Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Discussion of the new run of Star Trek XI+ movies and any spinoffs
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Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Captain Seafort »

EAS

He seems to have mellowed slightly, and he makes some good points with aspects of the film, although I have issues with others, particularly his continued inability to recognise that this is not Star Trek as it's been for 40-odd years.
It tried hard to relay the message of Gene Roddenberry, but failed to do so on several accounts, most notably because it evoked the concept of destiny, as opposed to free will...The crew's destinies are explicitly said to be predetermined once again, from the person who would least claim that in the Prime Universe. STID just begs to be compared with the Prime Universe, and so I will not spare the movie of my criticism that it does not adhere to all the standards laid down in the over 40 years of Star Trek that came before the Abramsverse, the technical ones (canon), the look and feel, as well as the philosophy.
So what if it's got different themes? For that matter how are destiny and free will irrevocably in opposition to each other. Abrams' films have never claimed that everyone has a predestined role in life, but that they (specifically Kirk) have the potential to be more than they've achieved thus far. STID in particular shows a Kirk who hasn't been forged by the experience of Tarsus and the Farragut developing into the individual we know he can become.

The nonsense about the technology and the "look and feel" has already been discussed and dismissed often enough and long enough that we don't need to go into it again.
Seriously, even if the Enterprise were built for it, why in the world does Kirk hide his 700m ship (if we believe in the official scale) in the ocean, against Scotty's explicit concerns regarding the corrosive salt water, when he could just stay in orbit, beam up and down and launch shuttles much more easily? The whole stunt was inserted into the story merely for a cheap "wow" effect and against all reason.
Good point, although we've seen that transporters in the Abramsverse are a lot iffier than in the Geneverse, and everyone was obviously keen to minimise use of high technology around the natives (to the extent of Kirk and McCoy using native transportation).
Actually, the whole sequence of events is familiar from the previous movie: Kirk is on trial and/or is demoted for a comparably minor offense in the beginning. Then Pike, the captain of the Enterprise, is disabled (or dead this time), so Kirk takes command of the ship. And he stays in command in the end in spite of his previously attested immaturity. This pattern is the same in both movies, and it doesn't become more plausible by just being repeated.
Kirk going from cadet to Captain in a bout five minutes was certainly the weakest part of XI, but here its less of an issue, as one of the central themes was Kirk growing up a bit as a result of being slapped round the head with the consequences of his gung-ho attitude.
And it loses sight of the actual mission. We've got: the mysterious torpedoes that can't be opened or scanned in any fashion; a villain who is hiding on Qo'noS and who could be eliminated by those torpedoes (in real life: attack drones); a Starfleet admiral who wants Kirk to use these and only these torpedoes; an attractive female officer who is unexpectedly assigned to the crew and who poses as an expert for these torpedoes; Kirk's crew members who almost unanimously protest against the use of these torpedoes. Scotty even requests to be released of duty because of them, which Kirk -unexpectedly for Scotty- agrees to. The crew's skepticism about the torpedoes only seems to make sense in hindsight, as prudent foresight. I find it quite distracting that everything revolves around the nature of these plot devices, rather than the question how to eliminate Harrison.
On the contrary, how to eliminate Khan always had an easy answer: fire torpedoes, kill him, job done (at least as far as everyone knew at the time). The real question was whether to eliminate him.
The solution to try to apprehend Harrison, rather than killing him, turns out a stupid mistake because you don't try to land on Qo'noS with a civilian ship and honestly expect to survive this stunt.
And lobbing a few dozen torpedoes at the planet from across the neutral zone is an improvement is it? For someone who has a go at the new films for allegedly departing from the spirit of Star Trek Bernd's being a bit bloodthirsty here.
To add insult to injury, the chase scene with the Klingon ships through the very un-Klingon abandoned city looks much more like Star Wars than Star Trek, and Harrison eliminates the Klingons much like in a superhero movie. Agreed, he does have supernatural forces as will be explained later, but it doesn't feel like Star Trek at all.
Yet another complaint about look and feel, completely ignoring the fact that this is not, and has never been depicted as, the Geneverse.
