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It's all spoilers, just so you know.
I didn't like the reboot for reasons I won't bore you with outside of a cut (but inside of a cut,it's too dark to see )
If you want a longer list, read my original entry after seeing the reboot. Just reminders, in short:
• Kirk gets command of a starship for being terribly effective at verbal abuse? That's so wrong it's offensive. That actually bothered me more the more I thought about it, while bad science bothered me less. I couldn't forget it in watching the second movie, either.
• A completely incoherent villain: Nero gains time travel, but instead of using it to save his people, he uses it to take revenge before the wrong has been done—or perhaps I should call it (with They Might Be Giants) prevenge. All his crew go along with him. No one defects, no one tries to save loved ones.
• Spock and Uhura's inappropriate relationship, first when he's a teacher and she's a student, and then when he's her superior officer. It lowers my opinion of both characters. I also felt that Uhura was really an interesting character, smart and strong and witty, in the first part of the movie. Once we learn she's having an affair with Spock, we don't get to see her intelligence or her guts as much for the rest of the movie. A romance doesn't have to reduce a character, but the writers didn't continue to show her as an interesting, complex person after she kissed Spock.
• Cheap emotional manipulation: let's motivate the whole set of characters by destroying Vulcan so they know what the stakes are! Let's motivate Spock by killing his mother!
• They broke science. Really, the movie made no scientific sense whatsoever.
I have a long list of complaints. Feel free to skip them if they might harsh your squee; I can complain and still enjoy things. Also feel free to tell me if I missed something that might resolve one or more of my complaints, or if you can handwave or fanon it away.
• They broke science <i>again</i>. What the heck, writers?
-- " cold="Cold" means="means" that="that" require="require" superhot="superhot" it="It" does="does" not="not" mean="mean" were="Were" the="the" writers="writers" being="being" or="or" did="did" they="they" not="not" know="know">Back to the Future does better with cold fusion.
--How far is the Neutral Zone with the Klingons from Earth? Seriously, it's apparently only minutes away, at old Star Trek Warp 4.6 of whatever! Funny, I didn't think it was quite so close. (Also, it's close enough that a souped-up transporter can get Khan there. If transporters that good are available, why doesn't anyone in Starfleet use them?)
--Khan's blood cures anything and everything! And Bones managed to synthesize it! That's really going to reduce death rates. I expect by the time we get through a few more movies, the population explosion in Federation space will be a serious problem.
• When the Enterprise loses gravity, people start falling in odd directions. That didn't make any sense to me. Brilliant Husband said that it was Earth asserting its gravity as the Enterprise flipped in descent, but surely the gravity wouldn't be at full Earth strength at the very start of their tumble! People shouldn't be plummeting to their deaths at 9.8m/s^2.
I'm sure there's more bad science I'm missing; these are just the things that jumped out at me.
• Opening sequence:
Why is the Enterprise under water in the opening sequence? How did they get it there without being seen in the first place?
See objection to Cold Fusion Bomb, above.
Why does the Enterprise apparently only have one shuttlecraft?
How messed up has this poor civilization been? (These people have apparently mastered writing, but they have no idea they're living next to a live volcano? Don't they know what volcanoes do?)
• The villain, despite being a genius, does not seem to make sense.
If I understand correctly, this was his plan: 1. Blow up Section 31.
2. That will cause all the Starfleet bigwigs to gather in one place, including Admiral Marcus, so that Khan can kill them all in vengeance. Then Khan can retreat to mourn his dead. It's not a great plan, but it makes some kind of sense.
Instead, #2 turns out thus: Khan can kill some of the bigwigs in vengeance. He knows people at that meeting are fighting back. He hasn't seen Marcus die. Marcus doesn't die. So Khan runs off to Klingon territory to . . . what? Mourn his dead and his failed vengeance? Has he no plan to come back?
Why go to Kronos at all? Does he want to start a war between the Federation and the Klingons? That took would make some kind of sense, but he doesn't actually appear to be doing anything to bring that about, other than beaming there.
