Are you car blind like I am? Some people seem to be able to pick out car brands and models just by looking at them, and my expertise extends to “that’s a truck, that’s a van, etc.”eabaker wrote:Ah, okay. Wouldn't know, because basically all vehicles look alike to me.Zarm wrote:eabaker wrote:
So, like, you bailed back in '79?
Ah! But the ships were still recognizable.
The Star Trek Thread (All TV & Movies)
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Yup, I'm pretty much right there. I still don't really understand the word "sedan."KaijuCanuck wrote:Are you car blind like I am? Some people seem to be able to pick out car brands and models just by looking at them, and my expertise extends to “that’s a truck, that’s a van, etc.”eabaker wrote:Ah, okay. Wouldn't know, because basically all vehicles look alike to me.Zarm wrote:
Ah! But the ships were still recognizable.
Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Me too! Tis a vague, amorphous concept.eabaker wrote:Yup, I'm pretty much right there. I still don't really understand the word "sedan."KaijuCanuck wrote:Are you car blind like I am? Some people seem to be able to pick out car brands and models just by looking at them, and my expertise extends to “that’s a truck, that’s a van, etc.”eabaker wrote:
Ah, okay. Wouldn't know, because basically all vehicles look alike to me.
OT: currently watching ‘Parallels’ from TNG. Worf’s delivery of that one line. “-and then we mated”. Priceless.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
That's how it is for me, too.KaijuCanuck wrote:Are you car blind like I am? Some people seem to be able to pick out car brands and models just by looking at them, and my expertise extends to “that’s a truck, that’s a van, etc.”eabaker wrote:Ah, okay. Wouldn't know, because basically all vehicles look alike to me.Zarm wrote:
Ah! But the ships were still recognizable.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Actually, the invisibility cloak is now reality. It was demonstrated by a scientist a few years ago. The principle involved is the same as a mirage - there's no "light-bending" involved, just reflection.Zarm wrote:Which can cloak, despite cloaking being an unknown, theoretical possibility when first encountered in Balance of Terror.MandaSaurus wrote:The new Klingon Bird-Of-Prey looks like some sort of dilapidated tent, not a space ship!
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Well, sure- but can it hide you from Federation sensors?MandaSaurus wrote:Actually, the invisibility cloak is now reality. It was demonstrated by a scientist a few years ago. The principle involved is the same as a mirage - there's no "light-bending" involved, just reflection.Zarm wrote:Which can cloak, despite cloaking being an unknown, theoretical possibility when first encountered in Balance of Terror.MandaSaurus wrote:The new Klingon Bird-Of-Prey looks like some sort of dilapidated tent, not a space ship!
(Even the Romulan cloak in TOS couldn't do that, so the Klingons had an even better one. Mind you... Discovery isn't the only trangressor there; Enterprise also gave the Romulans functional cloaking devices 100 years early, before the Earth-Romulan War, which would probably have resulted in the Archer-era Earth being utterly annihilated, because they were so not ready to fight on that level.)
Basically, issues like that- and the tension between real-world developments and TOS' established technology (and creators' unwillingness to ever respect the latter in favor of the former) is simply why Star Trek prequels are a bad idea in general.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Just finished Generations, and I definitely want to make a much longer post of observations in the next few days... but one thing in particular struck me this time around.
This was a bad choice of movie to kill off Kirk, considering the way that its structured. Because he's absent from so much of the film, and so many emotional things happened to Picard in the interim, by the time Kirk returns, the audience is no longer attached to him. It's not his movie anymore. He feels like a guest star, an interloper- almost an intruder, in an emotional sense, vying for the spotlight from Picard's emotional journey. It has become very much Picard story, and Kirk doesn't really have a place there anymore.
So what should be Kirk's grand, final adventure on Veridian III, and the culmination of the emotional connection we made with him at the beginning of the film, instead feels more like a third wheel, artificially and arbitrarily grafted onto what was a fairly complete and closed story, emotionally and structurally- one with no room for him in resolving the established conflict between the protagonist and antagonist that have shared screen time, conversation, and even moments of emotional connection. Kirk, who's never even met the man, feels inorganic and inappropriate to resolving this conflict... as if in the end of The Wrath of Khan, as the ships are flying around through the Mutara Nebula, Yeoman Rand just showed up on a Federation battlecruiser to blow away the Reliant and resolve the conflict between Kirk and Khan. After everything we've invested in seeing the two of them repeatedly match wits, seeing the situation resolved by a third party that hasn't been a part of this story for quite some time just doesn't feel right.
This was a bad choice of movie to kill off Kirk, considering the way that its structured. Because he's absent from so much of the film, and so many emotional things happened to Picard in the interim, by the time Kirk returns, the audience is no longer attached to him. It's not his movie anymore. He feels like a guest star, an interloper- almost an intruder, in an emotional sense, vying for the spotlight from Picard's emotional journey. It has become very much Picard story, and Kirk doesn't really have a place there anymore.
