nuTrek- rewrite the plot holes

Okay, here's a fun exercise for the Workshop:

The task is simple: close the plot holes and rewrite the implausible in the neTrek movie. Two simple rules:

1. You don't have to rewrite the whole movie. Just pick something you hated and rewrite it so that it actually works.

2. Don't take the easy copout and describe what you'd change- actually rewrite the scene as a script or a narrative. This is the workshop, after all.

You guys have seen me do this with ST VI, SW I, Buck Rogers, and BSG. It ain't that hard. Have some fun with it!

Here; I'll start:

McCoy: "How old are you?"

Chekov: "22!"

not necessarily a plot hole, but...

(Uhura and Spock in turbolift, after Vulcan has been destroyed)
Uhura: "Tell me what you need"

(Spock encircles his arms around her waist, spins her around and draws her to him)
Spock: "Bring dat booty ova here!"

I don't know that I know all the mechanics of scriptiwriting, but a LOT of room for backstory could have been changed by the addition of two letters:

Pike: "re-enlist in Starfleet"

Better than that, he could have elaborated.

"Jim, I've seen your record. I know that you are gifted in ways many starfleet captains will never be, I know about your scores and your performance at the Academy and later in Command school. And I know why you quit. But you are throwing your life away out here. You know it as well as I do - you were born for something greater than this. Re-enlist in Starfleet. Make a difference. Very few men have the chance to."

That may be a bit wordy but you get the idea.

Spock's mind-meld narrative: (I don't remember the original verbatim but it would start like this...)

Spock: "Romulus's sun was dying. The newly re-formed Senate consulted their best minds -- they could conceive of no solution other than evacuation. But the Romulans are a proud people. Many, too many, refused to leave their homeworld to be scattered across colonies. I felt for them, Jim. I wanted to help them. With a team of their world's best scientists, I devised a device that we hoped would would accelerate the reactions within their sun, to... rekindle its fire, to use a metaphor. We... succeeded. The star's reactions accelerated out of control. Within a week, the solar activity had wreaked havoc on the atmosphere of Romulus. The tides rose. Volcanic and seismic activity tore the surface of the planet apart. Your God is said to have created a planet in six days. Jim... I destroyed one in seven. And now I must pay."

Wordy, but not much more so than the original.

^^^
I like it. I'm not 100% sure I'd lay the actual fault directly on Spock but involve him closely enough that Nero could conceivably blame him...and for sure only the existence of the Romulan system (as opposed to the galaxy!) being at stake is win.

Eh, somehow Spock trying something daring and royally screwing it up, to me, seems like a far more serious and thought-provoking thing to do. Not to mention serious enough that somebody would take vengeance against him to the, ahem, biblical level Nero did. lol

Make kirk dishonorable discharge impresses Fleet enough to bring him back in. Some type of prison too.

And there's my "seismic-level WTF" of the day. Thank you, baba.

Mostly I'd just take out the line at the top of the script that says "hire epileptic off his meds to man the camera."

Aye, it looked like the noobTrek guys tried to cop Firefly's approach to effects -- but neglected to notice that the camera only really got shaky while showing the ship in atmosphere. And never so badly that you couldn't still make out what was happening.

My biggest problem is with Nero, who obviously doesn't understand the first thing about time travel, especially into the past.
Once in the past, you don't go and kill the guy who was trying, and failed, to save your planet. You get your ass to the planet and figure out a way to move everyone off the planet before the sun goes nova and takes the planet with it! You send a message to Spock and tell him his plan isn't going to work!

Thus I must assume (not a good thing, I know) that something happened to Nero, and only Nero, either during the attempted rescue, or soon after. Something that Spock discovered AFTER they met 25 years in the past.

Spock (during the explanation to young Kirk): He blames me for the loss of his family, his world, his life. I tried to tell him that since we were both here in the past we had a chance to fix the error; but I was unable to reason with him. I learned that soon after the planet was destroyed, he was injured below decks, and one of the slugs (whatever the hell they were called), was imbedded into his cortex, destroying all hopes of reasoning with him.

Here ya go; the BIG fix:

I'm feeling rather smug- I think I killed a couple birds with one stone, there. Now we know why everyone else on the bridge was a rank amateur as well. The only thing I might think of to change in the above is bringing in McCoy to 'rescue' Kirk from the security guard and escort him to Pike. Then it preserves some of the original interaction without the silly 'faking an illness' subplot.

