The Last Non-Com in the Galaxy

Rating: 2/10 (17 June 2009)

First off, where is Captain Christopher Pike? He was the Captain of the Enterprise before Kirk. Where is he?
Any military entity is a meritocracy. That is to say, that each person is judged based on their merits and achievements, not their race, class, or gender. In order to make your way up through a meritocracy, you guessed it, you gotta EARN it! So, apparently there were no other officers in the galaxy because Kirk went through several ranks to get to the top in one day. Let's go through them now. First you start out as a cadet for 4 years ( 4 YEARS just like college). Then you become the first officer rank, which is Ensign (En-Sin). After a couple years of being an ensign or more, you can become a Lieutenant, J.G. or Junior Grade. Again after a couple years of that, you get to become a regular old vanilla Lieutenant. Now that you finally made Lieutenant, after several years of that you can become a Lieutenant Commander ( just referred to as the rank of Commander if in front of people of lower rank, but in the presence of a higher rank, the whole term is used). Now you are where Data was for 7 years on TNG. After that, you can become a Commander, like Will Riker, but you got to pass some tests on how to command a ship, namely, you must kill off one of your crew in order to pass. It's a harsh lesson, but being in command can be tough. Then after a really long time, a decade perhaps, you can become a captain. It's fair to say that Kirk was always the youngest captain but 16 is a bit absurd. If you look at the captains of today you get older gentlemen like Cpt. Sully. Captains are old, it's the way of things. IF anyone would have gotten a battlefield promotion it would have been Spock first ( a LT. Commander IIRC in this movie) or any of the hundreds of other OFFICERS aboard the ship, not the cadet. That's like saying that you can take the best high school kid in the world and stick him on a plane to fly it. Good luck with that. Not to mention that in a meritocracy, since you have to work your way up, that others had already done so, and they would NEVER sit idle and watch a cadet sail past all their years of hard work only to become subordinate to a Non-Com. This would never happen. Not now, and not in the 2300's. The problem with Star Trek sometimes, is that they forget that all of this supposed future knowledge must actually be built on the knowledge we already have. For example, Naval battles have been waged for thousands of years. Tens of thousand. Study Naval History before you even attempt to write anything to do with a starship.
So Kirk went from a(non-commissioned)Cadet, to an (commissioned) Ensign, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, then Captain. Maybe he will make Admiral next movie at this rate. It only took Kirk decades after all.
Secondly, there is no Cardassian ale because Cardassians weren't discovered until the Next Generation which is some 40 years in the future. I thought J.J. Abrams said he did his homework. If he had he would never have released this garbage and tried to pass it off as something any fan of the show could enjoy. This is what you get when you use a flashy director who has NO experience as a ST fan. Terrible. For me this will be the new spin off that simpletons can watch. It is not part of Star Trek if you ask me.
The Romulan Captain Nero acts nothing like Romulans act. I can't go into the many nuances that make a Romulan, but at least in the TOS time period they were very Roman (thus the name Nero, but the comparison stops there). Terrible villain.
So, in conclusion, J.J. Abrams should stick to confusing the heck out of Lost fans, and stay the heck away from Star Trek. Star Trek came out in 1969. That's 40 years ago. You don't mess with 40 years of work so you can attempt to sell a blockbuster ( you failed to break $300 Million so you aren't a blockbuster). This movie is terribly written and anyone who knows ANYTHING about Star Trek knows that this is a steaming pile of inconsistent garbage. Could you imagine if he wrote a series when he can't even get the facts of a 2 hour movie right? How does this guy keep track of Lost for Pete's sake?
Which brings me to my last point. If you add up all the Star Trek episodes and movies across all of the series you arrive at a number of 545 hours of video. It took me an entire year of watching to get through all of the material. You don't ignore 40 years and 545 hours just so you can make a movie any way you want and call it a reboot. You do not ignore such a vast history, and say that yours is new and better, when you weren't even willing to work for it. If you can't hack reading the Star Trek Manual required to write anything under this universe then you shouldn't be writing for Star Trek. Period. This movie will go down in history like New Coke, and Crystal Pepsi. They will be rebooting too this by the next installment.