back to article Star Trek film theory: 50 years, 13 films, odds good, evens bad? Horta puckey!

So how many Star Trek fans does it take to change a lightbulb? As long as there are two, four, six or eight of them, it doesn’t matter. But you can forget about decent illumination if there are one, three, five, seven or nine of them. Thirteen episodes in - and 50 years ago on Thursday after the original series that spawned …

  1. Smallbrainfield

    TMP

    For all it's plodding pace, you can't fault the performances. Nimoy is spot on in this film. The first time Kirk, McCoy and Spock meet, there's a point where he totally blanks McCoy's jibe ("Well it's lucky for you we're heading that way") that makes me laugh every time I watch. Also ("You haven't changed a bit, you're still as warm and sociable as ever." "Nor have you, doctor, as your continued predilection for irrelevancy demonstrates".)

    Lots of great moments for Shatner as well, like Kirk getting lost on his own ship, pushing the crew too far and generally being a tool just to get his command back.

    1. Stevie

      Re: TMP

      So the fact that the entire movie was a retelling of an episode screened years before isn't a massive strike against it?

      Was for me "in the day".

      The second movie took an episode and developed the idea. Better in every way, down to the wardrobe department, though the TMP score comes close to the one for WoK for brillance.

      1. Smallbrainfield

        Re: TMP

        TMP score hands down for me. It gave us the blaster beam!

        Wardrobe trivia, one thing the cast insisted on for WOK was a new uniform. The TMP uniforms were uncomfortable in the extreme, (a mistake repeated for the first few seasons of TNG).

  2. TheProf
    Facepalm

    J.J. Abrams

    Now we have Star Trek that destroys San Francisco by smashing a starship onto it and no-one seems the least bit perturbed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: J.J. Abrams

      Jar Jar Adams was tasked to turn Star Trek into a Star Wars clone for profitability.

      Probably it's too hard to make money from a true ST movie today - and I'm afraid it's even difficult to find a decent script for it. It's some time SF moved a lot towards fantasy - people only wants monsters, blood-drinking aliens, etc. etc. Even in First Contact Borgs were turned into some kind of vampires (it was different in the TV episodes - assimilation could took time). And they were turned from a "distributed" society - and mind -, a "collective" without a single "chief" (which led to many question how you could deal - or combat - with such a society), to a bee-like structure with a "queen" (actresses in latex always look good on the screen....)

      Movies who could make you discover the monsters could be us are not welcome.

      1. TrevML

        Re: J.J. Abrams

        'Jar Jar Abrams'.

        Just brilliant.

      2. breakfast Silver badge

        Re: J.J. Abrams

        As far as I can tell, running about, shouting and big spectacular explosions are easy to sell internationally in a way that more thoughtful or considered film making seldom is. They save a lot on translation.

      3. tony72

        Re: J.J. Abrams

        @LDS - to be fair, they were right about the Borg queen. Talk about a weird boner.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: J.J. Abrams

          @tony72: IMHO it made "First Contact" too much alike a mix of "Alien" (a good film itself, but not ST) and a zombie/vampire movies (which I was never interested in, frankly).

          The battle between two "mothers" fighting to protect their "offspring" in Alien was brilliant. Copying it in ST was lame, dull, and "already seen".

          I hoped for something far more innovative about the Borgs - which were themselves quite innovative, and explored a new kind of civilization that took a far different direction than the hierarchical ones we are used. In some ways, it explored about how an actual truly "communist" society could have evolved if humans weren't strongly oriented towards hierarchies, despite whatever ideology they use to achieve power over others. Including in it the cyber element - and the truly "galaxy wide web" that connects and drives the drones - was brilliant, and the Internet was still in its infancy then. How many people truly assimilated by some Internet "power" we see today?

          IMHO later writers really wasted that brilliant idea and turned them just into another space monster that eats/zombies/possesses you. And which needs a sexy leader of a mass of zombies, not an efficient cyborg part of a larger community.

