Star Trek, five months later

[Patrick Degan]

I've rationalised it as older Spock receiving a telepathic impression from the mental deathscreams of six billion Vulcans which resulted in his vision of the planet's destruction. Alternatively, as older Spock was giving young Kirk an infodump via mindmeld, the vision could have been Kirk's, his brain interpreting the impressions he was receiving from Spock.

[Bounty]

I've rationalised it as older Spock receiving a telepathic impression from the mental deathscreams of six billion Vulcans which resulted in his vision of the planet's destruction. Alternatively, as older Spock was giving young Kirk an infodump via mindmeld, the vision could have been Kirk's, his brain interpreting the impressions he was receiving from Spock.

Or, simpler explanation: Nero left him one of his holographic TiVo things. The effect sure looked similar.

[Darth Wong]

The whole Spock marooning thing was retarded. If Nero was that sadistic, he would tie up Spock in his ship and force him to watch the viewscreen as Vulcan crumbles. If he maroons him on an ice planet he can't be sure that Spock will even see the event or survive long enough to see it, nor can he derive the satisfaction of seeing Spock's face when it happens.

The whole story is one clumsily assembled plot device after another. Spock was marooned so that Kirk would meet him, period.

[Ryushikaze]

Which is why I say Kirk should have snuck up on the mining rig to rescue Pike and met Oldspock there.

It streamlines the story and sidesteps some of the stupidest moments of the story. If you demand they land on the ice planet at all, have it be where they crash land after escaping Nero's ship after a failed attempt to get Pike and the squidship.

[RedImperator]

I'm honestly not sure what kind of number to give the movie. When I'm actually watching it, I love it--the acting's good, the action scenes are fun (ATTN: Michael Bay: action scenes work better if you can actually tell what the fuck's going on),the jokes work, it's gratifying to see all the little TOS touches they kept, I like the ship exteriors (I'm not as big a fan of the Apple Store bridge, but that's just a personal opinion), the lack of technobabble was refreshing, I really like that they were willing to take risks (the Spock-Uhura relationship, actually destroying Vulcan permanently).

But the actual details of the plot...there's just way too many total groaners. Even if you give the science a pass (and honestly, why should I? If you want to write science fiction, you could at least look up what a black hole actually is), there's just too many coincidences and lucky breaks for the heroes. Honestly, when I read that the script was rushed and then couldn't be revised for the writer's strike, my first thought was, "Ah-ha, that explains it." The script smells like a first draft.

I also think Roger Ebert had a point when he wrote that nTrek, with its by-the-numbers wham-bam action story, missed an opportunity to explore something deeper, which Trek at its best always did. I don't think there's anything especially wrong with the story*, but you could have had a better film if

*Story as distinct from plot. The story of the film is, "Crazy Romulan from the future kicks the shit out of Starfleet and blows up Vulcan. Young Kirk and future Old Spock must work together to save Earth." The plot is the details; "...and then Kirk goads Young Spock into an emotional outburst, and then...etc."

Bottom line: an enjoyable movie with some pretty glaring flaws and a missed opportunity to do something a little grander. I'd probably give this an 8 if the script were more polished; as it stands, it probably deserves a 6, but Trek nostalgia and successfully reviving the franchise is good for one bonus point. Final score is 7.

EDIT: All that argle-bargle to justify a score that falls right smack in the middle of the bell curve. How about that.

[Simon_Jester]

Hey, maybe that just means everyone else agrees with your argle-bargle. It happens.

[Darth Wong]

I haven't seen the movie since the one time I saw it in the theatre, so I didn't rate it at all. I don't think I can really rate a movie I've only seen once, especially when I saw it so long ago. Maybe if I watched it last week, it would be easier. But if I rated it now, it seems as if I would be rating my memory of how I've felt about the movie for the last 5 months, rather than my memory of the movie itself.

[Big Orange]

I still give it a solid score of 7/10 - a reasonable kick up the backside for the Star Trek movie series, after the abysmal Insurrection and so-so Nemesis, but not quite as good as First Contact.

