*** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread - Page 8

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

Yeah, but they didn't promote him because of it, just gave him a medal.

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Um, didn't Han and Lando get promoted to General and they didn't even go to the academy? Yes they were battlefield commissions handed an appropriate rank based upon lifetime experience.

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In this case, we are talking about the Rebel Alliance which probably needed all the good men (non clones?) they could find to take on the Empire. Where as in the Star Trek universe you would expect them to follow the proper military rank structure when it comes to promoting Officers.

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

[Nerd]Han was in the Imperial navy before he became a smuggler. I'm pretty sure that that's a Lucas backstory rather than something made up by the author of a novel.[/Nerd] Yes, I'm embarassed to know that.

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

After he blew up the death star, he was given command of Rogue Squadron. Therefore, I think the comparison is a bit more apt than you claim.

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But the rule is we can only go by what is on the screen and not some post movie made-up backstory to explain short-comings in the movie.

Not that I want to turn this into a Star Wars thread but one thing that never made sense to me in Ep 4. Luke says he wants to go to the academy to learn and then use those skills to fight the Empire. Why would the Empire allow such an academy exist and not simply blow it up?

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

I was initially a bit puzzled at the end that there wasn't some magical reset button (years of watching Voyager will do that to you), then, it just dawned on me. There isn't going to be one!! This is really a brand new Trek. And I thought it was good. Trek was suffocating because of decades of canon.

The small nitpick that still gets to me, though, is that Vulcan had a blue sky. A blue sky!

Great movie and I plan on seeing it at least two more times.

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Well it seems like I may be in the minority here, but I really liked it. I think they did a great job in casting and catching the essence of the original characters/actors. The story was pretty good. I too thought there would have been some kind of reset, so Spock's mother would still be alive, Vulcan not destroyed. I was thinking they were going to get sucked into the black hole and come out right after Nero comes back in time and take his ship out before George Kirk even gets there, thereby he'd be alive too. But this can work and it certainly leaves it open so they don't have to make sure everything tracks with "future" events.

Of course the sequel could be Spock trying to undo the damage from this movie.

Can't wait to see what's next.

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I would say that you are most certainly not in the minority. The film was a total blast and a joy to watch from start to finish. I find the 'complaints' interesting, but some level of 'nitpicking' borderlines on the absurd.

I have seen everything that has had the Trek name - and had been hoping desperately that the new vision for Trek would remain faithful to the idea of Roddenberry's future. This film did that - and I think as this cast is allowed to grow into these roles, and mature evermore into the characters that we love (albeit with the new lease their timeline affords) - we will look back upon the complainers with nothing but a smile.

I can't wait to see it again!

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Yes, I think on the whole, most of the posters here liked the film. I sure did, but it isn't a Star Trek thread if there isn't a lot of nitpicking!

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I understand that was your point, by my point was that Pike has substantial pull in Starfleet, and he personally felt those hundreds of years of tradition were all fine and good, but sometimes, you have to shake things up to take the institution to the next level. He *wanted* someone with little experience and a headstrong attitude in a high-level position. He said himself that it was something missing in Starfleet. I got the feeling that Starfleet was running on neutral (you even get this feeling in Enterprise, where Archer clearly feels held back by the staunchy Starfleet brass), and Pike finally said "screw this, let's try something radical."

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I know some expected a reset at the end (and why) but it didn't even cross my mind. To me the movie was the reset button. It reset everything that we know about the Star Trek universe and the adventures of the crew except the characters' personalities (for the most part). Did anyone else feel at the end "Okay now that the origin is out of the way can we get to the main feature and their first adventure with Kirk as Captain?" Sort of like Batman Begins where the first half the movie is spent showing how he became Batman and the last half was his first foray as Batman. So the movie would have been 4 hours long. I can take it.

Since Enterprise is still theoretically canon, do you think Klingons will have smooth foreheads?

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

The same could be said of the current Trek universe. The movie makes the point that they had so few staffed ships available between earth and Vulcan that they had to send a "boatload of children" (to use a TWOK phrase) to deal with a crisis. Being late, the entire fleet of that sector was destroyed as well as hundreds of officers and potential captains. So in a way, we have another fine parallel...Starfleet needed good men and women they could find to support the "peace armada" (to use a Pike quote).

:-P Let the nerd on nerd action continue! :-)

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Why would they do that? The whole point was to jettison all the old canon that was binding them down.

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I sincerely hope so. Swarthy dark make-up and Snidely Whiplash mustachios, too. Apparently in Enterprise they had bumpy foreheads, right? Then by TOS time they smoothed out but by the first movie they were bumpy again. So maybe we have them in smooth head time?