          But after all the latest seasons of TNG, and the movies even more so, forgot the "team based coopearative" environment of the Enterprise D, and focused too much on Picard and Data alone.

          The issue is bad writers can't work with many characters and a more complex plot - they need the simple, archetypal plot based on the Hero, his Companion, and the Evil One (and throw in some sexy woman whenever you can). Ok, it worked for Gilgamesh, but I now expect something more...

  3. dickiedyce

    ? Caption error ?

    I think Chewbacca has the mustache, not Spock. No, wait...

    1. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: ? Caption error ?

      Evil Spock does have a goatee though.

      1. dickiedyce
        Coat

        Re: ? Caption error ?

        ;-) That was kind of my point. Oh well...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rubbish

    The low budget, bargain basement BBC series Blake's 7 puts both Trek and Wars to shame.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Rubbish

      Are you sure?

      I went back and watched some when it was released on DVD. The special effects were shit, as I expected, but so were the scripts. Not sure the acting was up to much either, but its unfair to blame them without good dialogue. I've seen a few old Dr Who episodes as well, even the ones like 'City of Death' that are supposed to be great really just didn't work for me. Ignoring the budget, it was the dialogue.

      I was listening to a radio adaptation of Blake's 7 recently (Big Finish Productions?), and it benefited from not needing a budget for visuals, but also from a decent script. Which really showed off the good ideas the show had - complicated characters with different motivations.

      Is the moment to mention Servalan and the S&M costumes?

    2. Danny 14

      Re: Rubbish

      the list is almost endless. I enjoyed Babylon 5 for all its "tvness" and rewatched it relatively recently. I didn't rate season 5 but the main story arc was good. the new BSG was OK but got a bit silly in the story towards the end. Initially was good though.

      ST original was good at the time because it was new, plus all my mates at school watched it too. SW was a cinematic excellence from a time when we went to the cinema once a year if we were lucky. It also became a staple of new years viewing for many years.

      1. Shmako

        Re: Rubbish

        B5 suffered throughout its run of being under constant threat of cancellation. With the threat looking very real at the end of season 4, JMS (J Michael Straczynski, series creator and main writer) collapsed the end of the story which would have taken place in season 5 down into season 4, ergo season 4 deals with the end of the Shadows storyline then immediately jumps to resolving the Earth/Clark storyline. The final episode was shot and the entire B5 story was wrapped up neatly if not a little hurriedly.

        Then season 5 got greenlit.

        Cue relatively minor plot threads being expanded hugely to fill the void (Teep war), stories for character A being awkwardly transplanted to character B, to the detriment of the story, due to cast changes (Claudia Christian leaving over contract renewal disputes) and obvious filler episodes to replace already resolved Arc episodes (Penn & Teller anyone?).

        Seasons 4 & 5 would have been much more balanced in terms of carrying and resolving the overall story if the production would have gotten HBO style multi-year commitments. That the show was made and then completed to the standard it was against network indifference, production troubles & budgets and cast changes is a minor miracle. Serialised story telling with a beginning, middle and end and with characters that change over the course of the telling that B5 attempted hadn't really been done on US TV before outside of mini-series.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Rubbish

          Yeah, B5 was a real shame. I've re-watched it - bought cheap on DVD. Off-topic it has my favourite Amazon review ever. Season 4 (the best) gets only one star from a reviewer, because the box is a different shape than seasons 1-3 and 5, and therefore doesn't match on his DVD shelves!

          Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

          Anyway Season 1 is OK, but has many flaws - and on re-watching it, there are whole episodes that are just sub Star Trek, some funny bumpy-headed aliens turn up and are weird. Then go away / make peace / get shot. Though it is clever how some of these are set-ups for stuff that'll happen in later seasons. I re-watched it, and basically watched about half of season one, and none of season 5.

