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Im sitting here watching the latest movie and it has me wondering.....

This is a prequel and as we all know Vukcan is destroyed by Nero with Spock watching from a nearby planet. This causes a problem for Star Trek III. They find Spock of course and return him to Vulcan to get his katra back. Now that Vulcan is gone this cannot happen. I know Spock speaks of resettling the Vulcan race in this movie but makes no mention of it being Vulcan after their home world. Anyone have any insight?

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in the first of the New Movies, they changed the timeline when they had Spock show his emotions towards Uhura at the Academy, among many other changes in the timeline between this new cast and the old one

they set themselves up to basically rewrite and redo the entire history from that move onward,,,,,,it does give the writers a whole bunch of freedom,,,,,writing in that genre must have been a minefield of continuity headaches before these two movies and this new cast

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The ship that destroys Vulcan came back through time. That disrupted the timeline and sent events into a different direction. I think Old Spock was stuck in a time warp or something on that ship so he wasn't affected, or something like that (it's been a while since I've seen it).

They did that intentionally so they didn't have to make all the future stories line up with the old series - with the timeline changes they're open to do whatever they want.

Edited by Ken Cartwright
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And another issue with the new movie; not many people caught either! When Jim Kirk is debating joining Star Fleet and rides his bike to a point overlooking the shipyards; in the original Star Trek, and physics, the ships cannot fly in a dense gravity atmosphere. The warp drive engines would not stay on their pylons. They would twist and break off. And never mind that anti-matter does not work in a oxygen atmosphere. Sorry for the nerd showing but just an observation.

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I had never thought about seeing the starships on earth! Good catch. I had been wondering about Vulcan being destroyed and how that fit in with everything. Did the Rodenberry estate or The producers ever implicitly state that it was not meant to be a prequel? It really is the only way for the movie to make sense, isn't it?

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And another issue with the new movie; not many people caught either! When Jim Kirk is debating joining Star Fleet and rides his bike to a point overlooking the shipyards; in the original Star Trek, and physics, the ships cannot fly in a dense gravity atmosphere. The warp drive engines would not stay on their pylons. They would twist and break off. And never mind that anti-matter does not work in a oxygen atmosphere. Sorry for the nerd showing but just an observation.

The TOS Enterprise seemed to do OK in Earth's atmosphere at an altitude pretty near the service ceiling of an F-104. Also, I'm pretty sure that anti-matter doesn't work in any atmosphere at all. I assume the ship's antimatter is stored in a vacuum chamber devoid of any matter and contained by magnetic fields. Since the anti-matter comes in it's own container, it doesn't matter what atmosphere is around the outside of the ship. Also, a Klingon BOP doesn't seem to have any problem operating in an atmosphere, even landing on the surface of Class M planets. Edit: Forgot to mention USS Voyager had landing gear and was actually shown landing on a planet in one epp IIRC.

I thought it was weird that the new Enterprise was built on Earth, but I didn't see it as technically impossible.

Finally, the new movies are a re-imagining of the series. The timeline was altered when the Romulan ship came back through time and destroyed the USS Kelvin. Everything from the date of Kirk's birth could be different. The reality that old Spock knew doesn't exist anymore in this new timeline.

Edited by Dave Williams
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It's an Alternate Universe. It is not a prequel, the original Spock sees Vulcan destroyed after the events of the Next Generation.

Correct, the existence of parallel alternate timelines is one of Star Trek`s recurring themes. Somewhere, the reality old Spock knew (the series and movies 1-9) continues in parallel to this new movie/new timeline Trek.

That way everyone involved in selling Trek stuff gets to have their cake and eat it by starting anew without saying all that appeared in old Trek never happened.

Cheeres, Ian

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This movie was awful. As a fan of all the shows and movies I had to make myself stay in the theater. The first federation ship the uss Kelvin didnt even have necels. I guess I have read to many if the books and watched to many of the shows to enjoy this movie. It's like the writers and director never watched star trek before.

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This movie was awful. As a fan of all the shows and movies I had to make myself stay in the theater. The first federation ship the uss Kelvin didnt even have necels. I guess I have read to many if the books and watched to many of the shows to enjoy this movie. It's like the writers and director never watched star trek before.

