preposterous science, lack of continuity with established Trek technology
and lazily contrived plotting are all in evidence. I've been a fan of Star
Trek for over three decades so I'd have no shortage of ammunition if the
fancy took me.
And yet the whole thing was just so damned enjoyable that I'm willing to
forgive it all that and I *don't know why*. Yes, the casting and
performances were spot on, but there have been other movies with great
casts that have failed to help me see past the problems they have in other
areas. So why does this one work?
Could it be that, as I hurtle rapidly towards my 40s, I've become so jaded
about the state of most modern cinema -- particularly SF and fantasy cinema
-- that I've actually started to mentally "tune out" the negatives in
favour anything that helps me have a good time at the movies? Or is there
really something genuinely special about this rebooted Star Trek as the
wholly positive reviews would suggest?
Has anyone else had the same reaction to this film? That you can find a
hundred reasons why you shouldn't like it, yet you still do?
--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel."
School examination answer
Fallen
Sort of, but I think the reason is that a lot all the problems you and
others have listed apply to almost every film ever and most definitely
apply to all Star Trek ever.
The new film managed to be a cross between Star Trek and an enjoyable
hollywood action movie. That 'should' be the dream for Sci-Fi fans
because it means we get more Star Trek films. But of course you get
people whinging that it's "not their Trek", God knows what they've been
watching for the last 40 years as terrible science and soap opera
plotting have been there since day one.
It was a fun film that conveyed an atmosphere which didn't take itself
too seriously and thus you can forgive the silly science and hollywood
coincidence based plotting.
Fallen.
Thanatos
Kevin Reilly <use...@denali.org.uk> wrote:
> On 10/05/2009 16:53, Anim8rFSK wrote:
>
> > Again, see the comic book prequel. It's a superduper nova. Instead of
> > burning itself out like a regular nova, it becomes more intense with
> > every planet it eats. Need I comment on how galactically stupid you'd
> > have to be to come up with that one? I didn't think so.
>
> There's something very odd about my reaction to the new Star Trek, and I'm
> wondering if anyone else feels the same way. While I enjoyed the movie
> immensely, and feel it definitely hit its mark in terms of revitalising a
> stale franchise, I also find myself in full agreement with almost every
> criticism I've read.
>
> My days of posting long, detailed, nitpicking rants to usenet groups are
> long behind me but I'm quite confident that if I were to sit down and
> compose a list of problems this movie had it would be exhaustive.
> Preposterous science, lack of continuity with established Trek technology
> and lazily contrived plotting are all in evidence. I've been a fan of Star
> Trek for over three decades so I'd have no shortage of ammunition if the
> fancy took me.
>
> And yet the whole thing was just so damned enjoyable that I'm willing to
> forgive it all that and I *don't know why*.
My feelings exactly. When the credits rolled, I was happy despite all
the WTF? moments in the plot.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Was it established that it was *their* sun going supernova? Or just some
nearby star?
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Arthur Lipscomb
"ToolPackinMama" <philn...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:gu7brn$l49$3...@news.motzarella.org...
It was a different sun that was threatening the entire galaxy. Romulus was
just the first planet to be destroyed before Spock managed to save the rest.
David Johnston
<sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Thanatos wrote:
>
>> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
>> supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
>> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
>> planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
>> that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
>> recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
>> even close to being destroyed.
>
>One theory I've heard is that in a sufficiently dense star cluster, if
>one star goes supernova, the extra radiation will heat up the
>neighboring stars, and cause them to go supernova, and so on--a chain
>reaction.
>
>The total radiation flux from such a chain reaction of supernovae could
>wipe out all life within a wide area in the Galaxy.
Of course there are no such star clusters anywhere near our neck of
the galaxy, but hey, Star Trek stellar geography has always been iffy
at best.
>
>
>> And wouldn't an advanced space-faring society like Romulus know well in
>> advance that their star was reaching the nova stage? It's not like these
>> things aren't predictable even now with 21st century technology. They'd
>> have had centuries to evacuate to another planet and re-establish their
>> society.
