Revisionist parallel universe fiction
Photo: Action figures of Eomer from The Lord Of The Rings and Dr McCoy from Star Trek, both played by Karl Urban. Blast, we’re going to have watch those Xena: Warrior Princess episodes where he played Cupid/Julius Caesar.
Saw Star Trek on Imax, this time without the annoying voice that wanted to know how a starship could survive cracks on its hull in deep space, how big a blast would have to be to counter the gravitational pull of a black hole, the theoretical circumstances in which you can meet yourself, and what’s with all the lens flares. After all, the TV series was based on the premise that it’s possible to travel faster than the speed of light.
Result: Big fun! Star Trek has the sense of joy and unlimited possibility lacking in the workmanlike movies that preceded it (and in the leaden Star Wars prequels). It refuses to be bound by everything that came before, it revitalizes the franchise by wiping out many of the givens. Clever! True, it helps that everyone is young and bright-eyed. You realize of course that after this intervention Spock can develop into a drama queen and Kirk can be a good actor.
On the way out I wailed and whined until my sister bought me the Dr McCoy action figure. My sister has turned into my mother.
May 11th, 2009 at 01:42
Yes,the reviews are good. Time Magazine commended the fact that the space crafts in this movie actually get dirty and greasy from cosmic dust and other space pollutants. Not like the old TV series that featured toys and miniatures that are always immaculately clean,as if space crews could always go outside for a scrub down. Then again,we can’t blame them because this was during the 70’s. As scale model hobbyists like to point out, fighter planes,boats, robots and space ships must show battle scars and dirt,the way they do in real combat. That’s important in a science fiction movie. Incidentally,the Star ship Enterprise resembles a flapper assembly kit for toilet bowls.
May 11th, 2009 at 07:54
this time without the annoying voice that wanted to know how a starship could survive cracks on its hull in deep space, how big a blast would have to be …
Haha. That annoying voice was in my head at the beginning of the movie, until I realized this is Star Trek and I shut that annoying voice up.
May 12th, 2009 at 09:54
^Franzi: I surmise the PDs here must have taken clues from the TV reboot of Battlestar Galactica.
btw…Kirk somewhat reminds me of James Roday from “Psych”
July 17th, 2009 at 01:50
“how big a blast would have to be to counter the gravitational pull of a black hole,”
Not much. If somebody collapses something into a black hole, its mass isn’t going to change, so unless one moves closer to the new black hole, gravitationally one isn’t going to notice the difference. The main difference between orbiting a planetary mass black hole and a planet would be psychological. The ship’s orbit would be stable, but the ship’s crew might not be after a while.
As for a black hole made out of a spacecraft … how much of a gravitational pull does that much mass have? Having not done the calculations, I’m just guessing, but my best guess would be that the Enterprise could pass through the black hole created by the implosion of another vessel, and not even notice the difference. We’d be looking at a very tiny hole – microscopic, I would imagine – whose gravitational pull would not become noticable until one was very, very close to it.
How close? Newtonian physics works in good approximation in gravitational fields as strong as those on the surface of a white dwarf (let’s say about 300,000 Gs in the case of a heftier dwarf), so use
f=GMm/r^2
where G is the gravitational constant (G = 6.67 × 10-8 dynes cm2/gm2)
and calculate how close you’d have to get to a point mass as massive as – shall we say a thousand aircraft carriers – before one would even get up to three Gs – what one experiences in a tiltowhirl, something that human flesh can easily endure. I left my calculator at my place, so I’ll have to leave that to you, but I’m guessing that we’re looking at a microscopically small radius, meaning that the little black hole could pass through one of the crew onboard the Enterprise without doing measurable damage.