So anyway, enough fiddle-fucking around I suppose. So...Star Trek. Has anyone not seen it yet? No? Good...then I can proceed without fear of pissing on anyone's Corn Flakes. So where to begin. I suppose HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT is as good a place as any! My initial reaction after my first viewing was nothing short of complete and total geek-gasm in my pants. Seriously...the last time I had a smile like that on my face, my wife had just finished...er, uh, ummmmmm...never mind. But I thought, "No...I'll wait. I'll save my thoughts and reactions until I've had a second viewing. You know Mike, be a little more objective once you've had a second run at absorbing everything."
Did that work out like I planned. Yeah, um...not so much no (Sorry, thanks for playing - here's a lovely parting gift for you. What do we have for our contestant today Bill? Why it's a toaster Bob...that you can FUCK!). In all seriousness though, you'd have to be one bitter, hostile and cold motherfucker not to find something awesome to love in this new iteration on the adventures of Captain James T. I-Should-Totally-Have-Lost-My-Cock-To-Space-Chlamydia-By-Now Kirk and Co. In Insurrection, Ad'har Ru'afu insultingly commented that the Federation was old. And so too it seemed was Star Trek after the complete and utter box-office failure that was Nemesis (still largely the fault of Paramount's advertising department if you ask me), and Enterprise getting cut off after four struggling seasons. Prior to this film, the longest gap between any two Star Trek films was four years (between Insurrection and Nemesis), and averaged 2-and-a-half years. So it would seem, seven really is a lucky number.
So, from the minds of wunder-producer/director/writer J.J. Abrahms, and hit-or-miss screenwriters Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci (I mean really...The Island?!) comes a...restart/reboot/re-imagining of one of the most (arguably, I suppose) beloved ideas (sci-fi or otherwise) of at least the last century. I must admit, I hate this whole Hollywood concept of reboots/re-imaginings - there's just something so fake about it. With a few exceptions (this film being one of them), it demonstrates an unnerving laziness and lack of originality worming its way through the film and television industry. Remakes are nothing new in La La Land. There are 3 film versions and one TV miniseries about Beau Geste, and about 15 or so variations on Jane Eyre. I suppose that's the more "high-brow" end of the spectrum. Then there's the polar opposite, the likes of say...Friday the 13th. A film who just last year saw a "remake/re-imagining" even though the original is not even 30 years old and spawned 9 sequels.
Wait a minute...30 years/9 sequels - ok...that's weird. I just used that little factoid to piss all over one franchise when the exact same rule (or nearly so) applies to the subject at hand. Or at least the Star Trek film universe anyway. I suppose the difference is that one is an intelligent, engaging, and optimistic view of the future of humanity, and the other is about a mutant, all-pro linebacker in a hockey mask that likes to hack n' slash co-ed's whilst their boobies be showin'. Anyway, to get back on track, Star Trek as a concept has been desperately in need of a new set of eyes for a while - fresh blood if you will. I say they got it in spades. Dicking around with the space-time continuum is a bit of an old hat in the Trek universe. So, initially, hearing that this story was another time travel plot met with many a groan throughout fandom. But I think the take Abrahms and Co. took with it is actually quite refreshing. It basically allowed them to tell an origins story, and do it essentially with a clean slate - not always having to adhere to the 'oh-so-precious' Trek canon that so many Trekkies (literally in some cases I think) live their lives by. One of the really cool things (something I think some of the more hostile fans haven't considered) is that some or perhaps even most of the adventures we know this crew has already had can still happen - it may happen a little differently, but they'll still happen. Some of them have to happen - V'Ger is still on it's way, so is the whale probe; and Khan is out there...somewhere. The possiblities are almost endless. This gamble of theirs also allowed them to completely take some things that most superfans (and even those casually acquainted with Trek) take for granted and completely turn them on their heads - even one or two actual "Holy Fuck" moments.
I think one of the first of those was before production even began. It was that little moment (I think during San Diego Comic Con) almost two years ago or so when Abrahms walked out on stage with Zach Quinto and Leonard Nimoy and announced that the former would be portraying the younger version of the latter and both were going to be in the new Star Trek film (opening Christmas 2008 - yeah...that happened - fucking Paramount!). Generally speaking, I'd guess most of us were somewhere in the neighborhood of "Holy Shit...that's fucking BRILLIANT!!!". Otherwise, the film lay in a sort of "what is it?/good?/bad?" limbo until it was released last month - especially after Paramount announced it was moving the release by six months. Normally a move from winter to summer would indicate that they thought they had something good on their hands. But no one really knew, did they? I'd argue that they had something more than just 'good'...this is downright special. Abrahms has gone somewhere with Trek that even good ol' Gene Roddenberry couldn't seem to muster - he's made a Trek film for everyone.
