New Testingstan

RyanThunder wrote:I mean planetside missile silos and emergency shields for buildings and what not. I'm not asking for impregnability here.

Whatever the case, the Enterprise and Vengeance were both able to make dangerously close to a major population centre unchallenged. That's just not acceptable. Even if we accept that they can't stop something that big from hitting the ground (which isn't unreasonable), there wasn't even anything trying to stop them. Suppose one of their space docks falls out of orbit. What then?

Well they were technically friendly vessels who suffered unfortunate accidents from the point of view of Earth's mission control. Stopping crashing ships is different from stopping attacking ships (plus there were loads of emergency service vessels going into action).

Furthermore, airspace control. Khan zoomed right up to Starfleet Command with that gunship, completely unchallenged. The admirals had to request air defense teams to try to shoot it down.

That bit bothered me as well, I'd thought an emergency military meeting after a terrorist/guerrilla attack would take place in a bunker.

Yeah the thing that still shits me about the first one was how Spock had to shoot down the Narada's drill platform. Why didn't the federation have some fighters? I mean we see them in the sequel.

...I don't remember any fighters in Into Darkness, where did they turn up?

For the next film, I bet they'll do the Mirror Universe stuff.

evilsoup wrote:...I don't remember any fighters in Into Darkness, where did they turn up?

For the next film, I bet they'll do the Mirror Universe stuff.

At the end, they flew over the funeral.

You know, in all this speculation about what nuTrek III should do, I think everybody is overlooking the most important element they could have.

Uhura doing the fan dance.

Look to your avatar

RogueIce wrote:Uhura doing the fan dance.

You fool! Now you've put that vomit-inducing mental image from STV in my head. It will take me days to force it back out. Days of abject horror.

Saw the new movie last night. In short: it's a good action movie, and apart from being very LOUD and FAST there isn't much wrong with it. The plot's convoluted but it all fits, the acting is actually pretty great (especially Cumberbatch - the guy does creepy like few people do creepy), the effects are super duper. There's a lot more humor and it actually works.

I'm just really disappointed that like the last movie, it's really navelgazing-y. The opening scenes are on an actual honest-to-god alien planet with alien natives and it was great, but after five minutes we're back to Earth and a villain trying to kill everybody. That stuff worked in the original film series because it came *after* a show about galloping into the great unknown, but here it's really grating.
It's also stuffed with blink-and-you-miss-it Trek references. Like, a lot of them.

Flagg wrote:Yeah the thing that still shits me about the first one was how Spock had to shoot down the Narada's drill platform. Why didn't the federation have some fighters? I mean we see them in the sequel.

Vulcan and Earth may have sent off militia/police interceptors to fight Nero's giant doomship off screen (then presumably shot down in short order).

They may not have had those kinds of fighters in the first film

How much time has passed between ST'09 and the end of Into Darkness?

A couple of years? Is that enough time to design, test, and deploy a new type of fighter aircraft?

In real life, probably not, or probably just a 'stop-gap' design.

Though with Future Technologies(tm) who knows ?

The ships could well have been in the testing stage when ST09 happened
or they could just be some kind of atmospheric fighters

So, complete ST newb question :

Does the United Federation of Planets even have a "military" so to speak ? I mean, I have been led to understand that Starfleet primary concern was exploration and flag-showing, not to be an offensive force.

Do the federated planets even have the right to maintain a self-defense force ?

It makes sense that Earth, Vulcan, and other major member worlds maintain their own defence forces (similar to State Troopers or a localised Coast Guard) but that was never really explored properly in Old-Trek, before a under-aged Kirk got chased by that local hover bike officer (also you had Starfleet officers or enlisted men acting like street cops).

The Starfleet uniforms have been revamped a bit (with Starfleet having formal looking dove grey navy/air force looking dress uniforms).

We do know there's such things as "Vulcan ships" so probably yes to the federated q.

In TOS it was pretty unclear, mainly because everything about the universe tended to change from one episode to the next (Does Kirk work for Earth? UESPA? The Federation?). Then in TNG the Vulcans had their own defense fleet for a few episodes even though they were also a major part of Starfleet. Everything afterwards put space defense on Starfleet.

So it's really 'whatever the hell floats your boat'.

A science fiction universe inconsistent with itself?

Inconceivable!

[nerdrage]

How do you want to quantify anything in these conditions ! Seriously, guys...

It's still weird seeing an Enterprise that big. The new massive lobby set... Christ. Nice core though.

Bounty wrote: The new massive lobby set... Christ.

I dig the circular atrium area as well, but it seemed like something more suited to the Enterprise-D (if they didn't have a relatively low TV budget). The engineering sector was greatly improved as well.

Apparently the warp core is a real place, just with set dressing added.

RogueIce wrote:Apparently the warp core is a real place, just with set dressing added.

Yeah it's an actual fusion reactor test core.

All the white gave it a very NASA feel, which was cool.

Also Bumbledick Cuddlebunch was ace, the way he delivered the line was perfect.