I personally would kind of like to see more of the Enterprise E, though I am not suggesting more TNG. My preference would be to see the Star Trek timeline continue on with perhaps an entirely new third generation crew; as much as I appreciate the concept of time travel, I do not particularly like seeing it used as a tool to rewrite Trek Canon.

I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t have any strong objections to present cfourse; but I really hope that the producers, as we continue to move forward, take the time to realize that – as someone earlier said above – Star Trek is not just entertainment. In addition to being fun sci-fi, t must be treated seriously; there will always be good movies that we see and forget, but Star Trek is a legacy which we believe in, live by, and dream for.

You conveniently edit my original position: ” Kubrick was at least as innovative, and thinking outside the box, as Cameron. And in many ways different, and possibly more. Kubrick was innovative in cameras, lenses, lighting, shot layout. Cameron has been innovative in CGI/CG. Which do you prefer? ”

And, in retrospect, I should have added using actors and real sets, physical models and miniatures, real effects as opposed to CGI.

In response, you stated: ” Cameron actually created a special 3D camera for Avatar, along with his performance capture system. ” To your credit, you backed off this position.

Further, your “you have to see it in 3D” argument falls on deaf ears. If it looks fabulous in 3D, but the movie sucks, what then. Not even taking into account that most of us will not be able to see it in 3D. And frankly, after many, many years of hype from the man himself about photo-realistic 3D and game changing results….. sorry, I just don’t see it, in whatever “D” you choose. In the end, if I still see obvious CGI characters and sets glaringly juxtaposed with real actors and sets, how has the game changed? Lucas did that 10 years ago. Not worth all the hype, especially if the movie itself is not good. That has yet to be seen.

Finally, getting back to Kubrick: You seem to be stuck on 2001, yet ignore his other films. Like i said, compare his body of work to Cameron’s. And compare his influence on later films and directors, including Cameron himself, as well as Scorsece and Spielberg to name a few. You may not appreciate 2001 because it seems jaded to you, 41 years later. But you don’t acknowledge that that film changed sci-fi films forever, and raised the bar. That one film influenced every sci-fi film made since. Try viewing it again, with a non-jaded perspective.

What I admire most about Kubrick is that he didn’t limit himself to a genre. But he set the standard across the board. Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and even the underrated Eyes Wide Shut. Each time he put his mark on each genre he touched, and set a new standard. Quite a legacy.

I’ll give Cameron another 20 years, I challenge him to do better.

(Honestly, I’m just being polite for the sake of discussion. Your inclusion of Cameron in the same league as Kubrick is laughable, at best)

I hear you.

People seem oblivious to the fact that even though we’ve been observing the heavens with telescopes for 400 years, we’ve been observing supernovas with the naked eye for far longer than that. To have the most science-oriented of the franchise’s characters, Spock Prime, spout that twaddle about a “special kind” of supernova just stretched the writing’s science-fiction cred, which had already been heading in this direction, over the line to that of a B-movie for me.

But you need to also bear in mind that these natural phenomena (supernovas & GRBs) have never been observed to propagate their disastrous effects faster than the speed of light, whereas these civilizations of the future that could be threatened by them have technology that does. It is hard to conceive of any circumstance where they simply would not have enough time to organize and simply get out of the way given the advanced lead time their probes and scans would give them in warning.

Now if they had written it as being artificially induced then I could cut them some slack as that would involve treknology and its an axiom of their mythos that they can, in effect, go faster than the speed of light.

Uh, thanks. That’s all cool. I love watching “The Universe” on the History Channel. Very interesting stuff. But Star Trek is “science fiction/fantasy” entertainment, not a documentary. When I turn to Star Trek for entertainment, scientific accuracy is low on my list of demands.

You could write an entire thesis on the scientific inaccuracies, lies, and stuff just made up in the Star Trek franchise. Start with Warp Drive first, then analize every episode and film in the following 44 years.

