[Mikes]

Huge plotholes, no doubt about that, but the film was also hugely enjoyable, best I've seen since The Dark Knight.

Dark Knight was awesome most notably for Heath Ledgers Performance as Joker.
There sadly isn't a single actor in the new Star Trek movie that comes even remotely close to that.


And most ironically Dark Knight... a movie about a former "Comic Book Hero" also had a more consistent plot LOL.
(Well, not that its hard to have a more "consistent plot than the new Star Trek movie..., but still )

[General Battuta]

Although I overall disliked the film, I must disagree with Mikes on that point. I thought the acting was consistently strong-to-excellent. Quinto/Spock in particular was good.

[Mikes]

Although I overall disliked the film, I must disagree with Mikes on that point. I thought the acting was consistently strong-to-excellent. Quinto/Spock in particular was good.

I would agree that the actors and/or the casting was the "best part" of the Star Trek movie and actually yes "quite good/above average".
Even though the movie is flawed or utterly fails in so many other areas, you gotta give it that.

But if we are talking about Ledgers Joker impression, i would argue we are moving into an entirely different ballpark alltogether, leaving "quite good" lightyears behind.

[Kosh]

I don't know what happens after TNG, but I'm curious about some tidbits in this topic.
- How did the Romulans gain access to Borg technology? What of Federation?
- What happened to the Borgs?
- What is Android B-4 and how can Data still be alive after what happened in Nemesis? The "evil copy" did not have Data's memories or personality.
- How the hell is Spock even still alive? How old do Vulcans live?

1.) I don't see how they would need access to borg technology. The mining ship could easily defeat anything from the TOS era because the tech is 100+ years more advanced and several orders of magnitude more powerful. Its kind of like how a World War 1 era Q ship could defeat pretty much anything from the Napoleonic era.

2.) Even in TOS they were out there, just on the other side of the galaxy.

3.) Thou shalt not speak the abomination "B-4" ever again. Seriously, the story in Nemisis sucked way worse than anything, down in the depths of Star Wars Episode 1.

4.) Vulcans live a very long time. Too bad we don't.

and from having a supernova somehow threatening the galaxy.

that is just a whole new plateau of stupid.

Not really, major supernovas aren't a threat to the galaxy but they are huge threats to nearby starsystems because of the massive gamma ray bursts.

[Mongoose]

Honestly, Mikes, I'm not quite sure what you're on about.  Did the movie have a number of little plot-fudges going on?  Yes.  (And yes, I did turn my brain off for a second at "supernova threatening the galaxy," though I think what Kosh said is a fine explanation for that line.)  But I was willing to overlook those almost completely, because the film as a whole was ****ing fantastic from start to finish.  The casting was sheer brilliance, the character interactions were spot-on, the shaky-cam wasn't nearly as overdone as I'd heard beforehand, and the whole thing was one fantastic adrenaline rush from start to finish.  I consider myself a fairly strong Star Trek fan in most of its incarnations (hell, I enjoyed Voyager greatly, and I thought that Enterprise was getting fantastic right before it was canned), and as such, I was rather apprehensive about the whole alternate-timeline premise and the scattered fanboy complaints I'd read beforehand.  Said apprehensions vanished almost instantly.  This is about the first movie I've bothered to see in theaters since The Dark Knight, and it was worth every penny.

Oh, and don't feed me that bull about it "not holding up afterwards," because it's been a good two weeks since I've seen it, and I'd give it every bit as much praise right now as I did when I walked out of the theater.  Maybe even more so.  I'd pay to see it again in an instant.

[General Battuta]

I went in with high expectations and was disappointed.

I was hoping for something more naturalistic and dramatic. I wanted it to avoid the use of common tropes - the cliffhanger, the two-man boarding action, the mad villain foiled by his own ego - in favor of newer, more clever things, the way 'The Dark Knight' did.

It failed at that.

I still think it's a great movie many people should see. But I didn't like it.

[Mikes]

Mongoose, as i said before, while the first half still kept me hoping,... i was simply very annoyed and bored all the way through the second half.
A selection of action scenes jumbled together with leaps of faith and more "holes than plot" simply doesn't keep a movie interesting - not for me anyways.

Reminded me a little bit of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRS90V8BQGo in that way



But actually "Star Trek" is not "just" a selection of scenes without a plot, nope, it's even worse.

As an analogy:

I felt like several scenes "sort of" feature the director/writers on screen yelling at the top of their lungs "Hey look at me, look how stupid haha!",
which sadly kinda detracted from any kind of performance the actual cast of the movie delivers. Good acting only goes so far in the face of outright idiotic writing


The "oh no we are sucked into a black hole! Lets go to warp! Oh we are on warp! () what now? Lets throw out the warpcore right along with any kind of logic and escape with an explosion! woot!" would be just one prime example for that. It comes down to world building and consistency. If you introduce a certain kind of technology... then it has to work a certain way without any too obvious "contradiction". The problem in Star Trek is... that the writers didn't seem to understand anything they were working with and caused glaringly obvious contradictions up to and including to, in quite non-sci fi concepts like basic understandings of chance, fate and character motivation. (The whole Kirk/Ice-Planet/Spock/Scotty idiocy comes to mind start to finish)

And there really is no excuse for that other than lazyness (well, or outright stupidity).

