To answer my own question: it appears so.
That’s too bad.
You’re right I take it all back, it’s not entertaining at all, it’s a tragedy.
Yo, carnivorous, I didn’t mean to sound snide… it was kinda hard to miss, was all! I should’ve used a smiley.
And I prefer Facebook. 
Regarding Smitty’s post
The emergency Starfleet meeting probably went something like this:
“Okay, there’s this impossible mission we need to complete. The chance of success is very low. Are there any surviving members of that Enterprise crew that seemed to be able to save the world, galaxy, etc. once a week?”
“I think Spock is still alive.”
“Perfect, let’s send him. Hell, he even died once and came back.”
And put me in the category of people who thoroughly enjoyed the movie. And my wife, who is by no means a Star Trek fan or any kind of aficionado, also loved it.
This is not retrocontinuous. The destruction of Vulcan absolutely places this in an entirely different timeline that cannot be brought into line with TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, and VOY. You’re right that this won’t save the impotent fundies from pooping and peeing themselves, though, and you’ve also made the point that most people just aren’t going to get this.
This changes nothing. It’s just a reimagining.
He says in the movie that he wants Romulus to grow without Federation influence.
At this point, he’s just lashing out at his enemy having accomplished his primary goal. To use the US as an example, someone with nukes who has a beef with New York might very well move onto Washington after they make Manhattan a crater. It’s all or nothing at this point, so why not go for it?
i liked it up to the point with the stupid Red Metal, Supernova story from Spock.
How i would fix the backstory.
Nero’s ship isn’t a mining ship which just happens to be armed to the teeth up to and including planetcracking energy beams. :dubious:
It’s a warship, the latest product of the Romulan obseesion with super-weapons (see Star Trek 10), in yet another attempt to shore up a declining empire. This ship is equipped with experimental isolytic subspace weapons (as seen in ST9).
Unfortunatley, as they are secretly experimenting with these weapons they accidentally destabilise their own sun.
Spock rushes to the rescue as before but it’s to late as he attempts to deploy a modified version of a weapon to stabilise the sun it goes nova and the resulting interaction opens up a time rift which throws them back into the past.
Events before and after the whole exposition thing proceed more or less a before but with the following changes.
Nero isn’t a whiny nice guy who was done wrong. He’s an warrior captain who’s going to sieze the chance to change history so that the Romulan empire becomes the master of the Alpha Quadrant.
So why does he sit around for 20+ years? Which is the other thing that really annoyed me. Two reasons.
First, he wants Spock. Not for petty vengance. But because he’s the only one who knows how the timeline is supposed to be and has a head full of future science to use against him. He want’s to secure Spock before he makes his move.
Second he’s waiting for the right time to exploit his knowledge of the future, sure he’s already destroyed one federation ship but that shouldn’t have changed things too much as far as he knows especially when what he’s actually waiting for doesn’t directly involve the Federation.
Remember those throwaway lines about something blowing up 49 Klingon cruisers that Uhura overheard in a comm intercept.
Lose the pointless ice creature chase, take the time and money from that scene and earlier in the film show this. A beleagered Romulan fleet is being crushed by a Klingon armada in what was the key battle that started the eclipse of the Romulan empire. Nero warps in and wipes the floor with the klingons and then contacts the Romulan Admiral. His first words “Hello, grandfather”. He then briefly explains how he has come to make things right that under his rule as praetor the Romulan empire will be triumphant. Having dealt with the immediate Klingon problem, he’s now going to settle with that pesky Federeation…and the film proceeds as before.
Thanks for real this time. As I posted in the other thread, that will teach me to post after 11:00 pm. 
The show is 50% above OK for me, and the major characters are all given a chance to shine and be memorable, except for Nero. Besides being hell-bent on destroying Earth, there’s nothing evocative about him. A one-dimensional being and sometimes I can’t even pick him out from the rest of the lot.
