Bob Orci Answers Questions From Posters at TrekMovie.com

[Peter the Younger]

I'm astounded by this guy's patience and class. And I have great confidence that, despite the nutballs (Parallel! Alternate! Blargh!!) he will be able to get something useful out of some of these comments.

 

[superdeluxe]

Robogeek: I completely agree that a movie should have layers to be discovered. I think what I (and others) are saying is that there seems to be a crucial layer missing, which might be as simple as a single word. …Yes, Uhura says they’re in an _alternate_ reality, i.e. one that has been altered, and is different than the original Prime reality. But no one in the film ever says they’re in a _parallel_ reality / separate timeline that coexists with the original Prime one. That’s the problem. BobOrci: And funnily enough we’ve been accused by some of dumbing it down.
Perhaps it could be clearer, but our goal in that scene is to get our scientists to talk as they would talk, and the fact that the Next Generation is still alive and well in another universe would not be their primary point of curiosity or concern. They would be concerned with what happens to them now. It’s more of an intellectual curiosity for the audience to ponder than for the characters, in my opinion. And as stated above, key characters behave in ways that can only be explained if they subscribe to the multiverse theory. I concede it could be clearer, but I will say it is exactly as clear as we wanted it to be. I’ll bet many more people enjoyed it than would’ve otherwise because they can see it either way.

Vapad: Exactly, it was never expressed they were in a parallel reality.
BobOrci: I concede that the word PARALLEL is not in the movie.

 

[ChristopherPike]

There are just some fans that really make it hard for me to call myself a Trekkie...

"I regret that we meet in this way... You and I are of a kind. In different reality, I could've called you 'trekkie'".

 

[SalvorHardin]

Dear god...

After reading all those questions & answers and especially the parallel/alternate reality questions with those...bright posters saying again and again how it wasn't mentioned in the movie I want to

I have no idea why Orci still bothers with all this. The stupidity is phenomenal sometimes.

I suppose kudos are in order

 

[superdeluxe]

Dear god...

After reading those parallel/alternate reality questions and those...bright posters saying again and again how it wasn't mentioned in the movie I want to

I have no idea why Orci still bothers with all this. The stupidity is phenomenal sometimes.

I suppose kudos are in order

Exactly, no one would fault him at all for shutting it all down. Crazy questions.

 

[Koinek]

Robogeek: I completely agree that a movie should have layers to be discovered. I think what I (and others) are saying is that there seems to be a crucial layer missing, which might be as simple as a single word. …Yes, Uhura says they’re in an _alternate_ reality, i.e. one that has been altered, and is different than the original Prime reality. But no one in the film ever says they’re in a _parallel_ reality / separate timeline that coexists with the original Prime one. That’s the problem. BobOrci: And funnily enough we’ve been accused by some of dumbing it down.
Perhaps it could be clearer, but our goal in that scene is to get our scientists to talk as they would talk, and the fact that the Next Generation is still alive and well in another universe would not be their primary point of curiosity or concern. They would be concerned with what happens to them now. It’s more of an intellectual curiosity for the audience to ponder than for the characters, in my opinion. And as stated above, key characters behave in ways that can only be explained if they subscribe to the multiverse theory. I concede it could be clearer, but I will say it is exactly as clear as we wanted it to be. I’ll bet many more people enjoyed it than would’ve otherwise because they can see it either way.

Vapad: Exactly, it was never expressed they were in a parallel reality.
BobOrci: I concede that the word PARALLEL is not in the movie.

I like that we had the exact same reaction to the exact same part.

 

[BorgPhil]

It really is stunning, so impressive that he has taken the effort to do this.

My personal favourites were confirmation that Admiral Archer was Enterprise's Archer at the age of 140-odd and confirmation that he thought telemetry/survivors' accounts from the Kelvin-Narada incident led the Federation to have dealings with the Romulans earlier than Balance of Terror.

I was a bit disappointed that he didn't consider Countdown canon, but in later answers it sounded like that was only because Trek rules considered nothing off-screen to be canon. I wish he would just declare it canon, as part of the 'Supreme Court' he now has the power to do that.

 

[Aragorn]

He was willing to go through with this AFTER having endured the MattJC era? Wow.

 

[SalvorHardin]

I was wondering... Besides Ronald D. Moore with his podcasts, the scifi forums, his wife participating in the scifi forums etc etc

Has any other writer or director ever done what Orci is doing over at Trekmovie ? Not just in Trek but in general.

