perldiver

I saw Trek last night and Oh My Holy God words fail me in describing it.

Let me see if I can come up with a metaphor: take a giant, rotting, putrescent, lice-encrusted ball of vomitus, throw it through a planet-sized plot hole and have it land in a hyper-modern silver bowl wrapped in really shiny special effects with lots of lens flare.

And yet, the Internet wants to have its love child. *Every* *single* review I've seen has said "wow, it was awesome. Here is my one tiny quibble but otherwise it's AWESOME!!1!!11!!!!!1!1!!!!" [1]

So, let's go through the issues.  Warning:  FULL AND COMPLETE SPOILERS AHEAD.

In modern Trek (the one that we have all known for the last 30 years), a star explodes into a supernova and "threatens to destroy the galaxy."

• Basic science check: The galaxy has played host to several tens of billions of supernovas since its formation and, oddly enough, it's still standing. Writers, if you want a galaxy-destroying event, just type"[insert treknobabble here]" in the script and let the real scientists fill it in, ok? Better yet, go read an occasional issue of Scientific American--it's even got pictures!

This supernova threatens Romulus (along with, as previous mentioned, the galaxy). Ambassador Spock ("Old Spock" to distinguish him from this movie's Spock) agrees to save it by shooting "red matter" (wuh?) into the supernova, which will cause a black hole and save the planet. A ship is outfitted and off he goes. The planet is destroyed just before he can destroy the supernova, but the black hole is created.

• If there was time to outfit a ship at all, that means this either wasn't the Romulan system star or the explosion was detected in advance. In either case, the Romulans should have had literally years of warning before the supernova ate their world. How does Old Spock arrive just *slightly* too late?
• How would creating a singularity _after_ the explosion solve the problem? 
• Why is the very aged Old Spock the right choice to pilot the black-hole ship?

Old Spock and a surviving Romulan--Captain Nero of the mining ship Narada--accidentally get sucked through the black hole and travel back in time 129 years to the moment of James T. Kirk's birth on board the USS Kelvin. Nero decides that Spock's failure should be punished by wiping out the entire Federation, so he attacks the Kelvin. Kirk's father (a Lieutenant) takes command long enough to let everyone escape, then kamikazes the Kelvin into the Narada to no real effect.

• Why are black holes such reliable time-travel devices in the Trek universe? In our universe, they pretty much just kill stuff.
• Please note that Nero is, at this point, aware that he's 129 years in the past and therefore could presume that Romulus is out there.  All he has to do is go to the Romulan Empire and say "hey guys, I just came from the future, and when I come from, this particular star is going to go boom and wipe us all out".  It wouldn't be hard to prove--he's got literally megatons of evidence in the form of his advanced ship.  And he could save his race and be a hero.  But then there wouldn't be a movie with a plot hole big enough to throw a planet through, so we couldn't call it "Star Trek", right?

James Kirk grows up in Iowa as a ruffian; at age eight or so he steals an antique car and crashes it into the Grand Canyon.

• Why is the Grand Canyon in Iowa?

From there, Kirk goes to Starfleet, faces the unwinnable Kobayashi Maru test and "cheats" to win--he hacks the simulator to make the test beatable. He gets called out for judicial review in front of his entire cadet class and is placed on suspension.

• I know this part is canonical, but the Maru is a stupid test. The reason real militaries don't do it is because setting soldiers up to lose teaches them nothing except how to lose.
• My understanding is that it is an officer's duty to do whatever it takes to achieve his objective. The objective of the test is to save the Kobayashi Maru. If the designers of the test built a system that could be hacked by a cadet, how is the cadet at fault?
• Why is he being tried in front of his entire class? Isn't the rule generally "praise in public, criticism in private"?

In the middle of his review, word comes that Vulcan is being attacked and all cadets are sent to their ships.

• Love that deus ex machina just-in-time announcement!
• These cadets haven't finished their training. Why are they being shipped off early?  They try to lampshade this one by saying "with our primary fleet busy in the Lorentzian system, all cadets report to their ships."  Ok, "primary fleet" implies you have a secondary fleet--where is it?  If you don't, what were you doing committing every single ship in the fleet to Lorentz?

