Star Trek XI

[l33telboi]

Both the trip from Earth to Vulcan and Vulcan to Earth were extremely fast.

The Earth to Vulcan trip was at maximum warp. And while it is true that there's a scene change in between the ship jumping to warp, and Chekov saying that they'll be arriving in 3 minutes, it's also worth noting that Sulu says "engines at maximum" or somesuch right before Chekov's briefing. And I doubt it took hours to reach maximum warp.

The return trip is more complex. The Enterprise is originally heading for the fleet in the Laurentian system, and only starts going towards Earth after Kirk has managed to get Spock from command. In the same speech that Kirk informs the crew that they're going to Earth, he also says he wants everyone battle-ready in 10 minutes. Oh, and the Vulcan to Earth trip started out at warp 3, but Scotty managed to get the engines to warp 4.

[Sandyin]

Animals tend to protect their territory from other similar animals. Wolves don’t chase birds and groundhogs and foxes out of their territory, the keep out other wolves. But again, we can make up any reason why this creature did what it did because it’s a fictional alien creature unlike anything we’ve seen in real life.

Not always, you talk of foxes and wolves, yet these two species of canide sometimes are in conflict with each other for prey and other times not so. In the case of two disparite felines species, lions will hunt down and kill, though not eat, cheetah cubs, but will not kill leopard cubs.

I’m sorry but I don’t find the notion that the animal was just being territorial satisfactory. It tried to pull Kirk into its mouth and could have eaten him in two bites. As I said before such a chase scene could have been done better if it had been done differently. The way it is makes it look like it was taken straight form Phantom Menace.

There is more going on in the Federation, as well as the galaxy, than just vulcans who are slow to increase in population size and are long lived. They also aren't all scientists. Some are musicians, religious people, etc. People don't go that far away from where they live, even if they did travel through space. Most people don't have meaningful interactions with high level people. Even if Sisko didn't take Bell's place, another black guy could take his place.

And even if you drop a pebble into a lake, the molecules are effected by the ripple, but the water molecules are still pretty much near the ones that they were near before the ripple. Just because you're late to return a vid, you just don't get as big a lunch the next day. When you're late 5 minutes or 10, you're still late.

The further you get away from the impact spot of the pebble in the lake, the less things get effected. Things are more or less gonna be the same.

The fact of the matter is that everything affects everything else. For example look at the difficulty we have predicting the weather. We generally know what the biggest and most important factors are but even so, predictions more then a week in advance are not very accurate. It’s because of the small things that we cannot track that when taken cumulatively have a large impact. Now the lose of one planet and its species isn’t a big thing to the galaxy but it’s pretty major to the Federation, if only for the physiological impact that it will have on the rest of the Federation’s citizens. I think your pond analogy fails because the ripples would themselves have to set off new ripples.

He was unconscious and didn’t wake up until after the pod had landed. If it’s an escape pod or some special landing pod it should have a phaser as part of its equipment set. I lack of one would mean that either Kirk didn’t find it, didn’t use it, or it wasn’t there. Spock trying to kill someone just isn’t very Spock-like.

Even still, would you trust to give the guy a phaser and he just happens to wake up as you're loading the pod into the tube to be fired off? Of course not. Also as pointed out already, the pod computer told Kirk to stay put and wait for rescue, but Kirk being Kirk doesn't wait around! As for Spock trying to kill Kirk, nothing was said about that, but Spock was not in the right state of mind after the death of his mother and the destruction of Vulcan, and so by marooning Kirk on Delta Vega puts Kirk at serious risk of being killed, either because of a pod malfunction, or for other reasons, like what nearly happened to Kirk with the monster attack.

Still not convinced? Look at how easy it was for Kirk to goad Spock into attacking him on the bridge for everyone to see. Once Spock realized this, he stood down.
-Mike

There is no reason for him to be in a pod in the first place. Quickly getting someone off the ship is what transporters are for. You don’t think the guys who had to drag his body to the pod wouldn’t have thought “Why don’t we just beam him down?” If there was a concern that he would wake up shortly the transporter is the ideal solution. I’m also asserting that a phaser would have already been in the pod as part of its standard equipment and that they would have had to go out of their way to remove it.

As far as waiting for rescue goes, who was going to come get him? One of the ships that were too occupied to respond to a distress call from Vulcan? Another ship of scrambled cadets? Scotty and his little friend who seemed to be the only people at the outpost and had no idea he was there? Old Spock? Or just some random passerby? Why did they drop him 15km away from the outpost, is that really as close that they could get?

