That Destruct Sequence

[JRTStarlight]

Anything is possible. And maybe the computer was down, too, or just assumed anyone coming by would only there with good intentions and to help. It's just that stuff is so destructive, I have to wonder why he needed so much of it, and why there were mind boggleingly inadequate safeguards.

 

[DonIago]

The quantity issue has already been discussed in multiple threads before. My favorite theory is that when you make red matter you get X amount, even if you only need a small percentage of it. Or the production method hadn't been perfected to the point that they felt confident trying to only produce the needed amount.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Even if you get X amount through the process of creating it, you don't need to lug X amount of it around with you. There is nothing they did with red matter that pleases me, even if we move beyond how they make apparently make mass/energy out of nothing. Forget that. You can't drill to the center of a planet, and even if they shored up the walls, why is a black hole at the center more destructive than one at its surface? How was that going to stop a destructive wave, anyway? Galactic wide destruction? Even the closest star (other than its own sun) wouldn't destroy like that, and any effect it would have would be at sublight speeds and take years if not centuries to reach Romulus. Not even light can get out of a black hole, which is mostly impressive since nothing travels faster than light, except in Star Trek they have warp drive that does, so . . . Of course the gravity would still tear you apart, unless inertial compensators and artificial gravity would counteract some of that. Dumping the warp core (a massively powerful system that goes FTL) to having no thrust and then escape a red matter induced black hole with a sublight speed shock wave? There really is no shock wave in the vacuum of space, and any energy wave sufficient to push the ship would probably vaporize it. Others may disagree, but from the first moment of that movie, there was so much bothersome stuff like that, and those are just a few surrounding red matter. And for the rest . . . well . . .

 

[DonIago]

I'm not sure what kind of response you're hoping for here, but we seem to have drifted off-topic in any case.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Yeah. Sorry. I was just disappointed Spock allowed that ship to fall into the romulan hands rather than blow it up with a "self destruct."

 

[Qonundrum]

If made nowadays, and to cut down the number of minutes needed to keep the drama scene moving faster, the writer would do a nudge nudge wink moment to the audience:

Kirk would say: "8-6-7"
Spock would say: "5-3"
Scotty would say: "0-9"

Kirk gets to finish with "Jenny"

*BOOM*

 

[retroenzo]

That's why I'd never be a starship captain.

Me: Computer activate self-destruct.
Computer: Please enter security code.
Me: Zero One Zero One Gamma Delta
Computer: Incorrect. Two tries remaining.
Me: Er, okay. Try Zero One One One Gamma Delta
Computer: Incorrect. One try remaining.
Me: Zero One Zero One Gamma Omega?
Computer: Incorrect. You are now looked out of the self destruct system.
Me: I've forgotten my password.
Computer: Transferring you to Starfleet IT...

Just realised that I'd probably be absolutely fine with the destruct command. It would probably have me on hold to Starfleet IT if I tried to enter my security code to cancel the self-destruct instead.

 

[Timo]

Neither Kirk nor Spock seemed to believe in dying much. It comes as a big revelation for both when Spock finally decides to die for the greater good in ST2; indeed Spock's so upset with his decision that he jokes about it!

In TOS, Kirk just bluffed with scuttling, and when asked to do it for real in "By Any Other Name", he considered the whole concept insane. Which was fine and well, as there always appeared to be a fighting chance left. ST:TMP put Kirk on a time limit, though - and his best-before date had passed anyway, so perhaps he was already suicidal to begin with? In ST3, Kirk was back to using scuttling only if his own butt was assuredly covered.

The general gist is that Starfleet has no standing orders promoting blowing up their own ships. If it's for tactical gain, fine, but not if there are lives needlessly at risk. Picard didn't scuttle the Stargazer and clearly didn't even attempt to try. Picard didn't blow up the E-E when it turned out there was no five-minute fuze to be lit so that the crew could escape. Janeway was the one with no hope of escape even with such a fuze, so she had a different set of restraints...

Apropos of nothing, the codewords and number strings don't appear to be for security, or at least they meet none of the usual criteria of "passwords" or the like. Rather, in all likelihood, they're just to slow down the process so that those involved get time to reconsider, and the risk of accidental scuttling is minimized.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Even if you get X amount through the process of creating it, you don't need to lug X amount of it around with you.

But perhaps you do? For me, red matter had just the right balance of fantastic scifi properties (the odd way it sucks, say) and mundane verisimilitude (the dull name, say). And of course everything can be explained away if there's the will. Much of this was thus covered in 2009 already.

