# [Trailer] Star Trek - Into Darkness



## Krug (Mar 10, 2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxZcxkFZZP0&feature=player_embedded


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 11, 2013)

Well, that's definitely a "wait for DVD or Instant View" for me. Remember when Star Trek was new and creative, about exploring new worlds?


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## Morrus (Mar 11, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Well, that's definitely a "wait for DVD or Instant View" for me. Remember when Star Trek was new and creative, about exploring new worlds?




Maybe you should just stop watching things! You don't appear to like anything!


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## Derren (Mar 11, 2013)

Horrible.

2/3 of the trailer looked more like Minority Report 2 with a splash of Indiana Jones turned Gangsta but not Star Trek.


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## ggroy (Mar 12, 2013)

I will probably end up reading the novelization, before watching the actual movie.


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Well, that's definitely a "wait for DVD or Instant View" for me. Remember when Star Trek was new and creative, about exploring new worlds?




No, I don't. Certainly not the movies.


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

Derren said:


> Horrible.
> 
> 2/3 of the trailer looked more like Minority Report 2 with a splash of Indiana Jones turned Gangsta but not Star Trek.




What does a Star Trek movie look like?


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 12, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Maybe you should just stop watching things! You don't appear to like anything!



Maybe I just have higher standards.
Or don't enjoy having my intelligence insulted by a movie with a bunch of pretty 20-somethings hiding behind FX with mediocre writing, directing, and acting.
In short, I prefer substance over flash.


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## Jhaelen (Mar 12, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Maybe I just have higher standards.
> Or don't enjoy having my intelligence insulted by a movie with a bunch of pretty 20-somethings hiding behind FX with mediocre writing, directing, and acting.
> In short, I prefer substance over flash.



And what Star Trek movie satisfied these 'higher standards'?


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Maybe I just have higher standards.
> Or don't enjoy having my intelligence insulted by a movie with a bunch of pretty 20-somethings hiding behind FX with mediocre writing, directing, and acting.
> In short, I prefer substance over flash.




That's lovely.

Go ahead and give us a list of your favorite Star Trek movies - you know, the ones that didn't rely on special effects that were modern at the time, and didn't have mediocre writing, directing, or acting.

And maybe drop the nose a few degrees while you're at it. I'm sure you can find a way to express your opinion without implying that everyone excited for the new Star Trek movies prefers flash over substance.


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## Raunalyn (Mar 12, 2013)

I know this is the internet, but as I see it, he was just expressing his opinion. He isn't interested. I'm ok with that.

I want to see this movie, personally, because I am a huge fan of Benedict Cumberbatch. I also really enjoyed the first reboot of the series. Yes, it was a bit predictable; yes, the story wasn't top notch, but I thought the movie was interesting, fun, and worth the watch.

I think the second one will be more so. That, too, is my opinion.


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

It's just off-putting for someone to hate on something new in favor of a rose-tinted view of what came before, especially given that "what came before" was lampooned for many of the same things he's calling flaws in the new movies.

Also, I loved this:



> Or don't enjoy having my intelligence insulted by a movie with a bunch of pretty 20-somethings




Here is the entire list of billed cast for Star Trek into Darkness under 30 years old:

Anton Yelchin

By the way, that list _*doubles*_ in size if you go back to 2009, when the previous Star Trek film was released.

The best part is that George Takei, Walter Koenig (who, according to documentation, was introduced for the explicit purpose of providing more sex appeal to teenage girls), and Majel Barrett were all under 30 when The Original Series first aired. That's right: there were more pretty 20-somethings starring in good-old-days Star Trek than there were (and are) in the modern reboot.


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## Nellisir (Mar 12, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Maybe I just have higher standards.



Or different.



> Or don't enjoy having my intelligence insulted by a movie with a bunch of pretty 20-somethings hiding behind FX with mediocre writing, directing, and acting.
> In short, I prefer substance over flash.




You sound like my dad.  
"Television sucks.  There's nothing good on television!"
"Dad, you haven't watched tv since 1970."
"Exactly!  It's all crap!"

(My dad does -own- a tv.  A really nice one.  But he lives in a place with almost no reception, and doesn't have cable or satellite.)

Anyways, I have ADD and love shiny flashy things.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 12, 2013)

Trek 2: lots of FX (Genesis Wave was a huge bonus with the particle emitter), still about the story.
Trek 6: not much new in the way of FX, still about the story.
Checkov was added (according to an interview with Roddenbury) when a translation of a Russian newspaper got back to him. The newspaper accused Trek of being another US propaganda show--no Russians are in the crew, so this show is 'proof' that the US will triumph. Could be that adding more sex appeal was a factor in the design and casting.
If you take every error, every glitch, and every piece of silliness from TOS, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, and Trek 1-9, it would not add up to the horribleness of JJATrek1. (IF you add in DS9, the formula reverses).

In truth, the ultimate damning factors for this movie are the Kurtzman and Orci writing team (who have destroyed everything they touched) and J.J. Abrams (I know people liked Lost, but I found it and unwatchable). How these three have careers is a mystery to me.

Flash is pretty.
Substance is better.
Substance with Flash can lead to a truly great movie.


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## Dannager (Mar 12, 2013)

Ooooooooooooookay then.


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## Nellisir (Mar 12, 2013)

Dannager said:


> Ooooooooooooookay then.



Yep.  I keep running into Sabrinathecat, and like Morrus says in the 3rd post, it's the same refrain just about every time.


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## Elodan (Mar 12, 2013)

I look forward to seeing it.  Hope there's more McCoy this time around.


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## Zaukrie (Mar 13, 2013)

Not a fan of how the sentiment was stated, but where is the space ship fighting part? Looking forward to this, but some actual space ship stuff would be good.....also, how about Klingons and stuff?


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## Mallus (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> In short, I prefer substance over flash.



So you're not a fan of science fiction films? More a Godard, Resnais, Fassbinder, Bunuel, Clouzot, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock (wait, he's flashy), Kubrick (him too, in his way), Griffith (flash & racism!), and Welles (pretty flashy) sort of person? That's cool. 

Personally I think the new Star Trek movie looks awesome (and I started with TOS at the age of 4, circa 1973).


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 13, 2013)

Hey, I am happy to praise anything I find good. Just ask.

