Stark Trek Into Darkness *SPOILERS*

[chitoryu12]

Even the "why couldn't they just beam that weapon onto Kronos if they can beam a man from Earth to Kronos?" didn't bother me that much.

Since I'm in such a mood, I would speculate that the order to Kirk to fire the weapons from Enterprise rather than beaming them in was a conscious choice by Admiral Marcus to get Kirk accustomed to the idea of cold-blooded killing and bombarding Klingon worlds. Marcus mentions (he was quoting Pike I think) that Kirk is one of their best and he'd undoubtably want Kirk on the front lines in his desired war.

Or that transport gizmo was a Section 31 prototype that Harrison made one-use-only deliberately in order to avoid this problem.

Kirk definitely wasn't meant to be on the front line; that's why the warp drive was sabotaged. Kirk is an angry youth whose mentor just died and is being given a free shot at the killer, who just so happens to be on the home territory of someone Marcus wants to start a war with; for all we know, Marcus intentionally made sure Khan would get something that would transport him to Kronos so he'd be in the right place when he made his escape.

Kirk gets promised that the torpedoes are advanced and long range enough that he can be in and out, no sweat. Just vaporize the guy and leave. Kirk fires some torpedoes and bombards the Klingon homeworld, goes to leave, uh oh! His warp drive has completely broken! As he tries to fix it, the Klingons show up to investigate the sudden torpedo launching. They find a Federation ship desperately trying to escape, blow it to pieces, and Marcus has the war that he wants.

Literally the only reason his plan failed is because Kirk had a change of heart and decided to capture Khan instead of just committing a messy assassination. They showed up disguised as rogue traders that fought and won against a few Klingon squads (mostly because John Harrison is the biggest badass in the Star Trek series) and took down a gunship, then fled. They have minimal connections to the Federation, and the time they spent preparing for a more cautious arrest (and the much lower chance of their attack causing a planet-wide alert) instead of just shooting and running let them repair their warp drive before any Klingon patrols showed up.

Frankly, I liked the film. One of my life goals is to work with Benedict Cumberbatch now.

[White Haven]

The biggest problem I had with the movie was its susceptibility to 'they're NPCs, so they're utterly irrelevant' syndrome. The Vengeance shipyard? Has no sensors, no security, no windows, and no suspicion. Vengeance herself has no internal sensors and an incredibly low crew-to-crew-space ratio so numerically-insignificant boarders can traipse around more or less unopposed. The Klingons have apparently sweet fuckall for homeworld defense or perimeter monitoring, and also apparently have no real warships of their own anywhere near the homeworld, just pissant little patrol cutters. Nobody but Enterprise is anywhere around Earth, and Earth has no perimeter sensors either. If the Player Characters or Primary Antagonists don't personally show up to do something, no one else actually...does anything. I still enjoyed it in spite of that, but I couldn't help but notice and sigh a bit whenever that tendency cropped up again. I expect some flaws; no movie is perfect, but this one grated more than some just because it was the same flaw showing up in several places, making itself more notable.

[chitoryu12]

I think that's caused by the tendency to treat space as an ocean analogue; we don't have radar installations and battleships patrolling our coastlines, so they simply scale that up to planet-size. It's the same thing that gets the Vengeance and Enterprise sitting side by side "right side up" within visual range after dropping out of warp. The closest we ever really came to use of 3D was the Enterprise warping under the Vengeance.

[Patroklos]

We did when we had threats that warranted them, and in this universe the Klingons and Federation did.

[Lilgreenman]

On another note, did we have a moment where the writers forgot the "you can't beam through shields" (when Admiral Marcus beamed Carol off the bridge) only to have them later re-establish that rule, when Khan and Spock exchanged Kirk for the torpedoes? Is this just a curse for anybody writing Trek?

Kirk had offered to beam aboard the Vengeance in exchange for the safety of the Enterprise crew just before this, so I assume that the shields were already compromised if not down by this point - I'd have to rewatch it to check.

Also, I'm a bit fuzzy on Khanberbatch's original plan, before Kirk shoots down his future copter. As best I can figure it out, Khanberbatch thought that Marcus had killed the rest of the Botany Bay man-sicles (well, 42 man-sicles, 30 woman-sicles, but who's counting?), so he wanted to exact revenge. He looks into Section 31's records and finds that Mickey's daughter is dying, and bribes Mickey to get him the beaming briefcase and then blow up the London base with his Alka-Seltzer of doom. He wants to make sure Starfleet gets a lead, though, so he walks away from the site in full view of the 3D CSI cameras.