Spock "has little time left" even after the horse has run away and Romulus is dust. Nothing much will be altered in the upcoming minutes as regards the fate of the entire galaxy; the supernova will simply continue to expand at a rate Spock's ship no doubt can overtake. But a clock may be ticking as regards Spock's droplet of red matter. Perhaps it is highly unstable in small amounts and needs a minimum critical mass to become stable? Reinjecting and ejecting are Spock's to time-critical options, then, and the latter will help stop the supernova.

There is nothing they did with red matter that pleases me, even if we move beyond how they make apparently make mass/energy out of nothing. Forget that.

Okay. It's not as if making mass/energy/gravitic pull out of nothing would have been a problem in the previous decades of Trek, after all.

You can't drill to the center of a planet

Nothing in the laws of physics against that; it's just an engineering problem, although perhaps a hairy one on a planet not named Vulcan for nothing. But Nero never did the sort. All we learned was that he drilled a deep hole. And clearly that was needed, because the whole big red beachball of his doomsday jello barely bent his mining rig when released; apparently, small droplets of the stuff need lots of natural mass around them in order to become a threat to something as big as a planet.

and even if they shored up the walls, why is a black hole at the center more destructive than one at its surface?

FWIW, the movie consistently shows this is the case whenever red matter is applied. The stuff apparently needs to eat matter in order to eat more matter; it's just what it does. Which is great if you need to deal with a supernova wavefront several AUs in diameter - a self-promoting, ballooning process is required rather than something merely linear.

How was that going to stop a destructive wave, anyway?

We pretty much were shown and told. Spock's little vial hits the supernova wavefront, and fiery waves of un-destruction start spreading across the front from the point of impact. So red matter eats matter, as usual. No matter, no pulverizing effect on planets. Although it's too late to save Romulus.

Galactic wide destruction? Even the closest star (other than its own sun) wouldn't destroy like that, and any effect it would have would be at sublight speeds and take years if not centuries to reach Romulus.

But it is the sun of Romulus itself. We get shown as much, in the zoom-in/zoom-out that ends with the wavefront hitting Romulus. The camera first flies past Romulus towards a star, then passes through a rubble field, then hits the star which blows up, and then the camera backtracks with the front through the rubble field and all the way to Romulus again.

Romulus blowing up certainly threatens the galaxy - heck, Romulus suggesting negotiations is a threat to the galaxy in the usual case. Keeping the physical action local is a tolerable interpretation, then, although it has its repercussions (telling us things about the potency of red matter or the speeds of the ships of Spock and Nero, say).

Not even light can get out of a black hole, which is mostly impressive since nothing travels faster than light, except in Star Trek they have warp drive that does, so . . . Of course the gravity would still tear you apart, unless inertial compensators and artificial gravity would counteract some of that.

And? Trek consistently and logically shows starships dealing with black holes (including the insides of event horizons) with relative ease, and this movie is no exception.

Dumping the warp core (a massively powerful system that goes FTL) to having no thrust and then escape a red matter induced black hole with a sublight speed shock wave?

No need to go FTL to escape the pull of gravity as such, and not in this particular case, either. The heroes aren't inside an event horizon or anything here. What Kirk needs is a bit of a kick, is all.

We don't know for sure what sort of a wave Kirk rides. Exploding warp cores tend to produce pretty energetic ones, but not bad enough to blow up starships from the outside (say, ST:GEN). OTOH, a subspace wind could be caught by the warp coils for all we know... We know that starships are good at this sort of surfing from elsewhere in Trek.

Others may disagree, but from the first moment of that movie, there was so much bothersome stuff like that, and those are just a few surrounding red matter.

How does this differ from average Star Trek, is what I'm wondering. Red matter, Genesis device, Really Strange Treaty with the Enemy, Spatiotemporal Anomaly, Mysterious Alien with Alien Motivations, Old Foe or Flame We Never Met Before... It's not even as if such things would be alien to movies regardless of genre - there must be something exceptional popping up to warrant a story in the first place.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

Since this is off topic, as some have already said, while I don't mind discussing it, I'll put it under a spoiler tag to make it easier to skip for disinterested parties.

Red Matter Randt

Spoiler

And of course everything can be explained away if there's the will.

Which is fine if they do it, but it's less satisfactory if they don't, or even really try - so it's more like science fantasy and magic than science fiction, or an extrapolation into the possibilities beyond the known science but still based more in science.

Perhaps it is highly unstable in small amounts and needs a minimum critical mass to become stable?

