Case
121
I’ve come across a couple of people (in other forums), talking about Star Trek “canon.” People forget that Roddenberry and Co. were making stuff up as they went along, and there were huge inconsistencies in the original series.
I watched a couple of episodes from season 1 of TOS with my daughter last night: Space Seed and Balance of Terror. Balance of Terror was interesting from a Star Trek nerd perspective, because they got the phasers “all wrong.” ;-)
That episode was originally inspired by WW2 submarine movies, so they made the phasers behave more like “depth charges.” (Later, we’d have photon torpedoes, but they apparently hadn’t thought of that then.)
Also interesting (and I’d forgotten this) was that the ship had a lot of grunts – guys in overalls doing tech-like work; they weren’t all officers, unlike what seemed to transpire in Next Generation.
Space Seed was pretty funny (and sorta sad), because they posited generational ships and suspended animation existing in the late 1990’s. I wish…
Talk about your alternate realities.
JM1
122
Have been saying this to a few friends who wanted to know what the new Kirk was like. He’s definitely channelling Crichton in a few scenes - particularly “You whistle really loud” and the way he’s easily distracted…
I figured that there was quite some time between the destruction of romulus and Spock’s rescue mission. Makes sense for a captain of a mining ship hellbent on revenge to arm himself a bit. As for spock’s ship: Cargo ships before Somalia are unarmed, but if they were carrying a cargo hold full of nuclear warheads, they probably would get a bit of protection.
The way I see it Spock just suppresses his emotions, but they are still there and he can’t suppress the stronger ones. Besides his father fell in love with a human woman without any human ancestry at all, so why not the son?
XPav
124
Sulu was at the helm. You can’t be at the helm and command the ship at the same time.
Ditto, giving Chekov the conn? He’s 17!
You’ve got to have someone sitting in the center chair at all times. Doesn’t matter who, any of the cast would be fine.
Also, in the Kobayashi Maru scene, was Bones at the helm? Wow.
I know people have said the Koyashi Maru scene was well done, but I can’t really agree. It does not really do the “legend” of Kirk beating the Kobyashi Maru justice, I would have expected something considerably more clever rather than hamfisted and blatant cheating.
I can’t recall where I read it (perhaps it was in one of the books from years ago), but I thought that reprogramming the simulation was exactly how he had “beat it”. It wasn’t a surprise for me, at least, although I agree it wasn’t exciting in a flashy sort of way.
[Edit] Oh, right…WoK. That’s where I got it. Duh.
I thought that at first, too. Why didn’t Kirk reprogram the scenario so that it made it look like he was more clever–like he actually had beaten the scenario? That’s sort of what is implied in Wrath of Khan, after all. But after thinking about it a bit, I decided that it just doesn’t make much sense. Kirk is smart; he would have realized that they were going to figure out that he had cheated. So why even try to hide it?
So instead, he doesn’t. He reprograms the scenario not just to have a solution, but to have an easy, nonsensical solution. Then he goes through the motions of solving the scenario without even trying to hide his disdain for the test (purposely looking bored, eating an apple, etc.). He’s not trying to pull a fast one on his instructors, he’s making a statement. “This test is dumb.”
Again I know it was not in the movie proper but for those asking about Nero’s crazy mining ship of spikes and death I direct you to Issue 3 of Star Trek: Countdown. I believe around page 12 there is an explanation.
Besides that, the Kirk in this timeline was more of an arrogant prick than he might have been otherwise if he’d had a loving, stern father figure around to keep him in line and prevent him from driving centuries-old convertibles off of cliffs. The fact that he’d not only cheat, but do so in a really dickish manner, fits his more-rebellious-than-before-which-was-already-pretty-rebellious persona.
Can someone tell me where I can find some cliffs in Iowa? It’s been a few years, but I didn’t see any the last time I was there.
