11 Things About Star Trek That Make You Go WTF?

[Tom]

If the Romulans knew the supernova was coming why wasn't romulas evacuated? Supernovas don't just happen unexpectantly, they take time to get to that point and clearly the Spock and the romulan scientists knew. Did they think Spocks plan would just work and no need to evacuate and take precautions? After the supernova happened why did spock still need to contain it, how could it be any more of a threat?

 

[gh4chiefs]

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!

Easily the biggest and lamest WTF moment of this film.

 

[Irishman]

I think the list is both apropos and hilarious!

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.

What part of my post don't you get? The Kelvin - part of the original timeline or not - would have to have been bigger than the TOS Enterprise to hold 800 ppl +. We know that 800 or so survived, not that the ship had a complement of 800. The complement could have been 850, or 900, or 950. Or more.

Further, when you compare the scales of the new shuttle that is assigned to the Enterprise, they're big enough to carry a dozen or more ppl plus crew, plus gear stowage. The Galileo shuttle wasn't.

Plus, when those new shuttles land in the new Enterprise, there's room enough for them to twist and turn 90 degrees in midair and then backup into these hanging-type berths. We see at least 6 (maybe 8) of these berths on the ship model.

I think that this safely lets us know that Ryan Church has designed a new Enterprise that is a good 50% to 100% larger vessel than the original.

 

[Danoz]

I loved it all.

As was said, SUSPEND DISBELIEF! This reminds of me of when "Planet of the Apes" came out and people criticized the way different species of ape socially interacted... failing to realize that it's a movie about apes who ride horses, talk and shoot arrows.

Having said that, Kirk's balloon hands were a bit weird

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

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

Suspected saboteurs AND critically wounded nephews!

The Romulans must have liked Star Wars -- another universe without railings.

The Romulans based their design off of the railing-less universe of Star Wars while the Enterprise engineering had more of a Space Mutiny feel to it, where no one is allowed to die without falling over a railing first.

 

[sdayan]

I loved it all.

As was said, SUSPEND DISBELIEF! This reminds of me of when "Planet of the Apes" came out and people criticized the way different species of ape socially interacted... failing to realize that it's a movie about apes who ride horses, talk and shoot arrows.

Having said that, Kirk's balloon hands were a bit weird

Well, I supsend disbelief the moment I walk in to watch a movie where a ship travels faster than light and where we encounter all sorts of alien species that have basically the same build as we do (except maybe the forehead).

We are talking mostly about plot holes that apply to every situation (at least I am). This is similar to watching a James Bond movie where I suspend disbelief about all the stunts he does, but will still criticize the villain holding him at gunpoint but not killing him, instead he reveals his whole plan and then sets up an elaborate killing device that Bond easily escapes from instead of just shooting him twice in the head.

 

[Red Ranger]

My chief WTF moment: When Uhura kisses all over Spock. While intended to be dramatic, isn't she supposed to be a professional Starfleet officer? Kind of strange! -- RR

 

[Peter the Younger]

If the Romulans knew the supernova was coming why wasn't romulas evacuated? Supernovas don't just happen unexpectantly, they take time to get to that point and clearly the Spock and the romulan scientists knew. Did they think Spocks plan would just work and no need to evacuate and take precautions? After the supernova happened why did spock still need to contain it, how could it be any more of a threat?

Spock's explanation indicated he was caught off guard by the destruction of Romulus, so we may assume that - since Spock isn't an idiot - this thing didn't behave like a normal supernova. As I've postulated in other threads, maybe it got tangled up in one of those warp pollution anomolies and it accelerated the blastwave, or maybe some jackasses figured they could stop it using subspace warheads and only made it worse. There are many pseudo-science explanations that would fit within the world of Trek. We got the Cliff's Notes, that doesn't mean there isn't an explanation.

 

[lawman]

I think the list is both apropos and hilarious!

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.

What part of my post don't you get? The Kelvin - part of the original timeline or not - would have to have been bigger than the TOS Enterprise to hold 800 ppl +. We know that 800 or so survived, not that the ship had a complement of 800. The complement could have been 850, or 900, or 950. Or more.

Further, when you compare the scales of the new shuttle that is assigned to the Enterprise, they're big enough to carry a dozen or more ppl plus crew, plus gear stowage...

I think that this safely lets us know that Ryan Church has designed a new Enterprise that is a good 50% to 100% larger vessel than the original.

What I don't get is your willingness to accept that in the original timeline, thirty-odd years before TOS and over a decade before the Enterprise was built as part of the state-of-the-art Constitution class, Starfleet supposdly had ships with at least four times the crew capacity of Pike's original Enterprise and twice that of Kirk's upgraded version. IOW, that the Kelvin "would have to be bigger" is the problem, not the solution. That the "new" Enterprise in the altered timeline may be bigger than the original (we can speculate, but don't really know) isn't at all relevant to this.

All they had to do was change Pike's dialogue from "800" to "200" and the whole glitch would've been avoided.