If all went to plan, he would kill Marcus and all his closest colleagues, cripple Starfleet, and hightail it to Kronos. The problem I have with this is: What was he planning to do after that? Spend all eternity in a deserted corner of a hostile planet? Buried alive, buried alive?

[Skylon]

Actually I think Spock was more or less using his older self to confirm whether or not Khan could be at all trusted. After all, he had saved them on Kronus, and had the very plausible story that he was doing all of this to save his own people and "to prevent a war with the Klingons". Then the whole "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" aspect just clouded the whole situation.

Oh, its a totally logical train of thought and something anybody would do if they knew they had a future version of them hanging out in the universe, I just didn't like it thematically. Let the new guys figure stuff out for themselves. I actually would have preferred if old Spock stuck to his statement about "forging your own destiny" and said nothing - because if Spock were to say nothing about a guy he died saving the Enterprise from, then it would be abundantly clear to the audience how serious he is about staying out of the reboot crew's shit.

[Lost Soal]

Where is this assertion that the Enterprise was the only ship around Earth? There were about a dozen ships at least near there since thats how many captains and XO's turned up to be shot at.

[chitoryu12]

Where is this assertion that the Enterprise was the only ship around Earth? There were about a dozen ships at least near there since thats how many captains and XO's turned up to be shot at.

I think they're talking about the finale, where the Vengeance and Enterprise are able to both fall (or in one case, kamikaze) toward Earth without a single other ship ever once appearing. The Vengeance is also totally unhindered as it flies toward San Francisco, though in this case there's really not a whole lot you can do about a ship that size with anti-aircraft weapons unless you can reduce it to vapor before impact. Unless they blew it to pieces before it entered the atmosphere, something WOULD hit San Francisco. Probably a lot of something with the size of that craft.

[Kuja]

Where is this assertion that the Enterprise was the only ship around Earth? There were about a dozen ships at least near there since thats how many captains and XO's turned up to be shot at.

And they were never heard from again.

Climax of the movie-

Enterprise and Vengeance hanging out in lunar orbit sucker-punching each other, repeated explosions, nobody around to say 'dude what the fuck.'

Enterprise belly-flops from lunar orbit to plunging through Earth's atmosphere, no word of anyone around to intercept, beam people out, tractor beam, etc

Vengeance goes from lunar orbit to slamming itself into San Francisco, no word of anyone around to intercept, shoot it down, tractor beam, etc

Earth, as far as we could tell, was totally ignorant to what was going on.

[RogueIce]

My only thing is that, if Kahn was doing all this to screw Marcus, why did he do it in a way that would conveniently play into Marcus' plan to start a war with the Klingons?

It seems like it would have made better sense if Kahn's initial attacks and beam out to Kronos was him working under Marcus' orders, though Kahn was always intending to cut and run and set up the torpedo thing. But Marcus outflanked him by sending the Enterprise loaded with those torpedoes and that's when Kahn realized he'd been betrayed and needed to deal with Marcus then and now. That could be how the movie played it out and I failed to notice, though.

As far as the "no ships around Earth" thing I don't see that as a big deal. Admiral Marcus is apparently head of Starfleet, after all. Could be he simply ordered the Earth fleet out to "forward positions" or whatever when Kirk sent him that message, so he could take out Vengeance without any likely-to-be-on-high-alert after two attacks on Starfleet (one at HQ which killed some unknown number of senior officers including Admiral Pike) Captains and ship crews noticing the big fuck-off Dreadnought and wandering what that's all about. Plus it was always possible Kirk would get the warp up and running and make his way to Earth (which he pretty much did as it was) before Marcus could intercept him, so it'd be a lot more convenient to not have a bunch of starships milling about and coming over to see what's going on, just in case.

[bilateralrope]

My only thing is that, if Kahn was doing all this to screw Marcus, why did he do it in a way that would conveniently play into Marcus' plan to start a war with the Klingons?

What if his plan was revenge against the Federation ?

I don't see any plan that would cause more destruction than a war with the Klingons, except maybe a war with someone else.

[Kuja]

As far as the "no ships around Earth" thing I don't see that as a big deal. Admiral Marcus is apparently head of Starfleet, after all. Could be he simply ordered the Earth fleet out to "forward positions" or whatever when Kirk sent him that message, so he could take out Vengeance without any likely-to-be-on-high-alert after two attacks on Starfleet (one at HQ which killed some unknown number of senior officers including Admiral Pike) Captains and ship crews noticing the big fuck-off Dreadnought and wandering what that's all about. Plus it was always possible Kirk would get the warp up and running and make his way to Earth (which he pretty much did as it was) before Marcus could intercept him, so it'd be a lot more convenient to not have a bunch of starships milling about and coming over to see what's going on, just in case.

