Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

-And it just wasn't very good.

Honestly; that's the bottom line - I didn't like it.

[Doc Nebula]

Yeah, it sucked pretty bad, too.

[Sigma]

It's really military, it's a story about a fight with a bad guy instead of exploring or the Big Space Thing, and the thematic spine of the narrative is about getting old.  Not a bad theme, mind you, but not a terribly Star Trek one.

ST was about a lot of things week-to-week, sure, so that's not a major knock on the flick.  It's the uniforms and all the "Permission to come aboard?" stuff that really puts me off.


And you're totally correct about the size of the shadow it cast - subsequent movies had the look and feel I didn't love, without the quality...

The problem is that you can't really do "classic" Trek as well in films because it doesn't translate as well into a two hour format. The three closest attempts were The Motion Picture, The Undiscovered Country and Insurrection, and none of them were particularly successful (but Insurrection suffers from the fact that all of the TNG movies are bad). Those are about, respectively, discovering something strange and unknown in space; space politics; and a boring Planet-Of-The-Week episode played out in long form.

I'll agree though that the military side of Starfleet gets overexposed in the films, though it is ever present in the TV series, especially The Original Series, where Kirk at one point flat out says that he is a soldier first and foremost (Errand of Mercy, I believe).

[Doc Nebula]

::shrug:: Movies have bigger budgets and Gene Roddenberry was an arrogant turd who took himself MUCH too seriously... so his wife still insists that everybody take him much too seriously, too.

STAR TREK was always intended to be WAGON TRAIN in space.  Roddenberry himself said that many times.  It's pulp fiction and it's not supposed to be grand or meaningful or say much of anything.  It's just entertainment.

Roddenberry himself got so puffed up and full of himself that he forgot that, and with bigger budgets come bigger pretensions. 


Very few big budget films, now that I think of it, have done pulp right.  JURASSIC PARK III is one of the few, as is CONGO.  But as soon as the TERMINATOR franchise got some money, it stopped being pulpy and started being preachy. 

Pulp may have to be cheap.   Maybe that's part of the essence. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Money ruins everything, yes - that's pretty central to my thesis about fake Star Track, and really, everything since the cartoon, which would have been improved by a better budget.

The problem is that you can't really do "classic" Trek as well in films because it doesn't translate as well into a two hour format. The three closest attempts were The Motion Picture, The Undiscovered Country and Insurrection, and none of them were particularly successful (but Insurrection suffers from the fact that all of the TNG movies are bad). Those are about, respectively, discovering something strange and unknown in space; space politics; and a boring Planet-Of-The-Week episode played out in long form.

I'll agree though that the military side of Starfleet gets overexposed in the films, though it is ever present in the TV series, especially The Original Series, where Kirk at one point flat out says that he is a soldier first and foremost (Errand of Mercy, I believe).

I can't agree that it can't be done well, just because it hasn't been.

Otherwise, yeah.  You have to remember that the show, before anything else, was a business venture - if they cut out ALL the fights in favor of the veiled social commentary Roddenberry preferred doing, they'd have never have made it through the first season.  But part of the charm and success of Trek was the variety of types of stories they could do.  Starfleet was a military, a space patrol/coast guard, and an exploratory/science service all at the same time.

I doubt I'd like if the movies had been nothing but science (bad science, no doubt) and exploration to the exclusion of all else, either.  Or only rescue missions and medical aid to colonies.  Military was only part of what it was in the beginning, and the movies lost a lot in throwing out the rest.

Star Trek was straightforward adventure, and social commentary, and even tried to be actual science fiction at times.  Star Trek was a dream of a better future, and a show that really stood out in its time for it's sincere attempts to be quality.  Star Trek is a 'franchise' that was long ago hijacked by people who didn't under stand or like Star Trek.  I refuse to drink that last bit of koolaide, and I think some of it began with Wrath, alas.

...

-And for MY nickel, Insurrection might have been pretty good if they'd come up with decent villains, instead of the Videans from Voyager with the serial numbers filed off...

[Sigma]

::shrug:: Movies have bigger budgets and Gene Roddenberry was an arrogant turd who took himself MUCH too seriously... so his wife still insists that everybody take him much too seriously, too.

STAR TREK was always intended to be WAGON TRAIN in space.  Roddenberry himself said that many times.  It's pulp fiction and it's not supposed to be grand or meaningful or say much of anything.  It's just entertainment.

Roddenberry himself got so puffed up and full of himself that he forgot that, and with bigger budgets come bigger pretensions. 


Very few big budget films, now that I think of it, have done pulp right.  JURASSIC PARK III is one of the few, as is CONGO.  But as soon as the TERMINATOR franchise got some money, it stopped being pulpy and started being preachy. 

Pulp may have to be cheap.   Maybe that's part of the essence.

Roddenberry actually had nothing to do with Wrath of Khan or any of the Trek movies past The Motion Picture, since Paramount kicked him out after it failed to perform at the box office. Also Majel Barret died a few years ago.

[Buster's Uncle]

Rod hated Wrath, actually.

It was the beginning of a huge behind-the-scenes power struggle that went on for years.

[Doc Nebula]

I understand that Gene had nothing to do with WRATH OF KHAN.  I like WRATH OF KHAN.

[Doc Nebula]

To make things clearer:  I loathe Gene Roddenberry.  He was the anti-Christ of 'science fiction'.  The fact that he wanted STAR TREK to be WAGON TRAIN in space fills me with contempt. 

Just wanted to get that on the record.

[Buster's Uncle]

Knowing what I've come to know and surmise about the man, I wouldn't go that far, but cannot understand why people who knew him loved him so.

[Sigma]

Knowing what I've come to know and surmise about the man, I wouldn't go that far, but cannot understand why people who knew him loved him so.

I don't think they really did love him so much as they loved what he created.

It's worth saying that my favorite Trek is DS9, which I'm sure sent Roddenberry spinning in his grave after the second season or so.

[Buster's Uncle]

While those power struggles were going on, he was strongly asserting that Star Trek wasn't about space battles, which peeved authors wanting to write novels along those lines off to no end.  He wouldn't have approved of the Dominion War seasons, no.

Bob Justman and Herb Solo spent a whole book bitching about weasel crap Rod pulled over the years - and SWORE they loved the guy.  Go figure.  Somehow it didn't set my bullcrap detector off, and I honestly still believe them.  Gene is universally attested to have been a very charismatic man.

[Doc Nebula]

DS9 has on more than one occasion referred to a Spock who lived past ST II, and therefore, is fake Trek, and I need not have an opinion on it.

[Sigma]

While those power struggles were going on, he was strongly asserting that Star Trek wasn't about space battles, which peeved authors wanting to write novels along those lines off to no end.  He wouldn't have approved of the Dominion War seasons, no.

I think it was more portraying the Federation as anything less than a perfect communist utopia that he would have objected to.

[Buster's Uncle]

It did have that element, yes.