I realize that his goals may change the moment Sulu threatens him with missiles, because that's the moment when he realizes that his people may indeed be alive.
Still, it doesn't seem like much of a plan!
Also: under what circumstances might it ever seem a good idea to hide 72 people in stasis inside photon torpedoes? I've been trying to come up with a scenario that would fit, and I am unable to conceive one.
• Spock and Uhura's relationship still makes no sense to me. I like them both individually; I like them less together. The movie does a pretty good job of illustrating, albeit briefly, why such relationships aren't a good idea: Uhura can't focus on the mission on her way down to Kronos because she has been waiting to tell off Spock. Why she waited until that moment, I can't fathom—and again, the writers seem to be diminishing the character in service of a goal I can't even identify. Does the relationship humanize Spock? Why would we want Spock humanized? If anything, it seems to be an excuse for him to tell us that he felt the loss of his planet and people, and he has chosen not to feel again. Couldn't we do that without a relationship that either breaks all the regs (or that indicates that Starfleet has a serious problem with its regulations)?
I don't get what either of them gets out of this relationship. It seems illogical at best. (Yes, I know Vulcans may act illogically—see Sarek and Amanda. But there, I felt that both Sarek and Amanda were deeply in love and getting something out of the relationship.)
I totally wanted Uhura to win over the Klingons with her argument. I was a bit bummed it all degenerated into a fire-fight.
• I'm with Scotty: I'm not loading anything on my ship without the specs! Why doesn't Kirk feel that way? Why doesn't Spock?
• Security fail! How does Carol Marcus bluster her way onto the Enterprise with an assumed name and fake orders? Brilliant Husband says she used her dad's security clearance. If that's true, her dad has an even bigger problem than Starfleet, but Starfleet still has a problem!
How did Scotty go undetected as he approached the secret base? How did not one of the little craft going in notice that he slipped from above into their group? How did he walk aboard the ship?
• So! Admiral Marcus was about to wipe out the entire crew of the Enterprise (not to mention Khan and his family) because they know too much. Spock asked Uhura to open a channel to New Vulcan, and she succeeded! I cheered, because of course once Young Spock tells the Vulcans what Marcus is doing, Marcus destroying the ship would only corroborate what Spock says. If Spock can contact the Vulcans, the Vulcans can presumably contact Marcus and tell him to stand down—they're taking over Section 31. Obviously, this irrational human admiral has made a complete hash of it.
Except that Young Spock used his phone-a-friend not to ensure that the secret that Marcus would kill them all to keep secret is no longer a secret, but to ask Old Spock if Khan is really as dangerous and untrustworthy as Young Spock suspects! Come on! You know Young Spock already didn't trust Khan; Old Spock only confirms what Young Spock already knows.
For that matter, why not phone a friend on Earth? Is there no one in Starfleet who can tell Marcus he's relieved of duty?
And if they're so close to Earth that the ships can fall out of orbit and crash or nearly crash, why weren't there loads of ships surrounding the two of them, demanding to know what the frell they were doing and ordering them to stop before somebody crashed into Earth?
• We saw it in 3D Imax. I do not need to see Chris Pine's pores so well.
• Kirk's still a jerk. The original Kirk broke the rules not infrequently, whenever he felt justified—but he knew what the rules were and why they were in place. I didn't get a sense that this Kirk ever bothered to learn them.
What kind of idiot would have expected Spock not to tell what really happened on that planet? Any man that dumb should not be captain of a starship.
Also, he didn't even recognize the name of the woman who took a post literally as far from Kirk as she could get. That's not funny. That doesn't make me admire Kirk. That just reinforces my sense that he is far too immature and careless of others to have command.
• Points off for Carol Marcus gratuitously changing her clothes in front of Kirk. (Only an idiot would have expected him not to sneak a peek, at least. I find I must conclude either that she's an idiot or that she wanted him to look. I don't like either.)
• And last but certainly not least: how does Khan manage to jump off a spaceship and immediately grab a coat that fits him perfectly?
Despite my laundry list, I enjoyed the movie overall.
