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(Message started by: Azgard on May 16th, 2009, 10:29am)
Title: Star Trek
Post by Azgard on May 16th, 2009, 10:29am
So, has anyone been out to see the latest of the Star Trek Movies?

Personally, I liked it  ;D  I think it did a good job of balancing between being a movie for the pre-existing trekkies, and being a movie that could be enjoyed by non-trekkies (yet to be trekkies? ::) ). If you knew nothing about Star Trek, you could watch the movie and enjoy it, but if you were a trekkie, you could watch the movie, catch all the references, and enjoy it. Not an easy task!

It was a sci fi movie, but I think we are getting to an age where sci fi is no longer way out there. Sci fi can ring a little closer to home nowadays, and is accessible by more people. You don't neccissarily have to be a sci fi fan to go and see a sci fi movie anymore.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 16th, 2009, 11:37am
I like the original 'Star Trek' series, not so much the new movie.

The Star Trek TV series dealt with many interesting ethical dilemmas and thought experiments. The new movie doesn't

Read the Newsweek article

http://www.newsweek.com/id/196005
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by towr on May 16th, 2009, 2:28pm

on 05/16/09 at 10:29:28, Azgard wrote:
So, has anyone been out to see the latest of the Star Trek Movies?
I haven't, and won't. But that's mostly because I never go out to see movies, I wait till they air on TV.
Still, even then, it just feels wrong to have Kirk and crew played by anyone other than the original actors. Why couldn't they just pick another ships? Or another era? Soon when you say "captain Kirk" people will think it's equivalent to whatshisface rather than Shatner.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 16th, 2009, 3:38pm
And, still, in Newsweek, I found this article

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195963

For decades, dedicated fans of 'Star Trek' have postulated a Kirk-Spock romance. A look at 'slash' fiction, 40 years later.

Star Trek depicted as a 'slash' fiction'??

I don't see any romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock. Does anyone see it?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by towr on May 17th, 2009, 7:00am
Who cares.
It's not a matter of whether it can be seen, but whether there are people who want to see it. And if they want to see it someone will write a fan-fiction about it.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by ima1trkpny on May 18th, 2009, 12:21am
Ehh... it was a good flick. :) I went with a group of friends to see it the night it came out and it was a fun movie. Definitely much funnier than I had expected it to be. And they brought back Leonard Nimoy!!! :D

Wasn't really a fan of some of time-travel plot line they used, but at least for the most part it it made sense. Oh and that PC swap at the end from "no man has gone before" to "no one has gone before" was a bit saddening.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by swanajohn on May 21st, 2009, 11:55pm

on 05/16/09 at 10:29:28, Azgard wrote:
So, has anyone been out to see the latest of the Star Trek Movies?

Personally, I liked it  ;D  I think it did a good job of balancing between being a movie for the pre-existing trekkies, and being a movie that could be enjoyed by non-trekkies (yet to be trekkies? ::) ). If you knew nothing about Star Trek, you could watch the movie and enjoy it, but if you were a trekkie, you could watch the movie, catch all the references, and enjoy it. Not an easy task!

It was a sci fi movie, but I think we are getting to an age where sci fi is no longer way out there. Sci fi can ring a little closer to home nowadays, and is accessible by more people. You don't neccissarily have to be a sci fi fan to go and see a sci fi movie anymore.

I also like these types of movies.


// removed spam link --towr
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by rmsgrey on May 22nd, 2009, 7:52am

on 05/16/09 at 10:29:28, Azgard wrote:
So, has anyone been out to see the latest of the Star Trek Movies?

Personally, I liked it  ;D  I think it did a good job of balancing between being a movie for the pre-existing trekkies, and being a movie that could be enjoyed by non-trekkies (yet to be trekkies? ::) ). If you knew nothing about Star Trek, you could watch the movie and enjoy it, but if you were a trekkie, you could watch the movie, catch all the references, and enjoy it. Not an easy task!

It was a sci fi movie, but I think we are getting to an age where sci fi is no longer way out there. Sci fi can ring a little closer to home nowadays, and is accessible by more people. You don't neccissarily have to be a sci fi fan to go and see a sci fi movie anymore.

Did you have to be a SciFi fan to go see Star Wars? Or the Matrix?

As a science fan, there were a few places in the movie where I had to remind myself "it's just a movie, I really should relax" - like the ice world in spitting distance of the (desert planet) Vulcan, complete with predators that will throw away a large meal in favour of a bite-size snack... Or the industrial brewery squeezed into the hull of the Enterprise next to the waterslide of death (maybe they heard Scotty was coming?)