Star Trek 2009 is a film that opens up the whole Trek universe to a new legion of fans and simultaneously engages and entertains most of the long-established fanbase. It would seem the only one's left feeling as though they just witnessed the rape and murder of their grandma by the family dog are the über-est of the über-Trekkies. Well...they can go back to fucking their blow-up Orion slave-girl love dolls in their mom's basements anytime they want. This Trek essentially took the layout and characters from a long-standing franchise, and cranked up the adrenaline by applying all the dazzle and pizazz of a slam-bang summer action blockbuster. And it works...for what ever reason, it works - gloriously. And it's ballsy. Getting back to those 'holy fuck' moments, what have we got: Obviously the biggest one - they fucking destroyed Vulcan...three words: GIANT BRASS COJONES. Then, let's see...how'sabout: They killed Spock's mom - Jebuth! Then: Spock's bangin' Uhura - Holy Jebuth! And then there's all the little in-jokes and references wallpapering the whole film - off the top of my head, a few of my favorites: Chekov's inability to pronounce V's; Kirk's complete inability to think with anything but his dick; Bones' space paranoia; the obligatory red-shirt demise; the Kobayashi Maru test (lamented by some - but I abso-fuckin'-lutely loved it); that slight "Shatner-esque" moment at the end when Kirk steps onto the bridge for the first time as the 'official' captain of the Enterprise; Captain Pike's seemingly predestined fate to end up in a wheelchair; the disappearance of Captain, er sorry...Admiral Archer's beagle. Some of it's in your face, some of it oh-so-subtle - but I loved so very much of it.
I thought generally, the casting was quite brilliant as well. I'd just like to say that Bruce Greenwood should be in every movie made from now on...ever. I didn't care for the look they gave Anton Yelchin's Chekov (he was brilliant in Terminator:Salvation btw), but the character and mannerisms were dead on. You can add Zoe Saldana to the list of women whom I'd like to suffocate beneath their buttocks...oh and her Uhura wasn't bad either. I found it odd that they cast a Korean to play an iconic Japanese man...but wtf, 'Harold' did a good job with what they gave him. I agree with Brad that it was a little bit of a bummer that we had to sit through half of the film before Simon Pegg's Scotty showed up - but it was well worth the wait (even if they did give him a weird little sidekick). Karl Urban's Bones was awesomely grouchy. If there was a fault to be had, it was that he was the only one who seemed to be trying to emulate their predecessor's performance of the character (that and the fact that he had the wrong eye-color...I know, details...). It was really geek-tastic (at least for me anyway) to see Lenny Nimoy play Spock one more time (even if the part was sort-of shoehorned in). He's been Spock for 43 years, there's a nuance, a sort of I dunno...comfort to seeing him. Like an old blanket your grandmother gave you. He is Spock, and he's always a welcome sight.
I read a comment on a website somewhere (I don't recall where) where someone was griping that the Romulan's all had Australian accents. Well let's examine that for a minute - for one: only two Romulan's had speaking parts in the film; and two: of those - only one is actually Australian; and three: the one that is Australian never spoke with an Australian accent. Bana's Nero, if not for the fact that he was a genocidal bastard hell-bent on his quest for revenge, almost seemed charming. I love his "Hi Christopher...I'm Nero." response to Captain Pike - hilarious. Nero...while not quite on par in villainy as Khan (will there ever be?), was an adequate nemesis for this film, and Bana's performance of him was adequately menacing (maybe too strong of a word) in turn. Then there are the two leads: Kirk and (young) Spock - Chris Pine and Zach Quinto. Boy oh boy...you know, I can't remember the last time, or maybe anytime, that two actors took two pre-established roles, especially ones as iconic as Jim Kirk and Spock, and really made them their own; really without any hint of emulation, parroting, mocking, any of that. I honestly believe that this is the best (as characters) Kirk and Spock have been together since The Voyage Home, maybe (maybe) even Wrath of Khan. It was quite effortless really, I was sold on both of them the second they each (respectively) appeared on screen. Quinto perfectly embodied that long-established conflict between Spock's logic and human nature. And Pine absolutely nailed that smart-ass rebel with a wink-in-his-eye but still commanding presence of James Tiberius Kirk. I simply can not wait for summer of 2011, these folks (the whole ensemble that is) really need to get back on the screen again - they just fit together.