I was turning something similar over in my head, but it would have been nice to see, even if in a throwaway line.

As it is, it's a fridge logic thing. Like I said, STID is a popcorn action movie. Disengage higher brain functions at the door, watch the pretty explosions and laugh at the one-liners. But when you actually start thinking about it, it makes no damn sense for Earth to be as vulnerable as it is. I mean, in the movie we see that with nuTrek's warp we see that:

10 mins in warp > from Earth to Neutral Zone, at which point a ship can fire on the surface of Kronos.

At least the Klingons in the movie had the saving grace that they did respond to someone farting around on their homeworld, on Earth apparently you don't even have to be sneaky, you can just ride a flaming starship all the way from the moon to San Francisco and nobody will so much as try to contact you. That's ridiculous. A 20-minute drive from Kronos and the Klingons can slam-dunk a bomb into SFHQ, it's like imagining Britain and France, two nuclear powers being on the brink of war, but nobody's so much as watching the Chunnel entrance and London's security consists of the normal complement of traffic cops.

[RogueIce]

I was turning something similar over in my head, but it would have been nice to see, even if in a throwaway line.

True enough. "We're the only ship in the sector" is a bad explanation, but it's at least an explanation. And I'd agree it'd made worse because we see the other Captains and First Officers in that meeting, and other ships up in orbit when the Big E sets off. So it is kind of a plot hole that they just vanished in the interim.

I would try to pass off the travel times as movie time compression, but I think they dropped the ball on that one because the way events play out when the Enterprise is running back to Earth doesn't allow for much off-screen time to have passed.

[Kuja]

I would try to pass off the travel times as movie time compression, but I think they dropped the ball on that one because the way events play out when the Enterprise is running back to Earth doesn't allow for much off-screen time to have passed.

Moreover, the whole Enterprise mission is to sneak out and kill Khan while he's in an abandoned area of Kronos. If we really wanted to think about time compression of, say, days or weeks, there would be no telling where Khan got to by the time the Enterprise made it to firing range. He could be at the Klingon capitol giving them stolen specs on transwarp beaming or something. The Enterprise's mission is predicated on dropping the hammer while he's still somewhere remote.

The nuTrek movies really seem to want to emphasize faster warp drive - minutes from Earth to Vulcan, minutes from Earth to the neutral zone, minutes from the neutral zone to Kronos. In ST09, Kirk barely had time to shake off the wacky Bones-injection routine beforedashing to the bridge and giving his big "it's a trap!" line to Pike.

But since we're already well into fatnerd territory with the fridge logic here, I'm going to go ahead and say that while goofiness with 'the Enterprise is the only ship in the sector' was already bad in oldTrek (TMP and Generations) it's even worse now. Superfast travel times mean that Earth should never be so vulnerable while we're in a tense state with the Klingon empire. Hell, it should never be vulnerable period, because someone might cross the galaxy in a few hours and punt the California coast into the ocean.

When you have speed like we see in nuTrek, you don't get a galaxy like the one we see in oldTrek - a quiet, cold war state with fleets dispersed along borders, ships crawling through the lonely unexplored regions, entire planets with little or no defenses. You get something more like what we see in Star Wars - vast interconnectedness, booming civilian trade, battles that take place wherever they damn well please because ships can warp into near-planetary orbit. OldTrek was like imagining a galaxy as defined by the Wild West - Gene Roddenberry called it 'wagon train to the stars.' NuTrek is more like the modern world - phonecalls across the galaxy, quick hops anywhere a ship wants to go, supertorpedos that can target an enemy and smack a human-sized target from light-years away.

The NuTrek writers have really upped the ante in ST for the sake of flashy fun, tense plot, and big stakes, but I don't think they've really cottoned on to the logic of the changes they've wrought. In NuTrek, a 5-year mission makes little sense - when you can cross the Federation in 5-10 minutes, you can rapidly map and explore vast swathes of space in days or weeks, and hop on home whenever needed.

[FedRebel]

Since they like doing a rehash of popular moments - Copy the ending of The Undiscovered Country
- New (NuTrek Enterprise) and Old (Enterprise-E) fight alongside each other against a common enemy, obvious candidate is the Borg via V'ger

How about the Relativity?