Written this way, you can still keep the 'troubled youth' scenes. The 'longing look' at the Connie being built can still precede Kirk's original entry into Starfleet, along with his meeting McCoy. It would have to be altered slightly but its still doable. Then, like Spock's flash-forward, it is implied that several years would have elapsed between then and the post-command school bar scene portrayed above. It also gets the relative ages back in line as well, and implies Kirk's prior fleet experience aboard Republic and Farragut.

I'd track down everyone I could who's been a major character in all the incarnations, bring them in, have them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (but allow them to admit that they've been in talks about being in the film). The film would have absolute secrecy while it's being shot, and even the trailers would conceal what it's going to be about and who was going to be in it. Also, every actor would only get the pages of the script for the scenes they were going to be in, and they'd get those only early enough for them to learn their lines in time to shoot the scenes that they'd be in, so they wouldn't have the thing laying about for 6 months or whatever before they had to put in their appearance. There'd be three versions of each scene that they were going to be in, and they wouldn't know which ones were going to be shot until they got on the set, and in some cases, they'd have to shoot all three versions. The only people who'd know what the complete script was would be the writer(s), the director and the editor.

No previews for the film at all. So all anybody would know when they went into the theater to see the film would be the title: Star Trek: Redemption. The opening credits would consist solely of the title and a black screen. We'd fade into see the bridge set (as a set and not as the bridge) with all the surviving members of the original cast, in uniform, gathered around Shatner in the captain's chair. Shatner would say, "Surprise! As many of you have noticed, Star Trek seems to have lost it's way. I guess admiral Kirk was right when he said these kids couldn't steer. We have decided to take the old gal out one last time to correct the things that have gone wrong, and set the Star Trek universe in the right direction again. As such, we in the Star Trek family would like to apologize for ST V, the first two seasons of ST:TNG, the ending of DS9, most of Voyager, ST: Insurrection, ST: Nemesis, and all of Enterprise. We would also like to dedicate this film to all those members of the ST family who are no longer with us. Sadly, their names are too numerous to mention here, but will be listed in the credits at the end of the film. Now, Captain Sulu, if you'll be so kind as to lay in a course for the second star to the right. . ."

The camera moves as everyone takes their places at their stations and we slip into the film, proper. (BTW, Scotty and Dr. McCoy will briefly be CGI'd in during a few minutes of the film.) Star Fleet is going to decommission the Enterprise and one of the planets that the Enterprise did some of their "miracle work" for, has requested that the ship be placed in orbit around their planet as a permanent museum, they've also requested that the bridge crew be there for the dedication and a medal ceremony. The Enterprise is cobbled together at this point and only has a skeleton crew.

On their way to the planet, they're attacked by the Romulan commander that Kirk and Spock duped to get the cloaking device. She's using an experimental weapon that when the Enterprise is attacked by it, creates a rift in space and actually puts the whole cosmos in jepardy (McCoy and Scotty are killed in the attack). Into the rift are also thrown the ships and characters from the various incarnations of Trek. All of them have to work together to figure out how to seal the rift and save the cosmos, in the process, it's discovered that various moments in time will have to be "uncreated" and this means that things like ST:Enterprise never happened. Give the folks about to be erased a chance to make a noble speech, and then push the button, so that the rift is sealed and the remaining folks are returned to the time and space which they vanished from.

The Kirk Enterprise appears seconds after it originally disappears and engages in a battle with the Romulan ships (gotta have some good space battles, doncha know). They manage to beat the Romulans, but there's a heck of a lot of damage to the Enterprise and she limps into orbit around the planet where she's to become a museum. There's an award/memorial ceremony, where Kirk gives a moving speech about those who've been lost and the adventures to come for those who choose to follow in their footsteps. Roll credits and we're done.

Done right, it wipes out all kinds of continuity errors and the like. It can also serve to inject the franchise with some much needed vim and vigor.

I banged that out in less than an hour after two viewings of the movie. (Yes, I went twice despite my critical panning of it... )

SO WHY CAN'T THE GODDAMN SCRIPTWRITERS WHO HAVE MONTHS TO WORK ON THIS SHIT EVER GET IT RIGHT?

Because they don't give a shit, figuring that so long as it says "Star Trek" on the marquee, people will show up and watch the film.

For Kirk beating the Kobayashi Maru, they should have done a "The first rule of the Kobayashi Maru is you do not talk about the Kobayashi Maru." bit before sending the cadets into the sim, the first time. All they know about it is that if you "blow" the sim, you're out of the Academy. Kirk, of course, gets beat, has a huge overreaction to it, but one of the instructors pulls him aside, sets him down, and explains to him that its a character test, and that his response to the situation is more important than rescuing the ship. He's also told that his overall test scores in other course work, enable him to request a "do over." Kirk requests it, is put on suspension for a week (until they have an opening for him to redo it).