Brad said he took the slightest issue with the 'stopping a supernova/supernova that could destroy the galaxy' plot element. I only slightly agree with half of that. I agree that a little more exposition as to how/why a supernova of the Romulan star could have such an adverse effect on the galaxy could've/would've/should've been included. The other notion, finding fault that they were able to halt the star from going supernova, I dismiss completely. To me, taking issue with that would be to take issue with the entire Star Trek universe. There's a short series of 'prequel' comics released prior to the movie that offer a deal of background detail on the events leading up to the beginning of Star Trek. Amongst those details is that the time-period 'old' Spock came from was roughly 30 or more years after the events of Nemesis. Given where the people of the Federation were technologically in Nemesis, I don't think it's a leap, even a skip really, in logic to think that they would possess the ability to do what Spock was trying to do. Just my two cents on that. Another detail I would've liked to have seen (which would have explained both the Romulan shorn and tat'd heads, as well as Nemo's missing ear tip) would have been the deleted sequence involving Nemo's time in and subsequent escape from the Rura Penthe prison whilst waiting for Spock to arrive in the past (maybe an extended cut DVD in the future eh?).
Then there's Michael Giacchino's score. While it's not quite on par with the grandeur of Jerry's TMP, or even Horner's WOK, it's still quite good. Especially in the context of the film. This score I think had a job to fulfill unique from any of the prior 10. It's really the only one that had to first be an action score, then be a science fiction score. If you listen to the FSM podcast about the new Star Trek from a couple months ago, someone made a comment that Giacchino's main theme sounds more like a counter-line to a stronger 'main' theme. I don't believe I would've put that association together had it not been for that comment - unfortunately, it is a valid point. Still, this new main theme is one of the catchiest fucking things I've heard in a long time. And, I think it's his most solid work to date - perhaps the additional orchestrators (aside from Tim Simonec) had some influence on that. Is Giacchino a busy little fucker lately or what. He's got three big summer scores all within 5 fuckin' weeks of each other. Nobody does that anymore! Anyway, if you head out to jwfan.net and search around there's a discussion thread that lists where all the cues from the score CD fit into the movie, as well as what's missing (somebody's seen this thing waaaaaayyyy too many times already). Essentially, we got a little less than half the score on the CD. Several great bits are missing (about half the ending sequence - including that awesome choral variation of the theme as the Narada gets sucked into the singularity) and some of the cues we did get are incomplete. If you want that awesome main title bit, I think all you need to do is splice the first minute or so from "Enterprising Young Men" to the last 15 seconds from that same cue. Simple as most of it is, I'd still say that overall it's the highlight of my summer movie-going/score listening season so far (still waiting on a few things: Transformers II, Harry Potter, hell even Silvestri's G.I.Joe could be interesting - oh and let's not forget Maestro Goldenthal's return to mainstream film with Mike Mann's Public Enemies...yea!).
Ok, so...you wanted it, you got it ("mostly..."). That's most of my thoughts on Star Trek - to sum up...I need a throwrag. I say that's most of my thoughts because I'm certain I have enough for another paragraph (or five) but I don't want to drive you guys totally crazy (or is that crazier?). I'll be back in a bit with my thoughts on Up (which by the way will be Der Monkey's first trip to the movie theater, here in a couple of weeks...how cool is that!)...after I've had a chance to see it again - in 3D!
45 comments:
so it was okay?
word verification: perse
Duma Key anyone?
Yeah, it was ok...
I'll have something a touch more eloquent to say this weekend (after I see it again!).
We're still waiting, you know.
keep waiting...
Oh, the "placeholder" blog post was literally a placeholder. Updating the post threw me, as did the past four comments.
All righty then... let's get it ON...
“Well...they can go back to fucking their blow-up Orion slave-girl love dolls in their mom's basements anytime they want.”HEY! Don’t judge me.
You know… sometimes I like to set her in a bubble bath with my blow-up Twi’lek slave-girl love doll and take pictures.
“In all seriousness though, you'd have to be one bitter, hostile and cold motherfucker not to find something awesome to love in this new iteration…”That may be true, but even I liked it!
What the fuck was with the spacing on that last comment? Anyway, as I was saying...
(I'm breaking up a huge-ass comment into multiples, to make it easier to track my points, so don't bitch about how I was 'just padding the blog.')
It's cool...think of it as counterprogramming to my absurdly long post.
