May 20
Finally, we can talk about Trek with O since he went and consumed some of it! Plus we rip apart Wolverine with our Roger Rabbit claws. Randy Jordan joins us tonight.
Additional thanks to GoDaddy (codes LIFE1, LIFE2, and LIFE3), O, Brian, Mark, Scott Fletcher, Rob Goobers, Skyhawk, Sebastiaan van Dijk, various contributors, and YOU!
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Cant wait to listen to it. It had been too long.
Not on iTunes yet…
Gah! Wish I coulda been there. I am the Star Trek expert, although been retired from speaking publicly on the subject for about 16 years.
Nice, an unexpected treat.
I’m not going to ever ever pretend I’m an expert on Star Trek or even a fan even if I have seen most it had to often since I had many off and on periods of outright hating Star Trek because of being forced to watch it when I was younger, but I will answer a few things I just heard having only just listened to the podcast (in fact, I’m still finishing it up on my PSP).
(BTW – Those off-periods were Deep Space Nine and Enterprise and refusing to go back and watch all of TOS or the animated series, but I have seen most all of TNG, definitely all of Voyager because I loved Voyager, and all of the movies except Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country and Nemesis.)
A: The New Generation SEQUEL was already given the ok way back in March and the script is already being worked on. Also, the cast from Pine to Pegg are already contractually held to the sequel, which…
B: … as Scott Jordan said he feared, is supposed to be set for a mid-2011 release (see also: early summer). Yes, 2 years after this one, EXACTLY like Transformers 2, which is just what Scott said he would hate.
C: Shatner originally did have a part written for him in THIS movie, BUT it was scrapped because it would be out of canon due to the fact that Kirk-Prime is dead in the prime universe that Spock was dragged from (see: Star Trek Generations). Thus even though it was a flashback cameo scene, it wouldn’t work because at the point the flashback could take place, Kirk would already either be in the Nexus or dead.
Hope that helps. I go back to finish listening now. Welcome back and good job. Also, yes, the Wolverine movie was a good fun piece of ultra-crap and Deadpool was a rape victim.
Great show, guys.
*SPOILER*
Although the ending of Wolverine was dissapointing, it’s a possible lead up to a squel of the prequel. In some of the comics, Wolverine does go to Japan and train as a Samurai, so it seems that they’re leading it along that path.
The movie made some decent cash, so they may end up making it.
I missed you guys!! But I know Randy, Scott and O did a great job…now I get to enjoy being a listener.
On the topic of Uhura and the Spock’s relationship. If you go back and watch the TOS you will see that Uhura and Spock have a relationship where Uhura seems to have a thing for Spock (Especially in the first 3 or 4 episodes) In the alternate timeline of the movie it seems that their relationship grows once Spock loses his planet and his mom and needs someone to lean on. I buy it!…and by the way.. TOS series Uhura…she was hot…don’t hate.
Great show by the way…Scott, O and Randy rule!
Glad to hear O finally caved on the watching of Trek. About frakking time!
Awesome show guys as usual! Missed you Brian *hugs* hope you feel better soon!
Scott, most of the time I agree with you about the whole “alternate timeline” thing. Many times it is just a contrived way to justify inconsistencies. It is kind of like the “evil wizard” joke in that Simpsons chapter featuring Xena.
Had the same issue with the last Resistance game. When asked about stuff like “places not looking, and people not sounding like they were 1950’s, but more contemporary” and stuff like that, all they could say was “alternate reality”, which was cheap…
The only way they could do this movie and satisfy old and new fans was to make it an “alternate universe.” This keeps the original Trek series and everything that followed it completely safe and in tact rather than wiping all that out. Elegant and well handled in the film – in my view. All the main players are there – just a little different. Now they can do anything they want with them – even kill one off, if it serves future movies. Good podcast guys.
I agree, Rick. I just hope they don’t use it as a way to go totally nuts with certain things.
Oh come on…
This movie makes no sense. On no level. Name one scene that made sense. Just one. The bar brawl made some sense, but even that scene makes no sense anymore once you see the next scene.
Please, try to prove me wrong and name one scene that made sense. JUST ONE EFFING SCENE.
Dang, getting into nerd rage again.
Whoooo! Finally saw the movie this evening. I think it was very well done, and would welcome future work along this timeline.
However, I did have three problems with stretches in storytelling:
1) Spock ejecting Kirk to a ball of ice (presumably to starve/freeze) instead of sticking him in the brig,
2) Kirk finding Spock Prime out of an entire planet by pure chance, and
3) Kirk getting command of the ship way too easily after exposing Spock. Logic would dictate since he wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place, he certainly wasn’t part of the command roster.
