Amph JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness

So the screenwriters had severe amnesia the whole time as they were writing the movie?

Nah, I think it will cover the impact of Kirk's de-- oh.

Hahahha. Good on you for taking the time to read that book, SkywalkerNumbers.

That said, I'm still not sure the logic even makes sense. It's not as if they're recreating the original experiment. The genetic differences between Khan and his crew members are dwarfed by the ones between Captain Kirk and some species of space rodent. Seems like that would be the much more important obstacle to success.

Well maybe we should read more into it? Maybe it turns out that Kirk is actually a genetically modified Tribble since he had the same reaction to Khan's blood?

I'm sure Arwen can tell us about the limited edition comic book miniseries that covers exactly that point.

Yeah, the issue of Khan's blood working on both a tribble and another human is farfetched and the screenwriters didn't think it out too well. At least Foster was able to provide a partial explanation as to why Khan's blood was important.

My pet peeve with the novelization: I don't know if it's the way Foster writes or what, but there are blank white spaces of several lines between each new paragraph and between the top of the page and the chapter header at the beginning of each new chapter. That's a waste of perfectly good paper and very distracting to see blank spaces glaring out. Foster probably could have trimmed 20 pages, if not more, by making use of every inch of paper he could.

Is the Enterprise really a flagship though? Remember Scotty - "We are explorers, what have we just joined up with the military now?"

It was something like that. I'm not a big Trek nut, maybe you could enlighten me here?

It was the biggest ship in the fleet until Vengeance came along I think.

The Enterprise is the "face" of Starfleet and of the Federation. It's the lead diplomatic ship, often a member of an advanced ship class, often out in the "frontier" (the Enterprise rarely visited core Federation worlds in both TV series), and is supposed to be crewed by the best.

Starfleet's primary mission is exploration and diplomacy. That's why in TOS and TNG and even in DS9 and Voyager they had things like science officers and labs. The military role is secondary.

Yes. I don't think I ever said they should have looked for a literal Montalban look-alike. That's because I'm not talking about such things as Pine not looking like Shatner, also known as the inevitable effect of recasting. Nothing inevitable is at issue here.

How do you know what way they saw it, or are you just assuming again? And what should the fact that the comic author did see it that way tell us? Is he simply overruled due to being a less important person?

You really don't understand the difference? That's somewhat hard to take seriously.

Heimdall is black in Marvel's movie-verse and it's not a continuity problem because that universe is explicitly not in the same continuity as the comics or any other sources where Heimdall is white. The same does not hold true for Khan, who is constrained by his other canon appearances which were in the same continuity as STID.

I wasn't talking about them.

TFF, Insurrection and Nemesis still got it beat.

And in Star Trek 2009 Pike says "we will have to wait to christen the flagship of the fleet" or something along those lines while they take off for Vulcan.

Enterprise D and E were also flagships but I'm not sure of the other two, I can't remember off the top of my head.

The Enterprise is always the flagship. I said "often" an advanced class. A was Constitution for the benefit of Kirk and co. (and for the benefit of the special effects who didn't want to make new models, and for the audience). B and C both made one-off appearances, at the very beginning and the very end of their lives, respectively.

I went back a few pages and didn't see any mention of this (Only a post about the newly hired writers), but apologies if it's old news.

Apparently Joe Cornish (Attack The Block) had been in the mix, if not the favorite, to direct the next Trek. But it's now being reported that he's no longer involved. So, new writers, but still no new director.

Never seen Attack The Block—likely never gonna see Attack The Block—so maybe someone else can speak as to why Cornish was a fan favorite for the job. But, it looks like you can scratch another name off the list.

Right, but the difference with Khan was in wanting the right actor and to keep quiet who he was playing. Though the skin tone was different, Cumberbatch at least had the dark hair going and I think similar eye color.

Because if it was really important, they would have hired someone of a similar ethnic background in the first place. As to the writer, for all we know, he's just doing it as lip service and for a nice paycheck.

I understand that it is really a non issue. Marvel could have produced a comic that had Hiemdel regenerate like Doctor Who. Nothing in this last film indicates that plastic surgery to make John Harrison a real person. If it was really important, it could have been inserted into the film.

It still applies.

One thing that bothered me about STID was that the Enterprise is severely damaged, yet when it's repaired it looks exactly the same as it did at the beginning of the movie. No modifications or anything.

