Jeyl's Nitpicks on XI (Spoiler Heavy)

[Jeyl]

Fellow trekkies, I never classified myself as a die-hard trek fan. There are some things I love about Star Trek, and there are some things I completely loath about it. I liked the original and animated series, but not really The Next Generation. I really like Deep Space Nine, but not Voyager. However, there are some aspects of those series that had merrits. TNG showed actual danger and enduring characters and Voyager had some very capable character moments. The one series I cannot find any liking towards is ENTERPRISE. So, when ENTERPRISE is the only reference and the others don't, a little bit of respect towards the writers just died.

Now that that's out of the way, did this Tholian Commander like the movie overall? Heck yes! Seeing it again tomorrow in Imax! Way better than any of the Star Wars prequels by far and much more enduring. The talent behind this movie really knew what they were dealing with. So with THAT out of the way, time to do my chores of nitpicks.

THE CANON Nitpick
- I know it's the animated series which everyone is greatly mixed on, but what what about Robert April?
- Klingons with cloaking devices....wait.. Klingons with cloaking devices in this era? Bye-bye Balance of Terror.
- Enterprise in Iowa. The scene looks great and all, but it's a bit redundant. The moment where Kirk takes a moment to look at the Kelvin looking salt shaker had more impact than looking at the under-construction Enterprise. It just felt unnecessary.
- Where's Number 1?
- The Kelvin is a small ship compared to the Enterprise, which has been established as having a little more than 400 crew members. But the Kelvin somehow has over 800!? That's crowded.
- The bug like creature. JUST USE THE CETI EALS! You don't need to hide the fact that you were ripping off Khan's Interrogation scene by just changing the bug's name. I wouldn't have cared anyways.

THE MOVIE Nitpick
- In regards to Number One, I was on my knees and hoping that Uhura would be more prominent in this movie. While I did enjoy the Spock romantic angle, she was still portrayed as the Uhura we all know who stood in the background reacting to what the guys did. Call me the stupidest son-of-a-glitch to ever make a suggestion such as this, but I would have made her the First Officer and not Spock. There's no reason, no freaking reason why she couldn't be the #1 officer and Spock still do what he does best. At least that would make the structure more realistic as to why Spock would be on away teams with Kirk instead of leaving the Enterprise Captain and First Officerless.
- Kirk. I've made a forum about this already, but Kirk barely, and I mean barely made it across the tightrope walk of likability. I didn't like his coldness towards others and even if it was to get him command, I still didn't like how that moment between him and Spock went without so much as an apology from him. Even Star Trek characters said they were sorry at some points.
- Not many recognizable aliens.
- Female luck. The real loser of the story. We follow a female crew member get sucked out into space, the orion girl gets put on a doomed ship, the female transporter chief is replaced, no Nurse Chapel or Number One, Amanda Grayson dies and we don't get to meet the female Romulan of the Narada who was established in Countdown to be the strongest crew member. Oh, the males outnumber the females on a ratio of 10 to 1. I guess I'm just disappointed that we didn't put a female character in a higher rank of authority.
- Please, for the love of god, hold the camera. Pretty please?
- The sets. The shuttle bay made sense, but the Engineering area did not. When did Star Trek ever go to a practical location to film a portion of the Enterprise? I got visions of Space Mutiny while I was watching the film. It was that bad. Rotating levers, simple light switches, steel grates, CONCRETE?!
- The transition between the Narada fighting the Kelvin to post-escape from Prison. Didn't make any sense to me at all. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Nero destroyed the Klingon home world and got in a bit of a ruckus with the Klingons during the attempt, not escape from prison. There wasn't one strong indication of Nero being in prison. How did he get captured? How did he escape? What the heck was the point?

That's all I got for now. I'll report back when I've seen the movie again.

 

[donners22]

Didn't he call them Ceti Eels?

 

[Corran Horn]

Nurse Chapel is mentioned by McCoy. A teenager Number One was on the Kelvin and she died. (why not?)

Where was scale mentioned in the film? We don't know how the Kelvin scales to the Enterprise or how either scales to the TOS Enterprise.