          CGI being expensive, you also notice how in Season 1 they shoot "cargo ship going into docking bay" and then re-use that shot repeatedly throughout the whole series. Intercut with other stuff. Thunderbirds did the same, to save on costs. Later series had better budgets. Despite its many flaws, it's still good fun telly. A real shame the network screwed up as described though.

          The remake of Galactica was brilliant. The first season is one of the best single series of TV I've ever seen. It does so well to avoid lots of cliche, and doesn't stray into melodrama. Season 2 didn't avoid cliche or melodrama, and I got about 6 episodes into Season 3 and gave up in disgust. I don't believe I made the wrong decision, from what I've heard about how it ends.

          Blakes 7 has some great ideas, and could stand a remake, with some budget.

          Having been rude about Star Trek, I'm sort of re-assessing it. Watched a bunch of the originals, digitally remastered, and they're not as bad as I remember. Some are just cheap, turn-up meet bumpy headed aliens then Kirk either kisses or kill them. But a lot more than I remember have some interesting ideas. I never got on with TNG because it was too New Age-y (having a psychic/empathic counsellor on the bridge) - and too episodic. I do like a story arc. But that had good episodes too.

          Although I think my "perfect" TV sci-fi episode of all time has to be 'Out of Gas' from Firefly.

  5. Dan 55 Silver badge

    No sir, don't like it

    They way Kirk went in Generations was pretty bobbins. Also the TNG films slowly turned into space opera but the crew were getting on a bit and weren't really able to charge about.

    Now that problem's solved with the new crew in the reboot, it's all space opera all the time to get the money in. Next year's series will have to work a miracle if it wants to keep the Trekkies on side.

    1. Graphsboy

      Re: No sir, don't like it

      Kirk never actually died. In the movie, Scotty was the last one to see him before he got torn from the ship and transported into the ribbon. Later, in a TV episode of The Next Generation, Picard and the crew discover a ship that's crash-landed on a planet. No-one is in the ship but they discover a pattern in the transport buffer. When they re-energise, Scotty appears having taken the drastic step of hiding in a transport stream to survive the crash. His first words to his rescuers are "Did Jim Kirk send you?". This implies that at some point, between the movie and that episode, he had seen Kirk alive.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge
    2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: No sir, don't like it

      By chance, Generations was on TV here last night. Those fight scenes between the ageing McDowell, Shatner and Stewart, hah!

  6. Blake St. Claire

    Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

    Of the first six, numbers two, four, and six are good; one, three, and five suck balls. Yes, three really does suck; not as much as one and five, but it sucks none the less. The TNG movies are all okay. The reboots are fine too.

    And I believe you're confused about which is the Flash Gordon rehash. I've seen at least one of the old Flash Gordon flicks that even had the opening scroll. TOS is just "Wagon Train" (a 50s cowboy American TV series) in space.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

      IMHO ST V was a good movie. I understand why many people didn't like it.

      It is about blind faith in religions - promising fake relief from troubles. And everybody but Kirk falls into those fake promises.

      Just, it turns everything is not only fake, but also very, very dangerous.

      I like very much when Kirk questions why "god" needs a spaceship. It's a strong assertion of individuality, of reason against faith, of never trusting ideas blindly, but always questioning.

      It's like the emperor's new clothes fable. Use always your brain, never someone's else. And don't be afraid of it.

      That's why ST V needs to be crushed... it's dangerous.

      PS: the reboots just share the ST name - if Roddenberry was alive we would have never saw them.

      1. Alan W. Rateliff, II
        Terminator

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        I award an up-vote with one minor change: while religion is easier to identify and explicitly takes center-stage, the danger to which ST:V alludes is blind faith in, and obedience to, any idea or idealism.