That usually happens in Trek. The original Enterprise in the old continuity was only modified to explain the change in sets and the model itself. The Enterprise D was damaged quite a few times, but the repairs were simple and it looked the same. The Enterprise E was the same after it was damaged fighting the Scimitar. Set construction will remain unchanged, same with the model itself since it is supposed to be a fairly new ship. And it hasn't suffered catastrophic damage like when Kirk blew it up in "The Search For Spock" or when only the saucer section of the Enterprise D survived its fight with the Klingon Bird Of Prey in "Generations".

Well, of course not. They go by the blueprints/specifications/whatever. They don't refit or upgrade real world ships for every repair (though when's the last time a navy vessel had major battle damage?), so why should Starfleet? Plus, yeah, they would have to change the sets and the cg model. The only reason the original Enterprise got a major refit was to make it look more "cinematic" (same reason D got a more crowded bridge) and they had to build new models anyway. There were always changes in sets and models between movies because of the gaps in production and such, which could be explained in-universe by a designer who can't decide on anything.

Generally a ship is only beyond salvage if its warp core a-splodes, which happened with the Enterprise D and would have happened with the original if a warp core explosion had been established as the mode of self-destruct (as it was it appeared to have explosives in the saucer or something).

It's not actually exactly the same, there are slight differences such as the impulse engines.

What makes Benedict Cumberbatch "the right actor"? The fact that everyone loves the sound of his voice and he can do "intense"? He's not the only actor with the necessary skills, and some would say the "right" actor would need to be believable as the same guy from Space Seed.

Just more self-fulfilling circular logic.

??? He gets a paycheck just for thinking there's a discrepancy between STID and earlier canon? I suspect he would get paid even if the comic said that Khan looked exactly like Cumberbatch all along.

Other than the part about concealing his identity. It's when we bring in Khan's other canon appearances that the discrepancy arises. STID is not a stand-alone.

That implies you really don't understand. Sort of like arguing "but Perry White is black now!" as if that's the same thing as the Khan situation. Marvel doesn't have any reason to "produce a comic that had Heimdall regenerate like Doctor Who" because in the MCU there is no need to assume Heimdall has ever been white. Movie Heimdall is not in the same continuity as white comic Heimdall.

Other characters not being the wrong race applies to the fact of Khan being the wrong race? Okay then.

But I want a new Enterprise nowwwwww!

before refit


after refit

The right actor is the one that the director likes and that the studio agrees upon. Abrams felt that Cumberbatch embodied the qualities that he wanted out of Khan, regardless of his ethnicity and when Paramount gave the thumbs up, that was all that there was too it. It was the same way when Montalban was hired years earlier.

Nope, just plain ordinary logic.

No, he gets paid to write a story and he comes up with a doozy of an idea to appease raging fans.

His identity is concealed by changing his name. This is 2259. Nobody really knows who the hell he is except Ambassador Spock and Admiral Marcus and that only happens because he found him. He has no history at this point in time that would require plastic surgery. And you know what would happen when people see between the two actors, they'd see that Hollywood just cast someone else and not go, "Wait, did he have plastic surgery?"

Right except I'm not talking about comic continuity, I'm talking about movie comic continuity. You know, the tie-in comics that have DC and Marvel have been known to indulge in.

No, it applies in that it isn't an issue until someone makes it one.

I would say there's more to it than that. Unfortunately this is just an appeal to authority fallacy.

Insisting that a film, by its very existence, must by definition address all "important" character issues is neither realistic nor logical; it is not arrived at by valid logic.

He gets paid no matter what the story is, and it doesn't seem at all obvious that the number of "raging fans" is sufficient to warrant any such appeasement.

There would be no reason for a hypothetical MCU tie-in comic to have Heimdall change from white to black ( or vice versa ) because there is no reason for the MCU's Heimdall to ever have been white. This is because movie Heimdall and white Heimdall from the regular comics are not in the same continuity. Thus, bringing up Marvel has no relevance to the Khan situation. The Marvel movies are not in the same continuity as the universe of the Marvel comics from which they draw their inspiration. The same cannot be said for STID and Space Seed.

I am someone, so I guess that means it's an issue.

lol, I hadn't noticed that, probably because by the end of STID my eyes had long rolled out of their sockets.