From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: efor6920@bigpond.net.au
Subject: Re: Star Trek 2009, I saw it this week (spoilers if you haven't seen
it yet) - very long response
"Wouter Valentijn" wrote in message
news:4afde0b5$0$22919$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> Mind you, I already saw several trailers and read dozens of spoilers. It
> wasn't that new to me. :-)
> Some assumptions I made were wrong. I thought there would be only one age
> for Nero whilst another poster with whom I had a discussion about this
> said there were decades between. He was obviously right. Advance Scout?
> Those twelve hundred quatloos are transferred!
>
> I consider this movie to be a totally alternate timeline, only a few
> levels
> more serious than 'In the Pirkering'.
> When did this timeline start to splice of? I think even before Nero showed
> up.
NB everything I write below is simply my opinion, I'm saying it up here
cause I dont want to write IMO 45000 times.
Possibly, not really enough evidence either way yet is there ?.
>
> If you look at the scenes involving the Kelvin you see a vessel you would
> not think possible for that time period. Outwardly it is reminiscent of
> the
> classic (non-canon) destroyer / scout configuration of the Starfleet Tech
> manual of the '70's. But it seems a great deal bigger and more modern too.
> It had 800 people or more on board and scores of shuttlecraft! And what
> was
> a pregnant woman doing on board? Passenger? Was there an early experiment
> involving family on board starships before the days of Picard?
>
You are assuming she isn't also a member of the crew, im not sure that this
is necessarily a valid assumption. Adding to the problems surrounding the
Kelvin the 'weathering' on the shuttle suggests this is a pretty 'lived in'
ship so it pushes the technology leap back heaps, A spurt in tech after the
Kelvin attack would make sence as defensive techs are fast tracked to deal
with the belief that the Romulan Empire now has a ship capable of destroying
a starship as easily as we would squash a mosquito, that the Kelvin looks so
advanced compared to what one expects does, as you mention above, suggest
the possibilty that the timelines actually diverged somewhat earlier.
> If you think about altering the timeline of Kirk & Co. it automatically
> involves changing everything they touched, not only in their regular time
> frame, but also in the times they will visit outside, in the past (or
> maybe not now in this case). The
> changes, how small or great they are, could start from the ice age of
> Sarpeidon to the mid '80's of the twentieth century.
> So, that might be a secondary effect of a timeline change from the moment
> the Narada entered the past, thus also effecting everything up to and
> including the construction of the Kelvin.
> It could be a cascade of changes. A ripple effect directly into the
> relative future, the natural way time flows, and indirectly the past
> because of the loops made by effected time travelers.
Yet again trek doesnt get current temporal theory but lets face it real
world quantum temporal theory is very airy fairy in and of itself so i'll
give them a pass on that aspect.
>
> The Narada... Those miners seemed to be part of a different culture than
> the Romulans we know about thus far. Which can be explained by the fact
> that most of those had been either in the military or in politics.
Pretty much exactly what the commentary track says too.
>
> Nero himself was total nut case. He could have used a couple of lessons
> from Spock when he was younger.
> The moment he realized he was in the past he might have chosen to head for
> Romulus and/or slingshot back into the future in order to use the red
> matter sooner! Romulus would have been saved and he would not need to seek
> revenge. But then again, I doubt logic was his strong suit.
Same thought I had, as the movie stands he had enough time to both rescue
Romulus and get revenge against Spock, mind you the original script did
cover this. The Kelvins suicide run pushed the Nerada into the Klingon
Neutral Zone, the severely crippled Nerada was captured by Klingons and Nero
and crew spend the vast majority of those years on Rura Penthe, having seen
the Klingon costumes I am damn glad this sequence was cut. While we are on
the point of logic original Spock is once again (Abrams is hardly the first
to commit this sin) given the logical ability of a school boy who fell
asleep in science class IOW since when has a super nova been a threat to the
entire galaxy, or to anything more than about one light week away from the
imploding star (yep I said implode Super Novea implode not explode, the star
colapses in on itself as the spent fuel no longer can provide enough
pressure to support the exterior layers, matter isn't ejected until the
implosion reduces the star to a smaller dimension thus over correcting the
pressure imbalance in the internal layers, as far as astronomers can tell
this is actually the last stage of he Nova event and with the gigantic size
of stars that are capable of going super novae this can take days or even
weeks after the star collapses, again abrams is hardly the frst to commit
this sin either). Our galaxy has a super nova event, on average, once per
century, the most recent was within the lifetime of most people in this
group, last time I checked the galaxy is still here.
>
> The red matter was a curious find for this movie. We know Romulan Warbirds
> are powered by a singularity but I understand this Red Matter has a
> different origin. I did half and half expect Sidney Bristow to show up,
> stopping Nero. :-)
Yep very interesting idea, my guess is that the red matter is actually a
Vulcan development, as this was the source of the ship and the delicacy of
the extraction process that has been shown, to me, suggests this is a
permanently fixed module.
>
> The heroes. Well, vehicular wise this was a very different Kirk. Not
> surprising since the focal point of the changes was his life. The same
> goes for most of the characters. Most close to the originals were Quinto
> as Spock (mostly because of his looks) and Urban as McCoy (almost too good
> a match).
> Really totally different were Chekov and Scott. The latter being
> borderline ADHD I think. And what was that short angry alien doing there?
