They don't "embrace" it. STO takes place in the old timeline.
Star Trek Online and Countdown Graphic Novel Continuities
- Thread starter The Super Brando
- Start date
I watched the movie three times in two weeks to prepare for writing a novel sequel, and I watched it again just last month for an article. Given your dislike of it, I've probably watched it more times than you have.
And yes, of course the movie has timing problems and other plot holes. Name a single Trek movie that doesn't have plot holes. If you're going to reject ST '09 because of something as trivial as a timing problem, then you should also reject TWOK for the sheer ludicrousness of Genesis, the contradictions in the portrayal of Khan's followers, the anachronistic Starfleet paraphernalia on Ceti Alpha, the inability of Reliant's crew to count, the idiocy of Scotty abandoning his post and bringing a wounded engineer to the bridge instead of sickbay, etc. etc. And you should reject TVH for playing fast and loose with temporal logic. And you should reject TUC for the sheer incompetence it required of its characters -- McCoy not knowing a thing about Klingon anatomy, Uhura not knowing a word of the Klingon language -- and for the stupid 2-dimensional shock wave that somehow propagated faster than light to hit Excelsior. And so on. Every Trek movie has plot holes. But people forgive the plot holes in the movies they like.
So it's dishonest to claim you're rejecting this movie because of its plot holes. You're just rejecting it because you just don't like it, or because it's different from what you're used to, and you're using the plot holes as an excuse.
You're assuming that it only took a short time to reach Vulcan. That's what the editing suggests, but if you pay close attention, you see that McCoy has changed his uniform between the time Kirk passes out in sickbay and the time he wakes up again. Kirk could've been out for hours.
And again, it doesn't matter. If you held every Trek episode to strict consistency in terms of travel time, you'd have to throw half the canon out the window. Heck, travel-time problems go clear back to "Where No Man Has Gone Before." How did the Valiant go fast enough to reach the edge of the galaxy 200 years ago, when warp drives were far more primitive? If it could be reached then, why has nobody done it since? How did the Enterprise reach Delta Vega in mere days if it was stuck at impulse? It doesn't make any sense. Then there's "That Which Survives," where Spock says the ship can cover 990.7 light-years in 12 hours -- at which speed Voyager could've gotten home in shortly over a month. And what about DS9's "Armageddon Game"? When Bashir and O'Brien were rescued, Bashir said he had to get O'Brien back to DS9 "within the hour" to save his life, so how does a runabout with a maximum speed of warp 4 cover interstellar distances in less than an hour?
Inconsistent or nonsensical travel times are a 45-year tradition in Star Trek. It's silly to complain about them in the movie as if it had never happened before.
Takes place in *an* old timeline, but not the one in the novels, with which STO is clearly incompatible.
I'm not not sure if this has been mentioned before or not but I think the Tier 4 science vessel, the reconnaissance science vessel, is a Luna class and I'm pretty sure it looks like the Titan design contest winner. I'm about to hit tier 3 soon so I can't say for sure yet. I'm just going by this chart I found. http://suricatasblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/stoshiptierchart2.png
Yes, it's been mentioned quite a few times already. 
In fact, my character is commanding one.
In fact, my character is commanding one.
Yes, it's been mentioned quite a few times already.
In fact, my character is commanding one.
Yeah, figured as much, I was just too lazy to check through 20 pages of comments here and I didn't remember seeing it.
I'm going slow so just about to make Captain. Will be a week or so at least before I can fly the ship myself and I'm looking forward to it. But I think there's not a lot else I'm looking forward to here. Let's just say I thought the game was going to cut into my reading time a lot more than it is. Just doesn't seem like that great of a game.
OK, I'm a little more excited about this. I was looking things over and realized the Luna is an Admiral ship. I thought it was going to be replaced when I hit Admiral. When I do hit Admiral, I've got a choice between the reconnaissance and the deep space science vessel. The deep space ship probably fits my play style better but there's no way I'm passing on flying the Luna.
Aside from some of the images shown when looking through the Guardian of Forever, which I found kind of fun, this is the first thing that has made me say "this is freaking cool" to myself about this game.
