TrekMovie.com Writer Q&A

TrekMovie.com has written an article of a Q&A session that occurred between site fans and Star Trek writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman in their comment section of an article from last week. The result was a rather informative view of their approach on writing the movie and incorporating things such as transporters, time travel, alternative universes and the like. Snippets below with the full article here. Time travel/parallel debate is the most interesting part and worth the read.

moauvian moaul: …How could Kirk and Scotty beam aboard the Enterprise from Delta Vega - half way across the galaxy? I know Spock gave Scotty the formula but, if they could transport at that range why the need for starships? Why a Star Trek to begin with? Am I missing something and wouldn’t that undermine most of the plots on ALL the various series and movies?
BobOrci: Interesting. We discussed that very question. The short answer is that it is entirely too dangerous. Scotty was almost killed, and we even had a line before they beam out where Scotty says, “If the calculation is off by even .oooooox (insert crazy number) we could end up 3 meters OUTSIDE the ship!” Remember, Spock Prime actually made the calculation. It’s possible there’s something key that he did not tell Scotty so that he could not reproduce the results.

VZX: How much time passed between the destruction of the Narada and Kirk getting his medal and becoming captain? I would prefer at least a year or two, as it would make a little more sense than a cadet automatically becoming captain, regardless of how many people he saved. It is just too hard to swallow and it kind of took a lot of believability away from the movie, making it even less realistic. I know you guys wanted to end with the movie with Kirk as captain and everyone in their place, but some line or two of explanation would have been nice.
BobOrci: There a are few subtle transitions in the movie that are purposely ambiguous to allow debate about how long things took to happen, like warping to Vulcan or the very thing you bring up in order to leave it in the eye of the beholder. But yes, we wanted to absolutely end with Kirk as Captain.

Robogeek: Since, among other things, the movie was about Kirk’s (altered) origin and journey to the Captain’s chair of the Enterprise, did you not think it should end with us seeing and hearing him make That Speech for the very first time, as the perfect bookend/punchline/finale to the entire film? I have to admit I was surprised and disappointed that we didn’t get that moment (which I sort of felt the entire film was leading up to brilliantly). I was also a little mystified by the choice of having Spock Prime give the speech, since frankly that’s already been done to more powerful/resonant effect (at the end of Star Trek II).
Can you talk about this decision, and whether you considered (or even tried) having Chris Pine do the speech? And dare I ask if you ever considered asking Shatner to do it?
BobOrci: We certainly did consider all of the above as you would’ve. Ultimately, we felt that from a canon and fandom point of view, Spock Prime (Nimoy) had really made this voyage possible (literally within the plot and karmically through his support of the movie), and as such, he deserved to announce the “continuing voyages” which would’ve seemed odd for Pine to say since it’s his first real voyage. But we certainly debated it all at length. Fun stuff.