TOS had modest effects for the time (some new stuff, but mostly the same ol' tricks). The episodes were driven by story and character.
Trek 2 had good effects, but was still mostly about the story and characters.
Trek 6 had about average FX for the time (the bar was set pretty high at that point), and was totally driven by the story and characters.
JJATrek, on the other hand, was driven by glare and splice-cut editing, and only managed to keep 1 character remotely like the others. As with most Kurtzman/Orci scripts they chose to almost completely ignore what was established, give a 2-finger salute to the existing fan base, and totally rewrite the situations, whenever possible adding scatological humor and sex jokes.
And, call me silly, but if I am going to a movie that is about flashy FX, I want to actually SEE the pretty light show. Black ship. Black background. Only time we can see it is when it passes in front of a star, which blurs everything. Shakey-cam makes me nauseous. Story has plot holes you could fly a star ship through.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> As with most Kurtzman/Orci scripts they chose to almost completely ignore what was established,




Which - pardon the nitpick - is pretty much the definition of a continuity reboot.



> give a 2-finger salute to the existing fan base,




No, just to you, apparently. I've been a lifelong Trek fan, and the new movie demonstrated a clear appreciation for the universe.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 13, 2013)

I was not referring to just Trek, but also to Transformers, and Jack of All Trades.
And I am not alone in my opinion of the new Trek. I am also not afraid of being unpopular just because I criticize something that is popular. I dissent when I discern a problem.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I was not referring to just Trek, but also to Transformers, and Jack of All Trades.
> And I am not alone in my opinion of the new Trek. I am also not afraid of being unpopular just because I criticize something that is popular. I dissent when I discern a problem.




Look, I can understand not liking something that other people like. That's cool. Whatever.

But what you are doing looks very little like you actually dislike these things for good reasons, and more and more like you've hopped on the hater bandwagon. As a number of people have pointed out in this thread, you don't have a lot of credibility criticizing new Trek for a laundry list of things that old Trek was equally - if not more - guilty of, while simultaneously saying that you long for the Trek of Christmas Past. To boot, some of your criticisms are based on things that _aren't even true to begin with_ (see: "bunch of pretty 20-somethings"). And the fact that Orci, Kurtzman, and Abrams _*all*_ have Emmy wins to their names (to say nothing of nominations) makes your rhetoric ("How these three have careers is a mystery to me.") sound hollow and petty.


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## jonesy (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> If you take every error, every glitch, and every piece of silliness from TOS, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, and Trek 1-9, it would not add up to the horribleness of JJATrek1. (IF you add in DS9, the formula reverses).



I loved DS9. I think it's awesome. But to say it didn't have all the same silly things that the other incarnations had is just.. well, silly. It just had slightly less of them, or in a more muted form, or in the background so it's mostly forgettable. But then you go and watch a rerun and lo and behold there's Garak repeatedly killing Quark on the holodeck in increasingly weird ways, with Quark commenting.


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## Derren (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> TOS had modest effects for the time (some new stuff, but mostly the same ol' tricks). The episodes were driven by story and character.
> Trek 2 had good effects, but was still mostly about the story and characters.
> Trek 6 had about average FX for the time (the bar was set pretty high at that point), and was totally driven by the story and characters.
> JJATrek, on the other hand, was driven by glare and splice-cut editing, and only managed to keep 1 character remotely like the others.




Pretty much sums it up.
Star Trek was always more about the exploration of a future society than combat. How much combat was there in Star Trek 3? 4? 5? Even the movies with more combat were still as pointed out driven by story and characters. JJTrek on the other hand is driven by combat and sex scenes ignoring everything Star Trek was supposed to be. It is just transformers in space with lots of FX with gigantic plot holes which jump directly in your face unless you shut your brain off.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 13, 2013)

Emmys and Oscars are both industry politics prizes. My top 3 worst movies of all time are either oscar nominees or winners. In all three cases, the only reason I can see for the movies even being considered is that someone was playing political games behind the scenes. And even a number of movies that weren't terrible that won oscars weren't great--look at John Wayne's True Grit--he got an oscar for _that_?
And I'm sorry if someone in full make-up looks 3-5 years younger. But that is also the look they were trying for. So maybe my erroneous gripe is a tribute to their make-up artists. Wow, it could be that there actually was some talent in that movie. Who'd have thought.

Never made it past season 3 of DS9. Season 3 was 1 really good episode (Transporter clone Riker steals the Defiant), 2 good episodes. 3 "this looks so bad that by the time the opening credits roll I've decided to skip to the next story", 2 watchable but awful, and 2 "It's a train wreck! I can't believe they're doing this. Oh god someone gouge out my eyes!"


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

Derren said:


> Pretty much sums it up.
> Star Trek was always more about the exploration of a future society than combat. How much combat was there in Star Trek 3?




Oh, y'know.

Some.

This too.

And this.

And those took me about 30 seconds to track down. I could find more, but there you go.



> 4?




Let's be honest; Star Trek IV had very little to do with exploring a future society, and a whole lot to do with lampooning the society of the day.



> 5?




Which, as I recall, was not received particularly favorably.



> Even the movies with more combat were still as pointed out driven by story and characters. JJTrek on the other hand is driven by combat




It does have its fair share of violent scenes, but each has its place in the story. Which, by the way, is a story of a man hell-bent on taking revenge on those he feels allowed his entire planet to be destroyed. That sort of story tends to play well with violence.



> and sex scenes




What sex scenes?

Seriously, which ones?

The one where Kirk and green-skinned girl make out on a bed for _*literally*_ five seconds? They aren't even naked. It's set up as a comedy moment.

Where do people _*get*_ these ideas? It's like they're retroactively manufacturing memories of scenes that never actually existed just so they can justify their undeserved hate for the movie. Sex scenes that didn't happen. A cast 10 years younger than the actual cast. How does this happen?



> ignoring everything Star Trek was supposed to be. It is just transformers in space with lots of FX with gigantic plot holes which jump directly in your face unless you shut your brain off.




I guess our brains were off, then. For what it's worth, MoviePlotHoles identified only two major plot holes: that the Enterprise basically deserted Kirk on an ice planet, and that stars don't just suddenly explode. If you think either of these is sillier than anything seen in Ye Olde Trekke, I can't help you. (For crying out loud, the Enterprise travels _*back in time*_  - and then forward again! - in Star Trek IV by slingshotting itself around the sun.)


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Emmys and Oscars are both industry politics prizes. My top 3 worst movies of all time are either oscar nominees or winners.




Of course they are.


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## Jhaelen (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> And, call me silly



If you wish, I shall


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## Morrus (Mar 13, 2013)

I'm very much looking forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch.  He's a superb Sherlock, and rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors.


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## Nellisir (Mar 13, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I'm very much looking forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch.  He's a superb Sherlock, and rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors.



He is incredible as Sherlock.  Anytime I want to go mad, I think about waiting for the next season of that show.

Slightly more on topic...I'm looking forward to Star Trek.  I've never been a fan of the various series (I just watched all of Stargate Universe and, just for kicks, tried to watch some Voyager afterwards - starship lost on the otherside of the galaxy, y'know - couldn't even make it through a whole episode), but the movies are usually fun.  As a general rule I don't watch movies for deep insight into the societal ills of our time, or revelations about the human condition.  I watch them for fun.


