No, very little time travel in it, more of an alternate history, which is NOT the same thing.

I thought it was a brilliant way to have TOS and this new interpretation co-exist. (although I can get a bit nit picky about a few things, but overall I was delighted with it)

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

I agree people, seesh. I'm old enough and I dunno what the problem is. A lot are going to take me to task for this but sometimes science shouldn't get in the way of storytelling. Watch the movie don't take notes on what's wrong with it. If you don't like it fine. I happened to have loved it.

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

I knew it was supposed to be, and I went into the movie willing to give it a lot of rope, especially on the science. Of course, that doesn't stop me from talking about science holes. Why should it?

Watching the movie, I had a much bigger problem with the plot holes than the science.

I remember watching it when it originally aired.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Just a reminder, spoilers ahead . . .






Time travel created the alternate timeline. I knew before I saw the movie that time travel was involved, and I didn't mind that they used it to reset the Star Trek universe. I expected that.

However, it also removed the villain's motivation. He had the means to stop the supernova, and he had plenty of time to do it. That's the problem with time travel stories: It's so hard to do them right.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

In the Alternate History sub-genre, that's the most common way of creating an alternate timeline...

I still say this wasn't a time travel story, but an alternate history story. Both TOS and this timeline still technically exist.

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

I would say it was both.

Did they say that they both exist in the movie? Honestly, I don't remember if they did or didn't.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Old Spock remembered events that happened in TOS, that can't happen in the movie timeline now because of Nemo, or Nero, or whatever the heck his name is, actions.

It's the old Grandfather Paradox. Nero figuratively killed his own grandfather by accident and changed history. He could save Romulas, but in his demented mind, it's not his Romulas. And since he did change history 100 or so years in the past, his wife might never be born just by chance. I don't see a problem.

Certainly better then 'Back to the Future' nonsense where your picture disappears :P

__________________
"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

The main thing time travel does is create alternate history. Whether it is
an alternate to real history or fictional history, and whether the alternate
is the history we know or some other.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

I think it's a question of degree. Star Drek took all of the bad science of a full season of the original series and crammed it into two hours of movie, leaving little room for the (comparatively) deep plotting, character development, and philosophy of a single episode.

In other words, "The dose makes the poison."

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

I have to tell you, it's the whole "alternate history" thing that makes me not want to see it. It's a cheat. It's intended, from what I can tell, to get all of the characters the fans know and love into the same movie, not because it's a better story but because they'll make more money that way. Well, of course, the point of a movie is to make money. I've no illusions there. But a point of a movie is to tell a story worth hearing, surely.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Alternate History is not a 'cheat' but a very popular genre of Science Fiction (and kinda sorta of Historical Fiction)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_history

__________________
"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

I enjoyed "Bring the Jubilee" very much.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Yes, and I have several books in it. In Star Trek, it's a cheat, because Star Trek's timeline is defined. The Eugenics Wars didn't happen, so the series is--as we knew it would be--already on an alternate timeline. To use an alternate timeline off Star Trek so you can get in characters who would not be in the same place at the same time is not the same as the book I have that speculates, for example, on what might have happened had Victoria Woodhull, in the face of all probability, succeeded in her Presidential bid.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the original timeline still exists. There's no real physics behind this, just whatever rules they grant time travel (if any) in the story.

I don't recall at any point in the movie where Nero indicated he didn't believe this was his "real" Romulus. On the other hand, he seemed to think Vulcan was real enough, and obviously thought future Spock would believe it was real. And, while he did change history, it wasn't clear he had made any changes that would significantly affect Romulus, at least up to the point where he went after Vulcan. I also have to wonder why the crew went along with all this. They had decades to think it over, after all.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The previous timeline HAS to exist, otherwise there'd be nowhere (nowhen?) for Nero to have emerged from in the first place.

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Had to. In some stories, changes due to time travel rewrite the one existing timeline. In other stories, changes create multiple timelines. Unless it is specified that the previous timeline still exists in the story, it can't be assumed.

One argument for the "one timeline" idea here is that Spock emerged much later than Nero, but was in the same timeline as Nero.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I watched this movie yesterday. The whole experience was fun, especially for my son, he loved the green girl. I on the other hand had a few quibs about the movie.
1. The red matter was busy destroying Nero's ship (and turning it into a black-hole), was it then really necessary for Cpt Kirk to fire at it?
2. Nero's ship was about to form a black-hole (thanks to the red matter), then why did Cpt Kirk decide to hang around (and endanger his crew, be pulled in etc.) for the whole shebang?
The above made Cpt Kirk look like a reckless and trigger happy captain.
(man I'm asking for it......flame suit on)

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

I doubt you'll get any argument about Kirk being reckless and trigger-happy,
even if several episodes of TOS had exactly the opposite idea as their main
story "point".

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Another thing, the flight time Earth to Vulcan is THREE MINUTES?