 

[Matt4511]

Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Major Spoilers Below















From over at Trekmovie:

359. boborci - May 18, 2009 21. That Nutty Fanboy - May 18, 2009
QUESTION:
While probably somewhat of a nitpicky question/observation by the Nutty Fanboy here: What happened to off-world Vulcans? The lines in the movie indicate 10.000 survivors overall, which seems rather low for a space-faring species - especially that very likely have off-world colonies.. or was the 10.000-line pointed towards survivors escaping Vulcan itself?
————–
True. Let’s just say then that the 10,000 does not count off worlders!

 

[SalvorHardin]

I like this Q&A

559. Matthew Weflen - May 18, 2009
Bob,
Thanks for doing this. It’s a most impressive act of fan service, even if the answers themselves aren’t always as impressive ;-)
For instance - any explosion that could escape the event horizon of a black hole would have to be expanding at a rate of speed greater than light (how much greater depends on the escape velocity of the black hole). This isn’t possible in the Einsteinian model of relativistic spacetime. Then, this extremely energetic explosion would have to somehow 1. not destroy the enterprise; yet 2. transfer enough momentum to it to somehow accelerate it past the escape velocity threshold.
It just seems like better science, not to mention writing, to say that:
1. the escape velocity of this black hole is lightspeed+X
2. the Enterprise can go lightspeed+X+1, if Scotty performs a dramatic engineering miracle, of course.
It just didn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny on the way home - scrutinizing being something we Trekkies are known for. I would have liked a bit more science fiction and a bit less space opera, myself.
—————————-



Orci: Never thought about it really…
… except maybe for Hawking’s essays on the evaporation of black holes and discussions of virtual particles appearing out of empty space at the event horizon as a result of the Hysenberg Uncertainty principle (not Einstein’s theory of relativity)..
A virtual particle and its opposite appear out of the quantum foam, usually existing for only a billionth of a second before crashing into each other and annihilating again. But at the surface of a black hole, sometimes one of the virtual pairs falls into the black hole and the other one becomes REAL and permanent.
So building on that idea, our creative engineering solution is not to say that a blast makes the ship go faster, but that the injection of the core causes a reaction that stretches (or creates units of space, like virtual particles) thereby putting the Enterprise past the point of no return.
The visualization you see is a simplification since, obviously, the story boards of quantum foam bubbling at the microscopic level at the event horizon of a singularity left something to be desire cinematically and viscerally.

and of course

Odkin - May 19, 2009 #602 Boborci
Just like no joke is funny if you have to explain it, explaining all the physics on a fanboard doesn’t mean that ejecting your engine in order to go faster makes any sense cinematically.

but

Orci:
The point I’m making is that the curvature of four dimensional space time that is theorized to occur near a black hole is IMPOSSIBLE TO RENDER VISUALLY, no matter the effects budget. Therefore, we are, from the beginning, dealing with simplifications of complicated physics concepts. Stretching or WARPING space is not as fun as the sensation of speed, but many fans nonetheless know from THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK that warp speed is not really speed at all, but THE WARPING OF SPACE.

 

[theFirebottle]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Ooo, nice little saving throw there. They don't even have to settle on a number there because of the perfectly plausible difficulty there would be in-universe of conducting an off-world census.

Of course, future writers will take this and run with it and the galaxy will quickly be crawling with Vulcan diaspora. (I definitely don't object.)

 

[Peter the Younger]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Good. That number was crazy low.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Where's the answer then?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Where's the answer then?

He said: "True. Let’s just say then that the 10,000 does not count off worlders!"

 

[BorgPhil]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

yeah, definitely a fair nit-pick this one, Spock's 'i'm an endangered species line was a bit silly'

 

[Amaris]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

It had to be assumed Vulcan had more people off world anyway. They're a modern, space faring species. I figure the 10,000 number referred simply to those that made it off planet before it was destroyed.

yeah, definitely a fair nit-pick this one, Spock's 'i'm an endangered species line was a bit silly'

Not necessarily. If humans went from 6.5 billion to a handful of millions, you'd think you were endangered too.

J.

 

[Feofilakt]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

He could have included that in the movie, you know.

I imagine there are some significant difficulties in writing any movie, nevermind a big budget one in which the studio is very likely breathing down your neck for results. But to miss these rather important details, or rather the opportunities to give these details in the movie strikes me as lazy writing. This seems more damage control to me, as he appears to be plugging all these flaws (minor and significant alike) while everything is already said and done. These questions should have been answered in the movie!

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Exactly, you're not telling me they didn't have advanced well developed colonies. Earth had colonies way back in ENT before the first warp 5 starship was commissioned so I'm sure Vulcan must have had several by the 23rd century.

 

[Aike]

Re: Boborci seemingly settles Vulcan debate

Good. That number was crazy low.

Why? We didn´t see any ships get away and the attack was unexpected so it would have been plausible that fewer than 10k survived.

And there is certainly not a lot of proof that Vulcans like exploring or colonizing new worlds like humans do.