Star Trek (film)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

******* I think it's plenty safe to assume that that was a horrible mistake by the costume designers, or else a prototype for a two-piece uniform that ended up getting thrown over in favor of the jumpsuits. Given the context (middle of the night, during an evacuation, two women in nightdress right behind him), I figure some blithering twerp on the costuming crew figured they'd throw it in as sort of a Starfleet standard-issue men's nightshirt, or something like that. (Which is stupid to begin with; how the hell would anyone be able to sleep with a comm badge digging into their nipple?) Presumably the responsible party was fired, because we never see it again. It's just one of TNG's many, many first-season experiments which didn't pan out, much like Troi, though at least the writers were smart enough to drop the men's miniskirt nightgown after a single outing -- frankly, though, I'd much rather have seen seven seasons' worth of men's bare legs than one episode's worth of tiresome nosy fanservice telepath with no function other than to state the plainly obvious.

******** Sadly it's not. Earlier in the episode, Encounter At Farpoint FTR, you can clearly see a man wearing a skirt working in Engineering.

******* Okay, speaking as someone who has actually watched the original series, I'm going to blow your mind: there were women on the Enterprise who wore pants. No, not just in the pilot episode. You would occasionally see a female crew member in the background wearing the regular men's uniform. Of course, all the prominently featured women still wore miniskirts, but at least it looks like pants were an option for everybody, just as skirts were an option for everybody in Next Generation.

******** From what I remember reading Gene intended for the women in TOS to wear pants just like the men and the leading female ''actresses'' vetoed the idea. They didn't want to look like men and came up with the miniskirt uniforms.

**** Riker established 50 million living on Luna and Alpha Centauri was sufficiently progressed to be considered a separate founding member of the Federation. Going with TOS numbers, Kirk lived on Tarsus IV with 8,000 colonists. To put the numbers in perspective assuming a stable 5 billion humans on Earth over the course of Trek let's assume something outlandish like 1 billion colonists. In that average then we'd assume roughly 4-5 human cast members to be born elsewhere than Earth. We have Tasha, Beverly, and Chakotay and many that aren't explicitly mentioned one way or the other, so it's entirely possible. Even assuming a relatively paltry 1:20 ratio in the TOS era would only grant an "average" of .35 senior officers born elsewhere than a homeworld, so even then it's not conclusive. And that's using a still huge number of colonists. Among the aliens we have Neelix, Tuvok (Vulcan lunar colony), and Ezri Dax (New Sydney) confirmed. So we'd expect a massive downgrade to the absolute number of Vulcans and their contributions in time as they adapt and rebuild, but they are almost certainly not as dire as suggested by the 10,000 figure and Spocks' ruminations imply.

*** [[Word of God]] is that there were only 10,000 Vulcans rescued from Vulcan, not only 10,000 Vulcans left in the universe. Since Vulcans have been in space for centuries, it's likely that there are several thousand more out there.

** After genocide on that scale, even if our strictest definitions don't include Vulcans as an endangered species, I think Spock's entitled to a bit of dramatic license there.

 

 

* This applies to pretty much any situation where a planet's atmosphere is involved, but the freejumping scene in Star Trek brought it to the front of my mind. Is simply being up in the atmosphere enough to fry a person, or is it a speed/friction deal? I have absolutely no idea how this kind of thing works, and I can't find any real consistency to it - be that popular culture or otherwise.

** Actually, [http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#airf it's air compression].

** Yeah, it's about speed. Spaceships burn up because they're coming in so fast that the air in front of them can't get out of the way. It gets hella compressed, which heats it up so much that it ignites. The reason they do this is because it slows the ship down to a safe speed without having to use fuel. Since Kirk, Spock and Ensign Moron were only at falling speed, they weren't going nearly fast enough to burn. The movie's a bit inconsistent about its science, but it got this one right.

** Speaking of red matter, why is it that, in a movie where they're vomiting weird-looking CGI effects onto the screen till you'd think Lucas was involved, they couldn't bother coming up with a Maguffin that looked any more exotic than a lava lamp?

 

** In the history of all real militaries ever, it is universally the case that if you save the planet Earth from certain destruction, you get promoted to Captain. No matter what. Name a single historical figure who saved he entire planet earth from literal destruction and didn't get promoted to captain as a result.

***** The above comment made This Troper smile. :)

** As hard as it is to believe, the whole "rapid rise through the ranks" was actually part of series creator Gene Roddenberry's backstory for Kirk in the original 1960s tv series, and is even mentioned in the [[Universe Bible|series bible]] written by Roddenberry. The difference, of course, is that we simply hadn't ''seen'' it until the new movie...

*** He specified that Kirk was the youngest captain ever at age 31. He is not 31 in the new movie.

**** Assuming a 4 year Academy degree and commission at 18, 23 for Ensign... 8 years to Captain is rather fast, but certainly not unfeasible.

**** Everyone has fogotten what kirk is told when Pike is talking him into joining starfleet. He says "you can have your own starship in four years." Pike expected him to have a ship of his own in four years under REGULAR circumstances. Kirk then says "four years? I'll do it in three." Next thing we see is "three years later." And what happens after that? Everyone (or nearly everyone at least) from the school with seniority over him DIES in the first engagment, he gets temporary assignment as captain (eventually), saves earth and destroys a huge threat to the rest of the galaxy at the same time, spock (the next logical choice) Nearly leaves starfleet entirely (only coming back to be under kirk) and Pike, the former captain, gets promoted to Admiral, and since he was pretty into the idea of kirk getting a ship in the first place, would have certainly dropped a heck of a recomendation.

**** Due to the structural integrity detail proposed two slots up, the people on Romulus and {{spoiler|Vulcan}} would most likely have been dead before ''getting'' through the singularity. The ships remain intact (most of the time) so the people in them would be able to time-jump just fine.

** You might as well treat the Vulcans as dead, even if they survived going through the black hole they went to a different timeline and it would be impossible to get them back. As for the Narada, the second time it went into the black hole the Enterprise was firing like crazy at it, which presumably would do some damage and maybe weaken the ship enough for the black hole to finish it off. But if this is not the case, then it's the same as the Vulcans. The Romulans got dumped in another timeline, not the Federation's problem anymore.

*** Not to mention that the second black hole opened up ''inside'' the ''Narada''--it was literally splitting the ship in half. Not much going to survive that, though Kirk was still wise to [[Beam Spam]] it into oblivion. Just in case.

*** Personally I like the believe that it is the interaction between the balck hole and warp drive that allows the ships to survive and travel back in time. {{spoiler|This explains why neither the planet or the Narada the second time survive. Also even if it went back in time everything on Vulcan is dead, the planet was turned inside out and would be a cloud of mostly rock.}}