Star Trek: No Subtitle

[Nate the Great]

How can you possibly not know going in to the Kobayashi Maru that it was impossible to win? How many cadets have gone through this thing? Is it possible for each and every one to be ordered to secrecy about telling other people it's a nowin scenario?

And the apple really WAS over the top. Sure, tweak the program to up the firepower of your weapons or the speed of the ship, but DON'T act like you're not taking it seriously.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Is it possible for each and every one to be ordered to secrecy about telling other people it's a nowin scenario?

Yes. Whether all of them maintain the secrecy is another matter, but as best I can remember, the novels tend to hold the position that they do keep it a secret. (The Kobayashi Maru and Sarek would be two to check.)

This may seem overly idealistic, but keep in mind that

1. the cadets are expected to keep much bigger secrets, both at the Academy and in their eventual careers, and to obey much more demanding orders.

2. the test (and, in fact, most simulations) probably doesn't exactly show up on any syllabus, which closes off the possibility of someone asking someone else, "Hey, what's this one about?"

3. it is very much in the Academy's interests that not a hint of the possibility of a no-win scenario get out to those who haven't yet taken it. The character demonstrated by a given cadet will be much different if he or she knows going in that it might be an unwinnable situation in which the best thing to do is to impress your superiors with your character. Since the leaking of such a secret would be very detrimental to the Academy, then, the Academy is certainly going to make it clear to cadets who have taken the test that their spoiling it for others would be very detrimental to their careers.

[Nate the Great]

I've never read Kobayashi Maru, but I have read Sarek. In that book Kirk's nephew Peter was about to take the test and he knew that he was under scrutiny about whether or not he'd be the second person to beat the test. Of course he did, but if it's public knowledge that Kirk was the only one to beat it, this implies that it's public knowledge that no one else ever has.

To expand the logic, if the test was supposed to be beatable and only one has, simple reasoning would yield only two possible scenarios:

1. The test is impossibly hard. After all, you can't exactly grade on a curve with the Kobayashi Maru. There are only two objectives (save the Maru and save your own ship) and very little slack in accomplishing this. This is a pass/fail test.
2. Everyone knows it's supposed to be unbeatable.

[Nate the Great]

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/in...ies-trekxi.htm

Ha ha! More inconsistencies, this time from an external source.

1. "Jim Kirk is born in the year 2233 on Stardate 2233.04." Huh? If the Stardate is simply the year, why call it a "Stardate"? Furthermore, a hundredth of a year is over three days. That's what I call inadequate precision. You'll need another decimal point, guys.
2. "Why is Captain Robau wearing a blue instead of a golden (or even a red?) uniform?" Valid point! Why shuffle the departmental colors? What's the point?
3. "Why is the appearance of the Romulan Nero not a total surprise to the crew of the Kelvin? At this time, humans have never seen Romulans face to face (at least no one has survived to report of it), as clearly evidenced in TOS: "Balance of Terror". Why doesn't anyone surmise that he has to be a Vulcan because that is how he must have looked to them?" Yeah, I forgot about this one, too.
4. I forgot about the age discrepancy with Captain Pike. Shouldn't he be less than ten years older than Kirk?
5. "When the shuttles from the Academy arrive at the Enterprise, we can see that about a dozen of them are stacked on two levels on either side of the shuttlebay. The shuttlebay has to be some 40m across to accommodate the 10m+ shuttles in the shown fashion. This would translate to a length of the Enterprise of over 700m meters!" Good point. Is there a reason there needs to be a dozen shuttles being stored in the main shuttlebay? Don't most series imply that long-term shuttle storage is via garages off the main bay, which is strictly to be used for embarking and arriving shuttles and "visitor parking"?
6. They call Klingon ships "Warbirds?" Was there NOT ONE Trekkie on the production staff to say "Wrong. Romulans have Warbirds, Klingons have Birds of Prey." NOT ONE person had the courage to stand up for accuracy for something that is trivially easy to get right?
7. Why is Delta Vega apparently in the same star system as Vulcan? Would a mention of long-range sensors or a subspace telescope or something be too hard?
8. "The interior of the engineering hull of the Enterprise is nothing like anything we have seen on any Starfleet vessel so far. There is no centralized engine room, there is nothing identifiable as power transfer conduits. There is no visible deck structure. It looks like most of this section is comprised of a maze of water pipes. Pipes with rivets. Purportedly this part of the movie was filmed at an actual brewery. This would explain the look, but definitely not excuse it. Overall, the set also seems too large for the secondary hull of the ship, which was designed to be overall just 366m long." Rivets? Water pipes? Was a simple warp core too "boring"?

