Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I just got back from the theater and I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. I've read your reams of criticisms and yes yes, the plot was full of holes and the science was reminiscent of the "Lensman" novels, so I would not have wanted to read this as a novel. But as a movie it was great.
Whenever anyone asks sci-fi (and fantasy) writers and editors what it takes to write a great story, the answer is always "sense of wonder." The first "Star Wars" movie had it. "Lord of the Rings" had it. "The Dark Crystal" had it, and almost every episode of "Farscape"--interesting how Muppetry seems to catalyze it. The original Star Trek movie had it but they quickly lost it. This one had it. The simple technique of showing a shuttle moving past the hull of the Enterprise to slowly let us know just how BIG the thing is--the same kind of shot they used in the original film--that was sense of wonder for me. The impossibly evil looking Romulan ship, that was sense of wonder for me. The Vulcan city. They did it several times. That's what movies are for, to do in visual images what might not be so easy to do in words, since they can't do the things well that words do well.
) This way we get the familiar Star Trek universe, with even the same old beloved characters, the same old Halloween-costume aliens and the same old forehead-slapping science, but with today's production technology. I'm still cheering.
DS9 had a lot of serious stories too. Setting Sisko up to dishonor himself as a ploy to win peace, and the cartoonish Ferengi episodes always had a little kicker. Even Voyager had its moments. It was an interesting perspective that the male starship captains were all dads leading their kids off on dangerous adventures, whereas Janeway was a mom, wanting only to bring her kids home safely.
Whenever anyone asks sci-fi (and fantasy) writers and editors what it takes to write a great story, the answer is always "sense of wonder." The first "Star Wars" movie had it. "Lord of the Rings" had it. "The Dark Crystal" had it, and almost every episode of "Farscape"--interesting how Muppetry seems to catalyze it. The original Star Trek movie had it but they quickly lost it. This one had it. The simple technique of showing a shuttle moving past the hull of the Enterprise to slowly let us know just how BIG the thing is--the same kind of shot they used in the original film--that was sense of wonder for me. The impossibly evil looking Romulan ship, that was sense of wonder for me. The Vulcan city. They did it several times. That's what movies are for, to do in visual images what might not be so easy to do in words, since they can't do the things well that words do well.
This is 200 years from now and as we learned in TNG, WWIII and WWIV have occurred. The world is surely much different from ours. Perhaps Iowa is now the perfect place for a military spaceport with an adjoining shipbuilding facility. It clearly still has a lot of undeveloped space, which would be a requirement. Apparently its topography was changed by the wars, because there are no canyons in Iowa in our century. I don't think you could hurt yourself by tripping and falling off of the highest elevation in the state.
McCoy isn't a cadet. He's clearly already a ship's surgeon. He's just there because he's been on shore leave and he needs to get back to the ship in the morning like everybody else.
It's a brand new ship that wasn't supposed to be launched yet. Virtually all of Star Fleet's personnel are off dealing with another disaster so this is all they've got.
I cheered when I realized that's what they had accomplished. The Star Trek franchise has run out of steam and my wife and I are both starting to miss it. If they tried to launch another series they'd have to set it a long way off in the future to give the galaxy a chance to have evolved new politics and dangers, and it would be hard to create enough continuity for us to connect with it. (Wait, wasn't that "Andromeda"?
) This way we get the familiar Star Trek universe, with even the same old beloved characters, the same old Halloween-costume aliens and the same old forehead-slapping science, but with today's production technology. I'm still cheering.
Depth? How can any fan of TOS talk about depth with a straight face? I hereby publicly confess that I didn't watch TOS because it was just too hokey and I couldn't stand it. Not in its original run and not in its endless syndication. It had some good episodes and I've seen some of them, and I certainly enjoyed the first movie if only for the cute ending. But we didn't become Star Trek fans until TNG. That was the "depth" we were waiting for. Real philosophy, real drama... by sci-fi standards anyway. Ardra, the time they wanted to dismantle Data, Picard's recovery of his flute from the dead planet... those were good stories, even if the science was still hokey. And of course Patrick Stewart was voted "the sexiest man on TV" in one TV Guide poll and my wife was nodding her head vigorously when she read that.
DS9 had a lot of serious stories too. Setting Sisko up to dishonor himself as a ploy to win peace, and the cartoonish Ferengi episodes always had a little kicker. Even Voyager had its moments. It was an interesting perspective that the male starship captains were all dads leading their kids off on dangerous adventures, whereas Janeway was a mom, wanting only to bring her kids home safely.
It certainly looked like he was set up to retain command of the ship once the crisis was over. It's awfully suspicious that he's got exactly the same crew as on TOS.
Oh come on dude. Considering how the managers of this franchise laugh in the face of implausibility on the average of once every four and a half minutes, I don't think they'll have any trouble at all taking it wherever they want to go next. Besides, it was stressed more than once that Vulcan culture has not been destroyed and that there are more than enough Vulcans left to rebuild a decent-sized civilization around it.
So am I. But there were almost no decent sci-fi movies in the 1950s and 1960s. "Forbidden Planet," "War of the Worlds"? Certainly "okay," but hardly "great" except in the sense that someone managed to get them made at all. "Barbarella" was about as good as any of them; at least it was amusing. And sci-fi on TV was even worse. "Tom Corbett: Space Cadet," "Space Patrol." I watched them all and got all the collectibles from my cereal boxes, but I can't imagine any adult sitting through an episode.
