Which Star Trek movie has got the most plot holes? And the least?

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Lance, Jun 5, 2013.

  1. Jon1701

    Jon1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    People seem to mistake a plot contrivance for a plot hole. If there were no plot contrivances these movies would be documentaries.

    Every movie or tv show ever made contains numerous plot contrivances.

    A plot hole is in Generations where Soren blows up entire planets to get into the nexus when he could just "fly into it in a ship"...
     
  2. marksound

    marksound Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    That was addressed in the movie. Ships that get too close are destroyed. Soran couldn't get to the Nexus, so he found a way to bring it to him.
     
  3. Belz...

    Belz... Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    One has to wonder, though, why the Nexus destroys shis but not people standing on a ledge.

    I also wonder if the 1701-B scene was the first Soran saw of the Nexus, or if that was one of his attempts.
     
  4. marksound

    marksound Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Timing?

    Didn't he or someone say that the Borg killed his family? Weren't they running from the Borg when they encountered the Nexus? Since the other El-Aurians had the same experience I assumed it was his first time. He's just the only one we know about that was insane enough to go to extremes to get back there.
     
  5. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Kirk simply broke Vulcan tradition by a) shooting Spock's dead body into space and b) not returning his katra. Sarek wanted to bury Spock at home and store his katra somewhere.

    They never intended to put Spock's katra back into his body.
    The intended to get Spock's dead body (the USS Grissom had reported the finding of the torpedo) and then get McCoy to Vulcan. They were just really lucky that they found Spock alive, and then attempted a different Vulcan procedure that hadn't been performed for centuries.


    Kirk also never thought Genesis would revive Spock. He simply started to think positively. Spock died, and an entire new world was born at the same time. He was just being sentimental in his log entry.
     
  6. Belz...

    Belz... Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That's a very good interpretation of the movie and it would make a whole lot more sense if they said so explicitely...

    ...unfortunately when Kirk talks to the admiral about going back, he seems already under the impression that he's going to bring Spock back. What convinced him was the video footage from the rental store... er... surveillance camera. It seems your interpretation, though preferable, is incorrect.
     
  7. ColeMercury

    ColeMercury Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    See, that's precisely what makes no sense to me. I could believe them committing conspiracy, sabotage and treason to bring Spock back to life. But merely to retrieve Spock's corpse? How is the resting-place of his corpse in any way relevant to his katra? The only reason they'd logically need Spock's body at all is to bring him back to life -- but they didn't know they could do that until they arrived at Genesis.
     
  8. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Or indeed why Kirk, floating in space, ends up in the Nexus. If it was that simple then all Soran needed to do was throw himself out the airlock of his ship. Of course, Soran might not have known it was that "simple". :lol:
     
  9. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    Ellison's review is reprinted in the book Harlan Ellison's Watching, which can be read via Google Books. My favorite barb of his is this one:

     
  10. Jon1701

    Jon1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Nah, Its a hole.

    Kirk got in that way, so did Guinan (sort of).

    It doesn't matter whether your ship gets destroyed or not, you still end up in the nexus it would seem. Maybe with a bit more dialogue they could have explained things better but thats what the movie clearly shows.

    I always remember a review from 94 for Generations that descibed that plot as having "more holes than a golf course"... :lol:
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2013
  11. Solariabsg25

    Solariabsg25 Commodore Commodore

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    That's a valid point. Not that I agree completely, as I assume that as Soran had studied the Nexus for decades, he'd know more about the nature of it than an audience member possibly would in ninety minutes.

    A simple two-line exchange, where Picard suggests he try flying into it with a ship, but Soran confirms that it was highly probable that any ship may not survive long enough to guarantee his entry, would have sufficed.

    Most plot-holes in all movies, not only Trek, can be explained with dialogue, but scriptwriters tend to think that their intent and meaning is obvious, so don't explain every little detail, which sometimes leads the audience going "Say, what?"

    Of course, if they did spell out every little thing, then the running time of movies would probably double!
     
  12. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I like the theory that the Kirk which Picard meets in the Nexus is just another "echo" like Guinan. If returning to Veridian III and saving the day is truly Picard's most heart felt desire at that point in time, then maybe the Nexus provided it... along with an ally to help fight (and make a heroic sacrifice) on his behalf. Picard's evidently still in the Nexus even now, living out some deluded fantasy life where he's an action movie hero (cf. First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis), while Kirk really did die saving the Enterprise B. :)
     
  13. Jon1701

    Jon1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It also begs the questions as to whether Picard and the crew of the Enterprise died along with everyone else in the Veridian system meaning that all Trek post '94 has taken place in an alternate universe.

    Which, depending on your point of view means that Star Trek 09 takes place in an alternate, alternate universe. ;)
     
  14. Belz...

    Belz... Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    What, we're STILL in the Nexus ? Shit.
     
  15. Kevman7987

    Kevman7987 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    That itself is a problem in Generations. The story has the Nexus be some sort of fantasy ribbon while at the same time involve time-travel. The writers used a big no-no in that film, changing the rules midway through.
     
  16. Jon1701

    Jon1701 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    If you add up all the alternate universes in Star Trek it would be a very long list.

    Everything past The city on the edge of forever is an alternate universe of sorts, as is Star Trek IV, as is Yesterday's Enterprise, as is Past tense, as is The trouble with tribbles, as is.......

    The list goes on and on...

    I don't know why everyone complained so much when Trek09 came out :D
     
  17. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Having mulled this over now, because it is an intriguing idea, I don't believe the idea of V'Ger living in denial can be supported by the film.