To quote They Might Be Giants...everyone wants prosthetic foreheads!

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No, they'll look like modern Klingons look (in every film/series except TOS) because they have the budget. The virus/mutation in Enterprise did not spread to all of the Klingon Empire. Any Klingons we see in future films will be those that never had the disease in their family. There's no reason to go back to the look of TOS.

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This whole movie was one BIG reset button!!! :-(

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See what happens when Paramount finally kicks Rick Berman out of the "Trek" driver's seat? He's been a drag on the franchise for years.

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[Nerd]Han was in the Imperial navy before he became a smuggler. I'm pretty sure that that's a Lucas backstory rather than something made up by the author of a novel.[/Nerd] Yes, I'm embarassed to know that.

You're absolutely correct, Travis. Han was in the Imperial navy before he became a smuggler, and I believe that is SW canon. That has always been Lucas' backstory. In fact, Han was kicked out of Imperial navy for one reason or another, found hate with the Empire and then became a smuggler shortly thereafter. As far as ranking in comparison to Star Wars and Star Trek, people in Star Wars die off so quickly that the next chump who comes forward is really a chump. You offer him/her a commander position and you might as well give a loftly salute to the otherworld. Of course in Star Wars, winning a good battle against the Empire can easily get you promoted to a higher rank. Going back to the topic of the thread (Star Trek), I'm not sure how I feel how this reboot. It seems that Hollywood is going stir-crazy over reboots and the potential profit that there is in one. This new Trek movie is all about marketing to me. I see a lot of pretty faces; Captain Kirk and several of his crew remind me of a CW-actors' lineup from one of the latest Smallville episodes. Why make Kirk so super-hot like he just popped out of Dawson's Creek for Christ's sakes? Anyway, the FX looks stunning and of course you got to give ILM credit for that one, for now Star Trek looks like a Star Wars wanna-be on the big screen with it's non-stop explosive action.

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Yes, he was a drag [Berman]. Too bad the excellent work by Moore, and others on shows like DS9 all get washed away.

Yes, I realize the idea of people saying "it's an alternative timeline!" I get that. But I cannot see how this alternate timeline can exist at the same time as the other one.. ie, this isn't a "mirror universe" or a split going forward, this is a significant change in the past, which would tend to erradicate all that follow it.

The movie made an effort to even say specifically that, when Spock said "so the futures we may have had before this event are now uncertain" etc.

Now, the inference, which I understand is MUCH clearer in the books then in the movie is that at the moment Spock and Nero were sucked into the Blackhole in the future of the PRIME universe, there was a split: in one, they were destroyed, which still maintains the PRIME universe, and that universe stays unaltered. Spock & Nero just die in the future in that timeline.

In the alternate timeline, Spock & Nero are sucked into the past, and this is what happens, creating a whole different timeline, but not in any way interfering with the first one.

I have to tell you, if the movie was about 1 minute longer to explain how the people in the universe most of us understand moved on and to them Spock was just "dead", it would have been a lot more informative then just the way it was left, which has a lot of people - like myself - who assume this just 'overwrites' the past as we know it, which is pretty disappointing.

As to Spock trying to reset the timeline, the answer to that is pretty obvious, actually. Outside of restoring the Vulcan population, he's now got a new riddle.. he knows some events beyond their actions will occur. Example: that star WILL go supernova still, he knows right when, but now he doesn't have the vulcan science academy to develop the material to stop it. He knows about the creation of genesis, etc. etc. etc. You'd think his sheer existance would be a chance for the federation to pump him for tons of technology and inside information on everyone from Romulans, Borg, The Founders, Cardassians, etc.

Just my thought.

I'm still not sold on the film. But it's passable.

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

T'Pring and Stonn are dead.
T'Pau and T'Lar are dead, unless they were rescued with the Vulcan High Council.

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

Short thoughts: enjoyable and fun, but didn't "feel" like Trek to me. It was a sci-fi action flick with Trek elements.

Plot was a mess!

Quinto seemed too Sylar for my liking. Spock is supposed to be dispassionate, but Quinto always looks like he wants to bite off somebody's ear...

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

Of course it is a movie. So is Battlefield Earth.

More to the point, it is a movie based on a long-standing series with specific internal rules related very much to our current civilizations rules for such things. This film discards a lot of that, and I am trying to understand why. The previous films and series set up a Starfleet very similar to most modern First World Navies. Same ranks (Ensign through Admiral), similar officer accession (an Academy), same fleet structure. Of course those would evolve over 200 years, but you can't speed certain things up.

And the movie you cite is a space opera...a fantasy. Its planets were Tatooine. It's basis was Campbell and mythic tropes.

