Looked like it needed to be said, and snarkily, as far as I can tell.
As for the movie… if the dreadnought was Khan’s design and he set up the torpedo/freezers with the goal of having his crew loaded on the dreadnought… well, I will admit that clarifies Khan’s motivation, a little. It makes me wonder how many blood-bribes THAT took, but no matter. Why does Marcus then load the 72 on Enterprise?
In responding to a post like that, the more snark, the better, says I.
I’ve been wondering about that. If he knew the corpsicles were in the torpedoes, there’s no way he’d give Kirk all 72 of them. Even if he had no idea, the official mission was to fire one (1) torpedo into Klingon space and maybe start a war, with the other option being that Kirk would do what he did and actually go to Kronos, in which case he didn’t need any torpedoes at all.
The most important qualification to be a Starfleet officer is not mental toughness or the ability to think on your feet. Rather, it is the ability to hang onto ledges, or hang on to people hanging off ledges, or hang on to people hanging off people hanging off ledges. Which explains why Vulcans were so skeptical about Humans exploring the galaxy, we just don’t have the grip strength.
As for Starfleet’s relationship to the Federation Government, as I’ve said before my personal opinion is that Starfleet is the post-scarcity equivalent to the Boy Scouts. People who like building spaceships and dressing up and exploring the galaxy can do whatever they like. Most people prefer to stay home and play video games all day.
Nobody joins Starfleet because they need a job, because nobody needs a job. Starfleet is not supported by taxes because nobody pays taxes. If Starfleet wants to outfit and crew a spaceship they have find people willing to do the job. Starfleet sometimes fills military or police roles, because they are capable of doing so. But they do so for the same reason a boy scout troop might do search and rescue. If Starfleet sometimes seems hyper-competent and other times alarmingly lackadaisical, it’s because Starfleet only has its internal resources to rely on, and if they can’t find enough people willing to play security guard then there’s no security guards this week.
On a Starship it’s different–you obey orders, or you get sent home and don’t get to play. But this also explains the loosey-goosey hierarchy and command structure. I’m the Captain! No wait, you’re the Captain! That’s an order! I order you to not listen to my orders! You’re off the force! I want your gun and your badge! This whole starship is out of order!
That actually makes a lot of sense.
khan is a very logical, with a big scoop of ruthless, thinker. he will, i won’t say never… but i really can’t think of a scenario that he willl do something just “out of the goodness of his heart”. should he give a kid an ice cream cone, there will be something in it for him somewhere.
now marcus, his thinking is somewhat more murky. he has to keep his good standing, he can’t let anything smudge his name, yet he wants to be the big war hero. gotta have a war for that to happen.
he has a very, very, loose photon torpedo with khan on kronos. khan is a very charismatic guy, he will have no trouble, should he want to, perhaps getting the klingons on to his side. he has no loyalty to starfleet or earth, and perhaps the klingon warrior way and klingons are a better fit for him.
marcus is in a bit of a panic, khan has blown up his secret lab, he has shot up his secret meeting, and now in runs james kirk. “khan is on kronos!” “let me at him!” “i’ll get him for you!”
marcus jumps at the chance, in one swoop, he can get rid of khan, his crew, and start a war with the klingons. he gives kirk nifty new long range torpedos to shoot at khan, makes sure the enterprize will break down while in klingon territory, figuring that kirk will use the rest of the torpedos against the klingons that hunt him down for firing on their home world.
of course kirk and khan threw a bit of a twist into his finely tuned plan. but hey! no worries i’ll just blow up the ship they all are on and back on track for war. who would doubt marcus when he claims that he tried to save them but was a bit too late. those naughty klingons!
Eh… not so much. Starfleet has the power of imprisonment (after court-martial conviction) and potential death (when ordered on dangerous missions, or in TOS, if you visit Talos IV) over its members, and enforces the law against Federation civilians (just ask Harry Mudd), as well as providing exploratory, diplomatic and military services. It clearly isn’t just a social club or bowling league.
Get a Life.
I’m quite happy with my life, thank you very much.
“Call down to the engine room. Have them put on more snark!”
thank you! why khronos?
well, perhaps the klingons are a better fit for khan. they would understand his need to conquer and rule. no extradition treaty? a chance to go after marcus in a bird of prey? khan would love to be in the middle of an epic war.
