Rules in a Fictional Universe

Star Trek: Into Darkness has been out for a couple weeks now. My wife and I had a chance to see it, and we enjoyed it.



Of course, there was a lot of speculation as to the way this second movie in the rebooted "Abramsverse" franchise would align to original Wrath of Khan; I have to say that the previews and photos released of the movie were a total red herring as to what to expect. In a way it was true to form from the original second movie; I remember reading that it was leaked to the public that Spock was to die in that film, and fans were whipped into a frenzy. Remember how Wrath of Khan opened? A simulated battle in which Spock, then captain of the Enterprise, "died."

Supposedly this was added to show fans, "Ha ha! You thought Spock was going to die and we totally tricked you! This was the scene that was referred to in the leak!" This also explained the reference to a line from Kirk after the simulation asking Spock, "Aren't you dead?"

Total misdirection. Into Darkness played that hand very well.


We enjoyed the movie, but I started musing aloud to my wife some things that didn't quite make sense to me. She sort of nods and ignores me, since I'm thinking about sane elements in a fictional universe, but these are the sort of things that kind of irk me in a universe that has established rules.

(Warning, some things that follow would be spoilers. If you cared, though, you've already seen the movie by now...so...warning, otherwise, don't complain.)

Yes, this is fiction. Science fiction. Where some plot holes are waved off with techno-jargon the way Harry Potter films can be explained through adequate explanation of magic if necessary.

But in an established universe, there are rules to follow. Rules that if broken, for a fan, this means the suspension of disbelief necessary to follow the story can break. Science fiction fans are notorious sticklers for rules, and this in turn leads to the roadblocks that turn into online bickering over details in the movies that risk alienating a loyal fanbase.

Let's draw a parallel. Man of Steel, yet another reboot of the Superman franchise, will no doubt create a new spin on Superman's origin. It will probably have the basic elements that have been rehashed with every movie and comic...planet Krypton, explosion, baby in space, raised in the middle of ideal America, the Kents.

The thing is that Superman has been around for a long time. A really long time. He premiered in 1938, back when comics tended to have some really absurd things incorporated into the storylines. Basically whenever the writers need a new ability, they sort of just gave it to him. Things that "worked" became permanent. Things that didn't, they conveniently forgot about.

For instance, in the early days superman didn't fly. He could jump really far (ever give thought to the whole, "leap tall buildings in a single bound" thing describing Superman?) He had other abilities, like Super Ventriloquism and Super Telepathy. He even had Super Muscle Control that he used to pretend he was dead by stilling his heart and reshape his face and body so he could imitate an alien.

Most of these abilities faded away, lost to comic history. Sometimes they reappeared in other forms (like the Super Kiss that gave Lois Lane amnesia in the movies, or his ability to throw his Super Saran Wrap "S" at his enemies when fighting other Kryptonians in the second movie.)

Adding these abilities detracted from the character; they were convenient ways to wrap up a story without having to actually deal with the conflict (Super Deus ex Machina, I suppose.) The DC comics universe has a roster of characters that are, relatively speaking, gods, with Superman being the pinnacle example. He is invulnerable. He lifts mountains. He has an aura that helps protect things near his skin (the example given is his suit's resistance to damage). He flies. He can fly into space, and since his cells are charged by our yellow sun, he can fly into the sun. Some comics have depicted him as hardly aging, or even being in the center of our sun. He's as fast as the Flash. He shoots heat beams from his eyes, and freezes things with his breath.

Stories require that the hero must overcome adversity. There must be a challenge; a possibility that he (or she) will lose. How can you make an audience worry about the protagonist's life when your protagonist can withstand a nuclear bomb?

Oh, we'll throw in an Achilles heel...Kryptonite. Exposure to this radiation from his homeworld is a poison to this otherwise invulnerable race of god-aliens. But even this was eventually used as a plot point, where depending on what color of the rainbow the Kryptonite it would affect Superman in a different way.