I do have questions about Khan's motivations, but Benedict Cumberbatch made an awesome Khan (no disrespect to Ricardo Montalban intended). He made the movie. I kept finding myself sympathizing with him and then having to remind myself that he killed forty-two innocent people, plus however many he got in San Francisco. He wanted his people back above everything. He turned himself in just to get closer to them.
Of course, the two times I saw him escorted by redshirts aboard Enterprise, I thought, "He's only in custody because he wants to be in custody; all those men could be dead at any moment." I expected him to bolt the first time, even before I knew his people were in missiles. I was surprised he didn't take over the ship then.
I could believe this man (with this incredibly large and phallic weapon) could take out all those Klingons. I could believe that this man could fight Spock effectively.
Fantastic voice—and as far from Martin Crieff as one could imagine. Except for the single-mindedness.
Peter Weller makes an awfully good villain too. "Oh, shit, you talked to him." Well, at least he didn't insult everyone's intelligence by pretending that it was all made up and he'd never heard anything like what Khan was saying! (I must admit, I wasn't expecting a Starfleet admiral to use the word "shit," but I guess that's an indicator of how far he has gone.)
"You brought me here because I speak Klingon. Let me speak Klingon." I can set aside my complaint above about Uhura because when she does her thing, she's fantastic.
I still love Karl Urban as McCoy. I have no idea why he was on the Planet of the Red Trees with Kirk, but I don't care. He's fun. I liked him trying to disarm the torpedo. I loved that he got all those people out of the torpedoes, and apparently in very little time. And, okay, I liked the tribble. (You realize that in the two weeks Kirk spent in a coma, however, the tribble that McCoy revived and then forgot produced about sixteen trillion offspring and grandoffspring and so on. "Near as I can figure, they're born pregnant!" Near as we can figure, they're dead pregnant too!
I love Spock misleading Khan while insisting that Vulcans don't lie. I want to say that there was an episode (or a movie?) of OS wherein Spock reiterated that Vulcans can't lie, and Bones replied that they sure could twist the heck out of a truth. I can't find the line, and I don't think I'm remembering it right. (Please let me know if you know it!)
Even if I think Young Spock had no good reason to call Old Spock, just seeing Real Spock on screen made me very happy.
I felt like an idiot when Noel Clarke was credited at the end; I'd kept thinking, "Who is that guy? I think I know him!" when he was onscreen, and hoping I'd recognize his voice, but he had only a few words, and it wasn't enough for me to identify him! I really felt for him and his family. His poor wife—I don't know what she'll do.
Scotty's a hero. He made the right call not to accept those torpedoes, and he saved everybody even after Kirk accepted his resignation. (And apparently didn't file anything, or Scotty wouldn't have been able to take that shuttlecraft out to the hidden base.)
Khan must have a good coatand a short friend. Apparently it's a law of nature.
Avon (Blake's 7, "Mission to Destiny"): "You just don't get off a spaceship and run." No one told Khan that. He not only ran, he got a good coat!
Apparently, no one told the "savage" Khan what doors are either. There are moments when I don't care about logic because something is just so cool. This chase was one of those moments.
Khan can't be taken down by a human or even a Vulcan alone, but Uhura and Spock together can take him. (Apparently, he also can't be taken out of a shipload of photon torpedoes. Maybe putting people in them reduced their yield.)
ETA: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joonscribble for her comment about John Cho's objections to the casting of Khan, which I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't consider beyond "Well, Montalban wasn't Indian either." I found a good round-up of links in "Whitewashing? KHAAAAN!" by Annalee, and a pithy, persuasive argument at "The Real Problem with Benedict Cumberbatch's Villain Role in Star Trek 12" by Charlie Jane Anders, which also alerted me that Ricardo Montalban did consider himself a person of color and founded and worked for advocacy groups for minorities in the media.
I didn't like the reboot for reasons I won't bore you with outside of a cut (but inside of a cut,
If you want a longer list, read my original entry after seeing the reboot. Just reminders, in short:
• Kirk gets command of a starship for being terribly effective at verbal abuse? That's so wrong it's offensive. That actually bothered me more the more I thought about it, while bad science bothered me less. I couldn't forget it in watching the second movie, either.