        We live in a period now in which we are experiencing the re-emergence of a number of Great Ideas which have failed spectacularly in recorded human past, underlined and with an exclamation mark at the end, usually at an incredible cost of human lives. The very fact and fabric of history does not, however, stop the uninformed, willfully or otherwise, "enlightened" ones from forging forth, progressing head-strong and hell-bent that they can do it better than those masterminds who failed before them. You see, history begins today with this new breed of mastermind.

        Those who point out the failures, repetitions, and marked similarity to the past are ridiculed, demonized, and minimized. The ones who speak the loudest and often the most clear are washed over with comparisons to the very events and people about which they warn occurring again. The ones who truly question the prevailing authority are admonished as being closed-minded, bigoted, and insensitive; sore losers who will not accept the direction in which the herd is turning and moving at ramming speed.

        Question everything, damn it.

    2. Shmako

      Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

      Bullpuckies. ST:TMP is an over extended episode but at least attempts to tell a science fiction story. Wrath of Kahn is fine, granted. Search for Spock isn't bad, even though it turns reintroducing a dead character into a 2 hour film.

      Voyage Home hasn't stood the test of time at all. The plot is the worst kind of eco bollocks going, with the tilt towards humour strained and forced. "It's funny because they don't know how 1980s tech and culture work!". Final Frontier is just awful with little to nothing to redeem it. Undiscovered Country for my money is the best of the original cast films; acknowledges their age and has them questioning their relevancy, together with a plot that deals with concepts more than spectacle.

      So, we've got one decent science fiction film that sorta works as a trek film, two bona fide good films (II & IV) and bobbins for the rest.

      Generations just plain doesn't work. The plot around the Nexus is awful (see RedLetterMedia's considered, snarky takedown on YouTube) and exists solely as an exercise to have Kirk and Picard interact. The trash the Enterprise again is straight out of Search for Spock, leaving aside the nitpicking around shield rotation frequencies the characters had already solved in TV TNG.

      First Contact appears fine but makes the mistake of taking a well defined hive mind, decentralised enemy and giving it a focal point/weakness: the Borg Queen. cf Davros in WHo for what happens next. The previous implacable enemy become a bunch of hapless stooges around a shrieking figurehead.

      Insurrection was awful if for no other reasons than the observation planet of youth making female crew members boobs firmer. Seriously? The worst kind of pandering to the 7 of 9 fancying demographic. If TNG was the best embodiment of Rodenberry's vision then Insurrection was that vision subverted by morons.

      Nemesis I saw at the cinema and aside from yet ANOTHER Enterprise destruction I couldn't tell you a damned thing about the film. It utterly failed to register.

      Aside from DS9 which got better as it went along, everything that came afterwards was just terrible. Voyager had a great over-arching premise; far from home, few resources, no Starfleet/support infrastructure and intra-crew hostilities. All established in the opening episode, all ignored immediately thereafter. The so-far-away-from-home crew ran into more familiar faces than they would have back home, had no end of magic resource/shuttlecraft replacements and payed no attention to the dramatic potential of its overall premise. The episodes in the main were either warmed over TNG, or at worst were Brannon Braga spatial anomaly of the week where Yesterday's Enterprise was written to the tune of diminishing returns every time. Add in Daisy Duke/Heather Locklear/7 of 9 and I soon checked out. The BSG reboot took the premise of Voyager and then actually made something of it, albeit in a grimdark way that wouldn't have been Trek.

      Enterprise was even worse. I never got past the pilot. Characters lubing each other up, THAT theme song and more ignoring your own premise - humanity's first trip outside of the solar system evokes absolutely no wonder or sense of occasion, instead becoming a FedEx run to deliver a Klingon back home - and all hope was lost for me.

      Paramount/Abrams can do whatever they like with Trek as far as I'm concerned. Braga & Berman flushed the Trek premise around the U bend once DS9 went it's own way under separate stewardship, pandering to the worst aspects of its own fandom.

      Apologies for the rant, but none of the TNG films are actually any good or are particularly consistent with the TV series that spawned them, either tonally or premise wise.

