11 Things About Star Trek That Make You Go WTF?

[David cgc]

12. A boat throttle for speed control. Just as bad as the manual manuvering joystick in Enterprise.

I didn't see that as a boat throttle. He didn't use it as a variable throttle-like device. He used it in way that - to my eye - was analogous to an exec key (on-off). But instead of a key it was a lever with off at one extreme end of the field of motion and on at the other end.

I see that as a safety interlock for the most potentially dangerous single control on the ship.

Personally, I always missed that they took the throttle off the helm after TMP.

 

[Vaadwaur]

11. Kirk's clown hands. Did we really need that?

10. Letting Willy Wonka design the engine room.

9. That whole plot point about how using the planetary drill thing (suspended improbably by what looks like a mega-huge strand of barbed wire) conveniently disrupts transporter beams and communication.

8. Mining ships of the future have enough weaponry to destroy a Starfleet armada. What exactly are they mining? (Yes, we know there is an explanation for this in the prequel comic, but if you need to read the comic to explain the movie, that's a problem. Would explaining it to the movie audience have been that difficult?)

7. Uhura casually tells her roommate that she translated a mysterious message detailing the destruction of a Klingon fleet by a large, Romulan ship, but fails to inform her captain until he's about to fly into a trap.

6. If he's getting so much action, why can't one of Spock's emotions be, you know, kinda happy? Why so dour, my Vulcan friend?

5. Rowdy officers must be jettisoned off the ship in life pods and left on ice planets. Apparently the brig was broken?

4. It's OK, though, because if you do that, the person in the life pod will manage to land right next to THE ONLY OTHER PERSON ON THE PLANET who has also been stranded there.

3. The bridge is the best place to bring suspected saboteurs. OK, this is actually a time-honored Trek tradition. But still.

2. If you accidentally get sent back 25 more than 150 years in time, it's better to take revenge on the person who was unable to save your planet than to actually, you know, TRY TO SAVE YOUR PLANET!

1. The random Star Wars and Cloverfield-like monsters appearing for no particular reason.


http://scifiwire.com/2009/05/11-things-about-star-trek.php

11 Comic relief, not so bad

10 At least for me it feels more real, not really a big issue. Kelvin`s was better

9 Could be a Drilling Beam effect, ships always ¨block all comms¨ and prevent from beaming while attacking....

8 Mining ship from the future, weapons from the future.....

7 Someone wasnt paying attention....Vulcan distress signal was about an electrical storm, not about a Romulan attack

6 He lost his planet and his mother

5 ¨Are you out of your Vulcan mind?¨

4 Read ¨When worlds collides¨ Also, Kirk walks from the escape pod

3 Kirks cheated an academy test, just that

2 Saving Romulus wasnt enough ¨I saw her die, dont tell me it didnt happen¨

1 Now every space creature is from Star wars.....

 

[Peter the Younger]

I'm sure Sisko once said to Cassidy Yates that Earth was 4 weeks at max warp from DS9. Now assuming the Defiant's max speed was warp 9, I'm not sure TOS era ships could get anywhere near that. Travel to Cardassia in a TOS era ship would've taken months at the max speed of the vessel.

It would be the same as saying that Starfleet vessels in the Nu-Trek timeline are routinely popping off to the Delta Quadrant version of Risa for a bit of shore leave. Starfleet vessels of that era would never have been able to travel that far in to space, let alone have actually explored that far.

No, it would be the same as saying European traders made the months long journey to China, and brought things back from China. Which they did.

As to the original point about the humor, none of the lighter moments in this film come anywhere near the mind-numbing stupidity of The Life Forms Song.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Just as an FYI - I feel obligated to mention that this is not my list. There's a link at the bottom. I copied it from the Sci-Fi Wire site. I just wanted to start a discussion.

 

[Irishman]

1. Spock/Uhura made me roll my eyes, but I'll probably have to get used to it.

2. The missing 25 years for nero. These things need explaining.

3. Engineering - nuff said.

4. Phasers - where is the beams that I know and love, this pulse business is Star Warsy, lazy and does nothing for me.

"Lazy" is a criticism to be reserved for someone that doesn't make a change from what came before. They did make a change. You may not like the result, but it's not lazy, as in avoiding work.

I don't think you meant to say "lazy".

 

[Admiral Bear]

As to the original point about the humor, none of the lighter moments in this film come anywhere near the mind-numbing stupidity of The Life Forms Song.

Which was a direct result of the mind numbing stupidity of Data's emotion chip.

 

[Irishman]

What really annoyed me was the fact that the Romulan homeworld was engulfed by a supernova that was going to threaten the entire galaxy. The supernova wasn't the Romulan homeworld's sun.