Also, I think it is quite hypocritical that the Klingons, with whom Kirk and his people have no business, are slaughtered by the dozen, while Harrison gets a chance to surrender. Sure, the Klingons would never surrender, but it is highly unethical to cause so much collateral damage apprehending just a single man, which is just one more reason why Kirk should have used the torpedoes, or any other weapons that would kill just Harrison. Or perhaps he could have asked the Klingons in advance to do the job for him?
Did it somehow escape Bernd's notice that the Klingons were shooting at them while Khan was saving their necks?
The question why Harrison was so sure that the he would be arrested, rather than killed, and why he was so sure that Marcus would equip the Enterprise with his torpedoes, and all 72 of them, remains unanswered anyway.
Sulu had already told him that the Big E had long-range torpedoes locked onto him, and ordered him to surrender. He therefore knew that the Enterprise had some of his toys, and Kirk himself told him that they had all 72.
In the following it is revealed that Harrison is actually Khan. But this revelation has no impact on the story; it is just a message to the audience, "Look, this is still Star Trek. We've even got Khan for you." The fact that it's Khan, the generally accepted Savior of the Star Trek Franchise, remains utterly gratuitous for the rest of the movie.
To a certain extent that's true, but I think the plot did a decent job of justifying his use.
Actually, his reason for revenge is a weak one, compared to the one of Khan 1.0 in "Star Trek II". STID enters a direct competition with the classic, and while Cumberbatch is absolutely convincing in showing Khan's attitude, the story fails to provide him with the strong motivation of having been exiled to a desert planet.
On the contrary, it explained clearly that Khan wanted revenge on Marcus for using him, and for what he believed was the death of his crew.
It doesn't really explain either why Khan allowed himself to become a minion of Marcus.
Because Marcus was holding the fate of his crew over him. This was made pretty explicit.
But with the scene in which Kirk saves the tumbling ship by restarting the reactor the movie has lost me. As already mentioned, I avoided reading spoilers, and therefore I was not prepared for STID totally ripping off Spock's death scene from "Star Trek II", only with switched roles. I anticipated what would follow as soon as Kirk and Scotty were standing in front of that glass door in engineering. I yawned. But it was still a shock that the sequence of events was exactly the same as in "Star Trek II", even the words that Kirk and Spock exchange and the hands on both sides of the glass pane. After the initial shock I couldn't help but giggle, followed by loud laughter. It was so bad, I couldn't help but to laugh it away. My girl-friend says it was embarrassing, and perhaps I should be sorry for disturbing the supposedly most emotional scene of the movie in such an inappropriate fashion. But seriously: What the hell where they thinking? That it would be a nice homage? If this was the intention, it has gone completely awry. The way STID repeats the events of "Star Trek II" (or rather, pre-enacts them) certainly doesn't harm the original movie. But it turns STID and ultimately the whole Abramsverse into a cheap rip-off that taps into the original instead of trying to find its own way.
I'm in too minds about this sequence. On the one hand, I can see what Abrams was trying to do - closely echo the greatest scene in Trek history, while giving it a new meaning by showing Kirk's understanding of the importance of cold logic (and thereby echo Spock's preparedness to sacrifice his own life in the volcano at the start of the film) and Spock admitting that he does have emotions, and does consider Kirk his friend, not just his commanding officer. On the other hand I felt it fell flat, partially because it was obvious to me (if not to Bernd) that it was going to cut and paste large chunks of the script from TWoK, partially because it came in the middle of the film's climax, unlike TWoK, and partially because there was obviously no chance of Kirk staying dead, and the film had already signalled clearly that Khan's blood would be use to revive him.
Characters & acting Well, I can't really say much about Kirk in this movie, other than that he makes many decisions (some of which he has to revise) and engages in reckless maneuvers (some of which end up in even more chaos). In my impression Kirk, even rather than Khan, is the unstable element in the story.
Congratulations Bernd - you've picked up on one of the central themes of the film.
I don't think that it's plausible that Spock can rather live with the loss of his home planet (which is only a side note this time) and of his mother, while the fight against an enemy like Khan provokes such an irate reaction in him ("Khaaan!").
