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Phylodox posted:You know, I've been thinking about this movie and its predecessor a lot lately. They are big, flashy, aggressively stupid movies, but I still like them and I've been trying to figure out why. At this point, I have a kind of working hypothesis. I think it's because previous to these movies, Star Trek had just forgotten how to have fun. I watch the original series and Next Generation back-to-back on television, and it's amazing to me how different the atmosphere is in the two shows. It just seems to me like everyone in The Next Generation is so buttoned-down and professional and stick-up-their-rear end boring. Seriously, you have a room that can re-create absolutely any scenario you can imagine and your guilty pleasure is re-enacting Raymond Chandler-esque detective novels? Everyone is so stiff and formal and tepid. Not that it wasn't a smart, interesting show...but it just lacked a lot of the adventure and camaraderie of the original series. I don't think they're stupid movies, though. They're just not concerned with the same kinds of details that a large portion of the hardcore fanbase seems to be concerned with. Voyager could be fun in an extremely camp way. Once again, it has a bad reputation with the fans because glorious camp wasn't what the fanbase wanted or expected. And pretty much every character on DS9 had a sense of fun and moments of looseness, even the villains, along with a greater complexity of moral ambiguity and serialization than any other part of the franchise. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 21:05
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Presto posted:This is probably some kind of heresy, but I really think this one is near the top. Yeah, I agree. There's always got to be some accounting for taste, but really, which films can anyone argue are BETTER than these four?
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May 20, 2013 21:05
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Lord Krangdar posted:And pretty much every character on DS9 had a sense of fun and moments of looseness On paper, Sisko is dishwater. All of the greatness of his character comes from Avery Brooks being legit crazy in real life. And Voyager had potential that they immediately flushed down the toilet. There was a gold mine of dramatic potential having two antagonistic crews thrown together in a dangerous, resource-poor situation. The writers then fell all over themselves to have the terrorists almost seamlessly integrated into the Starfleet crew as soon as possible and have the show be as close to Trek status quo as they could make it.
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May 20, 2013 21:20
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I think I agree with the notion that Avery Brooks brought a ton to Sisko. When he first started out it wasn't quite as interesting as what he became as the series went on. It kind of had a Shatner vibe of energy to it where he took his character beyond with his performance. The over-acting and ham scenes are brilliant. I am sad that Siddig didn't get that role but wish kind of wish Bashir didn't turn so grim. He was great as this young, charming, naive doctor who is exceptionally gifted. Although I suppose clashing with the likes of Section 31 and having your history exposed as a genetic augment would do that.
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May 20, 2013 21:22
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Phylodox posted:And Voyager had potential that they immediately flushed down the toilet. There was a gold mine of dramatic potential having two antagonistic crews thrown together in a dangerous, resource-poor situation. The writers then fell all over themselves to have the terrorists almost seamlessly integrated into the Starfleet crew as soon as possible and have the show be as close to Trek status quo as they could make it. That's just what I said; Voyager wasn't good at being what people expected or wanted from the premise. However, it was really good at being a camp take on "the Trek status quo". Sure a lot of the episodes' basic premises could have been done (or were done) on TNG, but the tone and atmosphere of both shows are completely different. Though Voyager went closer to Adam West's Batman than the BSG remake grittiness that fans would have preferred. I have a personal rule for this kind of situation: judge something for what it is. There is no good or bad, rather good or bad at. Remember, we're talking about fun in Trek. Would "two antagonistic crews thrown together in a dangerous, resource-poor situation" have been fun? More fun than a crew-member going too fast and evolving into a hyper-lizard in a grotesque homage to The Fly, then having lizard sex with the captain and starting a new off-shoot species of humanity in the Delta Quadrant that is never mentioned again? As for Sisko: I've been watching DS9 recently, and yeah Sisko is awkward and undeveloped for the first couple of seasons but he still has those little details that give him life and make him more complex than the stiff, polite intellectuals of TNG's beige world. He has a wild temper and impatient streak, loves baseball, has more complex relationships with his family and the rest of the crew, and the show allows him to be more vulnerable and world-weary than Kirk or Picard on a regular basis. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 21:37 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 21:32
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They were big dumb space action movies, which is fine. The opening scene where they give no fucks about the Prime Directive was telling the audience this. Like Spock is worried about the natives seeing the ship; but later Pike points out they were violating it by being on the planet in the first place. I was confused though why did the Enterprise go into Klingon space? What would have happened if they fired the cryo torpedoes as planned? Destroying the Augments and starting a war with Klingons? How did Khan convince starfleet to build torpedoes around the cryotubes to begin with? Nothing made sense, except to tie the
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May 20, 2013 21:37
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McDowell posted:Nothing made sense, except to tie the You played the video game? You poor, poor soul. But yeah, I also missed how Khan was even convinced that putting his family into torpedos would be a remotely good idea.
