Alternate Timeline Writers Are Asses

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

I am going to share a post I did on FaceBook, however, since this blog is more for Trekies, I'm going to edit my original writing a bit.

Time to put on my Trekie Nerd Hat. 

I've been on the fence for a long time about this new alternate time line that JJ Abrams has created. I am still sliding more and more quickly into disliking where they are taking the franchise. And it's mostly due to bad writing and a lack of continuity to already established source materials.  Not to mention a complete lack of respect to scientific fact.

Star Trek IS Science Fiction.  Yes, I get this.  And Science Fiction IS make believe.  Yes, I get this too.  However, the originators of Star Trek always prided themselves on trying to make things believable.  They had scientists serving as advisers so that they could come up with believable make believe.  In fact, they were so particular about this sort of stuff that years and years later, real world devices are starting to emerge that are very similar to thier make believe counterparts.  

 

Star Trek has motivated real world individuals to create things based off of that make believe world.  Ask most scientists what motivated them to become scientists and a large portion of them will say "Star Trek".

So it is a real big middle finger to that concept of trying to stay believable when you start ignoring science facts so that you can do something cool in a movie.

Let us start with this concept of the Enterprise being able to go underwater as well as land on a planet.  I could quote website after website of physics professors and structural engineers who can disprove the possibility of either of these things happening.  

To make it simple, a vessel built for space is built to handle the vacuum of space, a negative pressure being exerted on the hull.  A vessel built for traversing the depths of the ocean, is built entirely different, so that it can withstand the extreme positive pressure being exerted on the hull.  

 

My second point to this is that the Enterprise is physically unable to land or even stay upright if it did land.  I have quite a few models of this ship.  Here is a picture showing the size comparison of all of the ships named Enterprise.  the bottom one is the one from Abram's Alternate Timeline.

Now, take a good look at all but the top ship.  You notice that big part in the front, it's called the saucer section.  That part of the ship is a big solid part of the ship.  It's heavier than the back part of the ship where the warp nacelles are.  Every model I have, when placed on a flat surface, ends up doing a nose dive and rests on that saucer section.  

I suppose if you put landing gear that extended out from the engineering hull towards the front of the ship you could compensate for the nose heavy ship, but then you now have to contend with the weight of that saucer section being supported by the thin neck of the ship.  I'll point out the movie "Titanic" where the ass end of the ship was sticking up in the air and then suddenly buckled and broke.  Same thing would happen here.

One last point about structural integrity.  Those warp nacelles that stick out on the back of the ships are pretty heavy themselves.  Go back and look at the comparison picture again.  Those support struts are not meant to support the weight of those things.  They are there to keep them attached to the ship and transfer power from the warp reactor out to the warp nacelles.  Put that ship in a positive gravity and you will once again have the "Titanic Effect"

If you have ever read anything about how and why the designers made them this way, you'll see that they realized that it was impossible for this style of ship to land on a planet.  Which is why they came up with transporters and shuttle craft.  

The Alternate Timeline Kirk should have lost his captaincy simply on the fact that he jeopardized his ship and crew by taking it down to the surface of a planet as well as submerging it under water.

And now, let us go on to what originally sparked this whole post.  I will first share what I originally wrote and then I will share my follow-up post as well.

ORIGINAL POST:

I've been doing some reading on the Narada which is the big bad ship from the 2009 movie. 

Part of my reading on this ship brought up some comic books that told some back/future history of how this ship was built. For those of you who don't understand what I mean by "back/future", the Narada went back in time from the distant future (a future that was past all the Next Generation movies and TV series), and changed the course of events that would have occurred in the Original TV series. I of course go and track down these comics and read that Data (who is now captain of the Enterprise E) from The Next Generation is partially involved with the story of this ship. 

HOLD THE PHONE MISTER!!! Data could not be the future captain on the Enterprise, because Data was killed in the movie titled "Nemesis". His brother B-4 is the only known surviving android at that point in time. 

Come on writers, at least know your source materials, especially if you want to write stories for an already well established fictional universe. And because this story is supposed to be a tie in to the 2009 movie, you should especially have your facts straight. This story had to be approved by the writers on the 2009 movie as it is an official prequel story. Therefore, the 2009 movie writers have yet again shit all over the Star Trek universe.

FOLLOW-UP POST:

OK, it helps to do some research myself and I retract my previous statement about the writer's needing to know thier source material. I did some follow-up reading on Data's brother B-4. 

The Memory-Alpha website is considered the Wikipedia of Star Trek. According to thier entry on B-4, he eventually is reprogrammed to become Data, in essence, resurrecting him like they did with Spock in the third Star Trek movie.

SOOOO, I humbly submit that it would be possible for the events in the comic book to actually happen and that I was wrong.

That being said, JJ Abrams is still an ass.