Rate the new Star Trek Film

[Rackhir]

Well, I've always preferred TNG to DS9 by a long shot, so there's one person that disagrees. Possibly because I abandoned DS9 by season 3 or 4, but I could never get behind the characters in it.

I find a lot of this sort of preference tends to come down to an "imprinting" effect. IE. what did you encounter first or at the right time in your life.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Season 3 is when it started picking up, and by Season 5 it completely rocked.



Agreed. I think the coolest thing about DS9 is that they were able to develop one large, over-arcing story plot, where they couldn't do that with TNG. They were also able to do a much more in depth look at some of the cultures and such (Bajorans, Cardassians, etc) than TNG, because of the stationary presence of the station.

Though that had the tiny disadvantage of being about Bajorans and Cardassians, not, say Romulans and Vulcans.

I think TNG could have done an over-arcing story plot, but it wasn't the time for that yet. I think series in the past decades slowly moved more towards the long arcs and became less episodic. It might also be what makes it so hard to follow them - and poses a general risk. If you don't like the particular story arc - even if you might like the setting and the characters - the entire series might be disappointing.

Ongoing story arcs could have been stories that actually have been told, but in single episodes or occassional two-parters:
- Return of the Romulan Empire
- Sarek & Spock and the reunion of the Romulan Empire
- The strange crab-like mind control creaturs
- The Borg
- The Klingon Civil War
- The Cardassian-Maquis Conflict
- Q
- Lore (Lore allying with various of the oher forces, with his own plan for a power grab)
- Archeology Hunt (The origin race of the humanoids, the story where Picard was underccover on a Pirate ship)
There would still be plenty of room for singular episodes, but each could have been a longer-running story arc with plenty of detail - and also room to explore the characters.
Heck, Picard and Beverly shouldn't have danced around each other so long, they could have gotten together and learned to live together. "Menage a Troi" with Deanna, Riker and Worf. The friendship between Data and LaForge. Wesley growing into a responsible adult. The trust between Riker and Picard. Data and Yars relationship (and the meaning of her death to him. Of course, if that would have been a major plot, Denise Crosby might not have wanted to leave the show.)

I also think they really missed their chance with Voyager in that regard - it was the perfect show for an ongoing story arc, with episode-to-episode continuty and all. BST:TNS could have happened in the Startrek Universe!

 

[Plane Sailing]

I find a lot of this sort of preference tends to come down to an "imprinting" effect. IE. what did you encounter first or at the right time in your life.

I think one of the biggest issues is that Babylon 5 had started, and showed what could really be done with multiple story arcs. Trek had never done that in the past, and early DS9 wasn't really doing it (at least not well) at the start. It seemed that one of the positive influences of B5 on DS9 was that it kicked their writers up a notch or two in terms of their large-scale story planning.

Even now though I prefer TNG characters to DS9 characters. I prefer Picard to Sisko, I prefer Data to Odo (the 'fish out of water' character, if you will), I prefer Riker to Major Kira. I also disliked episodes where (for example) O'Brien completely disobeyed an order from a superior officer and nothing came of it. Seemed really wrong to me).

Cheers

 

[WhatGravitas]

TNG wasn't bad, either. I think it influenced my moral compass greatly.

Ditto here, as a kid, TNG was great and I kept some ideas from it. But I have to say, DS9 aged much better than TNG. Reruns of DS9 tend to suck me in, TNG... not so much.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Mark]

DS9 ditched exploration in favor of a spiritual element as it's underlying thematic throughline. It was less a show about a string of adventures than an episodic drama. While it was an enjoyable show, it was really a departure from ST norms. Voyager tried to get things back to the norms but was too repetitious, relying on too many of the same old plot devices, and many fans had problems with the casting of the female starship captain. Enterprise was a good attempt to bring things back with an updated feel but broke too many traditions for most long time fans. It appears to me like the new movie is about the best thing since the ended of TNG for the ST franchise.

 

[Rhun]

I think one of the biggest issues is that Babylon 5 had started, and showed what could really be done with multiple story arcs. Trek had never done that in the past, and early DS9 wasn't really doing it (at least not well) at the start. It seemed that one of the positive influences of B5 on DS9 was that it kicked their writers up a notch or two in terms of their large-scale story planning.