The Ceti Eel I've had since '09 was that due to the miracles of time travel the USS Relativity got swept up in the whole mess (Hobus' stellar mass had to go "somewhere" through that Red-matter wormholish thing), but was badly damaged and wound up in NuTrek circa 2261. Braxton or whomever is evasive to NuKirk in his request for parts for repairs making NuKirk suspicious, the Enterprise goes on it's way to marshal the Federation Centennial festivities when it's intercepted by Suliban who take Kirk to to Future Guy, FG explains that he's ultimately responsible for the NuTrekverse because the Primeverse is unstable because of extensive time travel and needs a shunt in the form of NuTrek to remain stable. The Relativity is unaware of this in their quest to set right what went wrong, and Kirk must stop them.

The Enterprise is given upgrades, time travel, and torpedoes to make it more of a match and Kirk tries to stop the Relativity. They chase it to the Kelvin incident but it's too late the Relativity destroys the Naranda before it can fire on the Kelvin, they catch the Relativity in 2387 (Primeverse) where the Nuprise stops the Relativity from destroying the Naranda before it falls into the wormhole, the Relativity pounds the crap out of Nuprise in response stopping only to try and stop the Jellyfish from falling in, the E-E (with TNG fanfare) blocks the shot and Piicard demands to know what the Hell is going on. The Relativity would bugout (time core is damaged so they're stuck in 2387.) NuKirk and Picard talk while the Nuprise is repaired, NuKirk emphasizes the imperativeness to stop the Relativity for the survival of both universes.

Picard wants to get advice from Starfleet before acting, but NuKirk chooses to reengage the Relativity ASAP. Both of them know that Nuprise doesn't stand much of a chance, Kirk's commitment to the cause (plus Picard's previous encounter with Kirk [Generations]) motivates Picard to join the fray but not before assembling his excrewmates for Calvary, Capt. Riker and the USS Titan (in my mind a Flight II GCS (USS Venture style), Capt. LaForge and the USS Challenger, and Capt. Worf and the USS Defiant.

The Nuprise takes a whoop'n until the "calvary" arrives, finally the Relativity's defenses are reduced to the point where NuKirk can use a special one use weapon FG provided which destroys the Relativity and creates a "tunnel" that'll return the Nuprise home. Picard gives NuKirk the same advice PrimeKirk gave Picard, and Nuprise triumphantly returns to it's 'verse with the aura that the torch has been completely passed.

[chitoryu12]

My only thing is that, if Kahn was doing all this to screw Marcus, why did he do it in a way that would conveniently play into Marcus' plan to start a war with the Klingons?

What if his plan was revenge against the Federation ?

I don't see any plan that would cause more destruction than a war with the Klingons, except maybe a war with someone else.

I think Khan may not have intentionally transported to Kronos. The transwarp device appeared in a duffle bag in his hands during the bombing as he jumped into a car at the scene, so he likely snuck in and stole it from Section 31 before it went kaboom. I'm willing to bet that if that was the case, Marcus intentionally made sure Khan would find out about it and get his hands on it (seeing it as an easy escape plan), then find himself on the Klingon homeworld when he used it to get out of his crashing gunship.

Khan ends up stealing some weapons from the Klingons while figuring out a way off the rock, and responds to the message from the Enterprise and the kerfuffle with some traders dogfighting with Klingon gunships to find a whole squad of Federation starship crew who were planning to take him into custody.

Meanwhile, Marcus was just hoping that Kirk would be so angry and out for blood after Pike's death that he'd launch the prototype torpedoes at Harrison's last known location. Whether or not the terrorist gets blown to bits, Marcus has his war. The Enterprise's warp drive fails, a Klingon patrol following the path of the torpedoes finds a Federation ship and destroys it, and everything is FUBAR.

[charlemagne]

As far as the "no ships around Earth" thing I don't see that as a big deal. Admiral Marcus is apparently head of Starfleet, after all. Could be he simply ordered the Earth fleet out to "forward positions" or whatever

Even if this is the case, it'd still be weird that no one else on Earth picks up on what is happening - I'd imagine at least news stations to be all over the ship fight Which would mean that U.S.S. Kamikaze shouldn't hit San Fran that unprepared.

[Justice]

When you have speed like we see in nuTrek, you don't get a galaxy like the one we see in oldTrek - a quiet, cold war state with fleets dispersed along borders, ships crawling through the lonely unexplored regions, entire planets with little or no defenses. You get something more like what we see in Star Wars - vast interconnectedness, booming civilian trade, battles that take place wherever they damn well please because ships can warp into near-planetary orbit. OldTrek was like imagining a galaxy as defined by the Wild West - Gene Roddenberry called it 'wagon train to the stars.' NuTrek is more like the modern world - phonecalls across the galaxy, quick hops anywhere a ship wants to go, supertorpedos that can target an enemy and smack a human-sized target from light-years away.