Finally saw it over the weekend. A lot of people have shared my concerns.
I’m torn about the movie. On the one thing, JJ Abrams makes exciting and fun movies. The plots are full of action and adventure, there’s a fair bit of humor, and it can be entertaining. On the alternate thing*, I just don’t care for his forcing back to the well, retreading old ground. Sure, we have a completely different adventure with Khan, we see a totally different confrontation and a totally different way Khan almost wins. But why? It just feels like Abrams is too busy trying to put in all the references he can to the old series to actually write a new adventure.
The whole point of a reboot is so we can get new stories, and not be tied to canon. So why go do the same old stories again? It’s like Abrams said: “Okay, Trek fans derided my last film. I know, I’ll go back to the sure fire best Trek movie ever, STII. Trek fans will have to love it.”
By the way, I managed to miss spoilers for the movie, so I didn’t know it was Khan until pretty close to the reveal. Then I was a bit thrown because he doesn’t look vaguely Indian at all.
The biggest problem for me, though, was I kept seeing places where stupid things happened that didn’t make sense. Okay, they explained blowing up the archive, and why Mickey would do his bidding. Why is Starfleet’s reaction to gather all the heads of all the in-system Starships in a building in the sky with windows to the outside and no defenses, instead of an underground bunker, or having shields on the building and laser turrets? “Because we’re not military” ? :dubious:
For the communicator thing with Scotty, I was thinking they were patched through some sort of Earth global com network, but it still seems a bit much they can talk directly.
Then Scotty flies off to the place, but the super secret base doesn’t have any sensors, no security screens? And he just floats up and is sitting there when a stream of shuttles comes along, and nobody sees him, or sees him hop in line? :smack:
There were other things I can’t remember now, it just felt like I kept being taken out of the story by places where it didn’t make sense.
I also can’t figure why Khan ran to Kronos. It does make sense that he figured out he could use Enterprise, which is why he intervened against the Klingons, and he clued in on Kirk when Enterprise said they had him on torpedo lock but were coming down to arrest him. That is what suggested Kirk could be manipulated by his honor. Also, that had to be one of the special torpedos, so he probably expected he could get at least one of his crew back, with renewed hope he could get more.
The other big thing, Kirk fucks up and gets busted back to the Academy. Awesome, I thought, that is exactly what needed to happen, because he was thrust into the captaincy without really understanding the lessons necessary to make him a great captain. That was the smartest move Starfleet could have made. But then they had to go undo it and set him up for the return to status quo with the death of Pike, because it wouldn’t be a Star Trek movie if Kirk isn’t in charge. Meh. So this plot shows Kirk learning the necessary lessons under fire. Okay.
I don’t think she was pissy because he risked his life, or even expected to die rather than be rescued because of the Prime Directive. I think she got pissy because he didn’t get all weepy and upset over the fact he was dying and wouldn’t be with her.
That’s pretty much from Space Seed. Yes, Khan was born somewhere around 1959.
That was a poorly handled bit of exposition to set up things later. Apparently McCoy has Khan in sickbay so decides to run tests with his blood, right when Kirk is interviewing Khan. Or something. It was very odd, the timing was strange. Basically Kirk sees McCoy poking around and his ADD kicks in. “I’m having this important and grave conversation with Khan, McCoy, what the hell are you doing over there?”
Yes, the conversation with Spock Prime seemed pointless and trite. As for how they defeated him in the original timeline, I’m assuming that Spock Prime did not say “Well, we found that Khan displayed a lack of grasp of the geometry of space and was stuck with 2 dimensional thinking, so we employed a three dimensional move to get into position where he did not see us coming.” That would not have been very helpful, especially since in this timeline Khan had time to adjust and was specifically involved in weapons and tactics development. I rather think he said more along the lines of “Khan is ruthless and brilliant, but he is arrogant and can be overconfident, and can be shortsighted when he thinks he is getting his way.” Still, I’m not sure how that really helped with the plan.
