Ironik

Ceti Alpha Five was where Ceti Alpha Six was supposed to be and it matched 6's description. Hence the confusion.

Contrary to pictures in textbooks and posters on walls, planets are not all neatly lined up on one side of their sun. Sure, they could've done a full survey of the Ceti Alpha system, but they were bored stiff and 5 resembled 6 and was in the right place as 6, so they assumed it was 6. Character laziness isn't a plot hole.

No records of Khan and crew were in the general databases because the Space Seed incident was labeled Top Secret. It had been long enough that it had slipped Chekov's mind. It's not like he didn't face even greater dangers and have more impressive adventures in the time since he was an off-screen ensign during Khan's first appearance.

They weren't necessarily scanning for metal, so half-buried metal structures could've been disguised as ore deposits given the planet's weather conditions.

Overlooking Khan & Co. *is* a problem for me, however, and a plot hole. But because of the awesomeness of the rest of the film, I will squint askance at it and say that the weather conditions were messing with their scanner readings. There's precedent for that in ToS, so it works for me. The movie does so many other things right that minor slights like this can be forgiven. Abrams' flick doesn't earn a similar pass.

The distance between the Regula One space station and the Mutara Nebula isn't a thing as far as I can recall. Maybe you can be more specific as to what you're referring to. Since they're both fictional, they can be anywhere in relation to each other.

The Genesis Device and Red Matter cancel each other out, but the first is absolutely integral to the plot while the latter is merely a Plot Contrivance Switch. It's just a bad example of Treknobabble designed to blow things up and isn't used again to any great effect.

While neither Carol Marcus nor the Spock/Uhura relationship are plot holes, I will opine on them:

Carol Marcus wasn't Kirk's wife, just another girlfriend. And as a lover of numbers, I'm sure you can appreciate that with all the play Kirk got, David's existence was statistically guaranteed. Kirk is always shown being attracted to strong women, either highly intelligent or strong leaders or both. Carol Marcus is that. However, the important point is this: neither of them feel "wrong" given the character, not the way the relationship between Abrams' Spock and Uhura does. Spock is pretty much asexual and Uhura is a consummate professional. I just don't buy them doing rishathra.

Marcus calling Kirk directly isn't a coincidence, either: he's part of the Admiralty now and as such approves and oversees projects like Genesis. She's simply trading on her past relationship with Admiral Kirk in order to get some answers while bypassing the usual channels. However, Abrams piles coincidence on top of coincidence, such as Kirk being marooned on the ice moon where Old Spock happens to also be marooned where Scotty also happens to be hanging out, and that particular coincidence is again predicated on Spock acting completely out of character: emotional *and* ignoring Star Fleet regulations.

While this is often the case and it's certainly at work here, WoK is the superior effort. In fact, WoK starts off with a terrific scene that plays with our sensibilities and expectations and then three-quarters of the way through the movie has what is undisputedly THE crowning Moment of Awesome in the Star Trek universe ("hours would seem like days"), and one of the all-time contenders for that title in cinema. So much so that it's referenced in other movies and TV shows as well as in other Trek TV series, and JJ Abrams put an amazingly lame version of the Kobayashi Maru test in his flick. In WoK, however, it's integral to the both the plot and the character, which is one of the reasons why it's so revered all these decades later.

It's also important to recall that WoK had three other important Moments of Awesome, too -- Khan's initial attack on Enterprise and Kirk's response to it ("Here it comes.") and then later the Bullit-like moment after Spock mentions that Khan is brilliant but inexperienced, forgetting the 3rd axis. Then, of course, Spock's death is the third one. Four really cool scenes, one of which being an all-time great.

How many of those moments can you recall from Star Trek? There you go.

Pop quiz:

How many female characters wear revealing outfits that show off their assets? How much skin is shown?

How many male characters wear revealing outfits that show off their assets? How much skin is shown?

The vast majority of female characters in the Golden and Silver Age wore skirts and showed skin, while only a few male characters showed skin. Martian Manhunter, Namor, Hawkman, Magnus Robot Fighter... and that's about it. I suppose you could include Ka-Zar, but he was really a Tarzan knock-off from the pulp era who was brought back.

Miss Fury is one of the few Golden Age characters who comes to mind who didn't wear a skirt -- and she was written and drawn by a woman. When Miss Fury was rebooted decades later, her outfit went from a complete catsuit to one that showed ample cleavage and had bondage overtones. Her breast size also increased substantially. Written and drawn by men, of course.

