It does sound funny, but a friend of mine watched all six Star Wars films starting with TPM down to Return of the Jedi. She had never heard of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and was genuinely shocked when Anakin screwed up the way he did.
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It does sound funny, but a friend of mine watched all six Star Wars films starting with TPM down to Return of the Jedi. She had never heard of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and was genuinely shocked when Anakin screwed up the way he did.
I can't believe that Lucas never thought of this as a possibility. Palpatine should not have named him Vader in part 3. Kenobi should have left Anakin for dead on the smouldering mountain. Padme should not have given birth but there should have been discussions with Yoda about splitting up the children to keep them safe once they are born. Wipe c3po's memory. The end. We'd have shortened the movie by half an hour.
It also adds a slightly sinister quality when Kenobi blames Vader for Luke's father's death in a new hope and our first clue would be the glimpse of Vader's burned head in Empire looking a bit like Anakin's burned head in 3. Much neater.
You do realize that in Balance of Terror Kirk (the PRIME universe one) let the Romulan Commander destroy his ship without trying to rescue the surviving crew aboard the ship right?
or how about Kirk ignored the warnings of his officers in TWOK and many cadets were killed including Scotty's kin.
The crucial difference being that Abrams had nothing to do with Balance of Terror.
Abrams is always wrong, and TOS is always right, especially when they agree.
See how much fun you can have when you don't fear paradox and contradiction?
i dont think either in the new movie or balance of terror kirk had much choice.
in balance of terror kirk was attempting to rescue the romulan crew but couldnt do anything to stop the romulan commander ..
considering the enterprise wasnt seriously damaged or destroyed when the romulan ship self destructed they were not in range to do anything to stop him.
as for the new movie..
while damaged the narada didnt totally start breaking apart until enterprise fired on it.
kirk once nero refused to surrender couldnt take the chance on any part of narada still being functional and going else where to cause more damage.
and once the red matter went off just locking in on random member of the narada crew might have created even more transporter issues.
so much so one might need to have them in one place with a visual lock or some other way of knowing where they were.
you also have to be concerned beaming aboard a combatant who has not surrendered.
especially when their weapons are more highly advanced then yours,
or they may beam aboard still planning to commit suicide and take you with them.
You have to distinguish between acts taken while the enemy is still a significant threat (per STIII - a functional ship and crew of 12 vs a damaged ship and crew of 4) and actions taken where the enemy is a manageable threat (a few armed Romulans v a crew of over 400). I think the key is showing that the Enterprise crew acts in a humanitarian way and that includes trying to rescue the romulans even if that proves impossible (per Balance of Terror).
I don't know if 23rd century transporters can drain energy out of weapons like in 24th century transporters but it would make sense since the weapon has to be reconstituted like everything else.
Basically Kirk should have asked whether it was possible to beam off at least some of Narada's crew, been told that the gravity flux was too great, confirmed that they could not take the risk that the Narada might survive a trip through the wormhole and them blown the crap out of it.
No he DIDN'T try to rescue them he told the Romulan Commander that the Enterprise could take the survivors of the Romulan ship aboard the Enterprise, the Romulan Commander said no and then did his speach about having one more duty to perform and how in another reality (hint hint Abrams) they could have been friends (during which Kirk could have tried to beam over survivors BUT DID NOT) then nuked his own ship.
Wrong. If you look closely, large chunks of the ship (including those long knife like structures) are breaking off. Add to the fact that the black hole literally cut the ship in two as evidence that each half was spinning in the opposite direction.
And of course, "Your ship is compromised. Too close to the singularity to survive without assistance". I seriously doubt he would be saying that if it wasn't true considering that Nero could tell himself.
That's a risk that every crew must face EVEN if the combatants have surrendered.
...how? The Narada has been chopped in half, the red matter is gone, they fired everything(!), the crew are frolicking away from their stations like a bunch of loons, and Nero? If any of his crew survived the ordeal even had a quarter of a brain, what reason would they have to follow him any further?
This was not an act of justice, this was straight execution. Your enemy is helpless, you know they're doomed, but you pull out your own gun and pull the trigger yourself.
I think that was probably a situation where the exploding ship could have caused further damage to the Enterprise if they had moved within Transporter range, plus the amount of time they'd have to lock onto anybody would be limited by an imminent explosion. In other words the exploding ship posed a significant threat. Further, the ship wasn't in imminent danger of being destroyed and Kirk didn't actively seek to destroy the ship once it was 'helpless' i.e. no longer able to retaliate.
In NuTrek Kirk took active steps to destroy the helpless ship more quickly. This involved staying closer to a potential (very powerful 24th century) engine explosion than transporter range (since transporter ranges in NuTrek are much longer) and staying close to the event horizon of the singularity in order to fire upon a ship that was already being destroyed.
