DDL on 2/6/2009 at 14:50
They could always argue they're just setting the entire crew and ship up as posterboys for starfleet awesomeness: "here's the incredibly youthful and inexperienced crew that saved our planet and fucked over the big bad guy. Yeah, we're THAT awesome.", and then intend to just parade them around, drawing lots of attention, opening supermarkets etc etc, while Starfleet actually goes on dominating the universe on the sly using darker, nastier warships full of big burly grizzled Gears of War types commanded by ruthless military geniuses.
It could work.
Starrfall on 2/6/2009 at 15:14
Quote Posted by oudeis
As far as I can tell, in the US Navy it takes about 15 years from comissioning to command of a capital ship, and that would be considered fast.
Betcha dollar if the US navy lost a large percentage of its fighting force (including a lot of its top brass) you'd see a lot of accelerated promotions. And once again, I don't see why a pure merit system is so hard to believe. Kirk = awesome captain, therefore Kirk = captain of the enterprise. It's not like this is taking place in today's civil service world when the only way to reach the top is to climb every single step up the ladder and kiss every ass on your way up.
ZylonBane on 2/6/2009 at 15:18
Quote Posted by DDL
They could always argue they're just setting the entire crew and ship up as posterboys for starfleet awesomeness: "here's the incredibly youthful and inexperienced crew that saved our planet and fucked over the big bad guy. Yeah, we're THAT awesome.", and then intend to just parade them around, drawing lots of attention, opening supermarkets etc etc, while Starfleet actually goes on dominating the universe on the sly using darker, nastier warships full of big burly grizzled Gears of War types commanded by ruthless military geniuses.
It could work.
That's an excellent point. Let's pretend Paul Verhoeven directed this, and call it satire instead of crap.
Chimpy Chompy on 2/6/2009 at 15:51
We've basically got the equivalent of an origin story in a superhero movie. It's revisiting a popular legend, and step one is to show how the characters took on the roles we're used them having in that legend. So Kirk had to be captain by the end really; it would a bit of a downer if he was Lieutenant Commander Kirk or something.
Sp while such a meteoric rise is kinda silly, between starfleet being short-staffed (look how dependent the flagship was on newbies even before the fleet got crunched) and Pike personally rooting for him, I can live with it.
Oh and I don't think I said before but great movie overall despite a flimsy plot. Characters were spot on, great action scenes, Nero was pretty cool. I'd give it an 8/10.
Stitch on 2/6/2009 at 15:54
I will say this much: complaints abut the trivial ship design deviations make me want to see this film purely to contribute to its box office tally and further marginalize constipated nerd obsession.
doctorfrog on 2/6/2009 at 16:54
Oh, how I envy your disposable income ;)
The new ship is pretty neat. Crew compliment is 100 if they're fat, 160 if they're skinny.
They had to rocket-promote Kirk somehow. Backgrounds for Kirk's and even TNG's Picard's pre-captain years have always been fuzzy, I don't think they ever completely covered what made Kirk the youngest captain ever, or what happened to Picard before his first command.
This still makes Kirk's rise to captain on par with Tim Robbins's rocket shot from mailroom clerk to CEO in The Hudsucker Proxy (cue graduation music, crossfading laughtercuts and frontpage headlines).
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhStVdkBJiw#t=8m14s)
zenmaster891 on 2/6/2009 at 17:02
Jeez man...I LIKED the movie and I've seen it twice so I've done my share of contributing to box office success. I didn't say it ruined the movie or something it was still a lot of fun even for its mediocre plot. I just said looking at them side by side makes the new one seem even more silly looking, it didn't ruin the movie or anything crazy like that.
Also yea I agree they kinda had to rocket-promote him, that was just the nature of the film to move quickly. It felt like a blitz and now that everyone is settled into the characters in the right place with the right rank we can move on. But they still probably could have tweaked a thing here or there to make it seem a bit more plausible, I dont think I would have had a problem if he wasn't already captain at the end because they're clearly going to be making A LOT more of these so they've got plenty more screen time to work with. But I guess they didn't know that going in.
Matthew on 2/6/2009 at 17:07
It's a fairly minor quibble at the end of the day, so I certainly didn't get worked up about it.
To put my nerd hat on, Lieutenant and later Commander Picard has featured in a couple of novels in the past, but you're right that his documented history mostly starts with Stargazer.
ZylonBane on 2/6/2009 at 17:28
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
They had to rocket-promote Kirk somehow.
No, they really didn't. The script is already full of jumps forward in time. We see Kirk as a little poorly-acted product-placing douchebag, we see him enlisting in Starfleet, then we see him graduating from the academy. Just one more jump forward could have shown us a Kirk who's been serving in the fleet for a few years.
But that would have been the act of an intelligent script, not the zoom-wow let's not force our audience to think headbanger that we ended up with.
It's really no surprise that this Star Trek is so successful-- they've finally made one that's stupid enough to have mass appeal. It's practically a live-action cartoon. And even the Star Trek cartoon was better-written than this.
mol on 2/6/2009 at 18:14
This thread is finally finding its geeky form. I wondered what took it so long.
