Star Trek The General Star Trek Thread - From TOS to Corporate Schenanigans

[Agent23]

Honestly, the whole SNW thing with Spock should've really been with an OC, because it makes the whole Chapel/Spock thing super weird and shitty with him cheating on T'pring and her going to run off and marry Roger Korby, then come running back to Spock a few years later.

They can not use an OC, the executives want to milk the nostalgia and the shitty blue haired landwhale writers have to make their Mary Sue SIs look good by butchering the original characters and having their crap fanfic extracts stand atop their corpses.

This reminds me of some of my edgy teen ideas of Trek "continuations" where my blatantly SI MC would have been the "bestest ever" and would have turned the federation into an intergalactic empire that could have stomped Wars and Dahak for breakfast.

I blame HFCS and lack of spanking for regarding the land whales and doyboys mental development.

 

[S'task]

They can not use an OC, the executives want to milk the nostalgia and the shitty blue haired landwhale writers have to make their Mary Sue SIs look good by butchering the original characters and having their crap fanfic extracts stand atop their corpses.

This reminds me of some of my edgy teen ideas of Trek "continuations" where my blatantly SI MC would have been the "bestest ever" and would have turned the federation into an intergalactic empire that could have stomped Wars and Dahak for breakfast.

I blame HFCS and lack of spanking for regarding the land whales and doyboys mental development.

In fairness to Strange New Worlds, they're not entirely milking the nostalgia factor.

They decided to basically make a Prequel to TOS, using the captain of the Enterprise just before Kirk, Christopher Pike. Per the TOS Episode "The Menagerie" Spock served as a science officer under Pike in his tenure as CO of the Enterprise.

Spock also isn't the only TOS character serving under Pike in SNW. M'Benga, Pike's Chief Medical Officer, was a doctor on the Enterprise in TOS as well, and of course Nurse Chapel was also from TOS.

 

[Husky_Khan]

'Star Trek' Icon William Shatner Roasts Paramount's Continued Attempts To Memory-Hole Captain Kirk: "It Makes No Difference To Me That A Group Who Think They Are 'Enlightened' Obviously Feels Threatened By The Character"

William Shatner has revealed that he remains unphased by Paramount's ongoing attempts to erase Captain Kirk from 'Star Trek' history.

boundingintocomics.com

I'll be honest... I read the article and... I can see where Shatner is coming from if it's some sort of pattern of behavior, but from what I see presented in the article itself... it kinda just sounds like a primadonna actor who doesn't have to give af complaining on social media. It reads to me as William Shatner just whining to whine and I think it's because he's kinda full of himself tbh. 🤷‍♀️

Like a Star Trek Day graphic on Paramount Plus? That's so niche... but it's an attempt to memory hole Shatner?

Is there a long pattern of this happening and if so is it because he or his character in Star Trek is portrayed as a is a toxic White male or because it's due to Shatner's many idiosyncrasies and eccentricities?

 

[Agent23]

In fairness to Strange New Worlds, they're not entirely milking the nostalgia factor.

They decided to basically make a Prequel to TOS, using the captain of the Enterprise just before Kirk, Christopher Pike. Per the TOS Episode "The Menagerie" Spock served as a science officer under Pike in his tenure as CO of the Enterprise.

Spock also isn't the only TOS character serving under Pike in SNW. M'Benga, Pike's Chief Medical Officer, was a doctor on the Enterprise in TOS as well, and of course Nurse Chapel was also from TOS.

Overlord DVD covered the character destruction of Christopher Pike in STD, I have not followed SNW, but given the disasters that were STD and Pukard, I am pretty sure that the characters are there to enable Mary Sues and milk nostalgia.

And you don't need a major character to milk nostalgia.

In fact minor characters getting their own show decades later works even better, since the landwhale writers can project more/there will be less of a backlash if the canons are broken.

 

[Sailor.X]

I'll be honest... I read the article and... I can see where Shatner is coming from if it's some sort of pattern of behavior, but from what I see presented in the article itself... it kinda just sounds like a primadonna actor who doesn't have to give af complaining on social media. It reads to me as William Shatner just whining to whine and I think it's because he's kinda full of himself tbh. 🤷‍♀️

Like a Star Trek Day graphic on Paramount Plus? That's so niche... but it's an attempt to memory hole Shatner?

Is there a long pattern of this happening and if so is it because he or his character in Star Trek is portrayed as a is a toxic White male or because it's due to Shatner's many idiosyncrasies and eccentricities?

Yes there is a long pattern of this happening. This is not the only graphic that has happened in.

 

[Bassoe]

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Gentlemen, I have a question.

So, JJ Abrams isn’t exactly the most thoughtful film maker, right?

Well, Star Trek Into Darkness has a lot of problems, and one of its more confusing moments to my mind is when USS Vengeance catches up to USS Enterprise and blasts the crap out of her.

In the middle of Sector 001.

Directly above the Moon.

And…nobody seems to notice? I mean weapons discharge like that is, in sensor terms, screaming in someone’s face. But there’s no hails from the fuckhuge star base nearby, nor half a dozen armed ships appearing and demanding to know what the fuck is going on. I understand Admiral Marcus was a powerful man but how the Hell could he get away with that?