He's had time to come to terms with the loss of his mother and his planet, which he handled about as well as anyone would expect last time (i.e. badly, including beating the crap out of Kirk). On top of this, the complaint ignores one of the main themes, of Spock learning to avoid bottling up his emotions so much, which was highlighted earlier in the film with the discussion with Uhura and Kirk in the shuttle.
The development of Scotty's character is a pleasant surprise in STID. The humor surrounding everything he is doing and saying is toned down to a more appropriate level. His arguably greatest scene is when he asks to be relieved of duty, more like a hollow threat, and Kirk surprisingly accepts his request. The way Simon Pegg plays Scotty's reaction is priceless. It seems I have to revise my opinion from the first movie on this casting choice and I look forward to seeing him next time.
The accent could do with some work though, unless he wants to threaten Dick Van Dyke's reputation.
The engineering of the Enterprise is still as ugly and inappropriately factory-like as already in "Star Trek (2009)". I wouldn't really have expected that to change, but except for a few less water pipes that were visible the whole set still cries "brewery". I like the industrial look of the huge warp core, which strikes me as very realistic, although it has nothing in common with anything we have seen in Star Trek so far. The arguably most questionable design choice is the Vengeance, which not only has a name that is unbecoming of a Starfleet ship but is also as huge and ugly as no Federation vessel ever seen on Star Trek. As much as I hate this abomination of a starship, I think I could set aside my anger about it but only because I was prepared to see it.
Given Bernd's previous, I'm actually pretty impressed that he's managed to restrain this nonsense, although I suppose it would be too much to hope that he'd got his head round the fact that this is not the Geneverse, and is therefore not constrained by its aesthetics.
It took just one year since the destruction of Vulcan for the following to happen: Khan's ship is found adrift in space. Marcus enlists Khan's help to develop a huge starship and all kinds of weapons. The starship is built and launched. This is absolutely ridiculous.
It was made clear that Khan had been found and employed some time before the events of XI - the destruction of Vulcan simply gave Marcus the political impetus he needed to turn his plans for the Vengeance into reality.
So Khan built those torpedoes, and he managed to keep the interior a total secret? How would he explain the empty space that he designed just large enough to hold the cryonic chambers? Agreed, he may have claimed it was for extra explosive charges, but it seems extremely unlikely that he could really keep the secret.
It was a rather large plot point that he failed to keep the purpose of those torps secret.
Khan transports himself to Qo'noS, using Scotty's "transwarp transport" formula. This was already utterly incredible in "Star Trek (2009)", but instead of admitting their error and abandoning the idea, the writers repeat and thereby corroborate it.
This is something called "consistency". It is to be praised, not criticised, that the interstellar transporter didn't simply disappear into some warehouse like the Ark of the Covenant.
Well, and the Enterprise needs less than a day to travel to Qo'noS and back as well.
Consistent with the very high speed of warp from Earth to Vulcan in XI.
After the extreme structural damage, the Enterprise is definitely only fit for scrap. Well, maybe it is actually a new ship in the end, but the impression is created it is still the same Enterprise (only with some modifications to the warp and impulse engines).
Really? I didn't know Bernd had a degree in starship engineering.
Why does McCoy need Khan's blood to cure Kirk? Couldn't he simply revive one of Khan's people, who likely have a suited blood composition too, especially considering that he needs one of their cryogenic chambers for Kirk anyway?
Excellent point, and one of the biggest plot holes in the film. It's possible that since McCoy had conducted his initial experiment with Khan's blood he didn't want to take the chance that the others had different properties.
It looks like McCoy saves only Kirk's life using Khan's blood. What about all the other people who were fatally injured during the attacks? Is it the captain's prerogative? Where could he possibly draw a line, considering that Khan is a blood bank that could be tapped for the benefit of humanity?
McCoy was clear that Kirk needed to be frozen fast to prevent irreversible brain damage. Since he didn't realise the effects of Khan's blood before, he wouldn't have taken this precaution with other fatalities. There's also the issue that repairing radiation damage would be a bit different from reversing fatal physical injuries, or long exposure to vacuum.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Yeah, some reasonable things in that review but a lot of criticisms that don't really gel for me.