So what should be Kirk's grand, final adventure on Veridian III, and the culmination of the emotional connection we made with him at the beginning of the film, instead feels more like a third wheel, artificially and arbitrarily grafted onto what was a fairly complete and closed story, emotionally and structurally- one with no room for him in resolving the established conflict between the protagonist and antagonist that have shared screen time, conversation, and even moments of emotional connection. Kirk, who's never even met the man, feels inorganic and inappropriate to resolving this conflict... as if in the end of The Wrath of Khan, as the ships are flying around through the Mutara Nebula, Yeoman Rand just showed up on a Federation battlecruiser to blow away the Reliant and resolve the conflict between Kirk and Khan. After everything we've invested in seeing the two of them repeatedly match wits, seeing the situation resolved by a third party that hasn't been a part of this story for quite some time just doesn't feel right.
Last edited by Zarm on Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Interesting point. I haven't seen this in a long time, and I'm trying to remember why I liked it so much and why it resonated with me - I watched all of the Star Trek movies together in a row, over the course of a few weeks. When I watched Generations, I was already six movies deep, and had become really accustomed to the TOS crew generally, and Kirk more particularly. So I was seeing it more through that lens of this very long, albeit loose, ongoing story. So to me it didn't seem strange when Kirk just showed back up. It almost felt like a return to normal after having been introduced to an entirely new cast (at this point in time, I hadn't seen any Star Trek TV at all).Zarm wrote:Just finished Generations, and I definitely want to make a much longer post of observations in the next few days... but one thing in particular struck me this time around.
This was a bad choice of movie to kill off Kirk, considering the way that its structured. Because he's absent from so much of the film, and so many emotional things happened to Picard in the interim, by the time Kirk returns, the audience is no longer attached to him. It's not his movie anymore. He feels like a guest star, an interloper- almost an intruder, in an emotional sense, vying for the spotlight from Picard's emotional journey. It has become very much Picard story, and Kirk doesn't really have a place there anymore.
So what should be Kirk's grand, final adventure on Veridian III, and the culmination of the emotional connection we made with him at the beginning of the film, instead feels more like a third wheel, artificially and arbitrarily grafted onto what was a fairly complete and closed story, emotionally and structurally- one with no room for him in resolving the established conflict between the protagonist and antagonist that have shared screen time, conversation, and even moments of emotional connection. Kirk, who's never even met the man, feels inorganic and inappropriate to resolving this conflict... as if in the end of The Wrath of Khan, as the ships are flying around through the Mutara Nebula, Yeoman Rand just showed up on a Federation battlecruiser to blow away the Reliant and resolve the conflict between Kirk and Khan. After everything we've invested in seeing the two of them repeatedly match wits, seeing the situation resolved by a third party that hasn't been a part of this story for quite some time just doesn't feel right.
But you definitely make great points, and obviously the Trek movies, unlike say Star Wars, are each meant to be much more contained than viewed as part of an ongoing saga. Perhaps if I watched it again now, divorced from a marathon of all the Trek films, I'd feel similar to you.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Ironically, I am watching this is part of a marathon of Star Trek films. It's been about 3 days since we watch Star Trek 6, but we have been following that story.
For me, it's not that Kirk doesn't feel like he belongs in the story, generally... it's just that by the time the card reaches him in the Nexus, it doesn't feel like his story anymore. He's not the central protagonist, because Picard's highly emotional story has so successfully been communicated to us and taken center stage, and we've followed him through so many emotional twists and turns, and seen every connection and debate and personal stake with the villain center solely around Picard, that it's not Kirk's show anymore.
I mean, Sarek didn't feel like he didn't belong in the story reentering it at the end of Search for Spock, after he'd been there in the beginning. But if, after Kirk has stolen the Enterprise and then been forced to destroy it and then they're on the Genesis planet, as he was standing over the body of his dead son, suddenly Sarek just showed up, beamed down, fought the Klingon commander in hand-to-hand combat and defeated him, and then beamed everybody up and flew them away to Vulcan, it probably wouldn't have felt very organic. Because even though Sarek was a part of the story, having been featured in it earlier, and had a connection to the story because of Spock and because of his previous appearance in the ongoing series of Star Trek lore, it wasn't really his story at that point. The conflict was very personal between Kirk and Krudge. We've been following Kirk's sacrifices, Kirk's loss, Kirk's emotional moments and quest. If Sarek had just reappeared and been integral to the resolution of the plot, it would have felt as if it took something away from the resolution of the conflict between Kirk and his very personal nemesis that had taken things away from him, and detracted from the resolution of Kirk's story in which he had already suffered so much and been so vulnerable and raw in front of the audience.
I feel like that is what happens here with Picard. Even though Kirk is a part of the story because of his place in the ongoing mythos, and even a part of this story at the beginning of it, by the time he returns later in the movie, we are so involved in Picard's story that Kirk doesn't really have a place in it any longer, in an emotional sense. And trying to switch gears to making this his story and his emotional farewell, after he's been disconnected for so long, just doesn't feel like it belongs, to me.
