Topic: Star Trek

Yeah. We've had this conversation already, but hey, we mention it in the commentary. It's the wave of the future, man!

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/643/photoece.jpg

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Star Trek

I disagree with Brian about everything.

Posted from my iPad
http://trek.fm

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Re: Star Trek

Worth mentioning for the rest of eternity that Gregory posted that before the episode went live.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Star Trek

Live long and prosper bitches!  Hit the links to boldly go where everyone else has already been...before.

Pick up Star Trek DVD, Blu-ray, and Score at the Store

Star Trek on IMDB

Fridge logic

Michael Giacchino's Oscar acceptance speech has been pulled from YouTube as of this posting.

The Last Lecture

J.J. Abrams at TED

Hook sequence

Black holes

Andrew Kramer

47

Kobayashi Maru, available at the store

Geodesic dome

Vasquez Rocks, we've been there.

Sabrina Morris

R2-D2!
http://larryfire.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/r2d2_star-trek1.jpg
(right click, view image)

Magic bean

The Naked Time

Ryan beams himself to Vulcan,http://i985.photobucket.com/albums/ae340/downinfrontshow/vasquez_beam-in.jpg
photographed at Vasquez Rocks

also,

Ryan's warp speed desktop: http://i985.photobucket.com/albums/ae340/downinfrontshow/osx_warp.jpg
Right click, set as desktop, enjoy!

Delta Vega

Zordon is a racist

Mark Lenard

George Takei on Geekza

Taste of the gag reel

Red Letter Media

Leonard Nimoy photography

Last edited by Matt Vayda (2010-04-20 04:06:19)

Re: Star Trek

I think you're the greatest, Greg.

Re: Star Trek

Alright, well i think you guys have officially ruined Star Trek for me, but not in that happy "Yah I know more about movies!" kind of way. But more in the I can't see this movie without hearing voices bickering in my head locked in an eternal state of argument of the hardcore classic Trekkie and the new modern audience. Where neither will give ground and neither makes any progress. And all you get is an eternal loop of bickering voices in my head.

Sorry guys, but that's a lot of what I heard for most of this. And after a while it just came down to Brian = extremist religious leader preaching the word of the almighty book of Classic Trek and everyone else is the rest of the world going, "You do realize this is kinda bullshit right?"

(Sorry to use the religious metaphor, but it was really the way I kinda came to see this dynamic as the commentary played out.)

I still don't know what to think of the commentary, it's gonna take a bit to digest, but having just finished it... that's my gut reaction.

On the topic of the actual movie; the insanely epic post a while back about everything wrong with Star Trek (2009) did not manage to dissuade my opinion of it, and I don't think you guys did either. I still love the fuck outta this movie, and yes I get it's not perfect, but then I go it's fukin Star Trek and I'm cool with it. I'd much rather have this than everyone wandering around for hours on end explaining the intricacies of red matter to me in a completely fictional techno babble that really has no impact on the story whatsoever and which means absolutely nothing to me. TNG gave us that, and well, that's why I don't watch TNG. Give me some character growth any day.

So in short.... Brian... you're wrong.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Star Trek

I loved this movie. Ryan, too. So, you know. It's just Brian. smile

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Star Trek

In retrospect I regret my decision to let you guys do New Trek without me.   Nah, go ahead I said, have fun.   Now after listening to the end result I wanna write a rebuttal so huge it feels like I'm gonna give birth.   

But I got work to do, so I will just have to keep my legs crossed and try to breathe deeply.

Short version, of course Brian's wrong.  I just wish I'd been there to explain how wrong.    For starters GAAAHHHH CONTRACTIONS  SOMEBODY GET ME AN EPIDURAL

Last edited by Trey (2010-04-20 07:03:52)

Re: Star Trek

If it's any consolation, I'm right there with you Trey. I literally felt myself wanting to scream at my computer every five seconds..it was aaaaaaagonizing.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Star Trek

I'm downloading the comm now, but I'm actually dreading listening to this. I'm a fan of the old Trek movies and this new one. (just got II, II and IV on Blu yesterday actually big_smile)

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Re: Star Trek

Things that stayed in my head after this film.

- They blew stuff up in space and it looked awesome
- Setdesign - fail

Barcode Scanners on the navigation console. Why?
I'm considering watching it again just to count how often they show them - but the pain....

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Re: Star Trek

Four friends in your head … who sound like they're about ready to punch each other.

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Re: Star Trek

Three friends in your head…

…and one guy that you want to punch.

Posted from my iPad
http://trek.fm

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Re: Star Trek

Holy shit, really guys?

This movie makes NO SENSE. Things just happen because they need to happen.

