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"I like the new movie better..."

No No, as an experienced head to head with a certain Trek XI basher, he will be back. You guys just posted way too many smart things for him to comprehend. So he is probably on another thread bashing the movie.

I enjoyed the movie because I actually felt bad for Nero. He wasn't bad because he was pure EVIL nor because he was a Klingon nor because he was god nor because he was a Klingon, he lost everything including his pregnant wife because Spock failed on his promise. I would be pissed too, granted I would be irrational and see only revenge because of my grief and the my wanting to end that grief by destroying the one visible target.

What makes Khan so believable as a villain? His ability to quote Shakespeare? His raging man pecs? How about the obvious off-sync conversation he had with Kirk (come on you can tell Kirk is talking to a recording)? How about the fact he had blind morons for followers and they were supposed to super men and women? I liked TWOK for the basic fact that it a much needed military feeling that TOS and TMP lacked plus it wasn't a bunch of actors running in tshirts or pajamas with Decker's extremely noticeable bulge. I think the director focused on it just to mess with us.

The Narada was a mining vessel. What if the missiles were actually used to destroy asteroids or other heavenly bodies to be processed. More than likely, working vessels such as tankers, freighters, or other ships tend to be a lot bigger than warships. Narada could have been a miner, processor, and a walmart all put in, who knows, but does it really matter not really. Does it matter that Vulcan or Earth was unprotected not really. Like someone said Trek planets are generally unprotected anyways.
 
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The Narada was a mining vessel. What if the missiles were actually used to destroy asteroids or other heavenly bodies to be processed. More than likely, working vessels such as tankers, freighters, or other ships tend to be a lot bigger than warships. Narada could have been a miner, processor, and a walmart all put in, who knows, but does it really matter not really. Does it matter that Vulcan or Earth was unprotected not really. Like someone said Trek planets are generally unprotected anyways.

Vulcan being unprotected... possibly, although that contradicts episodes from Enterprise. The Federation being unprotected in that they have monitoring stations that can pick up transmissions from Klingon space but have no ships along the border and cannot detect a MASSIVE and very powerful ship travelling all the way through the heart of Klingon space right up to Vulcan's solar system... it starts to look dumber and dumber.

I still really enjoyed the movie but I take issue with people who try to defend its internal logic. Not that TWoK's internal logic was any better - let's be honest here!
 
^Dude, TOS contradicts way more from ENT than STXI does. Time travel, cloaking devices etc. It turned out that all that amazing stuff Kirk did "first" was just a retread of Captain Archer's adventures :p

Star Trek's never been consistant with itself. It's done a great job over the decades of presenting a good illusion of consistancy, but an illusion is all it ever was (just ask James R. Kirk, or ask Voyager Q about the TNG episode "True Nature"). I don't think any of Star Trek really holds up under scrutiny.
 
Vulcan being unprotected... possibly, although that contradicts episodes from Enterprise.

T'Pau's takeover of the government in S4 strongly implied that Vulcan would be veering away from its combative nature and return to a more peaceful existence. Probably to the detriment of their defense; either that or by this time they rely solely on Starfleet for their defense, which was busy elsewhere (see next entry).

The Federation being unprotected in that they have monitoring stations that can pick up transmissions from Klingon space but have no ships along the border and cannot detect a MASSIVE and very powerful ship travelling all the way through the heart of Klingon space right up to Vulcan's solar system...

The movie itself stated that Starfleet's primary forces were busy in the Laurentian system. Granted that's just a plot device to have the fleet away from the action, but at least they bothered to give a reason why there were no other ships. And c'mon, this is not a valid criticism of the movie. How many times in ST's past has the Enterprise been "the only ship in the quadrant" or some such nonsense?
 
I still really enjoyed the movie but I take issue with people who try to defend its internal logic. Not that TWoK's internal logic was any better - let's be honest here!
At least it was better than Trek 1.0's logic of Enterprise being the only ship in the Sol system. ;)
 
The movie itself stated that Starfleet's primary forces were busy in the Laurentian system. Granted that's just a plot device to have the fleet away from the action, but at least they bothered to give a reason why there were no other ships. And c'mon, this is not a valid criticism of the movie. How many times in ST's past has the Enterprise been "the only ship in the quadrant" or some such nonsense?

