I agree with this. Come on, they blew up Vulcan.
Did Kirk's rather *enthusiastic* execution of Nero bug you?
- Thread starter Chrisisall
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So? The Gorns destroyed Cestus III, but Spock didn't want to destroy them. Even Kirk at the end didn't tell the Gorn Captain to surrender. He just decided not to kill him.
Truly Trek09 captures the TOS crew at their greatest. JUST BLOW THEM UP when they're already dying!
Nero's ship was an unknown. It appeared to be dying, but there's no telling what sort of escape vehicles it may have had (or their destructive potential), what Narada's regenerative capabilities were (it previously survived a kamikaze ramming from a Federation starship) or it's functionality when damaged.
It's possible it's tentacles would snap off, the core of the ship fall through the black hole and after 50 years of rebuilding, Nero's on the war path again in another time and place. Even without Red Matter, he and his near-invincible ship can still do a lot of damage.
I can understand Kirk wanting to ensure that the biggest threat ever to the Federation was stopped at any cost. I daresay this Kirk would have uploaded that virus to Hugh and saved the Federation a lot of trouble and lives.
And Cestus III was a colony of a few thousand, destroyed by Gorn who believed they were being invaded. Nero destroyed an entire planet of six billion and was planning on doing so again and again.
It's possible it's tentacles would snap off, the core of the ship fall through the black hole and after 50 years of rebuilding, Nero's on the war path again in another time and place. Even without Red Matter, he and his near-invincible ship can still do a lot of damage.
I can understand Kirk wanting to ensure that the biggest threat ever to the Federation was stopped at any cost. I daresay this Kirk would have uploaded that virus to Hugh and saved the Federation a lot of trouble and lives.
And Cestus III was a colony of a few thousand, destroyed by Gorn who believed they were being invaded. Nero destroyed an entire planet of six billion and was planning on doing so again and again.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
I think it's important also to acknowledge that that particular moment, that particular reaction from Spock is done just as much for the humor of the line. We all expect Spock to be cold and rational and here he is being the exact opposite. However organic to the character the reaction may be given what has occurred in the film, it was a great choice by the writers to have him say it because it also, in a very morbid way, is funny.
Kirk is also an asshole. He always has been. For some reason though, this movie seems to bring up the ire of the fans who never really recognized this aspect about him.
For the record, I had no problem with the scene this thread was started about. It made perfect sense.
Kirk is also an asshole. He always has been. For some reason though, this movie seems to bring up the ire of the fans who never really recognized this aspect about him.
Maybe there's more to that saying than you realize. Sure, classic Kirk was sometimes prude and arrogant, but by no means was that his signature trademark that the new film heavily emphasizes on. Everything about NuKirk is pretty much what the general audiences think he is. You may think he's a womanizer, but how how many cases can you make to defend that claim? Or how about his eagerness to punch his own officers simply when they're obeying orders? Or by killing the bad guys when they're already defeated?
Yes, Kirk was written by the writers. Kirk didn't know.
Kirk presented the facts of the situation to Nero: His ship was compromised and Nero and his crew wouldn't survive without help, which Kirk offered. Nero refused and indicated that he was still quite insane (and dangerous) so Kirk finished off the dying beast. It is akin to shooting and wounding a dangerous animal and then walking up to it as it lies gasping on the ground, pointing the gun at its head, and performing the coup de grace.
It was also thinking that there are probably escape pods that Nero could "escape" with. Just being Nero was a danger to the Federation (being from the future and not afraid to change the time line when it suited him). If there was any chance Nero (or any of the 24th century Romulan crew could survive, that threat had to be eliminated.
At the point Spock was changing it, the present was all shot to hell anyway (historically speaking from Spocks' POV).
Spock was trying to restore some semblance of the timeline, by uniting the Enterprise crew in order to stop Nero.
In a word: BINGO!
To end it in any other way, then what we got would have been an emotional let down, and would have come across as silly.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
It's a different timeline, there is no semblance to it. Is it only a valid universe if the Enterprise crew is together?
I don't want to believe that if you are making a ST movie you should be more worried about being "silly" (meaning you can't film the scene well enough) than being right. Or are my expectations too high?
By the way, Spock's death at the end of TWOK was an emotional let down. Ignoring STIII, were they wrong? As you probably know, Director Nicholas Meyer was very anti the resurrection, which could have prevented him from doing the next film by the sound of it. There's an interesting alternative universe!
This was a heroes journey, and a dragon needed to be slayed. the writers rightly understood that. To have done otherwise would have been the wrong way to go about it.
No, it was not an emotional let down, it ended with catharsis, the villain was dead and a noble sacrifice was made. An emotional letdown would have been if neither of those things occurred. Trek II was the type of story that called for sacrifice on the part of Kirk, a theme carried over into the next movie with the Enterprise herself.
Yes Kirk and crew going out of their way to "bring Nero in" for rehabilitation (or any other ending that made it so the good guys were all touchy feely do their best to not fire a weapon for example) would have fallen very flat on a mainstream (none Trekkie) audience and have been ah, silly. There's very little right about an ending like that.
No, your expectations aren't too high, they though may be clouded by Trekkism. And the Trek way to tell a story has not always been the best way to tell a broadly appealing story. In fact, it usually is not and when the Trek thing to do is at variance with the standard (broad/mainstream) way of doing it. I would come down on the side of doing it the mainstream way rather than "The Trek way" which is addled with all sorts of feel good notions.
Star Trek, the franchises issues in part arise from the fact many of its producers came to think as a storytelling format there was a "special kind of way to tell a Trek story". Its just not so.
Since the only reason the timeline's turning out differently is because Nero appeared in 2233, I'd say Spock's nudging things in the right direction is the right thing to do.
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