Star Trek Ongoing IDW After Darkness Question
- Thread starter BlueMetroid
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We'll add a caption in post-post-production: "Five weeks later..."
Or rewrite the ending so the final battle still takes place a fair distance from Qo'noS, but nowhere near Earth. Maybe a Federation colony just outside Klingon space. Use the "broad strokes" approach.
As I said, I figure there was a pursuit. Surely you've seen pursuit scenes before -- the pursued trying to get far enough ahead to be out of the pursuer's firing range, or trying to dodge their fire, while the pursuer tries to counter such evasive tactics and get in a decisive blow. Such a pursuit can easily last until the pursuer gets in a lucky shot or manages to inflict enough cumulative damage to slow or disable the quarry.
Just because one shot in a film immediately follows the other, that doesn't necessarily mean the events in the second shot immediately followed the first. I'm choosing to pretend that more happened than we were shown. Okay, perhaps I'm interpreting what's onscreen, but that's my prerogative as a thinking audience member. It's no different from pretending not to see the wires holding up the Sylvia and Korob puppets, or pretending that Saavik's face and voice didn't change between movies. Where fiction is imperfect, we're allowed to use our imagination to paper over the flaws.
But one of the biggest complaints about the Enterprise-D crashing and threatening the lives of unknown residents of the planet in "Generations" was that the audience doesn't care about them. Battles that threaten Earth and Starfleet HQ are seemingly more thrilling for fans and general audiences.
You solution would not necessarily have provided additional $$$$.
Why? In "That which survives" Enterprise traveled almost a thousand light years in a handful of hours. Why would a journey of just over a hundred light years take more than a few minutes, especially on a ship that is unquestionably more powerful than its TOS counterpart?
Besides, we had it established via Admiral Marcus' desktop models that this film is set in the ST-Enterprise universe, which means Starfleet would have acquired transwarp drive technology from the Xyrillians. You DO remember, I presume, transwarp vortexes the Xindi used to travel from the Delphic Expanse to Earth Orbit in about forty five minutes?
Yeah I've been watching old TOS episodes and they are really inconsistent. They keep jumping across the galactic barrier too, which is really far away. However, they didn't really know much better back in those days or rather, they didn't think anybody would be paying attention. In the modern movies they know full well the nerds are paying attention lol.
It does irk me that the instant gratification mentality of the modern era leads to this kind of story element because it moves the goalposts substantially in terms of exploration. The final frontier is now the Delta Quadrant rather than Rigel III.
It does irk me that the instant gratification mentality of the modern era leads to this kind of story element because it moves the goalposts substantially in terms of exploration. The final frontier is now the Delta Quadrant rather than Rigel III.
Would Enterprise have been able to maintain a head start over the Vengeance for a couple hours, at the very least?
And I realize that my solution to the problem - they don't get all the way to Earth - may not have brought in as much cash, but it's more reasonable, and that matters more to me.
And I realize that my solution to the problem - they don't get all the way to Earth - may not have brought in as much cash, but it's more reasonable, and that matters more to me.
Relative warp speeds is another conundrum because the difference in speed at the upper levels is so huge. Presumably Federation ships can determine speed relative to each other by checking the ship's beacon but plenty of federation/non-federation chases have been documented so it looks like all the ships have to do is analyse the warp trail to determine the speed of the ship in front and adjust speed to catch up. It wouldn't even take more than a few seconds. Warp chases are only relevant where one of the ships is at maximim warp and the ship trying to catch up has the same maximum speed. Only the tiniest difference could possibly lead to a chase. In that respect Into Darkness has it right but the previous movie was completely wrong.
^Look, obviously it's an ill-conceived scene that doesn't make sense. I'm trying to salvage it in my own mind. Of course my solution isn't perfect, but shooting it down just makes things worse. Unless either of you can actually propose a better solution.
If Kirk disabled his Federation beacon, the Vengeance might have had trouble syncing warp speeds which would have caused problems catching them. Knowing their destination is not the same as knowing their exact path so yeah, there could easily have been a time gap in there. Also as the ships get closer to Earth, the number of possible pathways shrinks considerably so it would have been far easier for Vengeance to home in at that point.
