star trek:into darkness (WARNING: SPOILERS as of 4/23/13)

Originally, Spock was assigned to another ship to be its science/first officer. The Enterprise needed a replacement. Carol Marcus schemed her way into being that replacement, using (off-screen) some combo of being the Admiral's daughter, pluck and luck.

She knew about the specialized weapons from working on them.

I read it on first viewing that he did know that the Botany Bay's crew was in the missles. He was so insistent on using precisely those missles to basically be like "F--- you, Khan, I'm killing all your people." Alternatively, if he didn't know, he might just like the irony of using the missles that Khan himself designed to wipe out Khan.

My take: He needs the Enterprise to do it because he needs a sacrificial lamb/patsy.

We know from the movie that Marcus arranged the sabotage of the Enterprise's warp core (or at least, that is what Khan deduces happened and there's nothing to contradict it). Clearly, Marcus intended for Kirk to fire a crapton of missles at Khan while he was on Kronos, then be unable to "haul ass" out of there. Assuming that went according to plan, the Klingons would then blow the crap out of the sitting-duck Enterprise and thus allow Marcus to ignite the war with the Klingons that he was so desperately craving.

If it doesn't go to plan, at least he has some level of plausible deniability by shipping out the rogue Captain Kirk who just recently got demoted for failing to follow orders.

I disagree. Remember the Maine? A ship, any ship, fires super long-range torpedoes from our side of the neutral zone as was specifically mentioned. Remember, Kirk was specifically ordered to fire from the Federation side. Why else would you need super long-range torpedoes? He violated those orders by going to Kronos to capture Harrison.

The Klingons come looking for who did it and find the, unknown to the Klinks, crippled Federation ship. The Klinks didn't initiate the violence so they cross the neutral zone, attack, and destroy the ship. The Federation can deny firing the torpedoes and they now have a lost ship and crew. The perfect casus belli.

Jim Kirk just happened to volunteer the Enterprise.

I don't know, this seems pretty consistent with the Trekverse -- very minimal thought given to security and verification. To me it's their those things like the way there is always an idle officer on the bridge ready to sit down in a chair the moment it's abandoned by the usual crew member. It's absurd, and yet I appreciated that it happened at least twice in STID, because that's what happens in Star Trek.

I think he wanted the Enterprise to he discovered (recall the sabotage of the warp engines) because he wanted to instigate war but be able to point the finger of blame at Kirk, the known rogue officer.

As I sit here to write about my STID viewing experience, I can't help but feel happy and fortunate that I didn't go to that movie with an attitude like Dayton or El Chup - that of a spoiled little child that felt they were owed something. "My Star Trek" and such nonsense like that doesn't exist, and they're delusional for thinking so. It's pretty sad because with an open mind, this is a good flick.

This movie greatly outperforms JJ's first Star Trek movie. By a wide margin.

- entertaining from start to finish
- by far the best the Enterprise has ever looked, there are some amazing shots of the ship in this movie
- I found the acting to be greatly improved from the last. Most notably Pine, who I was lukewarm on. Not any more though, he delivered
- McCoy once again steals the show, Karl Urban is just great
- Khan was a believable villain, played very capably by Cumberbatch. That scene where he's negotiating terms with Spock is instantly a classic. One of the better Trek villains we've had in a while
- these are the best visuals and CGI ever to exist in a Trek film, they were absolutely outstanding
- present day parallels were noticed and appreciated by me
- the humor wasn't as in your face and blunt as it was in the last movie which I really liked
- Alice Eve is so hot, but I liked her role and thought it worked
- I enjoyed this take on TWOK, well executed
- great ending in that it got me really excited for what could be in the next movie - you have the 5 year mission, the potential war with the Klingons or Khan and 72 supermen chilling out waiting to be revived

It's probably in the top 3 or 4 best Trek movies of all time for me. There are some nitpicks to make, but no deal breakers.

Solid A.

Things must move pretty fast in Starfleet, because KIRK is the first officer of the Enterprise up until he volunteers to go after Harrison. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time between Kirk volunteering and the Enterprise departing, so how could she even know which ship to get on?

They why doesn't she know all about Khan, since he was part of the same program? And, if she doesn't know there are bodies hidden in the torpedoes, why the curiosity to examine weapons she worked on?

Okay, fair enough

Okay. I guess if it hadn't been the Enterprise it would've been some other ship.

Okay, I suppose that works.

Incidentally, the warp core in the engine room? It's the ignition chamber at the NIF at Lawrence Livermore Labs, the one I visited last year (and where I was told that the Star Trek sequel had been filming). I wrote about it in this thread.



Look familiar?

I said this then:

When it was good.

Lotta goddamned filler in there.

Whenever it's about Crusher, Troi, children, or bitchy diplomats, you may as well change the channel.

She follows the missiles. There has to be some time for Starfleet brass to assign them to a given ship. She then tries to figure out how to get aboard that ship. In this case, she had enough time to see that there was a science officer vacancy and could sign up to be Science Officer Carol Mother's-Maiden-Name.

I believe the movie explicitly stated that she worked on the missiles. Eventually I will probably see the movie again and confirm or correct.

Assuming I'm correct, working on the missile program in some capacity doesn't mean that she knows EVERYTHING about the missiles or the other people who worked on them.

She probably did not have the clearance to have been briefed about Khan's existence or role in the the program. She could have just uncovered that there was something weird about this top-secret missle program and wanted to investigate.

Honestly, I don't mind it, though I like the version someone made for one of the Starfleet Command or Armada games better.

