|
Myrddin_Emrys posted:I was born in 1972, and I have grown up with Star Trek TOS, the films and onto The Next Generation etc... I can honestly say, knowing much of the lore as a trekie that STITD was loving AWESOME. I enjoy Into Darkness for the most part. The only issue I have is they spend so much time not doing space related things. You have a brief ship battle, and a brief chase scene on the Klingon planet, and that's about it. One thing I love about Star Trek is the space setting. The blind ship battle in wrath of khan, or undiscovered country. Into Darkness was fun, but it just felt like they wanted to spend more time on the ground than in space. I also lump this in with the issue of the studio wanting Kirk (and the cast in general, to a point) to wear their bright colored star fleet shirts as little as possible.
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 17:56 |
|
|
Even though I think Kirk's death gets too close to WoK it's a good movie overall. It does a good job confronting and rejecting the militarism of the Starfleet idea, and honestly that pre-title sequence, as short as it is, is pure "exploring strange new worlds" coolness. Plus as long as they've got Karl Urban as McCoy they're good. The first time he spoke in 09 it scared me how much he sounded like Kelley.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2014 02:14
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:Even though I think Kirk's death gets too close to WoK it's a good movie overall. It does a good job confronting and rejecting the militarism of the Starfleet idea, and honestly that pre-title sequence, as short as it is, is pure "exploring strange new worlds" coolness. He's so underutilized in that role though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2014 15:08
|
|
|
Corek posted:Also T&A hasn't never been a profitable element to Star Trek, except maybe some Enterprise episodes (I'll never see them). I don't think they cast Jeri Ryan in Voyager for her acting ability.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 01:32
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I don't think they cast Jeri Ryan in Voyager for her acting ability. Which is funny, because she turned out to be one of the better actors on the show.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
What's funny about the Seven of Nine character is that you only have to take one look at her and you know exactly how she was conceived: some suits from Paramount, one a severe business woman with her hair in a bun and holding a clipboard, walk into the producers' office and tell everyone, "Our market research says viewers don't think the show is sexy enough, and they also like the Borg. So OBVIOUSLY we order you to add a sexy Borg to the show."
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 02:23
|
|
|
Hewlett posted:Which is funny, because she turned out to be one of the better actors on the show. It seems like sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy considering her character and Picardo's were the only two who were actually allowed to be characters. Naturally the rest of the cast got frustrated and checked out when they were given nothing to work with.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 01:38
|
|
|
Does anyone else feel like they have turned the Vulcans from beings of reason who completely understand emotion but choose to reject it into autistic orientals who literally don't understand emotions? Whereas before Kirk represented the libidinal and Spock was the ascetic of reason and the two remained separated although they may listen to one another, now Spock is becoming sexual and Kirk is becoming reasonable. It's all quite a departure. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jun 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2014 16:58
|
|
|
The Walking Dad posted:Does anyone else feel like they have turned the Vulcans from beings of reason who completely understand emotion but choose to reject it into autistic orientals who literally don't understand emotions? The former is literally what's laid out in Spock's dad's speech to him in the first film.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
computer parts posted:The former is literally what's laid out in Spock's dad's speech to him in the first film. Ah, It's been awhile since I've watched it I'll admit. I've been reading the late Roman stoics lately and then I started thinking about the Vulcans and well...
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 01:04
|
|
|
New Trek has the benefit of hindsight when it comes to Vulcans. The idea of hyper or ultra-rational people being a boon to society in terms of leadership was popular in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, but it turns out that a healthy person simply balances their rational side with their emotions instead of repressing them. That just leads to explosions! Like, obviously not being ruled by my fear/hate is a good thing, but if I go too far in distrusting my emotions, then that rules out empathy - and we can see today in business and government and everywhere how decisions that are perfectly reasonable cause unmeasurable amounts of misery and pain. I love Old Spock, but the New take is pretty drat interesting. Uhura certainly has her work cut out for her! I suspect she likes it that way . .