Other inconsistencies include the range of sensors (something at warp is quite far away very quickly). Give me Balance of Terror style sensors any day. And also the range of communicators - Scotty would have had to use the 'secret' base's communications array to contact Enterprise - fair enough, although I would question why a group that could keep a large, visible, station secret in the solar system had such lax security - but how did Kirk dial him up instantaneously in a bar on Earth?
Other inconsistencies include the range of sensors (something at warp is quite far away very quickly). Give me Balance of Terror style sensors any day. And also the range of communicators - Scotty would have had to use the 'secret' base's communications array to contact Enterprise - fair enough, although I would question why a group that could keep a large, visible, station secret in the solar system had such lax security - but how did Kirk dial him up instantaneously in a bar on Earth?
I understand, Christopher, I really do. But in this instance, I just feel that the best solution would be to treat the final sequence of STID similar to how we treat ENT "These Are the Voyages", and rationalize it as a dodgy holo-recording. The Vengeance did cripple the Enterprise, the Vengeance did crash on a planet, and Spock did beat the crap out of Khan.......but none of that happened on Earth, despite what the holographic dramatization of the events may show.
Honestly, why does it matter? Rationalizing these sort of errors and inconsistencies is fun when it's done as a sort of throw-away line but it is a mistake to create an entire story just to explain away a mistake. Especially in this case, given that doing "something cool" was the priority rather than a realistic depiction of warp drive.
I understand, Christopher, I really do. But in this instance, I just feel that the best solution would be to treat the final sequence of STID similar to how we treat ENT "These Are the Voyages", and rationalize it as a dodgy holo-recording. The Vengeance did cripple the Enterprise, the Vengeance did crash on a planet, and Spock did beat the crap out of Khan.......but none of that happened on Earth, despite what the holographic dramatization of the events may show.
Or seeing as they could get from Earth to Kronos in four days at warp 4.5 a century ago and their doing at least warp 7 as of the 23rd century and it maybe faster since there is no telling what tech advances Nero's little rampage may have led them to its not that far fetched that they got to Earth so quick.
I was unaware that there were actually warp drives.
I understand, Christopher, I really do. But in this instance, I just feel that the best solution would be to treat the final sequence of STID similar to how we treat ENT "These Are the Voyages", and rationalize it as a dodgy holo-recording. The Vengeance did cripple the Enterprise, the Vengeance did crash on a planet, and Spock did beat the crap out of Khan.......but none of that happened on Earth, despite what the holographic dramatization of the events may show.
I don't see why that's the best solution. It's making a huge change in things that really matter to the story (the climax had to be at Earth because Khan was specifically targeting Starfleet Headquarters) merely to avoid changing an extremely minor detail that has no impact on the story (whether they got back to Earth instantly or needed longer). That strikes me as an inverted set of priorities. If it was a dodgy dramatization, then it's far simpler to assume the cheat was in the depiction of the travel time, which can easily be chalked up to dramatic license. Lots of movies dramatizing true stories play fast and loose with the time intervals to improve the dramatic flow.
Unless it's genuinely a good story in its own right. KRAD wrote The Art of the Impossible in order to explain an inconsistency in a single line of dialogue -- namely, how a "minor incident" could last 18 years -- and that turned out pretty well.
Oh, you'd be surprised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White–Juday_warp-field_interferometer
Clearly, this is why the Trek 'verse has jumped forward to quantum slipstream. It needs to stay ahead of the curve or else it just looks embarrassing.
In all seriousness, and to borrow a cliché,... fascinating.
It's a matter of logic: It would only have taken the Vengeance a few minutes to catch up to the Enterprise at warp, and to have knocked Enterprise out of warp via a barrage from its weapons. The Vengeance was only about a minute behind them when they went to warp. So no matter what way you look at it, there is simply no way they could have reached Earth. There logically could not have been a longer pursuit/battle in warp space, as the proximity of the Vengeance would not allow it. Something would have to have delayed Admiral Marcus before he could set off after Kirk, and something pretty big, in order to give Kirk the time to reach Sector 001.
Next time get the cinema to stop the film and have the audience to go on a pub crawl, then rendezvous a few days later for the climactic battle.