My thoughts in short: While some movies require you to throw logic overboard...  Star Trek really sort of requires you to jump after it and actively choke it to death so it stops whimpering.

[Ford Prefect]

If you introduce a certain kind of technology... then it has to work a certain way without any too obvious "contradiction".

Forgive me but, have you watched an episode from any Star Trek series? They introduce more nonsensical, bull**** technology than the average Brookstone catalog.

[Mikes]

If you introduce a certain kind of technology... then it has to work a certain way without any too obvious "contradiction".

Forgive me but, have you watched an episode from any Star Trek series? They introduce more nonsensical, bull**** technology than the average Brookstone catalog.

Maybe i'm doing you a disserve, but please adress my actual argument instead of nitpicking on a single sentence.  /shrugs maybe i just wasn't clear enough, in that case, my bad!

As i posted in some other thread:

The believability of the "science" in science fiction can be stretched quite a bit, as long as one stays at least somewhat consistent within the world one presents. "Somewhat consistent" is naturally a subjective matter and i would fully agree that there is a lot of bull**** in the TV show as well...  i would however also contend that the new movie sets a new record on the bull**** meter. In the TV show you can see them sometimes at least "trying" to avoid obvious selfcontradictions, or even just "trying" to cover it up a little if its too much bull****... the new movie however doesn't even try anymore, it keeps rubbing it in your face and laughs about it. There isn't even an attempt anymore to offer some believability or consistency.

More to the point however is that their utter disregard of "believability" extends to entirely "non-sci" fi concepts, like characters, their actions, fate and their motivations as well as chance itself... once you stop caring about making that believable, your plot basically dissolves into incoherency and becomes a random selection of scenes that just happen to be presented in that order because the producers decided it to be that way, not because there is any kind of coherent or consistent storyline to follow.

Once you cross that line.... you basically go into "lala" land, no matter if your movie happens to be sci-fi, fantasy or real-life drama.
And yes... that's pretty much how i started feeling after the whole Kirk/Ice-Planet/Spock/Scotty desaster which appeared to be the point where the writers started not to care about anything anymore really.

Believability of Science and Believability of characters are two entirely different things. The new Star Trek doesn't seem to care about either however and that is the reason it outright sucks.
If it was just screwy science then i frankly wouln't even mind all that much, as long as the plot wasn't entirely based on that "screwy science" and kept rubbing in your face just how stupid it was (Fringe i'm looking at you, but that s a different story heh ).

[NGTM-1R]

The "oh no we are sucked into a black hole! Lets go to warp! Oh we are on warp! () what now? Lets throw out the warpcore right along with any kind of logic and escape with an explosion! woot!" would be just one prime example for that. It comes down to world building and consistency. If you introduce a certain kind of technology... then it has to work a certain way without any too obvious "contradiction".

Concept: Warp drive allows tremendous power output, but pushed to peak the output is large enough it can't be be controlled and results in a what we view as a destructive explosion.

This wasn't violated.

What are you talking about?

In fact, the concept is not terribly dissimilar from nuclear power, only lacking the difference in form factor between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Just as the icing on the cake, the use of repeated nuclear blasts as a propulsion system is still one of the highest-acceleration methods of travel humanity has ever devised. This is Project Orion with warp cores. It's not even all that science-fictional.

[SpardaSon21]

Well, you kinda need a warp core to stay at warp speed.

[NGTM-1R]

Well, you kinda need a warp core to stay at warp speed.

The problem was attaining escape velocity. This was achieved.

[General Battuta]

I guess it's arguable that the warp core exploding could throw the ship away really fast. On a movie-logic level it works fine for me.

Physically, it doesn't: the warp drive works by manipulating the spacetime metric by the application of negative energy density (in real life) or subspace (in Star Trek jargon.) Lose the warp core, you lose the warp field, and no amount of exploding will probably be able to make up for that, just because you're going from a warp engine to a reaction engine.

I was disappointed to see such an old trope being employed. But that scene looked decently cool and worked well for me. It's not one I'd really nitpick at.

[Sushi]

I guess it's arguable that the warp core exploding could throw the ship away really fast. On a movie-logic level it works fine for me.

I agree. What I don't get is why they were stupid enough to stick around and risk getting sucked into the black hole in the first place. Like Mikes keeps saying so emphatically, it isn't the SCIENCE part of the fiction that's broken, it's the NARRATIVE part of the fiction.

[Mikes]

I guess it's arguable that the warp core exploding could throw the ship away really fast. On a movie-logic level it works fine for me.

Physically, it doesn't: the warp drive works by manipulating the spacetime metric by the application of negative energy density (in real life) or subspace (in Star Trek jargon.) Lose the warp core, you lose the warp field, and no amount of exploding will probably be able to make up for that, just because you're going from a warp engine to a reaction engine.

