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I don't accept the notion that somehow the same person can be born 4 years earlier simply because of Nero's arrival. If the same person can be born 4 years earlier than why wasn't I born in 1964 as my brother rather than 5 years later as me?

 

What happens if 4 years earlier Chekov's mother is only 14 or 15 herself? We don't know that (as far as I know) but just suppose she was 19 or 20 in 2045. Where's the explanation there? That's the problem with all the "alternate timeline" stuff and messing with what's already been done.

 

I know we're dealing with scifi and "anything" can happen but I simply don't believe that because Nero was thrown back into the past that Andrei Chekov and Larisa Chekov were somehow able to have the same exact baby that would grow up to follow the same exact life path into Starfleet and be the same person but only have it all happen 4 years earlier than originally. I could see how the events could cause someone to NOT be born but to somehow make someone come into existence 4 years early? It would be a whole different person.

 

I suppose if we just want to "look the other way then we can just call it what it is, Abrams wanted to use all of the TOS characters but either didn't take into account the dates and history that came before (either through ignorance or laziness in research). Or maybe at worst he just simply didn't care that the dates didn't fit, he was doing it his way and that was that.

 

Ever since the dawn of Star Trek in the 1960's Star Trek fans have been sticklers for accuracy. I don't believe that to be a bad thing. This movie has thrown a lot of things out the window and it almost amazes me that so many people are happy to just say "Well it's just a new timeline".

 

Star Trek fans almost revolted when the Ferengi and Borg were on Enterprise yet it's ok to change Kirk's birthplace and Chekov's date of birth.... and who knows what else.

 

I am curious to wait a couple weeks then I'll scan various Trek sites and see what everyone's saying in regard to the alterations. Maybe I'm the only one that those little things annoy.

 

 

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The fact is, we don't know anything about Chekov's parents beyond Chekov's father's name being Andrei. So there is the possibility that some change in the timeline could alter the date of Chekov's birth. With the change in birth year, it may not be the exact same Chekov. The prime timeline Chekov was never a math whiz or any kind of prodigy. Or maybe they just goofed up. Orci and Kurtzman (who wrote the movie, not Abrams) would hardly be the first Star Trek writers to make an error. But I don't think it was poor research or ignorance. It would be difficult to get Chekov's middle name right without seeing his birthdate, which leads me to believe it was supposed to have been changed by temporal interference. I will be interested to see how they address this, because I'm sure it will come up in interviews.

 

 

 

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Just to be a pedant a typical nova usual goes something like this; As the sun/star runs out of its usual sources for fusion it expands as it draws upon the heavier elements (A la whatever star that killed romulus) then as those resources are used up it collapses upon itself (now here is the fun part) If it continues to fall upon itself and is of a sufficient enough size, it can become super dense and has the theoretical possibility of either becoming a black hole itself (extremely like or becoming a brown dwarf (a stellar object with a mass between that of a gas giant and a star, some debate is whether they have achieved fusion but for sake of argument here, it has) between collapsing on itself and brown dwarf it blows of a huge amount of debris (gas etc)

 

So essentially Jack when you say some reason it expanded and absorbed energy (beg to differ it is collating elements for fusion ergo transforming into energy, but neither her nor there) it is actually fulfilling its actual death throes of being supernova. [here endeth the science nerdism]

 

Big bug bear with the film is the death of the romulan ship.

 

Under relativity

 

to an outside observer action near to a large gravity object become slower as the gravity of the large gravity object acts on time, however to those actually near to the large gravity object time behaves in an apparently normal manner (basic rule is everything is relative to the observer) time speeds up the more gravity there is, but to those experiencing the speeded up time, they won't notice it. (which would indicate Bajor with 26 hours may possibly be in an area with less gravity than earth)

 

Given this, the enterprise would have seen the Romulan ship in a state of suspension and not destroyed immediately (Time being slower for the observer than the observed in this equation) it could have taken centuries if not millennia for the destruction of the Romulan ship. Where as for the Romulans themselves it would have been a momentary thing.

 

Feel free to illuminate me.