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## Mallus (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> As with most Kurtzman/Orci scripts they chose to almost completely ignore what was established, give a 2-finger salute to the existing fan base, and totally rewrite the situations, whenever possible adding scatological humor and sex jokes.



Not to belabor this --any more than we're already belaboring it-- but not all of the existing fanbase felt flipped off. Pretty much every old-school Trekkie I know, myself included, enjoyed the hell out of Abrams-Trek. 

Also, re: sex jokes... recall that in TOS the Starfleet uniform for women was a miniskirt and go-go boots... that should qualify as a running sex joke, at least to non-1960s audiences. Also note all the cleavage and crazy up-dos.  



jonesy said:


> I loved DS9. I think it's awesome.



You have great taste in Trek!



Derren said:


> Star Trek was always more about the exploration of a future society than combat.



A lot of TOS episodes were really better described as morality plays, kinda like Playhouse 90 in Space. Then there were all the topical episodes which were pretty explicitly about the then current-day world, from a very American perspective (Cold War!, Racism! Hippies!).

And I read a great essay over at Grantland which made the case that TNG was very much about the late 80s/90s. 



sabrinathecat said:


> ... look at John Wayne's True Grit--he got an oscar for _that_?



The Coen brothers version was much, much better. 



> Never made it past season 3 of DS9.



Then you're missing out on some of the best Trek ever. The Dominion War is the first, and best, attempt at a sustained dramatic arc in the Trek universe, with no shortage of standout episodes, like "In the Pale Moonlight". 



Morrus said:


> I'm very much looking forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch.  He's a superb Sherlock, and rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors.



Did you watch BC in The Last Enemy? My wife and I caught the first episode on a Netflix and weren't too impressed. Does it get better? I hope so, 'cause I really like Cumberbatch (and Francis Begbie, err, Robert Carlyle... who doesn't have a speaking role in ep. 1)


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 13, 2013)

Dannager said:


> I guess our brains were off, then. For what it's worth, MoviePlotHoles identified only two major plot holes: that the Enterprise basically deserted Kirk on an ice planet, and that stars don't just suddenly explode. If you think either of these is sillier than anything seen in Ye Olde Trekke, I can't help you. (For crying out loud, the Enterprise travels _*back in time*_  - and then forward again! - in Star Trek IV by slingshotting itself around the sun.)




OK, you asked for it.
First off, the grandfather paradox. The Romulans go back in time, and radically alter the time line. Right off the bat, there's a problem. Even if they don't kill the people they believe to be key players in their situation, they alter the people by causing a cascading wave of other situations which either won't occur or will occur in such a radically different way that the other people won't be the same people--their fundamental experiences of life will be totally different. MAJOR PLOT HOLE.
Romulus is destroyed by an explosion at the center of the Galaxy. <blink></blink>(blink)At. The. Center. of the. GALAXY???? (blink) Think about that for a bit.
Future Spock comes back to do what? By the time he leaves, it would be a differnt future Spock. Or are they giving him the BttF timelag window to try to fix things? Which becomes impossible once the planet Vulcan is destroyed.
If that a drop of that red goo can create a black hole, why do they have so much of it on the spinney ship?
The Romulans show up, blow up the fleet, and then... wait 20 years. What are they doing for those 20-odd years?
"Enlist in Starfleet." Um, that would be "Join and be a jr crewman". "Enroll in the Starfleet Academy" would have been what Kirk needed to do to become an officer, and get his own ship within 5 years.
The car scene--totally pointless. Actually, I have heard a back-story explaining that scene, which was pretty neat, but since it isn't in the movie, it has to be at best EU. As such, the only reason for including it in the movie is that it was in the trailer. It does nothing to advance the plot.
Why do the academy crews take off in shuttles? Aren't the transporters working? Transporters can move 6-12 people at a time every minute or so, and there are 4 transporter rooms aboard the TOS enterprise. Seems to me they could really speed up that boarding process.
There is a really funny editing glitch in the fight onboard the romulan ship. Kirk jumps. Misses. Lands next to a phaser. Gets up. Fights. Gets his phaser knocked out of his hand. Falls again. Lands on the catwalk--no phaser! gets up. Continues the fight.
Then there's the huge long pipe to the drill-head beam. That didn't make any sense at all. Why not just phaser the cable? Oh, it is shielded? then how are people in thruster suits supposed to get onto it?
"Fencing." Fencing? Really. Since when does fencing involve a collapsible katana? "Kendo" or "Kenbutsu" would be the correct answer if you are going that route.
And that's what I remember off the top of my head.

So the whole thing about this being a reboot? No. If they had left out time travel entirely, and made the enemy be just the romulans testing out 2 new devices (cloak & plasma torpedo), which were defeated when Kirk Sr self-destructed to take out the mysterious attacker, that would have made more sense. Why the 20 year delay? Romulan high-command wasn't sure what happened, and decided to abandon the project. Then there was a change, and the Romulans decided to start building a fleet. Still want Nimoy in the movie? Let him be Sarek, or a member of the Vulcan Science Academy. Or a Romulan. Just anything else. (sure, there would be fans saying WTF, but it would have been better)

Trek always had flirting and kissing, but it was largely cute, relatively harmless (due to TV restrictions of the era). Not hot panting bodies covered in a shine of sweat. And it may have been intended as a joke, but the joke fell flat.

Trek has never been really good about time travel (except Guardian at the Gates of Forever), and really should stop. A completely alternate timeline would have been a better route to go, rather than the half-a##ed path of JJATrek.

Trek 4 was popular, but it was way too kitchy. They just wanted to make a funny movie, but the humor was way too dated (even when it came out), and it just wasn't going didn't work (for me). All you need from that movie is the first 10 minutes (where they agree to return home to face trial) and the last 10 (when the face trial, get the verdict, and the new ship).
Trek 5 was an abomination. Mainly because the studio kept insisting that they make the movie funnier, because that was what they perceived people liking about 4.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> OK, you asked for it.
> First off, the grandfather paradox. The Romulans go back in time, and radically alter the time line. Right off the bat, there's a problem. Even if they don't kill the people they believe to be key players in their situation, they alter the people by causing a cascading wave of other situations which either won't occur or will occur in such a radically different way that the other people won't be the same people--their fundamental experiences of life will be totally different.




This is not a plot hole. This is how alternate-timeline-time-travel works in fiction. No one thinks this is a plot hole, except you. Why do you think it's a plot hole?


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## Mallus (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> OK, you asked for it.



Right back at ya'. 



