Stark Trek Into Darkness *SPOILERS*

[Havok]

Oh for fucks sake... THIS IS NOT THE SAME UNIVERSE AS TOS... just take what is happening as what is happening and stop referencing TOS since hey news flash, both movies have happened before anything in TOS would have.

[Skylon]

Hey, I was just thinking - did this movie avoid the "exploding consoles of doom"? I lost track amidst the multiple hull breaches suffered by the Enterprise, but nobody seemed to get killed or injured on the bridge.

[Srelex]

Hey, I was just thinking - did this movie avoid the "exploding consoles of doom"? I lost track amidst the multiple hull breaches suffered by the Enterprise, but nobody seemed to get killed or injured on the bridge.

Don't think so. Then again I don't think exploding consoles were really a thing in TOS.

[Simon_Jester]

One thing I found interesting, specifically, having only gotten around to seeing the movie yesterday.

In the first conversation between Harrison/Khan and Kirk and Spock, after the fight on Kronos, Khan talks to Spock specifically, saying (to paraphrase) "intelligence alone won't win a fight."

In the fight between Spock and Khan, the two most effective moves Spock pulls off before Uhura shows up are a sustained nerve pinch (which causes Khan great pain and immobilizes him), and that... telepathic face-touch thing (which gets Khan to back off and stop trying to crush Spock's head). So, ironically, Spock's best fighting moves turn out to be the product of Vulcan mental discipline and training, not his own raw physical abilities.

Further irony, of course, in that Khan says to Spock: "You can't even break a rule, how can you expect to break a bone?" Spock later breaks Khan's arm.

I think they actually did a good job of making a Khan-Spock rivalry, of playing these two figures who are arguably physical and mental equals off each other with their very different personalities.

[TOSDOC]

Skylon wrote:
Hey, I was just thinking - did this movie avoid the "exploding consoles of doom"? I lost track amidst the multiple hull breaches suffered by the Enterprise, but nobody seemed to get killed or injured on the bridge.


Don't think so. Then again I don't think exploding consoles were really a thing in TOS.

Their best episode led off with an exploding console, City on the Edge of Forever. Poor Sulu.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Skylon wrote:
Hey, I was just thinking - did this movie avoid the "exploding consoles of doom"? I lost track amidst the multiple hull breaches suffered by the Enterprise, but nobody seemed to get killed or injured on the bridge.


Don't think so. Then again I don't think exploding consoles were really a thing in TOS.

Their best episode led off with an exploding console, City on the Edge of Forever. Poor Sulu.

Sorry for the slight necro but it happened quite a few times. Where no man has gone before, Balance of Terror.. City on the edge of forever... Tomorrow is Yesterday... off the top of my head.

Then again in TMP, TWOK, TSFS, TVH... not sure on TFF. Happened in TUC, too.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Can't be that far, since Archer's Enterprise was able to make the trip from Earth to Kronos in the space of just a few days with a much slower warp drive.

You really don't want to go there even in the old continuity. Trust me.

Well the directors went there, Admiral Marcus had a model of the NX-01.

Zor

I noticed that too. Just saw the film this evening, got the blu-ray

Though I'm not sure why they had to have Khan's blood to revive Kirk (I figured out the blood part before the dead tribble revived ). I mean they had 70-odd other supersoldiers to choose from, not least the guy they pulled from the cryo tube to put Kirk in

I couldn't help but draw parallels with Loki from the Avengers, from the way Khan was brought aboard the Enterprise to how they interacted with him in the brig too...

[EnterpriseSovereign]

What do you expect with no Chris Hemsworth?!

There was no Chris Hemsworth in Iron Man 3, but I still would have preferred spending another $20 watching that again to watching Star Trek.

He was busy filming "Rush"

And Kirk spent maybe ten minutes as first officer before being reinstated, his demotion was pretty pointless

On the plus side, at least Spock Prime when asked about how Khan was defeated, didn't do an Ellen Ripley and simply say "I died"

I think they overdid the drama a bit when they had Kirk and Khan spacewalk over and Scotty blew that Mook Redshirt out the airlock at the last second.