”Amongst those details is that the time-period 'old' Spock came from was roughly 30 or more years after the events of Nemesis. Given where the people of the Federation were technologically in Nemesis, I don't think it's a leap, even a skip really, in logic to think that they would possess the ability to do what Spock was trying to do.”The pikey has a damn good point here. I was trying to recall where I’d heard Red Matter used before. It turns out that it was created just for this film. But the fact that I thought it was from an episode shows how well integrated this film is. And I thought I was thinking of an episode involving the Distant Future, which ironically backs your point.
The way-post-TNG-era universe (by hundreds of years, however, not decades) includes a Federation unit of temporal investigation… I forget exactly what they’re called, but they’re basically Time Cops. I guess they fucked up by not preventing Nero (not Nemo, damn it!) from doing his thing.
Incidentally, something that bugged me about the opening of this movie was that I didn’t know what I was watching—rather, when I was watching. It was the uniforms. The baby-Kirk era uniforms looked like the uniforms from the future in the final episode of TNG, “All Good Things…” (which would be about the time of Leonard Nimoy’s character’s “present day”).
Just sayin’. It threw me. They could have used different uniforms. Or maybe they were deliberately misleading me, but I sincerely doubt that because I think it was just a matter of it being my own imagination. Pardon me for not studying up on a visual encyclopedia before seeing the movie in order to not be confused, but the similarity was enough to make me think the opening scene was well after every other Trek movie.
God DAMN it, there it is again! What, I can't have a citation in its own paragraph? FUCK YOU, blogger!!
Integration was one of the fantastic things about this film. Andrea and I just lauged our way through all the little jokes that were meant for people who know the series. As awful as it was we laughed hysterically when The Guy-In-The-Red-Suit's chute didn't open and he went careening to his death when he, Kirk and Sulu dropped to the mining platform.
I must say, though, Chekov drove me fucking crazy and, despite the fact that it seemed slightly forced, I enjoyed Karl Urban's Bones quite a lot.
I actually liked the ambiguity of the opening, not knowing exactly when we were. I think that actually created a certain sense of tension that you don't really know what's going on. This thing appears, lays waste to the Kelvin and then disappears again with no explanation whatsoever.
I remember reading someone complaining about Chekov's "V's" - their gripe being essentially: Russian has a V sound...what's the fucking deal?
Well Mr. Smartguy...the deal is you obviously never saw The Voyage Home!
"Nuuuuclear...Wessels!"I also absolutely loved Bones, I just noticed that his performance stood out for that reason.
The opening rocked. Shit got blowed up real good, and we witnessed the birth of a legend. Awesome stuff!
A few quick points on the nitty-gritty:
The first time I saw Heroes, Zachary Quinto came on, and I remembered I’d heard he was going to play Spock. I was watching the show after it was out on DVD, so I didn’t have the Heroes-fanboy groan reaction. I was like, “Dude. THAT guy… IS Spock.”
Casting was fucking brilliant. Karl Urban was spot-on. Perhaps even the best part of the movie. That’s right, I went there. The first scene with him talking about all the ways you can die in space… the Captain and I were in stitches.
The red shirt death scene. “I can’t wait to kick some Romulan ass!” I leaned over to the Captain and said, grinning, “Red shirt.” The Captain replied, “Yeah, that guy is dead.”
The Orion slave girl make-out scene. It’s what you’d call an “Easter Egg,” yet somehow it felt like it was relevant to establishing the Kirk character. Because you always hear the jokes about Kirk sleeping with green-skinned women, and I make the jokes myself, but I don’t think I ever saw an episode with one. Now I know. Kirk is a horndog for chicks with green skin.
And to those who complained about the Kobayashi Maru test… FUCK OFF. What did you expect? I mean, really. The movie takes place during the time when he would have taken the fucking exam, it’s not like it’s an unnecessary, self-indulgent, self-referential, extraneous scene that breaks the pace of the film. It’s fucking RELEVANT to Kirk’s character establishment! He doesn’t like to lose!
And Captain Pike in the wheelchair at the end. Walking out of the theater, I said to the Captain and the Amazing Brando, “So basically, Captain Pike was completely fucked over by Fate.”
All of these things, combined with the smaller tidbits like classic lines (“I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!”) made me not only smile, but rest assured the franchise was in good hands.
God damn it. We're all commenting simultaneously. That's going to fuck up our own points.
yeah, I noticed...this place got busy in a big fuck hurry!
Also, please to notice that Mr. Giacchino usually has a lot of orchestrators for his film work. I think the only time he works only with Tim Simonec is for his television work.
