JJ has destroyed the essence of Star Trek

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2014)

I worked on engines with my father when I was 6 years old. That was around 1970. Computers weren't controlling them, everything was done mechanically so they were pretty easy to understand; valves opened, a mix of fuel and air was created by the carburator and introduced into the cylinder chambers down the intake manifold. Valves closed, then spark, transmitted to the plugs via the coil & distributer, ignited the mixture forcing the piston down in it's chamber creating kinetic energy by turning the drive shaft which ultimately turned the tires making the car go. This is how all engines work. When I was a kid I thought Star Trek was really stupid but it was me who was ignorant. How is it that we always think something we don't understand is stupid? In 1970 the Enterprise's engine room and that warp core didn't look like any engine I'd ever seen. J.J. has dumbed the new S.T. down so far that I wouldn't have thought it was stupid if I was to have seen his version as a kid. This is the main reason I hate what he's done. He's doing such a disservice to the viewers. In many ways, by taking away the plausible advanced physics, he's aligned it - dumbed it down - so that the passive consumers who've been taking over for the last 30 years or so can easily understand it. Without curiosity we'll not go anywhere new, build anything great or create anything awesome. J.J. Abrams has made the Enterprise look like the U.S.S Apple-Store with an engine room from the U.S.S. Titanic Samuel Adams. In general something that fits into what an uneducated mind thinks it should look like and that's a bad thing. The engine room is the size of an Amazon fulfillment center, has .. what - like 20 freak'n warp cores? The only reason it's so huge and there's so many pipes and water tanks on a starship that uses anti- matter as it's primary energy source is because that imagery fits into what an uneducated mind - sadly a closed mind - finds familiar and comfortable. Anti-matter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It is real and awesome. 1 second of warp-core energy is equal to all electricity produced on Earth since there's been electricity production! It's power on a scale nearly unimaginable and truly nothing that's familiar. That's why the original S.T. was so great and J.J.s version pretty much sucks. In the original S.T., and all the movies and spin off series and in the real world of plausible physics - you'd only need 1 warp core, not much space for it (or water for that matter) and I only know this because when I was a kid I thought it was so stupid THAT IT PROMPTED ME TO LEARN HOW DUMB AND WRONG I REALLY WAS. It prompted me to read the blueprints, users manuals and technical books that my Trekky nerd friends had. That reading, that search for knowledge ultimately taught me that warp 5 wasn't the speed of light X5. It's the speed of light exponentially multiplied; SoL X SoL X SoL X SoL X SoL! These figures are off the charts fast covering distances incredibly vast! I write this for you, the new viewers, because J.J.s version won't prompt you to search for explanations of anti-matter and warp core engines so you won't experience the sheer awe these revelations the original S.T. lavished on me. J.J. is denying you of this. You'll not be prompted to learn that warping and much of the science on S.T. was conceived in the early 1900's by theoretical physicists Einstein, Rosen and Heisenberg - to name a few and unless you go to school specifically for this you'll not learn how they all wrote (and got published) papers on the physics used in Star Trek before there was common use of light-bulbs and air travel. You'll not learn that, by using antimatter, space is warped and it is moved around the ship effectively nullifying the galactic light- speed limit. Long before he was the nom de plume of the Walter White, Heisenberg (or more specifically the principal he created) predicted that you could never know where all the atoms in something were because just by observing/measuring them they are changed so something called the Heisenberg compensator is needed and is responsible for allowing the transporter to function. I'm not a professional who used this knowledge to further mankind but many other Trekkies - people who grew up in the 60's - are and have directly credited Star Trek for the innovations they've created. I learned about Einstein & theoretical quantum physics as a hobby because of the Original Star Trek. That's a great thing to glean from entertainment - knowledge of how the universe works. What is the J.J. version going to prompt you to learn? Sadly I believe - nothing. Now, after stating the above, I hate to say this but other than the disservice JJ's done in removing all the science they're not bad actors! Superficially its fun but compared to the original it's sadly lacking. Vince