[DaveJB]

Though I'm not sure why they had to have Khan's blood to revive Kirk (I figured out the blood part before the dead tribble revived ). I mean they had 70-odd other supersoldiers to choose from, not least the guy they pulled from the cryo tube to put Kirk in

I don't think they ever said that all the augments were from the same batch, so it's possible that Khan's healing abilities were something peculiar to him. Plus it'd also go a ways to explaining how Khan managed to avoid being Ceti Eel'd between Space Seed and TWOK, while his original crewmembers mostly seemed to have died since then.

While I personally wasn't keen on the whole "blood reviving Kirk" thing, I'll at least give the writers props for trying to make the situation around it seem somewhat plausible. Had it been Voyager or Enterprise, doubtless Kirk would have been laying around dead for a day or two, before leaping up and putting the moves on Carol the minute they injected him with the blood.

[RogueIce]

I liked the Kirk Lives scene because McCoy said that Uhura helped, which could have easily been ignored by the writers and I'm glad it wasn't.

[Chevron_Seven]

I don't think they ever said that all the augments were from the same batch, so it's possible that Khan's healing abilities were something peculiar to him. Plus it'd also go a ways to explaining how Khan managed to avoid being Ceti Eel'd between Space Seed and TWOK, while his original crewmembers mostly seemed to have died since then.

And Enterprise did establish at least some differences between the Augments. There was the one who was a Augment but lacked any of the abilities of one.

[Metahive]

So I finally got to watch Into Darkness and...was frankly underwhelmed. It's a rehash of TWOK only bland and boring. The opening sequence is just like that stupid cannibal island plot from the second POTC, right down to "protagonists get chased by angry natives" bit which only Indiana Jones movies should still have the permission to include. Well, at least Kirk gets somewhat of a dressing down for his insufferable maverick attitude, but it's all moot since he's still portrayed as being morally in the right and even gets to steal Spock's heroic sacrifice from the original continuity.
Admiral Robocop is Admiral Cartwright from TUC only with worse setup and a dumber plan ("We'll shoot at them and they'll shoot back = War. Imma' cunning genius!"). The superspecialawesome battleship Vengeance is introduced and then we are denied any sort of decent space battle as both Enterprise and Vengeance are sucker-punched out of commission and there are no other capital ships in the entire movie. Two movies in and we already are retreading the "only ship in the quadrant" nonsense from the old continuity, hooray.
A very videogamey and overly long sequence of "skydiving" from one ship to another, weeeeee. I almost expected quick time button prompts to show up. Hey, why not cut that EXTREEEEEME 90's BS out and give us a decent space battle instead?
Sherlock Khan has so little passion when compared to the original he might as well have been some sort of Kung-fu Borg drone. Since they also racelifted him into a very pale caucasian guy they might as well not have bothered with naming him Khan at all. Spock does the "KHAAAAAAAN!" scream, cute. After we already had one such allusion in the previous movie ("SPOOOOCK! SPOOOCK!"). Is that now gonna' be a thing for nuTrek just like "I've a bad feeling about this" is for SW?

4/10

[Crossroads Inc.]

SO, your review breaks down to:
"WAH IT's too much like the original StarTrek!" and then
"Kirk dies instead of Spock! It's not enough like original StarTrek!" and then
"It borrows elements which have been used in countless other movies! It's not original!"
and then my favorite...
"WAH! The Enterprise got beat up by a ship twice it's size weight and arms!"

Sorry, I just had to get that out my system.. Onto a more nuanced response...

Firstly, I have to ask what did you expect going into the film? Really?
Unless you where in a cave in regards to any and all news from it, you should have known it had 'A' Khan in it. And aside from Khan, and the ending, just Why is this a "Rehash" of the TWOK? lets take a look...
ST-TWOK = scientists looking to test new super plot device, run across Khan and his crew. Khan escapes and takes over a starship. Kirk is introduced as feeling old, bored and doing nothing but training new recruits. He is then called to investigate, has his ship punched up because of being arrogant, but escapes because he knows a lot about how starships work. Khan's lust for revenge blinds him against all else, he ignores advice from his crew and puts them in danger all to go after Kirk. Kirk finds scientists, finds plot device, but has it taken away. Finally Kirk and khan, both in equally smashed up ships, battle it out deaf and blind in a gas cloud. Khan, utterly obsessed with vengeance upon kirk, blows himself and the plot device up. Spock saves the day by sacrificing himself to restore power so they escape

Ok, now lets look at the next movie...