So you need a ton of it to keep it together? Well, it's a thought. Though it seems stable enough as they transport it around in tiny drop quantities to send it to its final destination, like a planet's core.

Okay. It's not as if making mass/energy/gravitic pull out of nothing would have been a problem in the previous decades of Trek, after all.

You'd have to point out specific examples for me to answer, but there may have been a reason for some or for each. But I will never defend previous Trek as flawless, if that's what you're suggesting my POV is unlike the flawless TOS, these movies are flawed. I see all Trek as episodic, some great, most good, nearly all above average entertainment, but some really bad episodes, too. I simply place those movies in that last category, and if they are guilty of nothing more than what's been done in a bad episode of Trek, so be it. But if you like them, that's cool, too. I'd also never suggest another person is wrong to like something I don't.

Nothing in the laws of physics against that; it's just an engineering problem

It's a heck of a problem, just as a drill itself that's miles long and keeping that coiled up in a ship is an engineering problem. And I fail to see the reason for it at all, though like you said, perhaps you can invent one and explain why a black hole needs to be down deep at or near the core to destroy a planet.

All we learned was that he drilled a deep hole. And clearly that was needed, because the whole big red beachball of his doomsday jello barely bent his mining rig when released; apparently, small droplets of the stuff need lots of natural mass around them in order to become a threat to something as big as a planet.

They said the core, and Spock said the center of the planet, so it's not just moderately deep - it goes all the way down. And you wish to suggest the mass felt by the drop in a hole is more than the mass felt at the surface? If anything, the opposite would be true, mass on one side cancelling the gravity effect of mass on the other side. Anyway, I suppose you can invent anything you want and say that's it, but some of it clearly seems more ludicrous than other possible suggestions. The mass of a ship is apparently enough to trigger it. I'm thinking the mass at a parent's surface would be, too.

FWIW, the movie consistently shows this is the case whenever red matter is applied. The stuff apparently needs to eat matter in order to eat more matter; it's just what it does. Which is great if you need to deal with a supernova wavefront several AUs in diameter - a self-promoting, ballooning process is required rather than something merely linear.

The amount of matter of an expanding supernova in the shell at a point several AUs out would be less than, say, the amount of matter at the surface of a planet. Maybe if Spock absorbed the proper area of the shell, then there would have been a hole that hit Romulus instead of the mass, but how far away is this star? Light years, probably, so this all makes little sense and would likely take hundreds of years. And I reject the idea that he'd save the planet if it's the stellar system's own sun. You know how useful that would be? Hardly. Without its sun, life on the planets will die anyway. And Spock says this supernova will destroy the whole galaxy, so there's a lot that makes a scientifically literate individual cringe in this movie. And what are you suggesting about red matter? It eats matter, but then magnifies the gravitational pull of that matter so its suddenly much stronger than just how much more gravity and mass that should be, like it's creating matter out of nothing as it eats matter? So it eats a planet and it's not just one planet's mass bigger, but millions of times bigger or something? I gotta tell you, I get the distinct impression the person writing that doesn't know much about astrophysics. Still, a lot would have been avoided if they just called it the red matter effect instead of saying it is a black hole.

But it is the sun of Romulus itself. We get shown as much, in the zoom-in/zoom-out that ends with the wavefront hitting Romulus. The camera first flies past Romulus towards a star, then passes through a rubble field, then hits the star which blows up, and then the camera backtracks with the front through the rubble field and all the way to Romulus again.

First, what we're shown is likely another star system. It already went supernova, and THEN Spock talks about promises and then outfitting the fastest ship, etc. to contain it. You don't have time to do any of that after the supernova, unless it's light years away. It must have been much later, so not the home star of the Romulan Empire, which probably isn't the type to go super nova, anyway.

Romulus blowing up certainly threatens the galaxy - heck, Romulus suggesting negotiations is a threat to the galaxy in the usual case.

So this galaxy wide destruction Spock spoke of from a supernova was his political estimation of what will happen to the whole galaxy? Please. But who knows since apparently Earth is now so well acquainted with Romulans, their 3 dialects, and all the rest of it when in the prime universe we haven't even seen Romulans yet, or know they are related to vulcans. All that seems to be taken for granted in that movie, wasn't it? Well, with ships so fast now they can go from earth to Vulcan in minutes, why not? Maybe they have explored most of the galaxy already.

And? Trek consistently and logically shows starships dealing with black holes (including the insides of event horizons) with relative ease, and this movie is no exception.