Even worse, this is clandestine. The USS Vengeance is top secret so as far as standard Star Fleet is concerned the Enterprise is basically screaming for help whilst an unidentified vessel is attacking her, having warped all but directly over Earth.

 

[Captain X]

Abrams Trek movies are just dumbed down dumb action movies. This just helps to illustrate how little thought went into them beyond making cool action scenes.

 

[bullethead]

So, JJ Abrams isn’t exactly the most thoughtful film maker, right?

JJ Abrams is basically a dime-a-dozen "it's all about the feel" director with a bit more flair, and outsourced the writing to his buddies.

Orci and Kurtzman were okay at dialogue, but like a lot of modern writers, they don't seem to give a shit about the logic of the story. It worked out okay in 2009, but STiD falls apart the nanosecond you think more than not at all.

 

[Jaenera Targaryen]

Abrams Trek movies are just dumbed down dumb action movies. This just helps to illustrate how little thought went into them beyond making cool action scenes.

To me, he always came off as aping Michael Bay while adding a lot of lens flare to hide the fact. At least Bay is honest about what he does, i.e. lots and lots of gratuitous pyrotechnics garnished with fanservice to appeal to teenagers and young adults.

 

[Agent23]

JJ Abrams is basically a dime-a-dozen "it's all about the feel" director with a bit more flair, and outsourced the writing to his buddies.

Nope, he is also a copycat hack.
Alias = worse Nikita.
Fringe = worse X-Files.
That island thing - no idea, but he has to have ripped it off from somewhere.

Orci and Kurtzman were okay at dialogue, but like a lot of modern writers, they don't seem to give a shit about the logic of the story. It worked out okay in 2009, but STiD falls apart the nanosecond you think more than not at all.

They are below Jar-Jar including in quality, nuff said.

Jar-Jar must have lots of videos of important people getting really, really close to other people's children, pets and livestock.

 

[S'task]

Gentlemen, I have a question.

So, JJ Abrams isn’t exactly the most thoughtful film maker, right?

Well, Star Trek Into Darkness has a lot of problems, and one of its more confusing moments to my mind is when USS Vengeance catches up to USS Enterprise and blasts the crap out of her.

In the middle of Sector 001.

Directly above the Moon.

And…nobody seems to notice? I mean weapons discharge like that is, in sensor terms, screaming in someone’s face. But there’s no hails from the fuckhuge star base nearby, nor half a dozen armed ships appearing and demanding to know what the fuck is going on. I understand Admiral Marcus was a powerful man but how the Hell could he get away with that?

Even worse, this is clandestine. The USS Vengeance is top secret so as far as standard Star Fleet is concerned the Enterprise is basically screaming for help whilst an unidentified vessel is attacking her, having warped all but directly over Earth.

STiD has a lot of problems, but I don't think they can really be placed at Abram's feet. Almost all the problems go back to the writers, and all the issues you're pointing out aren't faults of the Director, but of the Script itself. Which if you look goes back to the very start of the movie with all kinds of ridiculous things like having Enterprise hidden underwater on a primitive world rather than in orbit, etc.

A big part of the issue is that one of the people who wrote the movie was a literal 9/11 Truther type, and wanted to use the movie to push that kind of message... which doesn't work well in Trek and made the script so nonsensical. There's just to many logistical holes in it.

 

[Captain X]

STiD has a lot of problems, but I don't think they can really be placed at Abram's feet. Almost all the problems go back to the writers, and all the issues you're pointing out aren't faults of the Director, but of the Script itself. Which if you look goes back to the very start of the movie with all kinds of ridiculous things like having Enterprise hidden underwater on a primitive world rather than in orbit, etc.

A big part of the issue is that one of the people who wrote the movie was a literal 9/11 Truther type, and wanted to use the movie to push that kind of message... which doesn't work well in Trek and made the script so nonsensical. There's just to many logistical holes in it.

The director has no input into the script?

My own take on the Abrams Trek movies is that they actually tend to come off like old porn movies, which is to say that while they all had a "plot" of some kind or other, basically everything that wasn't a sex scene is usually just an excuse to get the movie to the next sex scene, and act as a bridge to connect them together. The only difference is that the action was of the pew-pew laser-beam type. Actually, speaking of the pew-pew laser-beam stuff, did anyone else laugh their ass off when they actually used sound effects like that for the movies? I sure did.

 

[Agent23]

The director has no input into the script?

My own take on the Abrams Trek movies is that they actually tend to come off like old porn movies, which is to say that while they all had a "plot" of some kind or other, basically everything that wasn't a sex scene is usually just an excuse to get the movie to the next sex scene, and act as a bridge to connect them together. The only difference is that the action was of the pew-pew laser-beam type. Actually, speaking of the pew-pew laser-beam stuff, did anyone else laugh their ass off when they actually used sound effects like that for the movies? I sure did.

Oy, stop insulting porn movies, they used to have better writing than what comes out of Jar-Jar and his coterie.


Or Disney.

Or, hell, all of the idiots at Hollywood.