ST-ID = Kirk is on a mission to a primitive planet, Wanting to save it's people, he breaks a bunch of rules and regs to do so and gets nailed for it. It is clear Kirk is cock, inexperienced and reckless. We then have a massive bombing of a secret installation by a someone with an obvious grudge against starfleet. The SF bigwigs are called together for a meeting, and are shot up in a trap laid by man with grudge. Kirks mentor is killed and Kirk is blinded by a desire for vengeance against the 'bad guy' and is given a bunch of 'magic' torpedoes and told to shoot them at the Klingon homeworld to get the guy. Virtually everyone else on bored feels this is crazy and tells Kirk this is a BAD IDEA! Kirk tells them to get lost and comes within INCHES of shooting the warheads, before at the last second having a change of heart brought on by Spock. They go down, and after a fight with token Klingons, 'arrest' the bad guy who gives up after hearing about the warheads. On bored he tells Kirk that he is a super soldier and super genus named 'Khan' who helped the Admiral design big nasty weapons cause the Admiral has a Hardon for war with the Klingons. The Admiral arrives in a big honking warship, blasts Kirk, and is only stopped from killing him and his crew by plot device Scotty who disables the ship of doom. Kirk and Khan team up, get over knock out the crew, where Khan naturally double crosses him and sizes control. Spock pulls a fats one and beams over the warheads which explode, cripple the ship of doom. Both it and the Enterprise fall toward Earth, but the enterprise is saved when Kirk sacrifices himself to restore power. Spock then goes after Khan, and with a lot of help, captures him and revives Kirk.

So...

In one movie Kirk is experienced, methodical, and clearly superior in his knowledge about how starfleet works. Meanwhile Khan is blinded by vengeance, sacrifice his crew to go after Kirk. The Enterprise is shot up mostly due to, not so much arrogance, but being overly relaxed around another federation ship.
In the other movie. Kirk is young, inexperienced, reckless and becomes blinded by vengeance. He however is talked out of committing the act of vengeance and is able to change his mind. Meanwhile Khan is cold, calculating and is utterly obsessed with the protection of his crew. their safety overrides any and all priories for him. Here the Enterprise is shot up because it faces a starship that totally outclasses it in every possible way.

So, Really, unless you say its a "rehash" in terms of them taking the basic themes and totally reversing them so that their different in every way... I don't see what your gripe is.
That is not to say the movie was all that good, it's not to say that it didn't have a LOT of mistakes and eye rolling moments. There are a LOT of valid things ot be said against it, but a "Rehash" of TWOK is not one of them

[Metahive]

SO, your review breaks down to:
"WAH IT's too much like the original StarTrek!" and then
"Kirk dies instead of Spock! It's not enough like original StarTrek!" and then
"It borrows elements which have been used in countless other movies! It's not original!"
and then my favorite...
"WAH! The Enterprise got beat up by a ship twice it's size weight and arms!"

Wow, you are either blind, dumb or illiterate if that's what you take away from my "review". Let's dissect...

"WAH IT's too much like the original StarTrek!"

Nowhere expressed.

"Kirk dies instead of Spock! It's not enough like original StarTrek!"

Bullshit, that's not what I said.

"It borrows elements which have been used in countless other movies! It's not original!"

Nope, not my point either.

"WAH! The Enterprise got beat up by a ship twice it's size weight and arms!"

Wrong again. That's a 0/4, you get an F-. Sit down, you flunk this class.

Not going to bother with the rest of your post if you are so eager to completely mischaracterize mine.

[Arawn Fenn]

Two movies in and we already are retreading the "only ship in the quadrant" nonsense from the old continuity, hooray.