For me, it's not that Kirk doesn't feel like he belongs in the story, generally... it's just that by the time the card reaches him in the Nexus, it doesn't feel like his story anymore. He's not the central protagonist, because Picard's highly emotional story has so successfully been communicated to us and taken center stage, and we've followed him through so many emotional twists and turns, and seen every connection and debate and personal stake with the villain center solely around Picard, that it's not Kirk's show anymore.
I mean, Sarek didn't feel like he didn't belong in the story reentering it at the end of Search for Spock, after he'd been there in the beginning. But if, after Kirk has stolen the Enterprise and then been forced to destroy it and then they're on the Genesis planet, as he was standing over the body of his dead son, suddenly Sarek just showed up, beamed down, fought the Klingon commander in hand-to-hand combat and defeated him, and then beamed everybody up and flew them away to Vulcan, it probably wouldn't have felt very organic. Because even though Sarek was a part of the story, having been featured in it earlier, and had a connection to the story because of Spock and because of his previous appearance in the ongoing series of Star Trek lore, it wasn't really his story at that point. The conflict was very personal between Kirk and Krudge. We've been following Kirk's sacrifices, Kirk's loss, Kirk's emotional moments and quest. If Sarek had just reappeared and been integral to the resolution of the plot, it would have felt as if it took something away from the resolution of the conflict between Kirk and his very personal nemesis that had taken things away from him, and detracted from the resolution of Kirk's story in which he had already suffered so much and been so vulnerable and raw in front of the audience.
I feel like that is what happens here with Picard. Even though Kirk is a part of the story because of his place in the ongoing mythos, and even a part of this story at the beginning of it, by the time he returns later in the movie, we are so involved in Picard's story that Kirk doesn't really have a place in it any longer, in an emotional sense. And trying to switch gears to making this his story and his emotional farewell, after he's been disconnected for so long, just doesn't feel like it belongs, to me.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
So, generations. Generations is… frustrating to me. I don’t hate it, as I do Nemesis, and I would put it above both that film, Into Darkness, and depending on my mood, Insurrection… but it is hard to watch, because almost every scene is a missed opportunity.
With Star Trek V, I can see the good movie in it, marred by some excesses and poor choices. I think you could trim/effects-upgrade Star Trek V into a good movie (with a few flaws, like Shatner’s manic performance, still present).
With Generations, by contrast, I can see where a good movie ought to be, but isn’t. I can see the spaces it could have been, or was, before it was changed. And that’s just painful to watch.
First off, the opening in the Enterprise-B. Not bad; there’s something strange about the feel of these scenes, to me (maybe it’s just the mid-90s filming), but I like the characters and the humor. The effects are mixed- the Nexus ribbon looks cool, but it fails to establish he geography. I have no idea where the transport ships and Enterprise are, when we see them against a sea of orange fire, in comparison to the ribbon-and-trail as we see it from a distance (and we can’t see the transport ships during the approach either), so there’s a bit of a disconnect. But overall, I have few complaints here.
My main distraction is that this was so clearly written for Spock and McCoy, with a find-replace sed to change this to Scotty and Checkov when the actors refused, and only a token effort to replace lines. Consider the following, and tell me these exchanges weren’t written specifically for them:
Each of them either specific to McCoy and Spock, or generic enough to be either. By contrast, the only lines that I can see that were written custom to the characters actually in the movie are:
…And even then, a few of those I could still see fitting with only a minor change of phrasing, I’m just giving the benefit of the doubt.
Now, would this movie have been better with Spock and McCoy? I don’t know. Scotty works well for this role (despite the continuity issues with Relics), at the very least, and Walter Koenig gives a fine performance. A more emotional moment with Kirk’s closest friends? Quite possibly. Either way, I’m fine with Scotty and Checkov… if they rewrite all the lines so they sound like Scotty and Checkov. As it is, some of these (Kirk expecting ‘Scotty’ to have a theory, ‘Checkov’ recruiting nurses, and some of the banter around Kirk’s order to take the ship out and inability to stay in his chair) are just so obviously written for the originally-scripted characters that I find it distracting.
So, then we move onto TNG, and the promotion scene. And… it’s not bad. There’s some nice interaction, it’s good to establish the ‘family’ feel of the TNG crew. But realistically… it is a bit slow. Kills the pacing a bit. (Plus, I don’t know what’s wrong with Geordie; that absolutely was funny. )
The biggest problem here isn’t what’s there- although it could’ve used a little bit more energy for its placement in the story, or to go on just a bit shorter. But the real problem is what it replaced. The original script, before one of the producers asked for something lighter, had a scene set aboard the Amergosa Observatory, with a couple of bored officers, a sudden attack by Romulan Warbird- and then, as the station begins to come apart under the bombardment, the Eneterprise-D swooping in to the rescue and driving off the Romulans; seen primarily from the outside. And you know what? The film needs this. Badly. Because, as one reviewer put it, it would show the TNG crew as ‘heroic counterparts to Kirk’; worthy successors. Like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or a few of the MCU films; when the end is a pyrrhic victory or incomplete quest, give the heroes an early win so that you still get to see them have one.