> Even if they don't kill the people they believe to be key players in their situation, they alter the people by causing a cascading wave of other situations which either won't occur or will occur in such a radically different way that the other people won't be the same people--their fundamental experiences of life will be totally different. MAJOR PLOT HOLE.



That isn't how time travel works in science fiction, or, rather, it's one of the ways it works. Either everything is radically different (cf. Bradbury's _The Sounds of Thunder_), or things are only slightly different, and the differences exist for dramatic effect related to the story at hand (cf. Back to the Future). 



> Romulus is destroyed by an explosion at the center of the Galaxy. <blink></blink>(blink)At. The. Center. of the. GALAXY???? (blink) Think about that for a bit.



This is dumb. However, in the Star Trek universe, the Milky Way is surrounded by an energy barrier that turns some people into gods and giant-ass bacteria live in interstellar space. So I'm willing to cut them some slack, science-wise. 



> Future Spock comes back to do what? By the time he leaves, it would be a differnt future Spock.



Alternate timeline paradox. Par for the course. 



> The Romulans show up, blow up the fleet, and then... wait 20 years.



The order of events is: Nero & Romulan super-ship accidentally travel back in time --> blow up Kirk's dad's ship --> wait around for future-Spock to arrive (time travel was accidental -- he arrives 20 years later), Nero captures future Spock, maroons him on ice planet with good view of Vulcan --> Nero travels to Vulcan, blows up Federation fleet --> Nero implodes Vulcan.



> The car scene--totally pointless.



I thought is was kinda brilliant. It's the *last* thing you'd expect to see in a Trek film; delinquent young Kirk stealing his stepfathers' muscle car while the Beastie Boys blare in the background. Tonally, it's marvelous and unsettling (this ain't the Trek of yore). It also serves to characterize Kirk -- he's still brash and daring, but, in the absence of his father, troubled rather than the good student aimed at the Academy.

Like I said, a brilliant (and efficient) scene.  



> Why do the academy crews take off in shuttles?



Because the line of shuttles arcing into the air over future San Francisco looked nice. Film is a visual medium. 



> "Fencing." Fencing? Really. Since when does fencing involve a collapsible katana? "Kendo" or "Kenbutsu" would be the correct answer if you are going that route.



23rd century fencing includes collapsible katanae. 



> Trek always had flirting and kissing, but it was largely cute, relatively harmless (due to TV restrictions of the era).



Harry Mudd is introduced trying to sell space-hookers to space-miners. Kirk and Co. periodically relax by watching half-naked Orion slave girls. 

edit: the scene with the Orion woman in Trek 2009 is actually cuter and more harmless. She's not a coerced sex worker or asylum inmate. She's not described as subhuman ("They're like animals: vicious, seductive" from TOS: The Menagerie) 

She's a Starfleet Academy student making out with Kirk on a date. 



> Trek has never been really good about time travel (except Guardian at the Gates of Forever), and really should stop.



I am now forced to question your Trek _bona fides_. It's "_City_ on the _Edge_ of Forever". Written by Harlan Ellison.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 13, 2013)

Why is it a plot hole? um, you do know what a paradox is, right? By invalidating their reason for traveling in time by changing the past, they don't have a reason to travel back in time.
If you change it, it catches up to you. Marty McFly started to fade away, because he had never been born.
Yeah, it bothered me. And almost everyone I talked to (vocal visual&communication within proximity to another person) about the movie. And a lot of people who have seen more than 5 or 6 Doctor Who episodes. Even Trek itself has sometimes (inconsistently) gone to lengths to make sure they didn't change the past when time travelling.
I'm willing to accept the sloppy use of "Solar System" for every planetary system, but saying that a star at the center of the galaxy destroys Romulus, but somehow is not a problem for the entire rest of the galaxy, no. Sorry. No. Don't buy it. If the Romulan home star went supernova, that might make sense. Some star way at the center of the galaxy? No. Not even close. And why is it always Romulus? What about the rest of the Romulan Empire? Don't they have thousands of colony worlds, just like the Federation and Klingons?
Accident? No, pretty sure the Romulans went back in time deliberately.
All it does is establish that Kid Kirk is a worthless spoiled brat, something that was established just as well when Pike went to get him after the bar fight, when he's a worthless, directionless, spoiled brat. The backstory where he was trying to take pressure off his 1/2 brother's back and stick it to his step-father made that scene worthwhile. Without it... A lot of the 7th-doctor stories involve concepts where the key scenes are on the cutting room floor, so what remains is a garbled mess. That's what this scene is like to me.
Nope. Still shouldn't happen. Future Spock should still fade away--his "past" has essentially been erased by the completely different path his life took.
Yes! Film is a visual medium. Which means I want to actually be able to SEE the frickin' ships! What does the romulan mining ship look like? It has lots of spikey bits, and that mining arm, but what does it look like? We don't get to SEE it. And the action sequences flooded with Skakey-cam. If you make the audience nauseous, how does that help them SEE?
Plural of Katana is still Katana. Japanese root word. Fencing is Fencing. Kendo is Kendo. These are separate martial arts/sports.
Even the most baudy of the Orion Slave Girl scenes was barely past the cutesy Harem-girl wanna-be Dream of Genie belly-dancing. Sure, there were inuendos. JJATrek seemed more like a skank.

Oh, I'm sorry. I mentioned the computer/machine instead of the title of the episode. Obviously all my comments and arguments are flawed beyond redemption. I should just go and curl up in a hole somewhere. Thank you for pointing that out.
/sarchasm.


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## Morrus (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Yes! Film is a visual medium. Which means I want to actually be able to SEE the frickin' ships! What does the romulan mining ship look like? It has lots of spikey bits, and that mining arm, but what does it look like? We don't get to SEE it.










Feel better now?



> Obviously all my comments and arguments are flawed beyond redemption. I should just go and curl up in a hole somewhere. Thank you for pointing that out.
> /sarchasm.




No, your _delivery_ is flawed beyond redemption.  Sabrina, you need to start addressing your tone of sarcasm before it becomes a problem.  As a hint, if you're actually_ labeling_ your posts "/sarcasm", there's a problem.


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## Dannager (Mar 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Why is it a plot hole? um, you do know what a paradox is, right? By invalidating their reason for traveling in time by changing the past, they don't have a reason to travel back in time.
> If you change it, it catches up to you. Marty McFly started to fade away, because he had never been born.




That's because Back to the Future employed single-timeline time travel. There was only one timeline, and whether you moved forward or backward you had to deal with any changes made to it.