 

[bullethead]

The director has no input into the script?

JJ Abrams is famously not a Star Trek guy, so odds are he'd be hands off on pretty much everything, except for stuff that'd affect filming/post-production.

 

[Captain X]

That island thing - no idea, but he has to have ripped it off from somewhere.

(time=8:47 if it refuses to cooperate)
I mean, probably not, but still.

I actually liked Lost starting out, but the problem was that there were never any answers to anything. Something Abrams has never figured out is that while the mystery box might work to get people watching and hold their attention for a while, if you keep dragging it out or it becomes obvious that there's nothing in the box, people will get frustrated and stop watching.

 

[Captain X]

JJ Abrams is famously not a Star Trek guy, so odds are he'd be hands off on pretty much everything, except for stuff that'd affect filming/post-production.

I very much doubt that. Him not being into Star Trek is why he famously made it more like Star Wars, as he himself admits.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Gentlemen, I have a question.

So, JJ Abrams isn’t exactly the most thoughtful film maker, right?

Well, Star Trek Into Darkness has a lot of problems, and one of its more confusing moments to my mind is when USS Vengeance catches up to USS Enterprise and blasts the crap out of her.

In the middle of Sector 001.

Directly above the Moon.

And…nobody seems to notice? I mean weapons discharge like that is, in sensor terms, screaming in someone’s face. But there’s no hails from the fuckhuge star base nearby, nor half a dozen armed ships appearing and demanding to know what the fuck is going on. I understand Admiral Marcus was a powerful man but how the Hell could he get away with that?

Even worse, this is clandestine. The USS Vengeance is top secret so as far as standard Star Fleet is concerned the Enterprise is basically screaming for help whilst an unidentified vessel is attacking her, having warped all but directly over Earth.

Earth almost always seems to have a very light Starfleet presence in terms of big ship count (not counting small shuttles or civilian passenger liners). In TOS and TNG, whenever the Enterprise visits Earth, it is usually the only ship seen there. In the TOS movies you see a couple other ships in Spacedock and that's it. In Star Trek Generations, the Enterprise B launches from Earth and then begins heading towards Pluto when they receive a distress call and they are the only ship in the area to respond. In the finale of the first season of TNG, Picard becomes aware of a conspiracy within Starfleet Command, and the Enterprise along with three other ships begin making their way to Earth to confront Starfleet leadership, and apparently a gathering of this size is unusual. And so on. So the Enterprise and the Vengeance being the only big Starfleet ships around Earth can make sense (though if the battle lasted more than 20 or 30 minutes then other Starfleet vessels from nearby star systems probably should have shown up), though as you said they should be receiving hails inquiring as to what is going on.

 

[Captain X]

Earth almost always seems to have a very light Starfleet presence in terms of big ship count (not counting small shuttles or civilian passenger liners). In TOS and TNG, whenever the Enterprise visits Earth, it is usually the only ship seen there. In the TOS movies you see a couple other ships in Spacedock and that's it. In Star Trek Generations, the Enterprise B launches from Earth and then begins heading towards Pluto when they receive a distress call and they are the only ship in the area to respond. In the finale of the first season of TNG, Picard becomes aware of a conspiracy within Starfleet Command, and the Enterprise along with three other ships begin making their way to Earth to confront Starfleet leadership, and apparently a gathering of this size is unusual. And so on. So the Enterprise and the Vengeance being the only big Starfleet ships around Earth can make sense (though if the battle lasted more than 20 or 30 minutes then other Starfleet vessels from nearby star systems probably should have shown up), though as you said they should be receiving hails inquiring as to what is going on.

This is one of the more absurd tropes of Star Trek, though, which is rightly criticized. It's continued used in the Abrams Trek movies is just that much more hilarious given that this is something that has been made fun of about the show for years. This is another aspect of the first Abrams Trek movie that doesn't make sense, too, because they had all those ships that supposedly needed crews, which was the entire rationale behind putting cadets on the ships. The Enterprise was the only new ship that theoretically would have needed a crew, though, so where were all those other ships' crews? Why would they pull from the Academy and not from all the bases planetside or in orbit? Very little thought was ever put into these movies. All they cared about when it came to the fight with Vengeance was how cool that action scene would look.

 

[Agent23]

(time=8:47 if it refuses to cooperate)
I mean, probably not, but still.

I actually liked Lost starting out, but the problem was that there were never any answers to anything. Something Abrams has never figured out is that while the mystery box might work to get people watching and hold their attention for a while, if you keep dragging it out or it becomes obvious that there's nothing in the box, people will get frustrated and stop watching.

Didn't you have something called Gilligan's island that had a slightly similar premise?

Also, there was a sequel to to 20 000 leagues under the sea, where a bunch of castaways crash on an island with a Deus ex machina in the form of Cap. Nemo and all his supertech, even the way they get to the island is cia de facto air crash since they use a balloon.
The Mysterious Island - Wikipedia

We also have such classics in the genre as Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies.

So, yeah, not a new idea. You can just sprincle some stuff about the Bermuda triangle magic, then start doing shit, with no direction or reason.