Maximum speed of the NuEnterprise

[Crazy Eddie]

Sometimes you need the occasional contrivance to keep things moving. ST09 had them just for the sake of having them, and to avoid actually having to come up with an even halfway coherent reason for something happening.

The reasons, from what I can tell, are as coherent as they ever are in Star Trek. The subtext of that statement, however, is that you believe you could have done better.

Regardless of just how inaccurate that impression was?

Considering the original pilot of Star Trek saw Christopher Pike trapped in a medieval dungeon fighting a sword-wielding kinda-supposed-to-be-an-ape-man, I should say that impression is far from inaccurate. You should also be aware that the Rura Penthe scene was envisioned largely as an excuse to showcase exotic/modernized versions of TOS creatures like the Salt Vampire and the Gorn.

One of Ted Sturgeon's laws is, "Never ask your audience to believe more than one impossible thing at at time." Where Star Trek generally got into trouble is when they violated that rule.

Strongly disagree. Science fiction strays in the realm of "impossible" all the time, and Star Trek, especially so. Where they get into trouble is more along the lines of the "conveniently possible," where you need a solution to a problem so you make one up off the top of your head and expect the audience to believe this was a possibility all along.

STXI's violation in this regard is the "jettison the warp core" thing to escape the black hole. IMO it was the single weakest aspect of the entire film, though I find it excuseable because it was executed nicely and with a proper dose of high tension.

OTOH, warp drive is impossible; the audience believes it. Transporters are impossible; the audience believes it. Aliens that look like humans are impossible; the audience believes it. Ray guns that render people unconscious only are impossible; the audience believes it. Artificial black holes are impossible; the audience believes it. So all respect to Ted Sturgeon, but unless you can cite a more concrete example of "impossibility and improbability" that the audiences didn't buy, I think your problem is with Star Trek in general, not STXI.

 

[Timo]

Which still involves a measurable duration of travel at high warp, a big difference from "Vulcan orbit".

Oh, definitely. So the real question is, how far would the effects of the storm travel?

It also fails to explain why no other Federation planet experienced the seismic disturbances. As one might expect, there are other Federation planets along the border.

Yet the 16 lightyears between Vulcan and Earth might make all the difference - and to be sure, we don't have any indication of UFP planets other than Vulcan and Qualor II lying close to the RNZ. The latter might not even be known in the 2250s, and doesn't appear to be a major port of call even in TNG. So it might well be that Vulcan would indeed be the closest world to a weird hypergravitic disturbance in Romulan space.

...All the more so if we speculate that Nero and Spock traveled relatively little in space despite going back a century. Their starting point was next to Romulus, after all. It's quite possible the original Romulan exiles didn't pitch their final tents all that far from their starting point those millennia ago...

Although to muddle up the waters a bit more, we never learn that the Neutral Zone where the disturbances mentioned by Chekov had taken place would have been the Romulan one. Indeed, let's remember that Starfleet was aware of fighting involving 47 Klingon ships and one Romulan, and of a disturbance in the Neutral Zone, one somehow related to trouble at Vulcan - yet didn't make a connection between the disturbance and Romulans. Perhaps the disturbance had been in the Klingon Neutral Zone, and Starfleet was worried about Klingon activity (and had sent the bulk of the local forces to Laurentius to counter that perceived threat)? Perhaps Chekov's PA was intended to convey the information that because of a disturbance at the Klingon Neutral Zone, the subsequent trouble at Vulcan would have to be handled by the current posse rather than by the pros - and there was no further connection between the storm and the Vulcan situation?

In terms of the limited number of unusual things that could have caused the siesmic disturbances, we are reduced to two suspects.

...Yet we must not forget to examine other possibilities as well (although we might stop short of examining the impossibilities, just to keep Spock and his revered ancestors from blowing a fuse).