And sure Spock was messed up and the entire crew would have been affected as well. But marooning a disobedient crew member like that shouldn’t have been taken in stride as if that was the standard operating procedure. Epically since it puts him in unnecessary danger. GStone was the first to assert that Spock wanted Kirk dead and that does sort of seem to be in inescapable conclusion, considering all of the other safer things he could have done to deal with Kirk.

On a more general point, in a lot of ways the filmmakers were successful in making this feel like a Star Wars movie and don’t get me wrong I a big Star Wars fan. But it just feels like they really wanted to make a Star Wars movie and Lucas wouldn’t let them so they settled for Star Trek. The way Pike tries to get Kirk to join Starfleet because of what George did, makes me think of that saying about how Star Wars is a galaxy full of people but only a few of them are interesting.

[Praeothmin]

I’m sorry but I don’t find the notion that the animal was just being territorial satisfactory. It tried to pull Kirk into its mouth and could have eaten him in two bites. As I said before such a chase scene could have been done better if it had been done differently. The way it is makes it look like it was taken straight form Phantom Menace.

To me, it is satisfactory.
The white monster and Kirk could have been right next to its nesting lair, so while it would normally only chase away creatures that encroach on its territory, this time it wanted to make sure they didn't threaten its offspring...

And it would have looked like TPM if there had been a third, and then a fourth creature coming in each time to eat or attack the previous one, which there wasn't...

There is no reason for him to be in a pod in the first place. Quickly getting someone off the ship is what transporters are for. You don’t think the guys who had to drag his body to the pod wouldn’t have thought “Why don’t we just beam him down?” If there was a concern that he would wake up shortly the transporter is the ideal solution. I’m also asserting that a phaser would have already been in the pod as part of its standard equipment and that they would have had to go out of their way to remove it.

Weren't they at Warp at that time?
Don't forget that transporters in Kirk's time are not as advanced as the ones in TNG and DS9...
The best way to get someone of the ship at Warp might have been through a pod...

As far as waiting for rescue goes, who was going to come get him? One of the ships that were too occupied to respond to a distress call from Vulcan? Another ship of scrambled cadets? Scotty and his little friend who seemed to be the only people at the outpost and had no idea he was there? Old Spock? Or just some random passerby? Why did they drop him 15km away from the outpost, is that really as close that they could get?

The pod stated that he should wait for the rescue.
It probably sent an automated signal to the outpost.
How could the pod's computer know that there were only tweo people in the outpost?
As for the drop, this was a lifepod, probably the best it could do in the surrounding weather was to get Kirk within 15 km of the outpost.

But marooning a disobedient crew member like that shouldn’t have been taken in stride as if that was the standard operating procedure.

At that time, remember that only Kirk, Spock and Sulu knew that Kirk was "field-promoted" by Pike, and that Spock wasn't operating under "full-capacity", no matter how he tried to make it look.
Also, Kirk had, in his eyes, a negative influence on the crew, and the last thing Spock wanted was a crew alwasy questioning his commands or judgement.
So, in his emotionaly influenced logic, he concluded that the safest course for him was to send Kirk of the vessel, next to a Federation outpost, in a lifepod.
If he wanted him dead, he would have had the pod sabotaged, or sent it on a deserted and uninhabitable moon...

On a more general point, in a lot of ways the filmmakers were successful in making this feel like a Star Wars movie

I disagree completely.
This movie was a ST movie.
The only thing that resembled SW in any ways were the sound effects, which is normal since they came from the SW designer, Ben Burt.
But the characters were pure ST, the hero doesn't have super powers, everyone contributed to the success in their own way, the annoyingly cute little creature is only there for a few minutes, and contributes nothing to the story, and definitely does not accompany the hero on his quest.
The Federation is nothing like the evil empire, and Kirk doesn't look or act like a Jedi.
This movie is Star Trek, and nothing else...

[GStone]

The fact of the matter is that everything affects everything else.

Not to the same degree. The difference between someone getting stabbed at one point in time or 5 years later is not gonna make the sun spontaneously loose its ability to hold itself together. Someone robbing a bank this week or next is not gonna make the polar ice caps refreeze the week after.

For example look at the difficulty we have predicting the weather. We generally know what the biggest and most important factors are but even so, predictions more then a week in advance are not very accurate. It’s because of the small things that we cannot track that when taken cumulatively have a large impact.

