Trek XII - Images, Videos, Discussion, ect...

posted on September 13th, 2012, 12:03 am

I don't have an issue with it as a temporary measure in an emergency situation. But when you are offically given command of Starfleets flagship vessel as a raw recruit at a public assembly after all the stuff is over with, battlefield commission or not, that just strikes me as silly. Maybe its because I know alot of military people and that is not how it works in the real world but it just bugs me to no end. In some Spec Ops like SEALS they team leader would be the guy who has the most knowledge of the mission during the mission but once the mission is done and over with its back to the old rank system.

Knowing alot about the military also completely destroyed Avatar for me as I couldn't believe how grossly incompetent they were in that movie with ANYTHING to do with the military.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 12:07 am

Yeah I've seen the outpost. My question is why, in the early days of starfleet, does everything have to be automated? I actually liked the mix up, something different than the norm. Seriously, if the military had the budget to put automatic/shiny doors in every single cruddy outpost that existed I'd say save it and put it towards something else. Just saying but whatever you thought was startrek ended before Enterprise. I like the grit, I like that they depict a rougher side to the federation in the movie. The feds always seemed to crisp and clean to me, like they wanted everything done for them. So no big for me about a secluded outpost that no one in starfleet cares about anymore bc it was built back during the warp 5 programs. And the romulans were miners, not romulan military dude..... so of course they would be the lower class.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 12:17 am

ok wow, the guys in avatar were mercenaries/ private military group owned by the company. So not real military.

Kirk graduated ahead of his class.... and received special recognition for his actions which led to his being offered a command, to the flagship no less. He excelled in all his classes, displayed competence in the field and technical knowledge equivalent to those of higher rank (officers) which he received accommodations for, and went above and beyond the call of duty etc etc etc.... large portion of my family is in the military and most my friends. My father was a marine, my step father chief of police, etc lol.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 12:27 am

plus I doubt starfleet is going to recruit an over weight farmer who doesn't know the difference between blue ray and HD.

I don't know... Enterprise showed Starfleet leave the first NX in the hands of an Engineer that doesn't even know maths, so they'd probably hire anyone.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 5:11 am

ok wow, the guys in avatar were mercenaries/ private military group owned by the company. So not real military.

Kirk graduated ahead of his class.... and received special recognition for his actions which led to his being offered a command, to the flagship no less. He excelled in all his classes, displayed competence in the field and technical knowledge equivalent to those of higher rank (officers) which he received accommodations for, and went above and beyond the call of duty etc etc etc.... large portion of my family is in the military and most my friends. My father was a marine, my step father chief of police, etc lol.

Regarding the outpost.......That the pushbar door is EXACTLY like one that I go through everyday at school. LOL And the walls were cinderblock. Why would you build a station out of cinderblock? Especially on an ice planet with no stone nearby. It is much more efficient to build a structure with prefabbed materials such as steel or eve just poured future concrete. I agree that it shouldn't be all shiny but it shouldn't look exactly like a hallway at my college. I bet there was a Coke vending machine right behind the camera on the wall. That outpost and the "engineering" section on the enterprise were the absolute epitomy of laziness. Either he ran out of money completely or he just didn't give a rats ass about it. Judging by the movie overall I am inclined to think that JJ fell into the latter category.

Kirk was what 28-30 years old with only limited experience and fresh out of the Academy. The SEALS that killed Osama Bin Laden did something fantastic and amazing. They didn't make 4 star generals out of them because of it. Military history is full of young soldiers that do amazing things but they are not given instant high level command except in specific situations and only temporarily and especially not put in charge of the flagship or an elite force of soldiers. They army guy that killed those 30+insurgents in Irag by himself was not given command of a brigade all of a sudden. He got a medal and was probably promoted up a rank. That is simply not how ANY military in the world works.....EVER. Give him command of a small cruiser with a dozen crew. They knew absolutely nothing about how he could command a crew over an extended period of time or anything. All they had was the brief snapshot of combat.....nothing else. Yet they just hand him the flagship. The story would have made much more sense if they started Kirk in command of a small ship and then through him into the conflict. That would have been far more plausible than what they did.