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May 20, 2013 21:41
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Lord Krangdar posted:I don't think they're stupid movies, though. They're just not concerned with the same kinds of details that a large portion of the hardcore fanbase seems to be concerned with. I think "glorious camp" may be seriously overstating Voyager's level of quality. I personally love me some campy space operatic bullshit, but having recently tried to re-watch it on Netflix, I feel like I can safely say that Voyager doesn't come close to reliably delivering that. Simultaneously DS9 stumbles a hell of a lot even in episodes supposedly playing to the show's strengths, by the time my boyfriend and I were through with the show we were sick to death of all the "O'Brien is sad, also kind of a dick" episodes (and good lord did the mirror universe characters get old). Lord Krangdar posted:Remember, we're talking about fun in Trek. Would "two antagonistic crews thrown together in a dangerous, resource-poor situation" have been fun? More fun than a crew-member going too fast and evolving into a hyper-lizard in a grotesque homage to The Fly, then having lizard sex with the captain and starting a new off-shoot species of humanity in the Delta Quadrant that is never mentioned again? Yes. Here's one of the things with Voy, the people in charge essentially wanted to treat it as though they were just making an indefinite number of extra episodes of TNG. It wasn't about being camp or fun, it was about putting the bare minimum effort into milking the franchise. Next Generation was fun, it was frequently campy, and the actors were allowed to interact with eachother in a way which made the characters they played seem more real on screen (as opposed to the actors on Voyager, who were told to be more stilted in their performances so that the "aliens would seem more like people"). Voyager (and by extension Enterprise, which had most of the same people at the helm) was just kinda' not very good. Ernie Muppari fucked around with this message at 21:54 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 21:45
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AndyElusive posted:You played the video game? You poor, poor soul. Nope the game was a totally new plot (and I haven't played it) I'm just pointing out how movies have become more like games instead of embracing their advantages over the interactive medium.
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May 20, 2013 21:47
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Voyager went to some weird places, yeah...but they weren't fun weird places. The characters were the same kind of bland, milquetoast nobodies Star Trek came to specialize in. Even Tom Paris, the dangerous bad boy Kirk-wannabe...wasn't his big holodeck escapism thing re-living lovely 1930s serials? It made for a weird as gently caress episode, but it just reinforced how repressed everyone was. Can you imagine what reboot Kirk would do with a magic room that could create whatever you wanted? Hell, even in the original series when they landed on that planet where whatever you thought of came true, what did McCoy dream up? Two semi-nude showgirls! Picard would have thought himself up a particularly interesting archaeological dig site. Sisko would have thought up a baseball game. Janeway? I dunno, she probably would have imagined herself as a Dickensian governess or something equally dry.
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May 20, 2013 21:50
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Section 31 intentionally put the biggest weirdos and gently caress ups on Voyager hoping they would get destroyed/lost.
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May 20, 2013 21:53
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Lord Krangdar posted:That's just what I said; Voyager wasn't good at being what people expected or wanted from the premise. However, it was really good at being a camp take on "the Trek status quo". Sure a lot of the episodes' basic premises could have been done (or were done) on TNG, but the tone and atmosphere of both shows are completely different. Though Voyager went closer to Adam West's Batman than the BSG remake grittiness that fans would have preferred. I have a personal rule for this kind of situation: judge something for what it is. There is no good or bad, rather good or bad at. "Good or bad at" includes "squandering opportunity," and Voyager had a rather unique premise that had the opportunity of true greatness. The worst thing you can be is mediocre when you could be great (abject failure is still interesting in a different way), and that's why Voyager has so many issues.
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May 20, 2013 22:03
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McDowell posted:Section 31 intentionally put the biggest weirdos and gently caress ups on Voyager hoping they would get destroyed/lost. Ha. I used to describe the show as being about a ship full of Hairdressers and Telephone Sanitizers.
