Comments on: BA Review: Star Trek

By: ent0r

ent0r — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:28:11 +0000

Hi,
first of all, thank you Phil Plait for your efforts to teach us in a rather amusing way.
I would write more praise, but I don’t want to bloat this unneccasry.

Here’s a question:
If you would use a “gamma ray burst” as a plot device to be a threat.
Wouldn’t it be kind of a stretch, since a planet must collide with it, which is kind of hard, since the 2 gammaray bursts would erupt at the suns poles?

By: Damon

Damon — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:13:21 +0000

Finally caught a screening of this gem at a $5 theater with my girlfriend on a whim last night. Can’t believe I waited so long. I’m glad someone finally came along and decided to have some fun with the Star Trek universe. And I’m glad it was J.J. Abrams. Great movie.

The accuracy of the science in this and other films is irrelevant, because it’s Science Fiction. Sci-Fi is about taking variables we are comfortable and familiar with, in hard science as well as the everyday world, and altering those variables to see what happens. If astronomers ran Hollywood then no movie would ever get made and those that did would be boring, soulless black-and-white snooze-fests, devoid of any fun (see: variables) and replaced (blotted out) by elitist probabilities and by-the-numbers formulas. Like a movie about someone counting enough digits of Pi to fill two hours. Any iota of “fun” would be stamped out.

I prefer to get my boring science from where it belongs– old, dusty volumes stacked disinterestedly on my bookshelf. Your article is still pretty cute though.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:22:47 +0000

I thought the casting was good … with the exception of Pine as Kirk. Or maybe it was just the characterization of Kirk in the script.

Pike rocked, though. I want to see the series where Pike is the captain.

By: L.E. Greys

L.E. Greys — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:01:59 +0000

I’ve seen the film, and it was a spectacular, but it wasn’t Star Trek. I don’t know what happened to ‘exploring strange new worlds’ and ‘boldly going where no man has gone before’, but it disappeared long before this. Still, you could still call it Star Trek because they tried to keep at least some of the positive aspects of it going. This film was just a Sci-fi action movie, and there have been thousands of those. It was a good one, but it wasn’t Star Trek.
Don’t get me started on the science. Hollywood is Hollywood is Hollywood, and they won’t change.

By: Taylor

Taylor — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:30:10 +0000

I can live with bad physics in movies since it’s pretty much the rule rather than the exception these days. But for the love of god at least be consistent! Kirk, Sulu, and officer Redshirt don’t go through re-entry burn when they are space jumping onto the drill, but then several minutes later when Kirk is being marooned on Delta Vega we see a shot of the escape pod burning as it enters the atmosphere. Make up your mind J.J! Either have everything catch fire when it hits atmosphere or have nothing burn at all.

By: DANTHEMAN

DANTHEMAN — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:44:44 +0000

I’ve never blogged before but I feel compelled to put in my 2 cents. First, I’ve never seen such bad spelling in my life. I read all the blogs and almost everyone misspelled the word too leaving off the second o. And #405 had so many mistakes, it was laughable.
As far as the movie, I liked it. But I agree that the plot was too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Roddenberry’s origonal pilot, THE CAGE, was turned down by the network as being too cerebral. So the next pilot, WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE was chockful of action. It seems that this new movie has gone one step further; adding more action while dumbing down the elements that separate Trek from other Sci-fi series. Questions like, what does it mean to be human? Is there a God? Is there life after death? The old Trek was a morality play that made you think about unusual scenarios and question reality. Hopefully, the next Trek movie will return to the cerebral quality of the origonal series without sacrificing action and adventure. Anyone know why the Borg never work out? They believe that resistance is futile.

By: Stone Age Scientist

Stone Age Scientist — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:37:19 +0000

R @ #426:

RESISTANCE…… IS FUTILE!!!!!