THIS movie, again, is based on a series rooted in science fiction. They wanted their reboot to be more fantasy (a lot more). I get that. It pays better. But the structure of the previous series is intact, and part of this universe.

Don't be pedantic. the film timeshifted a few times, and every time it timeshifted forward, it either REPLACED actors or it used a title card (Three Year Laters, which was also meant to be a punchline). That is called establishing a visual language. My point was there are numerous subtle ways to indicate some real time has passed. Overt like a montage, subtle like some rank changes expressed in a conversation. This film did none of that

No, it is the WAY this movie was made...it established cinematic language early on. And if he says that, great. But I don't care what writers, directors, and actors say in interviews. If it isn't in the movie...then it isn't in the movie. It could very well be 5 years later...if so, the director failed to make it clear. Considering Abrams is a skilled director, I'll assume he was consistent in his use of cinematic language. Therefore, I'll assume the promotion ceremony and captainship was granted after this adventure.

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They still can exist because you can rewatch those 30 tv seasons and 10 films, which is the only existence that *really* matters or that it ever *really* had - that of life on your TV screen. I know it's not the same exact satisfaction as having more stories within that "old" timeline, but it doesn't mean anything horrible like "none of it mattered" or something similar. You can still watch and enjoy them. Hell, I actually sat down and watched some Voyager episodes I hadn't seen before yesterday and enjoyed them - much to my surprise due to my former ambiguous response to that series.

If you need an in-universe reason, just assume that the timeline that Spock Prime came from continues on in its own way. Remember the episode Parallels from TNG? All those alternate realities Worf encountered had a past, present and future whether he was aware of them or not.

Re: *** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread

Quantum physics.


If it ain't on screen, it ain't canon. I don't give a Jar-Jar what Lucas says.

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Fair enough. I assure you this will be my last missive on the cadet --> captain concern that affected my suspension of disbelief. Did you know that Naval Aviators command carriers...not surface warfare officers? Do you think they do that before or after they command a aircraft squadron? Simple. After. After some very specific training. Followed by command a non-line ship (an oiler or something else) to understand how to command a ship and a crew. Then they are given command of a carrier, very senior in their career. Command of an air squadron is not very similar to command of a SHIP. The Enterprise is the flagship, according to the film.

Josh, I very much appreciate this response. It's the best film-specific response to my concern. But you misunderstand my point.

It is NOT tradition that guides when you make a captain...it is experience. Time at sea (or in space), so to speak. It is a heck of a gamble to risk thousands of lives to "shake things up". I could totally buy a quick command, even the four years Pike mentions. Four years in space. Serving about starcraft. Learning how they work, how they function, how to deal with a variety of alien races. Think of it as a diplomat. How many 25 year old diplomats do most countries have?

And you don't shake up an institution forward deployed on a single vessel. You do so at headquarters. A vessel out doing it's mission has no impact on the old guard.

Like I said, last word on it.

As for the reboot, I thought that was clear from material months ago. They wanted a fresh start. There will be no reset. They want a blank slate, and this was a nice way to get a blank slate and tie it into the previous series. For all of the awfulness of much of the script, this was a very smart move. Credit where it is due.

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I'll fix it for you Chuck, just watch;

First off, we're talking about Space Years. A space year is like 28 Earth months.

Second, all cadets log a semester or two of actual duty on board starships. Kirk spent his on the USS Farragut. That was the ship we saw being built in Iowa by the way, not the Enterprise like everyone just assumed.

Kirk would have a been a Lieutenant Commander after graduation as well, (A really solid cadet like Saavik made Lt.), so in Trek ranks he only skipped 1.

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Nah...you graduate to Ensign And from their combined expressions on the shuttle to the Enterprise, the midshipmen (since it would be a more accurate term) hadn't been to earth orbit yet. I appreciate the effort, though, Zack.

I also liked the new bridge quite a bit. My phone has a touchscreen, shouldn't future interfaces be even more advanced. I thought it looked quite good.

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No-- you don't. While my post was just humor, the point about Saavik is actually valid. We see here taking her Kobiashi Maru test, She's fresh from the Academy like the rest of the cadets. She's a Lieutenant.

There's nothing more finite in Trek law than precedence.

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What I got a kick out in this movie is how they managed to reboot the francise in the confines of the Star Trek Universe. That's pretty cool. Nero's ship travels back in time, Kirk's Father dies at his birth...Vulcan Destroyed, etc.

I, too, was totally expecting them to reset it before the movie ended, especially after Vulcan went bye-bye, but...they kept it that way! I'm planning on seeing it again, I loved it.