 

 

The entire Star Trek franchise is loaded with errors in physics. Most movie are. Just one of those things.

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Well, like I said before. I liked the movie on it's own merits and I think it will be hugely successful at the box office. The things I don't like are all of those things that make us say "It's totally possible that because of this... that could have happened... which caused this and that's why it makes this all possible for that to happen". Too much of a gimmick.

I will consider the movie canon but I don't know that I'll consider it "real" Star Trek... by that I mean that Enterprise to Nemesis and everything in between is "real" Star Trek. This one seems to exist outside of that universe. At least to me anyway. As I said before, if I were putting my DVD's on a shelf I might put this one over with TAS. Sort of a "fiction" that was spawned off the "reality".

One aspect of the graphics that I didn't care for but one I could just shrug off is the way they show the ships going to warp. Not at all in a Star Trek way.

You know, it may not seem like it and I know I keep saying it but I really did like the movie. I like the concept of having new TOS era movies and I liked most of the actors. It's just the more I think about and discuss the whole "alternate timeline" thing the more it bugs me. I guess that's what we can expect when they bring in "outsiders" though.

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One aspect of the graphics that I didn't care for but one I could just shrug off is the way they show the ships going to warp. Not at all in a Star Trek way.

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Now there I disagree with you. As Angela said, everything is relative to the observer. If the observer was outside the ship he would perceive warp differently than if he was inside the ship. Generally Trek shows a starship going to warp from the outside. This movie showed it from the inside. Even when the ship went to warp in TOS we didn't see viewscreen images or exteorior images. We saw Sulu messing with the controls, that's it.

 

So who is to say what we saw in the movie was any less Trekish? We simply saw it from a direction we weren't used to.

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One aspect of the graphics that I didn't care for but one I could just shrug off is the way they show the ships going to warp. Not at all in a Star Trek way.

Click for Spoiler:

Now there I disagree with you. As Angela said, everything is relative to the observer. If the observer was outside the ship he would perceive warp differently than if he was inside the ship. Generally Trek shows a starship going to warp from the outside. This movie showed it from the inside. Even when the ship went to warp in TOS we didn't see viewscreen images or exteorior images. We saw Sulu messing with the controls, that's it.

 

So who is to say what we saw in the movie was any less Trekish? We simply saw it from a direction we weren't used to.

 

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I'm not sure I'm following, I'm talking about seeing the ships just "popping" into warp. We saw that from outside the ship if I remember correctly. When I go to the IMAX version I'll look at it again and and see if my initioal impression was wrong though.

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Just to be a pedant a typical nova usual goes something like this; As the sun/star runs out of its usual sources for fusion it expands as it draws upon the heavier elements (A la whatever star that killed romulus) then as those resources are used up it collapses upon itself (now here is the fun part) If it continues to fall upon itself and is of a sufficient enough size, it can become super dense and has the theoretical possibility of either becoming a black hole itself (extremely like or becoming a brown dwarf (a stellar object with a mass between that of a gas giant and a star, some debate is whether they have achieved fusion but for sake of argument here, it has) between collapsing on itself and brown dwarf it blows of a huge amount of debris (gas etc)

 

So essentially Jack when you say some reason it expanded and absorbed energy (beg to differ it is collating elements for fusion ergo transforming into energy, but neither her nor there) it is actually fulfilling its actual death throes of being supernova. [here endeth the science nerdism]

 

Big bug bear with the film is the death of the romulan ship.

 

Under relativity

 

to an outside observer action near to a large gravity object become slower as the gravity of the large gravity object acts on time, however to those actually near to the large gravity object time behaves in an apparently normal manner (basic rule is everything is relative to the observer) time speeds up the more gravity there is, but to those experiencing the speeded up time, they won't notice it. (which would indicate Bajor with 26 hours may possibly be in an area with less gravity than earth)

 

Given this, the enterprise would have seen the Romulan ship in a state of suspension and not destroyed immediately (Time being slower for the observer than the observed in this equation) it could have taken centuries if not millennia for the destruction of the Romulan ship. Where as for the Romulans themselves it would have been a momentary thing.