      1. dickiedyce

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        Yes, although VI is helped by the fact that Bill Shakespeare wrote some of the one liners...

      2. Ben 47

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        "humanity's first trip outside of the solar system evokes absolutely no wonder or sense of occasion, instead becoming a FedEx run to deliver a Klingon back home - and all hope was lost for me."

        Although I don't disagree that there a faults with the pilot, it wasn't the first trip. Enterprise was the first Warp 5 vessel, but in-universe there had been plenty of Earth vessels already out there.

        It's even mentioned in the pilot where Travis Mayweather (helmsman) grew up on a cargo ship that would take months and years to travel between local systems due to it's low warp capability.

        So it does make sense that, to a point, it wasn't a big deal.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          It's even mentioned in the pilot where Travis Mayweather

          Yes, and they absolutely didn't use that character as one of the more seasoned one in deep space travels aboard, they made it quite dull. Just like the language expert, most used as command deck tapestry.

          Anyway being the first warp 5 vessel *did* give him the capabilities to travel farther and to new destinations than cargo ships.

        2. Shmako

          Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

          @Ben47

          "Although I don't disagree that there a faults with the pilot, it wasn't the first trip. Enterprise was the first Warp 5 vessel, but in-universe there had been plenty of Earth vessels already out there.

          It's even mentioned in the pilot where Travis Mayweather (helmsman) grew up on a cargo ship that would take months and years to travel between local systems due to it's low warp capability.

          So it does make sense that, to a point, it wasn't a big deal."

          I stand corrected on the details. The fact remains that the entire plot was exercised in the most perfunctory, another day at the office manner. The series was pitched on the basis that the common technological conveniences of the earlier/later in the timeline series were not available to the new crew and so would give rise to new stories that later technological progression would rule out of TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY. Instead we got EXACTLY the same stories that had been told over and over again in the earlier series.

          I'll defer to your superior understanding. I've never gone back and rewatched the pilot and never saw any subsequent episodes through series cancellation. I have happily gone back and rewatched TOS/TNG/DS9 episodes though, many of which still stand up beautifully.

      3. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        Voyager had a two-parter, The Year of Hell, which went back over the lost, no resources, no backup, crew rivalries thing and is what the series could have been. And then at the end of the two episodes everything was shiney and new again.

        1. Paul Westerman
          Thumb Up

          Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

          Great episode!

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        PENDANT ALERT!!

        Ré Enterprise, it wasnt the first trip for humans, it was the first trip for a "Warp 5 Engined ship"; there were already plenty of Warp 1 and 2 ships plodding about.

        The rest of it I kind of agree with, especially Voyager logistics, it would have needed a ship five times the size JUST to break down to make all the shuttles they got through; not to mention the HUNDREDS of photon torpedoes they fired from their limited arsenal of a few dozen (ref first episode).

        Having said that, I liked both Voyager and Enterprise, Voyager regularly got a bit too touchy feely at times, and Enterprise crew members got a bit blasé at times, but in general they both managed to keep me watching - AND they managed to get in more than a few space battles to please the little trousered viewers*.

        Although I thought the alien Nazis were a bit too far out, but, hey, if you are going to mess with the time lines - do it in style!!!

        Overall, despite its weaknesses ST has always fostered my "sense of wonder".

        Ian, age 51 & 3/4s

        * That's little trousered as in "Little things please little minds, little trousers fit little behinds".

        PS, 7 of 9?? Ensign Saito always got me hot under the collar.

      5. Red Bren

        @Shmako Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        The 2nd worst crime (after the theme tune with vocals) was the introduction of alien races that never appeared in TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY, while established races barely got s look in

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

      Correct, according to his biographer, ST was pitched as "Wagon Train" in the stars and various historical documents say SW was written because they couldnt get the rights to Flash Gordon.

      Paris - in Latex of course!!

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Evens good, odds bad only applies to the first six

        various historical documents say SW was written because they couldnt get the rights to Flash Gordon.