As others have said, the whole tension of the death scene does not make sense in light of the reboot. Spock and Kirk do not have a strong bond of friendship, we see they are still largely uncomfortable with each other by the events of the opener, with the Captain’s Log and Spock’s report. We get a replay of the radiation chamber event because Abrams is remaking Wrath of Khan, and so we have to have a radiation chamber scene and a sacrificial death. We get Spock saying “out of danger”, and we get a “Khaaaaaaaannnn!!” because that’s what WoK did. Meh. I see how he was playing the scene for a parallel, but it was unnecessary.
And I don’t accept that Spock would have fallen apart over any personal loss. He had clarity and calm when facing his own death. He had clarity and calm with the death of Pike right in front of him. The whole point of the death scene in WoK is that they have this long history together and forged this close friendship. The reboot timeline has just not had time or circumstances to forge that friendship.
Yes, they were at their destination when knocked out of warp. It’s like they expect to warp right up to 10 miles away from Kronos, so they can sneak up on the Klingons, and then warp right up to the front doors of Starbase 1.
I agree. It didn’t make any sense as a Captain’s oath.
Mudd incident?
Yes, lens flares like crazy. Distracting and unnecessary and totally ridiculous and Abrams should be slapped.
It was stated that it was a year after the events. I think it was a memorial ceremony in remembrance of the disaster. Kirk was chosen to speak, and chose to reflect on Pike.
Supposedly, he planned out the whole strategy of bombing the Section 31 base to trigger Starfleet to meet, then timed his strike to take out Admiral Marcus and all of Starfleet command at Earth. With an escape route with the Transwarp transporter. Then he recognized Kirk could give him Enterprise and out fought the Klingons to rescue Kirk and Co. His plan was to convince Kirk what Marcus was doing so that Kirk would help him, probably expecting at that point Kirk would unthaw his crew. Then Admiral Marcus showed up, and he started strategizing taking over the other ship. So there was a fair amount of strategizing and playing people, but no real manipulations or thought duels.
Agreed. Abrams thinks all he needs is a bunch of call backs and some big explosions and a few fistfights and he’s got a hit. I’d like a coherent story, characterizations that are true to the spirit of the original while accepting the change of the reboot, and perhaps some originality, something new.
No, Kirk specifically instructs Sulu to put it on a narrow beam transmission. I think it’s just a matter of a random patrol.
Now I don’t remember from the 2009 movie.
You get a life. You’re the one wasting your time reading this thread and responding. Sure, we’re reading this thread and responding, but we’re not wasting our time. We’re enjoying a discussion about the merits and failings of the movie, to express our own disappointments and put in our suggestions for improvements, so others can congratulate us on our creativity. We’re interacting and commisserating and rejoicing and otherwise doing what people do with a topic they enjoy.
You are threadshitting.
- Hand - they’re called hands! Come on, get it right!
I haven’t read the thread, so apologies, but I need to get this off my chest.
Bad Space Stuff:
[ul]
[li] The coordinates that Khan gives Kirk, who gives them to Scotty. They lead to a secret dreadnaught hidden behind a moon of Jupiter. Because that moon is always there at those coordinates. Neither it nor Jupiter are in constant motion.[/li]
[li] Big battle near the moon. At least, close enough so the moon looks a lot bigger than the earth. The moon is dense enough so that if it’s that freaking big compared to the earth, which way is a body in freefall falling? Toward the moon![/li]
[li] The Enterprise falls toward earth. Fine. Whatever. How long does it take something to fall from out there toward earth? Well, it took the Apollo astronauts three days to travel from the moon back, with an initial thrust. The Enterprise fell in a matter of minutes.[/li][/ul]
The movie itself was meh. I’m sure it’s been said a hundred times in the thread that it was more like a Star Wars movie than Star Trek. Zachary Quinto’s great as Spock; most of the others are passable - I appreciate the actor playing “Scotty”'s take on the character - different but believable. Chekov should have just died. He was so bad.
I at least liked that Kirk was shrewd - he out-calculated Marcus, which is how Kirk thrives in the best TOS eps.
Heh. 238854 miles in 10 minutes = 1.433 million miles per hour. Good thing they had those seat belts!
Things that space movies will never, ever get right: gravity, and vacuum.
Oh my god, we opened an airlock! Now everything on the ship is instantly blasted at hurricane speeds out into space!