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May 20, 2013 22:07
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Darko posted:"Good or bad at" includes "squandering opportunity," and Voyager had a rather unique premise that had the opportunity of true greatness. The worst thing you can be is mediocre when you could be great (abject failure is still interesting in a different way), and that's why Voyager has so many issues. Watching DS9 has made me rethink the general consensus on Voyager's squandered potential. Note that for years DS9 and Voyager were airing together, and DS9 was already exploring much of the territory and tone that people think Voyager should have explored. For example, going by conventional wisdom would have meant two Star Trek series seriously tackling the difficulty of integrating former terrorists with a Starfleet crew at the same time. Instead we got two wildly different takes on the franchise, for better or worse. By the "good or bad at" thing I mean that I like Voyager for what it is, regardless of what it could have been. Any work of fiction or art could have been something else, but focusing so much on that seems to be a form of talking oneself out of enjoying what actually exists (and same goes for this film). I see now what you mean about the repressed characters, though, Phylodox. Looks like we're talking about two different tones of fun, because to me that's all part of the campy fun. That Tom Paris is actually living out a nerdy fantasy adventure but he'd rather watch old television serials and eat popcorn on the holodeck is funny to me.
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May 20, 2013 22:24
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McDowell posted:They were big dumb space action movies, which is fine. The opening scene where they give no fucks about the Prime Directive was telling the audience this. Like Spock is worried about the natives seeing the ship; but later Pike points out they were violating it by being on the planet in the first place. They didn't, nothing, yes, they didn't know he did. This was all explained. It's not a very complex movie.
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May 20, 2013 22:26
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I'm okay with a show having nerdy characters...but that wasn't how Paris was presented to us in the context of the show. He was the hotshot pilot ex-con bad boy. Sadly (so, so, so sadly), the only characters who use the holodeck in a realistic fashion are Quark (portrayed in the show as a revolting pervert), Geordi (who falls in love with his holo-lady for God's sake), and loving Barclay (who has crippling social anxiety and even then has to couch his holo-gently caress-fantasies in weird, flowery literary scenarios). I don't know if it's the fault of the writers, Roddenberry, or the perceived fan base, but the show was just weirdly, hilariously uptight. Especially considering how swashbuckling, adventurous, and free-spirited the original series was.
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May 20, 2013 22:35
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Part of the problem was that Trek started to be perceived as a "family" show, something you could let your kids watch (TNG and DS9 being in first-run syndication may have been a part of this- you couldn't be sure what hour they'd air in a given market.) When DS9 did a Risa episode they had to tone down the sexual elements and even reshoot some scenes with the actors in less revealing clothing/poses.
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May 20, 2013 22:39
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Maxwell Lord posted:Part of the problem was that Trek started to be perceived as a "family" show, something you could let your kids watch (TNG and DS9 being in first-run syndication may have been a part of this- you couldn't be sure what hour they'd air in a given market.) When DS9 did a Risa episode they had to tone down the sexual elements and even reshoot some scenes with the actors in less revealing clothing/poses. Then again there was the TNG episode "Conspiracy" which ended with a guy getting his head literally blown up, and then having a monster burn it's away out of his corpse. What was essentially a kid show suddenly turned into a Tobe Hooper movie out of nowhere.
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May 20, 2013 22:44
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This movie sucked. Arnold Schwazennegger or sly stallone could have easily played Kirk and it wouldn't have made a difference. poo poo one dimensional character development and moronic plot sandwiched into 2 hours of shooting and punching. Will not pay to see another movie in this series that's for sure. The idea that a star fleet admiral could go rogue and attempt to start an intergalactic war with a super secret star destroyer is some of the stupidest poo poo i've ever been asked to swallow in the star trek universe. They at least could have provided some tiny amount of motivation for the admiral. linoleum floors fucked around with this message at 22:49 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 22:47
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I liked The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine when the crews and characters were dealing with interesting plots and such...they were great shows, all considered. It was just when they delved into the crewmembers' personal lives that I wanted to fall asleep while punching my TV.
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May 20, 2013 22:50
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Phylodox posted:I'm okay with a show having nerdy characters...but that wasn't how Paris was presented to us in the context of the show. He was the hotshot pilot ex-con bad boy. Sadly (so, so, so sadly), the only characters who use the holodeck in a realistic fashion are Quark (portrayed in the show as a revolting pervert), Geordi (who falls in love with his holo-lady for God's sake), and loving Barclay (who has crippling social anxiety and even then has to couch his holo-gently caress-fantasies in weird, flowery literary scenarios). I don't know if it's the fault of the writers, Roddenberry, or the perceived fan base, but the show was just weirdly, hilariously uptight. Especially considering how swashbuckling, adventurous, and free-spirited the original series was. You're calling it hilariously uptight, I'm calling it funny and campy. Are we still disagreeing here? The contrast between Paris' archetypal role, as set up, and his actual characterization is what makes it amusing. Anyway, I'm not sure why we need to see scenes of "realistic" holodeck use but sexual uses are definitely implied as no big deal in DS9 at least.