Second, he said he is “preventing genocide” and he does this by destroying Vulcan and Earth? And the Federation? How would this save his home planet in the future? From the story it is quite clear that he knew Spock was going to it, and he accused the Federation of “doing nothing”. And why is a mining ship armed to the teeth such that it can out-fight several USS Constitution class starships?
Third, I would think that home planets would have powerful surface-to-space weapons as a sort of defense. No nuclear missiles? They pin all their defense on starship?
Fourth, is anyone troubled by “I got your gun” instead “I got your phaser”?
Fifth, how did they fool the computer upon the ship to get the Red Matter? That is assuming that Spock did put in ultra-high security system to allow him to get to the extremely dangerous stuff (as in the “Welcome, Ambassador Spock”)
Sixth, did the Enterprise ever fire a single torpedo in the movie except during the last part? I find the space battles sort of lack-luster.
Despite all these, I enjoyed the show and particularly like Sulsa’s performance. Kirk was all right, I think the dialogue is okay, but the plot is unkind of un-interesting. The story, however, is pretty well told and there a few “WTHOMGBBQ!” scene, especially at the start, when the Enterprise came out from warp and when it emerged out from the gas (“just like a submarine”).
In fact, I think it could be done worst. The characters are “re-modernised” quite nicely (vibro-katana, more phaser blasts instead of a single shot, Spock with improved hand combat skill) and the actions scenes are definitely better than Nemesis. It could become another over-the-board action science-fic film, but it didn’t, so I am quite okay.
Would anyone like to see the cast of the movies in a ministry of the New Star Trek universe? I think I wouldn’t mind.
I think he hang around for 25 years because Spock did not emerge. He wanted Spock to witness the death of his own home planet, and to get his hand on the Red Matter which is required for his plan. Yep, not the neatest of reason to give enough time for young Kirk and Spock to grow up…
OK my 2 cents:
It was a reboot and it’s Star Trek physics so I can handle a lot of the big things, but the little things bothered me.
- Spock already commander with the muppet babies still in the academy
- Although non-canon, I would have loved the simulation to be done the way it was in the book Kobayashi Maru whereing Kirk reprogrammed it to so that the Klingons were afraid of fighting the bad-ass Captain Kirk.
- Hoth world? Put Kirk in the brig and Scotty helps him escape. Spock is one of the Vulcan refugees. Difficult to work? Yep, but more plausible.
- I actually could accept Kirk being promoted to Captain from a junior officer (see the story of Gen. Custer. Promoted from junior officer to youngest general ever by mistake, he then saves the day at Gettysburg so the Department of War declines to correct the mistake) but as a cadet? Not buying it.
I’m glad these are open spoilers in this thread.
There were some things that totally rocked, from a plot perspective, in a big picture sort of way.
Specifically, the loss of the planet Vulcan and the entire race in a refugee status. The Vulcans always acted as if they were superior to humans, even in the Original Series, and bordering on xeno-racism. Now, that has been turned on its head and they are dependent on humanity. I think this opens up a whole pile of plot opportunities.
Someone back on page 1 mentioned that Star Trek excels when it is about character, and not science, and I actually couldn’t agree more with that statement. Even Star Trek II, which has been cited over and over again by fans as the “best” of the movies, was good because of character interaction. Heck, Shatner and Montalban never even shared a sound stage during production - THAT is character interaction! And the science in ST2 was just about as goof-ball as the science in this new movie…I mean, really - a planet-creating device? C’mon! And yet, we didn’t care because of what was happening between the characters. This new Trek, I feel, is in that spirit.
This is one of the times when my non-classical music cluelessness was a help to me. I didn’t recognize the song, as I have never actually listened to any Beasie Boys music and am not really sure if they’re rap or pop or rock or whatever. I’m not sure if they’re white or black, to tell you the truth. Anyway, I zoned out on the song. I didn’t know whether it was supposed to be a future song or a recycled contemporary song; it never occurred to me to wonder.