The original Star Trek used to at least put in an effort to do the research - this movie seems to run on "wouldn't it be cool if" and half-remembered astronomy for drama majors courses...

Needing Scotty's engineering magic to get up to Warp 4 when the NX-01 could break Warp 5 seems a bit poor...

Maybe I'm not cool and edgy enough, but shaky camera and lens flare doesn't equal exciting footage for me - more spending the next little while trying to figure out what just happened while the cameraman was getting excited...

What competent military gives a freshly graduated cadet command of their flagship on a permanent basis, regardless of how brilliantly they may have performed in their first deployment (which they were only on in the first place because of some creative interpretation of regulations...) ? By all means, tap them for fast track to command and plan for them to make Captain inside 5 years (which would still be younger than original Kirk's youngest StarFleet Captain to date - at which point the Enterprise was just one of a dozen Constitution Class ships - still a prestigious assignment, but nowhere near the celebrity it earned during Kirk's 5-year-mission...)

If it weren't for people acting as though Cadet Kirk was the Captain Kirk who'd been demoted from Admiral simply to keep him on the Enterprise, he wouldn't have been promoted anywhere near O7 with his record until he'd got the experience to grow into being the Kirk who was captain of the Enterprise.

On the positive side, I liked the characters, and the nods to old continuity, which offers hope for the future of the franchise - if they'd got the cast wrong but the science right, things would be a lot less promising...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 22nd, 2009, 2:14pm
I read that Star trek is gaining some new fans. I'm glad. Consider the other succesful Sci-fi flicks: the Matrix, Wolverine, Dark knight or watchmen. These movies are dark, they aren't about optimism. The Star Trek movie is going to make optimism cool again ...

The aging Trekkies? What percentage of aging Trekkies like it? I don't know.

The movie is designed to attract the under-25 crowd, the MySpace crowd and the Twitter fanatics.

Are they going to succeed? That depends on the US ticket sales and international ticket sales. The international ticket sales account for as much as 65% of overall box-office revenue.

What's the deal with William Shatner?
Leonard Nimoy, who plays old Spock in the film, came along as a surprise guest. Why wasn't Shatner around?

Do you consider the movie as:
(i) a prequel, or more like
(ii) a reset, or
(iii) a reboot
(iv) other
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by towr on May 22nd, 2009, 2:37pm

on 05/22/09 at 14:14:08, BenVitale wrote:
I read that Star trek is gaining some new fans. I'm glad. Consider the other succesful Sci-fi flicks: the Matrix, Wolverine, Dark knight or watchmen. These movies are dark, they aren't about optimism.
Aside from the matrix they're also not sci-fi.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 22nd, 2009, 5:28pm
Oops, That's right! They're not. Dark Knight, Wolverine and the Watchmen are not Sci-Fi flicks.

Dark Knight is a thriller, some people claim that it doesn't belong to a certain genre, that Dark Knight is its own genre. They call it the Dark Knight genre.

http://www.trektoday.com/images/news/042709Newsweek.jpg


Do you agree that :
> Star Trek taught us how to dream big?
> Star Trek allow people to take a break from politics and the economics news?

According to the latest issue of Newsweek, "Star Trek is way cool."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195082


As reported by Newsweek, the reason for Star Trek being cool is because the geeks have inherited both the earth and the White House. Another factor is the coolness factor of Director J.J. Abrams.

Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by towr on May 23rd, 2009, 3:21am

on 05/22/09 at 17:28:15, BenVitale wrote:
Oops, That's right! They're not. Dark Knight, Wolverine and the Watchmen are not Sci-Fi flicks.

Dark Knight is a thriller, some people claim that it doesn't belong to a certain genre, that Dark Knight is its own genre. They call it the Dark Knight genre.
Yeah, well, some people think the sun revolves around the earth; you shouldn't pay to much attention to what some people say ;)
I haven't seen it yet, but is it really a thriller? I'd expect a good deal of action. Overall, it should fall into the category of superhero films. Like Wolverine and Watchmen. And I'm not just saying that because that's where wikipedia puts them. The mere fact they're adaptations from superhero comics should suffice.
Which isn't to say it can't have elements of thriller, action, horror and whatnot.



Quote:
Do you agree that :
> Star Trek taught us how to dream big?
Well, let's consider one example. The American Revolution, 1776; Star Trek, 1966. I would have to say, people dreamed big before Star Trek.
I mean, come on, it's an absurd assertion. People have dreamed big since they came down out of the trees.