• A completely incoherent villain: Nero gains time travel, but instead of using it to save his people, he uses it to take revenge before the wrong has been done—or perhaps I should call it (with They Might Be Giants) prevenge. All his crew go along with him. No one defects, no one tries to save loved ones.
• Spock and Uhura's inappropriate relationship, first when he's a teacher and she's a student, and then when he's her superior officer. It lowers my opinion of both characters. I also felt that Uhura was really an interesting character, smart and strong and witty, in the first part of the movie. Once we learn she's having an affair with Spock, we don't get to see her intelligence or her guts as much for the rest of the movie. A romance doesn't have to reduce a character, but the writers didn't continue to show her as an interesting, complex person after she kissed Spock.
• Cheap emotional manipulation: let's motivate the whole set of characters by destroying Vulcan so they know what the stakes are! Let's motivate Spock by killing his mother!
• They broke science. Really, the movie made no scientific sense whatsoever.
I have a long list of complaints. Feel free to skip them if they might harsh your squee; I can complain and still enjoy things. Also feel free to tell me if I missed something that might resolve one or more of my complaints, or if you can handwave or fanon it away.
• They broke science <i>again</i>. What the heck, writers?
-- " cold="Cold" means="means" that="that" require="require" superhot="superhot" it="It" does="does" not="not" mean="mean" were="Were" the="the" writers="writers" being="being" or="or" did="did" they="they" not="not" know="know">Back to the Future does better with cold fusion.
--How far is the Neutral Zone with the Klingons from Earth? Seriously, it's apparently only minutes away, at old Star Trek Warp 4.6 of whatever! Funny, I didn't think it was quite so close. (Also, it's close enough that a souped-up transporter can get Khan there. If transporters that good are available, why doesn't anyone in Starfleet use them?)
--Khan's blood cures anything and everything! And Bones managed to synthesize it! That's really going to reduce death rates. I expect by the time we get through a few more movies, the population explosion in Federation space will be a serious problem.
• When the Enterprise loses gravity, people start falling in odd directions. That didn't make any sense to me. Brilliant Husband said that it was Earth asserting its gravity as the Enterprise flipped in descent, but surely the gravity wouldn't be at full Earth strength at the very start of their tumble! People shouldn't be plummeting to their deaths at 9.8m/s^2.
I'm sure there's more bad science I'm missing; these are just the things that jumped out at me.
• Opening sequence:
Why is the Enterprise under water in the opening sequence? How did they get it there without being seen in the first place?
See objection to Cold Fusion Bomb, above.
Why does the Enterprise apparently only have one shuttlecraft?
How messed up has this poor civilization been? (These people have apparently mastered writing, but they have no idea they're living next to a live volcano? Don't they know what volcanoes do?)
• The villain, despite being a genius, does not seem to make sense.
If I understand correctly, this was his plan: 1. Blow up Section 31.
2. That will cause all the Starfleet bigwigs to gather in one place, including Admiral Marcus, so that Khan can kill them all in vengeance. Then Khan can retreat to mourn his dead. It's not a great plan, but it makes some kind of sense.
Instead, #2 turns out thus: Khan can kill some of the bigwigs in vengeance. He knows people at that meeting are fighting back. He hasn't seen Marcus die. Marcus doesn't die. So Khan runs off to Klingon territory to . . . what? Mourn his dead and his failed vengeance? Has he no plan to come back?
Why go to Kronos at all? Does he want to start a war between the Federation and the Klingons? That took would make some kind of sense, but he doesn't actually appear to be doing anything to bring that about, other than beaming there.
I realize that his goals may change the moment Sulu threatens him with missiles, because that's the moment when he realizes that his people may indeed be alive.
Still, it doesn't seem like much of a plan!
Also: under what circumstances might it ever seem a good idea to hide 72 people in stasis inside photon torpedoes? I've been trying to come up with a scenario that would fit, and I am unable to conceive one.