It isn't the absence of the fleet that is the problem - that is indeed a ropey old plot device that is often used. The problem is the movie's inconsistent internal logic i.e. that the Narada can travel from Klingon space (enemy territory) to the heart of Federation space, without being detected or recognised as a threat even though the Feds are able to monitor Klingon communications. So the Feds have NOTHING monitoring the Klingon border or any area of space leading right into the heart of the Fedearation or their key planetary systems? The only sensible explanation is that the Narada can cloak.

This is a problem that Trek has generally because it appears that it isn't possible to track enemy vessels while they're at warp without their transponder codes except at very close range where a warp trail or field can be detected. This means that any enemy force can sail into Federation space and attack any of its planets, cloaked or not, inflicting mass casualties before any kind of response can be mounted even if there are ships in the quadrant. So why would any planetary systems need monitoring stations or defences? (insert sarcasm) This is why the writers should have avoided letting ships warp directly into a planetary system.

Problems tracking at warp may be true in Trek generally but then how can Enterprise track the Narada to Earth, and how can they get there before the Narada if they can't follow her, especially when their engines only allow them to travel at warp 4, and why would it not be faster for other ships to return to Earth at warp 9+ if the Narada is pootling to Earth at less than Warp 4? If we adopt the assumption that Narada has a cloak, why would she uncloak so far away from Earth and why wouldn't she raise her shields as soon as she uncloaked?

You can find explanations but it's hard to find internally consistent ones.

The most sensible thing would have been a line acknowledging that the cloak was damaged and Nero could have said, in that sinister voice of his, "We don't need a cloak." before torturing Pike for the defence codes. Without her cloak though, the Narada would have had shields raised... so we need the line, "Shield generators, engines, and our cloaking field have been damaged - we can only travel at warp 3.7 until we repair" "We don't need them... set course for Earth at maximum speed."

My own feeling is that it would have been a better movie if the Narada had been a less powerful ship with a cloak (albeit still tough enough to take on the Kelvin with the element of surprise), assisted by smaller attack vessels manned by non-Romulan allies that Nero had collected over the years (Pirates, arrrrr). Something to make the villains less cardboard cut-out, like some mercenaries who have motivations other than revenge who see Nero rapidly lose his hold on sanity once Spock Prime arrives.
 
I still really enjoyed the movie but I take issue with people who try to defend its internal logic. Not that TWoK's internal logic was any better - let's be honest here!
At least it was better than Trek 1.0's logic of Enterprise being the only ship in the Sol system. ;)

Heh ya - a bit silly too, although they may have been talking about the only ship fast enough to intercept V'ger early enough to make a difference rather than the only ship full stop - they could tell that an all-out assault on V'ger was a waste of time after all so why send multiple ships to be destroyed?

V'ger was travelling at high warp from Klingon space and still took several days to reach Earth unlike the Narada's rapid trip to Vulcan. Plus Epsilon IX was aware of V'ger while it was in Klingon space and the Feds were able to track it all the way to Earth - probably because of its size and power output.
 
What's the difference between your defending of TMP than my defense of Trek XI? I don't see one. I mean let's say the Enterprise was the only ship in the entire Starfleet to be able to intercept V'Ger. Since they know the destination of V'Ger, why not mount a defense, since they know V'Ger destroys, well downloads entire planets and anything that interests it. During the shot of Earth, where was all that traffic seen from the beginning of the movie?
 
If you want to go on about how great the new film is, there is an entire forum for that discussion.
 
What's the difference between your defending of TMP than my defense of Trek XI? I don't see one. I mean let's say the Enterprise was the only ship in the entire Starfleet to be able to intercept V'Ger. Since they know the destination of V'Ger, why not mount a defense, since they know V'Ger destroys, well downloads entire planets and anything that interests it. During the shot of Earth, where was all that traffic seen from the beginning of the movie?

Oh there is no difference and I love the nitpickers guides! Well, there is one difference I suppose in that NuTrek seems to have more and more inconsistent plot holes than some of its predecessors but they all had the same problems to one degree or another.

In TMP, since they knew V'ger was coming and they had several days to plan, they had the common sense to evacuate as many personnel as possible using all their spare ships of course.

