Moments that really made you cringe or disliked

Good thing because we all know that Klingons use disruptor cannons. That has been a given for... I don't know how long.



Only reason for Kirk's promotion is because Orci wanted him to be Captain at the end, for no logical reason. It wouldn't have made any difference on the success of this movie (yet it would have given this movie a little more credibility). They could have made Kirk Captain in the middle or beginning of the next movie.

 

It would have been detrimental to not have Kirk as the Captain at the end.

That's the emotional arc of the character, central to the story.

This move is about how a family comes together, how they become the crew of the Enterprise, and if Kirk was not the Captain at the end of the film, the crew would not have been where they needed to be for potential sequels, and the story would not have had a satisfactory ending for one of the main characters.

 

^ I disagree most heartily. It would have been highly satisfactory for me, at least, to have Our Crew assembled, even if Pike was still captain. Probably more satisfying than the ending we got, actually, much as I liked the movie overall. For one thing, I think Pike is a great character, a real addition to the cast. I hope we still get to see him in the next movie.

For another, seeing Kirk continue to mature over the next movie would have been very satisfying as well.

Don't get me wrong, I want Kirk to become captain (good thing, since he is). I'd like to think he earned it, though. The one we saw on TOS apparently did. It wasn't dramatically necessary at all for him to earn that rank immediately, though.

Edit: I mean, jeez, even Star Wars, which isn't exactly the most character-driven franchise on the planet, didn't make Luke a Jedi instantly.

 

Great thread.

Maybe multiple viewings reveal how flaws were hidden by eye-candy and quick-edits?

 

Agreed. If JJ wanted Kirk to be the captain at the end of the film, why the hell didn't they do a flash-forward? "Three years later" or something like that.

 

The reason the 21st century brands are so cringeworthy for me isn't so much stretching credibility they'll still exist (though that is a factor and Nokia moreso than Bud; I can accept Budweiser becoming a generic like kleenex in the future), but they date the film if Nokia goes bust. I like my Trek to be timeless!

 

Great point!

 

I don't see this as a problem. Ripley wears Reebok trainers in Aliens, you see them when she steps into the cargo loader exo-skeleton for about as long as you see the Nokia logo in Star Trek. If Reebok ever goes bust, will that date that movie too much for you as well?

 

But here's the thing:

George Kirk basically restored a museum piece, a 20th century car. We can assume the car is long discontinued by a manufacturer long gone. So what would be unusual about putting a discontinued stereo by a long closed manufacturer? It seems totally plausible that he could have found an old used stereo system by an out-of-business company to put in his out of manufacture car.

For example, lets say that in a 2010 movie, one character restores a 1930 Bugatti Royale Coupe. Now lets also say that the character makes a big deal about replacing the original engine with a 1967 NSU 1000C engine (NSU was a German car manufacturer). Would it pull you out of the movie that NSU is out of business in 2010? What if he got it used, got it from a scrap heap, got it on eBay?

Point being, never for one moment did I think the Nokia stereo meant that Nokia was a company in business in the 23rd century. I had assumed that the company was a relic just like the car, and the stereo from the long-closed company was returned to working order, like the car itself.

 

I would have preferred a scenario where Kirk was first officer for a while, too. But the reviews and the box office suggest that the majority of movie goers either don't know there is a problem with Kirk's rapid ascension, or don't care. I've had ex-military types, who do know better, shrug and tell me "It's just a movie." If test screenings had shown that people were up in arms over it, you can bet the studio would have changed it.

What really drove this decision had nothing to do with story or the writers' preferences; it was all marketing. As far as Paramount is concerned, "Captain Kirk" is the trademark, it's part of the brand, and they want their brand for all the marketing tie-ins. It wasn't Orci's choice, but he's not stupid enough to point fingers at the guys who sign his checks.

I dunno, I guess this didn't bother me as much because I can gloss over the timeline in my mind for future movies.

 

^ I gloss it over, too, Peter - it bothers me a bit, but not that much, particularly if they keep that timeline nice 'n' fuzzy in the next movie. The only reason I brought it up was the assertion that no other ending would have been "satisfactory." That just isn't true - I suspect that those same people who weren't bothered by Kirk's rapid promotion wouldn't have minded waiting until the next movie to see him actually make captain, either. I mean, only someone invested in Trek (e.g., Trek BBSers) really cares that much, anyway.