Not sure what "necels" are, but if you mean an engine nacelle, it sure did. It had a single one slung under the saucer section. The secondary hull was above the saucer section.

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Y'all know that it's just a movie, right?

Vince

I was tempted to quote Python`s "it`s only a model" earlier but changing it to "It`s only a computer generated image" simply doesn`t have the same resonance to it.

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yes, of course, everything in 2012 is "only a ________"

but, this is a series of tv shows, books, movies, and then books again,,,,,,,that prided itself on at least trying to keep a fairly linear continuity of technology and history in the creation of these snippets of entertainment

to the point that manuscripts were rejected in between the end of the original series and the first movie in the late seventies

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As some have indicated, it is a reboot of the series. As such, it does not need much continuity beyond the basic concept and some signature design elements. I hated it the first time I saw it, but then I realized that the producers were not attempting a faithful reproduction of the original series. They are instead trying to market a valuable franchise to a new, younger generation using modern production values. That means young, sexy actors in key roles and a fast paced, action packed story line.

One of the things I found interesting was the original series described William Shatner's Kirk as the youngest to ever promote to Captain of a starship at age 31. That was the best they could do in the 60's and make it plausible to viewers of the period. In the reboot, they have 28 year old (at the time)Chris Pine in command, and he looks younger than that. This plays well to boomer kids, at whom most expensive productions are targeted these days. However, can you imagine walking onto an aircraft carrier and seeing someone under 30 as the CO? Remember, crews often refer to the captain of a ship as "the old man."

But "It is only a movie."

The original series was a wonderful concept and has stood the test of time. Everything since has stood on the shoulders of the pioneering giants who thought it up and did it in the 60s.

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Y'all realize that we're all just having fun talking about nerd stuff that some of us enjoy, right?

Of course, and I'm glad you're all having fun discussing it. I just find it amusing when people point out 'flaws' in something which is totally fictional.

Vince

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This movie was awful. As a fan of all the shows and movies I had to make myself stay in the theater. The first federation ship the uss Kelvin didnt even have necels. I guess I have read to many if the books and watched to many of the shows to enjoy this movie. It's like the writers and director never watched star trek before.

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Of course, and I'm glad you're all having fun discussing it. I just find it amusing when people point out 'flaws' in something which is totally fictional.

Vince

I think the discussion is more about consistent story-telling, so there can certainly be flaws in that. If you're going to bother watching a movie at all, you should probably understand the story otherwise it's a waste of time. If there's a question about how part of that story is told, or something is not understood, what's the harm in asking for clarification?

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I just find it amusing when people say things like 'the ships cannot fly in a dense gravity atmosphere' when the ships in question do not actually exist. The whole thing is a work of fiction and is not trying to replicate any form of reality.

To put it another way, discussing how the P-51's in Red Tails couldn't have performed X manoeuvre shown in the film seems sensible to me - after all, we know that P-51's exist and we know what their flight envelope is. But discussing what a fictional spaceship in a fictional universe can or cannot do to me seems bizarre - if you accept that the Star Trek universe is fictional (which I sure hope everyone does), then why is it outside the realms of possibility in that fictional universe that the spaceships involved can indeed fly in a dense gravity atmosphere? After all, if the spaceship designers in the Star Trek universe can create ships which break the normal laws of physics as we know them, why is it also not possible for them to have created a way that allows these ships to fly in those denser atmospheres?

Vince

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Yes, it was... a poorly written, poorly directed, laughably bad attempt to make a dumbed down version of Trek that would be palatable to the movie going masses.

you're right, the tribbles would have made it far too intelligent for the masses...

Edited by zerosystem
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None of the events in Star Trek III will now take place, as it only exists in an alternate timeline. In other words, forget everything you've seen before in Star trek, they can now make it up anew.

Nowhere in Star Trek was it ever shown the Enterprise was built in orbit. Final assembly, possibly, and by the time they were refitting her before the Motion Picture perhaps they'd moved the dock into orbit. Any society capable of flying faster than light and having enough artificial gravity to keep the captains' hairpiece attached during combat could surely be able to build an entire ship in Kansas.

Alvis 3.1

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