If you don't think Nemesis is better than Star trek 2009....

[RoJoHen]

Santa Kang wrote:

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Tell us what's more cerebral

Well, the bad guys' giant heads for starters.

[archeryguy1701]

I hate that I am walking back into this (well, I hate that I actually bothered to catch up on this thread, but that's a tale for another day). The OP has obviously made up his mind on everything, and the only remaining point in this exercise is to give the OP additional opportunities to remind us that we're wrong about everything we say that's not in agreement with his thoughts, but I had to address one thing.......

trek_futurist wrote:

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I believe the release date of this book is at least 5 years after TNG ended. There are a a few old technical manuals from TOS which precede my own birth by many years, perhaps you are referring to these. Anyway, here is one of many amazing paragraphs from this book, reminding one of just how close the star trek writers (with help from their science advisors) got it.

'Finally, the Star Trek writers added one more crucial component to the matter-antimatter drive. I refer to the
famous dilithium crystals (coincidentally invented by the Star Trek writers long before the Fer-milab engineers
decided upon a lithium target in their Antiproton Source). It would be unthinkable not to mention them, since they
are a centerpiece of the warp drive and as such figure prominently in the economics of the Federation and in
various plot developments. (For example, without the economic importance of dilithium, the Enterprise would
never have been sent to the Halkan system to secure its mining rights, and we would never have been treated to
the "mirror universe," in which the Federation is an evil empire!)
What do these remarkable figments of the Star Trek writers' imaginations do? These crystals (known also by their
longer formula— 2<5>6 dilithium 2<:>1 diallosilicate 1:9:1 heptoferranide) can regulate the matter-antimatter
annihilation rate, because they are claimed to be the only form of matter known which is "porous" to antimatter.
I liberally interpret this as follows: Crystals are atoms regularly arrayed in a lattice; I assume therefore that the
antihydrogen atoms are threaded through the lattices of the dilithium crystals and therefore remain a fixed
distance both from atoms of normal matter and one another. In this way, dilithium could regulate the antimatter
density, and thus the matter-antimatter reaction rate.
The reason I am bothering to invent this hypothetical explanation of the utility of a hypothetical material is that
once again, I claim, the Star Trek writers were ahead of their time. A similar argument, at least in spirit, was
proposed many years after Star Trek introduced dilithium-mediated matter-antimatter annihilation, in order to
justify an equally exotic process: cold fusion. During the cold-fusion heyday, which lasted about 6 months, it was
claimed that by putting various elements together chemically one could somehow induce the nuclei of the atoms
to react much more quickly than they might otherwise and thus produce the same fusion reactions at room
temperature that the Sun requires great densities and temperatures in excess of a million degrees to generate.
One of the many implausibilities of the cold-fusion arguments which made physicists suspicious is that chemical
reactions and atomic binding take place on scales of the order of the atomic size, which is a factor of 10,000
larger than the size of the nuclei of atoms. It is difficult to believe that reactions taking place on scales so much
larger than nuclear dimensions could affect nuclear reaction rates. Nevertheless, until it was realized that the
announced results were irreproducible by other groups, a great many people spent a great deal of time trying to
figure out how such a miracle might be possible.

Since the Star Trek writers, unlike the cold-fusion advocates, never claimed to be writing anything other than
science fiction, I suppose we should be willing to give them a little extra slack. After all, dilithium-mediated
reactions merely aid what is undoubtedly the most com-pellingly realistic aspect of starship technology: the
matter-antimatter drives. And I might add that crystals—tungsten in this case, not dilithium—are indeed used to
moderate, or slow down, beams of anti-electrons (positrons) in modern-day experiments; here the antielec-trons
scatter off the electric field in the crystal and lose energy.
There is no way in the universe to get more bang for your buck than to take a particle and annihilate it with its
antiparticle to produce pure radiation energy. It is the ultimate rocket-propulsion technology, and will surely be
used if ever we carry rockets to their logical extremes. The fact that it may take quite a few bucks to do it is a
problem the twenty-third-century politicians can worry about.'-Lawrence M. Krauss, The physics of Star Trek

Did you read the excerpt you posted at all? Or better yet, did you understand what you posted? The shorter version of that excerpt translates out to be:

"The Star Trek people made up Dilithium crystals to make their ships fly. Now, if you take their made-up plot device and combine it with my made-up hypothetical explaination, we can make theoretical science!!!!"

As someone who's read that book in the past, that book largely does nothing but spout theoretical stuff and try to come up with ways these various things might be possible. It doesn't prove that the folks on Star Trek were forward thinkers, just that they needed a device to do a job on their show, and someone was willing to invest time into coming up with ways it might be possible.

