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Star Trek: Obama V Sisko - ORATE OFF!
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you're not being serious right
You need to watch some DS9. Sisko definately came more from the Kirk school of command then the Picard school.
You can check for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/show?p=Zk2dX5DnW_c
Somebody at Paramount got the brilliant idea of putting the whole series up on Youtube legally.
Yet, it was awesome.
I think your revelation is a bit silly - of course they pulled from TOS! but to suggest they just watched four eps and called it good?
doubt it
Why is it more complicated to call it a black hole device? Seems more straightforward to me. And yes, there is a difference between that and "red matter". With the former, you can just assume that scientists have somehow figured out how to make black holes without needing to know the specifics--red matter calls attention to itself as being, like I said, MAGIC!
Actually I guess it was five eps because Pike was in Episode 0. And yes, I'm joking. It just seemed funny/highly coincidental at the time, particularly with all the discussion of the many controversies surrounding the ice planet. The converse is I'm sure glad they didn't base the movie on the rest of the stuff that happened in those episodes (although Spock using multiple double-fist slaps on the salt creature/Bones' ex was hilarious).
Fine, fine. Let's just call it a Chazzwozza and be done with it. *high-fives in the writers room*
But seriously. You're right, I suppose it wouldn't be any more complicated to call it a black hole device, but if the purpose of calling it such is to prevent these kinds of conversations erupting, I'm not sure it would work. :P
25 series of modern star trek have proven that using psuedo-scientific lingo to prop up blatantly unscientific plot devices doesn't do much to stop people complaining about them, much less endear your brand to new audiences. Actually, watching the new film I really felt quintessentially Trek words like 'compensating' and 'gravimetric' pop out of the movie like a sore thumb.
Oh my god, I could kiss you. Only I won't. Maybe.
Individually, this is fairly trivial. In combination with all the other poorly handled science stuff, you come to a situation where the writers apparently either don't know how to do these things or don't care enough to bother.
It's not that any of this makes it a bad movie, either. I loved it for a variety of other reasons. There was plenty of room for improvement, though, and in areas that would not have required much (if any) change to the rest of the script.
It could have been any kind of doomsday machine, really. Black hole generator, some type of bomb, killer rabbit spawner, whatever. I kind of think a giant red ball works well as a very visual thing, especially with the syringes and such.
Still a bit silly, but not really more so than any random generic gizmo of ultimate destruction.
The majority of the audience aren't likely to be Star Trek aficionados, or that technically minded, and would just as readily accept something called a black hole generator without going, 'wait a minute!'.
It wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest, or anyone I watched the movie with.
The red ball works because it's such an obvious visual thing, which, yes, ties into what you say about the effects. Silly in a way, but also a rather clever choice. All part of the non technobabble approach.
I'm pretty sure one of the movies has just the opposite sort of thing going on where the crew is all "the guy that stole that ship is only flying on a two dimensional plane - aha, we will go under him and surprise him." I'm guessing there was some fancy nebula blocking sensors or something that made this not completely retarded.
...I don't know the Star Trek movies, but I think it was one with a Kahn in it (...or Khan).
Correct sir, this was The Wrath of Kahn, the second Trek movie, they were fighting in the Mutara Nebula which had disabled their shields and sensors, so they were fighting blind with the occasional flicker on the view screen showing where they were, Spock realizes that Kahn is thinking two-dimensionally and Kirk lowers the by a thousand meters and they just start looking up...
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
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Perish the thought.
Well, I saw it once...then my wife decided we should see it. And now she wants to see it a second time. So I'll probably be seeing it for a third time as well.
Except they don't have Balance of Terror.
The good for TV part think I could have clarified more. One person mentioned how they hated all the episodes of Voyager where they did not interfere of guide civilizations, just sat on the ship and were like oh our hands are tied and fretted about it then watch horrors unfold on said people and do nothing.
not interfering is bad TV. interfering is what makes it interesting. The point was more that they should never ever interfere on principle as the prime directive is a good rule of thumb to go by (but that is boring to watch)
Steam
XBOX
I thought about mentioning that, but chose not to...
Also, has anyone thought that perhaps another idea behind using Red Matter is to convey that not only can it be used to create a black hole, but rather also that not the hole would go away after a bit? You know, once the matter is consumed...
In theory a black hole generator would, you know, generate one permanently, where as red matter would be like gasoline, once it's consumed the fire burns out and dies...
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
Wii Friend code: 1445 3205 3057 5295
Near the end of the movie, when the red matter ball explodes, all the little globules start pumping out gravitons that suck in the other little balls. The rate of graviton production increases exponentially with volume and, after a few droplets merge, you get light-sucking graviton-spawners of doom. Eventually, presumably, the red matter would exhaust its mass and stop producing gravitons. At that point you'd have a big ball of mass/energy in space which may or may not be able to hold itself together. So you'd either get a permanent black hole, a star of some variety, or a big explosion.
This is a cool post, by the way. I didn't know enough physics to explain why, once the red matter formed the black hole, it wouldn't just stick around indefinitely. But you've addressed that nicely with this post.
I thought so too.
Then I realized they can make a toy out of it and that's almost certianly why they made it.
I'll buy it of course but still.
Yeah, the best thing they could have done would be to have had a briefing on the Enterprise (or a talk with Nero) about it. First, give a brief presentation saying that Nero is building a device capable of creating a black hole using red matter, a matter that produces gravitons. Second, explain away a crew rivalry from the show by having one member of the rivalry ask why it's called red matter, at which point the other rival would look at the rival, look at the picture of the giant red thing of doom, look at the rival again, and look at the giant red thing of doom one last time before giving the rival shit about the question for the rest of the movie. Third, have someone ask how red matter works, only to be answered by Spock or McCoy telling him/her that (s)he wouldn't understand it anyway.
Actually, that might be another problem with Janeway,who had origins in engineering. With a captain capable of understanding the complexity of what they were doing, the rest of the crew wouldn't have to use a general explanation and a crude metaphor, but could jump straight to the detailed explanation for a phenomena or strategy the writers only had a crude understanding of.
Also, I've seen Enterprise lately, and did anyone else notice that the wqriters kept playing the War on Terror over and over again instead of finding a new metaphor? The Xindi were generic middle east being manipulated by radical clerics (unless they were America being manipulated by republican fearmongering), and the Vulcan arc was so Iraq at the end it hurt.
I've checked pictures (still haven't seen the movie), and I'm very glad to find it was more of a sabre. The writers of TOS deliberately avoided a katana so they wouldn't make the whole thing stereotypical (besides the fact that the whole thing wouldn't have looked as good with the full body motion of a katana, most likely), and it would have been insulting to redact that.
No, that would have required that I watch Enterprise.
Just noticed this on Gizmodo or IO9...
I actually realized the parallels between the two of these very early on... Honestly I was going to do what they basically did, but on a much more grand scale, just didn't get the time...
I've noticed a crap load of Kahn and New Hope in the movie, so I was going to rip the audio tracks from both and impose them over the movie itself, thus creating theoretical hilarity when a person watches Star Trek with audio from the other movies... More Star Wars...
Granted, I pictured Obi Wan as moreof Spock than Pike, but Pike makes more sense...
Movie Collection
Foody Things
Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
Wii Friend code: 1445 3205 3057 5295
You could generically call it a Katana but it's far to wide and thick and definitely not long enough.
My question is why wasn't it a sabre or epee since his training was in fencing? If there's anything I've learned from various rpg character sheets is that you have categories for piercing vs. slashing weapons.
Sulu get's a +5 modifier when using bladed weapons and a +20 when his shirt is off.
Also:
Spoilered due to large image size