 

Feel free to illuminate me.

 

 

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Thanks for that post! I enjoyed it. Good points! :(

 

I just saw the movie again tonight, and I really enjoyed it--will go again! :D But I too still feel unsettled by the timeline, and sort of consider it a bit separate, in a way. Since the timelines clearly can't really coexist anyway, I don't see a problem with that. It is indisputably Trek! (Separate but equal? Oh no! :P)

 

Diana

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One aspect of the graphics that I didn't care for but one I could just shrug off is the way they show the ships going to warp. Not at all in a Star Trek way.

Click for Spoiler:

Now there I disagree with you. As Angela said, everything is relative to the observer. If the observer was outside the ship he would perceive warp differently than if he was inside the ship. Generally Trek shows a starship going to warp from the outside. This movie showed it from the inside. Even when the ship went to warp in TOS we didn't see viewscreen images or exteorior images. We saw Sulu messing with the controls, that's it.

 

So who is to say what we saw in the movie was any less Trekish? We simply saw it from a direction we weren't used to.

 

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I'm not sure I'm following, I'm talking about seeing the ships just "popping" into warp. We saw that from outside the ship if I remember correctly. When I go to the IMAX version I'll look at it again and and see if my initioal impression was wrong though.

 

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Roy is talking about you can see the view screen in some scenes when they are in warp and it has a bunch of stuff flying on the screen. But, the ships do "pop" out of nowhere like you said. To me, it made more realistic. If a ship was moving warp 6 for example, that is extremely fast and would appear to the naked eye as if the ship just disappeared.

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I dunno if this is supposed to be in a spoiler, but the new Star Trek movie is kinda like recent Godzilla movies. Starting with Godzilla 2000, the only thing that each successive movie shared with the continuity is the very first Godzilla movie. Each movie was basically a sequel to the original, so you had about 4 or 5 sequels in a row.

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it's generally understood that when someone says "I'm from..." they're talking about the place they were born

 

I've never assumed that... I ask someone where they're from and then I'll sometimes ask how long they've lived there. I was born in Washington state. I live in Houston currently. If someone asks me where I'm from, I'll say San Antonio, but the truth is I only lived there for two years before going off to college. I lived in New York for four consecutive years, Washington and Virginia each for four years... longer than I lived in San Antonio. I say I'm from Texas. But I'm not originally from Texas. I haven't even spent a third of my life here. So when someone says they're from a certain place, I don't assume that they've been there their whole lives or even for most of their lives.

 

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I liked the movie as a movie on its own. I love all of the inside jokes and little references and tributes. I think it was an absolutely great way to pay tribute to and keep elements of the old Star Trek but to give it a new beginning at the same time. It had plenty of plot holes and cliches, but I am actually very good at overlooking those types of things. I'm a Trekkie, after all. :P But the alternate timeline bothered me. I had a thought if they did that just to have an excuse to have Nimoy in the film, then maybe Nimoy shouldn't have been in the film. I think it could have worked using the original timeline... I'm sure they could have done something.

 

I was talking to my parents after the movie and I told them that as soon as Spock's mom died, I thought to myself, "Great. This never happened. They're going to write this movie off as an alternate reality. I'm watching a movie that never happened." And my mom told me, "Guess what. none of it ever happened. It's not real." And it made me think. And I came to the conclusion that my real problem with the movie is that it brings reality into Star Trek. That they felt they needed to give it a different start in order to draw people in. That it was, essentially, made for ticket sales (I know, I know, everything is. But it's tough to see something you love sold out for more money.) Star Trek is this great little universe of really fantastic stuff and in the past it has been—quite frankly—a sanctuary for me. So seeing it juxtaposed with reality is just a bit... unsettling.

 

Now, something I've been wondering: would it have been a better ending if they had fixed the timeline and everything went back to "normal" and none of the movie ever happened? I've been thinking about this, and it was originally the ending I thought would happen as I was watching the movie. It is a complete and total copout, yes. But I think the whole alternate timeline is a copout as well. At least fixing the timeline brings some closure and sets up any future movies to take place in the "correct" Star Trek timeline.

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