“…some or perhaps even most of the adventures we know this crew has already had can still happen - it may happen a little differently, but they'll still happen. Some of them have to happen - V'Ger is still on it's way, so is the whale probe; and Khan is out there...somewhere. The possiblities are almost endless.”
This occurred to me as well, but this aspect will most surely end up shooting the writers in the foot. When you create an alternate timeline, you have to fucking chart out every single minutia of events, big or small, to figure out what would happen differently, what would happen the same, what would not happen at all, and how it all fits together chronologically. The hardcore fans, who still loved this movie, will ultimately fly off the handle when J.J. Abrams does things in future installments that are obviously “implausible.” For example, having the Doomsday Machine show up inexplicably sooner. And that’s an example of the most obvious thing. Doesn’t matter to me, but this shit is going to be a headache for many as time goes on (writers especially).
Causality’s a bitch.
What I mean is, a reboot is one thing, but since they opened the door by saying it's a tangental alternate universe, they are obligated to follow the rules they set out upon.
OR just create all-new story lines.
I'll causality your bitch.
Well, that's my point. Create new ones as a true reboot or not. Pick one. This movie tried to be a sequel while being a reboot. That's all I'm saying. If those are the rules J.J. Abrams chose to play by, he's going to run into some fanboy opposition later. I couldn't give a shit myself whether or not he fucks up the order of events.
Reboot vs. spinoff… segue to other points I wanted to get to… and I have to break it up into two comments because I exceeded the limit of characters allowed in a single comment!
PART I:
“Anyway, to get back on track, Star Trek as a concept has been desperately in need of a new set of eyes for a while – fresh blood if you will.”
Only “desperately” from a marketing standpoint. There was still plenty of shit to do, which leaves me feeling let down that they are afraid to tell any future stories in the universe we are invested in. I’ll come back to that thought…
When I first heard about this movie, I was pretty ambivalent. When I had heard a little more, then a little more, then finally saw the first trailer, I wet myself a little. Anticipation began to grow until finally I was all ABOUT seeing this movie. KICK. ASS.
I very nearly blogged about it weeks before it came out. I wanted to talk about the direction of the franchise. Because, as cool as this movie looked like it was going to be, I couldn’t help but feel a bit apathetic about further sequels in this direction. I mean really, how many fucking alternate universes do we have by now. A lot. “Okay, this is a great idea, but I don’t want it to come at the expense of ‘real’ Star Trek sequels. It’s a shame that the studio is out shopping for caskets when they should be practicing their CPR.”
My feeling after seeing the movie was exactly what I thought it would be. It was awesome, don’t get me wrong, but… damn it, I want to see two active Star Trek franchises now. I want to see the balls-to-the-wall, sexed-up, hip J.J. Abrams incarnation, but I don’t want Nemesis to be the out-with-a-whimper finale.
That was more or less what I would have blogged about, but I decided to wait and follow this line of thought on this blog instead, because when I post about this shit it blow up in my face (like the post I ended up deleting, Alien vs. Predator, also why I probably won’t post about Terminator Salvation).
So it’s not by any means that I am a die-hard Trekkie and am pissed off that they “ruined” my favorite franchise (fuck you, I’m an unrepentant Star Wars freak). It’s not that at all. I just feel, as someone who has followed the franchise, that they owe me a grand finale before they go starting from scratch. Or do both.
In a second, I'll post Part II, but since we're all online at the same time I expect I'll be disrupted...
PART II:
The franchise was dying, sure, but how much of that is circumstantial? UPN is run by a bunch of monkeys with low-grade marijuana. Nemesis was actually a pretty damn good character film. It wasn’t a bad movie. And we finally got to see what the fuckin’ Romulans were doing, because even in the Dominion War, where they eventually teamed up with the Federation, they were implying that the Romulans were going to be a major fucking threat later. Then Insurrection came out, and you’re like, “When the fuck are we going to see the Romulans? That’s a big-ass loose end if the franchise dies, because the Romulans have been a significant (albeit dormant at times) threat since the dawn of Star Trek.” So it was awesome to finally see them come back, though Nemesis did end up being another put-out-the-brushfire-before-it-engulfs-more-than-just-the-crew-of-the-Enterprise movie.
So.
Here’s what I was thinking. And I’ve been thinking this ever since Julio and I were brainstorming in the car one day in BG, three and a half years ago. If Star Trek was to fizzle out, I’d rather see some closure, some epic tie-ins of all things big or small. By that I mean cameos from each show AND the major political factions all together. Because, like I said, what’s the problem with Star Trek movies? They’re all just self-contained adventures that end up underwhelming the audience. They never mushroom into full-blown crises. Captain Picard saves the day, and nobody gives a shit. And what about all these other things that are only ever alluded to in the background?