And when you try for 20 minutes to move a large object and it doesn't move, how does that compute? You're exerting a large amount of energy into the object, but you're not moving it. You might have effected it by making it warmer, but you didn't effect it enough to move it. So, what does it matter if you made it slightly warmer for a short period of time? Say someone came up to the object right after you left and leaned on it and felt the warmth. He took half a second to notice the warmth, while he was resting , but still didn't spend any other more time because it was warm. He then, proceeded to walk into an intersection, just as if he hadn't felt the warmth and saw a shiney coin that was left there an hour ago and the drunk driver still came around the corner and knocked him down.

So, how does not trying to move the object have an impact on the guy getting hit by the drunk driver? It wasn't the warmth, it was the shininess of the coin that made him stop. It was also the tiredness that made him stop at the object, not seeing the guy.

It's the same thing here. They're unconnected events. If you're being attack and you're on your back, if you can still reach a knife that is either 2 inches or 3 from you, what does it matter? You still grab ahold of it within about the same time span, while you're still struggling.

Now the lose of one planet and its species isn’t a big thing to the galaxy but it’s pretty major to the Federation, if only for the physiological impact that it will have on the rest of the Federation’s citizens.

Not the issue. Plus, not everyone likes vulcans anyway.

I think your pond analogy fails because the ripples would themselves have to set off new ripples.

Yes, smaller, weaker changes. Some tiny details might change, but things more or less stay the same the further you get away from the impact site.

[Jedi Master Spock]

What occurs in "Emanations" and "Favorite Son" that result in such high warp numbers?

Not necessarily high, but ambiguous and high. Both involve brief moments and star systems - entering/exiting/passing - and there are probably a few more in that family that I'm forgetting. So while they don't actually force high speeds, they're compatible with high speeds.

As for "The Chase", the upper end of those numbers are restricted to what Professor Galen stated about "Weeks" to traverse the 35,000 to 40,000 light year distance shown on the galaxy map. Assuming the E-D only spent a week chasing down the entire route, over a maximum distance of 40k ly, that would mean a top speed of 2,085,714c, which is in the neighborhood, but still falls short of the Big E's speed.
-Mike

Ahhh, but if we pay close attention to Voyager, we find that for a long trip the actual mileage exceeds the net distance by a factor of up to 2.

So if you stretch "The Chase" as far as possible, you get into that range.

[Sandyin]

Weren't they at Warp at that time?
Don't forget that transporters in Kirk's time are not as advanced as the ones in TNG and DS9...
The best way to get someone of the ship at Warp might have been through a pod...

I don’t recall if they were at warp at the time but Vulcan could easily be seen from Delta Vega with the unaided eye (strange since Vulcan isn’t supposed to have a moon). If they were so far away that transport was impossible and had to leave him in the pod, he’d have to have drifted for a long time to reach the planet since he’d have to be traveling at less then light speed. Putting the ship even further away for when Kirk and Scotty beam aboard hours later thanks to the magic equation. And the hours of unconscious travel makes the lack of a phaser even more odd.

The pod stated that he should wait for the rescue.
It probably sent an automated signal to the outpost.
How could the pod's computer know that there were only tweo people in the outpost?
As for the drop, this was a lifepod, probably the best it could do in the surrounding weather was to get Kirk within 15 km of the outpost.

Spock should have known how many people were at the outpost. Kirk would have known that the chances of someone coming form him weren’t all that great and sitting in that pod for hours would have sucked. But 15km is pretty poor accuracy most of the NASA splashdowns were closer to their target.

At that time, remember that only Kirk, Spock and Sulu knew that Kirk was "field-promoted" by Pike, and that Spock wasn't operating under "full-capacity", no matter how he tried to make it look.
Also, Kirk had, in his eyes, a negative influence on the crew, and the last thing Spock wanted was a crew alwasy questioning his commands or judgement.
So, in his emotionaly influenced logic, he concluded that the safest course for him was to send Kirk of the vessel, next to a Federation outpost, in a lifepod.
If he wanted him dead, he would have had the pod sabotaged, or sent it on a deserted and uninhabitable moon...