[JVTruman]

For #2, I don't think the department colors were changed. The Kelvin is a science vessel, so I figure having a science-department officer in charge works.

[Nate the Great]

I'm not so sure about that. I can see having a much larger than usual percentage of the crew be in the Science divisions for a Science vessel, but you're still going to have Security, Engineering, Medical, and so forth personnel. And the skills necessary to command a starship are basically the same no matter what kind of vessel it is. You're going to need command training (including the Kobayashi Maru) to command a ship, and that means (in the TOS days) a yellow uniform.

[Nate the Great]

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/community/blog/20720

Three guys sit around and discuss the past, present, and future of the Star Trek franchise, including discussing the movie.

[Chancellor Valium]

Finally got to see this. It's fine; the plot is OK (and mercifully free of Bermanaga reset-buttoning), the visual design is good, the camera/sound direction excellent, the acting reasonable if rather Hollywood and the story is decent. This is, at least, a better film than the last two films, at least.

The chief problem with the film is that there isn't a single shot that isn't ripped from somewhere - whether it's other Star Trek films, Babylon 5, The Empire Strikes Back, or Alien. And Sean Pegg was far less annoying than I expected. It's no The Third Man, by any means; it's not really even a Wrath of Khan. But it's still far better than average.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

4. I forgot about the age discrepancy with Captain Pike. Shouldn't he be less than ten years older than Kirk?

Why? Canon is silent on Pike's age.

5. [...] Don't most series imply that long-term shuttle storage is via garages off the main bay, which is strictly to be used for embarking and arriving shuttles and "visitor parking"?

The size discrepancy is the most seriously troublesome continuity point in the movie (although anyone who gets agitated about this and not about the Bird of Prey size problems is a hypocrite). So I dig that complaint, and Bernd at EAS does a good job handling it in his article on the new Enterprise.

That being said, no, shuttlebays have always been used for shuttle storage. The only series to suggest otherwise was Voyager, and then only very indirectly. For non-canon support (if you go for that stuff), consult the TNG Ent-D blueprints.

6. They call Klingon ships "Warbirds?" Was there NOT ONE Trekkie on the production staff to say "Wrong. Romulans have Warbirds, Klingons have Birds of Prey." NOT ONE person had the courage to stand up for accuracy for something that is trivially easy to get right?

It was undoubtedly an error -- and a vanishingly small one, at that. Would you say the same to Brannon Braga about "Broken Bow"? If you impute it to producer cowardice, you must say the same of the ENT production staff, at least.

8. "The interior of the engineering hull of the Enterprise is nothing like anything we have seen on any Starfleet vessel so far. [...]" Rivets? Water pipes? Was a simple warp core too "boring"?

This item is the actual reason I'm posting (on such an old thread!), because the first time I saw it I thought the same thing. Later, I found out that, actually, Abrams & Co. wanted a really cool, multi-level engineering set, with a pretty sexy-looking warp core in the center. You can see the early designs in The Art of Star Trek. Unfortunately, the designs were never finalized, because the entire set had to be cut -- they ran out of money.

So, the hideous engineering set we got was because of budget issues.