Because here’s the thing- the TNG crew are a bunch of incompetents and failures here. They spend the whole movie getting deceived, outmaneuvered, defeated, and failing. They are taken in by Soran. Data is compromised. They don’t rescue Geordie or apprehend Soran. They don’t detect the Duras sisters’ subterfuge. They are badly beaten by an inferior starship and deploy no good tactics to counter (more on this later). They don’t save the Enterprise- either half. Picard fails to stop Soran or save 213 million people or the Enterprise crew; he fails, and everyone dies. It’s only with Kirk’s help that the TNG crew are able to accomplish anything; and really, that’s only Picard pushing a few buttons after Kirk has done the hard work of beating up Soran AND risking himself to get the control pad. (And I guess Riker got his ionic pulse victory; but again, there are problems with this, to get to later).
I get that it’s not that kind of story… but we never see the TNG crew as heroes in this. Most of the time, they’re chumps and pushovers. They lose, over and over. Kirk is an action hero; Picard and crew get defeated and let everyone die, and need a do-over to save the day.
The Amergosa rescue scene could’ve made a huge difference; and a jubilant, successful Enterprise crew could still have some sort of celebration introducing them afterward, if they still needed to include it, at which Picard gets bad news; Soran, aboard, could even have confronted himimmediately after, heightening the raw wound. However they did it… the TNG crew needed that win, and didn’t get it.
No complaints for the next stretch of movie; good stuff for Data and Picard’s arcs. The plot thickens; a good sequence on Amergosa, and in Stellar Cartography. Instead, a general complaint:
The Enterprise look.
Don’t get me wrong; I get it- for some reason, the makers love the gloomy, moody, you’d-want-to-kill-yourself-if-you-lived-here-but-it-looks-cool-on-screen look; heck, Ronald Moore wanted the Enterprise to always look this way when he saw it in Yesterday’s Enterprise. And lacking confidence in the TV-quality sets and their detail, they wanted to underlight to hide the lack of details.
But it doesn’t look right. We just spent 7 years seeing how the Enterprise-D looks. Its homeliness was a part of its appeal; it looked like a place you could live without going crazy. It was inviting. To try and foster that sense of community with eh promotion scene, then have the Enterprise so stark and cold and uninviting afterward, creates a tonal clash. It is confusing to fans of the series, because it looks wrong- and it makes no sense. This isn’t a new movie Enterprise, it’s the same one from the show… and it makes no sense for it to suddenly be an ugly, dark cave when we know how it’s supposed to look.
…Anyhow, back to the movie. Things get dicey again with the Duras’ attack. Because it’s just badly written. Firstly, the Enterprise has experience, from fighting the Borg years back, with rotating their shield frequency. It’s a reasonable tactic to try when your shields are getting bypassed; instead of trying nothing. Secondly, we’ve seen the Enterprise defeat Birds of Prey before; this one is supposed to be older and even less in shape. Even if it is blasting through the Enterprise’s shields, the Enterprise should be able to annihilate it in the time it takes them to come up with the ionic pulse plan. Instead, we see the try the phasers once, then give up, and never try photon torpedoes (though a full spread could probably have taken out the ship, shields and all). They have phaser strips and aft torpedoes, so it’s not like they had to make a choice between running and fighting- and there was no mention of either being offline. So it just makes them look incompetent that they just sit there and get pounded. And the ionic pulse bit also takes way too long; we’ve seen how long cloaking takes. The Bird of Prey could have decloaked and raised shields, or easily performed an evasive, by the time the torpedo got there.
In short, it was a badly-written battle; a few token lines about systems being disabled by the sneak attack, or showing them firing back and giving as good as they got, could have helped; ideally, a bigger ship (like a Vor’cha) would’ve been good, or a second prototype that can fire while cloaked. Anything to give the Klingons an edge. As it is, this feels like a Vietnam war PT boat taking down a battleship, who just sits there with the crew waving their arms in the air and screaming “Auuggh!” like Charlie Brown instead of shooting back with any of their big guns.
And then the warp core breach; not only does it feel arbitrary (five minutes, and there’s nothing I can do- it is both slow, and inevitable), but they didn’t even give us the cliched ‘warp core ejection is offline’ (which it never should be) bit, giving the impression that they didn’t even try. Because ejecting the core and flying away would’ve saved the whole ship. Once again, a single line could’ve established that they couldn’t; instead, Riker immediately choosing to evac the star drive once again makes him look incompetent, risking everyone and destroying the whole Enterprise needlessly.
Nemesis- and Data’s death- have the same problem; the TNG films are repeatedly harmed when they contrive a desperate situation by ignoring capabilities they have repeatedly demonstrated that could get them out of it. If you’re going to hang the destruction of a beloved starship or character or massive crisis on a situation, you need to make that situation a little more bulletproof by your own rules. It’s not like every situation has to have slavish continuity to every episode and idea in the show; but when you kill off something major by saying “it’s the only way!“, you need to make sure it’s actually the only way. As it is, these aren’t even Fridge Logic problems; they’re problems obvious while watching the movie itself, at least to the experienced Trekkie. And they’d be so easy to fix, too.