Were there seismic disturbances on Vulcan? Didn't seem like that - not until after Nero had inserted the red matter. So perhaps the whole thing was a hoax. Remember that we were told that few in Starfleet can speak Romulan, or tell it apart from Vulcan through linguistic nuances. What if it was Nero who simply jammed Vulcan transmissions (with or without the drill), and then told the universe that Vulcan was "temporarily unavailable due to seismic disturbances", a commonplace occurrence on that world and one warranting only a minor response? Nero must have known he would be incredibly vulnerable while drilling - so he might try to buy time, and to do so in a manner that would allow him to wipe out local threats before reeling down the drill and starting the serious work.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[M'Sharak]

One of Ted Sturgeon's laws is, "Never ask your audience to believe more than one impossible thing at at time."

Are you sure it was Ted Sturgeon who said that?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Were there seismic disturbances on Vulcan? Didn't seem like that - not until after Nero had inserted the red matter. So perhaps the whole thing was a hoax. Remember that we were told that few in Starfleet can speak Romulan, or tell it apart from Vulcan through linguistic nuances. What if it was Nero who simply jammed Vulcan transmissions (with or without the drill), and then told the universe that Vulcan was "temporarily unavailable due to seismic disturbances", a commonplace occurrence on that world and one warranting only a minor response? Nero must have known he would be incredibly vulnerable while drilling - so he might try to buy time, and to do so in a manner that would allow him to wipe out local threats before reeling down the drill and starting the serious work.

Nothing like that is suggested in the movie, at least not directly.

On the other hand, all this time I've been interpreting Kirk's deduction as being catastrophically right about what was happening on Vulcan, though for all the wrong reasons. He connected the lightning storm with the Narada and the siesmic disturbances and obviously knew SOMETHING nefarious was going on on Vulcan...

Perhaps I missed the implication here? Maybe Kirk, recognizing the resurfacing of the Narada, connected the dots--literally--between Klingon space, "the lightning storm" along the neutral zone and the distress signal on Vulcan and realized it was too much of a coincidence to be trusted? In that case, the implication is that Nero intentionally sent the distress signal to lure Starfleet into an ambush, which Kirk must have guessed, based purely on his deep-seated (and, let's face it, well founded) belief in Romulan deviousness?

 

[Captain Robert April]

One of Ted Sturgeon's laws is, "Never ask your audience to believe more than one impossible thing at at time."

Are you sure it was Ted Sturgeon who said that?

According to John D.F. Black it was.

 

[JarodRussell]

Were there seismic disturbances on Vulcan? Didn't seem like that - not until after Nero had inserted the red matter. So perhaps the whole thing was a hoax. Remember that we were told that few in Starfleet can speak Romulan, or tell it apart from Vulcan through linguistic nuances. What if it was Nero who simply jammed Vulcan transmissions (with or without the drill), and then told the universe that Vulcan was "temporarily unavailable due to seismic disturbances", a commonplace occurrence on that world and one warranting only a minor response? Nero must have known he would be incredibly vulnerable while drilling - so he might try to buy time, and to do so in a manner that would allow him to wipe out local threats before reeling down the drill and starting the serious work.

Nothing like that is suggested in the movie, at least not directly.

On the other hand, all this time I've been interpreting Kirk's deduction as being catastrophically right about what was happening on Vulcan, though for all the wrong reasons. He connected the lightning storm with the Narada and the siesmic disturbances and obviously knew SOMETHING nefarious was going on on Vulcan...

Perhaps I missed the implication here? Maybe Kirk, recognizing the resurfacing of the Narada, connected the dots--literally--between Klingon space, "the lightning storm" along the neutral zone and the distress signal on Vulcan and realized it was too much of a coincidence to be trusted? In that case, the implication is that Nero intentionally sent the distress signal to lure Starfleet into an ambush, which Kirk must have guessed, based purely on his deep-seated (and, let's face it, well founded) belief in Romulan deviousness?