        - SW seems to bear a striking resemblance to E E 'Doc Smiths Lensman....

        - Late 60's, ST was up against a lot of Westerns, the networks were cagey about anything that wasn't a western, thinking the audience only wanted Westerns (much the same as today and slab/slate type mobile phones - to pick a chip off my shoulder as example).

  7. wolfetone Silver badge

    I have a fear I am in the minority here, but I think Star Trek peaked with The Next Generation. I couldn't relate to Kirk and the original Star Trek films - I apologise if that offends anyone - but I much prefer the 1990's Star Trek takes to whatever went before or after it.

    This goes for the new Star Trek films too, I can't get in to them. And when a Star Trek film is advertised as having a song from Rhianna in it, you have a feeling that the film isn't meant for you. Rather its meant for the yoof who have short attention spans yet are adamant vinyl is the best music medium yet spend all their time listening to Spotify, think all photos should look vintage yet take all their photos with Instagram.

    You get the idea.

  8. Alex Trenchard

    The best Star Trek film is Galaxy Quest

    See title.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge
      Coat

      Fool

      It's obviously Lost In Space.

      1. chivo243 Silver badge

        Re: Fool

        Do I smell "Danger, Will Robinson?"

    2. salamamba too

      Re: The best Star Trek film is Galaxy Quest

      I agree, but I also remember seeing TMP at the cinema - the intro was a deliberate attempt to outdo the starwars intro. Instead of the large star destroyer passing overhead, you zoom out on the star ship to show its size, then pan and and see how small it is compared to the stardock.

      p.s. for a more literal parody of ST, can I suggest Wilful Child, by Steven Erikson

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    I agree that Galaxy Quest was the best Star Trek film

    Wrath of Khan was pretty good, but Galaxy Quest actually made you cheer for people discovering that the heroes they played on TV were the better part of themselves. Plus it skewered just about every Trek:TOS standby.

    And yes, I grew up during the 70s, watching TOS on TV every afternoon. It was and is gloriously cheesey, with some thoughtful moments mixed in.

  10. Paul Westerman
    Thumb Up

    Well, I pretty much love all of it

    You miserable lot, I can happily sit through any of the films or episodes. Surprised there's no love for Voyager, I thought Janeway, the Doc and Tuvok were excellent and there were some great episodes in the classic ST vein. I can't be doing with the new films (despite a very good Spock), I thought the Kahn one was terrible and I haven't bothered with the third one.

    1. DropBear

      Re: Well, I pretty much love all of it

      Right there with you, except I haven't even bothered with the second. Oh, and even though I could never really warm up to "Enterprise", I enjoyed their Doc quite a lot - the episode that has him happy to have the ship for himself for a few days only to end up literally on the edge of going nuts alone by the end of it is still one of my favourites... :)

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Well, I pretty much love all of it

        The Doc was the best character in Enterprise - they really missed out on not using him more,

        In TOS, Spock was the character outside of humanity for the viewpoint, in STNG it was Data, in Voyager, the Doctor, in DS9, Quark and/or Odo. It was not the Vulcan in Enterprise, she quickly became more involved with her own pain to have a dispassionate viewpoint of what humans are like, their flaws, and potential. For me, this was what Trek is about, asking questions about what will we be when we go to the stars and meet other species, will we be human in all that we envision that to be, or something else.

        Best Enterprise episode still has got to be the Mirror double episode. Those who have avoided Enterprise aught to at least watch those.

    2. redneck

      Re: Well, I pretty much love all of it

      The episodes provided some good lines, as well, such as "Do you want me to manufacture a lie?"