The arrival of the Nexus and destruction of the planet is good stuff. Although I would also have liked to see a few cutaway scenes of the culture on Veridian IV. Because right now, Picard fights and Kirk dies for an abstract concept- ‘213 million people’ is just a series of words. Seeing some brief glimpses of their civilization, a few people interacting, would put an emotional and physical face on an abstract concept- help us to understand what Kirk is dying for, what Picard is fighting for. Another missed opportunity.
The Nexus stuff isn’t bad. It also feels like it drags a teensy bit, but there’s a lot that’s good there. The primary issue, for me, is just the Kirk lack-of-connection that I mentioned earlier (and thus, won’t reiterate here), robbing a lot of this of the power it deserves. Seeing Kirk as a stubborn oaf who doesn’t care about Picard’s problems- which we, the audience, have just seen the impact of and have a connection to- doesn’t help the audience estrangement. Now, if Kirk was the one to show up and talk Picard out of wanting to stay in the fantasy, that could’ve gone a long way toward balancing the emotional scales.
Still, their conversation on the horses is a great scene.
And then, the biggest plot hole of them all; the entire final fight. All of time and space, why would you ever choose to insert yourself into the worst possible moment, giving yourself no time? Why not, as my wife said, just pop back into Ten Forward, in orbit around the Amergosa star, and call security to arrest Soran? Even the most convoluted ‘temporal prime directive’ explanations simply don’t make this make sense. Picard’s still changing history; why not change it with a little more certainty and a little less desperation?
And honestly… Kirk’s death is not that satisfying. I mean, he does have a good moment; but again, the stakes aren’t clear, the circumstances feel arbitrary… it’s not the blaze of glory the character deserved. As a moment of sacrifice, it wasn’t terrible, but… it wasn’t what the film or the character needed. And even the writers admit they were just trying to come up with something, using the existing sets they had as a budget limitation, that could replace their awful first try.
I do have a proposal on that, which I’ll stick in spoiler quotes for any interested.
But the basic summation of Generations is… it could have been great. With a few relatively minor changes, even. But it’s a pastiche of missed opportunities and frustrating choices that make the heroes look like saps and feels very contrived overall.
Now, as a balance- things I love about this movie:
The score is great.
Kirk’s run to deflector control and frantic rewiring; great music, great sense of energy and action, great performance from Shatner that sells the urgency despite relatively limited, indecipherable actions occurring in the scene itself. He sells it, makes it feel pivotal and urgent.
The ‘I hate this’ scene, and the look of the sunlit Ten Forward. Also, Malcom McDowel’s performance in this scene.
The Enterprise-D model shots look great.
The arrival of the Duras sister’s- from Picard’s delivery of “…What?” to the wonderful shot of the ship decloaking and swinging around. In fact, this entire sequence, from the arrival on the bridge up through the Enterprise warping out as the station shatters, giving a wonderful sense of the shockwave’s power.
‘Human females are so repulsive.’
The saucer crash sequence itself is stupendous. Likewise, Soran entering the Nexus and the destruction of Veridian III were good.
Kirk’s actual final moment, that moment of preparation and jumping the gap for the control pad, is very well done.
The ending effects of the shuttle and the crashed Enterprise-D saucer, and the final shot of the film. (A terrible tragedy that a goodly portion of the Enterprise crash survivors probably died before they got home, as the Oberth-class starship being used to transport them was almost certainly destroyed en route. Because that’s just what Oberths do).
With Star Trek V, I can see the good movie in it, marred by some excesses and poor choices. I think you could trim/effects-upgrade Star Trek V into a good movie (with a few flaws, like Shatner’s manic performance, still present).
With Generations, by contrast, I can see where a good movie ought to be, but isn’t. I can see the spaces it could have been, or was, before it was changed. And that’s just painful to watch.
First off, the opening in the Enterprise-B. Not bad; there’s something strange about the feel of these scenes, to me (maybe it’s just the mid-90s filming), but I like the characters and the humor. The effects are mixed- the Nexus ribbon looks cool, but it fails to establish he geography. I have no idea where the transport ships and Enterprise are, when we see them against a sea of orange fire, in comparison to the ribbon-and-trail as we see it from a distance (and we can’t see the transport ships during the approach either), so there’s a bit of a disconnect. But overall, I have few complaints here.
My main distraction is that this was so clearly written for Spock and McCoy, with a find-replace sed to change this to Scotty and Checkov when the actors refused, and only a token effort to replace lines. Consider the following, and tell me these exchanges weren’t written specifically for them:
Spoiler:
Each of them either specific to McCoy and Spock, or generic enough to be either. By contrast, the only lines that I can see that were written custom to the characters actually in the movie are:
Spoiler:
Now, would this movie have been better with Spock and McCoy? I don’t know. Scotty works well for this role (despite the continuity issues with Relics), at the very least, and Walter Koenig gives a fine performance. A more emotional moment with Kirk’s closest friends? Quite possibly. Either way, I’m fine with Scotty and Checkov… if they rewrite all the lines so they sound like Scotty and Checkov. As it is, some of these (Kirk expecting ‘Scotty’ to have a theory, ‘Checkov’ recruiting nurses, and some of the banter around Kirk’s order to take the ship out and inability to stay in his chair) are just so obviously written for the originally-scripted characters that I find it distracting.
