NuTrek's Faulty Moral Compass

[Pauln6]

When I say rules, I mean in the setting as a whole: physics, narrative coherency, the science-y bits that are deliberately fluffed, all that stuff. When red matter and black holes function however the script says either functions from moment to moment, there is no meaningful way to discuss "plot" points tied to either one.

I'd point to the Genesis Device as being every bit as incoherent as Red Matter. I'd also point to wildly inconsistent warp speeds as well. Then there's wildly inconsistent weapons.

The Abramsverse films are no more guilty of "rules" non-sense than any other part of the franchise.

Lol. Yeah but I slagged off those at the time as well. By the book Mister Saavik!

 

[BillJ]

Promoting ensign with one year's experience as a navigator to chief engineer? It's tradition!

It's entertainment. I'd rather have a character I know down there than introduce a no-name that we never hear from again after the crisis is over.

 

[Pauln6]

I don't recall being offended by that particular decision - possibly because it is a heat of battle decision without a pause to parlay. The ship is still cloaked so the characters can't be sure how much of a threat the ship remains and there is no line underscoring the fact that the ship is no longer a threat. You can't beam people off a cloaked ship.

The Bird-of-Prey is clearly visible once the first torpedo hits.

Well, it's a special effect. The line of dialogue is something like 'target that explosion'. The dialogue supports the notion that the ship could still be cloaked (plus if it warped away or uncloaked and raised shields it could still be a threat). It's a decision in the heat of battle supported by dialogue.

I would be fine if that was the same in NuTrek.

 

[Pauln6]

Promoting ensign with one year's experience as a navigator to chief engineer? It's tradition!

It's entertainment. I'd rather have a character I know down there than introduce a no-name that we never hear from again after the crisis is over.

And they did it to satisfy people like you so that does justify their decision. It didn't satisfy me because I prefer a higher degree of narrative logic. I rather enjoy supporting characters but besides that, Chekov did not have to be chief engineer to be the character who delivered the lines from engineering.

 

[Set Harth]

When red matter and black holes function however the script says either functions from moment to moment, there is no meaningful way to discuss "plot" points tied to either one.

Huh? The film is internally consistent in this area. Red matter does the same thing each of the three times it is deployed in the film. Red matter black holes also appear to behave in a consistent fashion, as far as the viewer knows; we know that several intact ships were sent back in time and their passengers survived the trip, while we do not have the same level of assurance in the markedly different circumstances of a singularity being created within the ship and tearing it apart in the process ( though the discussions in this thread alone demonstrate that to many viewers time travel was not ruled out even then ).

When I say rules, I mean in the setting as a whole: physics, narrative coherency, the science-y bits that are deliberately fluffed, all that stuff.

But how does this go to the film allegedly not making sense at any point, except as hyperbole for shock value?

 

[BigJake]

I'd point to the Genesis Device as being every bit as incoherent as Red Matter.

No, that's a false analogy. The Genesis Device is a piece of handwaving -- that's commonplace in SF -- but it is set up with reasonably clear / intuitive in-setting rules and more-or-less plays by them, particularly in its initial film appearance*, which Red Matter is not and does not.

(* This gets more questionable when the Genesis Planet gets around to resurrecting people in TSFS, but even that doesn't approach the sheer randomness of RM.)

 

[Jeyl]

nd I enjoyed it. It was the climax of the interplay between Kirk and Chang and Chang lost.

So did I. Chang was one of those villains who really came across as charismatic, cold and dangerous. He's got more intrigue to his character than most villains do in an entire season of any Star Trek series.

And yeah, it was a bummer to see him go. I mean, when you look back on it, the Bird of Prey is a pretty small vehicle compared to the Enterprise and the Excelsior. Seeing the Enterprise and Excelsior pound on it all at once is like watching two bulldozers squash a volkswagen beetle.

I can forgive certain instances like this more than Trek09 because in TUC, Kirk is racing to preserve the peace between the Federation and the Klingons. NuKirk gets off to a good start when he offers assistance for the sake of peace between the Federation, but than immediately orders all all his weapons to fire on a crippled Romulan ship.

"I really do want peace, but I'll kill them if they say no."

 

[BigJake]

Huh? The film is internally consistent in this area. Red matter does the same thing each of the three times it is deployed in the film.

