If there's little or no practical difference in strength for that size area between having a transparent aluminium (this isn't glass we're talking about)
Given pretty much everything I saw in the movie, I don't think we can even really say that since it was never specifically said in the movie or even as a behind the scenes statement.
and standard hull material, why not have the viewscreen a transparent material, if you can overlay any other information you might want besides what's directly ahead? Just saying 'it's the bridge' doesn't suffice, unless you can give good reasons for it.
Realistically (you know, that whole realism thing Abrams said he was going for), a window would be pretty useless on a space ship at anything other than very close range. A large monitor that can zoom way in on a ship that would still be in the weapons range of even modern weapons would be a much greater advantage than a window with a HUD, particularly if information that was actually important was displayed on it as well (to be fair something I have yet to see on Star Trek in any form). The way they basically did a HUD on a window was actually pretty distracting because you could always see through any image displayed on it, and the glare caused by the ample white lighting in the room on the curved surface of the glass just added to that.
I think ol' GR has a specific reason for bridge's being up top, but I can't remember what it is. I wouldn't be happy putting the bridge on the top of the ship either though.
It was to give audiences a visual reference and that was pretty much it. They've said this in pretty much every non-fiction publication there is, and they even admit that it's a pretty weak reason but that they just do it out of tradition now.
Never heard of people who've properly tried watching the two and thinking that.
I have, and I even had to put up with them in school.
And I'm not too bothered with it, warbirds fit for both cultures ship design styles, as much as Bird-of-Preys are. And who are these mysterious people who mix up Romulans and Klingons, and think the viewscreen is a windshield?
The same people who'd confuse Star Wars and Star Trek. basically people who have no real interest in either show but will go to watch it because it has spaceships blowing up.
The fact that it had a kamikaze Kelvin crash into it probably didn't help it stave off any attackers. Not see how the Narada was tumbling away with wreckage drifing off it as the shuttles ran for it before the title?
Yeah, I remember seeing that and wondering a number of things, including:
1) How were those ships able to be that close to a star without suffering from the radiation put off by it?
2) Why aren't the shuttles going to warp so they can get away from the attacking uber-ship now that the
Kelvin isn't there to shoot down missiles?
3) Why isn't that uber-ship shooting anymore missiles at any of those shuttles?
4) How the hell did they fit that many shuttles into that ship?
5) Dear God, why did they have to make this movie like this?
Haven't watched the deleted scenes, but from what I've heard of the scene, that aspect sounds far-fetched. Unless there's more to the deleted scenes than I've heard about that is.
How else do you explain Nero and his biker gang being able to get the ship back then? This kind of reminds me of that episode on DS9 where Worf and Garak were captured and sent to a Jem Hadar prison, but for some inexplicable reason they kept the runabout close by. Or that episode of ENT where Archer and his crew do a jail break out of an internment camp, which has a hanger full of shuttles right next to it that all the prisoners use to escape.
Maybe the Klingons did get many secrets from the ship, why would they necessarily need to take it apart? It's not a military vessel with computer lockdowns, it's a civilian ship, so the specs and explanations of technology used would probably be available on the computers freely, or with little difficulty.
Reverse engineering is going to involve taking things apart so you can see just how they work and do things like material analysis. This is also something you'd want to do in a really secure place, so no one can just break in and steal the ship from you. And since you mentioned computer lock downs, there are a couple of issues with that.
1) Why wouldn't Nero add something like that?
2) The Klingons would have to understand how to even use the computers in order to get anything out of it, so even if there wasn't something as simple as a password protecting the computer that adds a complication to it.
I could be wrong about this, but no one in the movie ever tells anything about Nero and the Narada having been captured by the Klingons.
Aside from the deleted scenes we have that hint in the form of the transmission Uhura was talking about.
Apart from 'waiting' we don't know what Nero and co. did during those 25 years.
Which begs the question as to why they would bother doing that? As easily as they were able to defeat so many starships later on, why would they wait and not simply go on a rampage right then? What else are they going to do for 25 years? Buttsecks?
Still can't believe they actually made the viewscreen a window.
