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Jun. 11th, 2009 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarod45Saw Star Trek today. I'm reminded why I'm not a Trekkie.
Kirk, Spock, and Uhura were likable, but not particularly captivating. On the other hand, Bones and Scottie were hilarious.
Plotwise, I spent most of the film stifling my desperate cries of "Black holes don't work that way!!" I thought we had moved past this whole black-holes-as-logicless-plot-conveniences thing that was so popular in cheap sci-fi. I mean, let's leave aside the time-travel aspect. That's so ludicrous, it's not even worth considering. How is this little red droplet supposed to create a black hole? I mean, is it a tiny fragment of a neutron star contained in an anti-gravity field? That wouldn't even be close to doing the trick, but I just kept thinking: "There's not enough mass in that entire solar system to create a black hole." And what on god's green earth gave anyone (including a supposedly intelligent guy like old!Spock) the idea that a black hole would be a better, less dangerous thing than a supernova? I mean, if you've got a supernova, you'll as likely as not end up with a black hole anyway, why rush things? It won't help anything. And if your problem is that a planet is about to burnt to crisp by said supernova... then the supernova was probably that planet's star. In which case, I don't care what you do, that planet's toast. It'll get fried in the explosion, ripped apart by the black hole, or (best case scenario) freeze into a little ball of ice as the star retracts and reforms as a neutron star (or whatever). I'm really not sure where any of these characters got the idea that saving the planet was, in any realm of reality, even an option. And why was that even a question? Did this technologically advanced planet not have anyone paying any attention to their own sun and its life-cycle? Star don't just wake up one day and decide to go supernova. I mean, that's right up there with Krypton not noticing that the planet is ripping itself apart until basically the day that it explodes.
I'm not even going to touch the issue of the black hole that ate Nero's ship.
I don't require that sci-fi be scientifically sound, or even particularly plausible. That would take all the fun out of it. I only ask that it not insult my intelligence.
Though, speaking of Nero's ship... okay. So, Nero was a humble mining ship captain before he (bewilderingly) took it upon himself to avenge his planet on the guy who failed to save it (leaving aside that I have no idea where anyone got the idea that it could be saved). So Nero, who is not a military commander, on a ship that is not a military vessel, stumbles into the past. Where he proceeds, over the next 25 years (really? He sat in front of that black hole, doing nothing in particular for 25 years, waiting for old!Spock to come through, when it would be much more reasonable to assume after a few years that he'd been, oh, I don't know, annihilated after falling into one of the most powerful and destructive forces in the universe) to utterly decimate the most advanced military ships that the Federation and Klingons have to offer. (The Klingons aren't part the Federation, right?) Why is a mining ship outfitted with enough artillery to make a Star Destroyer look like an ice cream truck? Are Romulans just that badass, that no member of their species would even consider going out not armed to the teeth?
And then there's old!Spock. I never saw Star Trek: The Original Series. I never saw the original Trek movies with Kirk and Spock. I have no lingering fondness for the old Trek universe or for Leonard Nemoy. The shoutouts were lost on me. And, really, I found them obnoxious. Mostly because they were gratuitous. Old!Spock really served no purpose. The plot could just as easily have moved forward without him.
Why did Nero wait 25 years? It took that long to fix his ship after Capt Kirk Sr rammed it. How did Kirk survive the monster? The way any ingenious action hero survives ravening beasts. How did Kirk get the backstory? He didn't really need it, and we could have gotten from Nero. How did he get to the Starfleet base? Same as he did -- after all, he already knew it was there. How would Scottie have gotten them onto the Enterprise? He could just as easily say that he'd perfected the formula while sitting around on that icy hellhole with nothing better to do with his time. What about old!Spock's instructions to Kirk? Kirk already wanted to return and take over the Enterprise. If he found Scottie and got to talking to him at all he'd realize on his own that he'd found the means. And Kirk is a reasonably intelligent man with a proven inclination to fighting dirty, and who does in fact know Starfleet regulations (even if he ignores them). It would not have been at all unbelievable for him to come up with the "emotionally compromised" plan on his own. That was it. That was old!Spock's entire contribution to the plot. I frankly thought all of the old!Spock scenes were painfully awkward, and IMHO, the movie as a whole would have been better without him.
And then there was Spock and Uhura. Cute? Yes. However, um. Fraternization, anyone?
I may have spent entirely too much time thinking about this.
Really, though, aside from my screaming frustration with the black holes, and my annoyance with old!Spock, the movie was good fun. Really, if they decide to make a spin-off series called "The Bones, Scottie, Sulu, and Chekov Hour," I would watch it. And there was a pleasing number of explosions. And a red shirt getting killed. Good stuff.