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 08:48
|
|
|
The Walking Dad posted:Does anyone else feel like they have turned the Vulcans from beings of reason who completely understand emotion but choose to reject it into autistic orientals who literally don't understand emotions? The Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvirate in TOS has been beaten to death with Freudian analysis, but I think it's fair to characterize the franchise in those terms. TNG is a Spock-dominant branch. DS9 is a McCoy-dominant branch. The reboot is a Kirk-dominant branch. Voyager is bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 08:55
|
|
|
Black Bones posted:New Trek has the benefit of hindsight when it comes to Vulcans. The idea of hyper or ultra-rational people being a boon to society in terms of leadership was popular in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, but it turns out that a healthy person simply balances their rational side with their emotions instead of repressing them. That just leads to explosions! The thing is, this isn't some newfangled philosophy - it's meant to be a ten thousand year old culture. On some level, it's got to work. They have to have figured it out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 08:57
|
|
|
Breakfast All Day posted:Voyager is bad. Voyager does it's own thing and it's awesome. MikeJF posted:The thing is, this isn't some newfangled philosophy - it's meant to be a ten thousand year old culture. On some level, it's got to work. They have to have figured it out. A Romulan mining ship takes out 3/4's of their entire race, they play second fiddle to human captains on like every ship, half the eps. have the Vulcan character accepting that their approach failed, etc. Lets face it - you want a Vulcan on your crew, for sure, but they're as much a liability when making decisions as a Klingon.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 09:06
|
|
|
Black Bones posted:Voyager does it's own thing and it's awesome. watching voyager on netflix kinda got me more hooked on star trek than the others for some weird reason..
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 11:46
|
|
|
Breakfast All Day posted:Voyager is bad. Janeway is a serial killer. I forget how many times she creates new species only to needlessly destroy them, but it's too often.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 13:25
|
|
|
Black Bones posted:Voyager does it's own thing and it's awesome. Ah, posting from the alternate universe in which Voyager wasn't just rehashed TNG and spec scripts rejected from other series.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 16:53
|
|
|
The Vulcans were usually pretty jerky on old-Trek too. They have weird hosed-up mating rituals (the price of being super-logical is that every 7 years a male Vulcan just flips out), and they often are shown as not understanding emotions, like it's just something they don't have- whereas you have to be aware of your emotions in order to control them. It works for the purposes of the show, with the whole triumvirate, but it would be interesting if the Vulcans were shown more as people who know their emotions very well and thus are able to suppress them- like how in Dune, every character has a massive reserve of self-mastery and control because human training has just gotten that good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 17:15
|
|
|
DrNutt posted:Ah, posting from the alternate universe in which Voyager wasn't just rehashed TNG and spec scripts rejected from other series. In the first season at least there is this sense of fun and exploration. It has a certain starry-eyed charm- it just never goes anywhere. (And also I think I gave it a longer grace period than most because A) I was 14 and B) that loving title theme.) It's interesting. TNG and DS9 both had sloppy starts but came together, Voyager and Enterprise both begin well but end up locked in the formula.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 17:22
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:The Vulcans were usually pretty jerky on old-Trek too. They have weird hosed-up mating rituals (the price of being super-logical is that every 7 years a male Vulcan just flips out), and they often are shown as not understanding emotions, like it's just something they don't have- whereas you have to be aware of your emotions in order to control them. You know what? You are right, It was probably just me projecting on the older series because of the way I was raised. Emotions: something that need to be mastered and rarely expressed. I grew up in a Finnish community in rural Minnesota. In hindsight yes, the Vulcans have usually been portrayed as handling emotion very poorly, instead of having mastered emotion entirely. What I always saw as mastery may have been outright rejection. I always wanted an alternate universe where Spock, after having been on his mission with the Human race for long enough to see all of his friends die of old age or violent death, decides that Humanity is too much of a liability for the established races and files a report suggesting to have warp technology taken away from them and cordoned off back at earth. The Vulcan's have been space faring for millenia. It seems like hubris to think that they would need saving from mankind as JJ Abrams has imagined, and that they couldn't just squash us like a bug. Perhaps JJ Abrams is trying to create a Nietzschean world where god is dead, and mankind is free to steer it's own course throughout the universe. The reason of the enlightenment was lesser than human kind as a whole, reason no longer judges us from outside. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jun 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 17:59
|
|
|
The only proper Vulcan we ever spent that much time with was Tuvok (Spock being half-human, raised by a human mother, and all sorts of hosed up, and T'Pol being pre-Syrrannite-Reformation) and he seemed to have a pretty good handle on things. Even if underneath he was a simmering ball of anger because of having to live with Neelix and Janeway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
