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

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

There was plenty of internal inconsistency, but nitpicking communication lag times? The original trek did that all the time. They called it subspace channels. They always needed to find some subspace relay or something to use it in real-time, but it stands to reason that the homeworlds of major civilizations would have lots of those.

I thought it was much stranger that starships can park right next to the homeworlds of major civilizations and go unnoticed/unchallenged for any length of time.

(I got the impression that Spock could have talked to Earth any time he wanted, but he thought it was more important to but old Spock. That's just another kind of stupid.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's not "communication lag times", it's "all the distance failures"

Subspace communication is a Star Trek thing, it's real-time FTL infinite distance, fine. That's how Kirk was able to call Scotty, on his civilian cellphone, from Khronos (which is ~25 light-minutes from Earth)... and then, nobody was able to call Earth from the moon, and nobody on Earth could SEE the moon, but New Vulcan was totally reachable.

It has nothing to do with "lag time" and everything to do with "inconsistency of range".

Like, for example:
I thought it was much stranger that starships can park right next to the homeworlds of major civilizations and go unnoticed/unchallenged for any length of time.
... that.

Less than 20 light-minutes from Khronos is *the far edge of the neutral zone*. That same spot is less than 5 minutes at Warp 1 from Earth, making it less than 5 light-minutes from Earth.