Well I don't think it makes much sense. Chekov reports about the "lightning storm in space" in the Neutral Zone and "seismic activities" (or was it seismic disturbances) on Vulcan in one sentence, as if Starfleet felt there was a connection. As soon as Kirk hears about the lightning storm, he connects it with the ship that destroyed 47 Klingon ships. Pike, who wrote a thesis about the entire Kelvin incident (and who - in contrast to Kirk - was there when it happened), doesn't raise a brow when he hears "lightning storm in space".

If you believe the writers, then the Enterprise has been redesigned because of the Kelvin incident. Such a huge difference in technology, coming from sensor readings of a Romulan ship that emerged from a "lightning storm", changing the design of an entire ship class. And Pike doesn't react a tiny bit to the news of a "lightning storm"?

And Starfleet very well knew that it was a Romulan ship, because Kirk knew it. AND Starfleet knew that a badass Romulan ship kicked the asses of 47 Klingon ships. And the commanding officer of the flagship is never briefed about a space battle in which an entire Klingon fleet is destroyed? The time between Uhura making the discovery and the rescue mission might have been several days (it makes no sense that the Kobayashi Maru scenario AND the hearing have taken place on the same day. Such a thing needs a thorough investigation and THEN the hearing takes place).

And nobody else but Kirk connected the lightning storm in space to badass Romulan ship to Vulcan in danger?

They already connected the lightning storm to activities on Vulcan, but they totally ignored the destruction of an entire fleet? The guy who wrote a thesis about the incident and happens to be the commanding officer of the ship that was redesigned because of that incident doesn't notice it? Come on!

 

[Timo]

I don't think it's quite that big an issue.

If the lightning storm Chekov knew about was the 22:00 from future arriving on Neutral Zone, Ambassador Spock aboard, then our heroes are barging to the rescue of Vulcan less than a day after the storm. Kirk's trial must have taken place within a few hours of his cheating, as weird as it sounds, since otherwise Chekov would specify the day and not just the time of the day. And Nero apparently struck at the Klingons just one hour later, as Uhura specifies 23:00 for that attack.

And the summons to this rescue mission appear to come as a complete surprise to the personnel at Starfleet Academy, whereas Pike later emphasizes that the maiden voyage of the new Enterprise has been severely rescheduled. It's not impossible that Starfleet would fail to completely comprehend, disseminate and distribute the recent info on that lightning storm within the less than 20 hours we're talking about.

Somebody at Starfleet knew about a Romulan attack on Klingons. Yet Pike clearly did not know about it. Seems that Starfleet's response to that intel was covert in nature - perhaps the fighting forces were sent to Laurentius because of this? Pike would know that there was trouble at (Romulan) the Neutral Zone, and this could just possibly be related to Vulcan because Vulcan sits next to the RNZ - but he wouldn't be aware of the fact that a Romulan ship had already been seen acting aggressively. Probably none of the seven other skippers would know about this, either.

And the commanding officer of the flagship is never briefed about a space battle in which an entire Klingon fleet is destroyed?

I see little problem with this. After all, the flagship was not yet operational; the CO was probably sleeping on some balmy Alaskan beach at the time.

If you believe the writers, then the Enterprise has been redesigned because of the Kelvin incident.

Sounds a bit silly. Obviously, nothing else was redesigned - everything else in Starfleet service looks Kelvinesque. Why the Enterprise?

In any case, Starfleet wouldn't be building an Enterprise. Starfleet would be building starships, and just possibly naming one or two of them Enterprise. I'm sure a ship looking like the TOS NCC-1701 was built in the STXI universe as well (although perhaps with Kelvin-style nacelles at first), but it just so happened that this smallish ship never got named Enteprise.

Something did go differently, so that some features typical of a 2270s ship in the TOS timeline appeared a decade earlier. But as a direct response to the Narada? Unlikely; after all, nothing about the nuEnterprise seems to be specifically oriented towards countering such superships, and indeed the Enterprise fares badly in battle against the Narada every time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[I-Am-Zim]

OTOH, warp drive is impossible; the audience believes it.

