Star Trek Into Darkness... and beyond

[Obsidian Fire]

There's a big difference between a TV show where you can have hours and hours of character/world building combined with a 45/30 minute plot-line vs. a movie where you have 1.5/2 hours to have both plot-line and character/world building. So there's that.

However, Abrams pretty much chucks all the world-building and history done in all ST series out the window with this new time-line he's created. As someone who's a major Trekkie, the new Star Trek (first movie) was a disappointment. The pacing felt rushed, and I felt that you really needed to be familiar with ST: TOS to know who all the characters were and where they were and what they were doing, only a bunch of events that had made those characters who they were in the first place were all different, so they aren't the characters I knew (except for old Spock). It felt like Star Trek was trying to be something it wasn't all in order to have a reboot of a series everyone has heard something about. So yeah, it felt like the events could have happened in any sci-fi 'verse instead of only being able to happen in the ST 'verse. In fact, it probably would have been a better movie if it wasn't in the ST 'verse as I wouldn't have had any pre-conceptions about what it was supposed to be like. Okay, I just realized Abrams' ST works better as fan-fiction then as part of the franchise...

Okay... I totally didn't mean to write a mini-rant...

 

[Danseru-kun]

I'm just going to quote Nimoy's take:

Nimoy: I don’t want to speak for JJ [Abrams] and Bob and Alex, they are certainly capable of speaking for themselves. There is no way in the world that a Star Trek film will please every Star Trek follower or fan, no way. And to try to would be a death sentence, you just can’t. You twist yourself into pretzels over ‘what are they going to say about this’…for god’s sake what are people going to say about Uhura and Spock having the relationship they have in this movie? What? I thought it was wonderful and touching and effective.

I saw JJ quoted very recently on fan complaints of the kind you are referring to and what he said was something like "stay home and be angry" so just don’t see the movie, if that is what your life is about and that is the way you want to envision your relationship to Star Trek and the world, fine. This is a movie. It is a movie! You want to go see it — chances are you are going to enjoy yourself if you open your mind to it. If you go to see it to find fault and to point out the things you think are inconsistencies, chances are you won’t have a good time and you would have wasted your time and money so why bother? But if you go to it with an open mind, I think chances are very very good you will see very well made and interesting movie. The characters are all accessible. I think they are all well portrayed by very talented and intelligent actors. I’m impressed with every single one of them. I was shocked to see Winona Ryder so effective as Spock’s mother — I didn’t think it would work, I couldn’t envision her in the role. This really works — that wonderful scene between see and Zachary when he semi-apologizes for negating his human side and asks that she not take it as an insult, is so wonderful. They are both wonderful. I can’t see any reason to worry anymore about the people who are going to say this isn’t right. I am not worried about it.

[FONT=&quot]Actor Leonard Nimoy admitted to shedding a tear or two while watching the new "Star Trek" movie.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Nimoy played the character Spock in the original "Star Trek" series — a half-Vulcan, half-human who usually takes a dispassionate, logical approach to everything. The actor has reprised that role as the older Spock who talks to his younger self in the new movie that opens nationwide on [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Thursday.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"The movie is big, gigantic movie movie, cinematic movie," Nimoy told an audience at this year's FX International Con in Orlando, FL. "But it's also got great heart with the characters."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The new "Star Trek" looks at the origins of the original Starship Enterprise crew, and examines how a young Captain Kirk and Spock first struck up their friendship after a rocky start. Director J.J. Abrams, known for his work on television shows such as "Lost" and "Fringe," had said he wanted to make an accessible mainstream movie that stays faithful to the series.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Nimoy said that he had felt marginalized as waves of new "Star Trek" movies and shows have come and gone, and thought "'It was over for me.'" But Abrams and his writers convinced Nimoy to come back on board by impressing him with their dedication to the original "Star Trek" series.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"I was struck by the intensity of their feelings about the classic Star Trek material that we did," Nimoy noted. "I was very touched by it."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The memories and emotion hit home when the actor finally saw the fully completed movie.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"I gotta tell ya, I cried a lot," Nimoy said. "I did, I sat there and cried a lot watching it."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"Don't tell anybody," he added jokingly to the convention crowd. "It's out of character for me