[Nate the Great]

Canon is not silent on Pike's age. Look, Spock said he served eleven years with Pike in "The Menagerie." Fanon suggests that this means two five-year missions with a year in between for refit and long-term shore leave for the crew (many of which didn't go home in that five years). After Pike was another refit, and then Kirk. Did Pike appear to be more than ten years older than Kirk would be when he was in "The Cage?" No, they looked to be basically the same age; mid thirties. And if Kirk is 17 or whatever in Trek 11, Pike should barely be thirty.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Canon is not silent on Pike's age. Look, Spock said he served eleven years with Pike in "The Menagerie." Fanon suggests that this means two five-year missions with a year in between for refit and long-term shore leave for the crew (many of which didn't go home in that five years). After Pike was another refit, and then Kirk. Did Pike appear to be more than ten years older than Kirk would be when he was in "The Cage?" No, they looked to be basically the same age; mid thirties. And if Kirk is 17 or whatever in Trek 11, Pike should barely be thirty.

The fanon here is both not related to canon and also... I'm not actually following your logic with it. I agree, however, that "The Menagerie" (almost) definitely took place in 2267, and therefore "The Cage" in 2254 ("thirteen years ago," according to Spock). That makes Kirk 34 for "The Menagerie" and 17 for "The Cage." 2255 is the year in the Abramsverse that Pike meets Kirk in the bar. So Abramsverse Pike in the bar should be one year older (give or take eleven months) than Prime Pike on Talos IV.

Thing is, we just plain don't know how old Prime Pike was on Talos. Canon makes no clear statement on the subject, so we can assume nothing. He is clearly older than 12 and younger than 134 (we have little canonical data on the capacity of 23rd-century medicine to slow or alter the appearance of age). Some might base their speculation on the age of the actor, Jeffrey Hunter, at the time, and this is at least a reasonable method for figuring things out. Hunter was 38 years and one day old on the first day of filming for "The Cage" (and considerably older when it finally aired ). If we go by the actor's age, which is a pretty speculative method (after all, just two years later Hunter was asked to reprise the role, but this time he was supposedly thirteen years older), that would make Prime Pike's birthday somewhere in the vicinity of 2315.

That, of course, would make him 17 or 18 years older than Kirk, not ten.

Bruce Greenwood was 52 during the filming of Star Trek XI, which (subtracting 52 from 2258, the year of the movie's main events), gives Alt!Pike a birthday somewhere in the vicinity of 2306, or about ten years older than Prime Pike. However, given the dramatic drift between actors' actual ages and the supposed ages of their characters (cf Koenig and Chekov), it is not unreasonable to suppose that, in-universe, these characters are the same people with the same birthday and the same lives up until at least the divergence of timelines in 2233.

That's all I mean by that.

[PointyHairedJedi]

In brief:

The plot was in places, very stupid, and not exactly overburdened with originality.
The science was very stupid, even by Star Trek levels.
The new Enterprise is a turkey. I mean really, that thing is fugly.

And, despite all that, I liked it. Nimoy speaking at the end gave me actual goosebumps. It may have flaws, but is at the end of the day this is Star Trek (and definitely more so than Nemesis managed).

[Nate the Great]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0y6...layer_embedded

Here we go again...

So Nero and crew didn't actually sit on their hands for twenty years; they were in a Klingon prison. That's one step towards a coherent plot, but they're still on an ice flow about to fall over the waterfall.

I'm still a little confused about why they had to emerge at Kirk's birth. Surely Kirk could've been the rebellious teen wanting nothing to do with Starfleet (and not being a Boy Scout, as Carol Marcus would say), and then have his father killed when he's seventeen (toss in the "I never got to say good-bye" bit for additional pathos). No stepdad, no car off the cliff, just a kid picking a barfight and meeting Pike.

A damaged Nerada gets trapped in a nebula or something and takes five years to get out again at sublight speeds. Furthermore, the Nerada is a REAL mining ship. They find a prototype Romulan warbird (with a non-red matter superweapon) outside the nebula, catch it by surprise and hijack it.

And...presto! No lost years, no overpowered mining ship and a plot that's actually a bit more reasonable!