You know… it is the future.
You’re missing the whole alternate reality thing, “that was another life” and all that. Romulus is destroyed, his wife is dead. He can in theory save this Romulus but it is not his, it is 150 years in the past Romulus. His wife may never even be born, and he has no way back to his time. Everyone he knows is dead, and at best he will be very old when they come into being.
I took it as a quarry. If you noticed, the cliff had straight parallel groves running along them. He punched the car through a work gate, so that jibes with that as well.
The video is even more fitting with the new relationship.
Some random thoughts from a second viewing:
Kirk getting promoted to Captain: There’s no real indication of how quickly the award ceremony occurred after the incident. It could have been months later, and the presence of Spock Prime makes me wonder if he helped influence Starfleet’s decision.
Nero waiting for Spock: Early on, one of Nero’s crew wakes him from his little grinning daydream to inform him of their latest “calculations”. I assume their ship engineers used some technobabble to roughly predict when Spock would pop out 25 years later, so it wasn’t totally odd that they just waited around.
The post-Kelvin Universe: I wonder what other changes happened in this timeline. I got the feeling that Starfleet was more militaristic after the presumed-romulan attack 25 years ago. Also, to add to the destruction of Vulcan, Nero’s ship did take out 47 Klingon ships off screen, so that’s going to impact the political landscape as well.
Except he always just hoped right up afterward. Spock beats him, just jumps up. The guys beat him the bar, next day not a bruise!
Uh, Kirk’s face was messed up for most of the movie.
You are assuming that the Federation reality is ours…Space seed, the 3rd world war and other incidents point to it being not our reality. Blame it on Edith Keeler.
They had years anyway. Assuming that the star that blew up wasn’t the one Romulus orbited (because if it was, they’re still screwed) the next closest star is probably at least a light year or two away. That means they’d have at least a year or two to have evacuated it.
In a time of warp travel, stars going super nova are no longer a concern.
I just go to my happy place and make up a new back story. It’s easier that way. :)
I’m kind of of two minds about how the movie handled the Alternate Universe angle. It felt like a sort of extended character study, like a DC Elseworlds (Superman: Red Son), or like Marvel’s 1602. I think it’s an interesting idea that the characters and destinies are strong enough that the universe intertwines them as a sort of “stable state” of the universe.
I’m really surprised that people don’t have more problems with all the CG aliens and muppets being featured so prominently. Before anybody goes all “TV budgets” and “they exist, just aren’t shown much” on me, I know that stuff. But the regular people with prosthetic heads (and sometimes a being of pure energy) is just part of the “look” of Star Trek. Some of the visual changes were understandable and welcome, but that made it feel more like a totally different franchise (or Mos Eisley) to me. I’d have been happier with just more freaky-weird eyeball aliens like the nurse in the opening sequence.
Scotty, while well played as comic relief by Pegg, seemed very sloppily integrated to the story and crew. There’s no reason he’d go from “random guy beamed on board with Kirk” to Chief Engineer. My wife pointed out that Scotty is basically just a fantasy dwarf, all he needs is to talk about how much he loves gold. And did Scotty really need a leather-skinned ewok? Is that just a meta-joke I’m not in on?
Random thoughts:
- Yes JJ Abrams, we know you love your font from Lost.
- 8 year old Kirk was listening to “classical music” in the stolen car.
- Bones was fantastic.
- Your throat does not lead to your brain stem.
- Any official word on what this “series” is called? “Star Trek: New Universe” maybe? I don’t see people agreeing to call the TOS and TNG universe “Star Trek Prime”
- The “3 years later” academy cut means that the door is still open for Shatner’s “Starfleet Academy” series.
- The “cupcake” security guard apparently held a grudge against Kirk for 3 years. (Or he just taunted him throughout academy).
- Why did Spock’s mom have square boobs?
- Apparently nobody on the TOS crew get sto die normally. Shatner gets stuck in the Nexus, Spock disappears into a black hole, and Scotty gets stuck in a transporter buffer for 50 years. I can only imagine the space-time warping fate awaiting Sulu and Uhura.
Well, it sounds like you’re willing to suspend disbelief over Kirk graduating with his own command, but, I got the feeling Scotty was already an engineer. Arguably, he’s more worthy of the promotion to Chief than Kirk was to Captain.
I wonder… was his name Finnegan?