Oh well, he took over and kicked butt, and I was better for it.
LOL Brilliant podcast! I liked O’s unique point of view as an ST virgin. I’d be interested to hear his reaction to movies four and five. Do I have a cruel streak?
@ Erich the Mad Bassist
So, these things didn’t seem right?
What about…
- The humans knowing how romulans look
- The Kelvin being able to stand longer in a fight than the whole fleet of starships created 20 years later
- The escape pots being able tro escape despite the fact that a) they don’t have warp, b) nothing is in the vicinity and the weapon range of Nero’s ship should allow him to blast them from the sky easily
- That obviously no starfleet vessel tried to find out what destroyed the Kelvin, so Nero could WAIT IN PLACE FOR 25 YEARS
And stuff like this is in every friggin scene.
Kirk can outrun a flying motorcycle cop in oldtimer nokia advertisement (which he’s driving just to wrack it obviously).
Pike and the other cadets are for no reason in the middle of nowhere (they are already enlisted, so they’d have to spend their weekend-off together)
Bones entering the same transport as Kirk, and babbling about the risks of space, despite the fact that the shuttle will not leave the atmosphere.
Sulu being ti stupid to leave orbit
The fact that there is “a storm in space” near vulcan, despite the fact that this is caused by the singularity, not Nero’s ship
Nobody noticing Nero’s ship traveling from where-ever it appeared to Vulcan space
The whole fleet destroyed in the time that it took Sulu to get the ship out of orbit (despite the fact that the 25yrs older Kelvin was able to take more punishment)
A cadet who was never even in active duty is made 2nd in command.
Scotty unable to realize that the whole fleet was close to him, that a planet got destroyed within sight
The fact that the destroyed planet had no effect whatsoever on the other planets/ moons in the system
Red, crab like monsters on an ice planet
Which whole purpose is to chase Kirk into the cave where Spock waits for him (with a torch, nice of Nero to hand Spock a torch, BTW)
Spock deciding to wait in that cave. He knew that there was an outpost nearby…
Scotty beaming Admiral Archers beagle… unlikely but possible (Archer dies 1 day after the Enterprise was built)
Spock beaming Kirk and Scotty onto a ship which is travelling with warp speed and is light years away, without actually knowing where the ship is heading or having sensor contact or anything else… the beaming during warp thing is one thing, but if they can beam over these distances w/o the need of sensors, what do they need spaceships for?
And…
I could go on forever… there was no freakin scene that made any sense. I don’t expect that an SF movie makes total sense… but one scene would have been nice. Or maybe the general plot could have made some sense.
But the whole movie didn’t make anysense.
And if that first scene took place in Romulan territory (did it? Can’t remember) it get’s even worse.
And this is a pitty, because the actors were great, the ship looked nice, etc.
But no friggin scene made any sense. At all.
@Lenny: Yeah, I can’t argue with most of what you posted. The beaming thing bothers me too—now that you mention it. I chalk the rest up to the fact I was awake much earlier than normal to get that nice $5 ticket price, and my desire to suspend disbelief. The three things I posted before yanked me out of that nice “let’s just enjoy the movie” haze. Finding Spock made me want to throw something at the screen.
I couldn’t see a planet becoming a singularity as in the fears around the Large Hadron Collider, because I think it takes at least a dozen solar masses, but then I only grasp the concept of a stellar black hole. Still, if you could collapse a planet like that, it shouldn’t affect other bodies. The same mass is still there, but in a smaller package. You’d be toast (or silly string) if you got closer than where the original surface of the planet was.
As for going through a black hole and ending up in the past—eh, I place my disbelief in Star Trek Universe writing.
Oh yeah, it did suck they killed off Vulcan.
@Lenny: Most of your points are either assumptions or you have bad information. You do understand this is an alternate universe right? First, maybe Nero wasn’t trying to destroy the Kelvin. They had just come into this alternate universe. He wanted some information. As far as the crew of the Kelvin, they left in shuttles – not escape pods. They can travel at warp. Nero did not “wait in place” for 25 years. Read the book to learn more. Time is dilated when they go to warp. A few minutes as Sulu got them to warp is not the same time for the ships already traveling at warp. The cadets are not “in the middle of nowhere.” They are at a Starfleet shipyard waiting to ship out. I can counter every point you bring up like this.
I get it – you didn’t like the movie. Most people seem to have enjoyed it a lot more than you. Almost every scene made sense to me, and I have watched Trek for a very long time.