Trek 09 has plenty of issues, just like all the other movies. And if those issues are big enough that you can't enjoy the movie, that's your call. But I don't get the point of this thread other than to piss people off because you're obviously not going to be persuaded one direction or the other, and you're not going to win any allies for your cause by consistently coming out and insulting the folks who liked the new movie. Quite simply, this is not a discussion thread- this is a soapbox for you to preach to us Trek '09 loving heathens about the follies of our ways.

[trek_futurist]

Maurice Navidad wrote:

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re Roddenberry fighting to have a multi-ethnic cast on Star Trek.

Since this keeps coming up time and time again, I feel it's time to just reproduce the full text of the 1965 (before the series was greenlit) NBC memo that illustrates that Roddenberry had to do no such thing.

Here it is, emphasis mine:

All that sounds like code for 'please continue showing black women as maid's and black men as servants'.

Especially all the stuff about how imperative it is to show black people in a way that is 'reflective of their role in society'. At that time, their perceived role in society was as servants and maid's.

Muhammad ali did more for black americans at that time than these TV executives did.

[trek_futurist]

KingDaniel wrote:

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However it came about, Trek's racial toerance message is a powerful one - and it's one that Star Trek '09 encapulates better than any Star Trek has before!

Complete and utter non-sense.

It makes Uhura look like a whore and minimizes sulu's role down to virtually nothing.

TNG, DS9 and VOY exemplified racial diversity a lot better.

It's one thing to like the movie for being a special effects extravaganza, but to be snow blinded into this misconception is just ridiculous.

[archeryguy1701]

^As a reminder please.... outside of the "Big Three", what did any of the other TOS members really have to do in the first 6 movies that stood out compared to the new movie? In fact, what did the TOS members outside of the big 3 usually have to do in the series on a consistent basis?

[RoJoHen]

snowman1701 wrote:

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^As a reminder please.... outside of the "Big Three", what did any of the other TOS members really have to do in the first 6 movies that stood out compared to the new movie? In fact, what did the TOS members outside of the big 3 usually have to do in the series on a consistent basis?

Fan dance.

[BillJ]

Name the number of gay characters that Modern Trek had during a time when the awareness and acceptance of gay people was at an all-time high and were regularly being shown on TV? Here's the answer: 0.

TNG had two black actors in a cast of nine and had probably the most blatantly rascist episode of any TV show in the 80's/90's, Code of Honor.

[trek_futurist]

Santa Kang wrote:

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Pretty sure the "cerebral" thing is a bit of a myth as well.

No.

Santa Kang wrote:

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The pilot was well received by the executives. They did have problems with some of the casting (Like GR casting his then mistress) and the character of Spock. Who, ironically would be the shows break out character.

They didn't want a woman as second in command. More evidence of intolerance for minorities.

[RoJoHen]

trek_futurist wrote:

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No.

Well, I'm convinced.

[archeryguy1701]

Dude.... women aren't minorities.

[BillJ]

trek_futurist wrote:

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No.

They didn't want a woman as second in command. More evidence of intolerance for minorities.

For the hundredth fucking time, they didn't have a problem with a woman in that spot they simply hated that Gene cast his mistress. Gene didn't have the balls to tell his mistress she was getting the axe because she was a shitty actress. So he made up the nonsense about the executives not wanting a woman there.

[trek_futurist]

BillJ wrote:

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The female first officer myth was debunked long ago. NBC didn't like Majel Barrett not the idea itself.

Where do you people get this non-sense?

Gene Roddenberry himself cited many of these cases of network prejudice. Was he lying? And who are you to say he wasn't?

[BillJ]

trek_futurist wrote:

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Where do you people get this non-sense?

Gene Roddenberry himself cited many of these cases of network prejudice. Was he lying? And who are you to say he wasn't?

Google is your friend. Or you could read Inside Star Trek which was co-written by the Desilu executive (Herb Solow) in charge of the production of Star Trek, it's pretty well documented.

[trek_futurist]

Santa Kang wrote:

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horatio83 is another who needs to read Inside Star Trek. It counters alot of the spin GR produced over the years.

How do you know the writer of that book is not, as you describe it, 'spinning'?

Basically it's a matter of hearsay and who you choose to trust. I see no reason for Roddenberry to lie. He has every reason to keep the network execs on his side, and lying would not achieve this.

[archeryguy1701]

trek_futurist wrote:

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How do you know the writer of that book is not, as you describe it, 'spinning'?

Basically it's a matter of hearsay and who you choose to trust. I see no reason for Roddenberry to lie. He has every reason to keep the network execs on his side, and lying would not achieve this.

Who's to say GR wasn't spinning? I see no reason for the author of the book to lie.