Star Trek does not use single-timeline time travel. It uses alternate timelines/parallel universes. When Spock and the Romulans traveled through the time wormhole, they emerged in an alternate timeline identical to their own. They then _changed_ that alternate timeline by virtue of simply being there (and also by blowing up George Kirk's ship). There were no effects on Original Spock or the Romulans because they weren't changing their own timeline; they were altering a new one.

Spock explains this explicitly at one point during the movie. It's pretty run-of-the-mill sci-fi stuff, and Star Trek _*certainly*_ isn't the first sci-fi series to employ it. Heck, it's not even the first time _*Star Trek*_ has employed it (The Original Series, Deep Space 9, and Enterprise have all featured storylines involving an alternate timeline/parallel universe).

From Wikipedia's entry on parallel universes:



			
				Wikipedia said:
			
		

> The current _Star Trek_ films are set in an alternate universe created by the film's villan traveling back in time, this allowed J. J. Abrams to reboot the Star Trek franchise without affecting the continuity of any other Star Trek film or show.




The question, then, is why don't you know this? It's curious that you were paying such close attention that you're able to catalogue endless plot holes (or what you imagine to be plot holes) but missed the completely cogent explanation for the one you identify as the biggest.


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## Morrus (Mar 14, 2013)

Mallus said:


> Did you watch BC in The Last Enemy? My wife and I caught the first episode on a Netflix and weren't too impressed. Does it get better? I hope so, 'cause I really like Cumberbatch (and Francis Begbie, err, Robert Carlyle... who doesn't have a speaking role in ep. 1)




I've not heard of it; sorry!


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Mar 14, 2013)

I forget, is this an even sequel, or an odd sequel?

Also, I still have trouble parsing the title.  Should I be reading it as [Star Trek] [Into Darkness] or [Star Trek into Darkness]?

I'll grant that I agree in any case with the criticism of just using any time-travel concept in the Star Trek reboot.  Time games have become too cliche in Star Trek in my opinion; I think the tone of the new series would have been better off had they not opened with ZOMG ZANY! They could always have come back to a time travel episode later.

Agreed on anticipation of BC, though.  Love him in Sherlock, looking for a return of that series, and eagerly anticipating his appearance as Smaug in the next (or next-next) Hobbit.


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## Morrus (Mar 14, 2013)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Also, I still have trouble parsing the title.  Should I be reading it as [Star Trek] [Into Darkness] or [Star Trek into Darkness]?




Me too!  [Star] [Trek into Darkness] kinda works, but leaves the "star" hanging.  [Star Trek] [Colon here] [Into Darkness] would work if they had a colon or something there.  It does bug me a little - sounds so clumsy to me!



Olgar Shiverstone said:


> Agreed on anticipation of BC.  Love him in Sherlock, looking for a return of that series, and eagerly anticipating his appearance as Smaug in the next (or next-next) Hobbit.




And the Necromancer/Sauron, don't forget!


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Mar 14, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Me too!  [Star] [Trek into Darkness] kinda works, but leaves the "star" hanging.  [Star Trek] [Colon here] [Into Darkness] would work if they had a colon or something there.  It does bug me a little - sounds so clumsy to me!




Yeah, I considered [Star][Trek into Darkness].  [Trek into Darkness] works pretty well, but there's that hanging Star ....  A colon solves all.



> And the Necromancer/Sauron, don't forget!




D'oh!  Of course, how could I forget!


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

Because by that time, I was totally disgusted by the movie and am working from memory?
You know what would have allowed JJA to reboot the series? Just saying that he was rebooting it. That's all. People seem to have liked the New BSG series. Did they have to say they were rebooting? No. They just did. No explanation needed, and most people seem to have liked it just fine.

It isn't the biggest plot hole, simply the first. And by that logic, the timeline Kirk & Spock left to pick up whales resulted in a dead planet, and some other timeline suddenly had a second Kirk&Spock, and was saved from a completely different alien probe by whales from a completely different Earth.

As for the picture of the ship--thank you, but no, it does not really show me much. It looks like an artichoke with spiked plates, but still not much in the way of detail.


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Because by that time, I was totally disgusted by the movie and am working from memory?




Uh-huh.



> You know what would have allowed JJA to reboot the series? Just saying that he was rebooting it. That's all. People seem to have liked the New BSG series. Did they have to say they were rebooting? No. They just did. No explanation needed, and most people seem to have liked it just fine.




Yeah, but why do that when he can do what he did? Abrams' reboot technique was brilliant. It was consistent with Star Trek lore, it rebooted the series in a way that acknowledged everything that came before it, and it provided a very neat way to start over with the same characters but with enough differences in the timeline to avoid falling into the doldrums of rehashing old storylines.



> It isn't the biggest plot hole, simply the first.




It's not a plot hole. It's really important that you understand this.



> And by that logic, the timeline Kirk & Spock left to pick up whales resulted in a dead planet,




I could be wrong, but Star Trek IV involved using the slingshot technique to travel only through time, not to an alternate universe. The Earth they traveled back to and the Earth they returned to were the same planet.



> As for the picture of the ship--thank you, but no, it does not really show me much. It looks like an artichoke with spiked plates, but still not much in the way of detail.




This is a really inane nitpick. The movie is _filled _with close-up and distance shots of the Narada. This is made doubly inane by the fact that despite the repeated presence of Klingons and frequent mention of their ships, we never saw a Klingon starship until the third season of The Original Series.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

Well, some people may think it was cool. I am not one of them.
So now we're using two different sets of the laws of time? Whichever happens to be convenient?
Do you remember the beginning of a movie called Falling Down? How the camera was zoomed on on a couple of hair follicles on Michael Douglass' face, and then pulled back? The shots of the Narada are like that: either way too close to see anything, or way too far back to see anything. Pretty sure Errand of Mercy (season 1) had klingon ships. I know Trouble with Tribbles (mid season2) had a klingon ship.


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Well, some people may think it was cool. I am not one of them.




Sure, but your reasoning seems to boil down to, "Because I think it's dumb."



> So now we're using two different sets of the laws of time? Whichever happens to be convenient?




Basically. You can travel through time by slingshotting, or you can travel through time and alternate universes by passing through a black hole/wormhole/red matter singularity. But you don't get to lay the "blame" for this at the feet of Abrams, Orci, or Kurtzman. Star Trek has had both kinds of weird-travel for decades now.



> Do you remember the beginning of a movie called Falling Down? How the camera was zoomed on on a couple of hair follicles on Michael Douglass' face, and then pulled back? The shots of the Narada are like that: either way too close to see anything, or way too far back to see anything.




No, there are plenty of middle-ground shots. I think the issue is just that the ship is dark and casts all sorts of shadows on itself.



> Pretty sure Errand of Mercy (season 1) had klingon ships. I know Trouble with Tribbles (mid season2) had a klingon ship.