@Rico – doesn’t make much difference.
If you compare the differences in tech between TNG and TOS alone, the first attacks should have blasted the Kelvin out of the sky.
Shuttles are non warp as well – the first warp shuttles were introduced many years later – even TOS shuttles were impulse only. And remember, the moment Nero appeared was the moment the timelines split.
Another thing to keep in mind: The fleet was destroyed easily while Nero’s ship was already “mining” Vulcan – the Kelvin was just a single exploration vessel and more than 25yrs older than the ships Nero destroyed easily…
BTW – do you happen to know where that first scene took place?
“Nero did not “wait in place” for 25 years”
well, that’s what he said in the movie. What did he do? How many books and comics are needed so the movie starts to make some sense? Did he play hide & seek with star fleet during that time?
“Time is dilated when they go to warp. A few minutes as Sulu got them to warp is not the same time for the ships already traveling at warp.”
Um.. so you’re saying that n ships travelling from point A to point B will take different times to get there, esp. more time than actually passes on ship C which we’ll use as a reference? Or are you referring to normal time dilatation (time spent on the ship during warp might not be equal to time spent out of warp)?
But no matter how the time is bent during warp, shouldn’t it be bent the same way for all ships? (and isn’t the warp drive supposed to warp the space, to get around the time dilatation effects in the first place)?
I think you got this wrong. Not from the “scifi tech viewpoint” but just by looking at trek you can see that the ships leave warp normally in the same order and same time differences that they entered warp. So, the difference in time between the arrival of the fleet and the arrival of the Enterprise is defined by the difference in entering warp – unless the Enterprise flew slower than the other ships.
“The cadets are not “in the middle of nowhere.” They are at a Starfleet shipyard waiting to ship out.”
Hm.. so it was kind of an Starfleet Academy trip to the ship yard, and the cadets got an evening off? And they decided to go only with a few selected cadets from different courses, and only enough to fit half a shuttle to leave some room for new recruits? Hm.. yep, possible. So maybe the brawl scene made some sense (still not getting what Pike was doing there, but who cares?)
“Almost every scene made sense to me”
Please explain the warp beaming over lightyears onto a ship which is not even in sensor range to me.
I might have a couple of others requests as well (
Please explain why the heck humans know what rumulans look like
Please explain why the first shot didn’t simply destroy the Kelvin (nero didn’t know when he was, so a normal blast should have devastated the old ship)
Please explain why a flying bike is slower and less manoeuverable than an oldtimer
Please explain why and how the enterprise was built on earth, on how they got that ship into space
Please explain how the storm in space was witnessed in vulcan space
Please explain why the valve spit out Scotty only (with some water) but doesn’t spit out more water before or after Scott
Please explain how Scotty got into command in the engine room (NOBODY knows Scott at this time)
Please explain why Kirk gets promoted from “suspended cadet” to Captain skipping every other officer rank, basically, he left SFA as a captain.
Please explain the Spock:”Oh, I am too emotional to stay on duty” Kirk: “I am captain now” Spock: “Ok, then I’ll return” thing
) but you can skip these… the beaming thing would be most interesting
I could go on and on. There was alot of stuff that didn’t make sense (romulan ship interior design, strange scanner flaws not allowing Scotty to notice the life forms in direct vicinity to his chosen beam spot) – I don’t mind if some parts of a plot don’t make sense, but if pretty much nothing makes sense, it kinda hurts
“Most people seem to have enjoyed it a lot more than you”
I know. That’s another reason I want to see the movie again – maybe I can learn to like it…
Maybe, if yould fill the in the info I missed (since it made sense to you) I can rewatch the movie and actually “get it”?
I think if they had used more TOS (or even just star trek like) music, I might have gotten more into it. I really liked the actors and the new look of the ship, esp. how it referenced the look of the pilot episode.
I really do want to like it… a movie doesn’t have to make sense if it manages to entertain you in a way that you don’t worry about the fact that it doesn’t make sense while watching the movie.
I really like dthe nods towards classic trek, and the only Jar-Jar Binks effect I had was Scotties Mickey Mouse friend. I appreciate that the restarted the series.
@Lenny – First, you are again wrong about several points. Shuttlecraft have warp nacelles and can travel at faster than light speeds. Do your Trek homework – look it up if you have to. The new Enterprise could easily have been towed into space, even broken down into main sections and then towed up. Things are built like this all the time on Earth. Built up and them broken down to ship. That is a major base in Iowa in the altered timeline, that is why Pike and the cadets are there. The valve in Engineering is simple – it would just seal off the two sides while opening. There are valves that do this very thing used in industry now. The Narada again just emerged from traveling through time and was weakened. Plus they didn’t want to destroy the Kelvin at first. Nero wanted information from them. I’m not going to cover every point with you. Again, you obviously don’t like the movie. I’m fine with that because plenty of others seem to be making it the biggest Trek movie ever and the biggest movie of 2009 so far.