So, then we move onto TNG, and the promotion scene. And… it’s not bad. There’s some nice interaction, it’s good to establish the ‘family’ feel of the TNG crew. But realistically… it is a bit slow. Kills the pacing a bit. (Plus, I don’t know what’s wrong with Geordie; that absolutely was funny. )
The biggest problem here isn’t what’s there- although it could’ve used a little bit more energy for its placement in the story, or to go on just a bit shorter. But the real problem is what it replaced. The original script, before one of the producers asked for something lighter, had a scene set aboard the Amergosa Observatory, with a couple of bored officers, a sudden attack by Romulan Warbird- and then, as the station begins to come apart under the bombardment, the Eneterprise-D swooping in to the rescue and driving off the Romulans; seen primarily from the outside. And you know what? The film needs this. Badly. Because, as one reviewer put it, it would show the TNG crew as ‘heroic counterparts to Kirk’; worthy successors. Like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or a few of the MCU films; when the end is a pyrrhic victory or incomplete quest, give the heroes an early win so that you still get to see them have one.
Because here’s the thing- the TNG crew are a bunch of incompetents and failures here. They spend the whole movie getting deceived, outmaneuvered, defeated, and failing. They are taken in by Soran. Data is compromised. They don’t rescue Geordie or apprehend Soran. They don’t detect the Duras sisters’ subterfuge. They are badly beaten by an inferior starship and deploy no good tactics to counter (more on this later). They don’t save the Enterprise- either half. Picard fails to stop Soran or save 213 million people or the Enterprise crew; he fails, and everyone dies. It’s only with Kirk’s help that the TNG crew are able to accomplish anything; and really, that’s only Picard pushing a few buttons after Kirk has done the hard work of beating up Soran AND risking himself to get the control pad. (And I guess Riker got his ionic pulse victory; but again, there are problems with this, to get to later).
I get that it’s not that kind of story… but we never see the TNG crew as heroes in this. Most of the time, they’re chumps and pushovers. They lose, over and over. Kirk is an action hero; Picard and crew get defeated and let everyone die, and need a do-over to save the day.
The Amergosa rescue scene could’ve made a huge difference; and a jubilant, successful Enterprise crew could still have some sort of celebration introducing them afterward, if they still needed to include it, at which Picard gets bad news; Soran, aboard, could even have confronted himimmediately after, heightening the raw wound. However they did it… the TNG crew needed that win, and didn’t get it.
No complaints for the next stretch of movie; good stuff for Data and Picard’s arcs. The plot thickens; a good sequence on Amergosa, and in Stellar Cartography. Instead, a general complaint:
The Enterprise look.
Don’t get me wrong; I get it- for some reason, the makers love the gloomy, moody, you’d-want-to-kill-yourself-if-you-lived-here-but-it-looks-cool-on-screen look; heck, Ronald Moore wanted the Enterprise to always look this way when he saw it in Yesterday’s Enterprise. And lacking confidence in the TV-quality sets and their detail, they wanted to underlight to hide the lack of details.
But it doesn’t look right. We just spent 7 years seeing how the Enterprise-D looks. Its homeliness was a part of its appeal; it looked like a place you could live without going crazy. It was inviting. To try and foster that sense of community with eh promotion scene, then have the Enterprise so stark and cold and uninviting afterward, creates a tonal clash. It is confusing to fans of the series, because it looks wrong- and it makes no sense. This isn’t a new movie Enterprise, it’s the same one from the show… and it makes no sense for it to suddenly be an ugly, dark cave when we know how it’s supposed to look.
…Anyhow, back to the movie. Things get dicey again with the Duras’ attack. Because it’s just badly written. Firstly, the Enterprise has experience, from fighting the Borg years back, with rotating their shield frequency. It’s a reasonable tactic to try when your shields are getting bypassed; instead of trying nothing. Secondly, we’ve seen the Enterprise defeat Birds of Prey before; this one is supposed to be older and even less in shape. Even if it is blasting through the Enterprise’s shields, the Enterprise should be able to annihilate it in the time it takes them to come up with the ionic pulse plan. Instead, we see the try the phasers once, then give up, and never try photon torpedoes (though a full spread could probably have taken out the ship, shields and all). They have phaser strips and aft torpedoes, so it’s not like they had to make a choice between running and fighting- and there was no mention of either being offline. So it just makes them look incompetent that they just sit there and get pounded. And the ionic pulse bit also takes way too long; we’ve seen how long cloaking takes. The Bird of Prey could have decloaked and raised shields, or easily performed an evasive, by the time the torpedo got there.
In short, it was a badly-written battle; a few token lines about systems being disabled by the sneak attack, or showing them firing back and giving as good as they got, could have helped; ideally, a bigger ship (like a Vor’cha) would’ve been good, or a second prototype that can fire while cloaked. Anything to give the Klingons an edge. As it is, this feels like a Vietnam war PT boat taking down a battleship, who just sits there with the crew waving their arms in the air and screaming “Auuggh!” like Charlie Brown instead of shooting back with any of their big guns.