I’m fine with that being the case in the movie’s epilogue, I was more referring to him being immediately promoted to Chief Engineer as soon as he found a dry change of clothes. I guess we can pretend that their real Chief Engineer died in the explosion that took out Bones’ predecessor, but there’s no indication of that.
I assumed that Scotty was the equivalent of a Starfleet grad student, since he was assigned to a research station, so I’m guessing he’s qualified for the job, it just seems like the “in-action” assignment of him to the crew instead of just you know, helping out was strange. He didn’t even demonstrate particular prowess to Kirk that would give him cause to trust him.
Also: Spock being mad means he has to recuse himself from command, but Spock’s first officer who was just ejected from the ship for MUTINY and then illegally came aboard the ship is apparently perfectly fit to do so? And Spock didn’t assign a new first officer after exiling his old first officer FOR MUTINY! Maybe mutiny is not as big a deal in starfleet as I’d think it was
Scotty was definitely already a Starfleet engineer, just one who was on the outs.
The thing is, as far as anyone knows, Scotty spontaneously developed a way to beam objects onto a ship in warp and performed numerous other miracles that included saving the Enterprise. If you can accept that unrealistic level of singular personal talent then the idea that Starfleet would want him in a position of influence isn’t all that unbelievable.
Their chief engineer was Olsen, the guy who did the orbital jump to the drill with Kirk and Sulu.
But, reassigning Chief Engineer to somebody who, presumably, has never touched the new-fangled engines that the Enterprise has, in the middle of an enormous crisis? I know it’s a tiny nit pick, but he just seemed more poorly integrated into the story than the rest of the cast.
Admittedly, they clearly made the right decision, since I’m assuming that ejecting the warp core isn’t a thing that in the standard manuals, and apparently beaming 3 objects from 2 sources in a single go is a hard task. It wasn’t a big deal, just a little “huh?” moment
I assumed that, but it’s possible that scene is on a cutting room floor.
I assumed that Scotty was the equivalent of a Starfleet grad student, since he was assigned to a research station, so I’m guessing he’s qualified for the job, it just seems like the “in-action” assignment of him to the crew instead of just you know, helping out was strange. He didn’t even demonstrate particular prowess to Kirk that would give him cause to trust him.
He’d pissed off an Admiral with his teleport theory and got exiled. I imagine figuring out how to teleport them into a moving ship was all the prowness Kirk needed
Also: Spock being mad means he has to recuse himself from command, but Spock’s first officer who was just ejected from the ship for MUTINY and then illegally came aboard the ship is apparently perfectly fit to do so? And Spock didn’t assign a new first officer after exiling his old first officer FOR MUTINY! Maybe mutiny is not as big a deal in starfleet as I’d think it was
I think he was being ejected for being all around pain in the ass – and you can argue how he was ejected drew Spock’s eligibility into doubt.
I’m reaching here, but I think the issue was that losing Vulcan skewed Spock’s motives. What I’m not 100% certain of is if Spock knew Kirk was first officer. That detail kinda took everyone by surprise at the end. I can’t remember if Spock was there when Pike promoted him or not.
Oh, didn’t catch that! Problem resolved then. It’s even possible that Scotty would’ve been the highest ranking engineer once he came aboard, and command should naturally have fallen onto him!
Thanks, observant nerds!
Although, really Spock Prime did that, not Scotty. Although for all we know, Spock Prime said “Hey, Jim, that Scottish guy, make him Chief of Engineering.” Since it’s pretty clear Kirk was listening to whatever the magical future man said, he probably would’ve.
In any case, i’ve already revoked my complaint.
I’m pretty sure that Spock was there when Pike promoted Kirk to 1st Officer. It was on the walk to the shuttle when Pike was heading over to Nero’s ship.
Well, Scotty does pull off a magical multi-teleport later on in the movie by himself, but he’s using the revised formula that Spock gave him. Now, the revised formula Spock Prime gives Scotty was actually developed by Scotty Prime (in another movie I think), but it was clear from plain ol’ Scotty’s reaction that whatever he was working on was already fairly close to that. He just got a breakthrough twenty or so years early.
If you extrapolate the little lie Spock Prime told Kirk to explanation of the multi-teleport equation, then Scotty probably took full credit for it and it’s not totally unreasonable for him to be given Chief Engineer based on that. It’s not realistic at all but as I pointed out before, with a character like Scotty you’re already dealing with him having a totally unrealistic level of personal talent just as a baseline character trait. That’s necessarily going to deform the setting around him, or why bother with it?
