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Here, have some end credits while we're at it. (The first track leads straight onto the other. Don't know why they bothered separating them.)
Michael Giacchino is quickly becoming one of my favorite composers. He did the music for The Incredibles and Speed Racer, among others, and has a wonderfully
"old school" approach.
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Oh, I'm definitely going to see the movie. Just my Mom that needs the convincing. Berman, Braga and Paramount's shenanigans have turned her off to Star
Trek so badly that she doesn't even bother to keep up with the current events anymore.
Though I'll admit quite freely that knowing those two had nothing to do with this movie is very much liberating. (^_^)
The sabotage scene reminded me of Rush's Red Barchetta
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...
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I enjoyed the heck out of it 
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
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I saw it on Friday, and I am duly impressed. Most enjoyable. There were a few spots where I had some, "Yeah, but, in the original series...," but JJ
Abrams, talking to us through Spock, made me shut up and understand what he was doing. There were a few spots that made me cringe nonetheless (First, you
salute the Admiral, THEN you shake his hand, Captain Kirk.), but they were tiny quibbles and didn't detract from the general appeal of the film. And the
only way that Karl Urban could be more Bones was if they had shrunk him to match DeForest Kelly's height. It was creepy.
Trivia: Uhura's Orion roommate was played by Nichelle Nichols granddaughter.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
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Quote: Trivia: Uhura's Orion roommate was played by Nichelle Nichols granddaughter.
No shit??? Wow! Figures the hotness would run in the family. ^_^
(And if you doubt Nichelle Nichols was hot, just watch any episode of TOS with Uhura in it. YOW.)
EDIT: Checked IMDB. Turns out this is not the case. Not even close. Boy that's embarrassing.
But BOTH actresses were/are hot. I won't retract that! Nichelle back in the day and Rachel Nichols now.
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Quote: Logan Darklighter wrote:
Quote: Trivia: Uhura's Orion roommate was played by Nichelle Nichols granddaughter.
No shit??? Wow! Figures the hotness would run in the family. ^_^
(And if you doubt Nichelle Nichols was hot, just watch any episode of TOS with Uhura in it. YOW.)
Erm, I was told that, but now, on further investigation, I don't think it's true. Rachel Nichols (the actress in queston) will be showing up in
theaters later this summer, however. She's playing Scarlett in the "GI Joe" movie.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
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Just got back from seeing it, finally.
Yes, much win here. Our friend Joe Avins is a bit obsessive about his Trek movies, and reportedly he didn't like it, so Peggy and I were trying to figure out why and failing. We just enjoyed the hell out of it. I especially loved all the little mythology gags, like Pike in a wheelchair at the end. JJ Abrams has repeatedly said that he got the job because he wasn't an obsessive Trekkie, but someone connected to the production was, to have put all those little bits in.
I had only two real quibbles, besides the rubber science of course. First was, no defenses of any kind around Earth? And second, Kirk seemed to go from cadet on academic probation to (real) Captain in, what, a few weeks? Surely it couldn't, wouldn't happen that fast, even with battlefield promotions.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Regarding the first quibble, the unstoppable alien probe/spaceship/etc. that meets little or no opposition on the way to destroy Earth until the Enterprise
shows up to stop it is a standard plot device in Star Trek movies.
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Quote: Bob Schroeck wrote:
I had only two real quibbles, besides the rubber science of course.
But the rubber science quibbles are the best part. 
I mean, how could the astronomical event that started Nero on his deranged quest have possibly been the galactic threat
that future-Spock claimed? Don't the energy waves given off by supernovas travel at mere light speed? The only way that the Romulan homeworld would have
been endangered would have been if the supernova were in their own solar system, and if that were true, future-Spock's plan of turning the supernova into a
black hole would have destroyed the world anyway.
Why did the Romulan ship use a super energy drill to bore a hole in the planet before dropping in the black hole forming red goo? Wouldn't forming a black
hole on the surface of the planet have done the exact same thing in a fraction of the time?
If the ice planet was close enough to get that great a view of the black hole forming, wouldn't it have been pulled in?
Why did it take mere minutes for the Federation fleet to get from Earth to Vulcan (IIRC, the ETA was noted as approximately 4 minutes before they started the
trip) while it took the Enterprise and Romulan ship hours to get from Vulcan to Earth? Were they coasting on some sort of galactic jet stream during the first
journey?