WHERE are they inside the event horizon in a Trek show? They go near some, but NEVER inside a blackhole. Never so close that Scotty's engines canna pull them free. So my point here is, they were never inside a blackhole, not even when Nero's ship was going down (for if they were, the tidal forces would have torn them apart, so the warp engines would have been more than enough to get free. But hey, where's the drama, so let's do something . . . else? 8 years later and I'm still rolling my eyes on that one.

No need to go FTL to escape the pull of gravity as such, and not in this particular case, either. The heroes aren't inside an event horizon or anything here. What Kirk needs is a bit of a kick, is all.

And you think dumping the warp core, warp power, and FTL travel and losing all that thrust will be more than made up for with a slower than light shockwave, which wouldn't even happen in a vacuum anyway?

We don't know for sure what sort of a wave Kirk rides. Exploding warp cores tend to produce pretty energetic ones, but not bad enough to blow up starships from the outside (say, ST:GEN). OTOH, a subspace wind could be caught by the warp coils for all we know... We know that starships are good at this sort of surfing from elsewhere in Trek.

What episode do you have in mind here? I mean, you seem to be inventing multiple things here to make it work, like a subspace shockwave, and even the assumption that will interact with the ship in a good way, and it's far more powerful than warp engines, etc. I mean, I agree, you can always invent a pile of ad hoc reasons to make it work, but I think one is going too far to try to suggest they had all that clearly in mind when they wrote it and they know all about blackholes and warp speed and all the rest of Trek lore.

How does this differ from average Star Trek, is what I'm wondering. Red matter, Genesis device, Really Strange Treaty with the Enemy, Spatiotemporal Anomaly, Mysterious Alien with Alien Motivations, Old Foe or Flame We Never Met Before... It's not even as if such things would be alien to movies regardless of genre - there must be something exceptional popping up to warrant a story in the first place.

The genesis device was better explained, more limited, and the illegal, unethical material used to make it limits it more in other stories. And yet, while it does seem to operate on a stellar system scale, it's only using existing matter and making something that is relatively well understood. Red matter steps much further over the line. I don't have a problem with treaties. I don't have a problem with time travel or the parallel universe. But the alien motivations are whack. Spock's only flaw, he claims, was he was too late. Scoff. But a ship of that power, and their apparent working knowledge of temporal mechanics, going back/forward in time and fixing the problem and saving his wife and planet seems like plan B compared to plan A of reeking vengeance on a guy who tried to help, and billions of others who did nothing to hurt you. And his crew - that's perfectly normal, captain. We're 100% behind you. Screw our own families, too. We'd much rather kill a bunch of people who didn't cause a supernova than save our families or our own planet.

Yeah, without something to motivate/make a bad guy, where's the story, assuming you want to fight a bad guy, but this story is poorly crafted, abuses Trek lore, using magic to create problems, uses magic to solve problems, ignores science, and much much more. But trying to confine myself to Red Matter, and the fact Spock, who walked off his ship under his own power and most likely would have had every opportunity to self destruct or crack the casing holding the red matter, I don't really want to expand on everything about that movie that bothers me, or argue with you beyond red matter here. I'm not trying to convince you Trek 2009 is something you shouldn't like, if you do like it, or TOS was without flaw. I'm just saying from my POV, there's a lot more problems in that movie (those movies) than in your regular Star Trek episode, making them, IMO, bad episodes. YMMV, of course, and that's fine.

 

[Commishsleer]

Yeah. Sorry. I was just disappointed Spock allowed that ship to fall into the romulan hands rather than blow it up with a "self destruct."

This was stupid writing.
To live in JJ verse I ignore this Or I reason that perhaps Spock was in fact responsible for the creation of a new universe considering the two universes exist side-by-side.

 

[Timo]

Continuing with the sidetrack. Please ignore unless feeling particularly nerdy:

Spoiler

So you need a ton of it to keep it together? Well, it's a thought. Though it seems stable enough as they transport it around in tiny drop quantities to send it to its final destination, like a planet's core.

Which is the "minutes" Spock would worry about, evidently.

It's a heck of a problem, just as a drill itself that's miles long and keeping that coiled up in a ship is an engineering problem.

Most of it is pretty problem-free, given Star Trek. Nero is drilling with what looks like a big phaser. Phasers make matter just plain disappear to some sort of alternate dimension, so they're better at making deep holes than anything else imaginable. Just make the hole, pretty wide by the visuals, and before all of it collapses, drop your bomb.

It need not go particularly deep, mind you. When Vulcan collapses, it does so quite prominently from one side only.