His rank is irrelevant. Someone on the bridge should have objected to kicking him off the ship like that. The ship has a brig for a reason. And you can’t just get around that by saying “He could have escaped” because what good is the brig if everyone knows a dangerous person would be able to escape. I’m saying if Spock wanted Kirk out of the way there are things he could have done that would have gotten the job done without kicking him off the ship where he’d be in danger. I’m not saying that Spock was thinking, “I hate this guy, how can I kill him and make it look like an accident?” I’m saying that the decision to send him to Delta Vega the way he did puts him in unnecessary danger without so much as a type 1 phaser to protect himself.

I’m not saying we can’t dance around the issue and come up with explanations to justify it. But there are simpler solutions that the filmmakers didn’t use and the absence is odd and makes Spock and the rest of the crew look like they went out of their way to put Kirk in danger.

I disagree completely.
This movie was a ST movie.
The only thing that resembled SW in any ways were the sound effects, which is normal since they came from the SW designer, Ben Burt.
But the characters were pure ST, the hero doesn't have super powers, everyone contributed to the success in their own way, the annoyingly cute little creature is only there for a few minutes, and contributes nothing to the story, and definitely does not accompany the hero on his quest.
The Federation is nothing like the evil empire, and Kirk doesn't look or act like a Jedi.
This movie is Star Trek, and nothing else...

I’m saying that they turned the Federation into the Empire and Kirk into a Jedi but there are a lot of things that look like they were taken from Star Wars. Pike is obsessed with getting Kirk into Starfleet because his dad was a great officer. Not because of anything that Kirk has done. Given his record, it’s almost in spite of what Kirk has done. By virtue of being his father’s son Kirk is apparently destine for greatness. Kirk is saved from an attack by a wise old man in a robe. The wise old man then fills the young hero in on the back story (granted, a pretty standard role for the wise and the old). Old Spock goes on and on about how he can’t go with Kirk because it would deprive him of the friendship he has enjoyed and that everything will be fine just so long as a man named Kirk has a first officer named Spock on a ship named Enterprise. Then it ends with a big award ceremony. Invisible sheilds that don't seem to do anything. (Not to mention the previously mention animal attack scene) I’m sure there are probably more parallels but those are all I can think of off the top of my head.

This movie just feels like the characters are important because of who they are rather then what they are. It is most obvious with Kirk. Kirk is important because he is Kirk. Not because he is captain of a starship. He goes from cadet on the verge of probation or worse to captain of the Federation flag ship and savior of Earth in what seems to be a day or two. Seems only slightly more believable then farmboy to destroyer of the Death Star in a similar amount of time.

[Mike DiCenso]

Ahhh, but if we pay close attention to Voyager, we find that for a long trip the actual mileage exceeds the net distance by a factor of up to 2.

Well, we could easily infer that since it already is well known that on several occasions the ship was able to shave a good number of years off by improvements in navigational information alone.

So if you stretch "The Chase" as far as possible, you get into that range.

Into what range? The more weeks used, the lower the number. Typically, a 2-3 week journey for a starship across that distance would result in between 700,000 to 1 million c.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Concerning the Warp speed, I've re-watched the movie last night, and the trip to Vulcan, in movie and out, was no more then 10 minutes.
There weren't that many cuts involved, and all the cuts seemed to happen "in real time".
Right after Sulu announces they're at "Maximum Warp", Chekov makes his ship wide announcement, and announces the arrival in three minutes.

If they were so far away that transport was impossible and had to leave him in the pod, he’d have to have drifted for a long time to reach the planet since he’d have to be traveling at less then light speed.

In the movie, Scotty mentions that before he proposed his calculations for Warp transportation, the theoretical maximum distance for transportation was 150km, so perhaps that's why they didn't transport him, because they were out of range.

Spock should have known how many people were at the outpost. Kirk would have known that the chances of someone coming form him weren’t all that great and sitting in that pod for hours would have sucked.

How, or even better, why would he have known that?
It was a backwater outpost where Scotty had been waiting to be relieved of duty for 6 months...

But there are simpler solutions that the filmmakers didn’t use and the absence is odd and makes Spock and the rest of the crew look like they went out of their way to put Kirk in danger.

I agree, but to me it wasn't so bad as to make me hate the movie, or to diminish my appreciation of it...

Pike is obsessed with getting Kirk into Starfleet because his dad was a great officer. Not because of anything that Kirk has done.

No, Pike is obsessed because he knew George Kirk, and he thought he was a great man, and all of James aptitude tests are of the charts.
James wasn't a whiny Emo-bit** mad at his Uncle Owen because he wouldn't let him go to Tachi station with his friends, he was just a rebellious kid who didn't give a fu**...