The Walking Dad posted:You know what? You are right, It was probably just me projecting on the older series because of the way I was raised. Emotions: something that need to be mastered and rarely expressed. I grew up in a Finnish community in rural Minnesota. In hindsight yes, the Vulcans have usually been portrayed as handling emotion very poorly, instead of having mastered emotion entirely. What I always saw as mastery may have been outright rejection. I do think you were right in the sense that there's a certain reverence for the Vulcans that the original continuity had that I don't feel in the newest films; I admit this isn't exactly fair considering we can only gauge this from two movies where Vulcans aren't the central focus, but where before I felt like the Vulcans as a whole were treated like monks or Buddhists, in the past couple movies they seem like a race of spergy space nerds. One thing I was always a little surprised at with the other movies and shows was that it never pulled what I would have thought was an obvious idea for a villain: a Vulcan who concocts a scheme that would harm innocent people but would ultimately lead to a greater good (think Watchmen), a case of cold but infallible logic used to justify evil acts*. Star Trek's Vulcan villains were always those that went rogue, such as Sybok, who either rejected strict logic, embraced emotion, or were unstable and had 'a logic of their own'. It makes me wonder if the writers didn't want to go there because they didn't want to come off anti-intellectual or that they didn't have faith in rationality in the service of justice (or, of course, maybe they just never got around to it). *You could make a case that Valeris in Trek VI fits this mold, though the movie doesn't really dwell or focus on her 'evil logic'; the movie is more interested (and appropriately so, in this case) in presenting the conspirators as simply reactionaries whose primary motivation is simply wanting to keep the world from changing around them.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2014 16:21
|
|
|
lizardman posted:I do think you were right in the sense that there's a certain reverence for the Vulcans that the original continuity had that I don't feel in the newest films; I admit this isn't exactly fair considering we can only gauge this from two movies where Vulcans aren't the central focus, but where before I felt like the Vulcans as a whole were treated like monks or Buddhists, in the past couple movies they seem like a race of spergy space nerds.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2014 20:58
|
|
|
We really can't make a claim about JJ Trek's treatment of Vulcans as a whole because we've only spent a significant amount of time with one Vulcan who is a special Vulcan because he is not wholly Vulcan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2014 20:01
|
|
|
We got a glimpse as to how they can be assholes, early in the first movie.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2014 20:20
|
|
|
That's kids bullying Spock for being different. We then see Spock awarded their highest honor explicitly in spite of that difference. It's pretty much a wash as far as being assholes goes. Though it does show us where Spock's lack of tact comes from.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 02:33
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:That's kids bullying Spock for being different. We then see Spock awarded their highest honor explicitly in spite of that difference. It's pretty much a wash as far as being assholes goes. Though it does show us where Spock's lack of tact comes from. The awarders do have that rear end in a top hat "you did good...despite having the genes of an inferior species  " thing going on.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 15:46
|
|
|
computer parts posted:The awarders do have that rear end in a top hat "you did good...despite having the genes of an inferior species That's the tactless thing I was talking about. They think they are complimenting him. And this is behavior towards a unique individual, not representative of their regular behavior. Basically, people are extrapolating a lot from the behavior of and directed towards one Vulcan who isn't really a Vulcan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:who isn't really a Vulcan. You are spacist.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 00:23
|
|
|
Hbomberguy posted:You are spacist. Haha, I kept stopping myself telling people they're "fictional species-ist" but yeah that would be a pretty horrible attitude to take toward a real biracial person. No Wave posted:Haven't watched much Star Trek, but haven't you just described the MO of the enterprise? You might be thinking of select moments of the crew following the Prime Directive, which has on a couple instances kept them from saving certain alien folks (those they hadn't yet made contact with yet and hadn't developed space travel) from natural disaster in favor of 'not interfering' with their race and society's development. I don't think there's been a time when the Enterprise crew intentionally went out of their way to harm innocent people in order to bring about a 'greater good'. In Star Trek Insurrection, in fact, they even fight to keep the Federation from harnessing some fountain of youth wonder-radiation that could potentially help the entire galaxy because it means forcibly removing the (non-indigenous!) folks from their chosen homeland (the crew is further justified in rebelling against this because the gang the Federation has teamed up with to mine the the resource, the Son'a or however you spell it, are legit Bad Dudes that would probably squander it for their own evil purposes anyway, but the Enterprise crew certainly doesn't have 'pure cold logic' on the brain by taking their stance). lizardman fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jun 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 01:44
|
|
|
lizardman posted:Haha, I kept stopping myself telling people they're "fictional species-ist" but yeah that would be a pretty horrible attitude to take toward a real biracial person. It would be. But this is a fake bi-species person who is defined by being an outsider to each species.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 06:26
|
|
|
Hbomberguy posted:Janeway is a serial killer. I forget how many times she creates new species only to needlessly destroy them, but it's too often. Janeway's erratic behavior made Voyager more interesting.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 10:56