>
>Star Trek never got the scientific idea of supernovae right. A star
>massive enough to go supernova doesn't exist long enough for life to
>develop on one of its planets. It lasts maybe a few tens of millions of
>years, and then BOOM.
That's not an issue because there's no need to wait for life to
develop naturally in the Star Trek universe. There are loads of people
going around terraforming planets. Sometimes with nothing more than a
snap of their fingers.
Anim8rFSK
Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
Wait -- if the credits rolling make you happy, doesn't that mean you're
glad it's over?
Anim8rFSK
It's a random superduper nova. They get bigger and bigger the more
planets they eat until they eat the whole galaxy. Honest. It's not the
Romulan sun, and for no reason I understand it ate Nero's planet but
nobody mentions the other inhabited Romulan worlds. And they just sat
there and waited to die because the council didn't believe it was a
danger, even after it blew. And apparently it's expanding at translight
velocity, otherwise they should have had years to get out of the way.
David Johnston
wrote:
><<The Xindi homeworld was not destroyed in Enterprise and so far as I
>know, Odo's homeworld was not destroyed in DS9>>
>
>
>The whole premise of why the Xindi attacked the earth was because the
>Suliban lied and told them that in the future that it was the Federation
>that destroyed their homeworld. The Xindi attack on the earth was a
>pre-emtive strike.
There's a world of difference between threatening one and actually
destroying one.
>
>
>Odo's race was of the Dominion and I remember his people had to find a
>new world after their old one was destroyed in the war.
>
No. There was an attempt to destroy the big puddle, but it was the
wrong world and they didn't really destroy it anyway. They just made
a big hole in it.
sarah...@gmail.com
Heh, good point! But walruses and penguins also have a lot of body fat
to retain heat, and this critter clearly didn't. It looked like it was
all muscle, which made me wonder how it kept all of its body heat from
escaping when it had no fat to protect its vital organs. But, eh!
Maybe it was on vacation from Anus Faced Lizard planet and it was
looking for a snack...
Thanatos
<258ca451-c05b-488f...@j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
sarah...@gmail.com wrote:
Who says it had any body heat to retain?
David Johnston
Every animal does even the so-called "cold-blooded" ones.
Thanatos
David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
That we know of. That animal could be based on an entirely different
life process. Like the Horta, which was based on silicon rather than
carbon like all life on earth.
David Johnston
>> >Who says it had any body heat to retain?
>>
>> Every animal does even the so-called "cold-blooded" ones.
>
>That we know of. That animal could be based on an entirely different
>life process.
Any life process would require calories.
redhawk
[...]
>
> One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the trouble of
> drilling into the planet's core to plant his black hole bombs. Would a
> black hole really cause any less damage to a planet if it popped into
> existence on the surface, rather than at the core?
>
> As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
> destruction is assured.
I thought Nero had an explanatory line, "We need to drill deep. The
Schwarz is strong with this one."
Seamus MacRae
Nobody suggested it didn't eat. It certainly seemed to consider Kirk a
possible afternoon snack...
David Johnston
<smacr...@live.ca.nospam> wrote:
>David Johnston wrote:
>> On Sun, 10 May 2009 23:38:06 -0400, Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>> Who says it had any body heat to retain?
>>>> Every animal does even the so-called "cold-blooded" ones.
>>> That we know of. That animal could be based on an entirely different
>>> life process.
>>
>> Any life process would require calories.
>
>Nobody suggested it didn't eat.
Something that had no body heat to retain wouldn't eat.
Thanatos
Thanatos
Obveeus
"Thanatos" <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>> Something that had no body heat to retain wouldn't eat.
>
> How do you know?
Clearly, you have never dated a model.
trotsky
Nerd alert!
Audie Murphy's Ghost
I did. She never ate much, but she was a hell of a good cook. Go
figure.
David Johnston
It's built into the laws of physics. Digestion produces heat. That's
why "calorie" is both a measure of food and a measure of heat.
Wickeddoll
"redhawk"
RH
*wiping vanilla cafe off the monitor*
You owe me a laptop, mister!