Kirk, Spock, and Uhura were likable, but not particularly captivating. On the other hand, Bones and Scottie were hilarious.
Plotwise, I spent most of the film stifling my desperate cries of "Black holes don't work that way!!" I thought we had moved past this whole black-holes-as-logicless-plot-conveniences thing that was so popular in cheap sci-fi. I mean, let's leave aside the time-travel aspect. That's so ludicrous, it's not even worth considering. How is this little red droplet supposed to create a black hole? I mean, is it a tiny fragment of a neutron star contained in an anti-gravity field? That wouldn't even be close to doing the trick, but I just kept thinking: "There's not enough mass in that entire solar system to create a black hole." And what on god's green earth gave anyone (including a supposedly intelligent guy like old!Spock) the idea that a black hole would be a better, less dangerous thing than a supernova? I mean, if you've got a supernova, you'll as likely as not end up with a black hole anyway, why rush things? It won't help anything. And if your problem is that a planet is about to burnt to crisp by said supernova... then the supernova was probably that planet's star. In which case, I don't care what you do, that planet's toast. It'll get fried in the explosion, ripped apart by the black hole, or (best case scenario) freeze into a little ball of ice as the star retracts and reforms as a neutron star (or whatever). I'm really not sure where any of these characters got the idea that saving the planet was, in any realm of reality, even an option. And why was that even a question? Did this technologically advanced planet not have anyone paying any attention to their own sun and its life-cycle? Star don't just wake up one day and decide to go supernova. I mean, that's right up there with Krypton not noticing that the planet is ripping itself apart until basically the day that it explodes.
I'm not even going to touch the issue of the black hole that ate Nero's ship.
I don't require that sci-fi be scientifically sound, or even particularly plausible. That would take all the fun out of it. I only ask that it not insult my intelligence.
Though, speaking of Nero's ship... okay. So, Nero was a humble mining ship captain before he (bewilderingly) took it upon himself to avenge his planet on the guy who failed to save it (leaving aside that I have no idea where anyone got the idea that it could be saved). So Nero, who is not a military commander, on a ship that is not a military vessel, stumbles into the past. Where he proceeds, over the next 25 years (really? He sat in front of that black hole, doing nothing in particular for 25 years, waiting for old!Spock to come through, when it would be much more reasonable to assume after a few years that he'd been, oh, I don't know, annihilated after falling into one of the most powerful and destructive forces in the universe) to utterly decimate the most advanced military ships that the Federation and Klingons have to offer. (The Klingons aren't part the Federation, right?) Why is a mining ship outfitted with enough artillery to make a Star Destroyer look like an ice cream truck? Are Romulans just that badass, that no member of their species would even consider going out not armed to the teeth?
And then there's old!Spock. I never saw Star Trek: The Original Series. I never saw the original Trek movies with Kirk and Spock. I have no lingering fondness for the old Trek universe or for Leonard Nemoy. The shoutouts were lost on me. And, really, I found them obnoxious. Mostly because they were gratuitous. Old!Spock really served no purpose. The plot could just as easily have moved forward without him.
Why did Nero wait 25 years? It took that long to fix his ship after Capt Kirk Sr rammed it. How did Kirk survive the monster? The way any ingenious action hero survives ravening beasts. How did Kirk get the backstory? He didn't really need it, and we could have gotten from Nero. How did he get to the Starfleet base? Same as he did -- after all, he already knew it was there. How would Scottie have gotten them onto the Enterprise? He could just as easily say that he'd perfected the formula while sitting around on that icy hellhole with nothing better to do with his time. What about old!Spock's instructions to Kirk? Kirk already wanted to return and take over the Enterprise. If he found Scottie and got to talking to him at all he'd realize on his own that he'd found the means. And Kirk is a reasonably intelligent man with a proven inclination to fighting dirty, and who does in fact know Starfleet regulations (even if he ignores them). It would not have been at all unbelievable for him to come up with the "emotionally compromised" plan on his own. That was it. That was old!Spock's entire contribution to the plot. I frankly thought all of the old!Spock scenes were painfully awkward, and IMHO, the movie as a whole would have been better without him.
And then there was Spock and Uhura. Cute? Yes. However, um. Fraternization, anyone?
I may have spent entirely too much time thinking about this.
Really, though, aside from my screaming frustration with the black holes, and my annoyance with old!Spock, the movie was good fun. Really, if they decide to make a spin-off series called "The Bones, Scottie, Sulu, and Chekov Hour," I would watch it. And there was a pleasing number of explosions. And a red shirt getting killed. Good stuff.