And that just happens to piss me off more than usual.

Re: Star Trek

I've grown up around Star Trek.  My dad is a fan.  The names "Kirk" and "Spock" and "Picard" have been a part of my worldview for as long as I can remember.

I'm don't know that I'd call myself a Star Trek fan- I'm a Star Wars guy through and through (and like Teague I can trace that all the way back to Star Tours).  I've SEEN plenty of Star Trek, but it's never grabbed me viscerally.  It appealed to my imagination and sense of adventure.

JJ's Star Trek GRABBED my imagination and sense of adventure.  I saw this movie and just gaped at the screen the entire time.  It was not unlike the difference between reading about the battle for Gondor and actually SEEING it come to life in front of me.  They managed to capture EVERYTHING I ever enjoyed about Trek- Kirk's swagger, Spock's well intentioned dickery, the "we might all die right now if we don't come up with something fucking BRILLIANT in the next 8 seconds" scenarios- but made it so much more real to me.  The original Trek made me root for Kirk.  This Trek made me want to fucking join Starfleet tomorrow.

Brian is FROTHING right now at what I've said, but it's how I feel.  I've never come out of a Trek episode or movie and gone "I want a 24 hour feed of that universe fed into my brain from here on out, or at least 2 hours of it every six months."  JJ's Trek did that for me.  And it's not the lens flares and it's not the explosions, and it's not even Simon Pegg.  It's just that it took the emotions that Trek used to tickle in me and FLUNG them at me nonstop from bell to bell.

I fucking love this movie.  I have no shame in this being "my" Star Trek.

When.

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Re: Star Trek

I understand Brian's logic...to a point.  I am in no way going to engage anyone on the science of original Trek to JJ Trek because its pointless and I frankly don't give a shit.  More broadly, I would just say, look at the name.

Star TREK.  The emphasis was always on the TREK to me, not the Star.  At the end of the day what worked for me about TOS and TNG was the characters as they both TREK through space and TREK on their own path in life.  I feel JJ got that very well with the primary three characters of Kirk, Spock and Bones.  Yes, TOS tackled a lot of bold social issues and brought science to the forefront of a weekly television show.  That's awesome.  But it's not the reason I loved Trek before and its not thereason I love it now.  I love the characters, I love their journeys.  I love the sense of exploration and adventure. 

Were there a few clunky plot devices?  Sure.  But like a lot of movies, I'm willing to move beyond that if the film as a whole works for me, and this one does.  I would go on to say that JJ understands whats great about Trek better than anyone since Ronald Moore, and certainly better than it had been handled in the last 10 years or so.

Eddie Doty

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Re: Star Trek

I read something this morning that sparked something I had forgotten about til now.

I find it interesting that the so called 'hard-core" fans (Ala, Brian) are so incredibly against this film because of well...all the the reasons Brian handily pointed out. Yet in every single interview Mr. Nimoy has ever had, not to mention the fact that he agreed to be in the fucking thing, he praises Abrahm's Star Trek as a reviving of the franchise. Now personally I hold a lot of respect for Mr. Nimoy as an artist and as a person, so I find it highly unlikely that he is simply saying this as a measure of Hollywood politics or bullshit like that, I think he genuinely means it.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of it, but I find it interesting that one of the original cast members and someone who has seen and had a large part in the formation of this franchise, seems to like the movie, yet the fanboys can't seem to get to get it together.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Star Trek

Okay, I know plenty of fanboys, like my friend Ryan Schile who do like it a lot, for whatever reason. So that's the first hole in your premise.

Secondly, you're basically making an appeal to authority. "Well, Spock likes it so why don't you?" And as much as I respect the character of Spock and Leonard Nimoy as an artist, that doesn't mean I'm always going to agree with either of them.

Further, we don't know what Nimoy's specific feelings about the story are. Whatever it is, I'm sure his opinion is more complicated than a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Re: Star Trek

Someone on the TFN board asked me what my "ultimate Trek story" would be. So, crossposted from TFN:

I wrote:

I guess we never really ended up talking about what I would do differently in the commentary. I have in my head an idea for an ultimate Trek story, but that's a miniseries, not a movie, so it is not this.

As for this movie specifically, what would I do differently? Let's take any of the major ideas and rework them:

Our heroes all find their way to the positions we know them in.

If this is what you want your movie to be about, that's fine, though I still don't think it's strictly necessary. You could start the movie with Captain Kirk stepping onto the bridge for the first time and everyone in the audience, fan or not, would be on board (pardon the pun). But to make it work, let more time pass. It's an extraordinary coincidence by itself that all of these specific people end up on the ship at this exact moment in time, which is a different moment in time under entirely different circumstances than in the original continuity. So you have to justify how this exact arrangement of people ended up happening twice under completely different circumstances.