 

[Zeppster]

I agree with those nitpicks. The cannon related stuff is just going to have to go away though. This is a new reality and good for the future of Trek. That's more important to cannon for me.

 

[Jono]

- The transition between the Narada fighting the Kelvin to post-escape from Prison. Didn't make any sense to me at all. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Nero destroyed the Klingon home world and got in a bit of a ruckus with the Klingons during the attempt, not escape from prison. There wasn't one strong indication of Nero being in prison. How did he get captured? How did he escape? What the heck was the point?

Where does this prison stuff come from? They didn't even remotely suggest that. All they said was Nero destroyed a Klingon fleet near a prison planet, which he was near because Spock arrived in the past in that location.

 

[mynameisgorn]

They didn't have respect for the size of the universe. They made it look small.

I agree with Ebert's criticisms. They were transporting from Saturn to Earth? Or from Delta Vega onto the ship?

And how is it that Spock could see Vulcan from Delta Vega? I also agree that it was convenient how Spock and Scotty both ended up there.

Also, what they were doing for 25 years was hard to fathom. Likewise with the rapid promotions.

And what was the point of firing at the Narada once it was in the grip of the black hole? Why not just turn around and Warp Away right then? How did ejecting the warp core help them escape?

 

[Jeyl]

I agree with those nitpicks. The cannon related stuff is just going to have to go away though. This is a new reality and good for the future of Trek. That's more important to cannon for me.

Oh, I agree. If I was so critical about the canon elements I would have hated this film. But I didn't and watched it for what it was, and the story it presented was well structured and made a lot of sense. This was just an area I would have wanted to fix if I had a shot at it.

 

[Jeyl]

Where does this prison stuff come from? They didn't even remotely suggest that. All they said was Nero destroyed a Klingon fleet near a prison planet, which he was near because Spock arrived in the past in that location.

Somehow after the destruction of the Kelvin, Nero and some of his crew are sent to Rura Penthe. During their escape, Nero gets mangled by something which causes him to lose his pointed ear and have his mauling scar. Seriously, it's an element that throws people off than adds anything interesting to the mix.

 

[gh4chiefs]

- Please, for the love of god, hold the camera. Pretty please?

Ain't that the truth?! I really hated that aspect of the film.

 

[FatherRob]

The lack of science (why hire a science advisor) bugged me. It was science at the speed of drama, not any sense of heightening the accuracy (or consistency) of the film. Transwarp beaming? What a joke.

My full review is on my website, but in the end my favorite moment was the end of the film, because now we can tell some Star Trek stories instead of fanfic, which is what this struck me as in many ways.

On the flipside, did anyone else notice all the hatch markings on the keel of the Enterprise that were transferred from the original ship to the JJ version? Also, the ship grew on me a bit in the film.

Someone really needed to explain the Narada, what happened to Nero between the Kelvin attack and his attack on Vulcan, and the whole prison bit.

In the end, this film was TWOK repackaged and revised... but I am glad that it will do well at the box office because it means a sequel in which we can see something interesting.

Rob+

 

[NCC74894A]

- Enterprise in Iowa. The scene looks great and all, but it's a bit redundant.

Never mind the Enterprise - Iowa also apparently has at least one huge-@$$ canyon in the 23rd century.

 

[Zeppster]

If you want to go with technicalities, Warp and teleportation technology may prove to be impossible, so all of the star trek universe is pretty much impossible.

 

[Jeyl]

- Enterprise in Iowa. The scene looks great and all, but it's a bit redundant.

Never mind the Enterprise - Iowa also apparently has at least one huge-@$$ canyon in the 23rd century.

I just simply bought the fact that it was man made in preparation for whatever they were going to do in that area.

Oh ya, that's another thing. PRODUCT PLACEMENT! No amunt of Shia Lebugfudge footage of him screaming "nononono" constantly can ever equal my distaste for the product placement that was put into this movie.

 

[FatherRob]

- Enterprise in Iowa. The scene looks great and all, but it's a bit redundant.

Never mind the Enterprise - Iowa also apparently has at least one huge-@$$ canyon in the 23rd century.

I just simply bought the fact that it was man made in preparation for whatever they were going to do in that area.

It was actually a limestone quarry, and they really exist in Iowa.

