STAR TREK XI Teaser; anyone seen it?

[The Underscore]

Okay - I have about a billion thoughts to get out, so I will try and be brief - I might sound more abrasive, but I am just trying to speak my mind in short bursts.

 

I didn't read the whole thread. After half a page, I was queasy. Has the Star Trek fan community really turned into a bloodthirsty mob? What will satisfy the lot of us now that the majority has trashtalked and b*tched about and ragged on and torn up everything done since 1992. What was wrong with DS9? Oh, we have complaints that it's not on a ship. Waah. It's too dark - welcome to life. Not everything is "Leave it to Beaver". We wish it was, but a better way to connect to an audience is to sow them how people deal with the bad as well as the good. Which brings me to Voyager. What was wrong there? Treknobabble. The meandering "recalibrate the phase inducer and channel the warp power through the EPS detection circuit and emit an inverse polarised gravitonic pulse charge from the deflector dish and resynchronize the anti-matter stream"GOOD GOD, what ever happened to "SCOTTY, GET US OUT OF HERE!" As you can see, I kinda agree with that one.

 

Then Enterprise. What was wrong with that one? Well, I admit - it didn't catch my interest the way the others did. It wasn't poorly written. It didn't have bad special effects. It wasn't the actors. Or the sets, or the props, or the director or even the camerawork. It was all fine - it was just.... past. Everything they did, has been done before - and with a lot less effort and with a lot more payoff. It was too little, too late.

Well, here we are. No Star Trek film has made enough money to truly warrant a new sequel since 1991. No series has gone unscathed since Roddenberry died. All the games have eaten royal targ sh*t, with the exception of a precious few. And yet - a director who's never touched Star Trek, wouldn't have touched it ten years ago with a fifty-foot phaser rifle and frankly, has better things to do than take the scornful lashing of a group of slathering beasts who can't take the slight possibility that their Captain Kirk might be represented differently than we think we know him; that this film will turn the canon on its ear.

And this conculsion is drawn from a TEASER that shows us NOTHING. A couple of seconds of the frame of the Enterprise, a sweaty dude in a welder's jumpsuit and some quotes from the space shuttle launches on TV in the 60s and 70s.

 

Point Number 1: There is nothing in Star Trek Canon that said that the Enterprise was built in space. They have Starbases built on planet surfaces. Starships are capable, in some cases, of making a planetary descent. Must everything spaceworthy be built in the black? They don't built submarines a the bottom of the sea, do they? They could - but sometimes it's easier to do build something where the workers are, as opposed to shuttling your contract team elsewhere. As for the director's comment that he showed the Enterprise built on Earth to show added realism, where he said that a ship that must survive a gravity well should be subjected during its construction to the same or similar gravity well, welllllllllll...... no. A warp field changes the gravitational constant to make the ship LIGHTER, meaning it wouldn't be a gravity well, because there would be no force dragging it down. But if you wanted to operate a ship at the decidedly incredible speeds dictated by IMPulse speeds, yes - you would need to verify that the ship could stand up to hull stress.

 

Point Number 2: The welders. Everyone's ragging on the welding. They're welding the hull. Did we see enough to say that's they are welding the plates together? What if they were fixing down the panels and braces for escape pod hatches? fixing in a frame for a pressure door? Or a window? Or a running light? Furthermore, I would like to submit that the stress on a naval ship hull is different than the stresses applied to a space vehicle. A submarine or a merchant ship can be torn apart by rough seas. A ship in space... really doesn't have that same problem. The space shuttles *we* launch are pretty flimsy. About as strong as a jetliner. You can shoot a 9mm bullet through the hull. And lastly - it's not steel. It's one of those trek metals. Like duranium or tritanium or polyduralumin or whatever. And who's to say how it reacts to the welding torch? Maybe it's stronger afterwards. We don't know. There's a lot to the Trek universe that doesn't get explained because the writers are time-constrained, and often, they don't care *that* much. I can think of a great number of people who share that view.

 

Point Number 3: The actors. The original cast isn't returning. Nimoy is signed on, Shatner isn't. Let me get a hanky. I don't know what's worse; watching people groan at new actors playing their old favourites, or watch them drool like brainless gobs because the original actors were wheeled in to mumble the few lines they could remember with their failing memories and p*sspoor eyesight. I mean, for the love of God. Shatner is in his late seventies. Doohan and Kelley are Dead! Their characters retired from Starfleet in Star Trek VI! The TNG cast fragmented at the end of Nemesis, and there are no DS9 or Voyager movie oportunities. And Enterprise wasn't popular enough to warrant a fifth season, let alone a film! This was really the only option open to them, apart from taking the idea of Star Trek: Titan and sticking Riker in the captain's chair for 90 minutes.

