David Klaus called my attention to TrekMovie.com’s annotated list of Star Trek Buzzwords of 2009, a kind of Devil’s Dictionary for media fans. You see, we need lots of new language because ordinary old words are too puny to describe the vast changes made in the Trek universe since J.J. Abrams took the helm.
Says David:
My favorite of the terms is the sneering “Budgineering” since they filmed the engineering room scenes at the Van Nuys Blvd. Anheuser-Busch brewery. I found that so inappropriate (right down to the same steel I-beams supporting the ceiling as in the basement of my hundred-year-old two-story brick house!) that I don’t have words to describe my disgust.
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If you have over 400 crewmen aboard, you need a lot of beer!
Actually, 19th. century plumbing in the engineering hull of the Enterprise was among the least of my complaints. High on my list was young Kirk driving a vintage Corvette into a Grand Canyon scale abyss in Iowa! Perhaps it was created in the 22nd. century by a grazing blow from a wandering asteroid?
“Perhaps it was created in the 22nd. century by a grazing blow from a wandering asteroid?”
It was a quarry.
Specifically, it’s a quarry in Vermont that instead was supposedly dug in Iowa.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090505/NEWS04/905050350/0/NEWS04
With miraculous future technology, in the 23rd century, it’s deemed that they’ll still be able to have quarried rock.
Tour it! http://www.rockofages.com/en/gift-shop-a-tourism/254
Taral wrote:
> High on my list was young Kirk driving a vintage Corvette into a
> Grand Canyon scale abyss in Iowa! Perhaps it was created in
> the 22nd century by a grazing blow from a wandering asteroid?
That was my first objection upon seeing the early commercials, too, that something the size of the Grand Canyon had appeared in Iowa. I jokingly asked on LiveJournal if the crevice was left over from the Xindi weapon slicing Earth on Star Trek: Enterprise.
I was surprised that it is actually, as Gary points out, in Vermont, as I had read that the Corvette scenes were filmed outside of Bakersfield, California, but one of the articles linked above says the car and human footage was digitally combined with helicopter-shot footage of the Vermont quarry.
Perhaps they were trying to link with the Doctor Who tradition of filming in quarries?
I’ll chime in to agree that the brewery-as-engineering is just awful. It totally threw me, and has continued to throw me every time I’ve rewatched the movie, out of all suspension of disbelief in the movie, it’s so absurd and unbelievable and implausible a look.
The lack of railings on the Romulan ship do the same thing. I’m sorry, but there’s suspense, and there’s manipulation that’s just dumb and simple-minded and obvious enough as to insult the viewer.
It’s not as if it’s difficult to generate suspense in a fight without a crutch like ships with no railings whatever. Ships. In space. Which never ever have fluctuations in gravity.
Then there’s the size of the Romulan ship, which also makes no sense to me.
And the explanation for how Kirk would be dumped from the Enterprise (that, alone) and happen to land just near Spock (it’s the timeline trying to repair itself, just as it does throughout the movie!) is deeply lame and convenient beyond extreme laziness. And Spock knows there’s a Federation base in walking distance, but he’s been hanging around his cave because he likes it so much? Wtf?
And, of course, red matter. At which point I must stop altogether.
I kinda mostly like the movie, but I also have these — a number more than those I bother to list here — serious logic and dramatic problems with it.
I think the fact that the film had to be made during the Writer’s Guild strike, with no opportunity for polishing, hurt the script and film. At least, that’s the generous interpretation.
But the switching of the Enterprise to being built in Iowa doesn’t bother me, given that we’ve already altered the timeline in all these various other ways by then.
I suppose they were authentic to all previous versions of Star Trek in having the Enterprise be The Only Defense Of Earth (and in this case, bonus for Vulcan, too, only bad job there!).
Really, after you send off your dozen or so ships — full of cadets, because the real single fleet is elsewhere (Starfleet has only one real fleet?; gee, they *aren’t* a military organization, like they say), there’s just nothing left to defend Earth? No F-16 size ships that are armed? No satellites? No ground based weapons to defend Earth?
Starfleet: Most. Incompent. Military. Organization. Ever.
“Starfleet: Most. Incompent. Military. Organization. Ever.”
A tough contest against Imperial Stormtroopers, to be sure.