Errors and Inconsistencies - Stretching Credulity [SPOILERS]

[chrisspringob]

Hey, just came back from the movie and thought I liked it -- until I saw the list of errors and inconsistencies. I withdraw my enjoyment.

seriously? you let a bunch of nitpicking deter your enjoyment of the movie?

every movie has errors and inconsistencies, you just have to roll with the punches and look past them

I think your sarcasm detector is broken.

 

[Brent]

Maybe Pike did not know about the "lightning storm" Perhaps it was Kirk's mother who told Kirk about the storm.

 

[Rii]

Maybe Pike did not know about the "lightning storm" Perhaps it was Kirk's mother who told Kirk about the storm.

She was in labour at the time!

However his research was conducted it would've included this fact had anyone knowing about it survived to participate in the inevitable subsequent investigation, and if they hadn't then Kirk wouldn't have known about it either.

 

[phrog]

Pike apparently wrote a dissertation on the events surrounding the loss of the Kelvin, which is how he was able to recognise and subsequently lecture Kirk at the bar about his father, yet he needed Kirk to tell him that the "lightning storm" phenomena reported over Vulcan was the same as that the Kelvin had been investigating when it was attacked?

Yeah, I caught that too. Pike's supposedly Mr. Kelvin Expert, but is entirely and completely unable to put two and two together, not even a little bit. Doesn't even blink about it.

The only thing that REALLY bothered me was the Supertransporter which magically beamed two guys onto a moving ship that was presumably quite some distance, given the time involved, away at warp. It smacked of not thinking things through when writing it out, what with the implications and all. And yeah, Delta Vega being close enough to Vulcan that you could toss a rock and break up a koon-ut-so'lik ritual. That doesn't jive at all with what we've seen of the place previously.

All things considered, minor quibbles and I enjoyed the movie a lot.

 

[Brent]

Pike apparently wrote a dissertation on the events surrounding the loss of the Kelvin, which is how he was able to recognise and subsequently lecture Kirk at the bar about his father, yet he needed Kirk to tell him that the "lightning storm" phenomena reported over Vulcan was the same as that the Kelvin had been investigating when it was attacked?

Yeah, I caught that too. Pike's supposedly Mr. Kelvin Expert, but is entirely and completely unable to put two and two together, not even a little bit. Doesn't even blink about it.

The only thing that REALLY bothered me was the Supertransporter which magically beamed two guys onto a moving ship that was presumably quite some distance, given the time involved, away at warp. It smacked of not thinking things through when writing it out, what with the implications and all. And yeah, Delta Vega being close enough to Vulcan that you could toss a rock and break up a koon-ut-so'lik ritual. That doesn't jive at all with what we've seen of the place previously.

All things considered, minor quibbles and I enjoyed the movie a lot.

Scotty said when Spock entered the formula: "I never considered that it was Space that was the thing that was moving!"

So, apparently, since it is "space" that is moving, with the formula they can make it so space moves them to that point, or something fancy like that. But he did say those lines, so throw out conventional thinking.

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

Maybe Pike did not know about the "lightning storm" Perhaps it was Kirk's mother who told Kirk about the storm.

She was in labour at the time!

However his research was conducted it would've included this fact had anyone knowing about it survived to participate in the inevitable subsequent investigation, and if they hadn't then Kirk wouldn't have known about it either.

After having just gotten back from seeing the movie in glorious IMAX, I have to say it was fantastic.

I have no doubt there will be Star Trek conventions in 50 years. I think my nine year old self would have loved this Trek as much as the original Star Wars.

I will be seeing it again soon, after paying much more attention to the thread. First viewing, it's pretty damn consistent with Star Trek, while providing a new branch of the Trek multiverse.

Also, Captain Pike's wheelchair was nicely consistent, and he has two more movies to end up just going "BEEP". Though, having done so much with the character, I hope he does much better in this timeline.

/Tho, I imagine his final years on Talos had to be pretty damn entertaining.

//Temporal Headache now...

Oh yea! Kirk's mother.
The Kirk's mother bit was very similar to the premiere of DS9, and how Sisko lost his wife. Good stuff.

 

[Logical Leopard]

seriously? you let a bunch of nitpicking deter your enjoyment of the movie?

every movie has errors and inconsistencies, you just have to roll with the punches and look past them

I agree. Fictional movies are not like nonfiction books. A small amount of suspension of disbelief is needed. And I think there were only a few flaws in the movie that were easily overlooked. And besides, it's not like the original source material was airtight, anyway. If Star Trek was always internally consistent and completely adhered to real science, the nitpickers would have more of an arguement. As it is, though, it's a bit like calling a foul in....what's that obscure card game Kirk came up with in "A Piece of The Action"?

It's a bit like that.

 

[Logical Leopard]

Fizzbin. That's it.

 

[npsf3000]

Are we sure that scotty/kirk/spock are actually on the planet when the transport happens? (sorry, i have a hunch but ill have to see it again first).

 

[Brent]

Are we sure that scotty/kirk/spock are actually on the planet when the transport happens? (sorry, i have a hunch but ill have to see it again first).

I guess we don't know for certain, but it seemed like it, seems like they would have shown them flying away from the planet if they were going to.

 

[npsf3000]

True, but the movie misses a bit (does pike ever tell nero the codes, does pike get the bug removed? ETC).

 

[Mike Farley]

Re: Errors and Inconsistencies... [SPOILERS]

Someone remind me what happened with Nero putting that slug into Pike. He does that to get Pike to give him the info he needs to get through Earth's defenses. Once he puts the slug in him, I'm supposing that Pike is forced to talk, but we don't see that onscreen?