> He reminded me of Zathras a bit.
>
To me the casting is the best feature of this movie, Pine is very good as
Kirk, he goes far from the original actor but judiciously does copy Shatner
on occasion, such as "we have been ordered to rescue them . . . captain">
While he doesnt copy the style of Shatner he does I think capture the
essence of the charachters flamboyance. Quinto similarly is able to match
Nimoys cadence and delivery but shows good judgement on where to depart and
do his own thing. I agree regarding Urban, saying he comes closest to
matching the original actor is to understate the case significantly, he
absolutely nails it. Urban is an actor to really watch I am starting to
wonder if there is any limit to that mans range. He is so close that I
really cant decide if Kelly would have been flattered or offended I suspect
the former as he does manage to match cadence and delivery without slipping
into parody. Pegg is very good, after Pine and Uhura he is the one to depart
most in performance, but we must remember the original Scotty did have
moments where he could be quite excitable and this is Scotty nearly twenty
years younger than what we were used to him, he hasnt yet learned to temper
himself and use his excitability to his advantage. To my mind Uhura is a
completely different charachter, Nicholls had the presence of a queen she
made huge impacts even when she only had one or two mundane lines in an
episode, this young lady couldn't quite leave queens NY behind her. Her
performance is respectful and entertaining but she did not really sell me
the part. Note, being fairly oldschool in my values, unlike some others I
have no problems with a woman insisting on a man earning the right to use
her first name. The turbolift scene pissed me off royally but that is
Kurtzman and Orci's fault not hers, B-level actresses do not argue minutea
with writers, directors and producers if they ever want a hope in hell of
being considered A-level actresses. Chekov I also agree is very different, I
suspect he had never really watched Trek b4 getting the part, and doubt he
watched much after getting it, he was told they wanted a Russian accent and
thats what he tried to give them only to find out they actually wanted a
chekov accent which, lets face it, is a hollywood russian accent and not
even remotely like a real russian accent. That being said he did a
significantly better job of portraying a prodigy than Koenig, afterall most
people dont even realise that the original Chekov is supposed to be an
intellectual prodigy until one reads the background material written by
Roddenberry and Koenig himself. I think Sarek has to be considered a major
charachter as well and again I think the actor performed the part quite
well. The interesting thing is many among the cast are actually trekkers
themselves including Urban, Pegg (both of whom are actually old school
trekkers), Greenwood and Quinto. Oh I almost forgot Greenwood, while quite
different from the original Pike I think he does manage to capture the
essence of the charachter in an interesting way. As I said above the casting
is the best element in this movie and, I feel, a sign of possible promise
for the future
> Taking a few steps back, taking into account this is a totally alternate
> universe, I have some mixed feelings about the way the film was made. The
> first half seemed too loose and fast. Way too MTV. Maybe because it is
> aimed at a younger age group than mine. The second part of the movie, from
> Kirk's stay on that other Delta Vega was the better half.
>
Agreed, nearly all the pacing cuts are in the first half of the movie and it
is to the point, I think, where they have made the Nemesis mistake of
cutting the story out of the movie by removing some expositionary elements
which would have made the story flow more logically but as I said above I am
damn glad they lost the Klingon sequence.
> As a whole it can be seen as a 'Collage Homage' to the classic series,
> mixing images and sound bites from Treks past into a story that is a bit
> shaky.
> I would have made two or three movies from that first half or so (up until
> the Vulcan distress call) and use those to flesh out Kirk's life in a more
> in depth manner.
> But I guess such a thing will never happen because that wouldn't be fast
> or MTV enough.
> Speaking of MTV, I think it was funny to hear 'The Beasty Boys'. As being
> an Abrams product I would expect to hear 'Drive Shaft'. :-) This however
> was a better choice.
Abrams answers this on the commentary, Burke asks "why sabotage by the
beastie boys" Abrams answers "because it's a kick-ass song"
>
> Bottom line: Do I regret getting this DVD (2 disc edition)? Nope! :-)
I got mine for free and I never look a gift horse in the mouth, so agreed
> Will it replace the originals? Never!
In our hearts, no, but if it is successful, and they have covered enough
bases that it might be, then our Trek is effectively dead in the general
sence, the new audiences to a large extent are not going to be particularly
interested in what came before because in story terms that universe now only
exists in the mind of Spock and in a sence, from the perspective of people
in the new universe, is merely a delusion of Spocks. When Frank Force (aka)
Leonard Nimoy passes the new universe loses it's only tangible link with the
old.
> It starts as this sloppy homage to Trek's past and at the end it finishes
> relatively well.
> Relatively because they were not able to save Amanda and Vulcan. But again
> since I consider those not to be 'our' Amanda and Vulcan, the loss isn't
> felt that strong.
>
Agreed
additional:-
In my opinion this movie is on the whole rubbish, BUT it is better than I
expected it to be, this is one of the few reboots I have seen that actually
does come close to working. It doesn't quite but it comes close, if they can
get a run of three or four movies going and they keep to a similar balance
of respecting the old and creating the new then by the third movie it may be
very interesting indeed.
Cheers
Fozzi
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux NewsLink 1.92-mlp
* Origin: BigPond Internet Services (1:2320/105.97)
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Linux
* Origin: telnet & http://cco.ath.cx - Dial-Up: 502-875-8938 (1:2320/105.1)
|
