True... and even in Serenity, the absurdity of it was mocked with a bit of self-aware dialog. On a tangent, the Operative's sword in Serenity didn't bother me all that much, because it was clearly unusual even there... making it a character quirk. "The guy killed me with a sword, Mal..." Nobody else pulled out a collapsible ax to fight him.





I agree. The one thing I always felt was missing from the Khan fight was a final shot where Khan sees the Enterprise make it to warp just before Genesis explodes. I like to see a villain know they've been beaten.





Given the special effects budget that they had, I was surprised that a bunch of platforms was all they could come up with. They're in an environment where any gravity is artificial... play around with that, especially if you're going to use a huge interior space.

The idea of the mining ship being able to do that much damage I do like, I admit, but it gives the impression that the bad guy was just some blue-collar Romulan, which doesn't add much to his menace factor. (Yes, I know one could argue that he would need some serious scientific know-how to do his job, but still... it's not the kind of position that one looks to in order to find the most cunning threat to the federation.






Convenient that he ran into a Romulan axe enthusiast... and that neither of them had bothered to bring a pistol. For that matter, why the hell would you need axe-armed guards (or any guards, really) on a tether shooting a giant laser? And why couldn't the Enterprise just shoot the tether, since Spock did later? Plus, I know they wanted to kill a red shirt on the away mission for custom's sake, but it was an especially stupid way to go... I'm not sure why they gave the mentally challenged crewmember the explosives.

The whole set up doesn't make a lot of sense, but you let it go because it is a pretty cool action sequence.

Quote:
All defending ships were kept at bay by the weapons capable of disabling a starship; only an advanced future-ship could avoid them.

I'll buy that for why nobody else could simply shoot the tether. Some indication that they were trying would have been appreciated, though.

In hindsight, they did establish that communications were impossible once the drill started drilling, so I guess that's a reason why no-one else on the entire Earth showed up to try to stop it.

Quote:
Pike had the defence codes because he wasn't due to go into space but was instead teaching at Academy until the crisis required him to set forth.

Well, the real question is why anyone would have the keys to shut down an entire planet's defenses, especially someone off-planet. But then they were pretty lax on any kind of regulations through-out the movie. Apparently if you were the last one to be seen with a captain before he died, you're allowed to simply say "He made me captain before he left" and that's that... no recording in the logs, or anything. And nobody is an acting captain, or simply in command while the captain is away... it's always "you're the captain now."

I did like how Kirk was made First Officer of the Federation's Flagship after being in space for all of 15 minutes. Says a lot about the qualifications of everyone else aboard that ship.




Your No-prize is in the mail. Display it with pride.





I liked "The Wrath of Khan", the whale one was cute and fun, although I don't know how well it holds up (having not seen it in years), the last full movie with the original cast, and "First Contact" with the Borg. Most of the rest of them were pretty bad, as I recall.