[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]

http://trekmovie.com/2009/05/04/exclusive-interview-with-leonard-nimoy/
http://www.space.com/6655-leonard-nimoy-cried-watching-star-trek-movie.html

And Roddenbery's

[/FONT]

"I would hope there are bright young people, growing up all the time, who will bring to [Star Trek] levels and areas that were beyond me, and I don't feel jealous about that at all. [...] It'll go on, without any of us, and get better and better and better, because that's the... that really is the human condition. It's to improve and improve." - Gene Roddenberry, The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next,

"There's a good chance that when I'm gone, others will come along and do so well that people will say, 'Oh, that Roddenberry. He was never this good.' But I will be pleased with that statement." - Gene Roddenberry, Los Angeles Times TV Times, article "Star Trek's New Frontier", 1993.

I'm not saying Nimoy's reaction is the correct one or that Abrams definitely made Roddenberry's vision come true, one thing for sure, the new ST films sparked the interest of the public and brought fans like me.

 

[Zee]

Spoiler

My general knowledge of Star Trek is severely lacking a timeline. But what I do know is that either by this point the droids dont exist, or if they do they have already been banned. Theres a reason why Data is pretty much the only droid in all of Star Trek,

i'm not talking about androids, i'm talking about robots. we have robots in the here and now that are specifically built to do things that would be dangerous for people to attempt. shit, the mythbusters team builds robots on a weekly basis to test all sorts of wacky shit (TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE -- okay no i'm sorry)

I think Jim and Bones are intentionally luring the natives to safety

no, i meant in my second point, why was the ship on the planet at all when they can beam down?? did they make some flimsy excuse that i missed because it seemed pointless as hell (esp when even if you couldn't beam down, clearly they have shuttles so??? WHY WAS THE ENTIRE ENTERPRISE THERE?)

^^and here I didn't really like Star Treck untill Roddenberry stopped working on it... DS9 was my favorite...

i'm not even talking about specifically about just TOS (i loved DS9 and Voyager) . but there's always this theme in star trek about philosophy. something outside of just "action that so happens to take place in space" that gave it meaning. or how the series always pretty progressive in terms of casting with women and people of color in commander roles (which, for some reason, we STILL struggle to see in mainstream media with it's sea of white faces -- cough cough, like whitewashing a certain villain in the movies, COUGH).

the problem with the movie is it had a real potential. khan is a warrior thrown into a world that's filled with peaceful explorers except the movies themselves barely give you the impression that they are explorers at all, with a reckless kirk at the helm who just gets into shit when he sneezes. whatever point could have been made was completely lost.

There's a big difference between a TV show where you can have hours and hours of character/world building combined with a 45/30 minute plot-line vs. a movie where you have 1.5/2 hours to have both plot-line and character/world building. So there's that.

yeah, but that's not an excuse. prometheus had fucking phenomenal characters and managed to explore all their individual issues and get you attached to them.

however these movies would have been more tolerable if they were punctuation marks to a series and not made in place of one.

"I would hope there are bright young people, growing up all the time, who will bring to [Star Trek] levels and areas that were beyond me, and I don't feel jealous about that at all. [...] It'll go on, without any of us, and get better and better and better, because that's the... that really is the human condition. It's to improve and improve." - Gene Roddenberry, The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next,

pft, i fuckin' wish, gene.

how's this for improvement: lgbt representation for new!trek the way TOS revolutionized representation for people of color

that's fucking improvement. that's updating the series while staying true to its core.

 

[Geostigma]

i'm not talking about androids, i'm talking about robots. we have robots in the here and now that are specifically built to do things that would be dangerous for people to attempt. shit, the mythbusters team builds robots on a weekly basis to test all sorts of wacky shit (TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE -- okay no i'm sorry)

Actually no. The robots we have here and today are either extremely restricted in regards to space and functionality (think Tony starks pet robot arm things, similar are used in manufacture lines).