Were you watching the more recently-released enhanced versions? They went back and added Klingon ships to the first two seasons because it was weird not having them in there.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

I would say more "The style does not appeal to me."
No, I blame it on Trek having always had mostly sloppy time travel (exceptions already noted previously). 
Yeah, middle-shots where you can't see... What was that about film being a visual medium?
I have been watching the new ones. In Tribbles, however, there was originally a klingon ship in orbit around the station. The CGI version just makes it visible outside the windows some times.

Yeah, what can I say--I'm an old geezer. And cranky. And picky. I try to keep up with the new stuff just to see what it is that is popular now. More often than not I turn it off. Wish I could say that it is just the new stuff, but there has been a plentiful supply of garbage. I'm just sad to see Trek (among so many others) fall so far from what it was, and what it could be with the right writers and directors.


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I would say more "The style does not appeal to me."




That's fine.



> No, I blame it on Trek having always had mostly sloppy time travel (exceptions already noted previously).




It doesn't strike me as sloppy, per se. Just sort of kitchen-sink-ish. But that makes perfect sense when you're talking about a film and television franchise that's nearly 50 years old.



> Yeah, middle-shots where you can't see... What was that about film being a visual medium?




That was the idea, I expect. You're not supposed to see every facet of the ship. The Narada was kept dark and shadowed because the direction team wanted it to come across as menacing and overwhelming. I think they did a stellar job. There's a certain brutality to the idea that you can show up with a _mining ship_ but the fact that it's from a hundred years in the future means that it has the upper hand against anything thrown at it.



> Yeah, what can I say--I'm an old geezer. And cranky. And picky. I try to keep up with the new stuff just to see what it is that is popular now. More often than not I turn it off. Wish I could say that it is just the new stuff, but there has been a plentiful supply of garbage. I'm just sad to see Trek (among so many others) fall so far from what it was, and what it could be with the right writers and directors.




What we're telling you (and giving what we feel are pretty solid examples for) is that Trek was _never_ as incredible as you think it was - certainly not in film. And, above all, that the new movies do at least passable justice to the franchise as a whole.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

I see it more like the James Bond franchise: it is capable of being brilliant (Trek 2, For Your Eyes Only, Trek 6, Living Daylights, but in the hands of those currently in charge, it never will be. (we'd be lucky to get something as good as Live & Let Die or Trek 8)


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I see it more like the James Bond franchise: it is capable of being brilliant (Trek 2, For Your Eyes Only, Trek 6, Living Daylights, but in the hands of those currently in charge, it never will be. (we'd be lucky to get something as good as Live & Let Die or Trek 8)




That's not a totally barren opinion (if a bit extreme), but there's a gulf of difference between lamenting a film franchise not reaching its full potential, and cursing its caretakers. Star Trek was _not_ a ground-breaking film. But I didn't want it to be ground-breaking. I don't think a lot of people did. I think they wanted to be reassured that it was possible to make a film that was unquestionably Star Trek and be _excited_ by it. We'd spent quite a number of years dealing with disappointment (and this is coming from a guy who was still in high school when Nemesis came out). The 2009 film was a breath of fresh (if not particularly inspiring) air. And, unlike you, I have a lot of respect for Abrams as a storyteller and I'm excited to see what he decides to weave next.


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## Grumpy RPG Reviews (Mar 14, 2013)

The new Star Trek trailer looks more up-beat than the other trailers. And rebooted Trek is just action adventure, not science fiction. However, it is good and high energy action adventure.


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## Mallus (Mar 14, 2013)

Grumpy RPG Reviews said:


> And rebooted Trek is just action adventure, not science fiction.



I don't know... action adventure stories with spaceships, aliens, ray guns, and time travel qualify as science fiction. It's a big-tent genre. Always has been. From Confederate swordsmen on Mars to stories examining the effects of and anxieties associated with rapid technological/social change to meditations on God (often found IN SPACE!) to a allegories of every stripe to whatever it is the French come up with when they make SF. 

And then there's all the stuff with the laser swords, dinosaur chases, and spaceships blowing up!


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## Raunalyn (Mar 14, 2013)

Dannager said:


> And, unlike you, I have a lot of respect for Abrams as a storyteller and I'm excited to see what he decides to weave next.




Not only that, but the new movie has an actor with the potential to be as good of a villian as Khan (a good friend of mine says his name is so British that he had to affectionately change his name to Bandersnatch Cumberbund to make it sound less so). I'm excited about this movie, something I cannot say about the Star Trek movies between The Undiscovered Country and the 2009 reboot.


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## Mallus (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> ... um, you do know what a paradox is, right?



Yes!



> By invalidating their reason for traveling in time by changing the past, they don't have a reason to travel back in time.



This is why traveling backwards in time is impossible, ie causality violation paradoxes, often stated as the "Grandfather Paradox". Time-travel (backwards) stories are, by definition, nonsense. Unless you accept Everett's "Many Worlds" hypothesis, in which case traveling back in time is okay, but you end up creating a separate universe (which still means stories about "fixing" the timeline are nonsense). 

Of course, this doesn't stop people from _writing_ time travel stories. Which is a good thing, 'cause I like them. You just can't ask too many questions -- or at least the wrong questions. 



> If you change it, it catches up to you.



No, it doesn't. That's nonsense. 



> Marty McFly started to fade away, because he had never been born.



Marty fading away is a very clever cinematic conceit. The real reason it happens is to allow the Marty, and the audience, to *see* his time running out. It's a way of increasing tension in those scenes. The fading also serves as a "guide" for Marty, so he tell what actions help preserve his existence. Put another way, the fading only makes sense in the context of a movie, as a supposed depiction of some real, timey-whimey phenomena, it's nonsense. Time doesn't work like that. 



> All it does is establish that Kid Kirk is a worthless spoiled brat...



OK. Like I said, I think the tone of the scene does a lot of important and interesting work -- but I admit, I care about things like tone a lot more than most of the other SF fans I've talked to.



> The backstory where he was trying to take pressure off his 1/2 brother's back and stick it to his step-father made that scene worthwhile.



So you hate Trek 2009 so much you've either watched the deleted scenes or read the novelization? Sometimes SF fans can be real gluttons for punishment. I should know -- I can't count how many made-for-SyFy channel movies I've seen (though my wife's partially to blame for that. She loves them). 



> Future Spock should still fade away--his "past" has essentially been erased by the completely different path his life took.



Future Spock should only fade away if he traveled back into Back to the Future. Time doesn't work that in the Trek universe. 



> It has lots of spikey bits, and that mining arm, but what does it look like?



Kinda like an elongated, cylindrical Shadow vessel from Babylon 5. 



> Plural of Katana is still Katana. Japanese root word.