And I fail to see the reason for it at all, though like you said, perhaps you can invent one and explain why a black hole needs to be down deep at or near the core to destroy a planet.

Not a black hole, but red matter. The droplet isn't a black hole in itself and has no gravitic pull of note - but when eating surrounding matter, it creates something that is much better than a black hole, giving the corpse of Vulcan more gravitic pull than Vulcan itself originally had (so a ship previously in orbit is now in a maelstrom). That's magic, but that's consistent, which is what counts.

They said the core, and Spock said the center of the planet, so it's not just moderately deep - it goes all the way down.

Only to the border separating "not core" to "core", it seems - as said, the collapse is lopsided.

[/quote]And you wish to suggest the mass felt by the drop in a hole is more than the mass felt at the surface?[/quote]

Obviously. Although the gravitic pull of that mass is of course canceled out. But what matters is giving something for the droplet to eat. Give a little, and freefloating drops suddenly acquire immense gravity (the pull-together scene after Spock's kamikaze run). Give a lot, and it's immense to the immense power, apparently.

The mass of a ship is apparently enough to trigger it.

Trigger what? With just the wreck of the Narada to eat, the resulting black hole is feeble, incapable of even significantly further hurting the wreck; it also only grabs Kirk's ship at point blank range. Something more substantial like a planet or a supernova wavefront gives a more potent black hole, one capable of grabbing Kirk's (Spock's!) ship at thousands of kilometers, i.e. over the former Vulcan, or perhaps tens of thousands, i.e. close to the former Romulus.

The amount of matter of an expanding supernova in the shell at a point several AUs out would be less than, say, the amount of matter at the surface of a planet.

Which means less destruction and pull, but the idea isn't to destroy or pull - it's to eat the wavefront, apparently.

... how far away is this star? Light years, probably

Not very probable when we actually see it's Romulus' own sun. Sure, we could argue we're seeing things, but why bother when this only creates problems?

so this all makes little sense and would likely take hundreds of years.

And since it doesn't, that interpretation can be dropped at once. Isn't that nice?

and I reject the idea that he'd save the planet if it's the stellar system's own sun. You know how useful that would be? Hardly. Without its sun, life on the planets will die anyway.

Too bad. But defeating the blast wave would let millions survive and escape at the very least.

And what are you suggesting about red matter? It eats matter, but then magnifies the gravitational pull of that matter so its suddenly much stronger than just how much more gravity and mass that should be, like it's creating matter out of nothing as it eats matter?

Pretty much.

Still, a lot would have been avoided if they just called it the red matter effect instead of saying it is a black hole.

What's the problem? The result is an immensely powerful black hole (of the Trek type that serves as a wormhole and time conduit and probably gives you a shave at the same price, too) - since it came about by magical means, there's no point in sweating the steps of the process.

First, what we're shown is likely another star system. It already went supernova, and THEN Spock talks about promises and then outfitting the fastest ship, etc. to contain it. You don't have time to do any of that after the supernova, unless it's light years away.

It doesn't work that way. If Spock did have time to talk etc. then Romulans also had time to see death was coming. But they reject the premise, indicating nothing has happened yet and they think Spock is just mouthin' off.

Also, Spock has no business flying to Romulus if the star has already exploded and Spock can calculate to the ninth decimal point the hours by which he will be late.

Reading the narrative so that Spock is the mad scientist who believes in the upcoming explosion and all others laugh him out of the court (except for the Vulcans who just stare), and justice is then served when the Romulan homestar blows while Spock is en route, makes much more sense.

And it is Romulus where Spock is headed, rather than a supernova location that is not Romulus, because it is at Romulus that Spock meets Nero, an eyewitness to the carnage.

so not the home star of the Romulan Empire, which probably isn't the type to go super nova, anyway.

Which no doubt is why Spock was laughed out of court in the first place.

apparently Earth is now so well acquainted with Romulans, their 3 dialects, and all the rest of it when in the prime universe we haven't even seen Romulans yet, or know they are related to vulcans.

Such things must hang on a thread, given Romulans being Romulans. Who knows how many harebrained schemes of their mad Praetors went unnoticed in one universe but noticed in another? Even Picard might not know Romulan cusswords yet if "Balance of Terror" had gone slightly differently.

Well, with ships so fast now they can go from earth to Vulcan in minutes, why not?

No basis for "minutes". Or do you think the sedative McCoy gave Kirk was a placebo? The man probably slept for hours at the very least.

WHERE are they inside the event horizon in a Trek show?