    3. Alan W. Rateliff, II

      Re: Well, I pretty much love all of it

      I am /almost/ there with you. I just could not stomach DS9 after a couple of seasons. I recall watching an episode every so often in the beginning and leaving it having my curiosity stimulated, but later I found I could not make it more than a few minutes in and DS9 became one of those things which you have on TV because nothing else is on and you really are not watching. I very much enjoyed Voyager, though I found Kes more interesting than 7-of-9. I grew up in the decade after you, and I wonder if, like me, anyone else carries fond memories of the animated series.

      I had the benefit of seeing both TMP and SW as a youngin', when my imagination was soaring and easily carried me away. I remember distinctly different feelings while watching and after having watched each of them, as well as the movies which followed. Star Wars gave me many hours of play time and I was fortunate enough to own much of the toy collection to play out the good-versus-evil, black/gray/white hat Jedi concepts. Star Trek, on the other hand, was something to which I related when my wanderlust took hold, when I would contemplate travels to new places, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial, meeting new people. That may be because of TAS and TNG, which seem to be more about new encounter than the movies.

      With Star Trek I can relate to getting away from Earth. There are places in the ST universe to go in relation to home. SW is a completely different, unrelatable* universe. One appeals to me more than the other. Anyway, I am sure comparisons between the two have been hashed to death.

      * red squigglies, I really thought that was a word.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good movies, but...

    When I was a kid I never really liked the Star Trek movies even though I loved the series. And the reason for that was quite simple: it was all different! Different uniforms, different settings, the actors looked different (or so I thought)...

    And that problem manifested itself in many movies which were based on television series. Heck, it was one of the things I immediately liked about the Transformers movie (no, not that modern nonsense, I'm talking about the 80's animated movie): the intro music did honor to the original. It was different, sure, but you could at least recognize the opening theme in it. And the same more or less applied to the settings of the movie itself (Cybertron, Metroplex, etc.) and the figures in it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good movies, but...

      I was happy the movie didn't use the TOS theme music.... is probably one of the very few things I hate about it. Ok, it was Desilu producing the show... but please, not that music... the intro is ok, then it becomes a '60s comedy show music.... Jerry Goldsmith's one is far better.

  12. FuzzyWuzzys

    I liked both SW and ST, even as a kid I liked both. Growing up as a teenager and finding a girlfriend ( now my wife!) who was into sci-fi was a geek's dream, we both spent way too much time and money in Forbidden Planet. Personally I loved all the variances of the ST TV stuff. I especially liked DS9, I found the long, drawn out story lines far easier to consume over several years. DS9 is ST with religous/political diarhea, I know! We'd await the arrival of each VHS release in the post and spend Sunday morning watching the new episodes and then the afternoon digesting the info while we raised FP one more time, ha ha!

    I digress....I must admit that as a kid of 9 years old when ST:MP came out SW was still pretty much on my mate's minds and as kids we'd often play out SW stories in the playground than the more cerebral ST stories ( being 5'4" when I was 9 meant I always had to play Chewie or Vader, even IG88 on one occaission! ) but now as an adult I much prefer the early SW movies, their dogged determination to explore ideas being of more interest than the whizz-bang SW franchise, which I still love but just not in the same way. Now that's all gone to pot with "Jar Jar" Abbrams, the studio's bitch, doing what he's told to when it comes to making the latest films!

  13. John70

    Star Trek: Discovery

    Then you have Star Trek: Discovery where the ship looks like a cross between NX Class Starship and a Klingon D7 Battlecrusier.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGsuM31IC-Q

  14. Mage Silver badge

    Close Encounters of the Third Kind

    "Close Encounters of the Third Kind showed that more cerebral SciFi had a market"

    Barely SF and certainly not cerebral. Just popular UFO tropes.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The bullsh@t of space

    Sci Fi fans always say 'I only watched the first one or two etc etc' but we all know they will devour anything and everything with a spaceship or monsters in it and get the raving hump if nothing weird or spacey happens in a movie or it all turns out to be a hoax.

    1. Alan W. Rateliff, II
      Mushroom

      Re: The bullsh@t of space

      This is bait. Begone, troll.