Over time it got really ridiculous, the variations of rule bending that was applied to Superman just so they could have some kind of conflict that would challenge him. That's part of the reason DC decided to reboot their universe, resetting Superman (and many other storylines) with the Crisis. Superman now had more sane, consistent rules applied to his powers and abilities, with everything more absurd being wiped away from the timeline (they essentially pulled a reboot before the term "reboot" became popular in Hollywood.)

So even in a comic universe, establishing rules is important. As a fictional universe grows, new rules...and sometimes stupid ones...are established, and sometimes something has to be done to wipe them out with an in-universe explanation. A reboot, if you will.

Fictional universes are usually based on our own "real" universe, with some elements altered or twisted for dramatic purposes. In superhero universes, we accept that most people are like ourselves; average people going about their business each day, but there's an exceptional person that lives by a slightly different set of rules. Once we know those rules, we settle in to enjoy the story presented.

Star Trek doesn't have the long-running history of Superman, but it does have a longer-than-average history, given that it premiered in 1966. As the storylines progressed, elements that were introduced for practical reasons were given in-universe explanations (for example, shuttles and transporters were invented because they were cheaper than the effects needed to land a starship on a planet in the early episodes, but in-universe they became part of how the future had evolved, and a starship was just too physically large to land.)

Later some rules were altered. The Intrepid class starship (Voyager) is able to land on a planet; it's energy intensive, it's rarely done, but that ship does have landing struts and a procedure that allows it to do so, thanks to the "structural integrity field" that keeps the ship from buckling and flying apart from the stresses of flying through an atmosphere.

The structural integrity field, much like the inertial dampeners, was invented for practical reasons; there's a popular story that when the Enterprise-D was being designed, someone in the art department superimposed the design over the parking lot and realized that something that size would never be able to withstand the forces placed on something that big when moving through space. Inertial dampeners were created because when you have something moving fast in space, even "tiny" changes in velocity would result in large changes in the forces placed on the inhabitants of the ship...in other words, people would be turned into pudding on the walls whenever they tried to turn the ship at a rate that wasn't glacial.

Why were people thrown around when in a battle or during sudden maneuvers? Because there was a slight delay between the change in motion and the computer compensating with the inertial dampeners, of course. Dramatic tension melding with technobabble!

And these rules were established and refined over time. The fact the story producers would address these kinds of technicalities drew geeks with a passion for technology and some way to embrace pedantism. These people will question the effects of relativity on people traveling at warp speed, and how warp speed actually translates to factors of the speed of light. They can, and do, call out producers for getting technical aspects wrong on the ship; remember, these fictional vehicles have had their designs refined to the point where there are cutaway models and posters available of the various Enterprise incarnations showing where things are located on each deck. There have been people who wrote in to ask why rooms had certain markings, knowing that the particular facility was located on <insert correct deck>, and all the producers could do was admit they screwed up.

Yes, the fans in some cases know more about the layout of the fictional ship than the people making the series.

Then came Abrams. Abrams created a new universe, one where he's said that this Star Trek could be the kind of Star Trek he would have enjoyed as a kid (he couldn't "get into" the original Star Trek series and consequently hadn't followed much of the original storylines.) He made it more accessible. He also had the benefit of more advanced technology, so their aliens didn't have to consist of painted paper plates stapled to the actors' faces and spaceships that looked like dangling hubcaps and hot-glued refuse attached to fishing line.

Abrams has created a universe wherein he focuses on the characters rather well. Dramatic tension. He's rewriting and exploring the relationships of these established characters, and doing so rather well. But I think he's also forging new rules within the Star Trek universe, and that creates an odd sense of confusion, or unease. Unless these things are addressed at some point, there will continue to be a sense that something isn't quite right in the Abramsverse.

Does warp speed work differently there? As depicted, it's almost like warp is a corridor through which a ship travels. In the movie, the Enterprise was attacked, and it was suddenly jerked to the size as if it were a skidding car, and "broke" through the corridor to "real space."

In the old series, something like that would have, at a minimum, turned everyone in the ship into biological wall decorations.