Who it wouldn't have been satisfactory for was, apparently, Paramount. But hey, they own the bat and the ball, so they get to decide the game.

 

Except it's clearly receiving an incoming phone call -- what did he put up a long discontinued transmission tower out near the barn too?

And I'm not talking about other films here (and yes, product placement and brands most certainly does date them), I'm talking about Star Trek which has never featured product placement like this. Would everyone have been perfectly happy if the tricorders in The Motion Picture had a big fat Commodore logo on the back?

I'd also like to highlight the Beastie Boys song -- not because it's cringeworthy, but if you're going to do that, where was the more classic Planet Rock? Perfect soundtrack to Vulcan getting sucked into a singularity methinks.

 

I can put a sound file on my mobile that makes it sound like someone's hailing me, does that mean I'm tied into the subspace network? Less facetiously, there would have been nothing to stop George from having modifying the programming of the in car phone to tie into whatever civilian communication system there is avaiable on 23rd Century Earth, or just straight up replacing it, only leaving a fascimilie control panel to imitate an actual car phone.

What about the Commodore that was in Kirk's apartment in ST:II and III? Maybe collecting antiques is a Kirk tradition If the logos were on actual and modern equipment (modern for the setting), it would date it, but in these contexts, it's obvious that they're not meant to be up to date in the first place.

I'm going to probably have to show my age (lack of?) and say I don't have a clue what kind of music you're on about there. To be fair though, I didn't recognise is as the Beastie Boys and thought it was some kind of Rage Against the Machine song

 

Agreed. And also, we have no idea what sort of communication system really was in the car. Was it truly a fully functional "phone" with the ability to call out and receive calls? Was it more of a "walkie-talkie" intercomm style system just between the home and the car (this would especially make sense if as an antique, the car was more of a showpiece that didn't move much, so the wife could intercomm the car from the other side of the house, etc).

I agree Sean, from a "muso" (to quote the British) or thematic point of view, Planet Rock (from Afrika Bombata for those who have no idea what we're talking about) might have been a great fit. But from a commercial point of view, the song didn't make nearly as much money. Commercial success doesn't make a song good, but it does increase the likelihood of it surviving through the years. So Sabotage works on two levels—to a modern audience it is more likely to be recognized as it was a bigger hit, and on an "in story" level as it was the bigger hit, it is more likely to have survived inside whatever archaic car stereo George Kirk salvaged for his car.

 

All I can say is if the away teams use hoodies with Nike swoosh logos on them in the next film I won't be surprised given the groundwork laid in this film.

And although they couldn't manage to find an actual Scottish actor to play Scotty, it was novel to have him using an accent that didn't sound like something from Brigadoon. If they're going to have Scotty actually sound Scottish, why the hell does Chekov still have that bullshit "Russian" accent though? Just cut the cord dammit!

 

That "thing?" You mean the Starfleet officer of non-Human descent named Keenser? That "thing?"

I understand if the character annoyed you, but considering that part of the point of Trek is to accept diversity and to treat people who are different as equals, I'm surprised that you'd use language that implies that one character is, within the fictional world of Star Trek, somehow less of a person than another character just because he or she has an alien biology.

That was not a pun, and you weren't supposed to interpret it as such. They were using technical jargon, but there's nothing in that scene to suggest that any sort of double entente was intended. It's absurd to try to read one into that, since that scene was decidedly non-sexual in nature.

I believe that the implication is that their depiction of warp drive is a bit different from traditional depictions. Ships at warp seem to have difficulty, if they're even able to, use long-range sensors to detect what's going on outside of subspace.

Apparently the deflector wasn't powerful enough to help after they came out of subspace in the middle of a debris field.

Why would they? It may be an unusual thing, but what makes you think people would automatically associate it with an anomaly detected decades earlier?

Because, amongst other things, a captain who gets it in his head to ram the Narada can still disable it, as seen in the prologue. Obviously circumventing local defenses helps eliminate this threat.

We don't know how the Red Matter works. What makes you think that it would cause a black hole and implode the planet without being introduced to the high temperatures and gravitational stresses found in a planetary core?

He probably knows that she's aboard because they took the same shuttle, obviously.

Right, because no one who is talented in languages ever makes minor mistakes or has minor problems understanding someone's articulation.

Actually, both TOS and this film (via Uhura) seem to imply that most of the cadets aboard the Enterprise already held the rank of lieutenant.