"Why I say son, I was making a joke you see, a joke! I know you can't pluralize a Japanese word by slappin' an 'e' on the end like it was the Pope's own Latin!" (this previous sentence is also a joke, but it's funnier if you say it out loud in the Foghorn Leghorn voice). 



> Fencing is Fencing



Tennis today is really 'lawn tennis'. The original game, sometimes called 'real tennis' is another racket sport which is sort of weird and played on indoor courts. In the 19th century, 'tennis' referred to this game, not the one played by Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal. 

So maybe in the 23rd century, the word 'fencing' will describe a sport that includes katanae, and maybe even lazor-swords. It's as plausible as anything else in Star Trek. 



> Even the most baudy of the Orion Slave Girl scenes was barely past the cutesy Harem-girl wanna-be Dream of Genie belly-dancing.



Yes, but even in a cutesy harem outfit, an Orion *Slave* Girl is still a kind of coerced sex worker. The operative word here is "slave". 



> Oh, I'm sorry. I mentioned the computer/machine instead of the title of the episode. Obviously all my comments and arguments are flawed beyond redemption.



I was just teasing you a little. It's funny that you muffed the name of one of the most famous Trek episodes.


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## Dannager (Mar 14, 2013)

Raunalyn said:


> Not only that, but the new movie has an actor with the potential to be as good of a villian as Khan (a good friend of mine says his name is so British that he had to affectionately change his name to Bandersnatch Cumberbund to make it sound less so). I'm excited about this movie, something I cannot say about the Star Trek movies between The Undiscovered Country and the 2009 reboot.




Around here we affectionately refer to him by his _proper_ name: Benedict "I s!*% the queen" Cumberbatch


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

No, when I expressed my disappointment with the movie to a friend of mine (who is a total fan-boy in that "oh god make it stop" painful sort of way), he provided the information.
And yet 85 years later, Picard was in traditional fencing gear that had barely been modified from it's current form?
And yet you do it again.

I am trying to remember any other time travel/cross dimensional barriers episodes. The only thing I can think of is the Enterprise story where the constitution-class vessel from Tholian Web (sorry, can't remember the specific name of the ship) ends up in the Mirror/Mirror universe during Enterprise's time frame (what, 80 years before?).


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## RangerWickett (Mar 14, 2013)

Guys! It's a movie. You're on the internet, arguing about a movie! More specifically, arguing about the continuity of a movie as it relates to a 47 year-old TV franchise. 

It's a waste of time. Go to Wikipedia and read something educational. No, not about Star Trek. Here, how about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis


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## Mallus (Mar 14, 2013)

RangerWickett said:


> You're on the internet, arguing about a movie! More specifically, arguing about the continuity of a movie as it relates to a 47 year-old TV franchise.



Spoilsport.


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## Nellisir (Mar 14, 2013)

RangerWickett said:


> Guys! It's a movie. You're on the internet, arguing about a movie! More specifically, arguing about the continuity of a movie as it relates to a 47 year-old TV franchise.



Well, duh.  Where else would they do it?  And isn't that the point of the internet?  (Well, and cats.  And...no, let's go with cats.)


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## Mallus (Mar 14, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> And yet 85 years later, Picard was in traditional fencing gear that had barely been modified from it's current form?



Picard is a traditional sort of guy (aside from his no-strings-attached, post-coital breakfasts with Dr. Crusher). It's fitting he would indulge in an antiquated version of the sport. Who's to say Wesley doesn't prefer to fence with a katana, laser-katana, or Klingon K'Tana?

Also, you seem to be kinda fixating on this fencing thing, are you perchance an épéeophile?  



> I am trying to remember any other time travel/cross dimensional barriers episodes.



There are a lot of them. From memory, in TOS alone there's:

"Tomorrow is Yesterday" (time travel)
"City on the Edge of Forever"  (time travel)
"Assignment: Earth"  (time travel)
"All Our Yesterdays"  (time travel)
"Mirror, Mirror" (parallel universe)

There are some good episodes in the later series, too: "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG), "More Tribbles, More Troubles" (DS9), "Children of Time" (DS9), "Year of Hell (Voy!!?). This is by no means a complete list.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 14, 2013)

Aikidoka & Karateka.
But no other episode with BOTH cross dimension and time travel? IE: the time travel creating parallel worlds?


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## Joker (Mar 14, 2013)

I am so glad I brought popcorn.


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## Morrus (Mar 15, 2013)

Dude.  Kendo is Japanese fencing.  Even the Japanese refer to it as such.   Jeez.  These nitpicks are just getting inane.


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## jonesy (Mar 15, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Dude. Kendo is Japanese fencing. Even the Japanese refer to it as such.  Jeez.  These nitpicks are just getting inane.



Fencing meaning etymogically the act of protecting something a fencing school was therefore a self defense school. Self defense was a term first used for fencing as a martial art for civilian protection. Martial art, given form from martialis or the Roman god Mars, being a loan translation of the meaning of bujutsu in usage. Bujutsu being synonymous in use to kenpō, meaning swordsmanship. Kenpō being a Japanese translation of the Chinese word quán fǎ. Quán fǎ meaning simply boxing, as the cover-all of empty-handed fighting techniques. Inane meaning etymologically 'empty handed'. So yes, inane.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 15, 2013)

Uh, not really.
And since there is a real word which specifies Katana-style fighting, saying "Fencing" was simply a lame joke.

Sorry, but words have meaning. Grammar has rules. 10,000,000,000 ants can all be wrong.


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## Mallus (Mar 15, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> But no other episode with BOTH cross dimension and time travel? IE: the time travel creating parallel worlds?



Good question. I don't think so. Alternate universes are a thing in the Star Trek universe and so is time travel, but I can't recall any episodes which explicitly combine them. But let's look at how time travel works in Trek.

The Trek universe is paradox-tolerant, ie you *can* go back in time and disintegrate your grandfather with a phaser. The timeline will change, but you won't be wiped from existence. You'll just be a logical impossibility (hopefully with a guilty conscience, because you committed murder to prove a point about time travel paradoxes). 

The best example of this is in "City on the Edge of Forever". Drug-addled McCoy jumps into the Guardian of Forever, travels to 1930s Earth, and _changes the past_. The Enterprise is gone from orbit. Yet the away team is _still_ on the surface, and McCoy is still in 1930s. How did they get there? Were any of them even born? Welcome to Paradoxville. Please enjoy your stay, and refrain from killing you distant ancestors.

The Trek universe also strongly suggests that each universe has a single "correct" timeline. A good example of this is "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG). The Enterprise-D encounters a time-hole (err, temporal anomaly), and out pops her predecessor, the Enterprise-C. In flash the timelines changes. Suddenly the Enterprise is a full-on warship, and the Federation is losing a long war with the Klingons. 