The wise old man then fills the young hero in on the back story (granted, a pretty standard role for the wise and the old).

This is far from originating in SW, it was a trope that was used in many movies before SW, and in many movies since SW, so this doesn't make the new ST movie similar to SW...

Old Spock goes on and on about how he can’t go with Kirk because it would deprive him of the friendship he has enjoyed and that everything will be fine just so long as a man named Kirk has a first officer named Spock on a ship named Enterprise.

Where did you see that in any SW?
I don't remember seeing anything like that in any of the SW movies...

This movie just feels like the characters are important because of who they are rather then what they are. It is most obvious with Kirk. Kirk is important because he is Kirk. Not because he is captain of a starship. He goes from cadet on the verge of probation or worse to captain of the Federation flag ship and savior of Earth in what seems to be a day or two. Seems only slightly more believable then farmboy to destroyer of the Death Star in a similar amount of time.

Again, I completely disagree.
Kirk has shown insight, strategic thinking, adaptability.
He has shown that he was indeed an exceptionnal leader, while Luke has shown he was a whiner, that he couldn't find his arse without someone pointing it to him, etc...
The only similarity they had was that Kirk and Luke were both courageous.
And, by the way, Kirk has been like this since he was first invented by Roddenberry, and played by William Shatner, some 15 years before SW... :)

[Mith]

I feel like I went to see 1998's Lost in Space again.

More at the blog, but that about sums it up. Fun, but largely meaningless after the Kelvin scene and the boy Spock stuff.

the Kelvin is a pre-incursion starship, it would not have been affected by the timeline changes

I don't agree. I'm not even sure any of this is the same universe, but even if it were the Kelvin need not exist in our TOS universe. After all, start changing Kirk's life and you potentially change all the changes Trek has made in the 20th Century and before, so why should 2233 be normal?

I suspect that given the strange issues we've seen with this temporal incursion, the black hole might have accidently shot them in an alternative past. It might also explain why Spock didn't try going back. We've only seen two methods of dimensional jumping; one involving a transporter and the other involving a singularity. It's possible that Spock didn't know a safe way back into his timeline.

I was a bit annoyed at the fact that a star going supernova was apparently a danger to the whole universe, but not so much by one sending them back into the past. God knows we've seen ST blackholes do all sorts of weird shit before. Voyager alone has them being stuck in one without even realizing it and traveling to another dimension. TNG also had the Enterprise C coming out of it (I think), the Romulans started using black holes, and one instance of when they shattered time and space when an alien race tried to lay eggs in the wormhole of a Warbird.

Then of course, in TOS you have them going back to the past with a black star (aka, black hole).

As for the Kelvin, it may have been an actual design at the time, but perhaps the design itself was shot down in favor of the design we see for the TOS look.

[Mith]

Both the trip from Earth to Vulcan and Vulcan to Earth were extremely fast.

The Earth to Vulcan trip was at maximum warp. And while it is true that there's a scene change in between the ship jumping to warp, and Chekov saying that they'll be arriving in 3 minutes, it's also worth noting that Sulu says "engines at maximum" or somesuch right before Chekov's briefing. And I doubt it took hours to reach maximum warp.

The return trip is more complex. The Enterprise is originally heading for the fleet in the Laurentian system, and only starts going towards Earth after Kirk has managed to get Spock from command. In the same speech that Kirk informs the crew that they're going to Earth, he also says he wants everyone battle-ready in 10 minutes. Oh, and the Vulcan to Earth trip started out at warp 3, but Scotty managed to get the engines to warp 4.

Wait, managed?

The Vulcans had warp 7 ships in Enterprise. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the massive bulk of the Enterprise prevented her from reaching anything higher.

For the most part though, I'm sort of tossing out the warp speeds and keeping them consistent with what we've seen. It's not like this is the first time ST speeds have taken it in the ass *cough* Voyager *cough*.

[Mith]

My point is that they have changed the timeline in such a way that TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and all of the other movies cannot happen as we saw them. Everything after 2233 is different. This instance of time travel is incompatible with all of Trek except ENT. Since these events are not undone by the end of the film, the near entirety of Star Trek is.

How? It's pretty clearly established that this is an alternative timeline. That was made clear by everyone working on the damn thing. The specific reason was so Trekkies could still keep their canon with minimal damage of they didn't like the reboot.

