There’s no way that a multi-ton alien spaceship could remain parked in a cloaked state for very long on a grassy lawn in a public park. As soon as someone bumps into it playing Frisbee with their dog (the dog would probably notice the landing pads first, actually), the news and/or military will be all over it.
There’s two Scottish guys who work as porters in a hospital near me. It isn’t that hard to believe.
[quote=“Morbo, post:1, topic:567554”]
[li] How the hell did Sulu get that helicopter? Did he just happen across the most trusting military mechanic in the US?[/li][/QUOTE]
Don’t ask, don’t tell. 
I hate you. 
I think the joke was that in the 23rd century, they actually ARE considered giants.
Hey, why not? In Dickens’s day people thought he was a popular hack. It’s silly, but a clever throwaway gag.
Reminds me of one of the more prophetic Mad Magazine bits, during their parody of Trek IV:
Kirk: We need to get to the Naval base. Uhura! Go over there and hustle those sailors!
Uhura: May I remind you that we’re in San Francisco?
Kirk: You’re right! Sulu! Go over there and hustle those sailors!
I can deal with brooklyn trash picker uppers.
I can deal with no one on the ground finding the ship while it was cloaked.
I can deal with Sulu stealing a helicopter.
I have a hard time dealing with no one paying attention to the helicopter as it flys thru Golden Gate park, carrying a huge piece of Plexiglas that just “disapears” into the air with strange scottish sounding folks yelling at it.
I have an even harder time understanding why they didn’t just beam the stuff into place - they had the fuel problem solved at that point.
Actually it seems like most of the time beaming within the ship doing the vessel was problematic with even smaller things like humans.
In Enterprise, Captain Archer (pre-Kirk) has sufficient technology to rob an ATM and steal a car in 2004 (or were the keys there?), so it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say that Sulu could have possessed similar equipment or knowhow to jack a 1980’s helicopter.
“George & Gracie” really means nothing to this crowd? 
Y’all are a bunch of youngsters!
We never missed this show when I was a kid.
No, I think most of us are familiar with them. Heck I even have a DVD with some of their shows. It was only a buck, what a deal.
My biggest problem is that Scotty tries to speak into a mouse, then types at breakneck speed, generating a 3-D model of a molecule without using the mouse on a Macintosh Plus.:smack:
I had to offer my two cents for this thread…
I guess we all saw the rebroadcast on ScyFy recently??
Well I’ve noticed a couple more annoyances as well. I’ll ignore the geographical inconsistencies as well, even though I’ve only been to SF a handful of times and the mistakes are obvious to me.
For me the movie has two glaring plot holes. One, time travel. I won’t go there because we, as the audience, have to suspend our disbelief whenever going back in time is involved. It’s a very interesting and engaging device, but then you start asking questions, like “Whenever something catastrophic happens like the Borg invasion, why not go back in time and prevent it?” or “why don’t the Klingons and Romulans use this trick all the time to destroy earth?” It’s better not to ask these questions and go along for the ride. Two, the recrystalization of dilithium conundrum. Spock instantly comes up with a solution that isn’t available in the 23rd century??? Come on, just build a uranium reactor for these high energy protons and dispose of the waste in a star or something. This, to me, is very problematic, but it does provide the whole Chekov plot line, which is entertaining.
Also of note:
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During the opening scene at the pretrial of Kirk et al., a short montage shows the destruction of the Enterprise, and Kirk’s message to Earth. It’s possible that the Klingon ship recorded the blowing up part, but how did the Federation get the tape? Did Kirk email it to them for the trial? Also, who shot that footage of the bridge of the Enterprise with the Klingons on it?
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The tour group at the Cetacean Institute is so typically 80’s diverse. A couple of nuns, a precocious teen, an army dude, a navy officer, a gaggle of old women, and a breakdancing-style black guy. BTW, George and Gracie means very little to me, either, and I doubt the teenager on that tour group knew what she was talking about.
