Hey Resigned_Knight,

Thanks for the comment! I think you and I are are in agreement that the pieces are there, we just differ on how effective they were. It didn’t work for me; it did work for you. No shame in that.

As for the death stuff, even a week later, it does nag at me a little. Seeing the various members of the cast and crew during the opening Captain’s Log did give a face to the crew of the Enterprise, but since so many of the deaths were anonymous, it lacked the impact I was looking for. I guess what I wanted was for the impact to be felt on a personal level — something the film did do well with the death of the ensign who was hiding the Abronath for Kirk. One thing I remember from the various television incarnations of Star Trek was their emphasis on humanizing characters who were about to be killed. Even if it was just a few lines of dialogue between an engineer and Chief O’Brien, for example, when that person was killed we felt a real sense that someone was missing. Whatever moments could have sold that loss for me weren’t present in the film.