posted
That's just it. I think the thing that burns me a bit is how a few simple alterations to dialogue (or even a couple well placed title cards) would address many of these fan concerns. If Pike said "400" instead of "800". If it was shuttle 9 instead of 34 (or 407 or whatever it was). If there had been a title card stating "18 months later..." If someone, anyone, had said something, anything, about Nero's miles long mining ship monstrosity. If we'd been given some better sense of Nero's grief/loss and why it was SO focused on Spock (OK this might take a few extra lines, perhaps even a whole scene.) If instead of a single supernova, it was some mysterious supraluminal, subspace compression wake setting off Novae across the quadrant (extra credit if it turns out this was the unanticipated result of a red matter experiment Spock Prime had been conducting from Nero's research vessel.)
What I'm saying is that just a few little things would have made for a movie that would have been every bit as popular with the general public, and wouldn't have bothered hard core fans so much. I still count myself a fan of this movie, but I do so despite these problems and would prefer not to have to do that.
I also wanted to add on the subject of scaling: For those unfamiliar with 3D modelling (and I'm not claiming any grand expertise here), but I think it's a pretty common technique to overscale the model so as to wring every possible detail out of the render engine you can get. Also that Star Trek has pretty consistently scaled either planets down or ships up to exaggerate motion or otherwise enhance the storytelling. In my admittedly limited experience, this is A) very easy to do (purposely or otherwise) and B) commonly an entirely separate step (a separate program sometimes) from the actual modelling or texturing. Which makes me wonder if someone was just looking at a number in an animation file to make the new E so gargantuan.
Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: That's really lame, though. It's like writing a story about a plane crashing after colliding with a flock of ostriches. (But ostriches don't fly! These ones do! They are unlike any ostriches known to science! Because I am the storyteller and I say so! It's fiction, what do you care??)
Yes, but now you are comparing our knowledge of the Earth and it's phenomena with the Federation's knowledge of space and it's phenomena. Huge stretch. In the history of star trek how many 'new' things have occurred, space storms, fluidic dimensions, rings that make a planet's life immune to cellular degeneration, many different ways to time travel, different types of black holes, planets that exist in time pockets that are greatly accelerated from our own -- the list really goes on. In comparison, an "ultra nova" is really not that crazy.
quote:Yes, there probably are as yet unknown phenomena that would seem unbelievable to us and yet exist nonetheless. This is not a catch-all excuse to invent nonsensical plot devices because you're too lazy to do some research and come up with something logical that doesn't violate basic universal physical laws. Science fiction is at least supposed to have some fundamental footing in, you know, actual science. And all good fiction should be at least somewhat believable.
Since when is Star Trek science, which is only vaguely based in real science, always believable under this level of scrutiny. Aside from what I mentioned, something used on Star Trek so often, a transporter, is pretty much completely and totally implausible, but because it's been in Star Trek since the 60's, we kinda just accept it exists. If you want to call an explanation flimsy? The "Hiesenburg Compensator" is as flimsy as it gets.
quote:Besides, not even that flimsy non-explanation you cite was in the film. It's from a non-canon comic.
The ultimate point of releasing a comic that greatly expands the new trek as it relates to the old Trek, and was mostly for the hardcore fans who really needed something to segway into the film and this new universe. I think it did a decent job of creating that uber-geeky trek atmosphere and kinda bringing it in to the more hip Abrams-verse...
I understand the arguments that Nero was 2 dimensional and the entire store was sorta just there... but really this was a fun, exciting launching pad to the New Star Trek(tm). I think the Onion parody news article was spot on with how the hardest of hardcore fans will react to this new Trek.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I would certainly not deny that there have been stupid plot devices and bad science in Trek before. I don't see that as being a defense for adding more to the mix, though. I might be equally critical of a multitude of other scenarios such as the ones you cite, but they are not what is in question in the context of this discussion.
If anything, the new film ought to be held to a more rigorous standard than what has come before, considering its whole premise was designed to facilitate a fresh start. It is only my personal opinion, but if the goal was to retain the strongest aspects of Trek and discard the weakest, this film taken as a whole fell short of that goal. (And that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy much of it.)
And as I said earlier in the thread, the point is not so much that there are no rationalizations that can be made to explain things like this as it is that good fiction should not create the need for them in the first place. Writers can obviously make up any farfetched thing they want, but that doesn't mean they should. I consider it their charge to make up something logical, believable, and compelling. Some parts of the new film lived up to this, and some didn't.
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Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Getting back to ship sizes, if the E is 725 meters, than how big is the station it's docked at? It must be Gargantuan!
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
And that makes the saucer the ship almost crashed into at Vulcan easily more than a km in diameter. Although, in the E's defense, at 725 meters, easily 200 meters of that is nacelle.
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Registered: Jul 2007
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1. I found this pic at the TrekBBS. It seems to show that the big saucer the Enterprise almost rams into is actually the remains of the Farragut. However, we still can't see which ship the saucer belonged to.
2. This pic is the first to show the third type of Starfleet vessel, besides the three-naceller and the two-nacelled/two-engineering hulled ship. To me, it looks like the Kelvin's saucer with two nacelles attached underneath at the extreme left and right edges of the saucer. Actually it's a pretty plain design, but since it wasn't seen all that well it automatically becomes an obsession for me
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Actually, I think you can see it. On the pic of the station, to the farthest left is a starship that is a bit obscured, but recently another pic of the same scene was released that seem to show that the ship in question is a two-naceller, possibly then this one.
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
Registered: Jan 2000
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
So, nobody´s noticed that Ryan Church posted more pics on his website? Including a TOS-ified version of the Kelvin - USS Iowa? Would that be a concept or one of the ships at the spacestation? Haven´t we identified tentatively at least a Kelvin-class docked there? If so, could this instead be the one we´re seeing?
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
Registered: Jan 2000
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