Re-writing the climax of STiD

[WarpFactorZ]

Ocri asked if we could do it better. So, here's my shot. A little editing would have sufficed.

Kirk et al. have captured Khan on the edge of Klingon space, and the Vengeance intercepts. The confrontation scene plays out as it does, until the Enterprise tries to warp away. At this point, the Vengeance lays some whoop-ass on them and temporarily disables their warp drive (they're already scanning the ship, so they obviously see the warp drive powering up, and also Marcus is expecting deception -- you don't become an Evil Admiral without that distrust). Carol Marcus interrupts the attack, and Scotty intervenes and cuts the Vengeance weapons systems, as we saw. Pretty much everything happens as in the movie, except instead of being between the Earth and Moon, they're in deep space.

Fast forward to Khan taking over the Vengeance, demanding the torpedoes, etc... Kirk et al. get beamed back ("No ship should go down without her captain!"), and just as Khan is about to destroy them, Chekov gets the warp drive back online and they flee to Earth.

Khan transwarps after them, catches up, pummels the ship. Just before the Enterprise is destroyed, the torpedoes explode. Both ships fall out of warp hurdling toward Earth, without power.

At this point, the rest of the movie can take place as shown. Seems pretty much the same, preserves all of the action scenes, without the plot fails. It circumvents the bad physics of the "fall" (except for the ship gravity bit), and the nonsensical idea that no one would even fly by to see why two starfleet vessels were attacking each other. I mean - if two US Navy vessels started shelling each other in New York Harbor, no one would ask 'what's up?'.

Comments welcome.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

First off, taking his script and simply rearranging the order of a couple events is hardly doing anything better. He and the other writers did all the heavy lifting. You added a couple of frivolous notes in the margin, at best.

Secondly, the things you are concerned about are so miniscule and ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. Do you honestly think 99% of viewers even noticed or cared about the physics issues of the Enterprise falling to Earth or whether other Starfleet ships came out to fight? What you personally are concerned about is so far afield of what most viewers cared about. Most people who saw the movie are not die hard Treknology or physics geeks who care about stuff like this.

Good grief.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

First off, taking his script and simply rearranging the order of a couple events is hardly doing anything better. He and the other writers did all the heavy lifting. You added a couple of frivolous notes in the margin, at best.

Nonsense. It fixes numerous plot holes, physics failures, etc... It makes it a better story, and better science fiction. I'm sorry you're so invested in your defence of the production crew that you can't see that.

Good grief indeed.

 

[BillJ]

I'm appalled that people actually go to the movies to be entertained! Won't someone please think of the children!

 

[BillJ]

Nonsense. It fixes numerous plot holes, physics failures, etc... It makes it a better story, and better science fiction. I'm sorry you're so invested in your defence of the production crew that you can't see that.

I try to be fair and I don't always succeed. But I don't see anything there that would actually make the movie better.

 

[SeerSGB]

First off, taking his script and simply rearranging the order of a couple events is hardly doing anything better. He and the other writers did all the heavy lifting. You added a couple of frivolous notes in the margin, at best.

Secondly, the things you are concerned about are so miniscule and ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. Do you honestly think 99% of viewers even noticed or cared about the physics issues of the Enterprise falling to Earth or whether other Starfleet ships came out to fight? What you personally are concerned about is so far afield of what most viewers cared about. Most people who saw the movie are not die hard Treknology or physics geeks who care about stuff like this.

Good grief.

Sad better than I could--as in more diplomatically. A cut and paste hackery of the original work without anything original or better brought to the table. Not better or improved, just a fanedit.

I'm appalled that people actually go to the movies to be entertained! Won't someone please think of the children!

THIS...IS...STAR TREK!

Entertianment for the sake of entertainment is not allowed.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I said from the outset that all it needed was a bit of tender loving editing.

Is it too early to pull an Ocri?

 

[BillJ]

Who the Hell is this 'Ocri' you keep going on about?

 

[ComicGuy89]

I don't see how this would change the movie substantially other than fix a few supposed issues.

Besides, if this were shown on screen, there would still be naysayers complaining. I can think of one already, why is Qo'noS so close that the warp journeys could take place as quickly as they do?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Nonsense. It fixes numerous plot holes, physics failures, etc... It makes it a better story, and better science fiction. I'm sorry you're so invested in your defence of the production crew that you can't see that.

"Numerous" meaning "one" in this case, apparently. You "fixed" one physics error that no one except a small subset of Trekkies, Phil Platt, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson would care about, and "corrected" one plot hole about the lack of ships and defenses at Earth that has been featured in nearly every Trek series and film. Neither of which substantially improve the film in any way from a storytelling standpoint (especially since you just piggybacked on Orci's/Kurtzman's existing work), or address more important issues like character development.

Also, when you say they intercepted Khan at the edge of Klingon space, do you mean they never went to Kronos? If so, that would actually be a detriment to the film in my opinion, since I quite enjoyed that sequence, as did many others. So you actually removed a pretty significant scene now, for no apparent reason other than to have the opposing crews meet up in space first, which happens later anyway.

 

[saddestmoon]

I'll stick with Orci's version Works just fine Thanks!

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I'm appalled that people actually go to the movies to be entertained! Won't someone please think of the children!