Bones sneaks Kirk onto the Enterprise, which heads for Vulcan along with seven other ships. In the three minutes it takes to get there (no really--they make a point of commenting on the time, and I actually timed it--they synced screen time and real time pretty well), Kirk figures out that they are flying into a trap and convinces Captain Pike. It *is* a trap--Nero is waiting--and Vulcan is destroyed. The Enterprise is the last ship left standing and is badly damaged; Nero calls on Captain Pike to surrender and come aboard. Pike does so, leaving Spock in charge and Kirk as first officer.

• I'll let most of this one slide because the ship hadn't been christened yet so clearly wasn't really ready to go, but I'd just like to point out the staffing insanity on the Enterprise.  The command staff (i.e., the guys on the bridge) of the Federation's flagship should be the best of the best. Yet, apparently, it consists mostly of cadets. The only "grownups" that we know of for sure on the Enterprise are listed below, and we can be pretty sure that these were the only ones aboard because otherwise they would have been in charge of things when their superiors were removed:
  • Commander Spock (a main character),
  • A random lieutenant at communications who is rapidly replaced by Uhura because he doesn't speak Romulan (yet he is qualified for the Enterprise bridge crew???!!!).
  • The chief medical officer (killed within 300 seconds of leaving space dock), 
  • The Captain (captured about a minute after the CMO dies), 

There is a battle, lots of people die, Captain Pike is taken hostage, Spock is left in charge and Kirk is promoted to first officer. Kirk and Spock disagree about how to proceed and Kirk mouths off to the point where Spock shoves him into an escape pod and drops him on a nearby ice planet, where the pod tells him that there is a Federation outpost 14 km away.

• What, the Enterprise doesn't have a brig?
• What, you couldn't drop him *at* the outpost?
• What, you couldn't just beam him down?

Kirk leaves the pod, has some arctic gear magically appear from nowhere (well, ok, it was probably in the pod somewhere), and is chased by a monster which is suddenly killed by a bigger monster which then chases Kirk.

• Didn't I see *exactly* this sequence in one of the Star Wars prequels?
• Monster #2 is buglike, about 15-20 feet tall, and very roughly T. Rex-shaped. It has just killed something roughly its own size, yet it chooses to pursue the human...that's like making yourself a hot 5-course dinner, then leaving it on the table to go out for one garlic knot.
• Monster #2 lacks fur, feathers, or significant layers of fat, yet it lives on an ice field. How exactly does it not freeze to death?
• Don't even get me started on square-cube law violations.

Kirk runs into an ice cave where he is saved by Old Spock (yay Leonard Nimoy!!).

• Ok, this is so massively coincidental as to be ridiculous. On the other hand, I'll take any excuse to see Leonard Nimoy on screen so ok.

The two of them proceed to the nearby station, where they meet Scotty. Old Spock gives Scotty the formula for transwarp beaming (which Scotty will invent in the future), and Kirk and Scotty beam back onto the Enterprise. Kirk drives Young Spock into a rage, forcing him to acknowledge that he is emotionally compromised (because, ya know, his planet was just destroyed) and must step down as Captain. Spock steps down, Kirk declares himself Captain, Spock walks around the ship for a while and then comes back and takes up the science officer position.

• The heck? Either Spock is competent to function as a ship's officer or he isn't. If he is, he should be Captain. If he isn't, he should not be acting as science officer.
• If he's together enough to realize he needs to remove himself from the Captain's chair, Spock should be together enough to define his replacement. Instead, he just walks off and leaves everyone standing there. I almost wonder if Quinto forgot his last line before making his exit and the other actors were ad libbing for the next minute or so until they could get the "script" back on track.

The Narada goes to Earth and starts working on destroying it. Kirk and Spock beam aboard, fight the bad guys, rescue Captain Pike, and set off all the red matter on the Narada, causing a black hole that sucks the ship in. They beam back to the Enterprise where Kirk offers Nero the chance to be rescued. When Nero refuses, Kirk says "No problem. Fire all weapons" and the Enterprise shoots up the Narada.

• You have to figure that the Enterprise shooting the Narada was a token gesture; after all, the weapons on the Enterprise hadn't significantly damaged it in the past. I guess they were just establishing how dark and edgy the new series was.
• So, wait...the back half of the Narada is actually *inside* a black hole, but the ship is still functional, Nero is still alive, and everything is still in such good shape that communications are working? That's some damn fine engineering.