Or like in the case of EOD bots extremely finnicky and difficult to use.
We could toss in things like Drones into this conversation but it would borderline semantics.
IIRC Star Trek doesn't use Bots/Droids/What have you in any capacity, it would not make sense for them to toss them into this movie as a 3 minute plot device.

Tl;dr we dont really have robots in this day and age. Most of the true working bots that have been built by mitsubishi are just a gimmick.

 

[Zee]

he robots we have here and today are either extremely restricted in regards to space and functionality

i'm saying if we have robots in use here and now, why don't we have advanced robots in use while we bugger about in space? no one figured this out, really. no one?

IIRC Star Trek doesn't use Bots/Droids/What have you in any capacity, it would not make sense for them to toss them into this movie as a 3 minute plot device.

Spoiler

khan's blood

is also a plot device -- so? plot device is this movie's middle name

 

[Geostigma]

But that device makes sense in the context of the universe were working with. Its staying true to the franchise.

Toss in robots into a franchise that doesnt use them at all makes 0 sense.

 

[ForceStealer]

I don't think she's talking about Rosie of the Jetsons. I think she's talking like a volcano roomba, something I'm sure Star Trek technology could manage.

 

[Lord Noctis]

Thanks I watched a ripped version of the movie that starts off with Kirk and Doc already on the ground I didnt realize there was more to the movie lol.

There isn't really more to the movie. I got that tidbit from the novelisation. The movie does imply it somewhat, but I don't think it was ever outright stated.

 

[Dana Scully]

There are actually robots that exist here and now used to survey volcanoes too active/hot for people to go in, so. Other than CGI scenery porn and spock/uhura angst that scene really had no point. You could argue it set the groundwork for Kirk's character development, but there was no Kirk character development. He ended exactly where he started, displacement of zero.

Not that I really care, because Spock is far more interesting anyways.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Maybe the Enterprise didn't have any of said robots with them? If memory serves it probably would've been too late for them to go back and get some in time to save the natives, because I'm pretty sure I remember it saying somewhere that they discovered the volcano about to erupt only shortly before it actually did.

A contrived coincidence, to be sure, but better than nothing.

And before someone asks "Why don't they just use the replicator", it didn't exist during the timeline of TOS.

If we want to talk about plot holes though, there's the fact that the Eugenics Wars are stated to have taken place 300 years before the chronology of the film, which is set in 2259. So in other words, the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1950s? I find this way more unforgivable than anything anyone else has mentioned.

 

[Danseru-kun]

^

Well the wiki lists the Eugenics War at 1992-1996, it makes sense if you say Khan's crew were born in the 50's, making them indeed 300 year olds in 2259.

 

[Ⓐaron]

I'm pretty sure they said the wars themselves were 300 years before the events of the film, though, not that Khan himself was 300 years old. I'll have to go back and re-watch the film to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that's what I remember them saying.

 

[Geostigma]

I'm pretty sure they said the wars themselves were 300 years before the events of the film, though, not that Khan himself was 300 years old. I'll have to go back and re-watch the film to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that's what I remember them saying.

Well in the episode space seed IIRC Kirk mentions that Khans ship and crew had been in deep sleep for atleast 200 years at that point. If he was 100 by the time the Eugenics war came to a close and they high tailed it off earth it could match up well with the time line

 

[Danseru-kun]

Reviving this the thread for this tidbit. Apparently this scene was planned for the 2009 film but was cut:

Spoiler

SPOCK PRIME
Then I ask that you do yourself a
favor… put away logic, and do what
feels right. The world you’ve inherited
lives in the shadow of incalculable
devastation… but there’s no reason you
must face it alone.

And from around his neck, he removes the PENDANT that
until now, we’ve only caught glimpses of. Places it on
the table beside his younger self. The feeling in his
eyes is profound…

SPOCK PRIME (CONT’D)This was a gift to me. Representing…
a dream. One we were unable to fulfill.
(softly)
The way you can now.