For that, there’s only one way to do it right…
My pitch was this: think epic trilogy, like three movies of at least two and a half hours apiece. Think Lord of the Rings in space. Think, “All bets are off, mother fucker.” Remember how The Undiscovered Country opened with the destruction of the Klingon moon? Well, take that on a much grander scale. And entire civilization could be wiped out simply by collateral damage or some shit. We have a huge fucking galaxy of peoples and potential wars to deal with, so tie in everything, like the New Jedi Order books did with Star Wars (nineteen fucking books over the span of a five-year war, for fuck’s sake—but no spoilers here!).
Bring in the Enterprise, but also bring in Deep Space Nine and all these other Federation ships and minor characters from the series-es, Admiral Janeway, the Defiant, etc. Show a fuckload of different planets that we hardly ever get to see. Blow up Riza. I’m trying to remember if Voyager ended with the decommission of the ship… if not, then have the ship be out exploring shit and run into something that fucking obliterates the ship along with the new crew, just as an opening scene. Like some serious fucking menace that threatens the whole galaxy—this time for real, and you spark an epic trilogy that brings everything back for one last hurrah, a mind-blowing action extravaganza over eight hours that will give closure to every minor arc as well as change the face of the galaxy, “the end Star Trek as we know it.”
And THEN you can reboot with the adventures of young alternate-universe Kirk and company. That’s what I’m saying. Finish what you’ve started before you declare a total redo. That would be awesome.
Okay, my idea is a little more well conceived than the way I presented it here, but you get the idea. I hope.
Now you see why I was itching for this blog post.
The only thing about the new Star Trek that really bugged me was the distracting, almost comical amount of lens flares--especially on the bridge. Seriously, how fucking BRIGHT must it be in there? I think the next movie should have all the actors sporting sunburns.
No matter which way you spin it, Gene Roddenberry is no doubt turning in his grave… this movie is the antithesis of everything he ever wanted in Trek… but believe me, I’m not saying that in a negative light. It’s just interesting that Gene Roddenberry’s original intentions to keep it small, keep it non-military, have evolved into a behemoth of a playground of stories. He would have hated the Dominion War, and my epic trilogy pitch would be tossed out the window. But if Star Trek stayed true to Roddenberry’s vision, I would never have liked it in the first place. Seriously, that’s what Kevin Sorbo was for. I’m no purist, I’m not even really a Trekkie. I just paid attention. That’s why I loved Deep Space Nine, though the “true Trekkies” despise that show. Why is a series that observes continuity and rewards the attentive viewer such a polarizing, controversial show among Trek fans? Food for thought.
Well, that was the last of my many points I’ve been holding onto for the past several weeks. Now I’m going to lay off for the rest of the afternoon, because we’re all here at once, and that just makes commenting confusing. Go ahead and digest/reply to whatever. I get the feeling this post is going to generate some 90 comments before it dies out…
"I get the feeling this post is going to generate some 90 comments before it dies out…"
"MURderer".
"I was dead...I got better."
I've long maintained that the Next-Gen time period never really got a fair shake at the cinema, despite how good First Contact was. I too really like Nemesis, but it suffers a bit from a little Khan Envy. Problem is, over the course of the entire Next Generation series, Picard was never given an adversary like Khan to deal with. You know what I mean, someone who went toe-to-toe with him and presented a real threat to his life and his command.
Sure, the Borg were always a threat, but Voyager showed us that the Borg hierarchy resided on the opposite side of the galaxy...so, no real way for Cap'n Pickerd and crew to "finish them off" properly. The Romulans indeed needed a good, no, GREAT shot at being cinema adversaries...but unfortunately, Nemesis wasn't really it because in the end, the Romulans still weren't the bad guys. As far as other potential big-baddies...most of the ones presented during Next Gen's run were one-offs, or they were dealt their demise before the series concluded. Q just absolutely doesn't count - he's a pest, and he's omnipotent...how do you beat that?!?!
I agree that one final film from that time period would be awesome...and yes absolutely, start it off with something to really rattle the Federation to its core. Something as or more ballsy than imploding Vulcan in on itself. THAT was fucking ballsy!!!
Couple of other things...
One glaring mistake Star Trek (2009) made was the reveal of the Romulans to the Federation. Go back to the original series. I don't remember if it was season 1 or 2, but there was an episode where the crew of the Enterprise was the first to ever actually see a Romulan. And their reaction was decidedly agast...seeing as how the Romulans are decendants of the Vulcans.