VOY "Parallax". Not a biggie, starships should be immune, and are. It's just that from the viewpoint of the FTL vessel, the event horizon here is some sort of a rigid shell, for whatever reason.

So my point here is, they were never inside a blackhole, not even when Nero's ship was going down (for if they were, the tidal forces would have torn them apart)

When executing Nero, they probably weren't inside the black hole (although they could well have been and lived to show the selfies) - the visuals don't suggest such a thing, after all. But why would the tidal forces be worrisome inside as opposed to outside? They only grow too much for the SIFs to bear at some technology-specific point, and that need not coincide in any way with the event horizon.

And you think dumping the warp core, warp power, and FTL travel and losing all that thrust will be more than made up for with a slower than light shockwave, which wouldn't even happen in a vacuum anyway?

It didn't seem they were in a position to do any FTL anyway. And yes, I gather a subspace shockwave (which is what you always get from these warp core mishaps elsewhere in Trek) might well hit the ship with more helpful power than what the STL engines could deliver in the best of days. I mean, why not?

And what's this nonsense about "no shockwaves in vacuum"? No compression waves, perhaps. But that's what the word usually means in the context. An expanding sphere of destruction, at a wavelength of your choice or consisting of matter of your favorite taste, is perfectly realistic.

What episode do you have in mind here? I mean, you seem to be inventing multiple things here to make it work, like a subspace shockwave

Naah. I watch Star Trek, so I have plenty of other people invent such stuff for me. What we see here is standard Trek, not exceptional Trek. And it strikes me as either pretentious or inattentive to claim the latter, and I don't really know which is worse.

The genesis device was better explained, more limited, and the illegal, unethical material used to make it limits it more in other stories.

Can't agree with a single point here. No explanation was given, no limits were established (or, rather, some were but they did not hold true in the end), and its disappearance from other stories makes no sense considering its uses were feared to be illegal, meaning the means also being illegal would be utterly irrelevant. The Genesis torpedo was a perfectly good WMD even after ST3:TSfS. So, stupid, undramatic David Marcus bashing inserted to no practical or interesting effect whatsoever.

And yet, while it does seem to operate on a stellar system scale, it's only using existing matter and making something that is relatively well understood.

If you mean it's making relatively well understood palm trees and parrots, I might agree with you. If you mean something beyond that, you completely lost me. How is all this matter transmutation business more believable than the red matter stuff? Your precious conservation laws aren't in effect at Genesis, either.

But a ship of that power, and their apparent working knowledge of temporal mechanics, going back/forward in time and fixing the problem and saving his wife and planet seems like plan B compared to plan A of reeking vengeance on a guy who tried to help

...For a moment, I thought you were talking about Spock's plan B. Which for all we know indeed was time travel. Why else dive into the time portal after Romulus was gone?

I can't think of a reason to credit Nero with a plan? He's not the type - he's a stupid miner who sees Spock at the scene of crime and cries bloody murder. If he has any "knowledge of temporal mechanics", it's something he learns in the next 25 years of time exile and regret, and it doesn't amount to anything anyway if he doesn't have red matter.

(...Which he gets from Spock a few hours before he kidnaps Pike and tells him that he prevented genocide. Perhaps he did save Romulus?)

I'm just saying from my POV, there's a lot more problems in that movie (those movies) than in your regular Star Trek episode, making them, IMO, bad episodes. YMMV, of course, and that's fine.

My mileage does vary in that the very part I cannot agree with at all is this last paragraph of yours. It's classic Trek through and through when it comes to techno-magic, alternate astronomy or alien motivations - it's merely pumped with Fast and Furious storytelling that has never before been part of Trek, and as such has no effect on the techno-magic or the rest.

But yes, it does make for relatively bad episodes. The F&F part, I mean. I like my Trek three steps duller, thank you very much.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

Abandon hope, all non-nerds who enter here.

Spoiler

Most of it is pretty problem-free, given Star Trek. Nero is drilling with what looks like a big phaser. Phasers make matter just plain disappear to some sort of alternate dimension, so they're better at making deep holes than anything else imaginable. Just make the hole, pretty wide by the visuals, and before all of it collapses, drop your bomb.

I think phasers disintegrate matter - they don't make it disappear from the universe. They tear it apart at the molecular level. But no matter - HA. He lowered it and it was miles long before the drill head, which was a phaser of sorts, sure, let's assume that. But once you go just a little ways, with those pressures, it's virtually like drilling in water - unless you shore it up, it will collapse on itself as fast as you can drill it.