 

Point Number 4: The director. JJ Abrams is taking some undue lashes over his last picture, Cloverfield. Hyped by heresay and word of mouth without any true advertising until the last minute, people were a little disenchanted by what I would consider to be one of the only solid American monster movies to come by since "Jurassic Park" in '93. It had the "I lived through it" pre-mid-post-apocalyse viewpoint, the "what the hell is happening, hey, it's on CNN" development, where we get to see sci-fi hocus pocus described by newscasters, and that's always fun; getting to see what a straight-faced newsanchor would say in that situation - like seeing the newscasts they recorded for Night of the Living Dead. Sure, the handheld camera gag didn't run well when Blair Witch did it - but Cloverfield had a better handle on it. I watched Diary of the Dead, and guess what? They know how to do it too. Blair Witch was a bad movie - don't assume that because a bad movie was shot on handheld, that every film shot that way will be as bad. Retro-styled films don't always sell. Sky Captain was brilliant - but people preferred the faux attempt in King Kong. The imitation comic book was introduced by the Hulk (the one with Eric Bana, coincidentally in Star Trek!) but a slight take on it was much more well accepted. Maybe you've heard of it: Frank Miller's Sin City. So don't rag on the style of filming unless there's actually something wrong with it - which in this case, there isn't. Let's go back to Abrams. The director. Who did Lost and Alias. Which got more attention separately than Star Trek has gotten as a whole. Alias turned a barely-working actress into an A-list celebrity. So since sci-fi is not new territory for him, I doubt he can c*ck it up that badly.

 

I suspect Star Trek to watchable at worst. I, evidently unlike most people, have sincerely high hopes for the project and would be genuinely surprised if it was as bad as people expect it to be. I guess I shouldn't be shocked if it tanks, even if it's a work of art.

 

I think I've said all I can.

[Tenebrae]

I'm beginning to suspect that someone has issued a decree that the use of paragraph breaks is to be rationed... please feel free to borrow some of mine if that is the case, I've got a million of 'em.

 

I don't think the real hatin' started until a few years into Voyager. DS9 wasn't for everyone but Voyager started to really dig into morale and then Enterprise rubbed people up the wrong way from the start... I'd disagree about it not having any single flaw... I think it was a bad premise, poorly executed with a lacklustre cast and an over reliance on fanservice.

 

Welding... building on Earth... I think welding irritates people because - as some have pointed out - it's not really used any more in the production of fancy things because of various issues. To see Star Trek going BA Barracus just seems stupid. As to building it on Earth... I think people dislike that because it's fairly canonical that stuff gets built in space, Utopia Planetia etc. It's challenging the mythos that people have settled into like a pair of old slippers.

 

The cast - I'm not fazed by the fact Shatner won't be returning... given the fact Scotty and Bones are dead and the rest of the original cast LOOK like they're dead, that's a non-issue. For me, it's more the fact that this is just starting to sound like Enterprise attempt 2. Maybe if this was going to be The Original Series: Reimagined, ala BSG, I'd be thinking "ok, a reboot - a new look at Star Trek." but this is a time travel story cum restart with younger, sexier actors! It's just saying "Oh, I can't be bothered coming up with anything new... let's just rehash the original."

 

To be honest... Lost, Alias, Cloverfield... I'm sure they tick boxes with some people but Alias was laughable and I found Lost to become so boring during season 2, I just stopped watching... and I'm a man of quite considerable patience but the prospect of having to sit through another Charlie flashback or Jack tantrum in the vain hope that the show would do something like reveal a cogent plot made me lose the will to live. Oh, I'm sure that what's her name would be having to do sexual favours to get roles in films but that's neither here nor there.

 

Trek fans are currently like someone that's gotten out of an abusive relationship. They've been hurt and they're still hurting, they're rejecting everything presented to them because they're scared of being hurt again.

[Ulysses]

"Trek fans are currently like someone that's gotten out of an abusive relationship. They've been hurt and they're still hurting, they're rejecting everything presented to them because they're scared of being hurt again"

 

Personally I still say that they are making this film for the wrong reason and also to soon after the end of the last Trek tv series.

 

Trek has been done to death, and this new film sounds like they are just making it for the sake of making a trek film.

 

Just like the tv shows, Trek need a long break THEN attempt at bringing it back (like ive said many times just look at BSG or Dr Who for the proof), yeah it will mean several years of not having any on screen but I would rather it had a long break and come back and being a hit than it coming back to soon and flopping.

 

For me for this film to be a sucess they need to be getting to the heights of Star Trek 2/3/4 which with a new cast I cant honestly see is going to happen.  For Trek to be sucessful it has to attract non-trek fans which Trek has not done in a long time.

[The Underscore]

First note: If you're resorting to taking a jab at me not using the Enter key twice between paragraphs (which you don't see in books or magazines), you're going to wind up taking potshots at someone the wrong way. Stick to the facts.

The facts are this: Yes. Star Trek fans are currently mending a broken heart, and Paramount is licking their wounds after two bombed films and a cancelled TV show.