The "new timeline" Enterprise crew was a tad, oh I dunno, laid back when Nero comes on the viewscreen. Altered timeline aside, these people still shouldn't have known what a Romulan even looked like yet. And the fact that they looked like Spock with shaved heads and tat's I think should've been a bit more of a smack across the face to everyone on the bridge.
As far as my comment of the franchise needing fresh blood - I think it was more than a marketing thing. The first positive steps were made when Paramount sacked Rick Berman and Brannon Braga from Enterprise. Those two should've been pulled from the franchise sometime around season 4 of Voyager. They nearly ran the whole thing into the ground. Enterprise was really starting to get its running legs when the floor dropped out from beneath it and it was canned. Too little too late I suppose. I think putting producers and (2 out of 3) writers with absolutely no ties to the Trek universe whatsoever in charge of a new film was one of the biggest, boldest, and best steps Paramount could've done!
I think taking a fresh stab at a previous story from the original timeline would be fantastic, and more simple than people think. They've changed just enough with "New Trek" (is that like "new" Coke?) that they've basically got carte blanche to take whatever approach they want with it.
They obviously weren't too concerned with upsetting the hardcore fanbase this time around. They didn't go so far as to outright give them the finger, but it was close. I think the real trick in incorporating plot ideas from the original series adventures will be to not make the appearance of those events or characters overly convenient (plot wise). Not enough of the timeline was altered to stop say...the Doomsday Machine from coming to be. Like I said, Khan is still floating out there in stasis somewhere. V'Ger and the Whale Probe (presumably) came from the other side of the universe - so, again, it's likely they're still on the way.
It would be simple enough to explain that the reason the Federation temporal unit didn't intervene was that the important things ended up where they needed to be anyway - except the whole imploding Vulcan in on itself thing...kinda hard to justify letting that happen!
I'd argue that one plotpoint they shouldn't touch with a 3.048 meter pole is the "City on the Edge of Forever" story. Firstly, the rights to it are still in flux. Second...talk about opening cans of worms...that thing could really fuck up timelines! Causality once again.
Oh, and Brad...I know Giacchino uses more orchestrators besides Simonec.
Seems though that Simonec is his "main" guy...and he sucks!
Ok...where's Reed and the Captain on all this?
Does El Capitan even stop by here? Or did I scare him off a long time ago?!
Yeah, I definitely would like to see the concept of the Doomsday Machine redone with today's style.
I don't think the Captain comes by here, and even if he did, he'd never make it through all these bigass comments about Star Trek. Not in one sitting, anyway.
Q is Picard's foil, but a very different breed. Picard finds him extremely irritating and meddlesome, and Q seemingly wants Picard's respect out of some bizarre fascination, thinking of Picard as his favorite pet. As much as I love the Q stuff, that shit just wouldn't fly in a film. And, as I recall, Voyager changed some shit in the Q Continuum by the end, didn't they? Is Q still even the same Q after that? It seems like Voyager did a bunch of wrap-ups. Voyager was DESTINED for the Borg, because the very first episode with the Borg was when Q hurls the Enterprise way the fuck across the galaxy and says, "Here's a taste of things to come. These fuckers are WAY beyond any threat you've faced before, but for now they're across the galaxy."
Much of the later seasons of Voyager (I'm tired of using HTML tags) are fuzzy in my memory.
Sadly, almost all of my exposure to the Star Trek universe the last 15 years or so has been through the films. I watched TNG sporadically (yes, I know it's in syndication 31 times a day). I watched Voyager for about half a season before I gave up on it and I never really got into DS9 (though that I'm looking to rectify soon).
I guess what I'm basically saying here is that, unless it's about the films, I have little else to add here.
Ron Moore was the best thing to happen to Star Trek. And then he went on to write Battlestar Fucking Galactica.
I recently finished a DS9 marathon, borrowed from my brother. Good shit, if you get past the whole whiny Trekkie "but they're supposed to be explorers!" bullshit. YES, the Enterprise is an exploration vessel, but this series fleshes out the rest of the universe, which is what I want more of in films.
DS9 diatribe aside, good point about the Romulans. Your knowledge of Classic Trek far surpasses mine. But every time I hear people make snide comments about how the aliens are all basically humans with a ridge on their face or something, I think about the NG episode that revealed how we're all distant cousins or something, evolving slightly differently. I need to track that episode down. Yeah, once in a while, Star Trek gives a big middle finger to religion, but no one seems to notice... yet they are all up in arms when a children's fantasy movie has anti-establishment undercurrents...