It's worse than that, it was already in the last movie!

"The fleet is in the Laurentian system"

[DaveJB]

Where did they say that the Enterprise was the only ship in the quadrant/Sol system? In fact, I'm pretty sure there were some other ships seen at the spacedock before the Enterprise set course for Kronos. As to why no other ships intervened in the Enterprise's battle with the Vengeance, remember that Admiral Marcus was the head of Starfleet. He probably called ahead and told them that "Harrison" had taken control of the Enterprise and outfitted it with experimental weaponry, and that the Vengeance was the only ship that could take it down. Odds are that no-one would have had any cause to suspect anything really suspicious until right about the time that Alcatraz had become a smear on the Vengeance's deflector dish.

[NecronLord]

Two movies in and we already are retreading the "only ship in the quadrant" nonsense from the old continuity, hooray.

It's worse than that, it was already in the last movie!

"The fleet is in the Laurentian system"

Are you high?



One ship. My arse.

The "primary fleet" was "engaged in the Laurentian system," so they had six or more ships at Earth, including USS Enterprise, Antares, Farragut, and others.

There is no reason to assume there were no ships around Vulcan when the Nerada arrived, either.

Or are you assuming that Starfleet can never do anything other than remain meekly in its home systems waiting for the bad guy of the week to attack? As Q would have it, "go home and hide." Six starships is a reasonable number to have around Earth.

As for ships around Earth in Into Darkness:


The captains and first officers of ships in the region meet with Admiral Marcus.


Two ships visible at spacedock as Enterprise leaves.

There is no suggestion in this film of the Enterprise being the only ship available. None.

[The Romulan Republic]

Aside from the fact that no ship intervened while the Enterprise and Kahn were fighting while orbiting Earth and then crashing into Earth.

[NecronLord]

Irrelevant to the "only ship in the sector" trope. The Enterprise was never stated to be the only ship in the sector. The "only ship in the sector" trope is about there being no ships available. It was not the only ship available to go to Kronos; that is a fact.

I have established beyond reasonable doubt there were other ships in the area of Earth in this film, and the previous one.

[Eternal_Freedom]

AS DaveJB said, it's most likely that Marcus issued an alert "Enterprise has gone rogue/is in league with Harrison, stay clear, I'll deal with this myself." or "I'll engage the renegades, you ships set up a perimeter in case Enterprise runs again."

[Batman]

Mind you if the sequence had been much longer I would ask why no other ship tried to tow Vengeance clear or at least blew her into harmlessly small chunks before reentry, (or did the same for the Big E when she was deorbiting) but as depicted I'm perfectly willing to accept 'what the hell is going on' general confusion to explain why nobody else got involved in that.

[Arawn Fenn]

Or are you assuming that Starfleet can never do anything other than remain meekly in its home systems waiting for the bad guy of the week to attack?

No, I'm not "assuming" that. I'm saying that's what the movies always end up making it look like.

Oh, that's a great example. Funny thing, for some reason those ships weren't around when Nero showed up at Earth.

[Batman]

That'd be the part where Nero had already blown them to scrap by the time the Big E arrived at Vulcan? Did you actually WATCH the movie?

[NecronLord]

Oh, that's a great example. Funny thing, for some reason those ships weren't around when Nero showed up at Earth.

...

Yes, they were called away, to Vulcan. Then they were dead.



What manner of troglodyte are you, disgorged from your hole in the earth to trouble me with your meaningless and imbecilic braying?

Are you seriously arguing that they should have kept those ships around Earth instead of helping Vulcan? What'd be the fucking point of having a Federation if its members don't help each other in mutual defense and against natural disasters?

[Prannon]

To make a point, I've worked in a chain of command before, even if it's not a military one. All that Admiral Marcus would have to do to deal with any ships still docked at home would be to say, "Stay docked," and then nothing else. No need to say that he's doing anything and no need to mention the Vengeance, since it's an uber secret stealth ship.

Hell, he could just say nothing at all. Anyone who notices those two ships would probably be confused for long enough to not do anything anyway, and it's not like we saw those ships in space near Luna for anything more than half an hour.