I dig that it looked more practical than just another room with computer terminals, but it felt too big and wide open. It didn’t have the feel of something contained on a ship. Maybe that’s an unrealistic expectation on my part, maybe I’m the one with the improper sense of scale cultivated by other sci-fi, but it felt like it was just a huge expansive factory on the ground somewhere.
Looked like an old quarry to me. Don’t know how many large quarries exist in Iowa, but they have a couple hundred more years to dig it regardless.
First I have to say one of my all time favorites is ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’ not for any plot point, but it did a great job of showing life aboard a starship…more than other TOS series episodes.
Ah the pulse phasers…there is actually a half ass theory about this. Phasers are configurable to shoot differently…most of the time you go with the beams cuz it does more DPS than a pulse.
Of course really the writers should have been saying’fire torpedoes’ instead of phasers…but hey it’s a season one episode with no ‘trek bible’ available yet. Yes there is a Trek bible for writers so they get thier technobabble right.
Quarries in Iowa
It’s obviously a dilithium crystal mine.
Hugin
135
Kirk wasn’t interested in passing the test to fool anyone. He disagreed with the philosophy underlying an unwinnable scenario, so he broke it blatantly.
The romance with Spock/Uhura was kick ass. Spock is much richer with emotion bubbling just below the surface. Although I was surprised to see the Uhura love interest unfold, I thought they did a good job of building this into Spock’s character from the start. He fights his childhood friend for insulting his mother and then abandons a prestigious position at the Vulcan academy (in a moment’s decision no less).
It’s also not like there is no precedent for this in canon: Spock came from the union of a human and Vulcan in movie and TV. The excuse was always because mister patriarch was an ambassador, but in the movie he says he married her because he loved her. It makes sense that there would be a biological imperative to mate, if a species is going to survive. And with the human background and so much unabashed affection for his mother, I am not thinking this romance is too much. If he were a hedonist womanizer like Kirk, that would be too much. But falling hard for one woman and keeping it a secret? That seems like an interesting Spock.
Data is the first officer who can never have a love interest. If they ever give Data a girl friend, I will cry.
I thought the orignal Spock being in the cave was a little much, but I am willing to forgive. I can’t believe all the furor over black hole technology. WTF? When Scott babbles on about the dialithum crystals and having to crawl into the matter/anti-matter tube, you don’t call foul.
Perhaps my curmudgeonly age is showing, but i was left… hmm. I found it a typical modern action flick. Indeed, looking at the trailers for GI Joe and Transformers, JJ wasn’t setting his sights on much higher.
Aside from most of the science points above, there just was no gravity - every conversation was a little novella unto itself, virtually disconnected with everything else around it. Maybe that’s how young people think today, or something, but i found the tone no more mature than Bad Boys or Independence Day or any other summer flick. The scene with all the smiling cadets, and the little award ceremony, completely hand-waving off, you know, the worst disaster in known history of the Federation, because Kirk gets his laurels… eh.
I liked Star Trek because it filled a role in our culture, bringing pseudo-scientific imagination and adventure together; sometimes it went one way, sometimes the other. But i’m that guy who thinks Star Trek 1 and TNG were the high points of the series. This reimagined Star Trek did save the franchise from itself, but it did so by making it an unabashedly youth-aimed action movie franchise. Maybe that’s what ya’ll want, i guess.
One thing JJ did, and by his interview that i caught a glimpse of with Tavis Smiley was drive the development of these figures as characters. And from that interview clearly that’s all he really cared about - he had little interest in the franchise’s history, the science behind it, or “far fetched” sci-fi, saying he prefered Chrichton-esque to anything in space.
Another thing about Spock and emotion: he showed zero fear when he raced down to Vulcan to save his parents and culture. In the old zero emtion Spock, this is like a no brainer, not much at stake. But for the new Got-a-hottie-on-the-bridge Spock, it’s a little more tense. Maybe this particular scene didn’t work so well because I’m still getting to know Uhura, but it might be interesting moving forward.
You must have missed the episode where they did. NOW CRY!