Except the ship is only pressurized at one atmosphere, and you only opened a little door. Which means that pressurized air is blowing out the door into space.
If you were in a room and put a jet engine in the hole, and blasted air into the next room, what would that be like? Would everything in the room be sucked into the jet engine? Would people hundreds of feet away be knocked off their feet?
You’d feel a breeze as air blew out of the room. If you were really close to the jet you might feel a stiff breeze.
And that is all the open airlock would feel like. Air pushing out of the hole under the horrific force of…one atmosphere of pressure.
I saw it for the second time last night (in my defense, I wouldn’t have gone again but a friend really wanted to see it so I went with her.)
The plot was even worse the second time around. I was hoping that having seen the movie once already would help me make more sense of the plot but I kept finding more and more holes in it. I finally decided to try and not think about the plot at all, and I enjoyed the movie more after that. I am still very disappointed in the plot, though. They had a chance to make a great movie and they blew it.
There were a lot of things I really liked about it, though. The acting and dialogue was terrific. I loved all the nods to TOS: tribbles, Nurse Chapel, “I’m a doctor, not a…”, etc. There were so many instances where I chuckled out loud, even seeing it for the second time.
I loved the soundtrack so much that after hearing it again I went home and bought the mp3 album. The Enterprise theme in particular was perfectly majestic.
I hadn’t noticed the lens flares, but having followed this thread for a while, I noticed them a lot more the second time around. “Oh yeah, there’s one, there’s another…oh there’s a big blue one…” 
In my case, it was more a matter of “Wait, what’s that thing in the foreground? Oh, never mind, it’s just another lens flare”.
Maybe this was addressed somewhere upthread, but why are they setting off 10-15 years early on the 5 Year Mission? I can’t help but wonder if Star Fleet really wants Kirk & Co out of their hair and this is a great way of getting rid of him. Make them media heroes to distract from the fact that they almost sent two starships crashing into Earth, then send them off for a very long time, hopefully never to return. Can Kirk really be Invader Zim? Did anyone notice if any of those admirals were really tall?
The 5 year mission thing is goofy, but then there’s a lot goofy about the reboot. TOS never gave the impression that the Enterprise was the first starship, or the first of it’s class, or the first to go on a 5 year mission. The 5 year mission thing was implied as a standard commissioning for starships, or starships of that class. There was even reference to Spock’s prior assignment on Enterprise under Pike. It wasn’t suggested (though wasn’t really addressed) that Pike was the first captain of Enterprise.
The whole plot of this crew being assembled and sent out together early is goofy. It’s a bone of contention that Kirk doesn’t have the training or experience to make him the capable captain we see in TOS. It’s been the plot of two films now that this Kirk is a brash young hotshot that shouldn’t be in command but somehow is. The thing is, with the exception of Spock, none of this crew is really ready for the assignments they have, and Spock is iffy as being Exec. Okay, maybe Chekov, since he’s probably an ensign and he was likely on his first assignment in TOS. But then that just spawns different questions about Chekov.
McCoy is a Doctor, sure, and was a doctor before the academy. Of course there is no reason why McCoy should have been at the academy with Kirk. There was never that implication in TOS. (Sigh) Even though McCoy wouldn’t face the same issues of experience the others would, there’s still an element of having experience working on a starship as one of a team of medical staff before being head of the department, and knowing something about dealing with non-human crew before being in charge of research in the far reaches of space. I could let it slide, depending on what McCoy’s prior experience really was and exactly what the Starfleet Medical training entails.
Even Scotty, being slightly older and having some experience in the field, nevertheless should have time as a junior engineer serving a ship before being in charge of it. Ah, but he’s Scotty.
And Uhura’s in charge of communications (and possibly intelligence) because of her innate talents, so experience isn’t important.
And Sulu is just that good, so really who needs experience?
I am tickled a bit by the idea of the 5 year mission basically being a keep-busy mission to Antarctica to get rid of Kirk for a while.
I figure it’s something like the Great White Fleet. Sure they might accomplish some useful stuff while they’re out, but this is mainly to show the flag and let everyone see how badass (and peaceful!) the Federation is. The fact that they must be working hard to rebuild and keep ahead of the Klingons might play a bit into that choice of strategy.