ST Novelisation
My first day off in forever didn't go so well, as I ended up having to work. Albeit from home, so at least I didn't have to get dressed or anything crazy like that, but still.
To get over this trauma, I had a long bath and finished the novelisation of Star Trek.
Now, I've never read a novelisation of a film before (though I've been known to jokingly refer to LotR as such), and I have to admit I found it weird. I didn't enjoy it as a book, but I think the issues I had with it are probably just intrinsic to film-to-book adaptations. In particular, I disliked the omniscient narrator and the whiplash-inducing POV changes. But that's okay, because I was only reading this for the purposes of aiding fanfic, and there it served its purpose well.
A few things that made me die of cute include Spock's birth scene, with unfurling ears. There are no words for how utterly adorable baby Spock's unfurling ears are. And also, the bits of extra dialogue when ickle!Spock is sitting there with his green bloody lip...guh.
The Delta Vega scene was even more tear-inducing than the movie version thanks to a brief snippet of Spock Prime POV, and, well, I'm a complete girl over that scene anyway, so moving on...
I like the (presumably deliberate?) ambiguity over when Spock and Uhura's relationship started. It's still entirely plausible that the kiss in the lift was their first, and that makes me happy (because I'm sorry, but I still cannot buy Spock/Uhura at all. I get that some people like it, and that's fine, just don't expect me to agree).
Also, lots of slashy moments. The Kirk/McCoy is quite heavy, especially in the scene where McCoy sneaks Kirk onto the Enterprise (It's not like I'm trying to sneak my girlfriend aboard, indeed!). And much win for Spock Prime hinting that he and Kirk were more than just friends (srsly, it barely qualifies as subtext when it's right there like that), Kirk idly thinking I bet Spock's good at three-dimensional chess, and at the end hoping that Spock will show up to be his boyfriend first officer, and being all gleeful when he does.
But most importantly, as far as I'm concerned, the science! For some reason there's randomly a supernova on the day Spock's born. Is this meant to be symbolic? Who knows. Luckily, it's not at all unlikely - simple law of probability means we all had supernovae somewhere in the Universe on the day we were born. The troubling thing, for me, is that it's made quite explicitly clear that we're talking about Type II supernovae (being the kind that happens when a big star dies, as opposed to the kind that happens when a white dwarf - being the remnant of a small Sun-type star - put on too much weight). And that means my previous question remains unanswered.
Even more puzzling, it's stated in the book that the supernova happened before Spock went back to Vulcan and asked to be allowed to do his thing with the Red Matter. So a huge amount of time (relatively - remember a supernova takes milliseconds) passed between the supernova and Spock - supposedly - "only just" missing stopping it. That said - and unless I have completely misunderstood something, which is possible - this entire sequence of events is completely contradicted by the prequel comic, and the latter makes more sense so I'm going to go with that one. Even though it doesn't answer the question of how Romulus managed to survive its star's transition into a supergiant. Minor details.
There is a moment of complete science fail, when the Narada is allegedly in a geostationary orbit (meaning an orbit that stays in a fixed position relative to the ground) above San Francisco. Now, a geostationary orbit has to be above the equator (that's why your satellite dish points south, if you live in the northern hemisphere). And while geography is not my strong point, I am fairly sure San Francisco is not on the equator. I will overlook this and assume the author just forgot to mention that they were constantly adjusting the orbit with thrusters or something.
However, there was one part that made the science geek portion of my brain happy, and that's the explanation as to what happened to the new black hole that was created in the vicinity of Earth at the end of the movie. Apparently, the Red Matter had somehow been shot off in a direction perpendicular to the ecliptic (which is the plane that all the planets in the Solar System live on) before being ignited and as such the black hole will not interfere with any of those planets. It's a bit of hand-wavy explanation, and I'm not even going to go into the violation of conservation of momentum it requires, but if you also allow that the black hole has relatively low mass and that it travelled a decent distance...I guess it's better than no explanation at all.
Conclusion: worth reading if you intend to write fanfic or are dangerously obsessive about minor details (*shifty eyes*). Otherwise, there are better books.