• Spock and Uhura's relationship still makes no sense to me. I like them both individually; I like them less together. The movie does a pretty good job of illustrating, albeit briefly, why such relationships aren't a good idea: Uhura can't focus on the mission on her way down to Kronos because she has been waiting to tell off Spock. Why she waited until that moment, I can't fathom—and again, the writers seem to be diminishing the character in service of a goal I can't even identify. Does the relationship humanize Spock? Why would we want Spock humanized? If anything, it seems to be an excuse for him to tell us that he felt the loss of his planet and people, and he has chosen not to feel again. Couldn't we do that without a relationship that either breaks all the regs (or that indicates that Starfleet has a serious problem with its regulations)?
I don't get what either of them gets out of this relationship. It seems illogical at best. (Yes, I know Vulcans may act illogically—see Sarek and Amanda. But there, I felt that both Sarek and Amanda were deeply in love and getting something out of the relationship.)
I totally wanted Uhura to win over the Klingons with her argument. I was a bit bummed it all degenerated into a fire-fight.
• I'm with Scotty: I'm not loading anything on my ship without the specs! Why doesn't Kirk feel that way? Why doesn't Spock?
• Security fail! How does Carol Marcus bluster her way onto the Enterprise with an assumed name and fake orders? Brilliant Husband says she used her dad's security clearance. If that's true, her dad has an even bigger problem than Starfleet, but Starfleet still has a problem!
How did Scotty go undetected as he approached the secret base? How did not one of the little craft going in notice that he slipped from above into their group? How did he walk aboard the ship?
• So! Admiral Marcus was about to wipe out the entire crew of the Enterprise (not to mention Khan and his family) because they know too much. Spock asked Uhura to open a channel to New Vulcan, and she succeeded! I cheered, because of course once Young Spock tells the Vulcans what Marcus is doing, Marcus destroying the ship would only corroborate what Spock says. If Spock can contact the Vulcans, the Vulcans can presumably contact Marcus and tell him to stand down—they're taking over Section 31. Obviously, this irrational human admiral has made a complete hash of it.
Except that Young Spock used his phone-a-friend not to ensure that the secret that Marcus would kill them all to keep secret is no longer a secret, but to ask Old Spock if Khan is really as dangerous and untrustworthy as Young Spock suspects! Come on! You know Young Spock already didn't trust Khan; Old Spock only confirms what Young Spock already knows.
For that matter, why not phone a friend on Earth? Is there no one in Starfleet who can tell Marcus he's relieved of duty?
And if they're so close to Earth that the ships can fall out of orbit and crash or nearly crash, why weren't there loads of ships surrounding the two of them, demanding to know what the frell they were doing and ordering them to stop before somebody crashed into Earth?
• We saw it in 3D Imax. I do not need to see Chris Pine's pores so well.
• Kirk's still a jerk. The original Kirk broke the rules not infrequently, whenever he felt justified—but he knew what the rules were and why they were in place. I didn't get a sense that this Kirk ever bothered to learn them.
What kind of idiot would have expected Spock not to tell what really happened on that planet? Any man that dumb should not be captain of a starship.
Also, he didn't even recognize the name of the woman who took a post literally as far from Kirk as she could get. That's not funny. That doesn't make me admire Kirk. That just reinforces my sense that he is far too immature and careless of others to have command.
• Points off for Carol Marcus gratuitously changing her clothes in front of Kirk. (Only an idiot would have expected him not to sneak a peek, at least. I find I must conclude either that she's an idiot or that she wanted him to look. I don't like either.)
• And last but certainly not least: how does Khan manage to jump off a spaceship and immediately grab a coat that fits him perfectly?
Despite my laundry list, I enjoyed the movie overall.
I do have questions about Khan's motivations, but Benedict Cumberbatch made an awesome Khan (no disrespect to Ricardo Montalban intended). He made the movie. I kept finding myself sympathizing with him and then having to remind myself that he killed forty-two innocent people, plus however many he got in San Francisco. He wanted his people back above everything. He turned himself in just to get closer to them.