Not to get to OT regarding Avatar.......they said right in the beginning that many of them used to be in the military. We have artillery today right now that can shoot over 40km. The "tree was only 20km away and Pandora had lighter gravity which meant you could shoot even further. One howitzer would have done the trick. And that is just normal artillery, we have missiles that travel hundreds (thousands for the big ones) of miles and are very small. On top of that why wouldn't you have some sort of orbital weapon in place so that you could strike anywhere on the planet. Add in the absolute slowest flying aircraft I have ever seen portrayed in a movie including the blimp in Indiana Jones and I just completely wrote off that movie entirely. I know that James Camereon loathes the military but at least he could have had someone to tell him that he was completely bonkers on it. By the way I am not the only one that noticed this stuff. Some of my friends many of whom don't know military people and don't follow it closely even wondered about it. Why are their future "apaches" not equipped with bullet proof canopies when the copters we have today are equipped with bullet proof canopies?

Redlettermedia did a fantastic review on youtube about it.

I am fine with a few details here and there and some minor logical inconstencies.......that is to be expected and I probably miss half of them anyways. But when a producer/director is so lazy that he doesn't even bother to try and get the very basics right. I lose all respect for them and it really lowers my opinion of the movie. Parodies and comedies are of course exempt from this for obvious reasons.

JJ Abrams really killed Star Trek for me. But at least it wasn't ST9..........

posted on September 13th, 2012, 2:12 pm

I do not remember where I read it, but I seem to recall an old either book or comic (possibly technical manual) excerpt that said that Kirk was yes admittedly the youngest Captain in Starfleet, but that his Captaincy was that of a Destroyer, and he wasn't a Captain in rank, only in position.

To me, that makes sense. Modern navies regularly have smaller ships commanded by Lieutenants and the like, with the position of Captain but not the rank. In Star Trek terms, at least SFB/SFC terms, it makes sense he was given command of a Destroyer, as they are sort of the Star Trek equivalent to the frigates of old. For those unawares, basically during the Napoleonic Wars and the prior "Age of Discovery", Captaincy of a Ship-of-the-line was prestigious but usually the domain of old, stuffy officers who were chummy with the Admiralty. They were only really dragged out during the decisive engagements (Battle of the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar etc). Your up and coming dash young commanders were those in command of frigates. Think "Master and Commander" or "Hornblower". Sure they were smaller than the ships-of-the-line, but they were actually sent around the globe on assignments rather than sitting in the Thames.

So to me, a young Kirk would be that sort of guy, lets say during the 2240s and 50s, on the rather unstable border between the Federation and the Klingons, engaging in skirmishes with Orion Pirates, that sort of thing. It's also what Roddenberry kind of had in mind for TOS too, the lone cruiser out in the middle of nowhere, but trying to "retcon" that with the way both the new films and SFB/SFC has it, makes totally more sense that he was "Lt.Cmdr JamesT. Kirk of the USS Akula" rather than immediately "Cpt. James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise"

posted on September 13th, 2012, 2:23 pm

I think the key is that he was a distinguished officer. Though being in command of the flagship is questionable... Him having a command of his own is not. Again though, being in command of the flagship with a bridge crew of cadets is laughable at best.

Maybe this new movie takes place several years down the road though?

posted on September 13th, 2012, 8:18 pm

well he did save the whole population of earth, and nero was going to destroy the whole of the federation after that planet by planet so saving billions or trillions is probably worth a captains rank no?

tho the space dock being made to look something other than the giant mushroom was a mistake imo (onless it was a different station?)

and why was the enterprise built on the surface of a planet rather than in a space dock?

posted on September 13th, 2012, 9:12 pm

tho the space dock being made to look something other than the giant mushroom was a mistake imo (onless it was a different station?)

There are no "mistakes" on shapes of things when you are doing something "new"... Abrams Star Trek is a re-imagined Star Trek, not another stick-to-canon-Star Trek.

If you know Star Trek's canon and watch the Abrams' one, you notice that many things are changed for mass-appeal to make it a movie for all audiences, but as a fan you will get many references a non-trekkie won't recognize and enjoy that much. That's why for a trekkie, the engine room and Starfleet Academy look or feel wrong and that's why a non-trekkie won't get the point of the ladder in the corridor.

Edit: Actually, the JJ-Trek spacedock does remind me of a mix of K-7 and the original starbase-design IMO (just looked again).