Is there any reference to that later on? When they rescue Pike, at any point do they say, "Hey, you've got this thing inside you that's controlling your mind?" I can't remember any exchange like that.

How do you think Kirk got promoted so full real captain so fast?

PIKE: You did a good job, Cadet Kirk.
KIRK: Thanks, sir. Heh...maybe you should make me the permanent Captain.
PIKE: I should make you the permanent captain.

 

[Brent]

True, but the movie misses a bit (does pike ever tell nero the codes, does pike get the bug removed? ETC).

I assume Nero gets the codes because he made it to Earth and started drilling without any resistance.

 

[scotthm]

Re: Errors and Inconsistencies... [SPOILERS]

No, that's wrong. You collapse the Earth into a black hole, and it'll have the same gravitational attraction on nearby objects as it does now. It's the mass that it contains, not how dense it is.

The university of Illinois agrees with me. So does Nasa.

No, NASA agrees with chrisspringob.

But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. If our Sun was suddenly replaced with a black hole of the same mass, the Earth's orbit around the Sun would be unchanged.

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[Garibaldi O'brien]

True, but the movie misses a bit (does pike ever tell nero the codes, does pike get the bug removed? ETC).

Obviously the bug crawled out of Pike's ear and Kirk shot it with a phaser offscreen. He kills Ceti-alpha bugs dead.

 

[scotthm]

Re: Errors and Inconsistencies... [SPOILERS]

I don't know how to answer this other than they might have been going very slowly (just faster than speed of light).

Only on a Star Trek forum could FTL be called slow.

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[Brent]

Space is the thing that is moving, that's what Scotty said. I imagine is it is that warp theory that suggests space is the actual thing moving, not the ship, its a real theory.

 

[donners22]

Re: Errors and Inconsistencies... [SPOILERS]

My two biggest problems are:

- The distance Kirk and Scotty supposedly transported from the planet (apparently hours after Spock set Kirk adrift, travelling at warp all the while)

- The sheer ridiculousness of a person with three years' experience being made captain of the flagship at the end of the film, with outcast Scotty, fellow cadet Bones and 17-year-old Chekov all in senior positions on said flagship.

1) Yeah, that first one is a little bit of a stretch. Unless, OldSpock, who is from the TNG era, programmed in some futuristic changes because he's from an era in which interplanetary beaming technology (which I believe, was a plot of a TNG episode once) is functional. Maybe not utilized, due to some sort of Federation equivalent FDA standars, but possible. Eh, that's still a stretch, but...

2) This is a stretch, but it's easier to justify. Kirk is a genius hotshot, as Pike stated, he's got a great pedigree, and he had just finished saving the lives of everyone in that room, and on the planet. Starfleet isn't necessarily the US Navy, so while we look at it as "jumping ranks", they may think it's more like taking a qualified individual and putting him in a position he's qualified for.

On your second point, I agree. McCoy and Kirk graduated from the Academy during the same time period, it seemed, and McCoy was fit to be a LCDR and CMO.

McCoy serves as a doctor, and had experience in that role from his pre-Starfleet life. There's nothing to indicate Kirk has experience as a leader, let alone a starship captain. It doesn't ruin the film for me or anything dramatic like that, but it just seems a bit silly.

 

[biotech]

I could have sworn they did get on a shuttle, and match speeds with the enterprise, but either way, I don't care.

I have watched trek from the very beginning, I'm old enough to have watched the original series from its original broadcast, and before old age fried my memory I could tell you the title of every single original series episode from seeing a few seconds of it, or the most basic description.

I loved the movie, and once you start letting things like transporter distance and the number of nacelles a ship has ruin a film for you, you shouldn't be going to see films in the first place.

Newsflash, none of it is real, not one bit.

Whether a ship has two nacelles, three, or just one, doesn't matter, not one iota.

Whether a transporters range is 100 miles or 100 billion miles, it dosnt matter, its fictional either way.

How well they work is based on what the story needs, its always been that way.

Your average person on the street wont give a damn about the number of nacelles or how far you should be able to beam, and if you think that you caring about that raises you above them, you are wrong, all it does is give them a reason to point and laugh at you.

People go to the cinema to be entertained, and thats what most people have been that have seen this movie.

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

Re: Errors and Inconsistencies... [SPOILERS]

1) Yeah, that first one is a little bit of a stretch. Unless, OldSpock, who is from the TNG era, programmed in some futuristic changes because he's from an era in which interplanetary beaming technology (which I believe, was a plot of a TNG episode once) is functional. Maybe not utilized, due to some sort of Federation equivalent FDA standars, but possible. Eh, that's still a stretch, but...

2) This is a stretch, but it's easier to justify. Kirk is a genius hotshot, as Pike stated, he's got a great pedigree, and he had just finished saving the lives of everyone in that room, and on the planet. Starfleet isn't necessarily the US Navy, so while we look at it as "jumping ranks", they may think it's more like taking a qualified individual and putting him in a position he's qualified for.

On your second point, I agree. McCoy and Kirk graduated from the Academy during the same time period, it seemed, and McCoy was fit to be a LCDR and CMO.

McCoy serves as a doctor, and had experience in that role from his pre-Starfleet life. There's nothing to indicate Kirk has experience as a leader, let alone a starship captain. It doesn't ruin the film for me or anything dramatic like that, but it just seems a bit silly.

Three years does seem pretty fast, but it was a battlefield promotion, and Pike obvious had fate that Spock needed Kirk to challenge him to perform at his best. XO to Captain in less time than I can get pizza delivered, is streching, but I'll forgive it due to old Spock's coaching, and the fact it felt great to see Kirk get in the Chair at that moment. I just knew the ass kicking was about to begin.