Cut back to Earth; Captain Pike is now Admiral Pike and stuck in a wheelchair (still able to talk and move, though--the blinky lights must come later). Cadet Kirk is now Captain Kirk and being handed a commendation and command of the Enterprise.

• SAY WHAT??!! Kirk was (a) a cadet (b) who had not finished his training and (c) been placed on academic suspension (d) for cheating, but had (e) snuck aboard the Enterprise when it launched and (f) committed mutiny against the lawfully appointed Acting Captain (g) during a state of combat with the enemy. The leaders of Starfleet are going to make this person the Captain of the Federation's flagship??!!!

So, yes, basically this movie made no sense whatsoever. I suspect it was knocked out in three or four hours by some film school reject right before his pitch meeting with J. J. Abrams.

And, lest you thought we were finished, here are a few more things, just as a bonus:

• From the surface of the ice planet, Kirk watches Vulcan be destroyed. It is visible during full daylight and takes up about 20 degrees of arc in the sky (i.e., roughly a quarter of the space from horizon to overhead). For comparison, the real-life planet Venus is the brightest of the real-world planets, and it looks like a pinprick that is not visible at night in most cities (due to light pollution), much less in broad daylight on a blinding snowfield.
• After Vulcan was destroyed, Uhura basically offered Spock her body. Later on she grabs him for a passionate liplock which he returns. I hardly know where to start with this one:
  • There was an absolute absence of strong females in this movie, and Uhura was really the one chance to break that record.  There were no female Starfleet officers (unless maybe in a camera flash I missed), no strong civilians, nothing. This movie was the opportunity to go back and re-imagine the original series Star Trek, so why the fail?  Uhura in particular could have been so much more.
  • But, ok, move past the misogyny.  Let's look at Spock: he's a Vulcan and shouldn't be acknowledging these feelings at all, much less with a human.
  • She is a cadet, not even graduated.  He is a serving Starfleet officer, directly in her chain of command, and, to top it off, one of her instructors!!!  In any real-world military or civilian organization, this would get one or both parties fired on the spot.
  • Ok, leave aside all the in-universe stuff and just look at the dramatic perspective.  The only word is...what??! There was no lead-in, no sign that they had ever had more than a professional relationship, nothing, and suddenly they are macking in the elevator???
• Apparently, Romulan engineers are big fans of Donkey Kong and similar games, because the inside of the Narada is a series of narrow catwalks (with, of course, no guardrails), and the way you move around is by jumping--often as much as thirty feet down.
• The way the Narada destroys planets is to drill a hole down to the core, then drop in some "red matter" which causes a black hole that eats the planet. When Captain Pike goes over to the Narada, he orders Kirk, Sulu, and UnknownRedShirtOfficer to "space jump" down onto the drill and plant explosives to blow it up. Oddly enough, UnknownRedShirtOfficer [yes, his spacesuit is red] is the only one carrying explosives--nothing like a single point of failure in a critically important mission! Fortunately, it turns out that some captured rifles are more than enough to disable the drill, but not before the "red matter" can be dropped and blow up the planet.
• As long as we're talking about the space jump, why didn't the Enterprise simply fire on the bigass drill that was hanging down from orbit into the Vulcan atmosphere? Had they done that when they first got there, they might have cut the drill before it reached the core and therefore potentially saved Vulcan.
• After destroying Vulcan, Nero heads for Earth to destroy it. Remember, it took the Enterprise 3 minutes to go from Earth to Vulcan, and the Narada has a 129-year technology advantage, so it should be faster. Somehow, there is still plenty of time for Kirk to wander around on the ice floes, get chased by monsters, meet Old Spock, meet Scotty, beam back up, drive Spock bonkers, and then change course from where the Enterprise HAD been going back to Earth, and still arrive before the Narada arrives at Earth.
• J.J. Abrams apparently had friends who worked on Babylon 5 and Cloverfield. The Narada was a B5 Shadow Ship--not a homage or a pastiche, it *was* one--and the ice field bug monster looked a lot like the thing from Cloverfield.

[1] Actually, I've seen one or two negative reviews of this but they disliked the movie exclusively because of its complete lack of worthwhile female characters. I agree that this was a big fail in the movie, but this movie had so many other fails to choose from that the misogyny gets lost in the noise.