It need not go particularly deep, mind you. When Vulcan collapses, it does so quite prominently from one side only.

They said center. And core. But the fact the whole planet collapsed into the drill hole, so to speak, is just silly again. It would be best to assume they misspoke and it wasn't at the center of the planet or near it. But there's still no reason to drill anything at all when dropping a drop in a bottle to the surface and letting it free would do the same. (Except, dunt dunt daaah, no drop from space and no drill platform battle).

Not a black hole, but red matter.

Would they have just called most everything the red matter effect everywhere, and then it doesn't have to conform to known black hole properties.

What matters is giving something for the droplet to eat. Give a little, and free-floating drops suddenly acquire immense gravity (the pull-together scene after Spock's kamikaze run). Give a lot, and it's immense to the immense power, apparently.

There is a lot of matter on the surface of a planet. More than enough to destroy the planet there by eating it. No hole necessary.

Trigger what?

The beginning of the red matter effect, with geometrically escalating gravitational forces once it starts eating matter, apparently.

With just the wreck of the Narada to eat, the resulting black hole is feeble, incapable of even significantly further hurting the wreck;

And yet, though it can't crush the Narada, its feeble pull is so strong that the Enterprise's warp drive can't free them?

Which means less destruction and pull, but the idea isn't to destroy or pull - it's to eat the wave front apparently.

I would think to eat the cross section of the wave front heading for Romulus, (though he said he went back to the super nova itself, and Nero latter intercepted him on his way back from there) but apparently the plan didn't work since he was "too late." But my point there was if it could be triggered and eat that, even if the resulting gravity were low, then it would certainly do better at eating a planetary surface. So again, No hole needed.

Not very probable when we actually see it's Romulus' own sun. Sure, we could argue we're seeing things, but why bother when this only creates problems?

Since the super nova already happened, THEN they discuss it, THEN Spock promises to help them by saving their planet, THEN (I assume he goes back to Vulcan and they outfit a Vulcan ship) and THEN he returns. You think that all could happen if it were the Romulan Home Star and not just a close Star?

And since it doesn't, that interpretation can be dropped at once. Isn't that nice?

It doesn't happen in fewer than 8 minutes (more or less), so it's worth a closer look. Are you suggesting "if it happened on the show, to merely suggest it's stupid or couldn't work that way can be dismissed since we saw it with our own eyes and it did happen," is a pointless conversation, so anything they do is just as good as anything else they did?

Too bad. But defeating the blast wave would let millions survive and escape at the very least.

If he promised to save the Romulan people and give then time to evacuate, sure, but I think the idea was to save their home planet, and I think he said as much. But I'm working from memory since I have no great desire to watch that movie again, and it's been a while (except for excerpts).

It doesn't work that way. If Spock did have time to talk etc. then Romulans also had time to see death was coming. But they reject the premise, indicating nothing has happened yet and they think Spock is just mouthin' off.

More likely even an advance space going culture cannot move its entire population in the time they have with the ships available, so Spock promises he can save their planet (his plan being to swallow up the wave front heading for them would be better, IMO, than the stated plan of going back and swallowing up an on-going super nova, unless he also planned to go back in time first to do that, but if so, he didn't mention it).

Also, Spock has no business flying to Romulus if the star has already exploded and Spock can calculate to the ninth decimal point the hours by which he will be late.

Spock was probably already there furthering his efforts at reunification, where we last saw him.

And it is Romulus where Spock is headed, rather than a supernova location that is not Romulus, because it is at Romulus that Spock meets Nero, an eyewitness to the carnage.

Sure, for its near Romulus he expects to intercept and eat the wave front, or just as they said, Nero intercepts him on his way back from the Super Nova.

No basis for "minutes". Or do you think the sedative McCoy gave Kirk was a placebo? The man probably slept for hours at the very least.

It was a "mild" sedative, he said, and those events took place in about a half a day (or less) since the attack Uhura heard was still "last night," and then they did the KM test, the discipline review, and the emergency call from Vulcan, etc. and went there and that was still last night. I don't have an exact timeline, but it seemed incredibly fast – not the 4 days at high warp that I would expect. And Kirk trying to convince Pike he recognized something Pike wrote about before Pike recognized it was just . . .

When executing Nero, they probably weren't inside the black hole (although they could well have been and lived to show the selfies) - the visuals don't suggest such a thing, after all. But why would the tidal forces be worrisome inside as opposed to outside? They only grow too much for the SIFs to bear at some technology-specific point, and that need not coincide in any way with the event horizon.