Say WHAT? What kind of a supernova is that? It expands several times faster than the speed of light, it won't collapse in on itself into a neutron star/black hole before searing the entire galaxy, its going to expand to cover the entire galaxy, and be hot enough to cook every planet in it. It'll reach earth and Vulcan in a few weeks. Wait.. Just how MASSIVE is this star?

It violates
1. the Laws of Thermodynamics (First law - energy can't be created or destroyed)
2. Relativity (Faster than light)
3. Conservation of Matter (apparently this supernova has unlimited mass/energy - or is an incredibly huge star)
4. Everything we know about Supernovas.
5. Probably more.

And that's the just off the top of my head. My head hurts.

I also didn't like the destruction of Vulcan.

And probably the worst moment was at the end of the story when I realised ""Oh no... This is going to be Trek where the ONLY canon is Enterprise."
I turned to my friend and said "Kill me now. Please."

I love that they've created a Vulcan diaspora. I wonder how this will change the development of the Federation? If the Klingons in the TOS films thought the Federation was a "homo sapiens-only club", then I can't imagine how they've view it without the tempering hand of Vulcan over the Federation. This creates such amazing possibilities for future storytelling.

 

[Omega_Glory]

Only 11 things? I had at least that many WTF instances and more.

1)The USS Kelvin appears smaller than a Constitution class ship yet has over 800 crewmembers? WTF! It also has 19 shuttles in a bay no larger than the aforementioned Constitution? WTF!

2)Spock is banging Uhura? WTF!

3)Scotty is a goof ball? WTF!

4)The engine room? WTF! Kinda goofy and way to big for the ship.

5)The monsters were kinda silly.

6)Nero's torpedos moving as slow as clay targets at a trap range? Ok sure.

7)Starfleets so strapped for crewmembers that they have to send a couple hundred ungraduated cadets into immediate action & combat? WTF!

8)Kirk graduates the academy with a full captains rank and is handed the reins of the most advanced ship they have? Also the flagship of Starfleet. WTF guys!!! That would be like a cadet from the Navy Academy being assigned as commanding officer of one of our biggest and baddest aircraft carriers today. Ludicrous in the extreme!

9)The Kobayashi Maru scenario was choreographed like a Saturday Night Live Trek skit. Given Kirk's level of immaturity, he would have been drummed out before ever taking the test the first time.

10)So ok the timeline changed, but somehow Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov were born 10 years or so before they should have been? WTF! One ship missing in action wouldn't have caused such a massive change in the timeline.

11)Pike places Kirk as first officer when he was a stowaway in the first place, and he still has a year to go at the academy? WTF! You mean to tell me that noone else on the ship had more senority than that? Could anyone imagine something like that happening in a real navy?

And there's more, but lunch is over and I have to go back to work.

 

[JoeD80]

Two planets as close as our moon is to the Earth? Two M-class planets so close together with radically different climates?

One planet tilted on its axis will have a different climate than a neighboring planet. Different atmosphere mixes will lead to drastic differences. Even Earth has an ice continent during times when parts of it are exceeding 120 degrees. Maybe we're just seeing the icy part of the planet.

Vulcan's destruction having apparently no effect on Delta Vega whatsoever? The singularity that consumed Vulcan disappears after consuming it?

I assume this was just how the red matter worked. Sucks in an object that it's at the center of and then disappears. Like those collapsing wormholes in some episodes.

7)Starfleets so strapped for crewmembers that they have to send a couple hundred ungraduated cadets into immediate action & combat? WTF!

8)Kirk graduates the academy with a full captains rank and is handed the reins of the most advanced ship they have? Also the flagship of Starfleet. WTF guys!!! That would be like a cadet from the Navy Academy being assigned as commanding officer of one of our biggest and baddest aircraft carriers today. Ludicrous in the extreme!

The Admiral says specifically that those ships were the only ones close enough, just like other Trek films. I didn't get the impression that the Academy was supposed to be pre-officer education though, I got the impression from this film that they were officers already. Even in the show I think he was supposed to be a Lieutenant on the Farragut while he was in the Academy.

 

[Irishman]

Might have been mentioned elsewhere, but Uhura ordering a Cardassian Sunrise in the bar stuck out like a sore thumb. The Federation hadn't come within a million light years of discovering the Cardassians in the TOS era, let alone importing their beverages.

And if my DS9 memory serves, it was a Bajoran Sunrise, not a Cardassian one. I remember Quark making one in an episode.

I think I recall Cardassian awareness in ENT.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

6. If he's getting so much action, why can't one of Spock's emotions be, you know, kinda happy? Why so dour, my Vulcan friend?

I love this one!

Cardassians did come up in "Enterprise."

 

[Irishman]

Only 11 things? I had at least that many WTF instances and more.

1)The USS Kelvin appears smaller than a Constitution class ship yet has over 800 crewmembers? WTF! It also has 19 shuttles in a bay no larger than the aforementioned Constitution? WTF!