Natalie
--
"Wicked little doll, you have no soul"
(David Byrne, 1997)
http://www.supernaturalusa.net
(may not display properly with non-IE browsers)
Seamus MacRae
In this scenario, the heat is produced; it just is not retained. Nor,
hypothetically, needed.
David Johnston
<smacr...@live.ca.nospam> wrote:
>David Johnston wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 May 2009 07:33:04 -0400, Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In article <c9ff05pjvo6gv76c3...@4ax.com>,
>>> David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 11 May 2009 01:48:11 -0400, Seamus MacRae
>>>> <smacr...@live.ca.nospam> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> David Johnston wrote:
>>>>>> On Sun, 10 May 2009 23:38:06 -0400, Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Who says it had any body heat to retain?
>>>>>>>> Every animal does even the so-called "cold-blooded" ones.
>>>>>>> That we know of. That animal could be based on an entirely different
>>>>>>> life process.
>>>>>> Any life process would require calories.
>>>>> Nobody suggested it didn't eat.
>>>> Something that had no body heat to retain wouldn't eat.
>>> How do you know?
>>
>> It's built into the laws of physics. Digestion produces heat. That's
>> why "calorie" is both a measure of food and a measure of heat.
>
>In this scenario, the heat is produced; it just is not retained.
The result would be a creature that had to eat every single second.
Mac Breck
> "redhawk"
> Thanatos wrote:
> [...]
>>
>> One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the trouble of
>> drilling into the planet's core to plant his black hole bombs. Would
>> a black hole really cause any less damage to a planet if it popped
>> into existence on the surface, rather than at the core?
>>
>> As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
>> destruction is assured.
>
> I thought Nero had an explanatory line, "We need to drill deep. The
> Schwarz is strong with this one."
LOL!
--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"Brimstone" (1998)
Angel: Oh, there's one more thing you should know. Your fate was never
determined until you killed Gilbert Jax. All in all, you've led a good
life, Ezekiel. Have faith. Your work's appreciated.
Wickeddoll
:-)
Natalie
Thanatos
David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 May 2009 07:33:04 -0400, Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <c9ff05pjvo6gv76c3...@4ax.com>,
> > David Johnston <da...@block.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 11 May 2009 01:48:11 -0400, Seamus MacRae
> >> <smacr...@live.ca.nospam> wrote:
> >>
> >> >David Johnston wrote:
> >> >> On Sun, 10 May 2009 23:38:06 -0400, Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>>>> Who says it had any body heat to retain?
> >> >>>> Every animal does even the so-called "cold-blooded" ones.
> >> >>> That we know of. That animal could be based on an entirely different
> >> >>> life process.
> >> >>
> >> >> Any life process would require calories.
> >> >
> >> >Nobody suggested it didn't eat.
> >>
> >> Something that had no body heat to retain wouldn't eat.
> >
> >How do you know?
>
> It's built into the laws of physics. Digestion produces heat.
Depends on what type of digestion we're talking about. But even if
digestion produces heat, you still haven't shown that this alien
creature, whose biology you know nothing about and which is almost
certainly going to differ wildly from anything found on earth, needs to
retain that heat.
Our digestion produces methane gas. But we don't need to retain it. In
fact, our bodies are set up to purge it and get rid of it.
Seamus MacRae
Maybe that's why it was so persistent chasing Kirk? Or maybe it had a
high-energy-density store inside it somewhere.
~consul
> "rms" <rsqu...@REMOVEflashMOO.net> wrote in message
>
> S
> P
> O
> I
> L
> E
> R
> S
>
> H
> E
> R
> E
> [KalElFan wrote]:
> The issue is whether that's J.J. and Paramount going too far or not
> in rebooting. Initially I didn't like it but on brief reflection (as in by
> yesterday when I made the original post) I think it's a good choice.
> It very clearly conveys the "Reboot" aspect of this new alternate
> reality, an approach that already existed in Trek with the mirror
> universe and that TNG ep where the multiple quantum realities
> were revealed including the memorable one with Riker that had
> been overrun by the Borg. This movie has established the Trek-2
> universe, where Spock's planet is destroyed at this point.