Aside from some of the images shown when looking through the Guardian of Forever, which I found kind of fun, this is the first thing that has made me say "this is freaking cool" to myself about this game.
Well, that's kind of the way it works in real life, isn't it? Small ships can have captains of lieutenant commander or commander's rank, more important ships need COs of captain's rank, etc. You get a higher rank, and it means you're in command of a greater number of people and assets. It doesn't make sense to give someone that increased rank without assigning them to a post of greater responsibility.
May I point out that Greg Cox has reconciled most of these errors in his novels about Khan? If someone can do the same for the errors in XI, I would be very happy.
^Exactly. I bet that most of the people who condemn the new movie for its plot holes have no trouble forgiving TWOK for its equally glaring plot holes. That's because we've had decades to get used to TWOK as part of the tapestry of Star Trek and learn to rationalize or ignore its inconsistencies, but ST XI is still new. But that doesn't make it any less of a double standard.
I think its more likely that people are willing to overlook some trivial plot holes in a film such as TWOK where they are surrounded by quality drama, sci-fi ideas, characterization, and storytelling but in a film that is essentially 90% glitz, in-joke/references and on-rushing stylish non-sense with a glaring LACK of engrossing ideas, drama, or science fiction ideas those plot holes tend to be more egregious. Plus, TWOK never had anything as testing of an audience's suspension of disbelief as Kirk just happening upon Spock Prime in an ice cave. D'wha? That really threw me and I'm a huge apologist for anything Trek!
Anyway, this is much different than the simple march of time or nostalgia coloring people's take on TWOK vs ST09. But that's just my opinion.
Star Trek (2009) has a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an 8.2/10 rating on IMDb, and a 4.3/5 rating on Netflix. For comparison, TWOK has 90% on RT, a 7.8/10 on IMDb, and a 3.7/5 on Netflix. ST'09 is slightly more popular with audiences and critics than TWOK, and has received widespread acclaim for its drama, characterization, and storytelling.
Oh, come on. A cadet simulation rigged with live explosives? The Reliant crew not being able to tell 5 planets from 6? Khan's ethnically diverse followers morphing into a bunch of blond Nordic types? Most of them being twentysomething when they were stranded fifteen years before, even though there were no children on the Botany Bay in "Space Seed?" Scotty abandoning his post to bring his bloody nephew to the bridge instead of sickbay? Khan's brilliant intellect being unable to break the glaringly obvious "hours could seem like days" code? The Ceti Eel that was supposed to kill Chekov conveniently deciding to leave him for no apparent reason? A five-foot-long torpedo having the magic power to remake an entire planet in minutes? And somehow having the even more magical ability to create an entire planet -- and apparently a sun -- out of a hydrogen nebula even though it was only programmed to remodel an existing planet? Spock being the only person on the ship who can fix the mains even though there are plenty of engineers aboard who should be able to don radiation suits more quickly than Spock could travel down from the bridge? Kirk saying he's "never faced death" after losing his best friend (Gary), his own brother and sister-in-law, the love of his life (Edith), his wife (Miramanee), and her unborn child??? TWOK is nothing but plot holes that stretch suspension of disbelief to the limit.
ST'09 is a continuation of a pattern that TWOK originated: Star Trek films as visceral experiences where logic and plausibility take a back seat to emotion and energy. Neither one has a plot that really holds up to careful analysis, but both get their popularity from their emotional cores, from the characters and their interactions and the way they make the audience feel while watching, even if those feelings give way to Fridge Logic criticisms later on. So which one you prefer is really a matter of taste, not of any fundamental difference in their respective quality or intelligence.
I can buy that one, actually. Plenty of people who go through horrible things in life repress rather than actually deal with them; as you correctly note, in the span of about three years, Kirk lost about six people who were incredibly important to him, and yet, throughout most of TOS, he seemed unaffected by their deaths. The idea that he might be repressing those emotional problems and that it wasn't until his middle age crisis combined with Spock's death that he really began confronting death -- the death of his loved ones and the inevitability of his own death -- seems believable to me.
(I always liked Crucible: McCoy - Provenance of Shadows's notion that Kirk was suffering from clinical depression throughout most of the original series, particularly after the one-two whammy of losing Edith and George within weeks of each other.)
Similar threads