And moves to the door. Stops. Offers the VULCAN SALUTE:

SPOCK PRIME (CONT’D)
As my customary farewell would appear
oddly self serving, I will simply say…
good luck.

Their eyes hold. Spock turns, disappearing into the
corridor. Young Spock stares at the empty doorway a
beat, his mind a jumble of thoughts. Looks to the
pendant… and realizes it’s a HOLO-EMITTER. After
considering a beat, he hits an activation button and a
MOVING HOLOGRAPHIC MESSAGE materializes before him:
CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK. WILLIAM SHATNER. As always,
brash, wry, confident — and SINGING:

KIRK/ SHATNER
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to
you…
(stops, grins)
I know I know, it’s illogical to
celebrate something you had nothing to do
with, but I haven’t had the chance to
congratulate you on your appointment to
the ambassadorship so I thought I’d seize
the occasion… Bravo, Spock — they tell
me your first mission may take you away
for awhile, so I’ll be the first to wish
you luck… and to say…
(beat, emotional)
I miss you, old friend.

… and we’re PUSHING IN on Young Spock, taking in the
image of Kirk’s future self, the message, but above all —
the clear, unquestionable friendship these two men had…

KIRK/SHATNER (V.O.)
I suppose I’d always imagined us…
outgrowing Starfleet together. Watching
life swing us into our Emeritus years…

I look around at the new cadets now and
can’t help thinking… has it really been
so long? Wasn’t it only yesterday we
stepped onto the Enterprise as boys?
That I had to prove to the crew I
deserved command… and their respect?

I know what you’d say — ‘It’s their turn
now, Jim…’ And of course you’re
right… but it got me thinking:

Who’s to say we can’t go one more round?
By the last tally, only twenty five
percent of the galaxy’s been chartered…
I’d call that negligent. Criminal even —
an invitation. You once said being a
starship captain was my first, best
destiny… if that’s true, then yours is
to be by my side. If there’s any true
logic to the universe… we’ll end up on
that bridge again someday.

Stops, grins. Because this is the part he needs to say
most…

KIRK/SHATNER
Admit it, Spock. For people like us, the
journey itself… is home.

I crey, I think this is beautiful and the perfect chance for a Shatner cameo but *sigh*

 

[ForceStealer]

Apparently Shatner didn't want a "cameo," he wanted a role as big as Spock's. Frankly, that seems like more than a cameo to me. A cameo is spotting him in the background somewhere, that's a relevant character moment.

 

[Danseru-kun]

^

Shatner wanted Kirk revived just like in the novels, but the creators think that would shift away the spotlight on the new cast because the movie might be remembered as Kirk rising from the dead. I think they made the right decision, but the deleted hologram scene is so good it's such a waste.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Holy shit. I haven't laughed that hard in a long damn time.



X

 

[Danseru-kun]

I love the extra stuff in the DVD's so far, but why are there no bloopers

Video source: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x142yks_mr-spock-mr-spock_shortfilms#from=embediframe

 

[Carlie]

 

[Danseru-kun]

^

That's is really funny but I'm so sad that a lot dismisses Carol Marcus' contributions just because she had an underwear scene.

 

[Ⓐaron]

This seems like as good a place as any to dump this:

Shatner has been contacted about appearing in the sequel to Into Darkness, and has said he'd love to do it, depending on what they did with the character.

 

[Interslicery]

This seems like as good a place as any to dump this:

Shatner has been contacted about appearing in the sequel to Into Darkness, and has said he'd love to do it, depending on what they did with the character.

Shatner may decide to NOT reprise his role? This isn't the Shatner I know.

 

[Tetsujin]

I have a feeling it's just gonna be unnecessary fanwank.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Simon Pegg is co-writing the new Star Trek film. There's a very important clip in this article that everyone needs to see: http://io9.com/simon-pegg-will-co-write-the-next-star-trek-movie-1681057290



X

 

[Cthulhu]

I like how this thread was aptly named already,

Starting to look like episode umpteenth now, i.e. TV series episode like movie.