Comments on: My Thoughts on Star Trek

By: Tyson Durst

Tyson Durst — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:19:08 +0000

I saw it on digital projection and it was a lot of fun. There are certainly some holes and stretches but Abrams was juggling so much to make it work that I could forgive them.

I even got used to the Apple store bridge contrasted with the bizarrely antiquated engine room. I thought McCoy was a scene stealer and I loved that we finally get an explanation for his famous nickname.

And I think Star Trek has always taken some artistic license in the science and plausibility department from time to time anyway so I can give those liberties a pass here too, especially considering the goals and ambitions attached to this film.

The Nokia product placement in a Star Trek movie was…fascinating, as Spock would say.

Abrams and the cast and crew deserve a ton of credit. When was the last time that people who had little or no interest in Star Trek were talking and buzzing about it with enthusiasm?

By: Adrian Bamforth

Adrian Bamforth — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:32:22 +0000

I can’t say I liked it much: I don’t know about later series but for me, Star Trek was always about using the sci-fi device to explore human themes and moral dilemmas. My favourite was always The Motion Picture which did it perfectly. Here however, the ‘villain’ is empty and unsympathetic: He doesn’t have any kind of argument (and why would he think Spock was responsible?), so the heroes didn’t have to face any kind of moral quandries – they just had to get in there and kill him. And the ‘bad guy blowing up planets’ plot lacked invention (especially when the Red Matter isn’t explained at all. Finally, while the Star Wars prequels, for all their flaws, did explore in all kinds of ways the circumstances which led up to what we know, Star Trek missed this opportunity in it’s rush to ‘get the team together’ – Vulcan culture is illustrated by some Vulcan Children doing maths, while Star Fleet is explained in only one line: “The peace-keeping armada” – when did they become that? Then why at the end does their mission become ’seeking out new life forms’ again? Mind you, the way they ’scramble’ from Earth to Vulcan and back negates the whole ‘voyage’ element of the premise – they are hardly explorers at all.

By: IGPNicki

IGPNicki — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:03:38 +0000

I don’t know if McCoy could’ve declared Spock unfit for duty purely on the whole mother/planet getting destroyed thing… but he definitely could’ve done it based on the fact that Spock makes the most illogical decision a Vulcan could make, and decides to marroon Kirk versus just throwing him in the brig.

By: Alan Coil

Alan Coil — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:44:34 +0000

I haven’t read the comic book series. I shouldn’t have to to enjoy the movie, which I did. But if you are putting key information in the comic and not in the movie, you are failing at your job as a storyteller. (In a recent television animated show, character A calls character B by name, even though character B’s name had not been previously revealed in the show.)

By: Jonathan Eigen

Jonathan Eigen — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:37:24 +0000

I just assumed that Kirks parents still had sam earlier that since the timeline had shifted and Kirk now grew up witha stepfather instead of a father that his relationship with Sam may not have been the same.

By: Allyn

Allyn — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:15:54 +0000

Eric Bana’s Nero was a colorful look at a Romulan but he really doesn’t have enough time to do much but whine or snarl. Just what did he and his crew do for 25 years?

There was a deleted sequence that showed that Nero had been imprisoned by the Klingons on Rura Penthe. I don't know how or why the Klingons would have captured him; given that the Narada destroyed an armada of 47 Klingon ships, it's a safe bet that the Klingons didn't take the Narada by force. My guess is that Nero willingly let himself be captured by the Klingons and forced into hard labor, but I can't imagine the motive. The missing twenty-five years, by the way, is going to be chronicled by IDW in a series entitled Nero that starts this summer by the same creative team as Countdown. That would make the continuity around the comics and the films run thusly: Spock: Reflections --> Countdown --> Nero --> Movie

By: Geoff Trowbridge

Geoff Trowbridge — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:41:26 +0000

Setting aside the question of how exactly this “red matter” creates the singularity in the first place, there would be no appreciable effect upon the rest of the Vulcan system. Just because all the mass of Vulcan collapses down to a single point doesn’t change the amount of mass or its gravitational pull. As far as the physics are concerned, the planet is still there, with the same center of gravity… it just no longer has a surface to prevent you from falling in toward the center.

By: Bob Greenberger

Bob Greenberger — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:06:34 +0000

McCoy clearly is older not only in looks but when he refers to himself as part of the senior medical staff; credit for his years as a private MD clearly pushed him up the ladder a bit.

By: Bob Greenberger

Bob Greenberger — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:05:13 +0000

A few lines putting the loses at Vulcan into context could have helped explain why a crew of cadets were just being given what Pike called “the fleet’s newest flagship” rather than some crew shuffling. There should have been a lot more moments of explication with an eye towards these plot lines and character arcs.

By: Bob Greenberger

Bob Greenberger — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:03:37 +0000

The credits clearly state Greg Grunberg was the voice of Kirk’s stepfather. His dialogue also said “your mother may be off planet…” again confirming this was not a sibling. I’m just saying….