And then the warp core breach; not only does it feel arbitrary (five minutes, and there’s nothing I can do- it is both slow, and inevitable), but they didn’t even give us the cliched ‘warp core ejection is offline’ (which it never should be) bit, giving the impression that they didn’t even try. Because ejecting the core and flying away would’ve saved the whole ship. Once again, a single line could’ve established that they couldn’t; instead, Riker immediately choosing to evac the star drive once again makes him look incompetent, risking everyone and destroying the whole Enterprise needlessly.
Nemesis- and Data’s death- have the same problem; the TNG films are repeatedly harmed when they contrive a desperate situation by ignoring capabilities they have repeatedly demonstrated that could get them out of it. If you’re going to hang the destruction of a beloved starship or character or massive crisis on a situation, you need to make that situation a little more bulletproof by your own rules. It’s not like every situation has to have slavish continuity to every episode and idea in the show; but when you kill off something major by saying “it’s the only way!“, you need to make sure it’s actually the only way. As it is, these aren’t even Fridge Logic problems; they’re problems obvious while watching the movie itself, at least to the experienced Trekkie. And they’d be so easy to fix, too.
The arrival of the Nexus and destruction of the planet is good stuff. Although I would also have liked to see a few cutaway scenes of the culture on Veridian IV. Because right now, Picard fights and Kirk dies for an abstract concept- ‘213 million people’ is just a series of words. Seeing some brief glimpses of their civilization, a few people interacting, would put an emotional and physical face on an abstract concept- help us to understand what Kirk is dying for, what Picard is fighting for. Another missed opportunity.
The Nexus stuff isn’t bad. It also feels like it drags a teensy bit, but there’s a lot that’s good there. The primary issue, for me, is just the Kirk lack-of-connection that I mentioned earlier (and thus, won’t reiterate here), robbing a lot of this of the power it deserves. Seeing Kirk as a stubborn oaf who doesn’t care about Picard’s problems- which we, the audience, have just seen the impact of and have a connection to- doesn’t help the audience estrangement. Now, if Kirk was the one to show up and talk Picard out of wanting to stay in the fantasy, that could’ve gone a long way toward balancing the emotional scales.
Still, their conversation on the horses is a great scene.
And then, the biggest plot hole of them all; the entire final fight. All of time and space, why would you ever choose to insert yourself into the worst possible moment, giving yourself no time? Why not, as my wife said, just pop back into Ten Forward, in orbit around the Amergosa star, and call security to arrest Soran? Even the most convoluted ‘temporal prime directive’ explanations simply don’t make this make sense. Picard’s still changing history; why not change it with a little more certainty and a little less desperation?
And honestly… Kirk’s death is not that satisfying. I mean, he does have a good moment; but again, the stakes aren’t clear, the circumstances feel arbitrary… it’s not the blaze of glory the character deserved. As a moment of sacrifice, it wasn’t terrible, but… it wasn’t what the film or the character needed. And even the writers admit they were just trying to come up with something, using the existing sets they had as a budget limitation, that could replace their awful first try.
I do have a proposal on that, which I’ll stick in spoiler quotes for any interested.
Spoiler:
Now, as a balance- things I love about this movie:
The score is great.
Kirk’s run to deflector control and frantic rewiring; great music, great sense of energy and action, great performance from Shatner that sells the urgency despite relatively limited, indecipherable actions occurring in the scene itself. He sells it, makes it feel pivotal and urgent.
The ‘I hate this’ scene, and the look of the sunlit Ten Forward. Also, Malcom McDowel’s performance in this scene.
The Enterprise-D model shots look great.
The arrival of the Duras sister’s- from Picard’s delivery of “…What?” to the wonderful shot of the ship decloaking and swinging around. In fact, this entire sequence, from the arrival on the bridge up through the Enterprise warping out as the station shatters, giving a wonderful sense of the shockwave’s power.
‘Human females are so repulsive.’
The saucer crash sequence itself is stupendous. Likewise, Soran entering the Nexus and the destruction of Veridian III were good.
Kirk’s actual final moment, that moment of preparation and jumping the gap for the control pad, is very well done.
The ending effects of the shuttle and the crashed Enterprise-D saucer, and the final shot of the film. (A terrible tragedy that a goodly portion of the Enterprise crash survivors probably died before they got home, as the Oberth-class starship being used to transport them was almost certainly destroyed en route. Because that’s just what Oberths do).
Last edited by Zarm on Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Prelude to Axanar looks better than Discovery...
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Oh, heck yes- that thing is amazing. I really, really wish we'd gotten that as a series instead. Tony Todd's speech alone gives me chills...MandaSaurus wrote:Prelude to Axanar looks better than Discovery...
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
I finally saw The Wrath Of Khan last Saturday. I know now why this is considered so good.
