Beauty shot of earth at the end

[Temis the Vorta]

Spain is the one I always notice; Spain is in the middle of the screen.

Yeah Spain stood out for me, too.

I hope you all realize that next, your countries will be drilled into from space instead of ours.

As a San Franciscan, I take great exception to the way Trek always tries to blow up our frakkin' bridge. When that drill was cut and was hurtling towards the bay, I was amazed and pleased that it MISSED the bridge! For once!

I really expected it to take out the bridge.

LEAVE THE FRAKKIN BRIDGE ALONE ALREADY!

 

[Sci]

Isn't Paris the capital of the Federation/Earth?

Canonically, Paris is the executive capital of the Federation, as established inStar Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and again in DS9's "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost." The Federation Council seems to be based out of San Francisco in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and VOY's "In the Flesh" refers to a Federation Council building, but both are vague enough that there's enough wiggle room that novels such as Articles of the Federation have depicted the Council as operating out of Paris, as well. In fact, in the novels, both work out of a huge capitol building called the Palais de la Concorde.

The capital city of United Earth has never been established canonically. Personally, I would like to think that the UE capital -- which is distinct from the Federation capital, let us recall, because Earth is a Member of the Federation, but not the Federation itself -- is somewhere in Africa, South Asia, or Latin America, since those areas in the real world tend to be marginalized by the more powerful countries. Personally, I'd put it in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia (at least as much as Somalia can be said to have a capital). To me, it would be a wonderful statement of hope and equality to depict Earth's future capital as being in a city that is today barely functional, in a poor, oppressed, war-torn failed state in the middle of Africa. That, and I'm tired of how US/Europe-centric Trek tends to be in its depiction of future Earth.

The recent Star Trek: Enterprise novel Kobayashi Maru by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels seemed to imply that the United Earth capital was San Francisco when it referred to an office of the United Earth Prime Minister in SanFran. The novela A Less Perfect Union by William Leisner established the capital of United Earth to have been moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in an alternate timeline where Paxton managed to blow up San Francisco.

Spain is the one I always notice; Spain is in the middle of the screen.

Yeah Spain stood out for me, too.

I only noticed Great Britain, m'self, but I suppose that's just the Anglophile in me.

 

[M'Sharak]

Isn't Paris the capital of the Federation/Earth?

The office of the President of the Federation is located in Paris. We've seen the Federation Council chambers in San Francisco, but it's not too much of a stretch to figure that similar facilities may exist elsewhere on Earth (including Paris) and on other Federation member worlds.

 

[QuasarVM]

EDIT: now that I've noticed you're not American, I've edited this post.

They showed Earth. End of story. I was very pleased they didn't show the USA as per usual as if it was the centre of the universe and the only thing that matters.

Well, it IS the only thing that matters because if it wasn't then the rest of the planet would probably be speaking Russian or Mandarin Chinese or Farsi or Arabic (take your pick of languages of conquest)...and there probably wouldn't be Star Trek and that would result in you and I not being permitted to express our opinions on Star Trek and a gamut of other things as well. But...I digress...

I didn't mind seeing a different shot of Earth -- but it was a strange choice given it was shown right before the scene with Pike handing off the Enterprise to Kirk. Presumably that was in San Francisco, so a shot of Europe from space was a bit jarring.

And yes, I also noticed Spain rather than the UK in that shot...

 

[donners22]

They showed Earth. End of story. I was very pleased they didn't show the USA as per usual as if it was the centre of the universe and the only thing that matters.

They didn't do that in First Contact, at least. Well, the film was mostly based in the US, but at least the shot of Earth wasn't.

 

[Jeri]

When Tom Paris was slumming in Marseilles, it seems like he was stationed in France; but my memory's not clear on that...

 

[pookha]

we know from enterprise chicago survived..
the great unknown well as far as i can tell is new york.

 

[indranee]

II just saw our blue, blue globe. pretty sight. never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

 

[Brian]

I was very pleased they didn't show the USA as per usual as if it was the centre of the universe and the only thing that matters.

This is true. OTOH, it was odd and funny to have an "establishing shot" from orbit and then cut to the "close-up" in San Francisco - on the other side of the planet.

That's what I thought. When the establishing shot was of Europe, I thought sure we were about to see Federation headquarters. Then it cut to Starfleet Academy and I thought, "Why did they do that?"

As an American, I don't mind at all that they showed another view of the planet. It is a unified world in that universe, after all. It just doesn't make sense that they showcased a landmass not related to the scene which follows.

That's like showing an establishing shot of the White House then cutting to a scene in a Pentagon office.

 

[fresh]

II just saw our blue, blue globe. pretty sight. never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

If that put a lump in your throat, you should really check out DishNetwork channel 212.
It's a live view of Earth from the DishNetwork satellite, and its always on.
If you don't get Dish, google it, I think it's the only place where people can look up a live view of the entire planet at any time.

 

[Thestral]

Maybe they just didn't want to show the ugly scar across Florida where the Xindi hit?

 

[perigee]

That's not a scar anymore - DisneyCorp turned it into the waterslide for the "XindiLand" portion of "Disneyworld."

 

[Praetorian]

I noticed my own country too, lol!