They can send another Terminator to go to an earlier timeline.
--
"... respect, all good works are not done by only good folk. For here, at the end of all things, we shall do what needs to be done."
--till next time, consul -x- <<poetry.dolphins-cove.com>>
Michael Urban
Kevin Reilly <newsr...@denali.org.uk> wrote:
>On 10/05/2009 16:53, Anim8rFSK wrote:
>
>There's something very odd about my reaction to the new Star Trek, and I'm
>wondering if anyone else feels the same way. While I enjoyed the movie
>immensely, and feel it definitely hit its mark in terms of revitalising a
>stale franchise, I also find myself in full agreement with almost every
>criticism I've read.
>
> ...
>
>And yet the whole thing was just so damned enjoyable that I'm willing to
>forgive it all that and I *don't know why*. Yes, the casting and
>performances were spot on, but there have been other movies with great
>casts that have failed to help me see past the problems they have in other
>areas. So why does this one work?
>
>Could it be that, as I hurtle rapidly towards my 40s, I've become so jaded
>about the state of most modern cinema -- particularly SF and fantasy cinema
>-- that I've actually started to mentally "tune out" the negatives in
>favour anything that helps me have a good time at the movies? Or is there
>really something genuinely special about this rebooted Star Trek as the
>wholly positive reviews would suggest?
>
>Has anyone else had the same reaction to this film? That you can find a
>hundred reasons why you shouldn't like it, yet you still do?
Yes, although I don't like it a _lot_. It is, even more than most
Trek films(!), a 'check your brain at the door' experience.
Fortunately, I was able to do so while watching the film, and so
the absurdities with black holes, red matter, green crew, blue man
group... oh, sorry, where was I... anyway, all the absurdities were
able to wash past me; most of what annoyed me in the theatre were
the irritating quick-cut-and-pan camerawork that made it difficult,
and even unpleasant, to watch the action scenes. Still, all in all,
I had a good time and found the experience enjoyable.
But once out of the theatre, thinking back on it, all the stupidities
of the film began to impinge themselves on my consciousness. I don't
think I'll be watching it again any time soon.
I think one of my biggest real criticisms is the portrayal of Spock.
Quinto did a splendid job in the role, but the writers failed to
understand the 'Spock mystique'. The reason that he became such
a huge character during the original run of the series was that,
while it was clear that he was far from emotionless, that was almost
always withheld from the viewer; most of the time his emotions were
portrayed with an eyebrow raise, a slight smile, an intake of
breath, or a puzzled frown (Nimoy's low-key portrayal is sometimes
underrated. It's tougher than it looks). Girls went crazy. "Oh,
that poor baby, I want to mother him!" was one sort of reaction,
but the other was the proto-Mary-Sue thing of "He doesn't have a
girlfriend, but _I_ could change that!" But in the present film,
it's all given away. The audience gets all the emotional payoff
of three seasons (plus one particular animated episode - D.C.
Fontana should have had a writing credit for 'Additional Material
By'!) at once, and Uhura becomes the supremely competent Mary Sue
lieutenant who can get through Spock's too-thin facade of control.
Not only is this 'wrong' in a continuity sense, but it is far less
interesting. And slightly creepy at that, since he's her _teacher_
for Rod's sake!
Mike
Mac Breck
> "Mac Breck"
>> Wickeddoll wrote:
>>> "redhawk"
>>> Thanatos wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the trouble
>>>> of drilling into the planet's core to plant his black hole bombs.
>>>> Would a black hole really cause any less damage to a planet if it
>>>> popped into existence on the surface, rather than at the core?
>>>>
>>>> As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
>>>> destruction is assured.
>>>
>>> I thought Nero had an explanatory line, "We need to drill deep. The
>>> Schwarz is strong with this one."
>>
>> LOL!
> Just to clarify, I didn't write this - I'm not that witty1
>
> :-)
>
> Natalie
But you borrowed from one of the best (Mel Brooks).