[Anguirus]

I've rationalised it as older Spock receiving a telepathic impression from the mental deathscreams of six billion Vulcans which resulted in his vision of the planet's destruction. Alternatively, as older Spock was giving young Kirk an infodump via mindmeld, the vision could have been Kirk's, his brain interpreting the impressions he was receiving from Spock.

This actually reminds me of a minor continuity thing that bugged me. IIRC Spock had a total freakout moment in TOS when a ship with 200 Vulcans on it was destroyed. But neither Spock (or Sarek, etc) has an overt (i.e. telepathic) reaction to the destruction of Vulcan.

I think that having every Vulcan "go offline" at that moment could have actually had rather neat plot implications. (Possibly Old Spock is the first to recover thanks to advance mental preparation.) But, it might have paradoxically diminished the emotional impact, since Spock would be holed up in sickbay instead of trying to keep down his feelings and run the ship.

[open_sketchbook]

Easy rationalization; if light can't escape a black hole, why would psychic emanations?

[Patrick Degan]

Yes, it is admittedly weak. But the idea that Vulcan and Delta Vega were in such close orbital proximity is equally unsatisfying. One of the many aspects of this movie which simply were not thought through.

[Gramzamber]

It's funny since some Star Trek novels and such describe a companion planet of Vulcan, T'Khut.
Initially a retcon to reconcile TMP's Vulcan scene showing moons with the TOS line "Vulcan has no moons", the scene itself was altered to show no moons later on I think. Nonetheless it was there, it's odd they didn't just use that instead of "Delta Vega" which has just confused the hell out of many people.

[Big Orange]

Why would young Spock, a commanding Starfleet officer, just plonk Kirk on a very dangerous, barely habitable planetoid just because Kirk baited him? Why not just lock up Kirk in the brig? Starfleet are supposed to be navy/air force types who operate above board, not space pirates (like Nero and his henchmen).

[Aaron]

Why would young Spock, a commanding Starfleet officer, just plonk Kirk on a very dangerous, barely habitable planetoid just because Kirk baited him? Why not just lock up Kirk in the brig? Starfleet are supposed to be navy/air force types who operate above board, not space pirates (like Nero and his henchmen).

Because SF isn't modelled on the present day Navy/Air Force but rather the Napoleonic Era Royal Navy, a time where the Captain's word was law. If he wanted to exile you to an island, he damn well could.

[Batman]

That'd be the part where Spock wasn't acting rationally on account of his homeworld just having been destroyed?

[Stark]

I think BO's point is that even when angry, Spock isn't an idiot (like Kirk) and he could have just had him imprisoned. Throwing him off the ship was an extremely unprofessional and possible out-of-character thing to do, especially given the nature of the nearby planet. It works dramatically, of course.

[Batman]

Actually it didn't. As you say it DID make young Spock look extremely unprofessional, for no good reason.
Unless you consider 'Um-Kirk had to be on the planet because the plot required it' a good reason.

[Stark]

Well, I mean it worked from a 'rar angry men at loggerheads' perspective, and follows on from Spock's attempt to rescue the Cave Vulcans. Like much of the rest of the movie it doesn't stand up if you think about it.

[CDiehl]

Why would young Spock, a commanding Starfleet officer, just plonk Kirk on a very dangerous, barely habitable planetoid just because Kirk baited him? Why not just lock up Kirk in the brig?

In addition to the sudden, senseless deaths of almost every Vulcan in existence, plus his mom, I'd suggest the distinct possibility that Spock has never commanded a ship in his life. It appears that, up to this point, Spock's career in Starfleet has consisted of scientific and technical work, plus teaching at the Academy. He may have had some command courses when he was a cadet, but he never had to apply that training until now. This horrible mess was his first command, and despite our image of Spock as a cool badass, he couldn't take the pressure and took it out on Kirk. Before anyone brings up his being Vulcan and therefore logical, let's remember that Vulcans revere logic. That doesn't mean they practice it perfectly all the time. I never thought any of this was a bad thing, because it makes them people instead of walking computers.

[Darth Wong]

Vulcans don't revere logic; they just despise emotion. There's a huge difference between those two positions, their misuse of the word "logic" notwithstanding.

