Trekkin' to the Cakes

Watched the new Star Trek today but before I get to that, special mention for a workmate :-)

One of the better traditions at work is that birthday people bring in cakes. We had something special today, courtesy of the people behind Celebration Cakes. Absolutely gorgeous :-) There's one definite sign of approval for Cakes - they go real fast. Plus one of my other colleagues now knows who he's going to for his wedding cake next year ...

Think I may have to stick around another year in hope of more from Celebration Cakes this time next year.

On to the show and I have to get one thing out of my system before saying what I thought of Star Trek :
(technophobes may want to skip a few paras)

Building a starship on the ground in a gravity well ?

NOOOOO !!!!!!!

And that's a banging of the fists on the bars of the cot in true teddy throwing style. Everyone knows the shape of the Enterprise, it's a saucer in front connected to a tubular secondary hull by a solid spine. There's a pair of smaller tubes connected to the secondary hull via a pair of pylons. Ok, you could build a construction of that shape and scale on the ground but it would break itself into bits when you tried to move it into space. Plus it's completely unnecessary and highly inefficient to build a space ship on the ground, as zero G makes it easier to fix the big bits together.

If you've ever built a model of something, it would be easier to glue things together if gravity wasn't pulling the unsupported part towards the floor. Newton's First Law : "An object remains at rest until acted upon by a force." On Earth, that force is gravity acting on everything with an equal and opposite force coming from the chair stopping you from falling through the floor. In orbit, gravity is still present and acting but the net effect is that everything is falling at the same rate. So when the astronaut on the Shuttle releases a pen, gravity is acting on the pen, the Shuttle (Orbiter) and the astronaut equally, so they appear to remain in the same place relative to each other.

So it's easier to build space craft in space. It'll be why anything manned we send to the Moon or Mars will be sent up in small bits and then assembled in orbit.

Ok - techie bit finished, Technophobes can come out of hiding now :-)

3 of the 4 Crazies who went to see this one really enjoyed it. Star Trek is a very old franchise now, with a huge history behind it. Loads of backstory throughout 5 series and now 10 movies (Nemesis never happened). So anyone adding anything to the Trek Universe has to cope with all that's been written before. This is partly where Wolverine fell down, because it had to fit with what had come before in the 3 recent XMen films. It's a very tough act to follow.

I have to agree with the critics (for a change :-) they've done a cracking job with this one. My geek and engineering sense is highly offended by that Ship-On-Ground scene but that's just a few seconds in a very decent movie. The best films don't take themselves too seriously and Simon Pegg adds in a good fun element as Scotty, although he is a bit comic relief next to the Big People in Spock, Kirk and Bones.

The storyline is a little weak but ... this is Trek. Storyline don't really matter, it's how the characters interact with each other. And seeing how many of the famous cliches can be fitted in without making it corny :-) Although I don't think I heard "you cannae break the laws o physics captin". Actually, the less said about the storyline the better as there are some big surprises in there.

Geek things I noticed that I liked :
Shuttles entered through airlocks, shuttle bay unpressurised - opening the doors up means all the air in there escapes and air in a spaceship is a precious commodity. Wasteful to pump it all out, blow it all back in every time you go on a jaunt. ST:Enterprise fails here.

Engineering spaces that looked like engineering spaces. Although there was a lot more open space in them than there should have been. Space is a luxury on a ship, you make the best of what's available.

Battered looking shuttles. This adds a little realism that wasn't really capable of being shown just a few years ago. Computer graphics technology has improved to the point where we can show highly detailed textures overlaid on to complex models. So instead of "just out the car wash" shiny spotless shuttles, we have battered and tarnished workhorse shuttle hulls. As is right for something that has to repeatedly bear the brunt of going into a dense gas at 15,000 mph. (That'd be atmospheric re-entry)

There are a few things that make no sense whatsoever though and must be consigned to the worst Technobabble bin. They give a bit of a "we're making this up as we go along" feel and detract from what's otherwise very much a fun film.

One I'll definitely be looking forward to getting on dvd (blu-ray?) so I can watch it on better gear than what's at the cinema :-)

Final verdict : 3 out of 4 sci-fi fans loved this movie.