In which we attempt to rationalize apparent internal inconsistencies in the latest Trek movie.
What? Just because I hated the movie doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop being a geek. Stop looking at me like that. Besides, Uhura was v. pretty, and it had Winona Ryder in it. I’m not sure why that matters but it does.
One simple rule. Let’s try to analyze the movie on its own terms, no?
Anyway, I’ll start with this: Why is Spock so far ahead of Kirk in his Starfleet career, given that they’re about the same age?
Answer: Merely because we see a montage of events from their lives at roughly equivalent ages does not mean that they’re all that close in years. You’ll note that neither the Kirk in Iowa nor the Spock on Vulcan scenes have a date stamp. I think that Spock was making his choice between the Vulcan Science Academy and Starfleet at about the same time Kirk was being a car thief; he’s eight to ten years older, chronologically.
My personal fanwank is that red matter is actually exotic matter, i.e. matter of a negative mass/energy. Such a thing would serve to expand and hold open submicroscopic quantum wormholes that randomly form in spacetime, thus explaining the time travel of Spock’s and Nero’s ships. The supernova and Vulcan were destroyed by, uh, tidal forces the ships were protected from because of their warp bubbles creating an area of locally flat spacetime. That they called it a black hole in the film is just because in the future, you don’t quibble about such terminological minutiae.
Capt. Pike knew Kirk since he was a juvenile delinquent, and also knew his father. He chose to ignore the usual niceties of seniorities in a time of battlefield exigencies.
One complaint I keep hearing is about how everyone just happened to end up together on the Enterprise way earlier than they would have if the timeline stayed the same. But it makes sense, because they ended up the Enterprise in both timelines because they are the best at what they do. The only person who ended up on board by total random luck was Scotty.
Kirk is 22 before pursuing Star Fleet. As Checkov proves you can be seventeen if you have exemplary performance. Assume Spock entered Star Fleet at 17 and has been working his way up since then. Since three years pass between Kirk signs up and the events of the film, that gives Spock eight years (assuming they’re the same age). Eight years in the military is enough to be the second in command if you’re the brightest guy in the fleet. In fact, Pike says Kirk can have a ship in eight.
The ship was full of cadets because it took off before its christening ceremony. The majority of the fleet was at the “Lorengian” system at some crisis. That’s why they mustered up the cadets in a rush to staff the ships.
It wasn’t a random coincidence at all. It was…DESTINY! Yes, that’s right. It was ‘written in the stars’ (excuse the pun, couldn’t help myself) to happen that way. Because some things are just meant to be.
And I don’t think I’m even fanwanking there, I think that was the underlying theme of the movie: No matter how some nefarious baddie with time travel capability might want to muck history up, some things are just gonna happen no matter what.
There is, moreover, no reason we have to assume that the Trek '09 reality is really the same timeline as the previous series and films, diverging only at the destruction of USS Kelvin. Perhaps Trek '09’s timeline diverged further back in the past, like 1986, or 1969, or 1968, or 1930. This would also explain departures from earlier canon that would appear to have already been present during the Kelvin incident, such as phaser weaponry that fires in pulses rather than beams.
And, as Superman points out, the idea of “destiny” (or “temporal inertia” to use a more Trekian syntax) trying to impose itself on an altered timeline is clearly a major theme of the film.
Probably all dead, considering they yanked all the midshipmen, er…cadets out of the academy to be assigned to random starships. And immediatly made them all senior officers.
For that matter, where’s all the enlisted people in starfleet?
Was it canon in the original timeline that James T.'s father was a starship captain? I’d never heard that before.
I was a little surprised to hear the Kobayashi Maru test mention cloaking devices, since in the original Balance of Terror it’s considered a theoretical possibility encountered for the first time.
<sigh> Repeat after me: “All discrepancies were cause by tha alteration of time at the destruction of USS Kelvin”