I do. Human behavior is guided more by habit and emotion than it
is by reason. Why should Romulan behavior be different?

Not "utterly, totally, mad". Only as mad as you or I would be if we
saw Earth destroyed. Or as the German and Russian people were
when they saw their economies being destroyed by Jews, or as
Islamic fundamentalists were when they saw their culture being
destroyed by Americans. There are many other examples, several
in the news just in the last week.

The Star Trek script wasn't written in a cultural vacuum.

My neighbor just trashed his own apartment out of anger at his
significant other. Not rational, obviously, but he is neither crazy
nor an idiot, as far as I can tell. Just very, very unhappy.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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"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

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

History and recent history. Nothing more than that, Swift. Events which
probably directly drove the plot of the film. To leave out comments on
such events would be a travesty against history, in my opinion. While it
has the potential to be inflammatory, it certainly isn't bound to be so.
I certainly don't want it to inflame anyone or any thing. It is just history.
We have to live with it, not ignore it.

-- 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

No, I don't. However, I do expect that if he intended to save Romulus that there would be a good explanation for why he was waiting to do so. A good explanation would be something better than "he's crazy!"

It certainly was "impending." A supernova doesn't just happen. With today's science, we would know if there was a nearby well evolved star that was likely to develop into a supernova relatively soon. We wouldn't know if it was going to happen tomorrow, or in 50,000 years, but we would know about the danger.

They would have known it was dangerous. There was no indication in the movie that Romulus would have been ready for it if they had known the exact date of the supernova. The attempted solution was a last-ditch Federation effort with major input from Vulcan.

Again, they would already know the star was dangerous and he had the advanced technology to give to Romulus (or not - he could be a conquering hero).

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

There are plenty of good explanations, two of which I have already offered. He wants to punish Spock, but doesn't know exactly when he'll arrive, while he knows exactly how long he has until Romulus is directly threatened. So he doesn't want to miss Spock, and he can turn up just in the nick of time and guarantee his hero status by saving Romulus at the 11th hour.

Why would he want to conquer Romulus? He shows no such desires at any point in the movie.

It seems to me that you are constructing a series of events that he 'should' have taken, but I see no reason why your expectations of a fictional character's motivation are any more or less valid than mine. Why shouldn't he be waiting to step in at just the right time, given his knowledge of the exact date of Romulus's destruction?

I still want to know why that ship was carrying so much red matter though....

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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.

And I already discussed problems with those explanations. Ultimately, it comes down to "he's crazy!"

If he wanted to save Romulus, he would wait for Spock, because that's where he would get the means to save Romulus. However, if he cared, he probably would warn Romulus. But as previously noted, if he had had any intention of saving Romulus, he gave no indication of it.

I'm not saying he would. I'm saying he could have. This is part of a discussion going back to one of your previous statements:
And I pointed out ways he could make Romulus the dominant political force in the galaxy. Of course, all those methods start with saving Romulus from its doom.

I think we're going in circles. This is another item I already answered. One more time: It's extremely dangerous to wait and would serve no advantage. By the end of the movie, he was dead, the means to save Romulus was gone, and with Vulcan gone, it was unclear the capability could be recreated in this timeline to attempt to save Romulus. By his actions, he likely doomed Romulus.

HE SHOULD HAVE SAVED ROMULUS FIRST. FAILING THAT, HE SHOULD HAVE EXPLAINED WHY HE WASN'T SAVING ROMULUS FIRST. Not doing either of those things was bad story telling.

You'll have to ask the writers about that.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

O.K..you know you're a geek when you join a forum for the express purpose of joining in a Star Trek discussion, lol.

Just wanted to point out why Nero didn't take the Red Matter directly to Romulus instead of waiting for Spock, which seems to be the main point of contention here.

Simply put, he didn't have the Red Matter.

He waited for Spock and captured him as Spock left the wormhole. The aforementioned Red Matter was on Spock's ship, as is clearly shown in the movie. Several times Spock's ship is shown in the hold of the Romulan ship. The Red Matter is aboard it in it's "containment" chamber. It is still aboard when "young Spock" steals the ship.