Of course, the two times I saw him escorted by redshirts aboard Enterprise, I thought, "He's only in custody because he wants to be in custody; all those men could be dead at any moment." I expected him to bolt the first time, even before I knew his people were in missiles. I was surprised he didn't take over the ship then.
I could believe this man (with this incredibly large and phallic weapon) could take out all those Klingons. I could believe that this man could fight Spock effectively.
Fantastic voice—and as far from Martin Crieff as one could imagine. Except for the single-mindedness.
Peter Weller makes an awfully good villain too. "Oh, shit, you talked to him." Well, at least he didn't insult everyone's intelligence by pretending that it was all made up and he'd never heard anything like what Khan was saying! (I must admit, I wasn't expecting a Starfleet admiral to use the word "shit," but I guess that's an indicator of how far he has gone.)
"You brought me here because I speak Klingon. Let me speak Klingon." I can set aside my complaint above about Uhura because when she does her thing, she's fantastic.
I still love Karl Urban as McCoy. I have no idea why he was on the Planet of the Red Trees with Kirk, but I don't care. He's fun. I liked him trying to disarm the torpedo. I loved that he got all those people out of the torpedoes, and apparently in very little time. And, okay, I liked the tribble. (You realize that in the two weeks Kirk spent in a coma, however, the tribble that McCoy revived and then forgot produced about sixteen trillion offspring and grandoffspring and so on. "Near as I can figure, they're born pregnant!" Near as we can figure, they're dead pregnant too!
I love Spock misleading Khan while insisting that Vulcans don't lie. I want to say that there was an episode (or a movie?) of OS wherein Spock reiterated that Vulcans can't lie, and Bones replied that they sure could twist the heck out of a truth. I can't find the line, and I don't think I'm remembering it right. (Please let me know if you know it!)
Even if I think Young Spock had no good reason to call Old Spock, just seeing Real Spock on screen made me very happy.
I felt like an idiot when Noel Clarke was credited at the end; I'd kept thinking, "Who is that guy? I think I know him!" when he was onscreen, and hoping I'd recognize his voice, but he had only a few words, and it wasn't enough for me to identify him! I really felt for him and his family. His poor wife—I don't know what she'll do.
Scotty's a hero. He made the right call not to accept those torpedoes, and he saved everybody even after Kirk accepted his resignation. (And apparently didn't file anything, or Scotty wouldn't have been able to take that shuttlecraft out to the hidden base.)
Khan must have a good coat
Avon (Blake's 7, "Mission to Destiny"): "You just don't get off a spaceship and run." No one told Khan that. He not only ran, he got a good coat!
Apparently, no one told the "savage" Khan what doors are either. There are moments when I don't care about logic because something is just so cool. This chase was one of those moments.
Khan can't be taken down by a human or even a Vulcan alone, but Uhura and Spock together can take him. (Apparently, he also can't be taken out of a shipload of photon torpedoes. Maybe putting people in them reduced their yield.)
ETA: Thanks to
joonscribble for her comment about John Cho's objections to the casting of Khan, which I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't consider beyond "Well, Montalban wasn't Indian either." I found a good round-up of links in "Whitewashing? KHAAAAN!" by Annalee, and a pithy, persuasive argument at "The Real Problem with Benedict Cumberbatch's Villain Role in Star Trek 12" by Charlie Jane Anders, which also alerted me that Ricardo Montalban did consider himself a person of color and founded and worked for advocacy groups for minorities in the media.Tags:
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I understand why you hated the first one.
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I love Karl Urban and Simon Pegg!
Oh yes, they really should have had more than one tribble laying around at the end. *nods*
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I think this was the moment in the movie when I laughed the hardest.
I was a little amazed at how much I was not bothered by the race-change for Khan. However, I've been somewhat amused by John Cho clearly being NOT okay with it and calling Abrams out on it as the press tour goes on.
I have no idea why he was on the Planet of the Red Trees with Kirk, but I don't care. He's fun.
