Today I learned!

[theweaselking]

torrain took me to see Star Trek. Fun movie! Not nearly as terrible as the first NuTrek. But still, Today I Learned:


* That the Klingon homeworld Khronos is less than 20 light-minutes from the far edge of the Neutral Zone. Which is to say: "about as far as the Earth is, from Mars"
* That the Earth is less than 5 light-minutes from the far edge of the Neutral Zone.
* New Vulcan, wherever that is, can be reached by realtime communication from the Moon, but Earth cannot. So it's closer to the Moon than the Earth.
* KHRONOS can be reached by realtime communication from Earth, on a civilian cellphone. So.... fuck, I got nothing.
* Extremely bright and energetic things, including plasma discharges and WIDE-SPECTRUM RADIO BROADCASTS, in the orbit of the moon, cannot be seen from Earth.
* If your attitude-keeping thrusters fail while in stable orbit next to the moon, you'll fall straight towards the Earth. And impact about three minutes later.

That being said! Fun movie. Just remember that every time you hear a number or see a landmark, mentally replace with LALALALALALALALALALALALALA and you'll be okay. It's not QUITE as bad as NuTrek 1, but worse than Batman Begins' "human bodies don't contain water and steam isn't hot" plot point.

And, seriously, the far edge of the neutral zone is less than 20 light minutes from Khronos. And it takes about 5 minutes for a Warp 1 ship to reach Earth from there. That means Khronos is closer to the Earth than JUPITER is.

And fuck no, Khan is NOT your last chance, you have *72 other people with the exact same super-science mod installed* on ice, right next to you! But I can see making that mistake: Bones is, after all, traditionally the very dumb one.

Comments

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

fabfunk/Gabe Toro wrote this article, which makes a pretty clever reference to "Spaceballs":
http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/star-trek/117723/star-trek-into-darkness-what-went-wrong

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

Decent article, but I'm not sure the author and I watched the same movie... what second attack on London...? Did I miss that?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

He means San Francisco, having missed the two-second on-screen banner early in the movie that tells you they've changed places.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

From other sources I hear that the scene where a ship crashes into Earth (from the trailer) is meant to be San Francisco, but that part of Earth looks exactly the same as the way London looked at the beginning of the movie.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Very similar. The Golden Gate is visible in a couple of the background shots, and there's on-screen text saying that Starfleet HQ is in SF, but "future SF" really does look just like "Future London" did, and the establishment of London was far stronger.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

The ship seems to land on some random building on a hill. I was thinking, "is that what they think St. Paul's looks like?" Do you have any idea what that little building on a hill in San Francisco was supposed to be?

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

Alcatraz, I believe.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

What He Said: That's "The Rock", which is to say that's Alcatraz.