Quote:
> Star Trek allow people to take a break from politics and the economics news?
As do a million other things. The oldest of which are probably food, sex and sleep. I find simply turning off the TV works pretty well also. Or, y'know, watching something other than the news.
Actually, Star Trek didn't used to be averse to a bit of political and economic commentary. Like how the Ferengi stand for laissez-fair capitalists, and how klingons (in the original series) used to stand for soviet Russia, etc
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by rmsgrey on May 23rd, 2009, 2:33pm

on 05/22/09 at 14:14:08, BenVitale wrote:
What's the deal with William Shatner?
Leonard Nimoy, who plays old Spock in the film, came along as a surprise guest. Why wasn't Shatner around?


Kirk died heroically at the end of Generations. When Spock died heroically (at the end of Wrath of Khan) it took them an entire movie to resurrect him (Search for Spock) and then a chunk of the next movie to clean up the mess that made...

Apparently "they" tried to come up with a way to sneak Shatner's Kirk into the movie, but couldn't find any way without it becoming a movie about Kirk's resurrection, rather than about introducing the new cast...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 23rd, 2009, 5:44pm

on 05/23/09 at 14:33:38, rmsgrey wrote:
Kirk died heroically at the end of Generations. When Spock died heroically (at the end of Wrath of Khan) it took them an entire movie to resurrect him (Search for Spock) and then a chunk of the next movie to clean up the mess that made...

Apparently "they" tried to come up with a way to sneak Shatner's Kirk into the movie, but couldn't find any way without it becoming a movie about Kirk's resurrection, rather than about introducing the new cast...



That reminds me of a thought experiment I read some time ago:


Quote:
Philosopher Derek Parfit is famous for basing thought experiments on sci-fi. In 1984, he envisioned a teleporter malfunction, like the one that made two James T. Kirks in an episode of Star Trek. Teleporters annihilate every particle in you, then rebuild them from scratch. What happens if the original isn’t destroyed? Which is the real you? Parfit says both. Evil Kirk would disagree.


http://www.zimbio.com/Star+Trek/articles/139/Thought+Experiment+6+Parfit+Teleporter

They could have found a sneaky way to bring Shatner back, and have the trekkies busy texting each other at warp speed on the forums, on FaceBook, on MySpace, on Twitter.

If I were to market this movie, I would have announced the return of both Shatner and Spock in order to have the fans busy on the various social networking websites ... that would be free promotion.

Pretty much like Obama's campaign -- a campaign that did rely on YouTube, Facebook generations.


Thought experiment #2:

http://philosophicus.blogspot.com/search/label/Warp%20drive

Captain Villain and his right hand man: Mr. mini (an engineer)
Captain Villain suspects Mr. mini is plotting a coup and plans to kill him after taking the ship.  

Captain Villain is not a happy camper.
So, Captain Villain plans his own small plot to get rid of Mr. mini, but he wants to do it in such a way that mr. mini suspects nothing and to send a powerful message that mutiny is a bad idea.

let's assume that it's all real.
Would Mr. mini suffer a horrible death?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by rmsgrey on May 24th, 2009, 5:27am
Taking the warp field as an Alcubierre Drive, while anything in the flat space around the ship would travel with it, the boundaries of the region would have fierce tidal forces - not very survivable...

It's the effect of the tidal forces, more than the effect of taking a chunk of the surroundings with you, that makes an Alcubierre Drive a bad thing to try using too near planets...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 24th, 2009, 1:39pm
The article says:

It could travel faster than light without breaking any physical law ... Also, being locally stationary, the starship and its crew would be immune from any devastatingly high accelerations and decelerations ....

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alcubdrive.html
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 24th, 2009, 1:51pm
"Star Trek taught us how to dream big" may be an exaggeration.

but consider....

Star Trek deals with ideas and stories of utopia, community, self-improvement, that are central to American culture and history.

Have you read the 'American Jeremiad'?

I see a parallel between the two. The American Jeremiad which is a paradoxical rhetoric of hope and fear, a tension between the ideal and the real-- a required tension in order to generate the requisite energy to improve public life.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 24th, 2009, 1:53pm
Star Trek’s many contributions to the English language

http://www.good.is/post/star-trek-new-words-new-civilizations/?p=17734?GT1=48001


Trek fandom
the Trekkie vs. Trekker distinction

among fans, Trekker is a kinder term than Trekkie, though Trekker is mostly unknown to outsiders

redshirts: minor characters who tended to wear red and die, inspiring fans of others shows to use the term for all doomed extras

Warp speed, warp factor

cloaking device

Next Generation Cloaking Device Demonstrated (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090115164530.htm)

The mind meld was one of Mr. Spock’s most reliable tricks.