Anyway.......
So then Brad, I take it...that's it?! I provide this mammoth forum to totally geek-out on and that's all you've got for us? Tsk, tsk, tsk...
Shame...I figured you'd have a little more to offer.
As for DS9, I've seen about 90% of it. I would've loved it if Moore had been given free reign to go all dreary, bleak and realistic with it like he did BSG. To anyone who's argument was that the problem with DS9 was that they weren't explorers...I say au contraire - we learned more about various species of the galaxy in the entire run of DS9 than the OS and TNG combined! They were absolutely explorers - they were just on a rickety old space hub in the middle-of-fuck nowhere...the new worlds and new civilizations came to them!!!
The Dominion, the Cardassians, the Romulans, the Bajorans, the Trill, the Ferengi, the Breen, the Klingons...I could go on and on - all of these cultures fully fleshed out in 7 seasons.
That's true... in the pilot episode, the good doctor explains that he could have taken any assignment in the Federation, but he wanted this "frontier" assignment, where the excitement of the unknown is. Plus, most of the Gamma Quadrant was pretty much new shit. Gul Dukat was the perfect Star Trek villain, basically like Lex Luthor if he were Neo-Nazi and had a beige exoskeleton. The Quark-Odo relationship was brilliant all the way to the end. Come to think of it, most (if not all) of the characters were damn good. I won't give anything away, since Brad is intending to watch the show, but... yeah.
I would have liked to see stuff between VI and Generations. You barely saw the Enterprise B and we still never saw the Enterprise C except what, maybe once in an episode of TNG? My lore is fuzzy, so maybe I'm wrong and there's a reason we can't have a set of flicks about the missing Enterprise(s) in the history, but I'd love to see that era, because there's a fuckload of sweet ships that pretty much only appear in one of those Ultimate Coffee Table Books For Nerds that they have at Borders.
Make a series about all this shyte and just title it Starfleet. Take the sweet-ass red uniforms from II-VI and get Tony Scott if you want to spruce it up a bit. I mean, the guy did Crimson Tide, and these ships were always basically "submarines in space" (until the new Trek, that is). Well, maybe not Tony Scott, because ever since Spy Game his editing style has evolved into something inappropriate for Trek (whatever that means). Maybe get Antoine Fuqua. Yes. King Arthur With Phasers. And the U.S.S. Enterprise is nowhere to be seen in this movie, because it's about the rest of the fleet. Yeah...
But this new direction should be fine. I still hold that the Wrath of Khan uniforms are the coolest.
Yeah...that'd be okeyday! I agree though about making it about the rest of the fleet. The Enterprise-B was just a spruced-up Excelsior (when in Federation history did Excelsior become a class of ships rather than just A ship?). And we know the fate of Enterprise-C, so not a lot to tell there. I think a Joss Whedon Firefly-meets-Federation Starfleet approach would be kinda nifty. Real character driven...jump back and forth between the crews of three or four lesser known vessels (if a new series thing is what you're going for).
Star Trek kinda painted itself into a corner during the Next-Gen era because it seemed like the Enterprise was the only ship in the fleet that could survive a beating!
As for the II-VI era uniforms...you're right. I think it has something to do with the fact that they actually look like functional, military uniforms...
...as opposed to Gay Superhero Musical Jumpsuits!
What about a Starfleet covert ops show? Something like Star Trek meets Mission: Impossible? And I'm not talkin' the screwed up, Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible. I'm talking old-school Peter Graves Mission: Impossible.
word verification: impabsts
What happens to your bowels when you have too many watered-down domestic beers.
Of course, then you run into the problem of the Prime Directive. But that's why they're covert.
Fuck, you could still do an Excelsior spinoff movie. It's never too late just because George Takei is older. He'd still be captain of the ship, most likely. Plus, that would automatically put it in the time period I'm talking about here... kickass. An entire new cast of characters except Captain Sulu. And anyone who thinks it wouldn't be taken seriously because Takei is too playfully funny guy and came out a few years ago, they're wrong. I saw the first two and a half seasons of Heroes, and he's a believable hardass in that show.
So there's your hook. Everyone loves the Excelsior. Star Trek: Generation and a Half.
Hollywood never listens to my ideas. Except for the new trilogy of Terminator films, and the fact that Ridley Fucking Scott is coming back to do an Alien prequel. Other than those two things, Hollywood has ignored me completely. That's my real beef with the new Star Trek movie: it's totally awesome, just not my idea.
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word verification: hanksa
Hank's a what????
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