Instead, let the story unfold over a greater time period and you can bring them on bit by bit, lessening that implausibility. The heart of the movie and the relationships is the Kirk-Spock-(McCoy) dynamic. You can still follow that by contriving the two or three of them together early on and letting everyone else come in as time goes on. Does Chekhov really need to be there at the beginning? He's a punchline, really, nothing more. And the others, in terms of serving the plot, aren't much more.

Also, spreading the story out over a greater time period automatically raises the stakes. Say you have Nero and the Narada (or something like them) floating around the edges of explored space for years. But nobody's ever been able to engage or even directly encounter the thing and live to tell the tale. As far as the Federation knows, there's just a big hunk of flying death out there that could strike anywhere at anytime. And they don't know anything about it and they haven't been able to push the frontier out because of it. But now they've got these new state of the art cruiser-explorer ships meant specifically to explore the unknown and able to handle itself no matter what's out there. And who gets the assignment that will end up bringing them face to face with that mysterious floating death? Why, the brash young officer who's been climbing his way through the ranks the past few years (a setup less ludicrous than going from stowaway to captain in six hours), of course. Now you've got this cast of characters we already love facing down something that's been a menace for years or even decades. And, obviously, in the third act, they encounter the floating death just as it's almost ready to launch it's final assault on Earth/Vulcan/the Federation/everybody and have to stop it before it's Too Late.

Original continuity character is stranded in the past.

If this character is coming from an established continuity, then follow the rules of that continuity. Which means that if they know about how time travel works (and, I don't know, HAVE TIME TRAVELED TO FIX THE TIMELINE BEFORE, MULTIPLE TIMES), their actions must be consistent with their actions before. Which means Spock (Old Spock) should in that movie, be endeavoring to fix the damage Nero has done. He also has access to means to both travel further backwards in time and forward again. In this scenario, Old Spock would take any number of actions that follow this general pattern:

(1) Spock finds help.
(2) Spock convinces help that he's from the future and needs to repair damage to the timeline.
(3) Spock, with help, travels to the original point of divergence in the timeline to prevent the damage.
(4) Original timeline is restored, everyone drinks cocoa.

So maybe something like this:

Spock is stranded in the past. He works his way back towards civilization. Presumably if this is a smarter movie, the villain is smart enough to strand Spock somewhere a little more remote than the Federation equivalent of a Chicago suburb. But, he's stranded and he works his way back towards space civilization. He recruits somebody who is willing to believe him, whether it's Kirk, his young self, his father, whoever. He takes a ship and slingshots it around the sun to time travel again, like he's done multiple times before (including once with a death-hangover). Time travel damage repaired, go home, cocoa.

Obviously, this story is not about our young and pretty heroes, so as a movie, it's obviously a no go. But that's fine, since time travel stories are inherently nonsensical anyway and the more time we spend on them, the less they make sense. A bigger problem is that it wrecks the setup of having this new timeline to play in for future movies.

So let's make it interesting. Have Spock legitimately fail and die in any one of these steps. In the original continuity, it's a joke how improbably lucky Kirk and crew get in their travails. At least there it eventually gets lamp shaded - Kirk and crew are legends precisely because their crazy risky schemes always happened to pay off. That's not great story telling, but we can make this story STRONGER precisely by capitalizing on Star Trek's previous story weaknesses. Let Spock try a crazy risky scheme that has a 1 in 100 chance of working. And let the dice roll come up as snake eyes this time, killing him in the process. Then your original continuity character has tried to repair the damage and failed (making his character consistent), which then justifies why this new timeline is different and is going to stay different. You're basically spearing Wash through the chest by doing this, only times a thousand. If you did this, as somebody who has idolized Spock most of his life, I would hate you. But as a storyteller? I couldn't help but be damned impressed.

Future villain comes from the past to wreck things.

Ugh. Fine. But same point with following the rules of the original continuity. If the starting point is the original continuity - then follow those rules. If not, fine, do whatever you want. That's a straight reboot - a straight reimagining and you get free reign to do whatever you want. But original continuity = original continuity rules.

Anyway, you fix this by fixing Nero's motivation. It's weak to the point of being nonsensical. He blames Spock for trying very hard to prevent Romulus from blowing up and failing. How about, instead, now that he's in the past (by purpose or accident), he realizes his home still exists and he has an Awesome Future Ship that can conquer the galaxy. He also probably has the equivalent of Romulus' Grey's Sports Almanac that he can use to become Romulan-Biff. Go home and be Romulan-Biff! Conquer Romulus, become a crazy Emperor and use your awesome flagship to run rampage over the primitive Klingons and Federation! Even if you want to keep the stupid "I must exact revenge on my nemesis by making him watch me blow up his home," do it with the rest of the Romulan Empire at your back!