I for the life of me couldn't work out why red matter needed to be drilled into some things but not others, why the amount of red matter seemed irrelevant to the size of the black hole produced, or what exactly we were supposed to assume about the black holes it produced, when they facilitate time travel and when they don't and so on. So that's not exactly what I look for from internal consistency.

(Someone has managed to half-ass an explanation, as it turns out. Which doesn't manage to make sense of everything, really, but it's darned ingenious.)

But how does this go to the film allegedly not making sense at any point, except as hyperbole for shock value?

Hyperbole for shock value would be to describe [your mom / significant other / valued sibling] as being [physically attractive / intellectually acute / having opposable thumbs]*. Red Matter alone does not "go to the film allegedly not making sense at any point," of course, it's just one of the numerous instances that come together to form that gloriously nonsensical gestalt.

* DISCLAIMER: This choose-your-own-adventure insult is provided for comedic purposes only. I hearby attest that I have nothing but [respect / enthusiastic approval / wary, reluctant regard] for the [physical attributes / intellectual accomplishments / status as an evolved primate] of [your mom / significant other / valued sibling].

 

[Set Harth]

which Red Matter is not and does not.

Again, this is simply false. Red matter is used three times during STXI, and it does the same thing each time. That's called playing by the rules. You might as well have said "red matter has cooties".

I for the life of me couldn't work out why red matter needed to be drilled into some things but not others

When the thing happens to be a planet as opposed to a supernova, you drill into it. ( Aside from that, Narada may be a special case in which the problem was the breach of containment of the entire apparatus rather than what was used to destroy Vulcan. )

why the amount of red matter seemed irrelevant to the size of the black hole produced

We don't really find this to necessarily be the case ( in the cases where the sizes of the black holes were apparently different the amounts of red matter were also different ), but even had it been demonstrated to be the case, it would not necessarily signify an inconsistency in the properties of red matter.

or what exactly we were supposed to assume about the black holes it produced, when they facilitate time travel and when they don't and so on.

The film never established that any of the red matter black holes we saw were not capable of facilitating time travel. Thus, the film never displays an inconsistency in this area.

Red Matter alone does not "go to the film allegedly not making sense at any point

Of course not. But the claim that the film does not make sense at any point during its runtime is meaningless hyperbole.

 

[BigJake]

You might as well have said "red matter has cooties".

Don't even get me started on the cooties.

Just... you know. Ewwww.

(Otherwise see above.)

 

[Sindatur]

(ST09 actually presents less of a moral-compass problem, but insofar as the story, the setting and the version of Starfleet it presents makes zero sense at any point. When there are few or no discernible rules, you can justify pretty much anything.)

There is nothing in the films that point to there being no or few discernible rules. All the things Kirk/Spock got away with in the Prime timeline would make me think that there is also few or no discernible rules in that version of Starfleet.

Kirk abducted the head of a Federation member world ("The Cloud Minders"), Spock stole the Enterprise ("The Menagerie"). Then you add in all the times Kirk skirted the Prime Directive. Using Jim Kirk as a barometer of Starfleet rules and regulations in any timeline is a mistake.

Heck, Picard violated the Prime Directive nine times in his first four years as Captain of the Enterprise per "The Drumhead". Sisko contaminated a planetary biosphere.

And Kirk's one of the guys you can rely upon being lucky or intuitive enough to generally end up taking the best action.

Starfleet have never been shown to be a dramatically larger percentage of sane or clean handed Captains on up to Admirals. I think the number of clean/by the book, moral/Upstanding Captains on up through Admiral that we've been shown, is probably not much more than the number of insane/immoral/and dirty handed examples of Starfleet that we've been shown

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The Genesis Device is a piece of handwaving -- that's commonplace in SF -- but it is set up with reasonably clear / intuitive in-setting rules and more-or-less plays by them, particularly in its initial film appearance*, which Red Matter is not and does not.

Are we talking about the same Genesis Device that was designed for existing planetary deployment but ends up absorbing all the matter in a nebula using space magic to construct a habitable planet (or to buff up Regula a bit, depending on who you ask), which fortunately just happens to be in the Goldilocks Zone of a star compatible with humanoid life? Or that can create a tropical jungle in a cave, complete with weather, but doesn't extend beyond the precise boundaries of said cave (not even through passages with no doors) despite being depicted as an expanding energy wave that absorbs and reforms matter? And did it create that little artificial Sun in the Genesis Cave, or was that Starfleet issue? And if it was Starfleet, why didn't the Genesis Wave eat that?