Acting, sets, SFX, plot, the tense action scenes, musical score, character development, it's all top notch. Ricardo Montalban steals every scene he's in as Khan. You can tell that he's clearly enjoying the role. I really thought at times that he would succeed in destroying the Enterprise. And while he failed to kill Kirk, his actions resulted in Spock's death so he did get a fair amount of revenge even in death. Amazingly, in spite of that, the movie ends on a semi-upbeat note, since Spock's actions did save the crew and them remembering him ensures that his death was not in vain. And Kirk reuniting with his son was touching.
The only slightly downside is that I wish a bit more time had been made about if Project Genensis was worth Man playing God or not. However, the rest of the movie is so good, that it more then makes up for that.
It's truly one of the best sci-fi movies ever made and one of the best movies that I've ever seen.
Acting, sets, SFX, plot, the tense action scenes, musical score, character development, it's all top notch. Ricardo Montalban steals every scene he's in as Khan. You can tell that he's clearly enjoying the role. I really thought at times that he would succeed in destroying the Enterprise. And while he failed to kill Kirk, his actions resulted in Spock's death so he did get a fair amount of revenge even in death. Amazingly, in spite of that, the movie ends on a semi-upbeat note, since Spock's actions did save the crew and them remembering him ensures that his death was not in vain. And Kirk reuniting with his son was touching.
The only slightly downside is that I wish a bit more time had been made about if Project Genensis was worth Man playing God or not. However, the rest of the movie is so good, that it more then makes up for that.
It's truly one of the best sci-fi movies ever made and one of the best movies that I've ever seen.
Last edited by Rhedosaurus on Mon Jan 14, 2019 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Just curious, did you watch the theatrical cut or the director's cut?Rhedosaurus wrote:I finally saw The Wrath Of Khan last Saturday. I know now why this is considered so good.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
The theatrical cut. How is the director's cut different?MikeSTZillak wrote:Just curious, did you watch the theatrical cut or the director's cut?Rhedosaurus wrote:I finally saw The Wrath Of Khan last Saturday. I know now why this is considered so good.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
There are a few added scenes with Scotty's nephew (the trainee that dies in sickbay), primarily.Rhedosaurus wrote:The theatrical cut. How is the director's cut different?MikeSTZillak wrote:Just curious, did you watch the theatrical cut or the director's cut?Rhedosaurus wrote:I finally saw The Wrath Of Khan last Saturday. I know now why this is considered so good.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Interesting. I got the theatrical one on Saturday. I'll consider getting the director's cut.Zarm wrote:There are a few added scenes with Scotty's nephew (the trainee that dies in sickbay), primarily.Rhedosaurus wrote:The theatrical cut. How is the director's cut different?MikeSTZillak wrote: Just curious, did you watch the theatrical cut or the director's cut?
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
The major draw of the Director's Edition cut, which I can confirm, having just watched it last week, is that it is a much better, much sharper Blu-ray transfer than the one that came before. I wish they would go through and give that much attention to a better transfer of all the Star Trek movies on Blu-ray.Rhedosaurus wrote:Interesting. I got the theatrical one on Saturday. I'll consider getting the director's cut.Zarm wrote:There are a few added scenes with Scotty's nephew (the trainee that dies in sickbay), primarily.Rhedosaurus wrote:
The theatrical cut. How is the director's cut different?
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Thought I'd let you guys know that CBS is bowing to fan pressure( and poor ratings, no doubt )by getting back to basics, design-wise, on the second season of Discovery. Some of the YT blog-runners say so, anyway. I hope it's true...
CBS is to blame for the problems with Discovery, basically giving the show-runners and writers carte blanche to do whatever they WANT to do. Stuff like totally re-imagining the Klingons - their appearance AND their tech! WHO wanted that? No one who's a fan, certainly. And I thought J.J. Abrams had gone a bit far. Ha! Nothing compared to what Discovery was going to unleash!
Supposedly, we'll actually be able to recognize a D-7 Cruiser AS a D-7 Cruiser in S2. That'd be nice. Instead of constantly having to say, 'What's that?'
CBS is to blame for the problems with Discovery, basically giving the show-runners and writers carte blanche to do whatever they WANT to do. Stuff like totally re-imagining the Klingons - their appearance AND their tech! WHO wanted that? No one who's a fan, certainly. And I thought J.J. Abrams had gone a bit far. Ha! Nothing compared to what Discovery was going to unleash!
Supposedly, we'll actually be able to recognize a D-7 Cruiser AS a D-7 Cruiser in S2. That'd be nice. Instead of constantly having to say, 'What's that?'
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Re: The Star Trek Thread (Including Discovery)
Attempts by CBS to wrangle out of the lawsuit have failed, it seems...
Judge Orders Discovery on Discovery.
Judge Orders Discovery on Discovery.
The grace of God is a greater gift than we can truly fathom; undeserved mercy is a kindness humbling in its sheer scope.KaijuCanuck wrote:It’s part of my secret plan to create a fifth column in the US, pre-emoting our glorious conquest and the creation of the Canadian Empire, upon which the sun will consistently set after less than eight hours of daylight.
The Zone Fighter campaign is complete, with all episodes subtitled! PM me if you need a link location.
Maranatha!