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May 20, 2013 22:51
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linoleum floors posted:The idea that a star fleet admiral could go rogue and attempt to start an intergalactic war with a super secret star destroyer is some of the stupidest poo poo i've ever been asked to swallow in the star trek universe. They at least could have provided some tiny amount of motivation for the admiral. It's not exactly like Starfleet admirals are known for honesty or competence.
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May 20, 2013 22:51
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BrandonGK posted:Then again there was the TNG episode "Conspiracy" which ended with a guy getting his head literally blown up, and then having a monster burn it's away out of his corpse. What was essentially a kid show suddenly turned into a Tobe Hooper movie out of nowhere. That was early in the show, though, when nobody had any idea what they were doing.
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May 20, 2013 22:55
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linoleum floors posted:The idea that a star fleet admiral could go rogue and attempt to start an intergalactic war with a super secret star destroyer is some of the stupidest poo poo i've ever been asked to swallow in the star trek universe. They at least could have provided some tiny amount of motivation for the admiral. That's literally the plot of The Undiscovered Country except Meyer produced a story that made sense and gave everyone actual motivations.
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May 20, 2013 23:02
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One thing I don't quite get is the complaint that there were no spaceships around Earth to respond immediately to the battle. Are there supposed to be entire ships that just stand guard the whole time? If an enemy warship suddenly materialized on the shore of some American city and started shelling the hell out of it there'd be probably ten or twenty minutes before anything in the Air Force or Navy could respond, unless it decided to appear in the heart of Norfolk or something.
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May 20, 2013 23:02
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Lord Krangdar posted:You're calling it hilariously uptight, I'm calling it funny and campy. Are we still disagreeing here? I'd call the original series campy. I'm really not sure what I'd call the later series. I didn't mean it was hilarious in itself...more that it was hilarious that the writers had no trouble delving into matters of morality and science and humanity while seemingly being incapable of writing characters who led realistic, interesting lives. And the holodeck was just a good example of what I'm talking about. Nobody in the later Star Trek series gave the impression of being able to let loose and have fun. I think that if the original series was like the old West in space, The Next Generation was like Victorian era England in space. Except maybe for, like, Quark and Dax.
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May 20, 2013 23:03
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Lobok posted:One thing I don't quite get is the complaint that there were no spaceships around Earth to respond immediately to the battle. Are there supposed to be entire ships that just stand guard the whole time? If an enemy warship suddenly materialized on the shore of some American city and started shelling the hell out of it there'd be probably ten or twenty minutes before anything in the Air Force or Navy could respond, unless it decided to appear in the heart of Norfolk or something. It's a bit hard to suspend disbelief on that point when the film establishes that: a) there are several starships around b) apparently it takes like seconds to travel across known space c) Spock has time to skype old-Spock on New-Vulcan so it's not as if they can't call for help I'd totally be willing to go with the film if they just use the classic 'There's nobody else in range' but they don't even bother with that and still mash the above three points in my face until it's impossible not to come to the conclusion that I wasn't supposed to think about the plot this hard.
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May 20, 2013 23:07
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Alchenar posted:That's literally the plot of The Undiscovered Country except Meyer produced a story that made sense and gave everyone actual motivations. You didn't notice the constant 9/11 & War on Terror stuff that framed the motives for just about everyone in the movie?
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May 20, 2013 23:10
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What I wanted to know was why they needed Khan alive at all. They had 72 other genetically enhanced supermen whose blood they could have used. I thought that was where they were going when McCoy was all, "Get this man out of his cryo-tube...so I can put Kirk in it to preserve him until we get Khan's blood!" EDIT: VV I don't think Marcus knew Khan's crew were in the torpedoes. Khan's plan was to arm the Vengeance with those torpedoes, then free his crew and use them to hijack the ship. VV Phylodox fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 23:12
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McDowell posted:They were big dumb space action movies, which is fine. The opening scene where they give no fucks about the Prime Directive was telling the audience this. Like Spock is worried about the natives seeing the ship; but later Pike points out they were violating it by being on the planet in the first place. Presumably, Marcus' torpedoes would have soft-landed the augments, allowing them to go on a bugfuck berzerker rampage. The fact that they kept emphasizing "long-range" in the description of the torpedoes presumably meant "longer than transporter range," though why they couldn't have just used the magic transporter thingy Khan did is not really answered.