In what way was that different from Red Matter's silliness and alleged inconsistencies?

I for the life of me couldn't work out why red matter needed to be drilled into some things but not others...

How would one go about drilling into the heart of an expanding supernova (or the Hobus Star itself before detonation)? Ideally deploying the Red Matter to the center might be the fastest and most efficient method of absorbing the entire thing, but that wasn't a survivable option, so old Spock had to deploy it into the blast wave. Still gets the job done, just not as quickly or evenly.

Why would one need to drill into the center of a giant Edward Scissorhands looking ship when with that design you can pretty much fly right into the middle of it like kamikaze Spock did with the Jellyfish?

The two times it was used against planets, they drilled down to the planet core. I see no inconsistency. Three different types of targets, three different methods of deployment dictated by necessity, but consistent when used against the same type of target.

As far as why they drilled to the core of the planets, I just figured that if you drop it at the surface, it would possibly allow people on the other side of the planet more time to takeoff or be rescued, whereas if you drop it into the core, the entire planet start collapsing in on itself evenly and immediately (not to mention other devastating effects removing the core would cause, like eliminating the planet's magnetic field and irradiating the surface), making escape more difficult due to the increased speed of destruction. Since Nero was bent on genocide, not just destroying the planet, he'd want to limit the amount of survivors as much as possible. Dropped on the surface it would still get the job done, just not as fast.

why the amount of red matter seemed irrelevant to the size of the black hole produced...

I just figured that the Red Matter simply expanded gradually to the size of the object it was absorbing, regardless of the amount used.

or what exactly we were supposed to assume about the black holes it produced, when they facilitate time travel and when they don't and so on. So that's not exactly what I look for from internal consistency.

I just figured that every time a wormhole is created, it's sending stuff back in time to another universe. It's just that Vulcan is being sent back in time to another universe in small pieces because the gradual expansion of the wormhole tore it apart from the inside.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I believe Pike refers to Starfleet as a 'peacekeeping armada'.

Yes, and he does NOT refer to them as a "law enforcement flotilla." Different ROE.

In TMP a malfunction in engineering affected the transporter in the primary hull but you are right to say that in TOS Scotty did perform repairs on the console itself. If they had another one, why not just swap rooms? I think the circuitry to run a transporter is massive but the transporters use external emitters - I think the consoles and the platforms are just channelling to and from the important parts of the ship.

I don't know that Scotty and Decker were actually working on the transporter console. It's more likely they were working on a relay that routed power to the transporter's integrated sensors, without which the system would not be able to properly resolve a pattern sent to it. Decker and Scotty were trying to figure out why there was no power getting to the sensor; apparently they were having a disagreement over whether or not the problem was with the sensor or the power systems. Decker found out he had been right, and he says "I knew it. The transporter sensor was NOT activated."

There's also the jeffries tube thing from TOS, through which pretty much every circuit on the entire ship was apparently routed. The failure of the transporter in "The Doomsday Machine" and the very similar failure in "The Final Frontier" both reflect the notion that the ship only has one working transporter system, that it takes ALOT of circuitry and a fair amount of power to make it work.

In my view, site to site is fine as long as it is by relay through the pad.

I think so too, just not from INSIDE the ship.

However the stuff in the movies about moving targets is just silly. Targets are ALWAYS moving - on the planet, in the universe, even their atoms are moving.

It's not the fact that they're moving, it's HOW. The first time it becomes a problem is when Kirk and Sulu are falling out of the sky without a parachute. They're tumbling, buffeting in the wind and falling towards a planet that is in the process of collapsing into a black hole. Chekov has apparently worked on situations like that in the academy so he knows he can hit an erratically-moving target with a transporter beam; apparently, so can Scotty.

Another proof of this concept comes a few minutes later when Chekov is trying to beam Spock and the elders back to Enterprise. He has a solid lock on everyone, until the ground drops out from under his mother. She slips out of the confinement beam and nothing materializes on the pad that was trying to beam her up.