I agree with this completely. Of course, the other thing in B5's favor is that what, like 95% of the episodes were all written by J. Michael Straczynski. This made the overall story much more fluid.

Even now though I prefer TNG characters to DS9 characters. I prefer Picard to Sisko, I prefer Data to Odo (the 'fish out of water' character, if you will), I prefer Riker to Major Kira. I also disliked episodes where (for example) O'Brien completely disobeyed an order from a superior officer and nothing came of it. Seemed really wrong to me).

I liked both Sisko and Picard. Completely different types of captains. I think this is best illustrated when Siso punches Q. "You hit me. Captain Picard never hit me."

I agree with you on the O'Brien thing though, even though I liked O'Brien as a character. Plus, later epsisodes of DS9 had a lot more Worf. And who doesn't like Worf?

 

[Darth Shoju]

I agree with this completely. Of course, the other thing in B5's favor is that what, like 95% of the episodes were all written by J. Michael Straczynski. This made the overall story much more fluid.



I liked both Sisko and Picard. Completely different types of captains. I think this is best illustrated when Siso punches Q. "You hit me. Captain Picard never hit me."

I agree with you on the O'Brien thing though, even though I liked O'Brien as a character. Plus, later epsisodes of DS9 had a lot more Worf. And who doesn't like Worf?

IMO Worf was at his best on DS9 (though he had his moments on TNG, too). And Miles O'Brien is my favourite DS9 character. I love the episode where he infiltrates the criminal organisation.

I'm also a huge B5 fan, which I guess made me an easy mark for DS9.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I didn't catch the Admiral Archer reference.

And Porthos!

 

[Orius]

Average.

Where to begin?

Overall, the movie itself wasn't too bad, and was better than I was expecting. Yeah, there's the whole alternate reality thing throwing a massive (insert technobabble term of your choice here) into the shreds of Trek's continuity, but then there've been so many alternate universes in Trek now that what's one more? I already knew that this was supposed to be an alternate timeline so I was buffered for the shock.

And they were really going for shock here. I mean

Spoiler

destroying VULCAN?!

. It's like Orci and Kurtzman looked at the previous movies and said, "They killed Spock in II, blew up the Enterprise in III, killed Kirk and destroyed the Enterprise-D in Generations, and killed Data in Nemesis; how can we top that?" Top that they did. If I were a Trekkie with less of a life I might have actually been pissed, but Trek's been messed up so many times that I was able to shrug it off. I guess I have to credit Voyager and Enterprise for that. I was surprised there was no reset button at the end, but then this wasn't a Voyager episode. So now we have three major Trek timelines: the Prime line, this timeline and the Mirror Universe; as well as a dozen or so minor timelines from various episodes like "All Good Things..." "The Visitor", "Year of Hell 1&2", and "Twilight". I need a drink; anyone have some Romulan ale?

It's a shame too about

Spoiler

Romulus getting blown up too (and according to the timeline this happens approximately 8 years after Nemesis), because the Romulans kick ass.

If the franchise returns to after the TNG, I want the Romulans to still be around and causing trouble.

And of course technically, they shouldn't really know that Vulcans and Romulans are related too, because of "Balance of Terror", but then this is an alternate universe. Of course it gets even weirder when this movie has a Stardate of 2258.42 where "Balance of Terror" is 1709.2, so make of that what you want. Of course TOS startdates aren't really consistant anyway, and the movie's stardate also coincides with the year, which might have been the intent.

So while there's a lot of really picky things to snark about, why bother? It's another timeline, so what's the point? The thing is the whole alternate timeline thing kind of messes with the good stuff in the movie, which is a shame. Did the cool stuff happen in the Prime timeline too? That's the big question, I'll just assume everything I like happens in both.

And there is stuff to like. According to Memory Alpha Orci's a long time Trek fan, and it shows a bit here. There's a lot of nods to what we know about the original crew here, so I give him credit for that.