Worse than that, you lose the downtime that they often used to explore their thoughts and such. Instead of having quiet conversations between Spock and Kirk on the way to Qo'NoS about killing Khan, or Kirk giving a Captain's Log about him considering Spock's words, the whole thing gets relegated to a terse conversation in a turbolift. With everything going so quickly, there's no time for the characters to express themselves in a quiet manner.

[open_sketchbook]

I think that might be a reality of a universe that is only seen through film, though; they don't have the luxury of being able to do quiet, introspective episodes of puttering through space. Pacing, especially action movie pacing, has it's demands.

I gotta echo the love for the warp chase scene. I winced at every impact.

[darth_timon]

The warp 'battle' was bruising! Then the Enterprise sort of flops out of warp into a tailspin for good measure...

I wonder how long the human body can withstand warp speed without a ship before said body is ruined?

[Eternal_Freedom]

The warp 'battle' was bruising! Then the Enterprise sort of flops out of warp into a tailspin for good measure...

I wonder how long the human body can withstand warp speed without a ship before said body is ruined?

Since they are also in vacuum (otherwise they wouldn't be blown out of the ship) how long a normal humanoid can survive warp speeds is kinda moot. Anything longer than three minutes or so and it doesn't matter at all.

[SylasGaunt]

I just saw it again so with regards to there being few or no ships at Earth, when the Enterprise is preparing to depart space dock you can see at least two other ships pulling away to depart.

I had assumed that Marcus sent the other ships out chasing Harrison in the wrong direction in order to hide the launch of the Vengeance (also why it had such a small crew.. it's a lot easier to hide snuffing a starfleet ship when there's fewer witnesses).

[amigocabal]

At the end of the movie, Kirk says, " Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us". This actually drove the plot.

Spoiler

Admiral Marcus had used Kirk's desire to seek revenge for Admiral Pike's death to get him to bomb Q'onoS, thus sparking a war between the Federation and the Klingons. While Kirk makes the capture of John Harrison his primary goal, he was still willing to blast Harrison with the torpedoes.

Spoiler

Kirk uses Khan's desire for revenge for form a temporary alliance to stop Marcus.

Spoiler

Spock pursuses Khan in San Francisco to avenge Kirk's apparent death. He shows mercy when Uhura convinces him that sparing Khan can save Kirk.

Peter Weller had played John Paxton in the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Terra Prime" and "Demons".

Scott Lawrence, who played Commander Turner on JAG, appears as a Vengeance bridge officer.


I have one more observation
Spoiler

The Klingons apparentlty recovered from the events of the Enterprise episode "Divergence". Of course, as tezunigari implies, the events of "Divergence" may not have turned out precisely the same way in this timeline...

[Alyeska]

Saw Into Darkness last weekend. I enjoyed the movie, but....

I cano now see what comic book fans have been dealing with for years. Watching their favorite series re-imagined through anothers point of view. Taking concepts and story lines and characters, and re-using them in a new manner.

Into Darkness borrowed from TWOK clearly. But it reordered the material in ways that left me confused. Intellectually I know its a new universe. An alternate reality where they can do anything they want. Which means they can make something eerily similar while being years out of the timeline. Or they can reverse the characters (Spock and Kirk and the warp core). I enjoyed the movie as a whole. Flaws and all. But it borrowed from TWOK. Considered the best Trek movie ever made. And its hard not to make comparisons. And these are two very different movies.

Zachary Qunito as Spock was my favorite character in the movie. Pretty much just like the first JJ Star Trek. I like his take on being Vulcan. Not soulless. And not entirely without emotion. Spock is clearly dealing with his half-human side. I also loved the fight between Khan and Spock. They remembered Spock is super human in strength. So he could actually fight Khan. But where Spock can fight, Khan clearly had the conditioning and training. But when Uhura managed to stun Khan, my god Spock was vicious. Snap, crackle, CRUNCH.

Bruce Greenwood as Pike once against was pure awesome. He just oozes experience and confidence. Someone who knows the rules, but understands humanity as well. I would love to see a prequel Trek with Pike in command of a ship. He kicked ass in the first Trek. I was geuinely side to see him die, but I loved the bit with him and Spock.

Robocop as Admiral Marcus was a surprise. A little on the emotional side, but just as militant as he was in Delta City and Detroit. A believable character type. The Admiral or the General that wants a war.

[Enigma]

<snip>
Robocop as Admiral Marcus was a surprise. A little on the emotional side, but just as militant as he was in Delta City and Detroit. A believable character type. The Admiral or the General that wants a war.

He was militant too as Colonel Green in Enterprise.