|
|
|
So I rewatched STID today and figured I'd catch up on this thread. I ended up skipping the last 40 pages because it seemed like the whole whitewashing crap would never end. And I realized that basically all of those issues with the movie would go away if Cumberbatch had simply been John Harrison instead of Khan. Make him one of Khan's right-hand men, and when Starfleet/Section 31 found the Botany Bay in this timeline, they specifically made sure that Khan never woke up (because they knew he was a badass), and instead revived one of the other ubermensch and tried to use him instead. Boom. Cumberbatch works and the movie only needs a minor 2-minute exposition change.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 15:51
|
|
|
I'm not even someone who is angry over Khan being a white guy and I think Cumberbatch ends up taking the brunt of the complaints for just bad writing and casting decisions. As unpopular as this might sound, I think Enterprise toyed with the idea of the augmented humans like Khan being treated like a bit of a terrorist group, and I could have even seen them do that with this movie. What if the Botany Bay HADN'T been found by Kirk/Enterprise? What if Khan and his followers were able to take over another ship? What if they weren't stranded on a doomed world immediately after being woken up? Just to throw this out there, with the terrorism themes of STID, having Starfleet/Humanity dealing with repercussions from the actions of some extremist cell of humans pirating and terrorizing their way though space in a stolen Starfleet vessel could have flipped around whole thing, too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 16:14
|
|
|
I'm kind of the opposite mindset. I was more interested in Khan working with Kirk in the movie because of the nature of his character in Space Seed. Space Seed had a very optimistic view of the kind of society Khan and his followers could create and it's a shame that Wrath became the only version of Khan most people care to remember. I think the movie would have worked better if the main villain was Admiral Marcus and Kirk and Khan were never truly enemies. They could have ended it similarly to how Space Seed ended, but I guess it was too important to have someone yell Khan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 16:52
|
|
|
DrNutt posted:I'm kind of the opposite mindset. I was more interested in Khan working with Kirk in the movie because of the nature of his character in Space Seed. Space Seed had a very optimistic view of the kind of society Khan and his followers could create and it's a shame that Wrath became the only version of Khan most people care to remember. I think the movie would have worked better if the main villain was Admiral Marcus and Kirk and Khan were never truly enemies. They could have ended it similarly to how Space Seed ended, but I guess it was too important to have someone yell Khan. Well there's this too. And having just re-watched it I can definitely see a narrative where Khan is mostly on the level with Kirk - until Kirk has Scotty stun him on the bridge of the Vengeance. That's where he turns on Kirk, and it's completely Kirk's doing/fault. And then when he thinks his crew is dead he flips the gently caress out and decides to crash his ship. But before that, all the 'bad stuff' he did is at least semi-justifiable considering the actions of Admiral Marcus.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 16:58
|
|
|
Frostylake posted:Janeway's erratic behavior made Voyager more interesting. It is basically the most interesting part. Lots of episodes fans call 'bad' tend to be the ones where the captain does a lovely thing. I think a lot of Trek fans just don't like seeing a captain be mean, but Janeway being a massive dickhead is great. Not saying the show is actually good - just that Star Trek fans don't know what is good. Nothing new there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 18:56
|
|
|
Hbomberguy posted:It is basically the most interesting part. Lots of episodes fans call 'bad' tend to be the ones where the captain does a lovely thing. I think a lot of Trek fans just don't like seeing a captain be mean, but Janeway being a massive dickhead is great. Not saying the show is actually good - just that Star Trek fans don't know what is good. Nothing new there. Didn't Mulgrew say in an interview at some point that she started playing Janeway as losing her marbles intentionally?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:11
|
|
|
WarLocke posted:Didn't Mulgrew say in an interview at some point that she started playing Janeway as losing her marbles intentionally? I can't find the article in question, but I remember reading that she said she was getting confused by all the differing portrayals of her character that would show up in scripts and so she just decided to go for it and go 100% all-in on whatever aspect of her character that was being emphasized in a given episode.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 17:56 |
|
|
DrNutt posted:I'm kind of the opposite mindset. I was more interested in Khan working with Kirk in the movie because of the nature of his character in Space Seed. Space Seed had a very optimistic view of the kind of society Khan and his followers could create and it's a shame that Wrath became the only version of Khan most people care to remember. I think the movie would have worked better if the main villain was Admiral Marcus and Kirk and Khan were never truly enemies. They could have ended it similarly to how Space Seed ended, but I guess it was too important to have someone yell Khan. I agree with this perspective, too. But even keeping Khan as a some rogue (I mean, he did plot to steal the Enterprise in Space Seed, right?) could sort of work. He's out there doing terrorist/piracy-like stuff like stealing Starfleet ships and the like, but from his perspective it's a necessary evil to get his people their future in a future that he literally believes will put them back in prison for being genetically altered. I guess it could potentially turn him into the Magneto of the JJTrek Universe.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2014 19:41
|
|