First he deserves credit for really building up Uhura's character here. Seriously, of all the original crew members, she had absolutely the least development. They finally gave her a first name; Nyota had been floating around non-canon stuff for quite a while, and they finally canonized it here. I wonder if her refusal to tell Kirk her name was a dig at the fact that she didn't have an official first name until the movie? Though I find it ridiculous that she's supposed to be an expert on xenolinguistics, yet had to drag a big-ass Klingon dictionary on the the bridge for an inane joke in Undiscovered Country (though that was always a stupid scene).

I liked the scenes from Spock's childhood as well, but then I was always a Spock fan. Vulcan bullies are so....Vulcan. The young Spock is done very well here, which is probably why Nimoy agreed to the cameo. It's amusing that Spock was the one who programmed the Kobayshi Maru simulation the Kirk ends up cheating at. Especially given simulation's part in the story in Wrath of Khan: Kirk cheated at it, and so didn't face the no-win situation until Spock gave his life to save the Enterprise.

Uhura and Spock?! What the heck?

Kirk does seem to be played up a bit too much of a punk here at times (look how cocky he is during the Kobayashi Maru simulation!). He was still fun to watch though.

So yeah, for me it was kind of a typical summer action film. And while there were parts I enjoyed, the whole alternate universe stuff makes it harder for me to really care about it. It did dodge the odd-Trek rule though.

 

[Orius]

Yeah, a ship crewed mostly by cadets, how lame! Wait, are we talking about the new Star Trek movie or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn?

The biggest difference here is that in this movie the Enterprise is new, while in Khan, it's old and ready to be retired; it's used for training because Kirk's using privledge as an admiral.

[*]Admiral Archer? Next movie, I want a Sam Becket cameo.

Admiral Archer's prized beagle. I can't believe I missed that. Though I wonder, since this is a little over 100 years after Enterprise, so maybe Archer had a son or grandson in Starfleet who was important?

[*]We have a good explanation of why Spock joined Starfleet.

Yeah, the whole scene with the Vulcan Science Academy is something that I'd like to see in the main timeline.

Actually, that is a huge continuity nod showing they have really done their research. The idea that McCoy joined Starfleet after a bad divorce was originally though up during the original production run in the '60's. The episode was going to be about McCoy meeting his estranged daughter who had fallen in with a disreputable crowd. The episode was rewritten, losing this subplot and eventually became "The Way to Eden". They had never had the opportunity to mention it, but that was the actual original idea for his backstory.

Yeah, I think the whole "she took the whole damn planet!" in the divorce was pretty good. Another part from the movie that would be great in the main timeline.

And I MUST have that image of Enterprise in front of Saturn as my desktop background soon. Please, please, Paramount? I heart starship pr0n.

Best shot in the film.

FWIW, if I were full-on rebooting Star Trek, rather than kicking off an alternate timeline ~25 years pre-TOS, I'd ditch the transporter. It's too easy to forget that you can do certain things if you've got it.

They were already starting to use the transporter regularly in Enterprise at least for emergencies, and that was 100 years before this movie.

I really liked this move - really does any other movie attempt stand up to it except for KHAN?

Yes. Khan, First Contact, and Undiscovered Country do rank above this one. Perhaps Search for Spock and maybe Voyage Home. It is better than TMP, Final Frontier, Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis.

I'll assume perfecting Transwarp beaming was something Montgomery Scott did after he was rescued and set loose into the 2370's, guess he didn't retire after all. Since the year Future-Spock came from was 2387, and we hadn't seen much of that far into the 24th century (Voyager came home in 2378, Nemesis was set in 2379, so we haven't seen a thing of what has happened in the last 8 years or so, Scotty might have really revolutionized Transporting instead of retiring). Given the load of Future-Tech and Borg Tech that Voyager came home with, they could have had a sizable jump in technology especially with the Transwarp technology Voyager used to get home and the super-long distance subspace communications Lt. Barclay invented to communicate with Voyager during the Pathfinder Project.

That's an excellent idea, but the whole transwarp beaming sounded like the usual Trek tech of the week. Again.

I still haven't caught the tribble.

There was a Tribble? Damn, missed that.

I did catch one joke; the Romulan ship destroyed 47 Klingon vessels. There's our favorite random odd number again!