For that matter, how is it possible they were fired upon while at warp? Phasers are a light-based weapon, essentially a modified laser. The only thing that could blow up while at warp would be a torpedo, as it could have a small warp-capable casing for short traveling short distances. Are these ships also equipped with some kind of mini-railgun cannon? Or is warp speed using some kind of bubble of non-warp space that would allow for non-relativistic speed weapons use? (The movie would hint not, since they thought they were safe at warp speed right up until they weren't.)

The use of shields are also slightly different. Originally shields were like a second skin, providing an invisible armor that enveloped the ship, and once they had taken an adequate pounding their failure meant the hull was exposed to damage. Over time they seem to go through a few modifications, such as overlapping generators that could be selectively powered (rear shields fail while forward sections were protected) and the use of particular frequencies as a plot point to allow properly tuned weapons to easily breach shields (rotate frequencies to stop the Borg weapon!) The Abramsverse seems to make it abundantly clear that shields don't stop damage so much as they help reduce damage, since the hull was taking a beating throughout the fights and no one seemed a bit surprised as the shields just gradually reduced in power.

Even the size of the ship is called into question; this was a huge sticking point on the Internet when the first rebooted Enterprise was unveiled. People analyzed the ship from graphics, comparing deck sizes to the original ships and using windows and shuttle bay doors as anchor points when figuring out how large it really is and what this would mean for the series. I think it's telling something when at this point, a few years after release, there still aren't "official" technical drawings for this ship.

(If you think I'm just being strange in speculating on this, Google "Enterprise size comparison" to see what work other people have done when sleuthing the stated ship size versus the visual comparisons in the movies. The "original" ship size was over 300 meters, less than 400 meters, and the size of the Abramsverse Enterprise is over 700 meters...which is kind of freaking huge, given that it has an ability to casually land on planets. Someone out there will no doubt eventually do the math to figure out what kind of stresses this would place on a vessel of that kind of mass, even with structural integrity fields and other technobabble to compensate.)

And there still has to be some explanation given as to how the new transwarp transporters, pioneered in the first film and utilized again in this one, work. Or are limited. Because really...if these can be used to beam from one planet to another, why are you using starships? Just send out drones to other places in the galaxy, use beacons to signal back that you can beam there, and beam to that planet. Even Stargate SG-1 had to compensate when gates moved through space over time; somehow this transporter is able to beam to other solar systems and reconstitute living matter on a planet moving relative to your place of origin without worrying about little things like beaming inside the ground (or more likely, into the middle of space.) The implications of this type of technology are really kind of big (much as when people started questioning replicator technology...why not replicate a ship? To which people came up with an answer...more rules of how a universe works, so the universe stays consistent, and can balance dramatic tension with limitations of a magic hand-waving technology.)

I'm hoping that there will be more explanations given as the series continues, especially in relation to how the ship works. In the original series, the Enterprise was more than just a vessel for traveling around the galaxy; it became a character, an extension of the crew. That was part of the reason it was so shocking when the Enterprise was blown up in Star Trek III, paving the way for new ships to continue the name, but it was a shock for the audience when it happened.

Given time, I can get used to many of the changes. Sure, the bridge looks like a futuristic Apple Store. And for some reason engineering looks like it should be brewing batches of beer rather than propelling a ship through space. But I'm really hoping these new rules better defined. I'm kind of worried that in focusing on characters, the technology in the Abramsverse will become simply an extended form of deus ex machina, wherein everything non-character driven is sacrificed in the name of being a convenient plot device that can be thrown away later or explained as if the technology were driven by magic. Star Trek doesn't meld well with that kind of logic. We're talking about fans that debated whether food eaten on the holodeck disappears from your stomach when you leave the simulation (answer: no, since the holodeck uses force fields and replicator technologies, the food you eat is created as any other replicated food while using force fields to create objects you aren't ingesting.)

Magic can be waved away with spells and incantations. Trek fans will want a plausible explanation for how things work...and expect them to keep working within those limitations later.