:-)
Mac Breck
> In article <atropos-05262A...@news.giganews.com>,>>>> Again, see the comic book prequel. It's a superduper nova.
>>>> Instead of burning itself out like a regular nova, it becomes more
>>>> intense with every planet it eats. Need I comment on how
>>>> galactically stupid you'd have to be to come up with that one? I
>>>> didn't think so.
>>>
>>> There's something very odd about my reaction to the new Star Trek,
>>> and I'm wondering if anyone else feels the same way. While I
>>> enjoyed the movie immensely, and feel it definitely hit its mark in
>>> terms of revitalising a stale franchise, I also find myself in full
>>> agreement with almost every criticism I've read.
>>>
>>> groups are long behind me but I'm quite confident that if I were to
>>> sit down and compose a list of problems this movie had it would be
>>> exhaustive. Preposterous science, lack of continuity with
>>> established Trek technology and lazily contrived plotting are all
>>> in evidence. I've been a fan of Star Trek for over three decades so
>>> I'd have no shortage of ammunition if the fancy took me.
>>>
>>> And yet the whole thing was just so damned enjoyable that I'm
>>> willing to forgive it all that and I *don't know why*.
>>
>> the WTF? moments in the plot.
>
> Wait -- if the credits rolling make you happy, doesn't that mean
> you're glad it's over?
With all this positive buzz, I may have to go see it in the theater
instead of waiting for the Netflix DVD. Hey, I liked some of Enterprise
(the Manny Coto stuff toward the end). <shrug>
Sorry Fred.
Wickeddoll
> Wickeddoll wrote:
>>>> "redhawk"
>>>> Thanatos wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the trouble
>>>>> of drilling into the planet's core to plant his black hole bombs.
>>>>> Would a black hole really cause any less damage to a planet if it
>>>>> popped into existence on the surface, rather than at the core?
>>>>>
>>>>> As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
>>>>> destruction is assured.
>>>>
>>>> I thought Nero had an explanatory line, "We need to drill deep. The
>>>> Schwarz is strong with this one."
>>>
>>> LOL!
>
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> Natalie
>
> But you borrowed from one of the best (Mel Brooks).
>
> :-)
>
> --
> Mac Breck (KoshN)
I wish - but it was Redhawk all the way. the "LOL" is my only contribution.
:-)
Natalie
Anim8rFSK
"Mac Breck" <macthe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hey, I hope you have a fine time. Just check your brain at the door. :)
--
Bad Reboot's 'Crap Trek' 2009: "No Shat, No Show"
Rated "least anticipated film of 2009" by ETOnline
Mac Breck
> "Mac Breck"
>> Wickeddoll wrote:
>>>>> "redhawk"
>>>>> Thanatos wrote:
>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One other nitpick I had was why Nero kept going to all the
>>>>>> trouble of drilling into the planet's core to plant his black
>>>>>> hole bombs. Would a black hole really cause any less damage to a
>>>>>> planet if it popped into existence on the surface, rather than
>>>>>> at the core?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As long as the planet is within the Schwarzchild radius, it's
>>>>>> destruction is assured.
>>>>>
>>>>> I thought Nero had an explanatory line, "We need to drill deep.
>>>>> The Schwarz is strong with this one."
>>>>
>>>> LOL!
>>
>>> Just to clarify, I didn't write this - I'm not that witty!
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Natalie
>>
>> But you borrowed from one of the best (Mel Brooks).
>>
>> :-)
> I wish - but it was Redhawk all the way. the "LOL" is my only
> contribution.
Oops! Right, you are. :-O
Mac Breck
I thought your response would've been "You're dead to me." ;-)
> Just check your brain at the door.
> :)
Just like with ID4.
Mac Breck
> In article <UfINl.39005$i9.1...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
> t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
>> In article <gu7dke$gr$1...@news.motzarella.org>,
>> Seamus MacRae <smacr...@live.ca.nospam> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> ToolPackinMama wrote:
>>>> Thanatos wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational,
>>>>> but it seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the
>>>>> deaths of his people. It was a random natural event, like a
>>>>> hurricane or a tornado. Spock was offering to help, for goodness
>>>>> sake. The fact that he failed doesn't mean he was the cause of
>>>>> the tragedy.