[Gramzamber]

Well they do revere logic, as in, they form a religion around the notion of logic and dump the word around pretending it has some deep mystical meaning.
Which in itself is illogical.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

It's a movie that's extremely fun to watch, has some very excellent acting, characterisation, music, and some good scenework.

However, the plot is completely fucking nonsensical and it's an incredibly shallow movie.

6. Enjoyable enough that it warrants a positive score, since I am glad I saw it.

[Mr. Tickle]

I'd have to echo most of what has been said, as an action film it scores very highly, it is a good popcorn flick end of the day. Then we start pushing ST into the Indepedence Day camp of film making, which is fine I suppose, but not really what I wanted

The biggest plot device I could see from the movie was the new super transporter which seemingly can transport over at least solar system now (I beleive nuSpock and Kirk beam from one of the moons of Saturn onto Nero's ship) and the distance from the ice planet to the Enterprise, being the Enterprise was at warp 3 from around the point Kirk meets Spock, I'll be generous and say a 1 hour from leaving cave to beaming to enterprise.

So even going by the TOS standard of warp 3 being 27 times the speed of light in an hour the Enterprise has gone about 29,000 million kilometres (or about 18,000 million miles). We don't even know about the nuTrek warp speeds which seem to vary depending on the situation. That's one hell of a transport.

Either way I think it's going to cause a bit of problem for the future films, kinna sucks the dramatic tension out of a situation being able to transport willy nilly all over the place.

[Darth Wong]

I'd have to echo most of what has been said, as an action film it scores very highly, it is a good popcorn flick end of the day. Then we start pushing ST into the Indepedence Day camp of film making, which is fine I suppose, but not really what I wanted

It's funny how little time it took to make it obvious that this new movie would be done in the Michael Bay style. Literally by the end of the USS Kelvin scene, it was obvious that they were going for pure nonsensical slam-bang. They couldn't even get through one battle before making it obvious that consistency was not high on their priority list, with the USS Kelvin being crippled by the first hit and then somehow conveniently being able to survive an extended battle despite all of its crew evacuating, including the cheesy "Let's call him James" dialogue right in the midst of combat.

And then there was Captain Pike saying "I need someone who is proficient in advanced hand to hand combat". Oh yeah, you can see the Michael Bay influence from a mile away in that scene. Write the cool action scene first, then throw up a flimsy excuse for it later.

The biggest plot device I could see from the movie was the new super transporter which seemingly can transport over at least solar system now (I beleive nuSpock and Kirk beam from one of the moons of Saturn onto Nero's ship) and the distance from the ice planet to the Enterprise, being the Enterprise was at warp 3 from around the point Kirk meets Spock, I'll be generous and say a 1 hour from leaving cave to beaming to enterprise.

So even going by the TOS standard of warp 3 being 27 times the speed of light in an hour the Enterprise has gone about 29,000 million kilometres (or about 18,000 million miles). We don't even know about the nuTrek warp speeds which seem to vary depending on the situation. That's one hell of a transport.

Either way I think it's going to cause a bit of problem for the future films, kinna sucks the dramatic tension out of a situation being able to transport willy nilly all over the place.

I wonder if they're just going to pretend it never happened or can't be done again with no real explanation. Star Trek has a long history of doing just that. Otherwise one must start wondering why they even bother with starships, since they can transport people and products from star system to star system directly. They could just have swarms of drones in star systems for protection and save money on all those big warp driven starships.

[Vympel]

And then there was Captain Pike saying "I need someone who is proficient in advanced hand to hand combat". Oh yeah, you can see the Michael Bay influence from a mile away in that scene. Write the cool action scene first, then throw up a flimsy excuse for it later.

Personally I was thinking "hand to hand combat - what the fuck for?"

Oh yeah, that's right, in the future, there are no fancy things called slings, so one must assume that whenever you get in a fight you will lose your gun and have to take them out fisticuffs.

EDIT: nor are there any guns actually bigger than pistols to begin with, leaving aside the fact that pistols have always had an extremely low effective range and are not serious combat weapons, but a weapon of last resort and most often a mere military status symbol/ collectible. I was groaning at Spock and Kirk running through Nero's ship with hand phasers - I know its Star Trek, but damn give them a sub-machine gun.