Someone who enjoyed Star Trek XI

You mean the glass that cracked at the same rate as the walls and ceiling?

 

Exactly.

 

You seem to forget that the actual WALLS cracked before the glass did, so that's sort of a moot point.

OTOH this was never a problem to begin with for the many thousands of windows on the hull of the Enterprise-D, including the big skylight on top of the bridge that likewise never ruptured or showed any signs of rupturing unless the entire rest of the ship was falling apart.

 

They should have made the whole bride dome transparent. That would have been a departure from the TOS look.

 

I fully enjoyed the new trek. Any deviation from the established norm is bound to get its critics but thankfully it does seem to be only a very small vocal minority who have been wound up to the point of no return.

Two of the main issues that appear to have stoked the fire of discontent seem to be the 're-imaging' of the trek universe and some of the cast.

Personally I feel the new ship, costumes etc walked the tightrope between staying true to the original and coming up with something fresh incredibly well. I also think Simon Pegg (a huge Trek fan himself) played a good Scotty. I can't think of anyone else I would have preferred to play the part.

I think it will help usher in a new generation of new Trek fans who were too young to appreciate previous films/TV series. Friends of mine who had previously looked at me like an oddball for enjoying Trek thoroughly enjoyed the film and I come in for a lot less stick.

Obviously if people take issue with the film then its well within their right to have their say but, as with anything in life, when taken to a fanatical level only arguments and confrontation can come of it.

On the topic of plot holes I can pick away with the best of them but simply choose not to when trying to enjoy a film.

 

As far as plotholes, it's already been pointed out that better films than this have had bigger problems, even in Star Trek. At the end of the day, though, you can't argue with success, and STXI has come out as one of the most successful Trek movies ever made.

I don't think youth has anything to do with it. My two-year-old son already comes racing through the house like a starving cheetah screaming "E'prise! E'prise!" at the top of his lungs whenever he hears the TNG theme song. And almost everyone I know under the age of 15 who saw STXI have at least made themselves aware of the older series if only to have something to compare the movie too; a surprising number of them have also become fans.

 

Lasers can't get through shields. Or the navigational deflector.

 

If the light of the star was so bright that they needed to polarize the window, a laser of the same frequency could also make it right to the heart of the bridge. All a laser is is light of a single frequency with it's waves in sync. If you're letting in light from outside, a laser of a specific frequency could also get in.

 

I'm sure the Star Trek windows have an automatic safety cutoff for harmful levels of whatever. Otherwise most of the E-D crew would have been blinded when Beverly flew them into a star in "Descent", or whenever a torpedo explodes outside.

It's an unseen bit of magic, just like the universal translator, which somehow synchs mouth movements, or the magic fields that prevent the ship and crew being crushed upon acceleration.

 

Even though the captain has to specifically call for the window to be polarized?

 

^First and foremost, that was for dramatic effect.

But they also needed to show viewers that there's a reason why everyone's eyes weren't being burned out as the Kelvin flew past that star.

 

It's a good thing he showed up when he did or the bridge crew would have been blind.

 

Admittedly they would have had trouble reading their consoles.

 

Good thing the captain was there to state the obvious. Who was in charge of the bridge when he wasn't there and why could't they give a simple order like "Darken the window so we can see what's going on out there"?

 

Of course, everyone knows that lasers can't penetrate transparent aluminum!

 

Was anyone else even looking out the window? They were all fixated on their own consoles. So would they even notice the glare?

 

You read a book that's lying flat on the table in front of you and I'll shine a big, honking spotlight on your face. Let's see how fixated you stay.

 

I've always interpreted his "polarize the viewscreen" line as a fairly menial command. The screen was ALREADY filtering out mos of the UV and high intensity radiation from the nearby star, but the glare was still such that he couldn't clearly see the phenomenon without squinting.

It would basically be in the same vein as Kirk/Picard/Sisko ordering "Put it on screen... magnify." Robau wanted to see the black hole more clearly.

 

So the crew gets to squint into the glare until the captain gives such a menial command?

 

Yep. What do you think it is, a democracy?