Just because the Dominion can transport across light years doesn’t mean that the Federation can. And if that kind of distance is possible, why do they bother to take runabouts to Bajor all the time, or any intra-solar system travel. Even without a firmly established maximum range the normal range is much less. But just popping an equation into the transporter isn’t credible as a way to expand the range so vastly. It’s a little like saying if you just enter this equation into your operating system’s programming and it’ll run 6x10^12 times faster.

First of all, Spock said that Scotty invented it. Given that Scotty himself was alive in the 24th century thanks to Relics, that easily means that he could have been alive long enough for him to invent the trick, perhaps even after the Dominion did it.

Also, there's not that massive of a tech change between the two transporter systems. They've improved in the later part of the 24th century, but not so much that it could never work. And not only that, part of the M-Enterprise was designed based off the new technology that the Kelvin scanned off the Romulan mining ship.

The makeup for Romulans since TNG has been more then just pointy ears. Adding v-shaped bumps and changing the skin color. Now not every Romulan has those features but some of them on the ship ought to have had them. It’s just odd to get bald, tattooed, TOS looking Romulans in new Trek.

It's probably a subrace, which isn't hard to believe. He could very well come from a part of the planet where they don't have the Vs on them. It might have grown less common in the 24th century, but they could still exist and they'd probably make excellent spies. As for why they did it, probably didn't care for the Vs. I personally never thought they looked all that great and made zip sense as to why they had them in TNG.

On the point of them being bald and tattooed...they're probably the Romulan equal to rednecks.

I won’t argue too much about how the mind of an alien creature works but it seems silly to me that you would spit out a meal to chase a smaller one.

It's possible that the creature didn't eat meals that large and was just attacking it so it could eat Kirk. On the second hand, it's possible it wanted to eat both of them and after killing the wolf thing, it chased after Kirk.

It didn't exactly look as if the place was teeming with life.

Sure Spock is traumatized but no one objects to marooning a guy on an ice covered planet? Why send him down in a pod that lands a considerable distance away from the outpost when there are large carnivorous animals roaming about? Why not beam him to the outpost? And sure people always bust out of jail in fiction but if the characters all think that there’s a 50/50 chance that their prisoners will break out, the jail doesn’t have much use. And if the brig is no good they could have sedated him or something. Dropping him on a planet in such a way that he faces death from exposure or animal attack is just cruel. Someone in the chain of command should have objected.

Who would have? Kirk already claimed it was a violation. I'm just pretty sure at that point, no one gave a fuck. Vulcan had just been destroyed and Kirk was only there because he snuck on. Uhura wasn't going to help him, the security guys at least in part looked to be made up of the guys he fought in the bar, and Spock is a high ranking commander. Kirk was a young douche cadet who wasted their time with three simulations.

It was wrong, no questions asked, but no one cared. Even Bones allowed Spock to do it, even though he thought Spock was being an asshole.

Hello! You’ve missed my point entirely! My objection is that the timeline has been changed. The fact that Spock’s mom is dead means she can’t be alive to talk to Spock in ST:IV.

It is a NEW timeline. There's Star Trek Prime (ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY) and this one (ENT, ST XI with a dash of the others). They are two seperate timelines. This is mentioned in the movie. This has been mentioned by the production team. Get over it.

If I found out a friend’s mom had just been killed I wouldn’t be making sexual advances on them. Nor would I welcome such advances if the situation was reversed. Maybe it’d be different if we just witnessed the destruction of Earth and the human species but I doubt it.

She wasn't trying to make out with him because she was horny, she was trying to comfort him and kissing was going to establish that goal. Given our limited knowledge of Vuclan culture, that might be perfectly acceptable for Vulcans.

I didn’t say it was just his wife. The stuff in quotes is to be read in mocking tone. But everyone should have been able to see the supernova coming. It takes time for a supernova to occur. When a volcano is about to erupt people leave the area likely to be affected. If the star in question was Romulan sun Romulus would need to be abandoned anyway and they would have several minutes to evacuate even after the event. And if it were another star they’d have had years to prepare.

There was something clearly wrong with this supernova. It is so different they could have put anything in its place. Just toss in some sort of subspace bullshit and move on with it. We all know supernovas don't work that way.

The Red Matter didn’t need to be in the core of a planet to make a singularity, the whole plan was to save Romulus was to create a singularity in space to stop the shockwave (or whatever they called it). They did say that the Red Matter needed to be ignited but didn’t elaborate further.