Now we come to the Whale Probe in STIV... I can't recall if they explained what steps they took to intercept the Probe but it looked as though they didn't know it was coming and only the Saratoga(?) tried to intercept once it was inside the Solar system! Equally silly of course!
 
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I think that in TUC that the two diplomatic courier vessels would need more of an escort than just each other.

In GEN, I dont think the size of the Nexus could go unnoticed especially when it occurs more than Halley's Comet.

In TFF, what's with marshmellons?
 
Kirk's quote is "the only starship in interception range is the Enterprise."

Other ships may have been able to get there but wouldn't have been able to keep up.
It's not really intercepting someone if they fly right past you and you can't catch them.
 
Kirk's quote is "the only starship in interception range is the Enterprise."

Other ships may have been able to get there but wouldn't have been able to keep up.
It's not really intercepting someone if they fly right past you and you can't catch them.

And the only STARSHIP - that is not to say that there aren't other vessels like giant mining ships in range.
 
Kirk's quote is "the only starship in interception range is the Enterprise."

Other ships may have been able to get there but wouldn't have been able to keep up.
It's not really intercepting someone if they fly right past you and you can't catch them.

And the only STARSHIP - that is not to say that there aren't other vessels like giant mining ships in range.

This is an important consideration. TOS made the distinction that a starship was more than just a spaceship, even though some spaceships were capable of traveling in interstellar space. That distinction was never clarified, though, and I think it was best that it was eventually dropped.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture clearly followed in this pattern, treating ships like the Enterprise as uniquely capable in some vague way of handling situations like that presented by V'Ger.
 
That makes no amount of sense. In TOS, we got to see the Antares out and about. We got to see the small shuttlecraft go to warp and such. In TAS, we got a whole mess of different styles of Federation vessels doing the same thing as the Enterprise. It would make more sense, if the Enterprise and her sisters were the only ones that had a warp drive.
 
That makes no amount of sense. In TOS, we got to see the Antares out and about. We got to see the small shuttlecraft go to warp and such. In TAS, we got a whole mess of different styles of Federation vessels doing the same thing as the Enterprise. It would make more sense, if the Enterprise and her sisters were the only ones that had a warp drive.

It makes a good deal of sense in the TOS era where resources were more scarce than in TNG. Starships would have the best engines, the most powerful weapons, the most advanced sensors, and a diverse, highly trained crew compared to specialised science vessels, medical vessels, couriers, warp capable shuttles, troop carriers etc. What use whould a shuttle have been in TMP - V'ger would have overtaken it before it was a tenth of the way there.

Space is huge, particularly if you apply old-style warp speeds logically so it isn't even that stupid that there are often no ships nearby most of the time as long as you apply sensible time frames for ships to get from one location to another. Realistically, either warp speeds would have to be much faster than generally accepted or the Federation would have to have a vast fleet of ships (far more than we've seen) simply to police the territory. Warp corridors of safe regions (low gravity, no dark matter etc) with filed flight paths along established routes make the most sense in this regard.

What makes less sense is the concept of advanced civilisations having no or limited planetary defences (particlarly listening posts to warn about impending threats so that distant ships have time to respond) and no ships on hand for the evacuation of personnel or dignitaries in the event of a disaster such as an impending supernova.

TMP edges out NuTrek in the logic stakes because it has a realistic time frame, evidence that the Federation has resources to take action before a threat reaches a planetary system, and planetary defences. It loses out because it is unrealistic that Starfleet headquarters would have only one starship on site at any one time (I'm guessing the Laurentian system must be crowded a lot of the time).

NuTrek scores points because it shows that Starfleet has a number of starships on site (7) even if they are staffed by inexperienced (and often rather stupid) crew but it fudges the time frame and papers over simple plot points so that our heroes' simplistic actions look impressive rather than imcompetent but incredibly lucky.
 
^Dude, TOS contradicts way more from ENT than STXI does. Time travel, cloaking devices etc. It turned out that all that amazing stuff Kirk did "first" was just a retread of Captain Archer's adventures :p
:wtf: :guffaw: How the hell does TOS contradict ENT when the show was made thirty years before???
 
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