Oh ya, that's another thing. PRODUCT PLACEMENT! No amunt of Shia Lebugfudge footage of him screaming "nononono" constantly can ever equal my distaste for the product placement that was put into this movie.

Tell me about it. Nokia car phones, Buds at the bar... I thought I saw something on Kirk's wrists in a scene on the Narada, like on the undershirt below the black tunic he was wearing, but I couldn't make it out. I thought some of the medical equipment had some product names on it, but couldn't make it out.

What other prodplace did I miss?

Rob+

 

[M'Sharak]

- Enterprise in Iowa. The scene looks great and all, but it's a bit redundant.

Never mind the Enterprise - Iowa also apparently has at least one huge-@$$ canyon in the 23rd century.

I just simply bought the fact that it was man made in preparation for whatever they were going to do in that area.

As discussed back when the November trailer hit the theaters, it's a quarry, most likely for limestone. (See the pic here.) There are lots of these right now in eastern Iowa (where Riverside is located) so yes, man-made.

Edit: Rob was quicker, but I've got the pic.

 

[Aragorn]

I had no idea who Robert April was until I came here to TrekBBS, but now I'd like to think when Jimmy Kirk jumped out of his car, it landed on April.

 

[RTMS]

I agree with most of the nitpicks.
Another one would be the ludicrous promotion at the end of Kirk to captain when he's just graduated Starfleet academy a few hours/days ago. I get the field promotion at the time it was needed,but once the threat was done he should have started out as a lieutenant and gone at least three years until captain. Even Pike said he would be captain within four years after graduating. This was just a little too much Kirk praise/ he can do not wrong etc. Ironically he needed more humanizing than Spock.

 

[Starbreaker]

April doesn't matter... the timeline was changed when Nero came through the singularity. Many things changed. Maybe April was washing dishes at a Vulcan restaurant.

 

[Myasishchev]

I agree with most of the nitpicks.
Another one would be the ludicrous promotion at the end of Kirk to captain when he's just graduated Starfleet academy a few hours/days ago. I get the field promotion at the time it was needed,but once the threat was done he should have started out as a lieutenant and gone at least three years until captain. Even Pike said he would be captain within four years after graduating. This was just a little too much Kirk praise/ he can do not wrong etc. Ironically he needed more humanizing than Spock.

Totally agree. And he gets promoted, what, five grades and Spock, also integral to the resolution (even if "emotionally compromised"), gets... to be his first officer. Well, I guess the Vulcan lobby isn't very powerful anymore.

And speaking of emotional compromise, the scene that left the worst taste in my mouth was Kirk pushing to Spock to the brink. Now, Kirk, Scotty, and we, the audience, know that Kirk's doing this for good reason. But no one else on that bridge knows. All they see is a guy trying to make a man who has just lost his planet and his mother lash out. I could only think as I saw this scene, that if I were on that bridge, I would figure Kirk as either a sociopath who would do anything to get the center seat, including breaking a man on the worst day of his life, or someone so pissed off and "emotionally compromised" himself at being marooned on Delta Vega that he shouldn't be running their lives, either.

That said, I really enjoyed how Spock just utterly kicked his ass.

On the other hand, marooning a man on an ice-planet is kind of a dick move. I felt this was more a demand of the plot than a decision that Spock would've made. I really wish they'd just written around that, somehow.

Other nitpicks:

The interior design of the Narada. It's a mining ship, not an actual mine. Seriously, catwalks that lead to nowhere with no handrails. Why do you have a lake in the middle of your interrogation room?

Olson's death. I realize this was almost certainly meant to be a lampshading of sorts of the doomed redshirt, but man...

Spock-1 sitting on Delta Vega and doing... nothing, to stop Nero, until Kirk shows up, even though Scotty's right over the hill, and has been for six months. No wonder Romulus got blown up. Spock is lazy. Like I said, I wish they'd written around this.

There are a lot of things I loved, however. But this is a nitpick thread.

 

[Darth_Pinche]

I loved the film. LOVED IT!!!

But here is a nitpick...Red Matter. One little drop causes a black hole. Wouldn't that giant ball cause the galaxy to collapse or something?