I would also like to point out that the Romulans here aren't exactly an elite group of military minds; they run a mining ship. It's like going batshit crazy on the guys who work on oil rigs because they didn't use an atomic weapon correctly. Chances are they had very little idea how red matter work; they sure as hell didn't make it themselves, despite having all that time to do so. They had to use Spock's.

How is a reboot keeping continuity? I said they were true to the characters and there are many references to things in TOS but that’s not keeping continuity. Seeing the origin of McCoy’s nickname is nice but finding out that the 79 episodes he was a part of didn’t happen is a lot less nice.

Two. Seperate. Time. Lines.

Get it through your thick skull.

It just seems strange to me that they want to capture the feel of Star Wars rather then capture the feel of Star Trek. It sounds an awful lot like Coke wanting to capture the taste of Pepsi. And I find it disappointed that they can’t find a Star Trek fan to direct a Star Trek movie.

It didn't feel like Star Wars. Was it a bit more flashy like Star Wars? Yeah, it was, but it wasn't Star Wars. For one, I actually enjoyed most things about this setting and the enemies weren't so laughably bad that your suspension of disbelief was set to max. It had problems, but it wasn't Star Wars. Not by a long shot.

Presumably they are creating a new separate continuity, akin to what Marvel has done with their Ultimate universe. A modern, updated version of their characters that is separate and distinct from the mainstream Earth-616 continuity. But for 40 years Star Trek has maintained a single continuity and to create a new continuity is off putting. Epically when it is done in a movie with a plot revolving around time travel. I’m fine with Marvel’s Ultimate universe because the primary one is still being supported, but that is the nature of the medium. It is far easier to support multiple continuities when you put out new material every week. But with Star Trek it takes a lot longer to get a lot less.

Um...so?

The Star Trek that I’ve enjoyed is apparently done. We have an entirely new continuity. It’s an alternate reality where everything’s the same but different. It’s like the ENT’s “In a Mirror, Darkly”. I tuned in to see an episode of ENT and while it was good, it had no bearing on the characters I wanted to see. With this movie the best case scenario is that it has no bearing on everything else because the alternative is erasing everything else.

No, it just means we'll be enjoying a different aspect of that world. That's all. We can and probably will go back to ST Prime sometime in the future. And there's a reason for that. Look at the last two incarnations of Trek; they've been dule, unimaginative, horrible, and fucked up our timeline. And you're getting angry with them doing the exact opposite out of all of them.

Personally, I felt this movie was a character study and on that basis, it worked. It failed in other areas, but I would say that the movie was a success, more so than Generations, Nemesis, Insurrection, Final Frontier, and the Motion Picture.

[l33telboi]

The Vulcans had warp 7 ships in Enterprise. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the massive bulk of the Enterprise prevented her from reaching anything higher.

Battle damage is the reason they couldn't get maximum warp. They had just been blasted by the Narada, remember?

[Mith]

The Vulcans had warp 7 ships in Enterprise. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the massive bulk of the Enterprise prevented her from reaching anything higher.

Battle damage is the reason they couldn't get maximum warp. They had just been blasted by the Narada, remember?

Doh!

[Mike DiCenso]

It's probably a subrace, which isn't hard to believe. He could very well come from a part of the planet where they don't have the Vs on them. It might have grown less common in the 24th century, but they could still exist and they'd probably make excellent spies. As for why they did it, probably didn't care for the Vs. I personally never thought they looked all that great and made zip sense as to why they had them in TNG.

This V-less group of Romulans has canon precedent. The very first episode Romulans are shown in, "Balance of Terror", the Romulans are virtually identical to Vulcans. "The Enterprise Incident" Romulans in TOS' third season only reinforce this as does the Romulan ambassador seen in ST 6: The Undiscovered Country. Finally, in "Unification, Parts I & II", none of the V-head Romulans Spock deals with and don't know who he is, seem to think it odd that he has no bumps.

On the subject of the shaved heads and tattoos, that issue was dealt with in the Countdown series of comics; it's a part of a mourning for the dead ritual.
-Mike

[2046]

Those were neither TOS Romulans nor TNG Romulans. They were different altogether. TNG Romulans had a built up square brow with a V-shaped bump on it, like this:



Nero and friends didn't have that. They have a heavy Neanderthal brow with a slight upswing on the outer parts, increasing the altitude of the eyebrows a bit, but other than that nothing. As you can see below, Bana did not have to shave his eyebrows as Nimoy did:



Not to mention their fat-ass swollen ears.