The mind meld wasn’t named until later episodes, but it was described by Mr. Spock in  “Dagger of the Mind”

grup —an obscure word from a horrible episode that is a contraction of grown-up

beam
matter transmitter
beam me up, Scotty
Live long and prosper
Most illogical
the final frontier” and
“Where no X has gone before"
set phasers on X
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by rmsgrey on May 25th, 2009, 11:50am

on 05/24/09 at 13:39:14, BenVitale wrote:
The article says:

It could travel faster than light without breaking any physical law ... Also, being locally stationary, the starship and its crew would be immune from any devastatingly high accelerations and decelerations ....

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alcubdrive.html


Wikipedia's article goes into more depth.

Anything in the region of flat space (the "warp bubble") is fine; anything on the boundary is in serious trouble - the massive warping of space - in other words, the intense, varying gravity - will shred and/or compact anything caught in it.

There's also a problem with the front edge of the bubble not being causally linked to the inside - so you can't steer, or even stop - at best, you can set the navigational parameters in advance, and hope nothing unexpected happens to disrupt your journey en route...


As for the "dream big" argument, how much of that is chicken-and-egg? Dreaming big produced Star Trek in the first place - it was half a decade earlier that JFK said Americans would walk on the moon by the end of the decade...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 25th, 2009, 2:19pm
Food for thought...

Thanks for mentioning the Wiki article.
As for the 'dream big' argument, i need to give it some more thought.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 28th, 2009, 1:41am
In the following Scientific American

The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=star-trek-movie-science)

an interesting conversation with Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist at Arizona State University.

The first 2 questions are:

1. How much actual science has made its way into the sci-fi universe of Star Trek?
2. What is an example of something in science that has changed dramatically since then?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by towr on May 28th, 2009, 2:17am

on 05/28/09 at 01:41:34, BenVitale wrote:
2. What is an example of something in science that has changed dramatically since then?
Computers. The computers from the original star trek series are laughable by today's standards.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 28th, 2009, 2:54pm
I agree.

How were the computers on Star Trek TV series connected?

What a computer it was: it spoke, understood spoken commands, it knew when it was being spoken to, it even worked that magic intercom that knew who you wanted to talk to.

It could turn up the lights, change the temperature, find items and people within it's field of influence.

The voice of the computer was Majel Barrett-Roddenberry:

On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJfkYjrbPS4

NASA has Clarissa, which is a fully voice-operated procedure browser, enabling astronauts to be more efficient with their hands and eyes and to give full attention to the task while they navigate through the procedure using spoken commands.

NASA Clarissa (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/images/2005/Clarissa.html)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 28th, 2009, 2:58pm
Here are

9 silly things about 'Star Trek' we can't help but laugh at (http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/05/9-things-too-silly-about-star-trek-we.html)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by rmsgrey on May 30th, 2009, 9:40am

on 05/28/09 at 14:54:16, BenVitale wrote:
What a computer it was: it spoke, understood spoken commands, it knew when it was being spoken to, it even worked that magic intercom that knew who you wanted to talk to.

Not forgetting the prescient doors (or maybe they were just plot-sensitive) that somehow knew whether you actually planned to walk through them, or were just walking up to them to pause and toss off a dramatic one-liner and then walk out...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 30th, 2009, 10:27am
Yes. The computer on Star Trek TV series fascinated me as I was growing up ... I liked Spock for his logical and mathematical mind, and I liked the women on these shows, in particular the Green alien woman:

http://blog.nj.com/whitty/2007/11/large_green.jpg


And how the crew of the Enterprise could just bark out a question and get a definitive answer right away.

Wasn't it cool?

Did they have the Internet on Star Trek?

We may be close to the kind of computational technology of Star Trek: Wolfram|Alpha

http://www96.wolframalpha.com/


Quote:
Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.  You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.   Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing


We should not expect it to replace Google or any other search engine but rather, let it become a part of your research tool repertoire.
What it is intended to do is to take any phrase or question and figure out the best answer it can for you.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by BenVitale on May 31st, 2009, 2:59pm
I'm sharing with this community an article on Wolfram|Alpha:

Wolfram Alpha versus Twitter (http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/)


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