Spock's explanation indicated he was caught off guard by the destruction of Romulus, so we may assume that - since Spock isn't an idiot - this thing didn't behave like a normal supernova. As I've postulated in other threads, maybe it got tangled up in one of those warp pollution anomolies and it accelerated the blastwave, or maybe some jackasses figured they could stop it using subspace warheads and only made it worse. There are many pseudo-science explanations that would fit within the world of Trek. We got the Cliff's Notes, that doesn't mean there isn't an explanation.

Even the expanded backstory in the Countdown comic doesn't really make any sense of this. Sure, it's possible to come up with a suitably SFnal explanation for the threat to Romulus, but obviously the writers just didn't bother—prefering to give the audience a scientifically illiterate "Cliff's Notes" version (as you astutely put it) rather than a fully realized story we could actually buy into.

 

[Omega_Glory]

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.

When they showed the shot where the camera crossed in front of the B/C deck on the Enterprise, it didn't look substantially bigger. You could see the bridge inside via the niffty window/viewscreen. Didn't appear to be 50 to 100% larger than the old E.

 

[DanStro]

5. Rowdy officers must be jettisoned off the ship in life pods and left on ice planets. Apparently the brig was broken?
http://scifiwire.com/2009/05/11-things-about-star-trek.php

...And if that person finds a way to get back to the ship, it's OK to make him captain of the ship when the person that shot him into the said planet goes ape@#$% and almost strangles him.

Oh, and the Federation will thank the entire crew later on by letting them keep the ship.

 

[BrownShatner]

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.

You know, every version of Star Trek has done the same thing. When they want to get somewhere quickly, they use the transporter. If the plot demands they do something else, the transporters are broken/shielded/disrupted/whatever.

As for Delta Vega, they should have just made it a moon of Vulcan (although that probably would violate canon or fanon too). And the Enterprise warp engines should have been temporarily offline so that Scottie could beam them aboard. (There I fixed two plot holes with two lines of dialog.)

 

[miraclefan]

*sigh*

 

[cwl]

the kelvin surviving so long under fire made go WTF

 

[Vaadwaur]

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.

1) The Enterprise D can hold up to 5000 people (TNG Yesterday´s Enterprise) The Kelvin needs to be at least 15% the size of a Galaxy Class....

2) What´s the problem with that?

3) ???

4) 5) a matter of personal taste, like them both

6) Cant determinate relative speed, but even photon torpedoes were slow since TNG (plot wise)

7) 8 Starships docked at earth Starbase with skeleton crew only, its acceptable. And that wasnt a combat situation, it was a distress call informing about a space anomaly

8) Lets see what Kirk did:

Saved Earth
Successfuly defeated a 24th century Enemy, by commanding the flagship of the federation during a battle situation
Almost saved Vulcan by stopping Nero´s Drill, risking his life by saving a fellow shipmate
Saved Captain Pike

You re right, they should made him serve aboard the USS Walter Mondale

9) Maybe they were curious about his performance

10) Remember the ¨Year of Hell¨ asteroid paradox, its not impossible...

11) Remember, skeleton crew. Also, Pike trusted in Kirk`s skills

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As for Delta Vega, they should have just made it a moon of Vulcan (although that probably would violate canon or fanon too).

IIRC, there's conflicting information on that. There's an episode of The Original Series ("Shore Leave" I think) where Spock says that Vulcan has no moon. However, they showed moons in the sky above Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. However, I don't believe either of them were ever named.

 

[Danoz]

My chief WTF moment: When Uhura kisses all over Spock. While intended to be dramatic, isn't she supposed to be a professional Starfleet officer? Kind of strange! -- RR

Again, not really, considering the poor bastard just had his planet destroyed and his people obliterated-- his mother killed. She was just trying very hard to be there for him.

 

[Roald]

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!

I know people see this as a major plothole, but it's made clear that even the Enterprise realise an alternative timeline is created, so Nero probably knows this too. So he could try to save Romulus, but he could never save HIS Romulus.

As for Kirk landing on Delta Vega very near to Spock: it's destiny... That's why Spock says something like: 'How did you find me?' How? It's his destiny to meet Spock, just like it's destiny for Pike to wind up in a wheelchair one way or the other...

As for Pike ranking Kirk to first officer: I guess Pike had a special interest in Kirk, much like Qui-Gonn has for Anakin.

 

[lawman]

You know, I think those defending Kirk's insta-promotion are really giving him too much credit for his "accomplishments" in this story. Yes, he was nominally placed in command at a critical moment... but what's the first thing he then did?

Leave the ship, together with the guy he'd just displaced from command. And at that point, all he really managed to do was rescue Pike. It was Spock who not only saved Earth from the orbital drill, but also critically damaged Nero's ship.

And yet Spock was just about the only character in the story who didn't get a promotion at the end, not even a little one. How do you figure that?

(BTW, chalking things up to "destiny" is a supremely unsatisfying explanation for any story development. Especially in a story, like this one, that's supposedly all about freeing things up to chart a new path into an unknown future.)

 

[Geoff]

IIRC, there's conflicting information on that. There's an episode of The Original Series ("Shore Leave" I think) where Spock says that Vulcan has no moon. However, they showed moons in the sky above Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. However, I don't believe either of them were ever named.

Check upthread. http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=2938754#post2938754