He was interested in the human psyche, but he was definitely into bondage. From all accounts, however, he was something of a "switch" rather than pure sub or dom.

His interests went beyond psychology -- I would argue that his interest in psychosexual issues stemmed from his personal interests and not the other way around, very much along the lines of Kinsey's research. For instance, he lived what people today term a "polyamory" lifestyle, with a live-in mistress (who was the basis for Wonder Woman). By contrast, Masters and Johnson seem to have been pure scientists interested in this aspect of human psychology because it's so integral to human behavior rather than people who had a compulsion outside societal norms and were looking for ways to explain it.

If you're referencing the various X-Men titles, then anything after their reboot is considered the Bronze Age. That's squarely in the feminist movement, bra-burning, the ERA and all that. So those female characters were stronger and very much capable of holding their own.

For those of you too young to recall, the ERA (the letters were pronounced, ee-ar-ay, rather than it being called "era") was the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed Constitutional Amendment, support of which gained momentum coming out of the civil rights movement and was ratified by Congress in the early 1970s. After a decade of battles, it was finally killed in 1982. The ERA was so pervasive during my childhood that it was something everyone talked about and referred to constantly, much the way 9/11 is today or Woman's Suffrage was back at the turning of the 20th century. In fact, it was so much a part of our lexicon that I recall one guy in my high school speech class talking about some bit of history or other and referring to "the Christian ERA" when he mean the "the Christian era." I've always wondered what exactly he thought that meant.

I wouldn't really call 48 Hrs. an action movie. It's more along the lines of Bullit where it's a police procedural which has action sequences in it.

I wouldn't call Another 48 Hrs. anything but a money grab. Man, that's a stupid flick.

It's one of those movies that *feels* like a fantasy/science fiction movie but actually isn't. It's more of a mystery with action elements and a horror undertone.

Not revealing the base's location is cool, but I do think a bit of added background info about the story and/or world wouldn't hurt. Or heck, just something similar to what you have on the opening page:

Tracking <insert codename here>.

Terminal velocity reached.

Impact area: Arctic Circle <longitude/latitude coordinates>.


For what it's worth, I followed it fine and was going to pretty much say this.

I disagree Khan had more plot holes than JJ Trek. I mean, Abrams' movie has so many it is essentially one big plot hole.

Put him in makeup and have him play Grig.

See this right here? This is a brilliant story idea based on hypothesizing on extant lore. Playing the "What if..." game often leads to awesome things like this.

I have a list. But these posts will already get deleted for breaking forum rules. (Sorry, 5.)

I don't think we need Suppression in the PvE game and it's the thing I hate most about this game. Nothing else is as aggravating as that.

It's true! From my DA page (click pic to go there):

I totally agree. And DCUO's character creator is ridiculously limited and unbelievably clumsy to use. By comparison, CoH's is intuitive and elegant.

If CoH simply added fingered hands and blinking eyes, the characters would look 100% better, but I'm not complaining about what we have.

Although other games may look better (DCUO does, CO definitely does not) CoH has superior gameplay over both of those and far more interesting content. DCUO is essentially a generic Fantasy MMO with the serial numbers filed off, where they crossed out "knight" and wrote in "superhero."

People may decry what we're getting as "more of the same" but I disagree. Neither of the other games have anything resembling CoH's branching mission dialogue, limited though it may be. plus you can't fast-forward through any of the spoken dialogue in DCUO, so even if you've already heard it you have to listen to it all again. They also have the thrice-damned Travel Suppression which is actually (and I never thought it possible but they managed it) far more onerous than it is in CoH.

I agree so hard and very much with Tymer. That thing was a monstrous headache, always caught in loops forcing me to reboot my PC. If we have to use it, I would honestly rather not play, it's that frustrating.

I was just going to post that, too. It's ineffably cool and if we can get similar bits with that kind of quality, I'm stoked. Nice to see even bird people like the clockwork chest option, too.

This was on a different time. Its usual slot will be Mondays at 8.

Also, for anyone who missed it or wants to see it again, it's on again tonight (1/10/11) at 8.

Wolverine *is* a cool character. That's why he's been overused and watered down over the years. In his original appearances in X-Men, he was a stone killer who didn't care one whit what anyone thought, which was a breath of fresh antihero air in the stuffy superhero universe. That's why he immediately became the most popular character in the Marvel Universe.

He's cool; the way they've used him since then is not.

I had an idea for that... seems like just a page ago...