This idea could stand on its own or just as easily be folded into the first section of this post. The time that has had to pass for our crew to come together was also the time Nero needed to do all the political things he needed to do to become the unquestioned ruler of Romulus. And now, at the start of our story (or the third act, depending on how you're structuring it), he's finally established a solid reign of terror and is ready to steamroll over the rest of the galaxy, starting with Earth and Vulcan. And our hero's have to stop him. Somehow.

The advantage to folding this into the first section is it allows you to have parallel action over years worth of events. Kirk graduates the academy, cut to Nero first arriving in the past and blowing stuff up, cut to Kirk as a junior officer doing something crazy and getting noticed for it, cut to Nero returning home for the first time, cut to Kirk as a first officer clashing with his captain, cut to Nero finally defeating some political rival, and so forth. Whatever the specific events are, the parallel action allows you enormous freedom to cover vast amounts of time while still moving the story at solid clip.

Now, if you gave me a totally clean slate, I'm honestly not sure what I would do (unless you were giving me that miniseries I mentioned), but even starting with the broad strokes of what exists on screen, there are infinite ways to make a story that is both stronger on its own merit and more connected to the source material. Again, I give the filmmakers a lot of leeway because they the writer's strike interfered with their process and they were simply forced to start shooting. In a perfect world, movies wouldn't ever start shooting until the script was ready to go, but by the time that happens, we will have no need for Star Trek because utopia will no longer be science fiction.

Just don't pretend that the story is anything but poor after the fact.

Strong stories arise out of strong situations. 2009 Trek is three half ideas that don't add up to a coherent situation.

Last edited by Brian (2010-04-20 19:11:51)

Re: Star Trek

Still not up on iTunes yet.

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Re: Star Trek

Not sure what's up, let me kick it.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Star Trek

BrianFinifter wrote:

Okay, I know plenty of fanboys, like my friend Ryan Schile who do like it a lot, for whatever reason. So that's the first hole in your premise.

Secondly, you're basically making an appeal to authority. "Well, Spock likes it so why don't you?" And as much as I respect the character of Spock and Leonard Nimoy as an artist, that doesn't mean I'm always going to agree with either of them.

Further, we don't know what Nimoy's specific feelings about the story are. Whatever it is, I'm sure his opinion is more complicated than a thumbs up or thumbs down.

I never said anything about this applying to everyone equally, but I get what you mean.

Secondly i never said anything about this being the rule and must be followe, I simply find it interesting.

And no I am not making an appeal to authority, I am saying that this guy, who has basically lived breathed and been Star Trek for nearly forty years, has played a major role in the development of it's exsistence so if anyone is going to be able to speak about whether or not it's "Trek" enough, it would be him. And from what I've read/heard/seen, he seems to think so. Which I find INTERESTING... note that. i never said you had to agree with him.

I just find it interesting that the fanboys can talk for hours on end about what Trek "is" or should be while simultaneously dissing Abrams Trek, which Nimoy thinks is a good representation.

And while we may not know for absolutely definitely sure what his thoughts are, like i said, I am just going from what he has said in interviews and the like, and also going from my opinion that he isn't likely to spend his time on a Star Trek project and invest this much in it, of his own free will, if he didn't think it represented Trek well.

So I guess in the end, I can ask, what makes you think you know what makes Trek, Trek, than a man who has had a key role in making Trek, Trek?

(Yes, I am being a touch of a douchebag here, but I'm just trying to make a point.)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Star Trek

I don't want to steal Trey's thunderbirth, but at some point he's going to come in and tell Brian that this new Trek is way, way, way more like the original series than even TNG was.

I just put that in here because it seems like a good point to mention it. (IE, before we go off on this for five posts.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Star Trek

Well I will steal Trey's thunderbirth and say right now that I know "Star Trek" started as straight pop adventure serials. But it became more and has the potential (like everything else) to be both fun AND smart at the same time.

And this new movie doesn't even make sense, let alone achieve the high bar of being a "smart" film.

Sorry, Trey.

Re: Star Trek

maul2 wrote:

So I guess in the end, I can ask, what makes you think you know what makes Trek, Trek, than a man who has had a key role in making Trek, Trek?

That's like the Star Wars apologists who insist that the new Star Wars is good because George Lucas said so, and he's the guy who created the series so he must be right.

If you understand why this is a bad argument for SW, you understand why this is a bad argument for ST. If you think this is a valid argument for SW, then I have nothing to say to you.

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