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May 20, 2013 23:13
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Alchenar posted:It's a bit hard to suspend disbelief on that point when the film establishes that: Ah ok, I don't remember the first part then. Do you mean there were other ships in the vicinity?
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May 20, 2013 23:16
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:I really enjoyed that the Klingons have gotten a big makeover. I have, frankly, been really loving tired of them for quite a while now. And I really am looking forward to seeing them in future movies. Personally, I don't think they really got a big makeover at all. If anything they really amplified the post-1980s depiction of the characters greatly. I would have much rather seen them taken back to their more TOS nature of savvy cunning and suave passion. In short, team that version of them Khan and I think it shows a bit of a similarity in the natures and attitudes of both: Each believing they're the superior culturally, physically and intellectually and it's a series of betrayals on all sides that Harrison is manipulating to force Starfleet invest in releasing his family, restarting augment research, etc..
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May 20, 2013 23:30
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I'm still running through Quinto-Spock phoning Nimoy-Spcok to ask him about canon in my head, and I think I have a half-formed thought at this point. That scene really sticks out to me, given that last film's arch-villain was defined by his obsession with canon; in light of the previous film I have a hard time viewing the Spock-Spock call as mere fanservice. Maybe the film is equating the audience with the primitive civlization at the start of the film, that begins literally worshipping the Enterprise. This would fit with the later scene where the Enterprise similarly rises through the crowd cover, this time for the awe(?) of the audience. The various callbacks would then serve as pieces of iconography(?) for the audience, with the Spock-Spock call being a sort of communion with God. Or something like that.
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May 20, 2013 23:41
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Lord Krangdar posted:You're calling it hilariously uptight, I'm calling it funny and campy. Are we still disagreeing here? If you seriously think that voyager qualifies as fun camp, I legitimately feel bad for you for being so utterly deprived of humor and silliness in your life. Flash Gordon is fun camp, Voyager is a poorly written show with flat characters and a pathological fear of taking any sort of risk.
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May 20, 2013 23:44
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mr. stefan posted:If you seriously think that voyager qualifies as fun camp, I legitimately feel bad for you for being so utterly deprived of humor and silliness in your life. Flash Gordon is fun camp, Voyager is a poorly written show with flat characters and a pathological fear of taking any sort of risk. It did have a risk of having a finale where they get to earth and then does not show what happens next. They also take a risk of keeping a character that is a soulless duplicate and never promoting him. Also Threshold, just Threshold.
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May 20, 2013 23:46
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bobkatt013 posted:It did have a risk of having a finale where they get to earth and then does not show what happens next. We know what happened next thanks to Nemesis. They gave Janeway command of a desk and politely asked her not to lose it.
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May 20, 2013 23:53
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Phylodox posted:We know what happened next thanks to Nemesis. They gave Janeway command of a desk and politely asked her not to lose it. What is Nemesis? The tenth Star Trek movie was Galaxy Quest, and that movie is awesome.
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May 20, 2013 23:54
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JediTalentAgent posted:
They've got a Worf.
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May 21, 2013 00:08
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Alchenar posted:That's literally the plot of The Undiscovered Country except Meyer produced a story that made sense and gave everyone actual motivations. I still have yet to see an explanation of why peoples motivations don't make sense in STID that doesn't completely ignore what happened in ST09 and assume we're just back in TOS. If the real head of future-Starfleet lost like half of his ships, thousands of soldiers and four class years of commissioning cadets in a single day, you bet he would get pretty nuts about protecting "our way of life" and start thinking drastic things. MrBims fucked around with this message at 01:07 on May 21, 2013 |
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May 21, 2013 01:03
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Maxwell Lord posted:That was early in the show, though, when nobody had any idea what they were doing. And that story arc never went anywhere, despite implying that it would. Other than that, that episode got rid of 'balding unlikable guy' who'd been in charge of questioning everyone on board the Enterprise and generally being a dick. Lobok posted:One thing I don't quite get is the complaint that there were no spaceships around Earth to respond immediately to the battle. Are there supposed to be entire ships that just stand guard the whole time? If an enemy warship suddenly materialized on the shore of some American city and started shelling the hell out of it there'd be probably ten or twenty minutes before anything in the Air Force or Navy could respond, unless it decided to appear in the heart of Norfolk or something. There was that 'fighter flyover' before Kirk's speech. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 01:27 on May 21, 2013 |
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