What strikes me about it is that Bernd tends to express his opinions as if they were objective facts. It's one thing to say "I don't like the new factory-aesthetic of the engineering hull interiors". Personally I always wished Starship interiors had more of that, and certainly wished that they had that kind of scale to their interior elements. But tastes vary. But it's a big step from there to "it is an objective error for a Starship to look like this", which is the vibe I often get from some of his criticisms.

And Khan was unfrozen and did all his stuff in the last year? Um, no, that is not stated anywhere that I recall. I'd have guessed it was at least several years ago, and more likely ten or so.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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GrahamKennedy wrote:What strikes me about it is that Bernd tends to express his opinions as if they were objective facts.
Especially on the technical side of things, which is where he really went off the rails last time. Saying "it's a shit film, I hate its themes, and I think its fundamental concept is a betrayal of the name Star Trek" is one thing and fair enough. If he dislikes it that much then he's welcome to ignore the Abramsverse. Saying "this is 'factually' wrong, and what you're really seeing is x, y and z", when anyone with a working pair of eyes and a brain can tell that x, y and z bear no resemblance to what crops up on screen, is idiotic.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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There's also a lot of evidence that he went in pre hating the movie and wasn't paying attention to things that were rather explicitly stated.

Heck, his whole bitch fest about Kirk not just nuking Khan with the torps? The opening of the movie has Kirk disobeying one of the founding principles of Starfleet because it's easier than just letting Spock die. However when it comes to Harrison you have Spock and others advocating Starfleet's principles again. And they're not the easy route. The easy route would be to just nuke half the continent ensuring Harrison dies and he gets his revenge. The hard way of doing things is sticking to principles and not giving into base desires like revenge. Though Kirk hadn't gotten so far over it he wasn't willing to beat Harrison half to death (attempt to) before taking him in.

If you go by a literal interpretation of the scene as Kirk disobeying orders the first time, then doing it again. Then yes, however the scene isn't supposed to be viewed that way and it's not what it's conveying. It's conveying that rather than being an impulsive, emotionally driven, wreckless idiot, Kirk is learning to stand up for principles, even if they aren't easy, to take responsibility for what's going on rather than just winging it.

And seriously, how is Bernd of all people advocating for nuking half a continent on a world you're at peace with, to kill a man who's never been given a trial, as the thing you should do to preserve Gene's legacy? That's just willfully not getting it.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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And now we have a list of "inconsistencies". Or, as the rest of the planet would describe it, "stuff Bernd doesn't like".
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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Some are legit inconsistencies, but many are simply things left unexplained, and a few are simply not accurate.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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stitch626 wrote:Some are legit inconsistencies, but many are simply things left unexplained
Sure, but it's pretty obvious that that isn't why they're on the list.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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Captain Seafort wrote:
stitch626 wrote:Some are legit inconsistencies, but many are simply things left unexplained
Sure, but it's pretty obvious that that isn't why they're on the list.
Fully agreed. Bernd just has something against the new movies (probly cause they are "different").
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

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Things that jump out to me...

1) Enterprise as a submarine. His gripe here is that the ship would need to be watertight and capable of resisting pressure. Um... okay... and? He also thinks it would need "sonar". Well again, okay. And? And in any case, does anybody REALLY doubt that the 24th century has funky sensors OF THE FUTURE that can do what sonar does waaaaay better than sonar does it? They probably have words like quantum in their name, too.

None of this is "inconsistent" with anything.

2) Why was the Enterprise hiding under water? Well, who knows. But again, this isn't actually an inconsistency. It's just a complaint.

3) Why does Harewood still do the bombing? Maybe he's just a man of his word. Bernd even states himself that Khan might just kill his daughter if he refuses, and that's a possibility. But how about this one? Maybe Khan has a recording of him agreeing to do it. Blackmail. In short, there's any number of reasons he went through with it. Again, not an inconsistency, and not even a real problem.

4) Wouldn't the meeting have security? Perhaps. We can assume that it would. If we're allowed to assume that it would, we're also allowed to assume that Khan had ways around that security as well.

5) They use transwarp beaming again. This not only is not an inconsistency, it's the exact opposite! He's complaining here about a CONSISTENCY!

6) Vengeance model on display. Meh. I don't doubt that it was knocking around Starfleet as a suggested design, and the secret part was that he actually had it built. Most militaries have such things - paper projects for wonder weapons that never get built. Marcus built one. And again, not an inconsistency.

