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Monday, June 15, 2009

What Star Trek could do

Star Trek can play the following roles:

1. Real information about science
2. Sense of wonder about space exploration
3. Envision future technology
4. Envision future society

The original series gave us 2, 3, 4. Some good science but it was never a focus.

Next Gen was ok with sense of wonder (although a bit muted since they were on a cruise ship) and was amazing with its vision of technology. It also had a very ambitious vision of society, unfortunately one so utopian (no money, everyone is nice, everyone is understanding, all is done by consensus, blah blah blah) that it made for terrible drama and would be a bloody boring future to live in. They pretty much dodged anything remotely controversial, unlike the original series.

The terrible particle-babble ("tetrions") of the Next Gen was a tragic lost opportunity, considering this is as close as millions upon millions of people will get to science.

There is also a major flaw in the "envision future society" bit - Roddenberry had a very progressive vision in the 60s with equality of women and races - the obvious modern equivalent would be with sexuality, but there are no gay people in the future in Star Trek. That's pretty lame. Why not make Sulu gay? After all, he is.

Plus which, for the straight guys like me, could we have some more interesting women characters? Seriously 7 of 9 and T'Pol? Hey, look at our b00b1es! You can have way way more interesting characters like BSG Starbuck and Boomer, who are complex and not in the barbie doll mold but still super hot.

The new Trek movie is FAIL:
1. terrible science
2. you barely know you're in space and no one is excited about it
3. no technology vision
4. a society that appears to be basically identical to our current one in every way

Wow, that's quite the science fiction adventure you've put together there, except without the science, and the science fiction, and the vision, and the future.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 20:47 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

Star Trek: the problem of Delta Vega

(I'm pretty sure in the movie they said Delta Vega 4, but whatever.)

SPOILEROILEROILER

This is VERY BAD SCIENCE.

So this place looks to be like 100,000 km from Vulcan - in other words, it has to be a moon, or the spectacularly unlikely case of a planet sharing the EXACT SAME ORBIT.

But Vulcan is basically a desert, while with Class M breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, while Delta Vega is all ice, also with Class M atmosphere.

But they should be receiving the same amount of insolation.
So ok let's assume we have only seen the equatorial regions of Vulcan and we just happen to be seeing one of the poles of Delta Vega.

So we're obviously in the Vulcan star system, but there's only a Federation base there?
Don't you think the Vulcans would have a nearby moon covered with science bases?
What's the Federation doing with a base in the Vulcan solar system?

Makes no sense.

The unofficial info in Memory Alpha is very disheartening

Although the Delta Vega depicted in Star Trek is located in the Vulcan system, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman named it after the planet in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In an interview with TrekMovie.com, Orci said, "We moved the planet to suit our purposes. The familiarity of the name seemed more important as an Easter egg, than a new name with no importance." [1]

According to writer Roberto Orci, the part of the mind meld sequence in which Prime Spock sees the destruction of Vulcan was meant to be "as impressionistic for a general audience." The idea was that Spock saw the planet's destruction through "a telescope or some other type of measuring device," but showing it that way on-screen "isn't very cinematic." However, Orci himself prefers to think of Delta Vega as being in close orbit of Vulcan. [2]

This is one of the fundamental problems of modern science fiction, which is you have these TV and movie writers who know nothing about science or about the genre, and think it's just an excuse to make stuff up. This was particularly prevalent in the Next Generation, where it was clear they had writers from like random network TV shows writing stories for a completely different genre.

Things have names for a reason.
Scientists don't go hmm... ok that's alpha Centauri and right next to let's put Gamma Tarkania.

And you couldn't have Spock looking through a telescope? He's f&#king SCIENTIST for Christ's sake. He's SUPPOSED to look through telescopes.

Sigh.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 20:25 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Star Trek: the problem of time travel and Spock

* SPOILERS *

The Problem of Time Travel

Time travel, like any deus ex machina, always leads to major plot problems.
Most plots just avoid the issues entirely, and hope that the entertainment outweighs the flaws.
Sometimes they have the characters explicitly state: "um yeah if you think about this you'll get all tangled in temporal paradoxes so don't bother".
Others try to constrain the time travel in such a way as to make it possible only under circumstances that serve the plot.

There is lots of time travel in Trek (particularly Voyager), including in Voyage Home (ST 4) and First Contact (ST 8), both of which are movies I like.

The problem with unconstrained time travel is it breaks the rules of drama. In time travel stories, people are always rushing against time, while you're thinking... um, what's the rush? Just travel to yesterday sometime and fix it.

Now add to this the problem of Old Spock ("Spock Prime"). One of the ways you can get around time travel issues is by having the characters not know how it works, or how it happened. But Spock is a Science Genius. He has perfect recall. He knows 150 years of Federation history and galactic science. He's already travelled back in time in Voyage Home and knows about the Guardian of Forever, and he almost certainly knows about the Bajoran time-travel orb, just for three examples, plus he has this ship full of handy black-hole-making red matter AND he has Scotty, Super Engineer/Scientist. You're telling me out of all the thousands upon thousands of planets, devices, civilizations and scientific advances he knows about, there isn't one that would let HIM travel back in time AGAIN?

Particularly considering HIS ENTIRE PLANET INCLUDING HIS MOTHER ARE NOW STONE DEAD?

All Spock Prime has to say is "hi, sorry for the inconvenience, I'm just going to fly backwards around the sun in a certain way and un-f*ck this timeline, nice meeting you".

The Problem of Spock

Spock Prime loves peace. He has 150 years of deaths and wars in his head. You're telling me the most important thing for him is to help the Vulcan Colony? He's not going to try to stop the war with the Klingons? Make peace with the Romulans? Stop the advance of the Borg? Go to the Delta Quadrant and mind-meld the Dominion into pacifism? Or provide advice and information about the galaxy so that in a thousand thousand ways large and small, death and disaster is prevented?

Makes no sense.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 07:49 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

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