Wow. Someone is trying to pick a trek fight with Rico. and not doing very well.
I am very sorrz, but TOS shuttles were not warp ready. I doubt shuttles made 25 yrs earlier were warp capable. The original enterprise had class-f shuttles which had an ion engine.
May I ask where you got the idea that pre TOS shuttles had warp engines? To quote yourself “Do your Trek homework – look it up if you have to”
“The new Enterprise could easily have been towed into space, even broken down into main sections and then towed up”
The whole point of the enterprise lore was that the ship |was built in space, and not made for atmospheres” – the whole shape and center of gravity are not really meant for aerial flight or even landing.
They might have changed the lore, but that ship in gravity makes just no sense.
“even broken down into main sections and then towed up” – right, but why built it completely on earth then?
“The valve in Engineering is simple – it would just seal off the two sides while opening. ”
WTF?
Please explain what the valve is then for in the first place? If not to let out water?
Also, please understand that Nero didn’t know he was travelling through time, he shot first and asked questions later.
Anyway, you ignored the warp/beaming and romulans question…
Lenny, Lenny, Lenny……
Again, the shuttles can go to warp. And again – you are wrong about the Enterprise, it’s shape and atmospheres. Gene Roddenberry hired aviation expert and pilot Matt Jeffries to design the look of the original Enterprise. It was designed to be atmosphere capable but effect budget restraints during the original TV series run limited what they originally wanted to do – which was land the Enterprise each week on a new planet. Much like the ship in the movie “Forbidden Planet” does (which inspired many things in Star Trek). So Gene came up with the idea of the transporter. As for the valve, and this is based on what I can see in the film, it looks much like a trap under a sink to me. So it most likely meant to allow access and cleaning. You had only asked why didn’t water keep pouring out, and I answered that. I can do this all day, but I think I’ve had enough since it seems no answers will satisfy you.
“Again, the shuttles can go to warp. And again – you are wrong about the Enterprise,”
That’s cool that you keep telling me that, but point is that none of the shuttles in TOS had warp capability according to the series and according the “official” or “canon” (or how ever you want to call it) books.
And if the “premium” starships 25 yrs later don’t have shuttles with warp, it seems kinda unlikely that the old shuttles had warp.
May I ask what your source regarding the warp capability of the shuttles in that area is?
“Gene Roddenberry hired aviation expert and pilot Matt Jeffries to design the look of the original Enterprise. It was designed to be atmosphere capable but effect budget restraints during the original TV series run limited what they originally wanted to do – which was land the Enterprise each week on a new planet.”
According to canon-prime, the Enterprise was built in San Francisco and then assembled in space. Captain Robert April oversaw construction of her components and commanded her during her trial runs and early missions (kinda canon, this was in TAS).
I’ve no (big) problem with saying the dry-dock is located in Iowa (even if the HQ of SF is in SanFran) but that the ship is assembled on earth doesn’t make much sense.
No matter what was planned before the show, it never made it in the show. Neither the Enterprise-Prime nor the new Enterprise have the shape that would allow easy assembling on earth.
Building nacelles, saucer and engineering hull on earth and the assemble in space? Sure thing.
But the thing being completely built on Earth? For me, it seem like they just wanted to have that cool image in the movie and gave a damn about if this makes sense
The TOS Enterprise can operate in atmosphere but can’t land (operation in atmosphere was shown in one classic episode.
But the actual problem with the movie is, that almost every scene doesn’t make much sense, either in it’s current context or the context given by later developments in the movie.
And trying to make sense of it with brute force (see your idea of the valves on each side of the access port, which are at a distance that allows a human of Scott’s size to be placed within, and even if this were the case, it still doesn’t make much sense given Scotty’s size, the size of the access panel, the diameter of the tube, etc) isn’t that great either.
A sf movie doesn’t have to make total sense, as long as the logical gaps are not too obvious while watching the movie and destroying the immersion.
The “Everybody seems to know how romulans look and can easily discern them from vulcans” thing killed immersion a bit for me, the nice battle made up for that (a bit). Problem is that many of the other scenes seemed so out of place and had nothing ‘awesome’ following to make that up.