7) Why does Admiral Marcus the Section 31 facility to Kirk and Spock - because he's already setting Kirk up to go after Khan, I'd say. Marcus is trying to play Kirk throughout, here.

8) Torpedo mystery #1: Admiral Marcus orders Kirk to use the 72 torpedoes, and only these torpedoes, and apparently all of them, to eliminate Harrison. Why? Good question. I've suggested why I think in another thread - Marcus had the torps but no way to get Khan's people out of them because they were booby trapped. They're the only weapons he can use to get rid of Khan, and he can only use them with the popsicle people inside them. He has no choice. And again, what is this supposed to be inconsistent WITH?

9) Chekov's promotion. Chekov is the "wonder kid", remember? Kirk presumably thinks he would be better at the job than anybody else. And again, this isn't a... oh, never mind.

10) There's a "warp wake". At last, an ACTUAL inconsistency! Yes, there is. So they upgraded the warp engines since the last film. As an aside, I wonder if Bernd thinks that the different "going to warp" effect in Star Trek II as opposed to TMP is an inconsistency that is a weakness of the former film?

11) Travel times are indeed really, really short. This is actually consistent with the last film in which travel times were really, really short. I begin to wonder if they have discovered transwarp drive in this timeline, actually.

12) Is the moon Praxis? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I think it is. But his main complaint here is that Praxis shouldn't be in the Klingon home system. Um... again, he complaining about a consistency.

13) The K'normian ship leaves through a different hatch. Um, so what?

14) Yes, apparently the effects of the ENT virus were reversed rather earlier in this timeline. So what?

15) This is like saying that if some smugglers were landing on a US beach and the local law enforcement caught them, and the smugglers shot the local cops up and got away to sea again, then the US is obviously not a military power to be reckoned with. Absurd.

16) See earlier. Khan is confident that Marcus couldn't get the popsicles out because he designed the torpedoes so that nobody else could get them out. There's a chance Marcus might have managed it anyway, of course - just as his daughter did through pure luck. But if so, Khan has lost and that's an end to it. He has to gamble here, and he does so. As to why 72 is important, he wants to know if Kirk has them all or not. If Kirk had said "50", Khan would know that Marcus had held some back to continue his leverage. He might have changes his plans based on that.

17) Khan likely used a lot of different identities, some more fleshed out than others. Not really an issue.

18) This is a good point. If Khan genuinely wants Kirk to open a torp, he should offer to do it for him.

19) 300 years... give or take. A little rounding.

20) One could imagine a whole book being written about the complex plot Khan must have had to escape and how it failed. Nobody notices the popsicles are missing? Well, think of any explanation you like. Maybe he substituted other bodies. Maybe he substituted holograms of bodies. Maybe he suborned the people whose job it was to keep watch on those cryotubes. Maybe a lot of things. And yes... if you find it implausible then bear in mind that it DIDN'T WORK.

21) They cryotubes have batteries, obviously.

22) How did he design the torps. See number 20 re the complex plot... that failed in the end. Any one of these might have been what they uncovered at the last moment to foil him.

23) Exactly 72 torpedoes built? Actually, think again. When Harewood walks into the Kelvin institute he walks past one in the background. So yes, he DID build more of them. But they were lost in the explosion - which is probably another reason he attacked that particular facility.

24) Why sabotage the Enterprise after a successful mission. The sabotage does two things. One, it prevents Kirk going to Kronos in the Enterprise - something Marcus didn't want. And two, it means the ship can't escape and the Klingons will likely destroy it after it does fire. Remember Marcus wants a war here, and whilst poking the Klingons is good for that, poking the Federation too is also good. Klingons get to rage about their attacked homeworld, Federation rages about their destroyed flagship. One war. Unfortunately for Marcus Kirk didn't let the broken warp drive stop him from going to Kronos anyway.

25) Ships stop on a dime here. It seems to be the way of the universe - their warp drive is such that when you disengage it, you stop FAST. It may "look unrealistic", I suppose, but it is perfectly consistent with the last film.

26) Yes, Vengeance is about a mile long. This isn't an inconsistency, it isn't a plot hole. It's how big the fricken ship is. Let it go, dude.