I'm just saying while they have FTL and FTL could get out from behind an event horizon, I'm not sure a ship could survive inside one regardless, or close enough to one, since the tidal forces would still likely rip a ship apart if you get too close, even when still outside the EH. So they should be a fair distance from it yet - far enough that warp drive would save them, unless warp engines were off line, and I don't think that was the case.

I mean, why not?

It's unlikely to cause much push, or gentle enough continuous thrust, so much as being more similar to getting hit with a torpedo or a nuke blast and just destroyed.

And what's this nonsense about "no shockwaves in vacuum"? No compression waves, perhaps.

Yes, no compression shock wave. You wish to invent another, like a subspace one, and attribute to it a push in real space and not subspace, that's your call, but it seems a willfully stupid idea just to make a story idea work.

If you mean it's making relatively well understood palm trees and parrots, I might agree with you. If you mean something beyond that, you completely lost me. How is all this matter transmutation business more believable than the red matter stuff? Your precious conservation laws aren't in effect at Genesis, either.

A stellar system is well understood, and it uses existing matter of the nebula to make it. Red Matter seems to make more mass or energy than it uses or consumes out of nothing. Magic!

Why else dive into the time portal after Romulus was gone?

I thought he said they were "pulled" in.

I can't think of a reason to credit Nero with a plan? He's not the type - he's a stupid miner who sees Spock at the scene of crime and cries bloody murder. If he has any "knowledge of temporal mechanics", it's something he learns in the next 25 years of time exile and regret, and it doesn't amount to anything anyway if he doesn't have red matter.

Stupid people don't learn temporal mechanics no matter how much time they have. He or his computers or a crewman probably knew already. And don't forget his crew willingly lining up behind this fine plan of his. So warning his people 25 years ahead would give them more than enough time to evacuate if that was ever the plan, considering you think their sun itself is going bye-bye (an idea I find ludicrous, and contrary to what Spock says and does).

My mileage does vary in that the very part I cannot agree with at all is this last paragraph of yours. It's classic Trek through and through when it comes to techno-magic, alternate astronomy or alien motivations - it's merely pumped with Fast and Furious storytelling that has never before been part of Trek, and as such has no effect on the techno-magic or the rest.

If you really feel that way and see little difference, then I suspect I cannot sway you, or would be wasting my time to try. I'm glad you liked the movie and thought it as good as, what, most all other Trek.

 

[Lance]

I never minded it. It seemed eminantly sensible that it wpuld require several officers to set the destruct on a ship this powerful, just in case any one of them went mad, and the 'two key' version used on early episodes of TNG was equally as good. I felt it got ridiculous that by the time of Voyager it could be self destructed on the say so of only the Captain, because putting that much power in the hands of any one individual (when we've seen these people crack emotionally, so it's not a case of that not happening in the 24th century) seems unsafe.

 

[Steven P Bastien]

What onboard situation could possibly be so dire that a ship's captain would give the suicide command?

It seems that an alien wanting to borrow the ship as a prisoner transport and then give it back is sufficient. I can imagine being on the bridge and wondering if it is an issue worth dying for.

 

[Poltargyst]

I never minded it. It seemed eminantly sensible that it wpuld require several officers to set the destruct on a ship this powerful, just in case any one of them went mad, and the 'two key' version used on early episodes of TNG was equally as good. I felt it got ridiculous that by the time of Voyager it could be self destructed on the say so of only the Captain, because putting that much power in the hands of any one individual (when we've seen these people crack emotionally, so it's not a case of that not happening in the 24th century) seems unsafe.

Seems like Scotty could go to engineering and blow up the ship by himself if he wanted.

 

[Phaser Two]

It seems that an alien wanting to borrow the ship as a prisoner transport and then give it back is sufficient. I can imagine being on the bridge and wondering if it is an issue worth dying for.

Yeah, no one on the bridge, even Spock, looks real thrilled at Kirk's test of wills with Bele.

 

[johnnybear]

Maybe Bele felt a riddle or two coming on?
JB

 

[UnknownSample]

Yeah, no one on the bridge, even Spock, looks real thrilled at Kirk's test of wills with Bele.

I think they played around with the idea that sometimes Kirk might go a little too far.. so when he appears to go power mad in Ent Incident, we can almost buy it.

 

[Mysterion]

It's a little more byzantine than it needs to be, IMO.

You just need a procedure that is deliberate and not likely to be done through a casual action or someone accidentally hitting the right sequence of controls.