Well, there's narrative convention and then there's logic. If Nero's reality ceased to exist, then it ceased ever to have existed, which means Nero, at least the Nero of the original timeline, would cease ever to have existed as well.

__________________
There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

And this is based on what theory of time travel? You're making assumptions about how time travel is supposed to work. Unless it is spelled out in the story, there is no requirement that it works the way you want.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I disagree that it removed his motivation. Yes, he had plenty of time to save Romulus, but in the meantime his primary desire was to punish Spock and the Federation for failing to save his planet. It is never stated in the film that he doesn't intend to go on and save Romulus after he's finished with Vulcan and Earth, since presumably whatever he does with Vulcan and the Federation the supernova will still occur (physics not generally giving a damn about politics and all) and he has plenty of red matter to hand. (That's another question: if so little red matter is required to create the black hole that Spock made in the first place, why is there so much of it on the ship in the first place?) He also now has the added bonus that he can cripple his people's main adversaries and not only save Romulus in this timeline but create a situation that allows the empire to become the dominant political force in the galaxy.

So I don't see a problem with his motivation at all.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Does the movie treat the two timelines as equals, or is one presented as
being more real than the other? Or, if not more real, perhaps more final?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Well, the movie's timeline must have been more real, because the special effects looked more real

But no, I don't think any characters in the movie addressed that. More like, that's the way time was then, this is the way it is now...or however you say it.

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-----
Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

The future isn't what it used to be. Now it's history.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Neither. They simply state that Nero's actions created a new timeline.

However, notably for Star Trek, they never make any attempt to 'fix' the timeline and restore it to the original.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Why? That was extremely thin motivation in the first place (Spock and the Federation didn't fail for lack of trying) and Romulus exists in the new timeline. He either considers that to be his "real" Romulus (in which case there is nobody to punish) or he doesn't consider Vulcan to be real (in which case he can't punish Spock).

If he was going to save Romulus, he should have done it as soon as he could. By the end of the movie, the means to save Romulus no longer exists and he destroyed one of the worlds that built the hardware for the attempt to save Romulus in the previous timeline. He might well have doomed Romulus a second time.

I'm guessing it's supposed to be mass related: A small bit for a planet, a big bit for a massive star.

Then he should have saved Romulus first, and given them his advanced technology.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Where does that idea come from? You're applying your own thoughts on how the timeline thing worked to a fictional character's motivation. The man watched his home planet, and presumably a few friends and family along with it, burn up. That's surely going to unhinge him a bit, and his crew? He may have gone back in time to a point where Romulus still exists, but that's not going to erase the trauma of watching it burn, is it?

And while Spock was trying, he may believe that the Federation delayed his actions deliberately to remove Romulus and gain greater political power in the galaxy. Not everyone can accept that there's no-one to blame for a tragedy.


Why, if he's blinded by the desire for revenge?

If you apply that logic, Khan should have accepted the word of his lietenant in the second film and agreed that he had escaped exile and that was enough, since by the end of that film he had lost the ship and his entire crew.

He probably did, but his actions don't have to be so coldly rational. Romulans are not known for embracing the logic of Vulcans, are they?

But Spock only intended to use it once for one star, and in the flashback sequence he doesn't seem to extract any more than Nero did to destroy a planet. Why does he have so much left after his one-shot attempt?

He didn't know when Spock would come through to his timeline, and if his main motivation is revenge then why wouldn't he wait, given that he knows he has over a century before Romulus is actually threatened again?

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

I'm just listing different possibilities: If he considers this universe real, then I would expect he would want to project Romulus. If he doesn't consider it real, he can't punish Spock.

This isn't making any assumptions about how time travel is supposed to work. As shown in the story, Romulus and Vulcan did exist in the new universe. He can either accept it as real to him or not.

Trauma or not, I'd expect they either would want to save Romulus this time around, or somebody would at least explain why they won't.

If you want me to get behind the story idea, somebody has to explain their reasoning, since right now it doesn't make sense.

This is speculation. It was not mentioned in the story.

In this case, he had the chance to go to Romulus as a hero, and get everything he wants by working with them.

And I don't buy the blinded by rage bit. They had decades to think it over. If he was that utterly, totally, mad, I would expect that the crew would at least try to take over.

They are more emotional than Vulcans, but they aren't supposed to be crazy idiots.


As soon as he had Spock, he should have taken care of the impending supernova. Then he could do whatever else he wanted.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

You still assume that he must have gone there right away.

The supernova wasn't 'impending' in any meaningful sense to the people he would be trying to protect. It was about a century away. In the original timeline no-one knew it was dangerous to Romulus until it actually happened, otherwise they'd have been ready for it. How likely is he to be hailed a hero if he turns up, collapses a star that doesn't seem to be causing anyone any problems just yet, then goes off to Romulus and says 'hi, I've come from a hundred years in your future where that star blew up and destroyed this whole planet'? He has an advantage: he knows when it's going to happen. If he's going to be a hero he needs to step up at the right time or else he'll be locked up as a madman and his ship stripped down.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.