Comments diverted to Dreamwidth
To get over this trauma, I had a long bath and finished the novelisation of Star Trek.
Now, I've never read a novelisation of a film before (though I've been known to jokingly refer to LotR as such), and I have to admit I found it weird. I didn't enjoy it as a book, but I think the issues I had with it are probably just intrinsic to film-to-book adaptations. In particular, I disliked the omniscient narrator and the whiplash-inducing POV changes. But that's okay, because I was only reading this for the purposes of aiding fanfic, and there it served its purpose well.
A few things that made me die of cute include Spock's birth scene, with unfurling ears. There are no words for how utterly adorable baby Spock's unfurling ears are. And also, the bits of extra dialogue when ickle!Spock is sitting there with his green bloody lip...guh.
The Delta Vega scene was even more tear-inducing than the movie version thanks to a brief snippet of Spock Prime POV, and, well, I'm a complete girl over that scene anyway, so moving on...
I like the (presumably deliberate?) ambiguity over when Spock and Uhura's relationship started. It's still entirely plausible that the kiss in the lift was their first, and that makes me happy (because I'm sorry, but I still cannot buy Spock/Uhura at all. I get that some people like it, and that's fine, just don't expect me to agree).
Also, lots of slashy moments. The Kirk/McCoy is quite heavy, especially in the scene where McCoy sneaks Kirk onto the Enterprise (It's not like I'm trying to sneak my girlfriend aboard, indeed!). And much win for Spock Prime hinting that he and Kirk were more than just friends (srsly, it barely qualifies as subtext when it's right there like that), Kirk idly thinking I bet Spock's good at three-dimensional chess, and at the end hoping that Spock will show up to be his boyfriend first officer, and being all gleeful when he does.
But most importantly, as far as I'm concerned, the science! For some reason there's randomly a supernova on the day Spock's born. Is this meant to be symbolic? Who knows. Luckily, it's not at all unlikely - simple law of probability means we all had supernovae somewhere in the Universe on the day we were born. The troubling thing, for me, is that it's made quite explicitly clear that we're talking about Type II supernovae (being the kind that happens when a big star dies, as opposed to the kind that happens when a white dwarf - being the remnant of a small Sun-type star - put on too much weight). And that means my previous question remains unanswered.
Even more puzzling, it's stated in the book that the supernova happened before Spock went back to Vulcan and asked to be allowed to do his thing with the Red Matter. So a huge amount of time (relatively - remember a supernova takes milliseconds) passed between the supernova and Spock - supposedly - "only just" missing stopping it. That said - and unless I have completely misunderstood something, which is possible - this entire sequence of events is completely contradicted by the prequel comic, and the latter makes more sense so I'm going to go with that one. Even though it doesn't answer the question of how Romulus managed to survive its star's transition into a supergiant. Minor details.
There is a moment of complete science fail, when the Narada is allegedly in a geostationary orbit (meaning an orbit that stays in a fixed position relative to the ground) above San Francisco. Now, a geostationary orbit has to be above the equator (that's why your satellite dish points south, if you live in the northern hemisphere). And while geography is not my strong point, I am fairly sure San Francisco is not on the equator. I will overlook this and assume the author just forgot to mention that they were constantly adjusting the orbit with thrusters or something.
However, there was one part that made the science geek portion of my brain happy, and that's the explanation as to what happened to the new black hole that was created in the vicinity of Earth at the end of the movie. Apparently, the Red Matter had somehow been shot off in a direction perpendicular to the ecliptic (which is the plane that all the planets in the Solar System live on) before being ignited and as such the black hole will not interfere with any of those planets. It's a bit of hand-wavy explanation, and I'm not even going to go into the violation of conservation of momentum it requires, but if you also allow that the black hole has relatively low mass and that it travelled a decent distance...I guess it's better than no explanation at all.
Conclusion: worth reading if you intend to write fanfic or are dangerously obsessive about minor details (*shifty eyes*). Otherwise, there are better books.
Comments diverted to Dreamwidth