Fortunately for the plot, Guinan the mystic space bartender remembers the "correct" timeline, and convinces Picard to send the Enterprise-C back through the time-hole (to it's certain destruction) which restores the "proper" history. 

Time travel in Trek is also ridiculously easy to do. By the time of TOS, every warp-capable starship can double as a time machine, via the warp-slingshot maneuver. During TNG, Picard and Co. meet a 22 century con-artist with a more traditional 26th century time machine. In DS9, the crew travels back the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", and runs afoul of the Starfleet Time Travel Police -- who exist, apparently, because the Federation has something of a time-travel problem. By the time we get to Voyager, we meet Federation people from the 28th or 29th century who fly around in "timeships", ie by then, the Federation has a fleet of nacelled TARDISes. 

Then Enterpise introduces the "Temporal Cold War", which made things even more confusing. 

Put this all together and you see time travel in the Star Trek universe has always been a huge honking mess -- long before the writers of Trek 2009 came on the scene. 



> Sorry, but words have meaning. Grammar has rules.



Which change over time. Always. Trust me on this, I DM for a PhD in linguistics!

I mean, what does the word 'phone' (n.) mean? Is it the rotary telephone on a table from my youth... or the computer with a touchscreen interface connected to a global data network which also can make telephone calls? The answer of course is *both* are phones -- the definition of the word now includes fancy pocket-computers.


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## Dannager (Mar 15, 2013)

Mallus said:


> Which change over time. Always. Trust me on this, I DM for a PhD in linguistics!




Especially pertinent since the film takes place more than a century from now, and is easily the equivalent of someone from the year 1900 making fun of us for calling this wrestling.

My favorite thoughts on language:

"The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows  themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it  according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path  undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow  path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often  profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't  know where it was or where it led to." - E.B. White


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## Dannager (Mar 15, 2013)

Also - interestingly, I think - I'd wager the warp-slingshot technique is probably retired at this point. I don't think modern audiences would find that explanation for time travel plausible enough.


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## Morrus (Mar 15, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Uh, not really.




Yes, really.  









> And since there is a real word which specifies Katana-style fighting, saying "Fencing" was simply a lame joke.




Many, many things in this world have more than one name. For example, there's a real word for a "car"; that doesn't mean that it isn't an "automobile".  Or that it might now also be a "Ferrari".  Or a "sportscar".  Or your "ride".  Or a "vehicle".



> Sorry, but words have meaning.




Indeed they do. Here's a dojo which actually teaches it: the Kiraly Fencing Acacemy which teaches.... Kendo.

http://www.kiralyfencing.com/japanese-fencing

The whole point of this is not of course, Kendo or Fencing; it's just that it's not reasonable to slam a perfectly decent movie because Sulu called his swordplay "fencing".


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 15, 2013)

You forgot Trek7, in which Kirk and Picard emerge from the vortex cloud thing Before it arrives at the planet. ??? Yep, that's time travel. And it made no sense.
One of the few trek books I read was about the GatGoF, and it pointed out the Guardian had a relative bubble around it to protect the viewer. Yeah, it's a geeky excuse. But, the Enterprise disappeared IMMEDIATELY.

Language/Linguistics. Yeah, I'm very familiar with the "Living Language" argument.
I have a counter argument. Not appropriate here.


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## Janx (Mar 15, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Language/Linguistics. Yeah, I'm very familiar with the "Living Language" argument.
> I have a counter argument. Not appropriate here.




I think the crux of the matter is, why do people who don't like Topic X feel the need to post on threads about Topic X that they don't like Topic X?

It's like that Dr. Who thread.   That one dude watched like every episode and hated them all.  And felt the need to explain why in a thread for people who like Dr. Who.

It's dickish behavior.  I hate to make you feel unwelcome, but like most folks grammas say, if you ain't got nothin nice to say, GTFO.


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## Campbell (Mar 17, 2013)

Correct me if I'm wrong. Doesn't Star Trek assume that Earth is united under one language/government? Besides I like katanae. Call me shallow.


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## jonesy (Mar 17, 2013)

Campbell said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong. Doesn't Star Trek assume that Earth is united under one language/government?



Yes and no. United Earth is the major governing organization, but all of the countries and unions exist beneath it. And while all the different languages are still in use, Starfleet doesn't seem to have any members who do not speak English.

Edit: and I mean members from Earth who do not speak it.


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## Morrus (Mar 17, 2013)

jonesy said:


> Yes and no. United Earth is the major governing organization, but all of the countries and unions exist beneath it. And while all the different languages are still in use, Starfleet doesn't seem to have any members who do not speak English.
> 
> Edit: and I mean members from Earth who do not speak it.




i may be misremembering, but I thought everyone in the Federation eithe spoe something called "Galactic" or used a universal translator. So to the viewer, it's all English.


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## jonesy (Mar 17, 2013)

Morrus said:


> i may be misremembering, but I thought everyone in the Federation eithe spoe something called "Galactic" or used a universal translator. So to the viewer, it's all English.



Galactic language? I don't think so. And we were talking about language usage on Earth, not in the Federation (which was the reason I clarified what I was saying).


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 19, 2013)

Oh, everyone just learns English, because Star Fleet is based in the USA, and everyone knows that "Americans" never learn foreign languages.


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## jonesy (Mar 19, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Oh, everyone just learns English, because Star Fleet is based in the USA, and everyone knows that "Americans" never learn foreign languages.



I have a much better explanation: the show focuses on the English speaking portion of the Earth-based operatives.


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## Morrus (Mar 19, 2013)

Did universal translators exist in the Enterprise series?  They have no trouble speaking to Andorians and other newly met races, so I presume so.


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## Janx (Mar 19, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Did universal translators exist in the Enterprise series?  They have no trouble speaking to Andorians and other newly met races, so I presume so.




they had the early stages of a computer translator, but they mostly relied on Hoshi to figure out the language because she was a human translator.


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## Morrus (Mar 19, 2013)

Janx said:


> they had the early stages of a computer translator, but they mostly relied on Hoshi to figure out the language because she was a human translator.




Ah, OK. I've only seen a half dozen episodes, if that.


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## Morrus (Mar 21, 2013)

New trailer is pretty good.

One thing I will say is that I've seen the Enterprise destroyed a couple of times already, so it doesn't really have that much emotional impact on me any more.


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## Dannager (Mar 21, 2013)

The internet is telling me that the ship visiting Alcatraz isn't the Enterprise.


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## Morrus (Mar 24, 2013)

Anyone see the thing they did for Earth Hour last night?

[video=youtube;rd2VBfLtqCA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rd2VBfLtqCA[/video]


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