Actually the original series was commended many times for thoroughly researching the plausibility of most of the fiction that they threw at the fans.

Also am I the only one that picked up on the fact that the whole idea of putting Kirk in command hinged on the fact that the captain put him as acting in front of the ENTIRE commissioned and qualified crew of the ship?  He was a 3rd class cadet, who btw doesn't actually have any military rank, promoted to the position of roughly O-5 in todays military terms.  Ya ya, future military != sci-fi military but star trek has almost always used the exact same rank scheme of the navy of today.

I'm not saying that it wasn't true star trek becuase of the nits. I'm saying it isn't true star trek becuse of the attitude of the production team, the attempts to modernize the plot, and the fan response. It was still a very good movie.

STAR WARS > star trek

Lol i think in age and in the size of the franices

Star Trek > Star Wars

12 Moives, 6 series, rofl the amount of series, is greater than the number of movies in star wars

I'd like to qualify my earlier remarks by emphasizing that the whole thing is a matter of taste. I found the Abrams Trek flick to be mildly entertaining in the generally-dull sense of a Hollywood action romp.

I found the script-level Trek stuff seriously underwhelming, but I got enough enjoyment out of the acting to mostly make up for awful things like Scotty-in-the-pipes. Really, had everyone changed their head meds the day they locked down that part of the storyboard? It's really important to have stable serum levels with those fancy pharmaceuticals...

Like the giant god hand holding the ship in space?

I thought you didn't care for lengthy Trek canon talk? This seems like baiting for a real Trekker, which I'm not, but will attempt to play one on TV.

Yes, that episode was some truly excellent science fiction. The underlying premise was that an ancient, very hi-tech culture had used some of their toys to play with pre-classical Greeks and at least one of those aliens had come away with some durable version of having 'gone native,' as the old European imperialists used to say. The hand was special effects in both the TV production and science fiction sense of the term--the visual appearance of very powerful technology along the lines of Federation tractor beams. It looked that way because the alien who controlled it was still very hung up on thinking of itself as an ancient Greek god. Heck, that episode is not only swell science fiction, it's pretty decent dramatic TV in general, what with the conflict between romance and duty that the female red-shirt faced.

Edit: The fact that my avatar is currently part Vulcan joke is not because I'm Trek-obssessed; it is because some new folks on the Elemental boards seemed to think it was fine to 'borrow' what I thought was 'mine' on account of my having claimed it first. That, and because a forum friend was willing to do the art tweaks as a favor.

Wait, are you actually calling that kind of fiction "plausible"? I'd love to see your explanation on how the warp drive is plausible.

"High tech" does not imply that it's even in the realm of possibility, much less plausible. That's what I was making fun of.

You must see the huge irony in picking out scientific inaccuracies in the new movie while being perfectly fine with faster than light travel without which Star Trek would not exist.

I give. I don't think I can get my point across to you. We don't really disagree about much except the 'Trek-worthiness' of the flick and its total entertainment value. And, like I said, I'm not a real Trekker, so this kind of seesaw also loses entertainment value for me quickly.

Plus I'm in a play-huff over your disrespect for one of the best episodes of the fine Old Show. I'm far more likely to watch that (for the Nth time) on DVD than I am to do more than scan through the Abram's Trek DVD to confirm my impression that Mr. Pine is either sporting a serious package or the costumer's put him in some life-and-separate undergear.

I suppose I should rephrase what I said to mean that they tried to research the current theories as much as possible when they were introducing fictional topic, i.e. faster than light travel.  Generally instantaneous transport aside, FTL travel is conceptualized (still currently) as to either include hyperspace or a bending of the rules of normal space.  Hyperspace is generally thought of as being able to transfer to a similar alternate dimension where the distance between objects is closer and tranfer back shortening your travel time relative to the same travel in real space.  The other common theory of bending the rules of normal space, presumably how warp drive works, is to remove yourself from real space so the light speed limit doesn't apply and then go wherever you want. 

Point being that these are theoretical topics discussed today, and of course we can't do them yet otherwise they wouldn't be science fiction.  Another more real life example is that if you look at the communicators of TOS you'd be surprised at how closely they resemble flip phones.  Also hyposprays?  Yeah, they're currently researching methods of injecting medicine subcutaneously via supersonic air bursts that don't use needles.  Again i'm just stressing that they did research these kind of things when they were writing the scrips for TOS.

Actualy a warp drive is entirely plausible, possible and occurs in our universe today (at an atomic level).

A warp drive involves moving space-time (3D of space + the D of time) that the vessel occupies rather than the other way around. It could be done using massive amonts of anti-matter (a very reall substance). However containing even tiny tiny amounts of anti-matter is a universaly challenging task...

Dont really feel like going into detail here...