Basically, then, it should work pretty much like the ship's phaser banks: you have a steerable beam emitter and a targeting system with a definite practical range limit that largely depends on the resolution of your sensors, the characteristics of your target and/or how much you like the person you're trying to beam (which is why transwarp beaming can cover such huge distances: the beam can travel faster than light, which makes targeting ALOT simpler). Unlike phasers, however, transporters need to be able to keep the target painted in the beam for a few seconds in order to completely dematerialize it and transfer its pattern to the buffer.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Busting Kirk's balls over this is nothing but a result of "TNG think". The character is human and carries himself in a very human manner.

As seen in the TNG episodes "Arena" and "Spectre of the Gun."

"Arena" is an interesting comparison. The Federation had invaded a foreign powers territory unwittingly. The Gorn reclaimed their territory and didn't go on a genocidal rampage against the Federation. Nor had the Gorn commander personally killed one of Kirk's parents.

And yet Kirk was hell-bent on chasing down the Gorn and slaughtering them all until their captain gave his (IMO dubious) spiel about defending their territory. Kirk was smart enough to realize that if the Gorn are thinking of THEMSELVES as the victims, then they probably aren't setting up to invade Federation space. Their justification may be bullshit (you launch sneak attack and then lure a starship into a fight to "defend" yourself? Really?), but if they were really planning an invasion he wouldn't have bothered trying to justify himself.

Had the Metrons not intervened with their stupid cage match, however, it's extremely unlikely Kirk would have shown them a whole lot of mercy, not in the state of mind he was in during the pursuit.


Spectre of the Gun is also an apples-and-oranges scenario, since Kirk and crew were being subject to a situation that was CLEARLY artificial and already bending the normal rules of reality. More to the point, none of the "people" threatening him were even real, and he had no malice towards them. Basically: Kirk already had the moral high ground in that case, and he knew it. No need to descend to the level of his captives, especially since that wouldn't get him anywhere.

I didn't see anyone offering poor Chang a chance to surrender...

I don't think Nero was in the process of destroying the Enterprise.

Neither was Chang after they stuck a torpedo up his ass.

 

[Commishsleer]

There is nothing in the films that point to there being no or few discernible rules.

When I say rules, I mean in the setting as a whole: physics, narrative coherency, the science-y bits that are deliberately fluffed, all that stuff. When red matter and black holes function however the script says either functions from moment to moment, there is no meaningful way to discuss "plot" points tied to either one. There is nothing to know or to deduce about what Jim Kirk does in any alternative situation.

(Although yes, Starfleet also has suspiciously few rules in ST09 -- just think back to the last "promoting a cadet to Captain" conversation you had, I'm sure you'll recollect the usual objections. Actually STiD was better on this score for... well, for the first half hour or so, anyway, sort of...)

Promoting ensign with one year's experience as a navigator to chief engineer? It's tradition!

Yeh it will happen in the future, sort of. Geordi suddenly becomes an expert chief engineer from one episode to the next.

I'd point to the Genesis Device as being every bit as incoherent as Red Matter.

No, that's a false analogy. The Genesis Device is a piece of handwaving -- that's commonplace in SF -- but it is set up with reasonably clear / intuitive in-setting rules and more-or-less plays by them, particularly in its initial film appearance*, which Red Matter is not and does not.

(* This gets more questionable when the Genesis Planet gets around to resurrecting people in TSFS, but even that doesn't approach the sheer randomness of RM.)

While I agree that Genesis Device is a more understandable device than Red Matter and terraforming has been seen in other science fiction movies such as Aliens and Serenity.

But what about the Nexus? You could use it to go back/forward in time, live forever, get your greatest wish fulfilled, have all your physical needs met, move around the galaxy at will. I think Red Matter is 100 times more realistic than the 'Nexus' and probably 100 other things shown in the Star Trek series.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, because it's an extension of the audience's wish to see Nero pay for genocide.

So you don't agree with Kirk's speech at the end of Into Darkness that revenge is bad?

Wait a minute. A moment ago we were talking about a fictional setting and the emotional payoff for the audience, and now you're asking me about real-life values ?

 

[Cyke101]

nd I enjoyed it. It was the climax of the interplay between Kirk and Chang and Chang lost.

So did I. Chang was one of those villains who really came across as charismatic, cold and dangerous.