It's not impossible. Just improbable. Who knows what we humans may be capable of in a couple hundred more years?

Transporters are impossible; the audience believes it.

Again, only impossible with current technology. Maybe not impossible in a couple more centuries.

Aliens that look like humans are impossible; the audience believes it.

Why is that impossible? There may be planets out there that are relatively the same size and composition and orbit their sun in the same "sweet spot" as our Earth is and thus evolved similar lifeforms up to and including humanoids.

Ray guns that render people unconscious only are impossible; the audience believes it.

Not necessarily. We have no idea what the military may be up to. Those types of non-lethal weapons may already exist today. They are certainly not "impossible".

Artificial black holes are impossible; the audience believes it.

Not so. The LHC supposedly creates artificial microscopic black holes on a regular basis.

So all respect to Ted Sturgeon, but unless you can cite a more concrete example of "impossibility and improbability" that the audiences didn't buy, I think your problem is with Star Trek in general, not STXI.

Let's see, the ludricous "transwarp beaming" contrivance springs to mind immediately. As well as detonating the warp core(s) so the explosion could knock the ship away from the immense gravitational pull of a black hole????? Without completely destroying the Abramsprise in the process???? Utter nonsense. There's much more, but I don't have time to type it all now.

 

[Brandonv]

As well as detonating the warp core(s) so the explosion could knock the ship away from the immense gravitational pull of a black hole????? Without completely destroying the Abramsprise in the process???? Utter nonsense. There's much more, but I don't have time to type it all now.

I have always assumed that it was some kind of subspace effect, and not a conventional explosion, that freed the Enterprise from the black hole.

 

[startrekrcks]

We know that you think this movie is a piece of shit I-Am-Zim can you please let other people like it if you don't mind?

 

[Peter the Younger]

As well as detonating the warp core(s) so the explosion could knock the ship away from the immense gravitational pull of a black hole????? Without completely destroying the Abramsprise in the process???? Utter nonsense. There's much more, but I don't have time to type it all now.

I have always assumed that it was some kind of subspace effect, and not a conventional explosion, that freed the Enterprise from the black hole.

It's actually one of the oldest contrivances of action movies.

"Luckily, I was thrown clear of the blast!"

"By what?"

"Uh... by the blast!"

I like your rationale, at least it adds a modicum of pseudoscience to the explanation, which is more than we can say for Bruce Willis... hmmmm, wait a second. Does John McLaine have a warp field?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well I don't think it makes much sense. Chekov reports about the "lightning storm in space" in the Neutral Zone and "seismic activities" (or was it seismic disturbances) on Vulcan in one sentence, as if Starfleet felt there was a connection. As soon as Kirk hears about the lightning storm, he connects it with the ship that destroyed 47 Klingon ships. Pike, who wrote a thesis about the entire Kelvin incident (and who - in contrast to Kirk - was there when it happened), doesn't raise a brow when he hears "lightning storm in space".

In this case, Pike is a victim of his own experience. There are all kinds of strange things that lightning storm could have been, so he didn't jump to conclusions and neither did Starfleet. Kirk, who is less experienced and still a callow youth, jumped to the most obvious conclusion right off the bat and just happened to be right.

And Starfleet very well knew that it was a Romulan ship, because Kirk knew it. AND Starfleet knew that a badass Romulan ship kicked the asses of 47 Klingon ships. And the commanding officer of the flagship is never briefed about a space battle in which an entire Klingon fleet is destroyed? The time between Uhura making the discovery and the rescue mission might have been several days

It was more like twelve hours, tops. Uhura just happened to pick up the transmission while tracking solar systems, so the report is probably sitting on a desk in Starfleet Intelligence somewhere; Pike would get a copy of it a day or two later, once it's worked its way through the fleet bureaucracy.

it makes no sense that the Kobayashi Maru scenario AND the hearing have taken place on the same day.