I was disappointed to see such an old trope being employed. But that scene looked decently cool and worked well for me. It's not one I'd really nitpick at.

The writers don't even seem to be aware of Einstein, the lightspeed constant or the conceptualization of starship drives that "circumvent" the lightspeed barrier. These concepts are a staple of science fiction at a very very very basic level. You can't go past lightspeed with regular propulsion. That much is scientific fact. Warpspeed or any kind of jumpdrives always work with some kind of "trick" circumventing regular propulsion. The writers entirely missed that very very very basic point.

And even if you ignore the logical problems when you try to "quantify" warp speed as "regular propulsion" like the writers did however, then excerting a gravitational force that would be equal to that force to counter it...   you would have forces involved that would pretty much ripp any starship instantly apart. The forces matter of fact would be so incomprehensibly great that even a mere fraction of them would still ripp any starship apart several times over.

More to the point... any kind of "explosion" that would be even more powerful than the forces already being excerted would easily wipe out everything and anything caught in the blast LOL.

And there isn't even a reason to be as braindead. Even if you are deadset on making this very specific scene it's quite easy to think of a solution that is much more believable: Assume Enterprise gets hit and warpdrive is temporarily offline/damaged. Or better they try to go to warp and the warp drive gives up / breaks as they try due to previous battle damage. Now you have a perfect logical explainable situation of why an explosion potentially could supply the necessary "nudge" to help overcome a gravitational pull with subspace drives. Maybe still a bit far fetched, but not outright contradicting itself anymore. I mean, seriously? What was the big deal ? It just screams of ignorant writers that didn't even care or try to make sense.


And yet even more to the point... the movie did have much bigger plotholes that didn't involve any science at all

[MP-Ryan]

Well, you kinda need a warp core to stay at warp speed.

Wrong.  There are several episodes between TNG/DS9/Voyager where ships without warp cores remain at warp speed for periods of time.

[General Battuta]

MP-Ryan has a point.

I really think criticism of the movie shouldn't delve too far into the technical side. That kind of sterile techno-masturbation is what killed Trek in the first place.

This movie succeeded at telling a story in a way that appealed to a lot of people. I didn't personally like the way it did it, but I'm looking forward to the sequel, which will hopefully have a more mature and coherent plot.

[karajorma]

Yep. I view this as a Star Trek : The Motion Picture vs Wrath of Khan situation. The first movie was all about creating the demand, the second is where they actually do something good with it.

[Mongoose]

More to the point however is that their utter disregard of "believability" extends to entirely "non-sci" fi concepts, like characters, their actions, fate and their motivations as well as chance itself... once you stop caring about making that believable, your plot basically dissolves into incoherency and becomes a random selection of scenes that just happen to be presented in that order because the producers decided it to be that way, not because there is any kind of coherent or consistent storyline to follow.

Once you cross that line.... you basically go into "lala" land, no matter if your movie happens to be sci-fi, fantasy or real-life drama.
And yes... that's pretty much how i started feeling after the whole Kirk/Ice-Planet/Spock/Scotty desaster which appeared to be the point where the writers started not to care about anything anymore really.

Believability of Science and Believability of characters are two entirely different things. The new Star Trek doesn't seem to care about either however and that is the reason it outright sucks.
If it was just screwy science then i frankly wouln't even mind all that much, as long as the plot wasn't entirely based on that "screwy science" and kept rubbing in your face just how stupid it was (Fringe i'm looking at you, but that s a different story heh ).

The thing is, I almost completely disagree with your fundamental assertion here.  I fail to see any of this massive "disregarding of believability" when applied to the movie's characters or plot progression, or at least not nearly on the sort of scale you're implying.  You know what that ice planet scene was?  A plot contrivance.  You know, that device that's been used in every story ever written to some degree or another.  Kirk and Old Spock needed to meet, so Old Spock wound up on the same ice planet Kirk was exiled to.  Kirk and Old Spock needed a way back to the Enterprise, so Scotty happened to be at the outpost.  It happens, it's done, the movie rolls on.  Honestly, I didn't spend more than thirty seconds thinking about the relative plausibility of any of these events, either while watching the movie or afterwards, and I can't see at all why they'd bother anyone all that much.  A story's progression in a limited time frame often necessitates the use of chance, and provided the writers are keeping me entertained in general, I'm usually willing to grant certain implausibilities to them.  This one was certainly far less than I've granted to other writers in the past.  So unless you can provide some more concrete examples, I'll feel free to dismiss your statement as digging nits out so hard that you're drawing blood.

And I won't even address why I had no problems with the whole "explode the warp core" thing, as admittedly pulled-out-of-the-ass as it was.  I've watched large samples of Trek from five series and several movies, and that sort of thing is just classic Trek technobabble.  It's certainly far more plausible than slingshotting around the Sun to go back to 1980s San Francisco to pick up two world-saving humpback whales...and that was one of the better films.

[Turambar]

they detonated the warp core to seal a subspace tear in Insurrection.  Perhaps this was a similar situation.