Countdown - spoilers

[Graham Kennedy]

I read the Countdown comic last night. Interesting back story... some important points from the comic :

The star exploding is not the Romulan star but a nearby one. And it's not a normal supernova, but some kind of weird anomaly that nobody has ever seen before. Basically the star is sending out a series of explosive blasts. But the thing is, each time it destroys something it makes the next explosion even more powerful. A positive feedback loop. Hence why it is a threat to the galaxy; the more it destroys the worse it gets, until it will destroy everything. That actually makes sense, at least from a story point of view if not a scientific point of view.

Nero mines 'decalithium' for a living. Decalithium can be used to make Red Matter, and Nero mines the stuff that Spock and the Vulcans use to make the ball of red matter in the movie.

Nero's ship looks nothing like in the movie to begin with. After Romulus is destroyed he obtains access codes to a secret Romulan weapons facility. The scientists there are working to develop new weapons using Borg technology they have acquired. The Borg nanoprobes rebuild Nero's ship into what we see.

Spocks rotating ship is called the Jellyfish, and it was designed and built by Geordi.

Data is back and in command of the Enterprise. The thought patterns they downloaded into B4 gradually became fully active, and B4 turned into what was essentially a new Data.

Picard is an Admiral/Ambassador type.

Nero's plan was to destroy Earth, Vulcan and Kronos in the present; with Borg weapons the Narada is essentially invincible. The Klingons attack, led y General Worf, and are defeated. When Nero does his "come aboard" thing Worf leads a group of warriors who kill many of Nero's crew, before Worf is impaled on a big spike. He survives and is rescued by the Enterprise.

Nero's people look like normal Romulans to begin with. There's a Romulan custom that you shave your head and paint patterns on your skin to show grieving; the idea is when the hair regrows and the patterns fade, your grief should fade with it. Nero's crew tattooed the patterns permanently into their skin and shave their heads permanently, to show that their grief for Romulus will never fade or die.

[Tsukiyumi]

Wow, sounds pretty heavy.

Did you like it?

[Graham Kennedy]

I didn't like the aspect of Data being back again, and I didn't like the Romulans Borging up the Narada. Outside that I liked it a lot.

[Sionnach Glic]

The star exploding is not the Romulan star but a nearby one. And it's not a normal supernova, but some kind of weird anomaly that nobody has ever seen before. Basically the star is sending out a series of explosive blasts. But the thing is, each time it destroys something it makes the next explosion even more powerful. A positive feedback loop. Hence why it is a threat to the galaxy; the more it destroys the worse it gets, until it will destroy everything. That actually makes sense, at least from a story point of view if not a scientific point of view.

That's pretty good. It at least explain why a supernova is so threatening.

Nero mines 'decalithium' for a living. Decalithium can be used to make Red Matter, and Nero mines the stuff that Spock and the Vulcans use to make the ball of red matter in the movie.

Which would explain how he knows what it can be used for.

Nero's ship looks nothing like in the movie to begin with. After Romulus is destroyed he obtains access codes to a secret Romulan weapons facility. The scientists there are working to develop new weapons using Borg technology they have acquired. The Borg nanoprobes rebuild Nero's ship into what we see.

*groan* Why bring the Borg into it? Can it not just be a normal Romulan ship?

Spocks rotating ship is called the Jellyfish, and it was designed and built by Geordi.

That's an....odd name.

Data is back and in command of the Enterprise. The thought patterns they downloaded into B4 gradually became fully active, and B4 turned into what was essentially a new Data.

No! I knew this was going to happen the moment B4 appeared in NEM. It was fucking annoying then, and it's infuriating now.

Picard is an Admiral/Ambassador type.

Saw that one coming.

[Graham Kennedy]

The worst thing about the Data/B4 thing is that they made no effort to have Data be any different, any more limited or have any kind of different viewpoint. He literally talks about it as coming back from the dead. He's explicitly the exact same character as in TNG. Same memories, personality, habits, everything.

[thelordharry]

The worst thing about the Data/B4 thing is that they made no effort to have Data be any different, any more limited or have any kind of different viewpoint. He literally talks about it as coming back from the dead. He's explicitly the exact same character as in TNG. Same memories, personality, habits, everything.

I liked the comment Spock made about them both having shared the same 'experience'

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah. There's some nice moments too... like Geordi telling Spock he's programmed the ship so it will only respond to his voice, which we see happening with young Spock in Star Trek.

[Lazar]

Hmm, yes, it does seem from GK's synopsis that the movie makes more sense if you read Countdown, as TrekMovie has suggested. I'm curious, does Countdown just retcon away the Romulans' cranial ridges and show them as identical to Vulcans? (If so, I would be glad.)

[Graham Kennedy]

Yes they do. Not a ridged Romulan in sight, that I recall.

[LaughingCheese]

Well that DOES make much more sense now, in a Trek kind of way.

So is this novel considered canon then?

I'll have to pick it up sometime, too bad they couldn't have more elements of it in the movie, many many many people are never going to read the comic, and the movie should be self explanatory.

Oh well.

[Graham Kennedy]

You can find it online if you have a torrent downloader. Go look for it on isohunt.

[Nickswitz]

That makes a lot more sense now, so does that mean we no longer nit on the supernova thing, lol

[Foxfyre]

Yeah but does that meen the canon standards are more relaxed?

[IanKennedy]

No, the nit stands, it can be commented on though.

[Sionnach Glic]

The canonicity of Countdown is something I'm rather interested in, personaly. Paramount maintains that only filmed Trek is canon, but this seems to have been made in conjunction with the film itself.

For the forseeable future, I'm going to treat it as a sort of semi-canon article.