I often had this reaction of "why is he here? who cares, awesome!" whenever he showed on the bridge randomly.
I feel like the writers of these movies have the most trouble writing Kirk. I get that this version is different due to growing up without a father or really a family from what the first movie seems to suggest. So I get he has a slightly more "me against the world" attitude that often gets his entire crew in trouble. Making him like that, however accurate it is in terms of characterization always makes it seem like he has no business in being the captain of anything.
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I must confess that I hadn't thought of the recasting of Khan as whitewashing because I thought of Montalban as a Spaniard and so had never thought of Khan as Indian or even a person of color—but a little Googling turned up some useful links on the topic. Montalban apparently did consider himself a person of color and even founded and participated in advocacy groups "The Real Problem with Benedict Cumberbatch's Villain Role in Star Trek 12" by Charlie Jane Anders. I now feel a bit stupid and embarrassed for not considering the problem. Because Anders is right: there's a serious problem in recasting the role, particularly with a plot about eugenics. I also think it's a problem in a series of movies where white, blue-eyed Kirk seems to be captain of the Enterprise for behaving badly, and most of the people under him are not white (or are half-Vulcan) but much better behaved! I noted to Brilliant Husband after we saw the movie that the director really loved blue eyes. We got lengthy, loving close-ups of the blue eyes of Kirk, Khan, and Pike. Somehow the camera didn't seem to love the brown eyes of other key cast members. Now I'm not sure if it was the director's problem, or my problem.
I often had this reaction of "why is he here? who cares, awesome!" whenever he showed on the bridge randomly.
Yes! I genuinely like Bones. I don't like Kirk. I was never very fond of the OS Kirk, and I actively dislike this new Kirk. I watch the movies in spite of him. I have problems with Young Spock that are partly to do with Heroes (Siler was a major factor in my quitting the show) and partly to do with the fact that Real Spock was my absolute fave on OS. I was quite fond of Bones, so I didn't expect to warm to Karl Urban so much, but he's my favorite in this bunch. (Uhura might have been but for her ill-advised romance. I just have too much trouble with that.)
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I also think it's a problem in a series of movies where white, blue-eyed Kirk seems to be captain of the Enterprise for behaving badly, and most of the people under him are not white (or are half-Vulcan) but much better behaved!
I can't quite decide if this is an issue with the current filmmakers or an issue of them trying to translate a very dated trope to modern times. No one blinked an eye back in the day when Montalban was cast as an Indian character (in darkening foundation make up no less) and I'm sure no one batted an eye at the idea that heroism = white men behaving badly. But the whole idea of the very White Kirk basically disregarding rules and getting rewarded for it while those who are non-White who behave according to the rules and are ignored feels more problematic now.
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Yes! I found myself having sympathy for the character, and I credit that totally to the actor: I couldn't help but be moved when he talked about his people, but that didn't make sense of the things he did in the movie. I'd start to feel sympathetic, and then I'd remember that he killed 42 people just to get the higher-ups of Starfleet together so that he could kill one of them in vengeance, and my sympathy evaporated.
Montalban's Khan had more depth partly because he had more backstory, in "Space Seed"—but he had also been clearly driven to the edge of sanity by the two decades of suffering he and his people had endured. We got to see him interact with his people, which BC's Khan didn't get to do because they were all frozen.
I did wonder after I posted if the movie-makers actively chose not to have the man who bombs London and makes quite a mess of San Francisco be non-white. We're told that Khan is "savage," so it's not as if a person of color playing the character would avoid racefail for the movie either! So, yes: perhaps the lesser of two insults.
I've heard that Benicio del Toro was offered the role but turned it down—but of course he's no more Indian than Ricardo Montalban! Here's an article; I don't know how reliable it is. Why they then offered it to BC is anyone's guess.
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Second, the comic prequel explains why there's only one shuttlecraft left but they have Mudd's little packet. (And it's not Harvey's, but his daughter's, and she's Bajoran?!?!?)
And of course in TOS, Bones just wanders onto the bridge whenever he damn' well feels like it, mostly to needle Spock.