This has happened numerous times throughout Star Trek. Ralph Offenhouse making it to the bridge of the Enterprise-D in "The Neutral Zone," for instance.

This just makes no sense. Why would the fact that one person puts a pattern together and another person doesn't mean that the latter is an idiot?

There is nothing in the film to indicate that she did not pass this information on to her superior officer at the communications installation in San Francisco.

When Uhura intercepted that transmission, neither she nor Starfleet realized that it had been the Narada that had done it. The perpetrator of the attack was unknown.

Gasp! Someone put an "-s" at the end of a word that should have remained singular! That never happens in real life!

Are you seriously going to claim that something as minor as a bar fight is an indication that an entire species is "retarded?"

By the way, re-watch "The Trouble With Tribbles." We see some 23rd Century Humans getting into a bar fight.

It was also never established in TOS, which featured Federation citizens engaging in financial transactions or acting for monetary gain all the time. To wit: Spock posing as a merchant in "Errand of Mercy;" Cyrano Jones selling tribbles in exchange for Federation Credits in "The Trouble With Tribbles;" Harry Mudd, stealing starships and engaging in what we would today call human trafficking (and is no doubt called something more inclusive, like "sentient trafficking," in the 23rd Century); the miners on Janus IV learning to work with the Horta to make a larger fortune; Tellar seeking to solidify its claim on Coridan and prevent it from entering the Federation as a separate Member because of the money it stood to make if it was accepted as Tellarite territory in "Journey to Babel;" McCoy telling a transport captain that he did not have enough money to pay that captain's price for getting to the Genesis Planet; etc.

Or, rather, it became part of Roddenberry's vision of our future, and also was regularly contradicted even after it was established -- Quark selling his ship for scrap on Earth in order to buy passage on a transport to DS9, a Vulcan master upping the price of a meditation lamp upon seeing that Tuvok was a Starfleet officer, the Orion Syndicate robbin the Bank of Bolias (a Federation world), Crusher charging a purchase at Farpoint Station to her account on the Enterprise, the Federation offering to pay the Barzanians 1.5 million credits for use of their wormhole, Ezri's mother owning a mining company on New Sydney, etc.

That ST09 depicts the Federation as having and using money just means it is consistent with TOS; no references to a moneyless society in the UFP occurred until Star Trek IV, set twenty years after TOS began. Even if we ignore the fact that Trek has regularly contradicted the "no-money" rule since introducing it, it was never introduced in TOS and ST09 would in fact be violating canon by depicting the Federation as lacking money, which it obviously did not in TOS.

Yes, in a throwaway line "Dark Frontier." This contradicts numerous instances of the Federation and Earth using money in TOS. The line was a canon violation and ST09 was right to ignore it.

Very strongly agreed. The insta-promotion was stupid.

Actually, dialogue seems to imply that the car belonged to the unseen adult male that Kirk's mother was living with (presumably Kirk's step-father). There's no evidence that it was the property of Kirk's father George.

 

But why? I'm sure they had that capability even way back in ENT. Why would their technology degrade so much?

Well, it seems that the Kelvin-Narada incident was very important and left a strong mark on Starfleet (people often use it as an explanation for many of the technological differences in the movie). Details of the incident should still be quite well-known.

What about the black hole at the end of the movie?

Well, the thing is, the person that can't make the connection is the same one that quite literally wrote the book on the thing! If anyone should have seen a connection it is him.

But then Starfleet should have immediatelly stepped up to Red Alert and informed it's captains in the field. Instead it was treated like: 'Hey, guess what I heard today!'.

If anything, that the perpetrator was unknown should have made them even more alert. There is a unknown Borg cube equivalent superpowerfull ship out there, destroying fleets, roaming freely, maybe coming in the Federation's direction, and no one is worried?

 

Interestingly, the actor himself is Russian—born in Soviet Russia to two Russian parents. He clearly put on that accent, however.

I'm guessing it was kept "overdone" because a running gag in TOS (taken to it's extreme in STIV) was that he couldn't pronounce "V." The producers wanted to keep the running gag alive, so they kept the accent. With Scotty, his accent was simply an accent, so replacing it with a more authentic one didn't lose a gag.

 

It should also be pointed out that Jimmy Doohan was canadian. Why do they *have* to cast a real scot?? Keonig was certainly not russian either.. Where do these silly ideas come from??