>>>>
>>>> What I don't get is why bother to save the planet at all? They
>>>> have no sun! What's the point!?
>>>
>>> If it's slowly freezing, you have a heck of a lot more time to
>>> evacuate people than if it's rapidly blowing up.
>>
>> Was it established that it was *their* sun going supernova? Or just
>> some nearby star?
>>
>> Ted
>
> It's a random superduper nova. They get bigger and bigger the more
> planets they eat until they eat the whole galaxy. Honest. It's not
> the Romulan sun, and for no reason I understand it ate Nero's planet
> but nobody mentions the other inhabited Romulan worlds. And they
> just sat there and waited to die because the council didn't believe
> it was a danger, even after it blew. And apparently it's expanding
> at translight velocity, otherwise they should have had years to get
> out of the way.
Now wait a minute, did *you* *SEE* "Star Trek" (the new movie)? Say it
ain't so!
Anim8rFSK
"Mac Breck" <macthe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Nah. Maybe "He's dead to me, Jim"
>
>
> > Just check your brain at the door.
> > :)
>
> Just like with ID4.
Now you're just being mean 'cause I'm credited on the Blu-ray.
Mac Breck
;-)
>>> Just check your brain at the door.
>>> :)
>>
>> Just like with ID4.
>
> Now you're just being mean 'cause I'm credited on the Blu-ray.
Hey, I dinna know.
Anim8rFSK
"Mac Breck" <macthe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Yeah, they blew up my Empire State Building model on the menu of the
Blu-ray. There's some arcane combination of buttons to push that
reveals hidden credits, including me. Or so I'm told, I've never done
it.
Anim8rFSK
"Mac Breck" <macthe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
No, that's from the comic book prequel, STAR TREK COUNTDOWN, story by
Orci. I read it in anticipation that I might meld into the hype and go
see the film, and it was so horrible it had the opposite effect.
Wickeddoll
"Anim8rFSK"
> "Mac Breck"
>> >>>>> Thanatos wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>> Kevin Reilly :
For crying out loud, man - WHY are you in the credits?!
Mac Breck
He SAID they blew up his "Empire State Building model on the menu of the
Blu-ray."
--
Steven L.
> In article <ud-dnX52FNlScZvX...@earthlink.com>,
> "Steven L." <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Thanatos wrote:
>>
>>> Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
>>> supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
>>> galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
>>> planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
>>> that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
>>> recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
>>> even close to being destroyed.
>> One theory I've heard is that in a sufficiently dense star cluster, if
>> one star goes supernova, the extra radiation will heat up the
>> neighboring stars, and cause them to go supernova, and so on--a chain
>> reaction.
>
> Well, stars don't go nova because of heat. The go nova because they've
> used up all their lighter fuels, causing the balance between the
> explosive force of the fusion reaction and the gravitational force of
> the star's mass to go wonky.
That's right.
But if the star is sufficiently massive to go supernova someday, then
it's sufficiently massive to be generating such a high temperature as to
use up its thermonuclear fuel very fast.
Those types of stars are the blue-white and purple-white giant stars.
An example is Rigel. And Rigel has only been in existence for about
half a billion years. Nowhere near enough time for humanoid life to
evolve there from bacteria. (It took over 3 billion years on Earth for
that.)
Star Trek was always rather cavalier about naming inhabited stellar
systems. They would use names like Vega or Rigel because those were
more familiar to the TV audience. But the reason they're more familiar
is that they're very bright stars, and can easily be seen with the naked
eye. And they're that bright because they're that hot, and that means
they live out their lifespans and then explode relatively quickly. Not
enough time for humanoid life to evolve there.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Greg Goss
Spoiler space preserved.
>Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
>supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
>galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
>planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
>that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
>recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
>even close to being destroyed.