  16. RockBurner

    Flash Gordon?

    Quote: Star Wars is basically Flash Gordon - captiv

    Quote: Star Trek is basically Flash Gordon – except a bit more "intellectual"

    Your cake, sir?

  17. not.known@this.address
    Alien

    Science fiction <> Space Opera

    Star Trek used to (seem to) take great pride in using science or characters to solve problems rather than having some technobabble bull**** save the day like most of modern science fiction seems to do.

    Until Geordie LaFraud and Wesley Crush'im came along and changed what had been a pleasant break from the "let's just do bigger and bigger explosions" type of tv shows and films so beloved by the studios into an exercise in how many ways can they spell "deux ex machina" - even when it meant invalidating half the crap they had come up with in the previous episode.

    Obligatory IT reference: Users who seem to think all computers should behave the way they do in "movies" and don't understand why you can't just walk into the server room and "modulate the heterodyner with the frangible network consmogulizer" and restore the document they saved to their Desktop "because it saved time"...

  18. Stevie

    Bah!

    A) The rule was coined when there were only ST:TOS movies in the wild, and only five of them.

    2) The rule was worded "even numbered Star Trek movies don't suck".

    When viewed within the correct historical context, the rule works just fine.

  19. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

    liked them all up to but not including Enterprise

    What galled me about ST:Enterprise was the total disregard for "history." There were plenty of times where ST:E strayed from established "canon" and usually not, in my opinion, for good reason.

    The ONE thing positive I can say about the recent films of JarJar Abrams (thank you for that, LDS!) is that Abrams made it very clear his films were a different timeline and that everything else previously DID in fact occur, albeit in a different reality. Using the two Spocks to differentiate one from the other was a well conceived and executed attempt to placate long time fans who don't like rewriting existing stories. That being said, his "Re-wrath of Khan" story blows chunks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Abrams made it very clear his films were a different timeline

      Which is something I believe he copied from Japaneses.... many anime did it before to reuse some successful characters (and I guess manga also). Then some US comics followed.

      But there was really no need to "reboot" ST such a way - there was ample space for new stories - it just demonstrates the lack of new ideas in Hollywood, and the desperate need of suck out as much money as possible from old ones, tailoring them for the pokemon generation.

      1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

        Re: Abrams made it very clear his films were a different timeline

        "But there was really no need to "reboot" ST such a way - there was ample space for new stories - it just demonstrates the lack of new ideas in Hollywood"

        100% agreement from me. I was merely pointing out that at least Abrams acknowledged that's what he was doing and clearly pointed that out inside the story.

      2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: Abrams made it very clear his films were a different timeline

        Pokémon generation? Those who were kids/teenagers in the mid-1990ies are well into their 40ies now.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Abrams made it very clear his films were a different timeline

          Pokemon was released in the second half the '90s - most of those who played and/or watched them are under 30. Those who are well into their 40s are those who were teenagers in the '80s. I'm well into my forties and never saw a Pokemon (nor ever owned a GameBoy), my younger cousin still under 30 I believe knows each of them by name... yet I'm part of the issue, I bought her a GameBoy when she was a child - and she wished it exactly for the Pokemon games.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ST TOS Digital Remake is Racist.

    Gaze in wonder at the beautifully digitised and remastered footage; right up until they do each and every close up on Uhuru, where you see the original 1960's in all its fuzzy glory.

    (Unless of course, they have re-remastered it since I watched it all).

  21. Howard Hanek
    Linux

    Alien Acquatic Mammals

    I'm still waiting for that HUGE fish tank space ship the alien whale species tool around in from Star Trek IV.

    The boarding party scene should be hysterical when they find out that the whales look at them like krill.......with an outer shell that's a little 'crunchy'......

  22. Zed Zee

    "odds good..."

    So "The Wrath Of Khan" is a bad film and "The Final Frontier" is good???

    Surely you mean odds are bad...?!

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