Two subtle things I liked about the new Trek movie

[prog]

I may have misread it because it went by in a flash, but during the bit when Spock and Kirk are (to their surprise) storming the Romulan ship, there's a beat after Spock says "cover me" and leaves where Kirk, alone, gets a sneaky look and does something to his phaser so that the barrel spins around. I think that's meant to be his furtively changing the gun's setting from "stun" to "kill". He's got a nasty mean streak! (We know their phasers were on "stun" when they beamed aboard beacuse, in the next seen, Spock is mind-reading a Romulan he had just shot. I assume that his power doesn't extend to corpses.)

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When Old Spock was frankly telling people that he was from the future, their reaction was more like he had said "I am an undercover CIA agent" versus "I am a magical pirate ghost". In other words, it was met with skepticism but not outright dismissal.

What this hints at is that, in the Trek universe, time travelers pop in and out of the stream so often that they're accepted as fact, and show up on the news from time to time. One doesn't necessarily expect to meet one, but running across one during a galaxy-saving adventure isn't at all impossible.

I choose to believe that this was intentional, and very subtly done! It certainly jibes with Trek's colorful past (ahem) regarding time-travel tales.

Comments

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

At first I thought the phaser had a kind of 'safety' setting but later I realized ... yup -- Kirk set it to 'kill' alright.

There's also the established notion (prior to this movie) that Vulcans don't tell lies. Nonetheless as Spock's gotten older and realized the merits of 'illogic' he's learned to 'stretch the truth' from time to time.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I caught that it was a stun/kill setting -- the little emitter bit flips around from the glowy blue side to the glowy red side. But I hadn't been assuming they'd been using stun to begin with.

I didn't like the flippy-around bit, mechanically speaking, though. It was not convincing as technology. If they'd had part of the gun rotate on the *long* axis, I might have bought it.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I liked it when someone asked for a Slusho. Even though I don't know what it means other than it has something to do with the director... Ah, okay,
it's a fictional Japanese drink and the name first appeared in the 2nd episode of the director's series "Alias".

[prog.livejournal.com]

I assume that there was a Dharma Initiative logo (from "Lost") hidden somewhere too, as there was in "Cloverfield", but I'm too lazy to go looking for it.

[roboknee.livejournal.com]

It's also the drink company the main character in Cloverfield was going to go work for.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Also, Greg Grunberg was the voice of Kirk's stepfather.