How the new Star Trek failed

Rating: 1/10 (14 August 2013)

How the new Star Trek failed - originally posted on Zauberspiegel. I'd include a link, but IMDb won't let me :( To read the full review I'd suggest doing a search on the title, and the website, as IMDb doesn't allow enough words.
The new Star Trek is a disaster. J. J. Abrams is an idiot, and he's ruining the Star Trek franchise. Strong words? Yes, but true.
Star Trek was the first successful Science Fiction television show. Star Trek was a success for several reasons:
1. Solid Setting 2. Good Characters 3. Excellent Plots (well, sometimes)
Gene Roddenbury got some things wrong. David Gerrold covered several of these in his book The World of Star Trek. While I don't agree with all of his conclusions (you don't take children on a warship), the book is well worth reading, and several of his suggestions were adopted (including taking children on a warship).
The original Star Trek has been in constant syndication since it was taken out of production, and along with Doctor Who is one of the most culturally significant television shows ever produced.
Star Trek spawned further television series.
Star Trek: The Animated Series Star Trek: The Next Generation Deep Space Nine Star Trek Voyageur Star Trek: Enterprise
This happened over a 40 year time span, and in addition there were ten movies. There is also a successful book line, a wide range of fan made television episodes and movies, a thriving fan fiction community, and Science Fiction Conventions devoted to Star Trek.
I'm intimately familiar with Star Trek. I watched it when it first aired, attended my first Star Trek convention in 1976, played Star Fleet Battles, the starship combat board game, wrote Trek Fan Fiction, and even watched the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Degeneration (no disrespect meant to the actors, but when Roddenbury was pushed out, the show lost its spark).
In this case, it all comes down to setting.
Mistake Number 1
From Wikipedia: But according to The Making of Star Trek "the Enterprise-class starships have been in existence for about forty years" at the time of the original series. The ship's components were built at the Starfleet Division of the San Francisco Navy Yards and assembled in orbit.
Assembled in orbit. Now why do you think that they'd do that? Simple. The ship is not designed for atmospheric operations. To quote the Memory Alpha Wiki:
Though not an aerodynamic craft, in emergencies, Constitution-class vessels were able to break orbit and enter a Class M planet's upper atmosphere (and maintain altitude control while passing through it) for a limited period of time, conditional on the ship's ability to re-achieve escape velocity.
(TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday")
Components came from the Navy Yards, not the entire ship. Most of the ship was probably assembled from materials mined in the asteroids. Why boost materials to orbit, when you don't have to? Build the hi-tech components on Earth, build the low-tech structural materials in space, where you probably have a less capable infrastructure, and a smaller workforce.
This also reduces the need to mine Earth for materials. For some metals it may be necessary to mine one hundred tons of ore to produce one ton of finished metal. The Enterprise NCC-1701 is supposed to weigh 799,400 metric tons, and could require up to 8,000,000 metric tons of ore! That's a lot of ore. For comparison USS Enterprise CVN-65 weighs only 93,284 metric tons!
Memory Alpha has a list of Starfleet ships portrayed in the Star Trek movie. We can assume that it is incomplete, that there are more ships than mentioned. We can also assume that at least some ships were built on Vulcan or Andoria, but it is impressive.
USS Antares USS Armstrong USS Enterprise USS Farragut USS Hood USS Kelvin (destroyed early in the video) USS Mayflower USS Newton USS Truman USS Wolcott
It is extremely unlikely that they mined the ores for these ships from the asteroid belt, and landed them at Earth side shipyards. It would be the equivalent of dropping a hundred thousand Dinosaur Killers on the planet every year. Yes, I know, they'd use tractor beams to control the drop. Would you want to take the chance of a terrorist gaining control of the system, and dropping the load on a city instead? And of course, accidents do happen. Remember Fukushima? How about Chernobyl?