Why not? I got the impression the assembly was more a formality than anything else and that all the entire matter would be presented, discussed and settled right then and there. If it hadn't been for the distress signal, Kirk and Spock would have engaged in a fifteen minute debate, after which Admiral Barnett chides Kirk for breaking the rules, then hands him a commendation for original thinking.

And nobody else but Kirk connected the lightning storm in space to badass Romulan ship to Vulcan in danger?

Nobody else but Kirk would be stupid enough to leap to that conclusion. Like I said earlier, it seems like a case of Kirk being right for all the wrong reasons.

I doubt that Pike even fully believed Kirk anyway; what really did it for him was the sudden loss of contact with the rest of the fleet, at which point he ordered "shields up" as a precaution. Even Spock probably had his doubts, until the moment they dropped out of warp and found the entire fleet blown to smithereens.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Let's see, the ludricous "transwarp beaming" contrivance springs to mind immediately.

Not that you didn't totally set yourself up for this one, but

It's not impossible. It's just highly improbable.

As well as detonating the warp core(s) so the explosion could knock the ship away from the immense gravitational pull of a black hole?

Again, not impossible, just improbable.

At least use consistent logic when you lodge your complaints; argument from "it's ridiculous" doesn't amount to much when you're discussing a show like Star Trek whose fundamental technologies push to and beyond the limits of believability as a matter of course.

But as I said upthread, I don't think you do have any specific problem with the movie or any components thereof. I mainly think the film's detractors object to it in principle and then slap a bunch of other bullshit reasons on top of it so others will take their complaints seriously.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

I object to many things about this movie. Yes, I object to it in "principle". However, I also object to the less-than-stellar writing, the numerous rediculous contrivances, the complete disregard for and lack of respect to TOS, among many other things.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I object to many things about this movie. Yes, I object to it in "principle". However, I also object to the less-than-stellar writing, the numerous rediculous contrivances, the complete disregard for and lack of respect to TOS, among many other things.

The thing is, anything beyond the "in principle" objection is just shit-polishing. You're perfectly willing to accept all of these flaws and more in regards to every previous incarnation of Star Trek, but not this one, strictly on the principle of the thing.

It's sort of like religious satire. A devout Muslim will laugh at a cartoon depicting Jesus or Moses or the Virgin Mary in a humorous light, and then look at a drawing of Muhammed and name a hundred things that are offensive about it. It's just that every reason after "Because it's blasphemy!" is bullshit. And he'd HAVE to come up with all one hundred reasons to divert attention away from the inevitable response, "So what?"

 

[Pauln6]

I think some physicists acknowledge that warp drive is theoretically possible but the power requirements would be too great to be powered by antimatter. I think this is why dilithium was drafted in as a made-up substance - to focus the reaction and amp up the power to magical levels.

Transporting is impossible - at least on our current understanding. It's possible to teleport sub-atomic particles and it may one day be possible transport larger things but not living beings (at least not alive). Lets not forget that most matter is empty space with sub-atomic particles rushing around. The Heisenberg compensators were drafted in to cover this impossibility.

I don't mind Trek using impossible science; I object when they contradict their established impossible science with highly improbable impossible science as a plot contrivance. I know that they need to use this occasionally but I wish they'd think it through more thoroughly instead of just using it because they've written themselves into a corner.

This isn't solely a Trek phenomena (Die Hard was mentioned but I think Hollywood stunts are getting worse and worse).

 

[Set Harth]

and to be sure, we don't have any indication of UFP planets other than Vulcan and Qualor II lying close to the RNZ.

Are you kidding? This is a border of Federation space. To assert that there are no other Federation planets near the border defies reason.

Yet the 16 lightyears between Vulcan and Earth might make all the difference

That's just it: Vulcan is only 16 light-years from Earth. A convenient assumption indeed. But this highlights the problematical nature of the supposed effects of the black hole and how far they propagate. If Earth is beyond the limit of the effects, what about other Federation planets in the vicinity of Vulcan or in any given radius of Spock's emergence point? In the discussion of the Kelvin incident, why were there apparently no seismic disturbances reported anywhere as a result of Nero's emergence in 2233? What we're left with is essentially magic - some kind of metaphysical linkage between Spock's emergence point and Vulcan, which affects no other planet and failed to happen in Nero's case.