    Assuming we are meant to interpret Spock's descriptions of V'Ger's nature as true (which admittedly might not be fully warranted, since Spock has been known to fall in love with machines, as McCoy might put it), V'Ger is an entity with exactingly perfect thought patterns that, by the time of Spock's mind-meld with it, still can't answer the questions it's asking. If its inability to find answers is really genuine, then V'Ger cannot have been living in denial. Perhaps the assumption that the carbon units aren't true lifeforms causes V'Ger to reject the otherwise indicated notion that carbon units created it, but perplexion resulting from that would not really be the same as denial. For, one of the central ideas in the climax of the film is that V'Ger needs human qualities, in order to be able to leap beyond its present way of viewing the universe. I submit that V'Ger's growth as a being would include unlearning false assumptions that had been programmed into it, including the idea of what constitutes a true life-form.

    Here's a different idea. Maybe when establishing the "translation matrix" to turn the Ilia probe into its mouthpiece, V'Ger could only run glimpses of what it knew through Ilia's brain, much like as the speed of the images flashing on the screen during Spock's mind meld (one of which was the original Voyager VI spacecraft) went by almost too fast to see at all. Maybe V'Ger couldn't do any better, because this was all it knew how to do. So, the image of the original spacecraft flashes through Ilia's brain, she sees the letters V-G-E-R, and she recognizes them, so the machine is satisfied that a term, for its enshrined inner self, has been expressed. It's a little wonky, but I suppose it could work.

    But none of this invalidates what I read King Daniel as saying. To come to a place where everything "makes sense", we have to, so to speak, take an inkblot and recognize it as a bat. We may explain the misspelling, but, in my opinion, there is nothing in the film that implies any particular consistent explanation. On the other hand, there is good reason to suppose that the misspelling is there merely as something overt to illustrate how people are needed to correct broken machines, to hammer the point home to the audience. Now, the presence of something so heavy-handed is a clue that we really are watching Star Trek; even if the movie is not in on the joke, because of its high-brow aspirations, it's presence is nevertheless a relief.

    Really, I think we're discussing various ways that TMP might have been improved, here. I see no evidence that the authors had a completely clear understanding of V'Ger's motivations, as a personality, cf. HAL 9000. The screenplay really needed at least one more revision, but unfortunately the production could not afford that. As it stands, the audience has to do some of the heavy lifting to make the film work, while Roddenberry et al. aspired to, but fell short of, the class of science fiction film that 2001 belongs to. However, even as it stands, I find that TMP still gives me a lot to chew on, especially compared to other Trek films. This topic here is an example.

    ---

    This is as good a place to mention something that actually bothers me a little more.

    When the first plasma sphere hits the Enterprise, it should have digitized it and all our heroes, full stop. Sulu's bullshit line, "The new screens held," was bullshit. The line was cut for the DE, but even without it, the fundamental problem of the Enterprise not being digitized in the first place remained as an elephant in the room. V'Ger scanned the ship and had plenty of experience digitizing things in the Milky Way, not to mention experience digitizing whole other galaxies. That it should need to hit the Enterprise again is just plain absurd.

    But, on the plus side, that our heroes should be inexplicably immune to dangers that everyone else in the universe faces is more proof that we're actually watching a Star Trek film.

    ---

    Another weakness in the film is it's unclear why V'Ger should spit Spock out of the orifice after the mind meld. Whatever reason there might be for that doesn't seem to have been fully absorbed by the plot. In a recent thread on the cut "Memory Wall" sequence, I said this:

    Perhaps, by this point in the movie, V'Ger realizes that it might have been created by carbon units, but isn't really sure what to do. The mind meld as the turning point, not only for Spock, but also for V'Ger, might make sense. However, some reason for Spock being spit out, beyond Spock's immunity from danger as one of the main characters, was, I think, explicitly needed here, because, despite Spock's matter-of-fact attitude, the spacewalk was really executed as a suicide mission.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2013
  18. mos6507

    mos6507 Commodore Commodore

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    There's nothing in the movie that implies that V'Ger is aware of them. The image of the alien world is just one of many, and even Spock hasn't figured it entirely out by the time of the mind-meld.

    If you were to judge the two objectively, the parts the aliens gave him are far more representative of who he is as a living entity than the Voyager core, so since he's journeying to earth, he thinks we should take credit for creating the whole thing, not just the core. This implies that he doesn't realize that he really owes his consciousness not to us but to the mysterious aliens. I mean, the Voyager core is probably about the level of sophistication of an Apple II. Hardly a Turing-complete AI.

    It falls upon Decker to deliver all that exposition about Voyager falling into a black-hole. V'Ger simply has an incomplete sense of self. He is, as the film explains, like a child. Once Decker merges with Ilia, assimilating Decker's humanity and his knowledge, V'Ger can fit all the pieces together.

    There is a lot of irony in having a computer so omniscient and yet with such a gaping blind-spot. But then, cognitive dissonance is a quality us humans are all too guilty of as well. And as a child, you start by thinking of your parents as perfect and godlike, and then you eventually realize they are all flawed like us all, and we're all just fumbling around in the dark.

    Blame NASA.
     
  19. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^ As an aside, the fact that V'Ger has an image of the machine planet implies that V'Ger digitized and destroyed it.
     
  20. Belz...

    Belz... Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Right. But my point is that there is nothing to indicate that your speculation is correct. I just don't think V'Ger cares about the stuff he already knows.