The dialogue was revenge driven rather than Starfleet Protocol driven and I just feel that it devolved the morals of the Federation a bit. The next step could be Kirk torturing prisoners in the next movie. Perfectly justifiable in some people's minds but I would feel more comfortable if Spock Prime acknowledged this as a negative way in which this new universe had been changed rather than just take it as acceptable behaviour.
There is also a degree of illogic to exploding your engines at an event horizon. Without a warp core the ship might indeed be able to ride a wave away from the singularity but shields would be weak since the warp core provides much of the power for the shields, and once the energy of the wave had passed, I would have thought that the ship would once again be caught in the gravitational tug of the singularity since, without warp engines, they would have limited power and limited shields to overcome even weaker gravitational forces at the slightly greater distance.
More sensible would have been to create an energy wave by destoying the Narada's warp engines. That way killing the enemy is the best way to save the Enterprise. This seems like a more reasonable response and certainly survival driven rather than revenge driven.
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They don't need Transporter range anymore. They have that "Transwarp Beaming" that was used to beam Kirk and Pike from the Narada AND Spock from a moving object all at the same time from a good range.
An Explosion? The Narada was breaking apart, not exploding. And wouldn't the black hole absorb any kind of explosion like it did with a freaking super nova? Even if it didn't, I'd highly doubt that'd be a threat to the Enterprise since they managed to survive it's own WARP CORE EXPLOSION. And it couldn't be because Nero still had weapons, because he didn't. Nero ordered everything fired at once to Spock, and when hat didn't work, he didn't do anything else (Move the bloody ship!)
Sorry for not being clear - that part of my post was referring to the Romulan ship in Balance of Terror.
However, Black Holes don't absorb all the matter and energy that is poured into them. I think quasars are massive bursts of energy that shoot out from black holes when the matter on the accretion disc heats up. Plus the Enterprise is very close to the Narada. If the energy from the Enterprise's exploding engines wasn't simply absorbed into the singularity, there is no reason to suppose that the energy from the Narada's more powerful 24th century engines wouldn't also have produced enough energy to produce a shockwave.
I agree with your logic though. A singularity designed to absorb a super nova should really have sucked up the warp core explosion easily. That isn't exactly a point in NuTreks; favour though now is it?
I-Am-Zim
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Hmmmm. I had totally forgotten about that. The transporter on the Abramsprise couldn't lock onto two people (Kirk and Sulu) in freefall through the Vulcan atmosphere, nor could it lock onto a single person (Amanda) standing perfectly still on Vulcan's surface until the rocks beneath her gave way during the transport process. But it can lock onto NuSpock inside the Jellyfish travelling who knows how fast on a collision course with the Narada, as well as Kirk and Pike on the Narrada...at the same time...and get them all to the transporter unscathed and in perfectly assembled condition. Add to that the fact that "Russian whiz kid, Chenco...Cherpov..." whatever didn't need to intervene this time. What was the difference? Did Scotty "upgrade" the transporter after he got promoted to chief of the brewery? I suppose he could have used his newly "discovered" transwarp beaming equation to upgrade the transporters to TOS standards.
Funny how none of the characters mentioned that and from the dialogue I took it they were in transporter range already.
But Kirk still didn't actively seek to destroy the Romulan ship in BoT. I suppose you can count how long Kirk had to transport the Romulan crew in BoT compared to how long he would have had to transport the Romulan crew in NuTrek both as the movie stands and if he hadn't taken active steps to destroy the Narada.
Inaction is just as bad as action especially when people's lives are at stake.
It isn't a criminal offence if you don't take steps to save someone from drowning.
It IS a criminal offence if you shoot someone in the head WHILE they are drowning.
Numerous Hollywood movies show the underdog taking bloody revenge on the villains and we usually cheer them on. However, Star Trek made a conscious effort to move away from that sort of dynamic. Making Kirk (AND Spock!) bloodthirsty just seemed sooo wrong on more than a few levels.
Somebody VERY significant died on the Narada for the Federation to end up both incompetent and potentially quite nasty. If Spock Prime wants to right things I think he should concentrate on untangling the web and saving that person!
You are wrong, if you let someone drown because you don't act, then that would be considered negligent. Even a simple calling 911 is something, nothing is just as wrong.
Wrong, perhaps but not negligent in a legal sense. If somebody whose mandate was to rescue people failed to do so then yes, they could be negligent in a legal sense.
So if Starfleet protocols dictate the Kirk should have tried to rescue the Narada's crew then Kirk and Spock could be sued for negligence or brought up on disciplinary charges. Somethng tells me that won't happen since they killed anybody who might give a crap and I really don't think that Starfleet is that anal.
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