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No one above deck notices when Spock dives into the whale tank? Pretty weak security. Also, when Spock gets out of the water, his clothes are completely dry- just his hair is wet. Guess he got the self-drying jacket from Back to the Future 2.
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I’ve been annoyed at the fast typing Scotty as well. Another thing, the primitive MacPlus chemistry program can recognize new elements/compounds? OK, maybe he typed that in. But is Transparent Aluminum so great that nothing can beat it for 300+ years? Even in STNG the windows are made out of it.
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The Helicopter was never a problem for me. Like mlees said, I thought it came with the Plexiglass deal. The helo pilot is not military- there are chemical tanks and guys with hard hats in the background of that scene. Maybe the plexiglass company owned the copter or leased that one for certain deliveries. I think it’s actually a good thing that the stealing scene never made it to the final cut.
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If power was at a premium, why did Spock beam up after getting dropped off in GG Park instead of just hopping in a hatch?
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Love the Michelob product placement. They don’t get out too much anymore… But Kirk’s reaction to beer? What’s that about? I’m pretty sure beer does exist in the 23rd century. Alcohol certainly does. Maybe he’s into microbrews and he hates weak lagers.
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Yeah, I didn’t think there were guard dogs on carriers either, lol! Pretty poor specimen- didn’t even bark at two intruders! Also, I’m not sure that reactors have windows into their glowing red innards…
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Would a power drain in the reactor necessarily indicate the presence of an intruder??
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Dr. Taylor would have really f-ed herself up by running into the metal hull.
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Full impulse to the Bering sea??? Not to sound too dorky, but it would take a fraction of a second to get there and probably burn up a great portion of Earth’s atmosphere.
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Are Uhura’s Lee Press-On nails Starfleet issue? Not very functional.
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There is no way that that Sarek could have seen the ship before it passed the GG Bridge.
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So this massive probe was sent to say about 100 words or so to the whales and then jet? Weird.
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Love the stock footage of the whales breaching in open ocean at the end.
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At the end, Starfleet has created a new Enterprise, 1701-A, which seems to be heavily based on the earlier design that was 30 years old. Now, the ship appears to have been built in about three months or so following the destruction of the 1701 in ST III. That’s pretty darn quick. Also, aircraft carriers like those of the Nimitz class may have operational lifetimes of 50+ years, but the 1701-A was decommissioned only seven years after it was built. Seems like an incredible waste of time, esp. since the new Excelsior class had already been around for a few years.
All in all, a great romp of a movie. Still fun to this day. The movie print is in horrible condition- spots galore. In need of a major restoration.
sirfelgar, you should not watch movies I think.
Hah! As I said, I love the movie, but I’m procrastinating doing the work I should be doing, so I put some extra effort into this one.
They do when the Borg conquer Earth on one of the STNG movies.
I believe they just recommissioned another one, as they did with San Paulo (sp) on STDS9.
You mean just change the name of another Constitution class ship to Enterprise? Possibly, but not likely:
It says that the new ship took a shakedown cruise.
The fanwank that I heard was that it was a new one being built that was renamed (the Start Trek IV Sourcebook for the old FASA Star Trek Roleplaying game names it as the USS Atlantis before the rename, though of course that’s not official canon)
As for how old the design is, I believe the idea was that the Star Trek I redesign was something of a Washington’s Axe scenario–pretty much everything was replaced, so it can largely be considered a new design.
Yep, look at the final version of the New Jersey. A far cry from the WWII version.
Even the Current Big ‘E’ is very modernized from when she was launched. The electronics are all new and most of the weapon systems of course.
That’s a great point, and the Reagan and GW Bush are way more advanced than the Nimitz, but the fact remains that the 1701-A was decommissioned seven years later, so the design couldn’t have been all that new. New electronics and missiles in an F-4 Phantom won’t make it a F-22.
I think the ST Movie people just wanted to keep the Enterprise going for two more movies without too much discontinuity for the viewers. The ship had become such an iconic image.