I feel like I'm one of the few people who liked Bane in the Dark Knight Rises for exactly the same characteristics as Chang. They're both smart and calculating, and very much showmen in order to distract their opponents. Oddly enough, they were also major pawns on a grand scale (though that was much more of a turn off for Bane than Chang, admittedly. Trek gets the points for that round.).

 

[YARN]

Are we talking about the same Genesis Device that was designed for existing planetary deployment but ends up absorbing all the matter in a nebula using space magic to construct a habitable planet (or to buff up Regula a bit, depending on who you ask), which fortunately just happens to be in the Goldilocks Zone of a star compatible with humanoid life?

It is plausible that the device was close enough to Regula I planetoid that it simply terraformed it.

The planetoid was already lit, so there must have been a light source (i.e., star) close enough to it to at least make it visible to the naked eye.

Or that can create a tropical jungle in a cave, complete with weather, but doesn't extend beyond the precise boundaries of said cave (not even through passages with no doors) despite being depicted as an expanding energy wave that absorbs and reforms matter?

Energy wave, meet energy barrier. The perimeter of the test area was probably shielded.

And did it create that little artificial Sun in the Genesis Cave, or was that Starfleet issue? And if it was Starfleet, why didn't the Genesis Wave eat that?

If the technologically primitive Yonadans can figure out how to do a fake sun in a hollow asteroid, Starfleet can figure out how to do a fake sun in a small cave.

NOTE: If TWoK were to be remade today, it would make more sense for the starship battle to take place in the atmosphere of a gas giant (there are no pea-soup nebulas) and have Regula I orbiting a moon of that planet.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Are we talking about the same Genesis Device that was designed for existing planetary deployment but ends up absorbing all the matter in a nebula using space magic to construct a habitable planet (or to buff up Regula a bit, depending on who you ask), which fortunately just happens to be in the Goldilocks Zone of a star compatible with humanoid life?

It is plausible that the device was close enough to Regula I planetoid that it simply terraformed it.

The planetoid was already lit, so there must have been a light source (i.e., star) close enough to it to at least make it visible to the naked eye.

Or that can create a tropical jungle in a cave, complete with weather, but doesn't extend beyond the precise boundaries of said cave (not even through passages with no doors) despite being depicted as an expanding energy wave that absorbs and reforms matter?

Energy wave, meet energy barrier. The perimeter of the test area was probably shielded.

And did it create that little artificial Sun in the Genesis Cave, or was that Starfleet issue? And if it was Starfleet, why didn't the Genesis Wave eat that?

If the technologically primitive Yonadans can figure out how to do a fake sun in a hollow asteroid, Starfleet can figure out how to do a fake sun in a small cave.

NOTE: If TWoK were to be remade today, it would make more sense for the starship battle to take place in the atmosphere of a gas giant (there are no pea-soup nebulas) and have Regula I orbiting a moon of that planet.

It's like you read my post but simultaneously didn't read my post, which is a neat trick.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Kirk going from cadet to captain was not something I was really happy with in STXI. Simply separating the academy part of the story from the attack on Vulcan by some number of years would have worked wonders for me.

However, I have to point out that bringing Spock back to life in TSFS was at least as far-fetched as Kirk going from cadet to captain in STXI. The (real world) rationale for bringing Spock back to life was evidently simply that Star Trek with Kirk and company but not Spock was unthinkable. Never mind that it required the Genesis Planet to operate in an utterly random fashion contrary to how the Genesis process was explained in the previous film, which was that a new matrix would overwrite any previously existing lifeforms; the use of protomatter can explain that! Err, no it can't. Protomatter is just a placeholder for "and then a miracle happens".

There are differences. In the case of STIII, the magic was purely Treknobabbly. Bringing Spock back to life was a favorable outcome to the fans, so the end justified the means. In the case of STXI, the fantasy depended on people behaving at best conveniently and at worst implausibly. Although getting Kirk in the captain's chair is just as essential as getting Spock at the science station, any flaws in that process might have been less well-received because they were made the first time the nu-team went to bat, instead of the umpteenth.

I'm not in favor bad writing or ridiculous premises, but if STXI is to be faulted for the transgressions of red matter and putting Kirk in the captain's chair the way it did, then STIII is to be faulted for protomatter and bringing Spock back from the dead the way it did. I can't give one a pass while being critical of the other.