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

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to accept all kinds of nonsense *in the premise*. Tony Stark is Perfect Engineer and needs a power source in his chest to keep him alive? Okay, premise. Like "bitten by radioactive spider" or "space baby from space". Climax of the same movie suddenly depends on "and also clouds are made of solid rock, held up by angels, and the villain is dropping them on Iron Man"? Not so much.

maybe Star Trek was playing the same cards with its 1960's origins.

Except not so much, since they've clearly established that "physics matters" and "distances happen" and "FTL and sublight are both things" and "a supernova is a supernova" and "rectilinear propagation" and EVERYTHING ELSE NuTreks GOT WRONG ARGH.

Seriously. When "you can't call Earth, from Earth's Moon" is a CRITICAL PLOT POINT, you need to also not be able to call New Vulcan or Khronos from there. And you NEED an explanation for why the earthlings aren't just seeing you by looking up.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

But that makes "dirt in your chest cavity does not cause your death" part of the premise. Is that just Tony or the whole world? How is accepting "for some reason, dirt in his chest cavity did not cause Tony Stark's death" or "for some reason, Perfect Doctor was able to keep the area sanitary" any different than accepting "for some reason, the Wayne Inc. microwave cannon did not work directly on people" or "for some reason, steam containing Scarecrow's drugs cooled to a reasonable temperature"?[1] Both sets of rationale require that we believe things about the world that are either patently false ("people are not mostly water" "people do not die when dirt gets into their chest cavity") or rely on fictional crutches ("Perfect Doctor abilities sidestep things we know to be true" "the creation process of Plot Device sidesteps things we know to be true") to carry on.

This might be a reason why I have an easier time accepting radioactive spider and space baby: because they're so clearly fictional. There are no rules for something that clearly fictional except the ones they are making up. It's probably one of the reasons why I can't stand it when Batman is portrayed as always being right for no other reason than "because he's Batman." When his tactical and/or detective abilities are portrayed more like precognition, that breaks the nature of the abilities for me, because - all things considered - he isn't psychic, he's just extremely well trained. If Stark had set up a machine to do the surgery or if it had been something he had invented to wear, I would have accepted that just fine. Owing to Perfect Engineer skills, a machine could be made that would be exacting and could purify or filter the air or something. Something he just wore wouldn't require any surgery at all. As it is, I have to not only accept the super human skills of another person, I have to accept that dirt doesn't work the same way.

I know all the stuff about Star Trek, I was just messing with you on that one. My wife an I made fun of the cell phone call across the universe that could not even be remotely duplicated with the communications system of an entire ship. I'm actually surprised you didn't add the contents of the phone call to New Vulcan because I have a bigger problem with that than any of the other things.

[1]Please note, I'm not saying I believe either of those things, but - owing to the utterly fictional nature of both the Wayne Inc. microwave cannon and Scarecrow's drugs - either could be argued by saying their undefined fictional properties and undefined fictional creation allows for fictional results. My honest opinion is that they have no rationale for it, or, if they do, it was cobbled together after people started pointing it out as a plot hole.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm actually surprised you didn't add the contents of the phone call to New Vulcan because I have a bigger problem with that than any of the other things.

Meh. As problems go, "As you know, I promised to never tell you about the other timeline. Here's information from the other timeline" is a small one.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I think I have a bigger problem with "this is now two out of two movies where we've resolved a major issue by just asking the guy who already did it."