As for the other parts of "Bad Science"....it's a movie, not a thesis. It's entertainment, not theory.

... hmmm, just why was there so much Red Matter....?

No, the debate (well, one of the debates ) is over what Nero did with it once he had it. As I said in my previous post, "If he wanted to save Romulus, he would wait for Spock, because that's where he would get the means to save Romulus." Once he had the red matter, if he cared about the fate of the now existing Romulus, I would expect him to collapse the soon-to-be supernova first, and do whatever else he wanted to do after that.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Oh, I forgot to welcome you in the last post. Take a look around, you might find other things you find interesting on the site.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

A quote from Star Trek the Man Trap season 1

Vulcan, has no moon Mrs Uhura.
I’m not surprised Mr. Spock as Nero blew it up with red matter!

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Bart Sibrel is owned by the (Buzz-Lite-Punch) right on the chops.

We came in peace for all mankind…
The moon no longer as any astronomical importance! Thanks to NASA for defacing it!

Young Spock, get out of my mind!
My love for you is way out of line
better run Spock --
you're much TOO young Spock!

I *loved* the scenes of he and Uhura kissing. I wanted to say, "Next!"

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Smoking on the seashell pipe the gypsies had made
We sat and we dreamed a while...in that crystal thought time in Mexico. ~Donovan

Last time I went to that movie it was strictly for entertainment purposes; what is your beef?
It was well done, acting was great. (Even Phil Plait, SGU guys liked it).
Granted the story was dumb.

You've found my beef.

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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!"

Its a good beef to have, IMHO. I've seen the film (and did not put a dime in Paramount's pockets to do it, BTW), and they certainly had the elements to make a workable film, but what showed up on the screen was not, IMHO. Even if you hand wave away the things the film got wrong (Vulcan having a moon, Chekov being born several years before Nero showed up in the past, even though in TOS Chekov's age was such that he would have been born years after Nero appeared, etc., etc., etc.) its not a good film.

For example, Nero did something for 25 years after he found himself in Kirk's time. What, we don't know (though him ending up on a Klingon prison planet supposedly wound up on the cutting room floor), but he did not just hang out in one spot and wait for Spock to show up. (Right before Spock appears, one of the Romulans on Nero's ship says, "We're at the coordinates, sir.") Bear in mind, that Nero had a ship which was 200 years more advanced than anything in the Federation/Romulan/Klingon fleets. He could have ripped the galaxy apart and propped himself up in charge of it all fairly quickly (think what would have happened if a modern US aircraft carrier found itself parked outside of New York harbor on July 5, 1776). That's just one of the glaring plotholes in the film.

I will say some things in favor of the film. The size of starship crews was more realistic (800 on the small ship that Kirk's father was on, given that modern US warships hold that many or more, this makes more sense than the 400 of TOS), and the ships moved in three dimensions. They swung around, dove, twisted, and spun, instead of just coming at one another on the same plane, as they tended to do in previous incarnation of Trek. The cast was also pretty good, with some of them managing to capture the right elements of the original characters by the end of the film. (I did keep expecting Simon Pegg to be forced to shoot his mother, however. )

Its going to be interesting to see the reaction of folks who loved the film on the big screen, when they pick it up on DVD. I have a feeling that a significant portion of them are going to have the same reaction to it that a friend of mine did to Tim Burton's Batman when he watched it on video, "You know, this looked pretty cool in the theater, but watching it on TV, you realize it kind of sucks." (He said that less than 10 minutes into his first VHS viewing of the film. )

There's a real lack of depth to the characters in the new film. I've seen TWoK enough times to have the dialogue memorized, and I still pull new elements out of them based on the interaction of the characters. As I've grown older, I've found Kirk's wrestling with his mortality, that of his friends, and a son who neither knows who is, nor cares, to be more relevant to my life. How many of the kids seeing NuTrek today, will keep going back to it, decades after they first watched it, and identifying more and more with the characters in it?

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