As for the Trekkies-will-hate-it, non-Trekkies-will-love-it-thing – sorry, but that’s not me. I like Trek well enough, but I went in expecting a total reboot, either through time-travel as we got or a franker, BSG-type move starting a new universe related to the previous one only in name. I was cool with either approach. I simply thought the story was stupid, unbelievable in character motivation, self-contradictory, and boring. I might have been willing to overlook the awesomely stupid plot errors and the typically insane Trek science if I had been able to identify with the protagonist–but, as I wrote upthread, I found 2009!Kirk odious in every scene after his birth.
ETA: I also agree that destroying Vulcan is very interesting from a plot perspective, though it seems more like something you’d explore in a television series.
It just occurred to me what this movie, or rather the reactions to it, reminds me of. Signs. Some people, like me, love it; others hate it. (True story: the first time I saw it I sneaked into the theater without paying, and I enjoyed it so much that I went and bought a ticket for the next show and then discarded it, because I loved it to much to steal.) I can tolerate the poor logic in Signs because I empathized with Mel Gibson’s character, and liked him and his family; I wanted them to survive and be healed, so the plot holes were inconsequential to me. With this latest Trek, not so much.
Actually, it was a lot better. It’s less disruptive to suggest that a deliberate piece of technology does something weird but we just haven’t invented it yet than to suggest that a perfectly natural phenomenon that we already understand does something weird, especially if it’s so catastrophic that you can’t pretend it just happens unobserved in nature.
Besides, based on the widespread use of replicators and transporters, the conversion of mass to energy and back again would have to be a well-understood science in the Star Trek universe. The Genesis Device is simply a more powerful, self-contained example of that technology.
Enjoyable film, but I thought Kirk was a wanker.
I can concede your point, Grumman, but essentially, I was making the point that we have a lot of suspension-of-disbelief in the Trek universe across the board.
Ooh, that sounds nifty (seriously)! There was a prequel comic that explained how his simple mining vessel was outfitted with new Romulan prototype self-repairing nano tech based off of captured Borg tech - basically a really round about excuse for a evil thorny-looking spacecraft that was nigh indestructible.
Do they explain where on earth (so to speak) the rest of the Starfleet navy is? Wasn’t there some, and my memory is hazy on this point, mention of another crisis somewhere which is why they had to rush all the cadets onto the ships available around Earth.
Which now i think of it is also a bit odd. There’s half a dozen uncrewed starships just sitting there in orbit? :dubious:
Including the brand new Fleet Flagship, which is simultanously fully in commission and ready to go but hasn’t got a crew?
Oh god i have to stop thinking about the plot holes in this film, *it’s turtles all the way down *
OK, maybe it took a shower to come to realize how to set up the movie plausibly without a “Fuck you” to canon
- The graduating cadets are comparing assignments. Spock as junior science officer is the only one assigned to the Enterprise.
- Oh shit! Vulcan needs help. Since time is critical, use the new ensigns to staff the just-built ships and give them breveted ranks. What does it matter? It’s a rescue mission.
- When they get there, Nero asks for Capt. Robert M. April who gets killed (like the USS Kelvin captain) leaving first officer Pike in command.
blah blah blah - get attacked, killing Chief medical officer (Piper along with Boyd maybe?) propelling McCoy (not a cadet but a young doctor) into CMO status. Perhaps a Majel Barrett look-alike 2nd officer get killed in attack. Kirk becomes 1st officer due to breveted rank. - Young engineer Scotty save the day by magnatizing something to attract the torpedos or something.
- Kirk leads attack on drill (like movie) blah blah blah. Since Pike goes to Nero’s ship, when Kirk gets back, he is now Captain with his rag-tag crew to save the world.
- At some point in character development, Kirk and Spock have a (non-gay) bonding moment when Kirk (now dadless after the Kelvin) comforts Spock losing his mother.
Actually when Nero is questioning Pike, isn’t he trying to get some defence codes for Earth. I can’t remember exactly what he said but i do recall it sounded like that sort of thing. Anyone remember?