Thoughts of a long-time fan on "Star Trek: Into Darkness"
This blog contains major spoilers concerning the new Star Trek film, "Star Trek: Into Darkness". Do not continue reading if you don't want to see spoilers. You've been warned.
Let me begin by saying I thoroughly enjoyed this movie experience. It was fun, kept the audience on the edge of our seats for most of the film, had great special effects and some terrific acting. Lots and lots of good things in it. But there were a few things that bothered me and since I'm not going to include them in my review of the film for the website I write for, I needed somewhere to jot them down. This is the place. So don't read further if you want to avoid spoilers. That was your second and final warning. A lot of this is nitpicky stuff and shouldn't negatively impact your ability to thoroughly enjoy this movie.
Clearly, someone involved in the creation of this script is a fan of the novels that were written involving The Original Series after it was cancelled. Specifically one novel entitled "Dreadnaught!". It has a meglomaniacal Star Fleet admiral who secretly constructed a dreadnought class starship that outgunned anything that existed at the time. Strangely enough, this new film has a dreadnaught class starship that was secretly constructed by a rogue admiral who wants to start a war so he can use this new ship to win it. Now you stir in a character and sub-plot borrowed from "Space Seed", an original series episode and you have the plot for this movie.
The producers of these movies own the copyright to the Star Trek universe and if they want to retcon things, they have the right. Having a romance involving Spock and Uhura must make sense to them, even if Vulcans supposedly only mate during pon farr. Spock is half-human and his father met and married a human woman so there is precedent. But even in the 23rd century are there not rules involving romantic relationships between officers and their subordinate officers? Spock is First Officer, second in command. He is his lover's boss. There's an element of this that just rings wrong.
If they want to retcon and kill off the character of Captain (later Admiral in this version of the ST universe) Christopher Pike, so be it. I guess either he already went to Talos IV, or we won't be seeing the Talosians in this Star Trek universe. If they want to retcon the introduction of the Gorn, given that Dr. McCoy talks about handling the birthing of Gorn offspring, when in TOS we weren't introduced to the Gorn until the episode "Arena". At that point, the Gorn were an unknown enemy. We discovered that they are reptilian, so how was a doctor involved in birthing them in any event, since reptiles lay eggs.
At one point they refer to the Enterprise as being more than 237,000 kilometers from Earth. That's over 142,000 miles from Earth. That would put it closer to the Moon than to Earth. Gravity would not pull it into the atmosphere at anywhere near the rate of speed we are shown. Didn't make it any less exciting, but how hard would it have been to do a little research into the effect of distance on gravity? If I'm wrong about this, my apologies, but gravity decreases to 90% of usual strength at a distance of 250 miles. The distance we were quoted is 569 times as far.
Now that I've ranted about all of this stuff, let me repeat myself. This was a terrific movie to watch. I will see it again. I'm just satisfying my inner sense of pedantry.
Let me begin by saying I thoroughly enjoyed this movie experience. It was fun, kept the audience on the edge of our seats for most of the film, had great special effects and some terrific acting. Lots and lots of good things in it. But there were a few things that bothered me and since I'm not going to include them in my review of the film for the website I write for, I needed somewhere to jot them down. This is the place. So don't read further if you want to avoid spoilers. That was your second and final warning. A lot of this is nitpicky stuff and shouldn't negatively impact your ability to thoroughly enjoy this movie.
Clearly, someone involved in the creation of this script is a fan of the novels that were written involving The Original Series after it was cancelled. Specifically one novel entitled "Dreadnaught!". It has a meglomaniacal Star Fleet admiral who secretly constructed a dreadnought class starship that outgunned anything that existed at the time. Strangely enough, this new film has a dreadnaught class starship that was secretly constructed by a rogue admiral who wants to start a war so he can use this new ship to win it. Now you stir in a character and sub-plot borrowed from "Space Seed", an original series episode and you have the plot for this movie.
The producers of these movies own the copyright to the Star Trek universe and if they want to retcon things, they have the right. Having a romance involving Spock and Uhura must make sense to them, even if Vulcans supposedly only mate during pon farr. Spock is half-human and his father met and married a human woman so there is precedent. But even in the 23rd century are there not rules involving romantic relationships between officers and their subordinate officers? Spock is First Officer, second in command. He is his lover's boss. There's an element of this that just rings wrong.
If they want to retcon and kill off the character of Captain (later Admiral in this version of the ST universe) Christopher Pike, so be it. I guess either he already went to Talos IV, or we won't be seeing the Talosians in this Star Trek universe. If they want to retcon the introduction of the Gorn, given that Dr. McCoy talks about handling the birthing of Gorn offspring, when in TOS we weren't introduced to the Gorn until the episode "Arena". At that point, the Gorn were an unknown enemy. We discovered that they are reptilian, so how was a doctor involved in birthing them in any event, since reptiles lay eggs.
At one point they refer to the Enterprise as being more than 237,000 kilometers from Earth. That's over 142,000 miles from Earth. That would put it closer to the Moon than to Earth. Gravity would not pull it into the atmosphere at anywhere near the rate of speed we are shown. Didn't make it any less exciting, but how hard would it have been to do a little research into the effect of distance on gravity? If I'm wrong about this, my apologies, but gravity decreases to 90% of usual strength at a distance of 250 miles. The distance we were quoted is 569 times as far.
Now that I've ranted about all of this stuff, let me repeat myself. This was a terrific movie to watch. I will see it again. I'm just satisfying my inner sense of pedantry.
posted by me at 12:15 AM
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