----------------------------------------------------
"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV
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I work with the theory that while Vulcan and Earth had defenses, it was stated in the movie that most of the fleet was a good distance away, hence using cadets
to make up the numbers on the ships for what was believed to be a rescue mission. Nero then succeeded in getting the system defense codes out of Pike and was
able to get through relatively unnoticed, at which point he uber-torpedoed the crap out of everything in orbit that tried to start a fight.
As for Kirk being promoted to captain... I suspect that was politics and PR. As much as the Federation can rightly claim they stopped a madman from destroying
Earth, Nero did managed to take out Vulcan, one of the Federations founding planets, with a population of six billion. That's a major morale blow. The
Klingons of that era would look at the Federations and think 'oh! TARGET!', and the Romulans? If word leaked out it was a time travelling Romulan that
destroyed Vulcan, they'd freak the hell out, certain that the Federation would come after them for revenge as soon as they can. Which, in Romulan terms,
translates to 'kill them before they kill us.'
The Federation needs a hero, someone they can show off to their citizens and their enemies as a symbol that the Federation is safe and secure. And the cadet
turned acting captain that took down a time travelling uber-ship with black hole bombs is a pretty big damn hero.
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What Matrix Dragon said.
Also, re: travel time.
We know it took Enterprise hours because Spock took the ship towards the Laurentian system to get the rest of the fleet, and didn't turn back until Kirk and Scotty showed up and forced him to.
Nero would have had to interrogate Pike, get the codes, get through Earth's defenses, get into position, find the right spot to drill, and set up the drill, in those hours.
The trip to Vulcan took considerably more time than 4 minutes, but most of that was spent getting the cadets to their ships and loading relief supplies. That all got summed up into that little scene of guys calling out "Cadet X, you go tot he Farragut, Cadet P, you go to Enterprise," etc.
It would theoretically take several hours for the drill to reach sufficient depth to deploy the weapon.
As for why drill? It's possible that it's only in reaction with the planetary core that the Red Matter will, in the small quantities Nero was willing to use, form a black hole big enough to destroy the planet. We know that just trashing the containment system only formed one big enough to swallow his ship. --
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Random theory that utterly fails in regards to science and merely functions to justify rule of cool: The red matter creates an intense gravity 'pulse'
for a relatively short period of time. If detonated in space, it'll pull anything in range in close, then burn out before grabbing sufficient mass to
become an actual black hole. Nero didn't know much about how the red matter worked, so decided to play it safe and surround the red matter with as much
solid matter as possible. Hey, he already had the bigass laser drill anyway.
The supernova being a galactic threat... When the Hoebius star went nova, something in it sent out a 'disruption wave in subspace', causing a number of
stars in the path of the wave to go nova (Like a naturally occurring version of the Nova rocket from Generations). Spock was actually dropping red matter into
stars along the 'line of fire', canceling out the wave and preventing it from continuing on.
Spock Prime got to see the destruction of Vulcan in the sky because Nero is a bastard and has a holographic big screen projector on his ship. He and Kirk were
dropped on the same planet by... um... a pretty bigass coincidence. Someone was meddling to allow destiny... *Gives the Q's a suspicious look, is utterly
ignored in return*
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I thought the whole 'seeing the planet die' part was a visual device, representing that Spock was close enough to feel the deaths of that many Vulcans.
As for the red matter on Vulcan, I like to think that it was a combination of:
a.) Matrix Dragon is right, and Nero was being cautious.
b.) Nero has an appreciation of the dramatic, and wanted to see Vulcan collapse inward on itself.
c.) He had the drill, the missiles, and plenty of time, so why not? It's not like anybody in that time could really stop him.
d.) On the off chance that somebody caught on to his plan, (and, if I recall, he knew young!Spock would be out there), Nero wanted to use a potentially
needlessly slow and elaborate method, just to twist the knife a little more. Obviously, destroying the planet wasn't enough.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
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Okay, update.
05-24-2009, 06:23 AM
Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman conducted an online Q&A about the film earlier this week. According to a transcript, Spock
Prime's viewing of the destruction of Vulcan was cinematic license and 'impressionistic' and could have involved a telescope or other device. No
answer for the other points we've explored so far.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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... Well, we only saw Spock watching the destruction in his memories. Perfect place for cinematic license :lol
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Quote: Matrix Dragon wrote:
... Well, we only saw Spock watching the destruction in his memories. Perfect place for cinematic license :lol
Ooh! Excellent point! He may not have been -literally- seeing it - but FEELING the deaths of all those millions of Vulcans and translating that as a visual
image to Kirk.
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