And why the ship was built on Earth should be easy to explain. JJ-Trek's storytelling is more of the visual kind. That's why old Spock could see Vulcan exploding while standing on a planet that's actually too far away for that (Vulcan has no moon or such). The Enterprise being built in Iowa on earth means that Kirk can have a scene where he looks at his "destiny". Not the best of all ideas but for non-trekkies this kinda works.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 9:37 pm

when i say mistake i mean i think they lost a good design for an less appealing one. (imo)

redesigning it rather than outright starting again i think would of looked beter





edit
if you consider the size, perhaps its the interier of the giant mushroom befoer its outer shape is built around it? it would be nice to see the next one build on top of it, showing the advancement of the federation i suppose

posted on September 14th, 2012, 8:19 pm

tho the space dock being made to look something other than the giant mushroom was a mistake imo (onless it was a different station?)

There are no "mistakes" on shapes of things when you are doing something "new"... Abrams Star Trek is a re-imagined Star Trek, not another stick-to-canon-Star Trek.

If you know Star Trek's canon and watch the Abrams' one, you notice that many things are changed for mass-appeal to make it a movie for all audiences, but as a fan you will get many references a non-trekkie won't recognize and enjoy that much. That's why for a trekkie, the engine room and Starfleet Academy look or feel wrong and that's why a non-trekkie won't get the point of the ladder in the corridor.

Edit: Actually, the JJ-Trek spacedock does remind me of a mix of K-7 and the original starbase-design IMO (just looked again).

And why the ship was built on Earth should be easy to explain. JJ-Trek's storytelling is more of the visual kind. That's why old Spock could see Vulcan exploding while standing on a planet that's actually too far away for that (Vulcan has no moon or such). The Enterprise being built in Iowa on earth means that Kirk can have a scene where he looks at his "destiny". Not the best of all ideas but for non-trekkies this kinda works.

I almost jumped out of my seat at the theater when the Klingon movie blew up in Star Trek 6 and the Excelsiur felt the "shockwave" in "Federation space" :facepalm: So in JJs defense its not like he is the only director that never took a physics class.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 9:37 pm

I almost jumped out of my seat at the theater when the Klingon movie blew up in Star Trek 6 and the Excelsiur felt the "shockwave" in "Federation space"

i'd jump out of my seat too if the entire movie blew up, everyone in the first row would be killed.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 9:43 pm

i'd jump out of my seat too if the entire movie blew up, everyone in the first row would be killed.

lolololol


praxis (just googled it) was a dilithium moon so perhaps it has technobabble technobabble that makes it extremely explosive. i couldnt find a clip of it on youtube tho which is surprising..

posted on September 14th, 2012, 9:52 pm

i'd jump out of my seat too if the entire movie blew up, everyone in the first row would be killed.

lolololol


praxis (just googled it) was a dilithium moon so perhaps it has technobabble technobabble that makes it extremely explosive. i couldnt find a clip of it on youtube tho which is surprising..

i'm not sure which side of the fence i want to be on with this question.

on one hand, dilithium is pure technobabble, so it can be as explosive as the plot needs. even if the excelsior was hugging the border of klingon space, if they felt the explosion that far out, what must qonos (and other nearby klingon worlds) have felt? it spilled sulu's glorious tea at that distance, the damage to the klingons must have been more than just a loss of power, death toll would've been high.

on the other hand Morbo says DILITHIUM DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. dilithium is a crystal that regulates the m/am reaction. the m/am reaction is where the power comes from, not the dilithium. the dilithium just makes sure that the m/am reaction powers the engines over time, instead of blowing the entire ship to pieces like a large photon torpedo.

i'm not a huge fan of the explosion of praxis, as a plot point it could have been replaced with something else, maybe a virus or something.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 10:58 pm

It's not so much the explosion of Praxis or the Excelsior detecting it that is the plot hole, it's the huge shockwave.

It was intended to be a Chernobyl analogy, which works quite well, if someone hadn't decided a massive special effect was in order. In the case of Chernobyl, obviously the west didn't feel any explosion or such, but they could detect elevated levels of radiation etc which alerted them to the fact something very bad was going down in the Ukraine.

What STVI probably should have had is the Excelsior conducting a routine sensor sweep, as they pretty much were doing, and seeing an enormous energy spike or something of the like. Some kind of reading that made absolutely no sense. A sort of Star Trek technobabble version of a radiation scan or seismograph. Whatever it is it goes off the charts. They trace the origin and the plot continues from the "I can confirm the location of Praxis, but I cannot confirm the existence of Praxis" line.

Physics plot hole filled, largely. No very-over-the-top special effect wave required.