I went there to be entertained, and I was, and I then was again three more times just last week, it is a lovely film. Still, I resent that notion. Yes, entertainment is an important part of it, but the rest of the presentation also matters. It is just too easy nowadays to deliver good entertainment and be meticulous at the same time without harming the story or the enjoyment. It's wrong not to do it. And I care about that because I loved it.

Ten years from now I will be watching it again, trying to submerge myself in the story I had loved back in the day, and I wouldn't want to be suddenly taken out of it by a small detail that my mind inadvertently spotted, and which contradicts the otherwise impeccable visual and sound effects, and work by the actors. Films have become just too good to ignore the small things any more. It was fine in the era of TOS because everything back then looked like a theatre set, but when you've improved one, improve the other as well. It will make a part of the audience happier, and even if it is a very small part, it will hardly cost you more than they paid to see the film.

So make the nitpicking bunch among us happy too, please. We are also part of the audience, and some of us also love Star Trek. Thing is, I think they already did that for the most part, because I barely had much to complain after the last time I saw the film.

As for the OP:

--


WarpFactorZ, I love to nitpick as much as anyone, but I don't see any improvement coming from the gratuitous rearrangements done by you. What issues were these rearrangements supposed to fix again?

It's way too much changes in the plot for too little improvement in detail (if any). I bet I can fix all the trouble that you have with that scene with so little changes I could probably do them on my PC over the final cut in an hour:
(1) Make the Moon appear moving in relation to the ships when they drop out of warp.
(2) Simply switch two of the external shots of the Enterprise during the fall, so that people appear to be falling parallel to the Earth for one brief moment.

As it has been said earlier, there's no solid indication of the velocity and position of the Enterprise when it gets "caught in Earth's gravity", we don't know where they are, so that's hardly a problem to begin with, but if it still bothers you – as little as a single visual clue like (1) would suffice. It will be explicit that they are falling fast the entire long sequence, and yes, they are falling fast, otherwise they would not burn up in the atmosphere.

Furthermore, as you admit, these changes don't even fix the gravity issue, which while still minor, is more important than a simple confusion in position and velocity, so why go through all this trouble if you aren't going to fix the only thing that's borderline suspect... ish in the entire sequence?

And don't touch the plot of a good film just to fix a minor issue that can be fixed by a throwaway line or a nearly invisible background clue, especially if you're not going to fix all of it.

 

[Set Harth]

The gravity issue was probably inevitable once this series started trying to be like Star Wars. Lucas screwed the same thing up in ROTS, and wasn't really called on it; Abrams is simply dutifully following in his idol's footsteps, including making the same mistakes.

 

[Opus]

Gonna stick with Orci's, Z. Yours is an example of 'science' not making it 'better'.

Fanwanky blither that adds or improves nothing.

 

[Franklin]

Here's my fix for the physics problems:
-- Get rid of the transporter. Impossible.
-- Get rid of warp drive. Trek-type warping is not possible.
-- Get rid of artificial gravity. Not possible (unless the ship is rotating).
-- Get rid of humanoid aliens. If there is intelligent life out there, there's probably a 0.000000000000000001% chance of it looking anything humanoid.
-- Get rid of all sound in space. Doesn't happen.

Oh, and solve the ship falling into the atmosphere due to gravity issue.

Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. Let's get these things right, people!

 

[SalvorHardin]

Here's my fix for the physics problems:
-- Get rid of the transporter. Impossible.
-- Get rid of warp drive. Trek-type warping is not possible.
-- Get rid of artificial gravity. Not possible (unless the ship is rotating).

I think all these are possible and acceptable.
Want to fix physics problems? Just get rid of the Enterprise underwater scene. It's impossible, the ship could never deal with the pressure.

 

[Opus]

Pressure? As in, "Oh no! Whatever will the other starships think of me now?"

Agreed.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

After getting her nacelles soaking wet and her exhaust port filled with sand, she tried to kill herself, stranding herself on the edge of the neutral zone like a desperate whale stranding himself on the beach. No, that was not Marcus. Can you imagine her embarrassment when the Vengeance saw her there? All she wanted was to flee and jump to her death from somewhere high.

 

[anh165]

Why is it that Into Darkness needs a re-write because of apparent physics problems when every other Trek movie or episode is riddled with stuff like this?

It is selective suspension of disbelief or just haters looking for legitimate excuse to pick the film to death.


By the way those "fixes" adds no value to the film, so I'll have to pass too.

 

[Jeyl]

How about instead of having the Enterprise crashing into Earth, she almost crashes into the moon? It's literally right there. And when power is back, the crew notice that the vengeance, despite being damaged, has enough power to crash somewhere on Earth. The Enterprise, despite being crippled and her weapons gone, tries to intercept the Vengeance and figure out a way of stopping it. As both ships plummet through the atmosphere, the Enterprise tries using it's Tractor Beam to stop the Vengeance, but it doesn't work. The crew than decide to push the engines a little bit to get over the Vengeance and use the tractor beam to push the Vengeance into the coast before it hits the city. This way they stop the ship from crashing into San Francisco and you can still have your chase sequence when Khan escapes the Vengeance into SF.

Sure you'll lose the SF crash, but at least this will give the Enterprise a triumphant moment over the Vengeance. I just hate how they had the Vengeance pass by the Enterprise with the crew noticing yet nobody tries to do anything stop her from crashing into SF. They don't even say "We don't have power!" or "Engines are down!". Nothing.