Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m
Good question. From their desperation to climb, I figured it was the E needed to attain orbit to fly comfortably. However, they also were desperate not to be detected so...
Since every thing I'd read from the production/creative end was adamant that the Enterprise was not designed for atmospheric flight--since Matt Jeffries designed her specifically suggest she was a creature of the void (sorry--the beautiful girl brings out the bad poet in me*), maybe I'm just projecting an assumption.
*True Story: I once texted "Never lose you" to a Star Trek-hating woman--sans attribution, of course.
So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground?
In "Parallels", we see a Galaxy-class ship being built on the surface of Mars.
They had warp engines that spat rocket exhaust, even though GR explicitly reiterated that Warp Drive did not run on exhaust propulsion principles and that the E was so big (and so unfit for atmospheric flight) that she spent her entire life--birth to death--in space (and her one blue sky adventure, "Tommorow Is Yeterday," saw her compromised by atmospheric flight she stumbled into)?
So what are the red streaks zooming from the rear of the nacelles in movies II-VI? And the Enterprise NX-01 flying over NYC?
Underwater ships we've seen before in Trek (Insurrection), as well as ships swimming through giant Space Amoebas and endless other ridiculous stuff. And Scotty even points out "how ridiculous it is to hide a starship at the bottom of the ocean"
Writer "intent" be damned (hence the term fig leaf), these guys remade Trek in their image. I like it but it is more believably an extension of Gold Key comics, Peter Pan story records and Mego playsets than the show that ran on NBC from 1967 to 1969. Spocktimus Prime doesn't change that.
As happened in TMP, TWoK, TNG and ENT. Seriously, have you tried to compare TOS and TMP or WoK? It's like entirely different universes. The ship couldn't look more different in TMP, and then by WoK somehow technology has gone from showers which beam clothing onto the occupant to torpedoes having to be manually loaded. Not to mention, Khan and his followers changing radically in what was supposed to be a direct sequel to an old episode.
Let the turkey cherry-picking begin. I'll start: "It's no dumber than 'Spock's Brain'!"
It's all happened before and will all happen again next iteration of Trek. Just because technical manuals and chronologies and novels gloss over the big changes in direction for Trek doesn't mean they're not there staring you right in the face. Trek's continuity is complete illusion. That someone will suspend disbelief for everything
up until the latest round of changes seems rather ridiculous. Of course it's a reboot, but since we pretended the last half dozen were part of a continuous universe, I don't see what has to change now.
1. We see components of Galaxy class ships, a hundred years post TOS, with a hundred years worth of advances in tech from over a thousand worlds, on the ground of a planet with far less gravity than earth, roughly one third. Those components--saucers, if I recall--could well be awaiting lift-off, like modules of the ISS, to be joined with star drives in orbit. And if there were star drives in the picture, the saucers were not sitting atop them. So you have the mass of a Galaxy Class ship roughly halved, awaiting lift-off in 1/3 Iowa's gravity, to be assembled in space. Besides, I believe Probert said they were test modules, never intended to see actual flight, kinda like the shuttle Enterprise.
2. The ENTIRE ship streaks--it's a representation of the Doppler shift. The E-D rubber-banded. No exhaust, just a poetic representation of what FTL might look like to an observer. As far as ENT goes? F*ck ENT.
3. I doubt the Space Amoeba had the pressure or gravity found at the bottom of a Class M planet's ocean.
4. TMP and TWoK as reboots? Partial reboots, maybe--but then TOS rebooted from episode to episode, by that logic. (To use the Bond analogy, Lazenby is the same Bond as Connery, as evidenced by his handling Connery's mementos in OHMSS--he reverts to Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. And since Moore was Connery's contemperorary, we can assume it was the same Bond through A View to a Kill. Dalton was a partial reboot, Brosnan and Craig radical and complete reboots, despite Judy Dench being M in all their films. And, God help us, we're supposed to buy that Keaton, Kilmer and Clooney are all the same Batman. But they surely aren't West. And Bale ain't none of 'em).
But as I said, I'd have preferred an honest reboot to the fig leaf you are defending. The fig leaf is there. Okay. It's "not" a reboot.
Except it is.