And anybody who thinks it's absurd for Starfleet to be able to build a ship this big hasn't been paying attention. Look at Spacedock. It's a thousand times the volume of the Enterprise, at least. Building big structures is not and has never been a problem for Starfleet, in any timeline.

27) No, it didn't. Nobody ever says when Khan was unfrozen.

28) The isn't a lot of traffic at Jupiter. We SAW Jupiter, and we see no traffic whatsoever. I can't imagine why there would be a lot of traffic there, either. Some scientific research stations monitoring Jupiter, perhaps. Beyond that... what's there to justify traffic?

29) Meh. I've no idea why Bones did it, presumably his scans and studies thus far had indicated it might be something worth doing... for some reason.

30) I tend to think that the Enterprise was going to drop out of warp at Earth, when the Vengeance came ramming up behind. Had the battle continued at warp they would indeed have overshot their objective. Um, okay, so what? It's not like nobody ever overshot a destination before. Can't you imagine a fighter heading for point A and then overshooting it when some enemy fighter came up shooting from behind?

And yes, because of the damage they dropped out where they would have anyway. Think of that fighter above, coming in to land. An enemy attacks from behind... and the fighter boost speed to try and run! But it's hit, oh no! And it crashlands on the runway it had been aiming to land on a moment before. Surely this is not impossible? Or even particularly unlikely?

And why is it an issue that the Enterprise was warping between the Earth and the moon? We already know they warp right into planetary orbit. They warped into Vulcan orbit in the last film. There are MULTIPLE examples of this throughout every brand of Star Trek ever.

31) Young Spock contacts Old Spock because "of a feeling that he himself is living in a second-rate universe in which events repeat in some fashion?"

I'm not even going to argue this one. Grow up.

32) Private security. Actually, nobody says they are. Scotty ASKS if the guy is Starfleet or private. I imagine this is because he's in a non-standard uniform. And bear in mind, IIRC Scotty never hears any mention of Section 31, which is what the guy probably was. "Private security" is probably a fairly good guess given what Scotty sees and knows or doesn't know.

33) New launch hatches installed for this mission, is my guess. Although I think somebody suggested that they stripped out 72 of the lifeboats and stuck the advanced photons into the empty launch tubes instead, which I think is a kind of cool idea. As to why... they're new weapons, presumably they don't fit the standard tubes.

34) Kirk doesn't allow him to. Spock allows him to. Why doesn't he smell a rat? Because his Achilles heel is that he's overconfident in his own ability to outmaneuver everyone else.

35) Kirk catching Scotty is "physically impossible"? Maybe. But it's the kind of "slightly above average" action feat that most films feature. I'll give him Chekov catching and holding both Kirk and Scotty, though. Of all the people to do it, Chekov! He's like 95 lbs!

36) Lol, "I don't like the styling of the warp core!" is not an inconsistency, or a plot hole, or anything other than an opinion.

37) Sorry, but anybody who makes this complaint doesn't understand parallel universes.

The whole POINT of parallel universes is that EVERY possible reality is played out somewhere. In some universes the differences will be imperceptible - a universe without shrimp. In some they will be major - a universe of nothing BUT shrimp. And every single permutation and combination in between.

38) Yes indeed. Bernd must therefore also hate TMP, one assumes. And Star Trek II. And V (okay, I give him a pass if he hates V).

39) Spock is superhuman?! Oh noes! Um... Vulcans have always been stated to be physically far superior to Humans. On occasions in TOS when Spock fought his crewmates, it often took several people to subdue him and even them it was more by luck than force that they managed it. In DS9 they state that Vulcans are three times the strength of Humans. Ditto in Trek XI when Spock smacks Kirk down easily when he breaks his cool. Spock is probably the only person on the Enterprise who could even come close to giving Khan a run for his money. And note that even then, Khan would have whupped his ass if Uhura hadn't shown up and shot him like six times.

40) You don't think that the damaged transporter might have been too damaged to allow it to beam people who were moving?

41) Gee, I go with the whole "23rd has completely different building materials" option. What was the problem again?

