# The new Star Trek movie voids TOS? \[Open Spoilers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 5, 2009, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371 "2009-05-05T00:51:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/41 "2009-05-05T21:42:37Z")
Didn’t CSI do this whole thing as a episode a couple of weeks ago? And you can see one of the scenes they were parodying on last night’s (5/4) Colbert Report. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/42 "2009-05-05T21:54:31Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > Yes, it is fiction; but I love it most when care has been taken over the grand arc of the story to treat even passing details as established fact. Rather like the way in which the Classics adapted and expanded on each other - Homer is, after all, only fiction, but Virgil was not allowed to say that Homer got all wrong! Virgil had to come up with clever ways of troping the story without contradicting it. :rolleyes: Yeah, like no one in ancient times contradicted someone else (or even themselves, as Homer did—_once in the Iliad itself_ when he forgot someone had died in an earlier scene). Homer ignored the myths about Helen’s divine parentage, which Hesiod played up. Hesiod completely inverted the original Pandora story as a joke, & his parody became the standard version taught in schools, because it was Hesiod. We’re all imperfect recorders. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/43 "2009-05-05T21:57:21Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If you look at the Masked Rider TV series in Japan, each new series reboots the entire story, giving new origins for the characters, a new explanation for their powers, a new explanation of the workings of the universe, etc. though of course it all fits within certain general guidelines. But outside of that, there’s novels and manga, t-shirts and toys, based upon that particular incarnation. The TV show is at the center of the universe, so it–and the principal visionary behind it–decides the ultimate canon for that continuity, but that doesn’t impact other seasons. The “Ranger” series are the same way for the most part, although there’s usually a team-up with the previous season. You can try to come up with a sort of overall Ranger universe, but it’s not important to the individual series. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/44 "2009-05-06T14:59:40Z")
I kind of wish I didn’t read this thread, but then you warned me so it’s my own damn fault. I hope blowing up Vulcan works in the movie, and I won’t say “Oh Vulcan’s gone, none of the stuff in TOS and their movies can happen now because the timeline is screwed up blah blah blah.” It’s fiction, I can handle it. But blowing up Vulcan? To me that sounds like the equivalent of Michael Bay having a giant meteor trash Paris in Armageddon because big explosions are fun and it proves just how dangerous this meteor is. You better take that threat seriously because look at what it just did! So I’m actually concerned that Vulcan was blown up just to prove that Nero is a dangerous villain and to make a big special effect. Please tell me that it works in the movie and it’s not that. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/45 "2009-05-06T15:29:28Z")
> [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](#): > > I kind of wish I didn’t read this thread, but then you warned me so it’s my own damn fault. > > I hope blowing up Vulcan works in the movie, and I won’t say “Oh Vulcan’s gone, none of the stuff in TOS and their movies can happen now because the timeline is screwed up blah blah blah.” It’s fiction, I can handle it. > > But blowing up Vulcan? To me that sounds like the equivalent of Michael Bay having a giant meteor trash Paris in Armageddon because big explosions are fun and it proves just how dangerous this meteor is. You better take that threat seriously because look at what it just did! > > So I’m actually concerned that Vulcan was blown up just to prove that Nero is a dangerous villain and to make a big special effect. Please tell me that it works in the movie and it’s not that. Spoiler answer below: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That’s a hard question to answer. Yes, it does prove that Nero and the technology he uses is dangerous and the special effects are “pretty”. However, in my opinion the destruction is handled well. There’s a real dramatic tension leading up to it… It felt like something Joss Whedon would do, actually. You think the heroes are going to save the day, then you realize they won’t, and you get a sinking feeling as you watch everything go to hell. The consequences are given weight. It’s not shrugged off, and there’s a very real sense of what the surviving Vulcans have to face. Spock gets a great line in which he realizes he now belongs to an endangered species. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/46 "2009-05-06T15:46:56Z")