2)Spock is banging Uhura? WTF!

3)Scotty is a goof ball? WTF!

4)The engine room? WTF! Kinda goofy and way to big for the ship.

5)The monsters were kinda silly.

6)Nero's torpedos moving as slow as clay targets at a trap range? Ok sure.

7)Starfleets so strapped for crewmembers that they have to send a couple hundred ungraduated cadets into immediate action & combat? WTF!

8)Kirk graduates the academy with a full captains rank and is handed the reins of the most advanced ship they have? Also the flagship of Starfleet. WTF guys!!! That would be like a cadet from the Navy Academy being assigned as commanding officer of one of our biggest and baddest aircraft carriers today. Ludicrous in the extreme!

9)The Kobayashi Maru scenario was choreographed like a Saturday Night Live Trek skit. Given Kirk's level of immaturity, he would have been drummed out before ever taking the test the first time.

10)So ok the timeline changed, but somehow Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov were born 10 years or so before they should have been? WTF! One ship missing in action wouldn't have caused such a massive change in the timeline.

11)Pike places Kirk as first officer when he was a stowaway in the first place, and he still has a year to go at the academy? WTF! You mean to tell me that noone else on the ship had more senority than that? Could anyone imagine something like that happening in a real navy?

And there's more, but lunch is over and I have to go back to work.

Omega, the Kelvin and the Enterprise in this film are substantially larger than their TOS counterparts. By a large margin. Crew sizes will double or triple.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Might have been mentioned elsewhere, but Uhura ordering a Cardassian Sunrise in the bar stuck out like a sore thumb. The Federation hadn't come within a million light years of discovering the Cardassians in the TOS era, let alone importing their beverages.

And if my DS9 memory serves, it was a Bajoran Sunrise, not a Cardassian one. I remember Quark making one in an episode.

I think I recall Cardassian awareness in ENT.

6. If he's getting so much action, why can't one of Spock's emotions be, you know, kinda happy? Why so dour, my Vulcan friend?

I love this one!

Cardassians did come up in "Enterprise."

Cardassians came up in the Enterprise episode Observer Effect. They were mentioned by two aliens (Organians) possessing Reed and Mayweather, not by anyone in Starfleet (as I remember).

 

[captcalhoun]

a supernova that can destroy an entire galaxy

using a black hole to counteract a supernova.

time-travelling through a black hole

 

[Geoff]

Might have been mentioned elsewhere, but Uhura ordering a Cardassian Sunrise in the bar stuck out like a sore thumb. The Federation hadn't come within a million light years of discovering the Cardassians in the TOS era, let alone importing their beverages.

Not true. We know from DS9 that a Cardassian poet named "Iloja of Prim" was exiled to Vulcan during Tobin Dax's lifetime (i.e., prior to 2245). So the Federation was at least aware of their existence, even if they had no "official" contact.

I agree, Delta Vega was way too close to Vulcan! Two planets as close as our moon is to the Earth? Two M-class planets so close together with radically different climates? Vulcan's destruction having apparently no effect on Delta Vega whatsoever? The singularity that consumed Vulcan disappears after consuming it?

Something to keep in mind. Just because a singularity "consumes" a planet doesn't mean the mass just vanishes. It's still there, with the same center of gravity. It's just been collapsed down to a single point. So as far as the physics are concerned, it would have no effect upon the neighboring planet. Any satellites would still revolve around it, and the singularity itself would still revolve around the star.

But yes, the world known as "Delta Vega" would have to be a satellite of Vulcan... or, considering that the gravity seems close to that of Earth, it's likely part of a binary pairing with Vulcan. This would be consistent with the image of the huge planetoid seen in the Vulcan sky in "Yesteryear" and in the original edition of "The Motion Picture," while remaining true to Spock's claim that Vulcan "has no moon."

Incidentally, this notion had already been speculated in the fiction, wherein the sister planet was named "T'Khut."

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Might have been mentioned elsewhere, but Uhura ordering a Cardassian Sunrise in the bar stuck out like a sore thumb. The Federation hadn't come within a million light years of discovering the Cardassians in the TOS era, let alone importing their beverages.

And if my DS9 memory serves, it was a Bajoran Sunrise, not a Cardassian one. I remember Quark making one in an episode.

I think I recall Cardassian awareness in ENT.

6. If he's getting so much action, why can't one of Spock's emotions be, you know, kinda happy? Why so dour, my Vulcan friend?

I love this one!

Cardassians did come up in "Enterprise."

Cardassians came up in the Enterprise episode Observer Effect. They were mentioned by two aliens (Organians) possessing Reed and Mayweather, not by anyone in Starfleet (as I remember).

I'll quote myself and add that they appeared in the Enterprise episode 'Dead Stop' but no one knew who they were. They were among other bodies on an automated space station that was then destroyed.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

That's interesting. At what point do the little annoyances (nitpicks) overwhelm a movie and turn it from a good film into a bad one?