The galaxy is a big place, and the federation, especially back in the
early days, isn't. A supernova makes things uninhabitable for a few
dozen light years all around, though perhaps a technological
civilization could come up with some kind of whole-planet gamma-ray
shielding.
>And sure, Nero's a psychopath and is by definition irrational, but it
>seems quite a stretch for him to blame Spock for the deaths of his
>people. It was a random natural event, like a hurricane or a tornado.
>Spock was offering to help, for goodness sake. The fact that he failed
>doesn't mean he was the cause of the tragedy.
You're aware that Bush caused Katrina, aren't you?
>Given Nero's stated
>motivation, if Spock had never offered to help at all, Nero wouldn't
>have come after Vulcan. I guess it's true what they say-- no good deed
>goes unpunished.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Wickeddoll
Yeah, but how did his model get there? I wasn't aware he was in show biz
Thanatos
"Steven L." <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
The Romulans didn't evolve on Romulus. They came from elsewhere.
Thanatos
Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> >Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
> >supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> >galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
> >planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes but
> >that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
> >recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
> >even close to being destroyed.
>
> The galaxy is a big place, and the federation, especially back in the
> early days, isn't. A supernova makes things uninhabitable for a few
> dozen light years all around
Yabbut, that isn't what Spock said. He said it threatened to destroy the
entire galaxy.
Obveeus
"Thanatos" <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> "Steven L." <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> An example is Rigel. And Rigel has only been in existence for about
>> half a billion years. Nowhere near enough time for humanoid life to
>> evolve there from bacteria.
>
> The Romulans didn't evolve on Romulus. They came from elsewhere.
Exactly. Both Romulans and Vulcans were 'seeded' on their planets from a
common ancestor.
Steven must be having a 'senior moment' as I am sure he knew that bit of
Star Trek trivia.
Anim8rFSK
"Wickeddoll" <n...@chance.com> wrote:
See above:
"they blew up my Empire State Building model on the menu of the Blu-ray"
--
Anim8rFSK
"Wickeddoll" <n...@chance.com> wrote:
I am indeed. Hence the name Anim8r. :)
In this case, it got there through a very long and tortured path . . .
Anim8rFSK
Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
Yep. It's a superdupernova. The more it eats, the bigger it grows.
Greg Goss
Yeah. I was answering from science, and haven't seen the movie yet.
A supernova that adds energy from eating planets? That's totally
unrelated to science.
Obveeus
"Greg Goss" <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> Anim8rFSK <ANIM...@cox.net> wrote:
>>Yep. It's a superdupernova. The more it eats, the bigger it grows.
>
> Yeah. I was answering from science, and haven't seen the movie yet.
> A supernova that adds energy from eating planets? That's totally
> unrelated to science.
It is also unrelated to the movie.
Anim8rFSK
Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> Anim8rFSK <ANIM...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> >In article <atropos-7356CF...@news.giganews.com>,
> > Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> >
> >> In article <7715qfF...@mid.individual.net>,
> >> Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Thanatos <atr...@mac.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > >Also, I had a bit of problem with Spock's back story. He said that the
> >> > >supernova that destroyed Romulus was "threatening to destroy the
> >> > >galaxy". Huh? Novas don't destroy galaxies. Sure, they'll vaporize any
> >> > >planets that happen to be orbiting the particular star that explodes
> >> > >but
> >> > >that's about it. We've had several dozen supernovae in the Milky Way in
> >> > >recorded human history and the Milky Way is still humming along. Not
> >> > >even close to being destroyed.
> >> >
> >> > The galaxy is a big place, and the federation, especially back in the
> >> > early days, isn't. A supernova makes things uninhabitable for a few
> >> > dozen light years all around
> >>
> >> Yabbut, that isn't what Spock said. He said it threatened to destroy the
> >> entire galaxy.
> >
> >Yep. It's a superdupernova. The more it eats, the bigger it grows.
>
> Yeah. I was answering from science, and haven't seen the movie yet.
> A supernova that adds energy from eating planets? That's totally
> unrelated to science.
Yep. That's where I realized I was right in boycotting anything Orci
'writes' to start with.