> [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](#): > > …I hope blowing up Vulcan works in the movie, and I won’t say “Oh Vulcan’s gone, none of the stuff in TOS and their movies can happen now because the timeline is screwed up blah blah blah.” It’s fiction, I can handle it… WHOAH! I hadn’t heard anything about that. Can we get some spoiler boxes, please? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/47 "2009-05-06T15:50:36Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > WHOAH! I hadn’t heard anything about that. Can we get some spoiler boxes, please? I’ve added a spoiler tag to the thread title. I thought it was obvious but should’ve just added it when I saw the thread yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/48 "2009-05-06T15:53:54Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > WHOAH! I hadn’t heard anything about that. Surely it’s a whoosh. Mrs. Plant will kill somebody over this, and I’ll be the person nearest at hand. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/49 "2009-05-06T15:56:53Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > WHOAH! I hadn’t heard anything about that. Can we get some spoiler boxes, please? I’m sorry, I tried using the boxes but I couldn’t see them turn up in the post when I previewed. I also thought, based on the post I was answering, that the point was already revealed in this thread. If the mods want to delete my post, I won’t have any problem with that. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/50 "2009-05-06T16:50:53Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > Don’t go see it. > Other Star Trek fans agree that the new movie is horrible. Oh, I don’t know, out of 32 reviews on [RottenTomatoes.com](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_trek_11/), \*none \*are negative and many are raves. I don’t see this kind of acclaim very often, so I’m willing to go with them over a bunch of fanboys. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/51 "2009-05-06T16:57:13Z")
Too late to edit: I can’t get the Onion here at work, but knowing them, I have a sheepish feeling that I’ve been wooshed. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/52 "2009-05-06T18:39:38Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I knew that the upcoming movie is a reboot, figured that’s just Hollywood. But I recently read that the story actually retcons the Star Trek timeline, by having history be altered so that Kirk & Co. meet up years before the continuity of the original show. Is it really official canon that the stories of the original show are not valid anymore? It looks that way. From a review liked at rotten tomatoes: (Thanks, PoorYorick) Abrams and his writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman have come up with an ingenious loophole that allows them to clear the decks of all the clutter comprising four decades worth of Trek mythology ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/53 "2009-05-07T00:09:55Z")
I’ve got no problem with voiding or re-setting or whatever continuity, I would have even been OK with (and probably even in favour of) a complete Batman-style re-boot; that doesn’t mean I have to like the changes, or even the movie, though. I’ll spoiler the rest just to be extra-sure: [spoiler]Frankly, I can’t figure out why everybody’s raving about the movie like that, but then, I had the same feelings about the prequel comic. The whole plot is basically a series of ridiculous coincidences (Kirk being basically kicked from the ship by young Spock landing coincidentally on the same planet where Nero also left old Spock, which coincidentally also has a remote Federation outpost that just happens to be Scotty’s workplace?), contrived, contradictory non-science (really, even for Trek. Heck, even for Doctor Who this would’ve been bad! At least, when the good Doctor created a black hole to ‘cancel out’ a supernova, the whole thing was done for comic effect, but here it was taken seriously, being actually the thing that set the whole plot in motion, and because any old supernova just wouldn’t have been enough, for some reason nobody ever thinks important enough to address, it’s one that threatens the whole galaxy\*, apparently actually expanding into distant star systems, presumably with superluminal speed; don’t even get me started on the black hole making red matter, or getting out of a black hole’s gravity well by riding on the pressure wave from the explosion of the warp core, when previously actually _going at warp speed_ didn’t do squat, and why the hell would the plasma drill thingy emit some sort of transporter-and-communications-dampening-field?), and wholly unmotivated actions to carry the plot along (establishing the relationship between Uhura and Spock? Heck, just let her push her tongue down his throat, that’s establishing enough (yes, I know there was some reference to ‘showing no preferences’ or something beforehand)! And why the hell would Spock just throw out Kirk on some random planet? Oh yes, I forgot, it was ‘logical’. What, did they need to reduce the ship’s payload for a faster pursuit? Tribble infestation in the holding cells? Furthermore, why in all hell would Pike just make Kirk first officer when he’s not even properly in Starfleet yet? Why would that still hold any water after Kirk’s been jettisoned on an ice planet for mutiny? Is Starfleet promotion generally based on superior officers dying/going missing in action (even pre-emptively, as was the case with Spock/Kirk)? Could I walk up to the captain of some naval vessel, get him to loose his shit by insulting his mother, and be handed command? Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing wasn’t a total disaster, if you can get over the whole ‘not making any bloody sense and not even trying to’-thing, particularly the fanservice bits were nice – Kirk boning (or attempting to) a green skinned alien girl, the redshirt going the way of all redshirts (though usually, they die to show the severity of the danger, not just cause they’re idiots), ‘our plan has a 4.3% chance to succeed’, and it looked overall fantastic (though the Romulan ship was just a horribly confused mess of scary-looking protrusions, and I guess Abrams just needed to throw some strange monsters in there), and the acting was good, too – particularly the guy who played McCoy nailed the character’s mannerisms, but I was less than thrilled with Pegg’s Scotty, who seemed almost parodistic at times. But all in all? I don’t see why it’s getting the reviews it’s getting. Oh, just to end this, there’s one continuity change that does bug me a little – I can take a blown up Vulcan, but disbanding Starfleet and selling all the ships for scrap metal? Because I assume that’s what they’re gonna do, now that they had Spock and Scotty invent a transwarp transporter capable of bridging interstellar distances in the blink of an eye for no reason other than to get Kirk of a planet where his presence didn’t make any sense in the first place. \*Actually, I think the Romulans just wanted to one-up the Klingons. ‘An exploding moon threatening your home world? Ha! We have an exploding sun threatening the whole galaxy!’[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/54 "2009-05-07T00:34:04Z")
I don’t think I’m gonna like this…it would seem that Amok Time won’t happen now. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/55 "2009-05-07T01:34:36Z")
The time travel reset button is what I didn’t like about _Voyager._ It seems like this guy is writing himself out of a hole at the very start. Now I know how the Bond guys felt about _Casino Royale._🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/56 "2009-05-07T02:46:08Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Now I know how the Bond guys felt about _Casino Royale._🙂 Which one? (thinking) Oh, you mean ALL of them. [MSNBC](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30521500/) has the most damning reason to avoid this movie, besides how it looks like nowhere as much fun as “GI Joe.” > [@](#): > > “My name is James Siberius Kirk.” Those are the first words uttered in the revamped “Star Trek” trailer by a pre-teen version of the captain-to-be. Of course, fans know there’s a “T” in James T. Kirk and it stands for “Tiberius.” It’s a small mistake in the greater scheme of things, perhaps the result of a misread line or even a pronounced lisp. But you know who wouldn’t have made that mistake? William Shatner. Maybe I can be dismissed as a fanboi since 1966, when I was 12, but the modern fankidz have been raised on this from the cradle. Even when the canon was trampled, it was often done with a wink, as in Worf’s, “We do not discuss it (cranial ridges) with outsiders.” A \*Star Trek \*without a sense of humor about itself might as well be _Voyager_ or _Enterprise._ ETA: Which wouldn’t have required a reboooting. ---
**Author:** ![2ply](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/b2d939/32.png) [@2ply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ply)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/57 "2009-05-07T03:26:39Z")
I’ve watched the trailer as many times as you’d imagine a single person would, and the kid says “Tiberius.” God damn liberal media, get your facts straight. ---
**Author:** ![FordTaurusSHO94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f07891/32.png) [@FordTaurusSHO94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordTaurusSHO94)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/58 "2009-05-07T04:13:37Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > ETA: Which wouldn’t have required a reboooting. They should have given the TNG crew a proper sendoff and introduced this as an all new crew to take over the series… ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/59 "2009-05-07T05:12:17Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Yeah. What does a slut need with a starship? Sluts… the Final Frontier. These are the voyeurs of the starship Enterprise. Its five-second mission: to explore strange new posititions, to seek out new skanks and new pickup lines, to boldly go where every man has gone before. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371/60 "2009-05-07T13:46:26Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > Sluts… the Final Frontier. These are the voyeurs of the starship Enterprise. Its five-second mission: to explore strange new posititions, to seek out new skanks and new pickup lines, to boldly go where every man has gone before… No wonder Kirk was so eager to join Starfleet! And yes, the kid says “Tiberius” in the preview I saw. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-movie-voids-tos-open-spoilers/495371.md?page=4)