But I am glad that you liked the movie, including it’s badly animated cgi red-crab-monsters-giving-an-episode-i-flashback. I think it wasn’t that bad for an uneven movie, the action made it slightly better than ST:V with the story and glued-on-humor being on par with ST:V
@Lenny
Don’t freak out on me now…obviously you are very passionate about this topic.
People rarely ever get knocked out from a single punch in real life…but it happens all the time in movies. It’s just a plot device. It would get pretty boring watching people fight until they are exhausted and we would never get to the plot points we care about.
My take on the Kelvin attack was that the mining ship had not been fitted to be a battle hardened ship like it was for the battle with the fleet later on. The escape vessels did not need warp to escape because the Kelvin had crashed into the mining ship and it was in no condition to give chase to a bunch of shuttles.
As far as the ship being constructed on the ground as opposed to constructed in space…well we could dwell on that forever…but if you feel you need an explanation there is enough room in the plot to allow for it. At the time of the construction of the Enterprise in this timeline Nero had already arrived and by his actions of destroying the Kelvin could have forced changes in the policies of the Federation which required a more expensive and more guarded approach to building star ships. Even if it meant doing the impractical.
Why was there an emergency hatch for Kirk to save Scotty…because there had to be. These script writers aren’t really rocket scientists…but they do understand human emotion. They needed some action to keep the story moving along. So they used this. Was it the best ever…no…but I didn’t even think anything about it when I saw the movie…I was just thinking “I hope he saves Scotty before he gets chopped up.” The whole scene was around 30 seconds…hardly long enough to take me out of the movie.
How did Kirk run into old Spock on the planet. Fate. Kirk and Spock have always been fated. It’s the universes way of correcting things that have gone awry.
Why had Spock not already traveled to the local camp for help. Probably because he was still pouting from losing his whole planet. Where did he get a fire stick? He’s a Vulcan. I’m sure he knows how to start a fire. Besides…it’s a planet with an ice storm. It would probably take Spock a while to figure out his bearing before heading out into such a storm.
I’ve always had trouble with how “monster’s” act in movies. Most animals would not be so aggressive. But seeing as how this is an ice planet and there probably is not much food…But the finer point is that Fate bumped Kirk along to where he needed to go. Which was the cave with Spock in it.
I know some of this is just convient.but that’s how story telling is sometimes.
I totally agree.
.
But if you put too many of these things in a movie, the movie start making no sense, because all you did was putting scenes after another that you thought would be cool.
Resulting in things like making a cadet Captain. Manning a whole ship with cadets fresh from the academy. Placing a red monster with an exoskeleton in a ice desert to be defeated by a guy who found material to create a torch in an ice cave w/o any visible vegetation nearby, Beaming scotty into a tube – in such a way that it’s funny and allows Kirk to rescue him, etc.
.
Sure, each of these scenes taken for itself might be ok… but the amount of these scenes…
.
And it’s not to tell a story. Most of these scenes are just there for the sake of it. The Enterprise had to enter warp later, so Sulu makes a fool of himself. Kirk needs to know that it’s Nero, so a storm in space is mentioned. Nimoy needed a role, so that stupid ice planet scene was shot, also adding the transwarp beaming and the water tube incident. Scotty needed to have an iconic moment as well, so Kirk didn’t just watch the ship getting destroyed but fires weapons that don’t deal damage at it until it’s too late, etc.
.
And after your “do your homework” comment earlier, I’d really like to know where you got that Warp shuttle idea from. I might be mistaken, but so far all my “research” seems to indicate I was right.
.
.
Just found this one
“Wow. Someone is trying to pick a trek fight with Rico. and not doing very well.”
Not sure here, TBH
@Lenny
I assume you are talking to Rico when you talk about the shuttle warp stuff. I never tell anybody to do their homework. I never did mine.
Just don’t tell my kids.
Oh, you’re right. I am sorry about mixing you two up
Guess I was to deep into my nerd rage to realize.
.
I’m going to watch ST:XI another time on Saturday (last time I saw it dubbed, this time in the OV. Hope the actual voices will help me to into the movie more, the English trailer felt better to me than the dubbed trailer).
.
And I think I really might have a weird movie taste, actually had a lot of fun watching Wolverine.
I liked Wolverine…except for the special effects. Despite the bad effects I was still able to enjoy the movie.
I dont get why nobody liked Enterprise. The show was great! It had good stories, good actors (and hot babes …. jolene blalock rawrrrr) and stunning fx. The years of spin offs have caused star trek fatigue in us all but still Enterprise is in my favourite top 3 of all the series.