When the film isn't fun or entertaining.

The only thing that made me go "WTF" was the accidental boob-grabbing of Uhura's oranges in the bar fight scene. Not that I minded at all, but it was a bit too juvenile in my eyes.

I thought "well, at least she didn't fall on him, with her boobs smashed into his face".

 

[DeafPoet]

I thought "well, at least she didn't fall on him, with her boobs smashed into his face".

That actually would have been better. You should be writing for a Star Trek prequel!

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

I thought "well, at least she didn't fall on him, with her boobs smashed into his face".

He would've liked that. I like it every time that happens.

 

[lawman]

I think the list is both apropos and hilarious!

5. Rowdy officers must be jettisoned off the ship in life pods and left on ice planets. Apparently the brig was broken?

Kirk was proving himself to be more trouble than he was worth. Spock probably figured Kirk would still be a handful in the Brig if not even still manage to get out. So he jettisoned him on the ice planet.

Where the OnStar system of the pod told Kirk to remain inside and someone will come pick him up.

That would make at least a little sense, except that when they discovered Scotty at that outpost, Scotty displayed no awareness whatsoever that the pod had landed.

Meh, it made a good movie, why does everyone seem to scrutinize every possible detail of a film?

It's just the way my mind works.

The "why didn't Nero save Romulus in those 25 years" bit is just as silly a criticism. Maybe he did. You don't know that.

Nobody cares why his ship was so powerful. It doesn't matter to the general audiences; it didn't matter to me. It's not a reason to dislike a film.

So what if the pod landed near the outpost? Maybe it was programmed to to that, how would we know? That's no reason to be upset. And maybe there was destiny at play. Ka. Ka is a wheel, ask Stephen King.

Most of the things that annoyed you can be explained away with a little imagination. That's the cool thing about this film: it leaves you room to speculate and doesn't murder excitement by overload of information, like other Treks have done in the past.

You're really going out of your way to make excuses for the story here. Yes, it's possible to "explain away" a lot of the flaws in this story (or for that matter to imagine better alternatives), but the audience shouldn't have to do that. The writers are being paid very large amounts of money to come up with a story that works; we aren't. They should be able to come up with a final product that doesn't need this much stuff "explained away."

"Punch it" rather than "Engage"

Silly.

Well, I -- like most adults -- have probably said "Punch It" more often in my life than I have said "Engage"...However, I agree that "punch it" was a little out of place. That's not a term a Captain should use all the time; perhaps only in certain situations -- although to be fair, he didn't use it all the time.

The line didn't bother me (although I personally can't recall ever having said "punch it"), but in point of fact it is Pike, not Picard, who first used "engage" (I just rewatched "The Cage" the other day). (I've often thought that in many ways, TNG was Gene's take on what he'd originally wanted to do with Trek, before the network scrapped his original pilot as "too cerebral.")

I don't think it's a function of the number of things that can be nit-picked, but rather a function of if a person can look past the nit-picks, no matter how many there are.

A person who considers a film as a "whole" rather than the "sum of its parts" may be more inclined to like certain films.

Actually, I think the whole was less than the sum of its parts. It had parts that were quite entertaining. The whole? Not so much.

And I really don't think of this as "nitpicking." Some of these problems are with major story points. Personally, it's not as if I sat down and "dutifully compiled as list," as someone put it... what I've been writing about (and what this OP captures so effectively) are things that jumped out at me while I was watching the movie and yanked me out of any organic experience of the story.

As I've said a couple times already, if I can invent a scene that takes less than 5 lines of dialogue to explain away a plothole, then I just sort of assume it happened off screen and don't worry about it.

And for just about every single plot hole I could think of in this movie, a scene fixing it immediately came to mind.

See, if it's that easy, then I just sort of assume the highly-paid professional screenwriters should have actually written the necessary dialogue and taken care of it themselves.

1. The drill could be so easily diasbled/destroyed and yet no one really tries. I know Vulcan turned peaceful some time ago (as of Enterprise's Vulcan arc) but they must have had some sort of phaser canon somewhere to destroy this drill that's punching a hole through their planet! And they are punching that hole on Earth, right next to Starfleet!

...3. One more pick for me: What was Amanda Grayson doing in the cave with all of the Vulcan High Council? If she was indeed a member, or accepted enough woudl Vulcan kids be calling Sarek a traitor and his wife a whore? Or would the Science Council guy expressly tell Spock that his weakness is his Human Mother?

Yep, yep. Excellent points, and they definitely bothered me during the film.

Omega, the Kelvin and the Enterprise in this film are substantially larger than their TOS counterparts. By a large margin. Crew sizes will double or triple.

That really makes no sense. The Kelvin was part of the original timeline, built before Neo's arrival changed anything.