The theory of "the drill is the cause" contradicts the established fact "the drill blocks communications."

Once again, it doesn't.

The general sub-thread of "What the Vulcans knew and when they knew it" has alot to do with what did/didn't cause the seismic disturbances that sent the original distress signal.

So what? I still didn't say anything about "what the Vulcans knew and when they knew it", because my position doesn't rely on that - and yet I was accused of "whining" about something I never even brought up in the first place.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I just wonder when Vulcans became cliff dwellers...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

and to be sure, we don't have any indication of UFP planets other than Vulcan and Qualor II lying close to the RNZ.

Are you kidding? This is a border of Federation space.

No, it's a neutral zone between Romulan and Federation space. Vulcan could very well be the closest Federation planet TO the neutral zone, with other systems being claimed by mining companies, freighters, merchants, observatories, laboratories and small colonies with populations of five hundred to a thousand. None of these are likely to send a distress signal to Starfleet reporting seismic disturbances, even assuming that distress signal wasn't faked by Nero himself.

If Earth is beyond the limit of the effects, what about other Federation planets in the vicinity of Vulcan or in any given radius of Spock's emergence point?

What about them? You don't know what worlds ARE in the vicinity of Vulcan or what the radius of those effects are. Again, if Vulcan is the closest major planet to the neutral zone, it would indeed be the first planet to feel those effects and probably the only one to experience their full effect.

On the other hand, there's still the possibility that Nero faked the distress signal himself just to lure Starfleet into an ambush. That answers both questions far more effectively.

In the discussion of the Kelvin incident, why were there apparently no seismic disturbances reported anywhere as a result of Nero's emergence in 2233?

You know for a fact that there weren't? When, exactly, was it established in the film that the first black hole was not accompanied by any other unusual phenomenon?

Once again, it doesn't.

Once again, it does. We know the drill blocks communications, and we don't know of any method of defeating that interference, ergo we can logically assume that something other than the drill caused those seismic disturbances. The black hole is one possibility, but as Timo pointed out, Nero faking the distress signal is a far stronger candidate.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

I object to many things about this movie. Yes, I object to it in "principle". However, I also object to the less-than-stellar writing, the numerous rediculous contrivances, the complete disregard for and lack of respect to TOS, among many other things.

The thing is, anything beyond the "in principle" objection is just shit-polishing. You're perfectly willing to accept all of these flaws and more in regards to every previous incarnation of Star Trek, but not this one, strictly on the principle of the thing.

Well, you can't polish a turd. But anyway, you're right. I am willing to accept various flaws in previous Star Trek. And that is because I like previous Star Trek. All that Star Trek is part of the Trekverse that I grew up enjoying. According to JJA, his new version of Star Trek is "Not Your Father's Star Trek". Since I'm one of the fathers to which the ad refers, JJA's new take on Trek isn't my Trek. So I have no reason to like it. Add to that the horrible writing, absolutely rediculous contrivances, piss-poor plot, cardboard villain, and that abomination of a kitbash of a starship attempting to be a poor imitation of the Enterprise, and I have many reasons to dislike the Abramsverse.

It's sort of like religious satire. A devout Muslim will laugh at a cartoon depicting Jesus or Moses or the Virgin Mary in a humorous light, and then look at a drawing of Muhammed and name a hundred things that are offensive about it. It's just that every reason after "Because it's blasphemy!" is bullshit. And he'd HAVE to come up with all one hundred reasons to divert attention away from the inevitable response, "So what?"

So? It's called opinion. And this is a discussion board. Where we discuss things. In this case, things about Star Trek. You like NuTrek, I don't. Our opinions differ. That doesn't mean either of us is right. However, I will give reasons and explanations for why I don't like NuTrek beyond the old addage "It sucks".