42) Valid point. Though others have pointed out that McCoy doesn't know for a fact that the other people have the same healing blood that Khan has, as he has only experimented on Khan's blood. Be a real shame to make that assumption and then turn out to be wrong, wouldn't it? He may have been unwilling to take that chance, and I wouldn't blame him. As for the blood remaining intact, sure. Assuming phaser fire doesn't violate all your cells in bad ways, which it may. But even if it doesn't, how much blood does McCoy need? If it's more than a bodyfull, then shooting Khan dead isn't an option, you need to spend a few days sucking more and more from him.

43) Meh. It's super blood, it does super things. And remember, we are dealing with 24th century medicine here. Medicine in which a person can pop a pill and regrow a kidney within 20 minutes. I have little trouble believing they could fix a lot of the damage themselves and Khan's super blood did the rest.

44) What makes anybody think McCoy DIDN'T cure a whole lot of other people with the serum? And who is to say that the serum, once they understand it, will not indeed become part of that fabulous 24th century medicine? Hey, maybe that is where those wonderful kidney regrowing pills come from anyway?

45) Meh. Apparently they were fine with this violation of ethics, and I can't say as I blame them.

46) Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't look at all like Ricardo Montalban. Yes. One of the issues with this movie is that they didn't resurrect Ricardo Montalban from the grave. You know, Chris Pine doesn't look exactly like a young Will Shatner, either.

We're also told that Khan is different because... he fights? Um. the Space Seed Khan openly boasted that he had ten times Kirk's strength and could easily defeat him. And would have. Not seeing the issue here.

47) Is cryonic punishment legal? I don't know. Any reason to think it isn't?

48) The Enterprise is fit only for scrap, you say? Based on... what? Sorry, but this is just an absurd claim.

Phew. I can't believe I slogged through all that.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Tsukiyumi »

GrahamKennedy wrote:46) Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't look at all like Ricardo Montalban. Yes. One of the issues with this movie is that they didn't resurrect Ricardo Montalban from the grave. You know, Chris Pine doesn't look exactly like a young Will Shatner, either.
Actually, he does quite a lot. If you look at Montalban at approximately the same age as Cumberbatch, that is.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm425832448/nm0001544

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1242541312/nm1212722
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by LaughingCheese »

WOW :shock:


Soo....this Khan is wayyyy younger....somehow..
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Tsukiyumi wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:46) Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't look at all like Ricardo Montalban. Yes. One of the issues with this movie is that they didn't resurrect Ricardo Montalban from the grave. You know, Chris Pine doesn't look exactly like a young Will Shatner, either.
Actually, he does quite a lot. If you look at Montalban at approximately the same age as Cumberbatch, that is.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm425832448/nm0001544

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1242541312/nm1212722
Hmm, that's actually closer than I'd have expected.

But yeah. There's a longstanding issue in film in general of how important it is for a character to look like he or she is "supposed to". It can be a valid complaint if they don't - see Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher for example. But to me that line lies where the look of the character is important to the story. Jack Reacher being a very large and physically intimidating guy is a constant element of the stories, which makes Tom Cruise absurd in the role. You can argue that Khan, having an Indian name, shouldn't be white. But he was originally played by a Mexican, which is about as far from Indian as you can get. Hell, given recent Indian history I'd imagine you're far more likely to find people with white ancestry living there than you are Mexicans!

In fact if somebody wants to make race the issue, you could even say that that complaint is itself kind of racist. If the argument is that it's bad for a white guy to play an Indian, whilst it's okay for a Mexican guy to do it, the implication seems to be that any non-white ethnicity is pretty much interchangeable. "He's not white so he can be played by anybody who isn't white".

But if the only complaint is that Cumberbatch doesn't look like Montalban... well yeah. But nobody does. And I'd rather have a good actor who is good in the role than pick somebody who resembles Montalbal regardless of how good he is.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Teaos »

A good example of a character only kinda looking like they are supposed to, in Harry Potter only the ginger kid matches his in book discription, the other two only meet vauge characteristics. But people accepted it becuase it was close enough.
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

Oh, wow! :shock: Okay, anyone think someone in casting saw that pic of Montalbam and compared it to Cumberbatch? :wink:
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Re: Bernd reviews STID (spoilers, obviously)

Post by Graham Kennedy »

LOL at the Ex Astris comment on the Vengeance : "Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise, so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m, and not one mile."
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