He spends that week studying combat records, trying to find a way to win. He discovers an obcure account of a nearly identical situation, where the commander is able to put the ship through a tight manover, and defeat the enemy. On his second run of the Kobayashi Maru, Kirk tries it, only to have the sim crash, saying that his ship tore itself to pieces. Kirk is angry, but controls himself better, asks for another "do over," and since his response was better, they grant it to him, without being suspended for a week. (But he still has to wait a week or so before he can retake the test.)

Kirk then goes over the last sim, comparing it to the historical record, trying to figure out what he did wrong. In the end, he figures out that the problem is that the sim is using the rated specs of the ship, but because an actual ship is capable of more than the rated specs, the manover was possible. Kirk then reprograms the simulation, does his manover, and beats the Klingons.

He's naturally called on the carpet for this, and told he's going to be bounced out of the Academy for this, when he whips out the historical record, proving that the ship could do the manover. This causes the Board of Inquiry to have a "Holy shit! The kid's right!" moment, they reverse the decision to bounce him, and give him his commendation, because he, of all the cadets who'd taken the test, was smart enough to figure out that the simulation was wrong. (They then change things so that no one else can do what he did.)

Here's another one:

Nero is the head of a mining company working an inner asteroid belt in the Romulans home system. His wife and child live aboard a station in the belt that is the headquarters of their operation.

Due to Romulan experimentation with transwarp in the vicinity of their primary, they accidentally cause their star to destabilize. Spock rushes in with the solution: a synthetically derived 'red matter' which, when injected into the star's core, will re-stabilize it. He carries out his mission and saves Romulus, but the 'fix' results in a solar flare which destroys the station, Nero's family, and his livelihood. His own ship is damaged trying to escape the effect, and falls in towards the Romulan home star. He then slingshots around it in an attempt to escape, and emerges on the Federation side of the Romulan Neutral Zone in the early 23rd Century, where he is confronted by Starfleet (The USS Kelvin) for breaching the zone. He attacks and destroys the Kelvin, and then goes into hiding in an attempt to figure out how to return to his own time.

He figures it out, tries it, and then fails. These are Romulan miners, dammit, not Vulcan mathematicians! After the reverse slingshot they emerge some 25 years in the future, in a timeline altered by his original actions 25 years before. Insane with rage and grief over the loss of his family, hunted now by both Romulans and the Federation, he goes on a rampage and decides to 'retroactively' kill Spock (and weaken the Federation) by destroying his homeworld and some other core Federation planets. Of course, he doesn't know enough about Spock to understand that he's too late, the Spock is already in Starfleet, but that doesn't stop him from transforming some of the artificial singularities in his Romulan warp core (remember that episode of TNG- Time Stop I think it was? The one where Picard draws a smiley face in the mushrooming cloud of a time-stopped warp core breach) into a 'black hole' bomb he can use to implode Vulcan.

Roll the movie from there. TOS Spock never arrives in the altered timeline- he's either altered along with it or does not realize what happened to Nero and trucks on happily in his own time, having saved the Romulands. There is no red matter and no advanced starfleet ship, either. No need to strand Kirk on 'Delta Vega' as a plot device to meet TOS Spock and no need to impossibly transport him across light years. The nuCrew never even realizes they are dealing with a foe from the future and an altered timeline- they just go all phasers and bare knuckles and take care of the problem.

Throw in my earlier fix for Kirk as well, and you've got a reboot. The beauty of it is that the audience understands what's happened, but for the nuCrew the entire 'time travel' element is removed as they are completely unaware that they now exist in an altered timeline from TOS. (Unless Nero monologues it to them at some point. Villains have been known to do that...)

"I estimate only ten million survived"

Still tragic, but it is more realistic that millions of Vulcans would be off planet or hastily fled.

And it would make the reestablishment of a new Vulcan later more realistic.

"We will reach Vulcan in seven_________"

Cut away before the guy on the bridge says "minutes" which is utterly ridiculous.

Audience can imagine minutes, hours, days, or whatever fits their own view of canon.

Line by Nero

"Most of the Romulan fleet had been destroyed in the last war with the Federation".

One line that explains at once:

1) Why evacuation of Romulus wasn't possible.

2) Why Nero hated the Federation so much.

3) Why the Federation felt responsible for saving Romulus.