My question is: are you a Trek fan? Has Trek entertained you over the past 44 years? Or are you incapable of turning of the “science geek” button when viewing fictional entertainment?

In the scene where Spock explains the plot to the audience during a mind meld with Kirk, he says a supernova went off that “threatened the galaxy”. We see a giant yellow star explode, and it destroys Romulus.

The Science:

That scene physically pained me; I just wrote a book with an entire chapter devoted to the damage supernovae can cause, and the movie pretty much screwed it all up.

First off, supernovae are exploding stars, and are incredibly violent events. They emit trillions of times as much energy as the Sun does, and can outshine entire galaxies. But for all that, the damage they do is local; you have to be within about 50 light years for them to physically hurt a planet. Past that, and they can’t even bruise our fragile ozone layer.

For one to destroy a planet, physically vaporize it, the planet would have to be orbiting the star that explodes! Even from a light year away a supernova can’t wipe out a planet like that. And remember, our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. A supernova is nowhere near strong enough to take out a whole galaxy.

Also, a supernova happens when a very massive star at the end of its life explodes. Stars like this are supergiants that are either red (like Betelgeuse) or blue-white (like Deneb). The star in the movie was yellow. I can’t say that would never happen, but as far as we know, yellow stars can’t blow.

Now, had Abrams called me, I would’ve told him to use a gamma-ray burst, not a supernova. GRBs are like super-supernovae, where instead of the explosion moving outward in a spherical shell, the energy is focused into twin beams of cosmic fury. These Blowtorches of Doom could easily set a plane aflame from even hundreds of light years away, and the special effect for it would’ve been a bazillion times cooler in the movie.

J. J., babe, call me next time!

Incidentally, Spock says he tried to stop the supernova by using red matter to create a black hole to absorb the explosion. That wouldn’t work; in fact in the center of many supernovae the star’s core collapses to a black hole. The outer layers of the stars have so much energy they easily explode outwards even though at the heart of the explosion sits a black hole. So either Spock was mistaken in his calculations (gasp! horror!), he was lying about trying to stop the explosion (hmmm, sequel anyone?), or the writers just screwed up this bit of science.

Place your bets here.

But doesn’t that reasoning force us to question fresh Captain Kirk’s decision to haul that last surviving citizens of the planet Vulcan off to battle when he could have deposited them (or at the very least the children and their parents) on that cozy little winter haven stamped with Spock’s Good Logickeeping seal of approval for the duration of the conflict?

Just as every film every commercial film director, at least, makes is made using a wide variety of experts at their craft but we still credit the director for the film in its entirety. No one is suggesting that James Cameron was the engineer. He was the impetus behind the effort, so he gets credit for gettin’ it done.

“And it only took 15 years to produce a film that looks like a video game from two years ago?”

Oh that’s totally unfair. You do have to see it in 3D to come to a fair judgment about what he did or did not accomplish, as the people who have seen pieces of it in 3D are suggesting. We’ll just have to wait and see if what the people are saying is true about how extraordinary it looks in 3D.

And even NOT having seen it in 3D, saying it looks like a 2 year old video game is wide off the mark. It looks like excellent CGI, but it doesn’t look mind blowing. We’ll just have to wait and see. But it’s certainly not fair to judge a 3D movie made using new technology from a 2D trailer.

“I’ll lay a bet right now that Kubrick’s body of work and legacy will far surpass Cameron’s.”

Everyone will have to judge that on their own. Kubrick was certainly more serious about his “art” than Cameron, but my personal opinion is that the end result Kubrick achieved was largely overrated. I thought 2001 had one of the truly great moments of cinema, and the rest of it was too long.

Never knew he was such a genius! I’m sure he was totally involved in the engineering of such technology, or was it the team he hired? And it only took 15 years to produce a film that looks like a video game from two years ago? His patent rights alone must be enormous!

Again, only time will tell. I’ll lay a bet right now that Kubrick’s body of work and legacy will far surpass Cameron’s.