STAR TREK 2009

Excitement for a full year, sneaking in Internet trailers even though I'm fully aware the less I know going in the better. Even reading a few early reviews. I found out too much, Even DIGG.com helpfully let me know in the comments that Vulcan gets the gun. Now after seeing this hotly anticipated movie which is the first new big screen Trek in Eight years and having digested it for a couple of days I feel that some things aren't sitting with me quite right. Is It nit picking , possibly but more then that movies want and need repeat business and for that to be archived the movie should coalesce in to one big ball of sense.

If I had to sum up my experience in one parse it would be; STAR TREK, One big plot hole covered in a hard candy shell.

It looks Great , it's exciting we get the warm glow of seeing old familiar characters again but it ultimately doesn't sustain over a long period of time.

The Beginning is well done and it was smart to start the story with out a explanation of what it is coming through the anomaly (a black hole we find out later). It was nice to see that a Star ship after all is not so easily destroyed even against a much stronger foe. Too many times have other ships then the enterprise been destroyed with one or two shots, this was good. The Kalvin takes a beating and the captain quite quickly realizes he can not win "there's no help out hear for us" he proclaims while walking down a corridor to meet his doom with Kirk senior at his side. Well he was right of course and when Nero the renegade (aren't they always) Romulan kills him with a sweet ass pike thingy we get the quick cut away to keep the rating down. luckily they employed a clever bio monitoring device and this tactic worked well. We know he's dead, imaginations run wild as to how impaled he had became. Nero finds out just what year he's in since he really had no idea what happened to him going through the black hole, Kirk senior
helms the Kelvin Right in to Neros advanced ship as his wife gives birth to James Tiberius Kirk in a escape shuttle. Not before they have the discussion on what to name him of course. The Kelvin explodes in to it's target and the plot moves on.

This was a strong opening. The problem with this opening and with most of the movies plot is that they wanted to show the origins of Kirk , how he met spock, how he became captin of the enterprise and the answer is we will never know. Every thing that happens from this point on , even the shuttle craft birth and especially the death of Kirk seniour did not happen in the original time line. Old Spock is quite clear that in the proper history Kirk did get to know his father and that is why he joined star fleet. This is a new time line and anything is possible going forward.

Major logic holes:

Old Spock was dropped off on to a barren ice planet to watch his home die. Sadly he is just a walk away form a base where Montgomery Scott is situated and old Spock has the equation to Trans beaming. Which is used to get back on the Enterprise while in warp but also Scotty says that with his theory he can beam people even to adjacent planets in the same system. Vulcan would seem to qualify so he could have beamed Spock to his home with enough time to warn them had he sought out the base.

When the Drill is attacking earth Young Spock attacks it and severs the drill head. Where where all the Vulcan planetary defences and ships when they where being attacked? Could they not have severed it as well?

At the end of the Film Spock Prime reflects to him self , "trusters full head" almost happily as a memory. The problem is this is not the proper past there future is not his past he knows this.

When Nero confronts Kirk saying he will kill him like he killed his father, on paper this is a nice line. In the logic of the film he would have had no idea he killed his father as he only spoke with the captain of the Kelvin on screen and in person. Even if he had some historical federation data to find out his father was a crew member he would still not know if he was still on the ship on had escaped in a shuttle craft.



There's been so much time travailing in Star trek that Spock prime would not be content to leave the time line as it is and help resettle a new planet. Not only did billions of Vulcans die but all the future Vulcans he knows will not exist and that includes Savik. Since the time line was messed with by Nero he should have been compelled to set it right. Destroying the whole planet seemed a quite heavy. All historical culture lost, people present and future gone. I think it would have been as effective if they had just destroyed a major city.

Spock would do the travel around the sun trick and prepare vulcan for the oncoming doom.