Kind of like what Nostalgia Critic, Film Brain, and countless other reviewers have been doing to other movies?

By the way, my nitpicks (some of which Raoul and Elwood [edit: and gul] have diminished) shouldn't be taken to mean that I didn't like STID.

In fact, I can't wait to see it again!

I don't know what you're talking about.

"I like that shep! Et's exciting!"

Actually, though, yeah, that does look like a nice refit for the NX-01. But I don't want a 5th season of Enterprise. For one thing, unless they get somebody like Manny Coto for showrunner, it'd be more of the same, "What do you mean it's not Star Trek? It's got rockets and ray guns!" mentality Berman & Braga had on display. For another, the actors have severely aged out of the roles by now.

Do you not detect a relatively recent backlash, people thinking it "hasn't aged well" and so forth? I think a lot of that is against the idealism and utopianism. Well, I like that stuff.

TNG maintained a pretty high standard and had some truly excellent shows.

That said, I don't think it will be the classic TOS is.

I concur with all that.

Now to bring the point back to the current topic, we kad almost 80 examples of TOS and well over 150 of both RNG and DS9...we've had TWO examples of NuTrek. The sample size is not great enough yet to get the range of results that you got from the TV series.

Whatever one thinks of NuTrek, it's at least as good as the middling episode of TOS, which means it's at least on par with TNG, even in the more negative viewpoint.

I loved the movie.
And I am a Trekkie from the first days of TOS.
I love every character from TOS and I find I'm loving the NuTrek characters as much, but very differently.
I can't say there aren't flaws with NuTrek, because there are. There were flaws with TOS as well. I lived with those, and I'm living with these.
And hoping that with each movie the flaws become smaller, fewer and less noticeable.

THAT is perhaps the most relevant point that can be presented in the whole pro/con NuTrek debate.

Not revisionism on my part, with the dozen or so mentioned exceptions, I didn't much like it in the 80's.

I loved Q
I really liked Data
I liked the Borg as a mega-villain initially (before the whole "Hugh" business.

I liked Data's evil twin - and i loved it when Spock/Scotty/Sarek showed up...

otherwise, it usually bored the fuck out of me...other than a very few exceptional episodes.

Picard was "meh", so was Beverly, the rest were flat out annoying. I didn't even like Worf until they fixed him on DS9

and to repeat myself, even the JJ-prise is better looking than the E-D and that's saying something.

Something Aurora pointed out in her review (and so did the guy at rogerebert.com), STID does an excellent job of making the futuristic world look real and lived-in. I would like to have seen even more of 23rd Century Earth.

Now that several of us WFers have actually seen STiD (I haven't yet ), we can begin speculation, well Trekulation, about STAR TREK xIII.

oh, and relevant to nothing, no matter what I think of STID tonight - and i expect to really like it - THIS iswhat the U.S.S. Enterprise looks like:



I have no idea what THIS is supposed to be:




I shall ignore any indication to the contrary.

While I do like the remodeled Enterprise that debuted in TMP and always will, it's pretty funny how boring it looks compared to the JJprise.

You're on crack.

With the right leadership (either Coto, or some of the folks involved in DS9 like Ira Bahr for instance) I'd love to see more enterprise... BUT with the stipulation that most of the crew was new. Archer promoted to occasional guest star (say, he's an Ambassador or some shit or maybe a nancy pants Admiral that our bad-ass captain is constantly pissing off), ditch the brit guy, let Trip (whom I liked) stay dead, etc. I could actually work with Blalock staying on, if they ditch the ugly ass and irrational catsuits. Hell, if you made it post-BoF you could have Shran as captain but the suits would never risk a series with a non-human captain.

To clarify, in my book the "A" is the exact same ship as the TMP re-fit. the "A" is nothing but a plot device because of the events in TSFS

I'm the Mayor of Toronto?!

With TNG, the sum is greater than its individual parts.

To illustrate the point, let's use the game that Plinkett used for his Episode I review and give us a description of a character without stating what they look like or what their job/role was in the show. Picard is probably the easiest one, but even I'm drawing a blank on Geordi or Tasha or Doc Crusher.

a lot of those plot points are new info to me BUT I think you, and Elwood, have a sort of obviously correct impression here. If in fact Marcus is trying to create a pretext for attacking the Klingons by setting up a ship to be destroyed, the OBVIOUS play is to use Kirk when he presents himself available - since the whole fleet has to know he's a loose cannon.


Also, just by the way - it might be accidental but there's a sly logic in using Marcus like this - because what better way to turn a Starfleet officer like Carol into a Starfleet skeptic like the Carol in TWOK then being the child of an officer who wildly abused his position.

Manny Coto's Enterprise...ehhhh. The guy had fanservice up the wazoo and he did at least attempt to give Mayweather and Sato something to do other than be overpaid extras on the show, but...it was just way too much. The fourth season should've been laying out the beginning of the Romulan war (even if everyone knew there wasn't going to be a fifth season to execute that) or at least a reference or two about Earth post-Xindi--something to give ENT it's own voice.

It's not that his stories were bad, per se (nothing comes anywhere near the stupidity of crying over sick dogs while lusting after your XO)...but it's just nothing worth seeing again.

the fanservice was (a) tasty to me; and (b) more importantly, a needed tonic to wash the bad taste of the forgoing shit out of our mouth.

Season five would indeed needed to have found a balance between fanservice and breaking new ground, but I'm completely okay with gorging on it for one season just to put the B&B bullshit firmly in the rearview.

My comment was directed more at the "look" of the series rather than the plots or writing.