It doesn't mean they're going to kill Star Trek just because they put a moron in charge. And you will never know what Abrams will come up with. Or anyone for that matter. Risk is part of the game on both sides. They're taking a chance on a new director, new producer, new actors, new studios etc etc etc - and we're taking a chance when we go to see it in the theatre. Just as we took a chance on the opening of Nemesis, and Insurrection, and First Contact etc etc etc.

For the record, if Star Trek Canon takes a lump on the skull in order to create a good story - I think we'll live.

According to the Original series episode, "Metamorphosis", humans broke the warp barrier in 2061. That date was changed in Star Trek: First Contact to 2063. So, people immediately accepted the new date. Why? It technically violated canon by confusing the timeline.

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" A human ship crosses the galactic barrier "two hundred years" before the episode, placing it around 2065. So, a ship launched from Earth, reaches the barrier in 2065 - when it couldn't have had the warp power necessary to reach the edge of the galaxy. Not by 2065, regardless of which date is accepted as Warp Drive Invention Day.

Canon is always subject to interpretation. Archaeic terms used in the sixties, like "Lasers" fell out of use, and were substituted with "Phasers". Enterprise had Phased Cannons - meaning by then, Lasers were obsolete already. So how could Pike's Enterprise have Lasers? Time warp became Warp speed. The time barrier became the light barrier. UESPA became Starfleet Command. Over the years, the writers and directors and the fans have sought to include every morsel of information into the lexicon of Star Trek, including the random junk introduced by the show's early writers who didn't know what to make of this new program.

So, keep an open mind. It might be easier than you think to accept these silly little details. If you enjoy the movie for what it is, rather than what you want it to be, You'll be more likely to find a way to satisfy the canon in your own way.

[Tenebrae]

If you're keen on these books and magazines, you might notice they tend to indent and that's because they're working in a medium where space is at a premium. If you can explain to me why your space is at a premium, I'll do my best not to pedantically go on and on about it.

 

Anyway, you're pretty much ignoring the thrust of the arguments made by me and Ulysses - given that most of my response was just a reply to your

 

We know what Abrams wants to do. He wants to rehash TOS with a younger, sexier crew - TOS THE COLLEGE YEARS! We've been over that.

 

And there's no such thing as Trek canon/continuity. Not in any meaningful sense - because no one ever really sat down and said "OK - how is the Star Trek universe going to work?" They just slapped in a race here, a dozen or so god like beings there... and of course, felt free to go back and change things as necessary. Leave us with just a mish mash of contradicting stuff. People that watch Trek will blithely accept it or go out of their way to create staggeringly complex and counter-intuitive explanations or just sigh at the lazy writing.

 

Abrams isn't going "Well, I always hated San Francisco - so Starfleet HQ will be in Queens!" or "I'm going to give Vulcans a psychic third nipple."

 

He's saying "I'm too damned lazy to bother coming up with a new idea and if I pretend this is going to be OLD Star Trek, it's got to be more of a sure thing than something set post-Voyager!"

 

Also note all the warning phrases that have been used - just paraphrasing but he's a big fan, exciting new direction and so on. Which is what the likes of Paul Anderson say before they toss everything out the window and deliver the aborted fetuses of their "imagination".

 

So - don't try and compare this to Klingons getting head ridges or minor chronological errors. You might as well compare one murder to genocide.

[The Underscore]

Now you're making this argument personal. Why? Is it necessary to condescend me because I'm hopeful and not pessimistic about the possible outcome?

KEYWORD: Possible.

No, Abrams isn't going after TOS THE COLLEGE YEARS. It wasn't even Abrams' idea. He was signed on as director after the fact. Actually, decades after the fact. This has been a concept in the works since 1990. You want to rag on someone for a movie that hasn't even been finished yet, call Paramount. Abrams wants to take that idea and make it not suck.

All that's left to this conversation is insults about grammar and "premium space", which, okay,  I'm a print writer, not a web writer; try not to crucify me. Hitting the tab key on the internet usually doesn't have the effect I'm looking for.

 

Maybe instead of theorising about what might be just what the original series was; a Star Trek written about the characters, and what might also be what everything today is; a bunch of scantily clad barely-legals running around in their skivs having rampant space sex and shooting everything that moves.

We don't know! Why are the so-called "fans" tearing it up when no one has even seen anything!? And don't give me the "wounded animal" junk - how fans have been so disappointed with the franchise. The supposed haters of DS9 obviously weren't numerous or loud enough because it won awards and had a strong following, myself included. It wasn't on a starship - but it had to it what TOS had; stories of People.

 

Voyager ran all seven seasons because the technogeeks were mad about it. Not everyone liked it, but not everyone has to. Enterprise get cut because people lost interest and couldn't invest in the characters.

If you SEE Star Trek XI and hate it, we'll understand. But until then, any argument against it is as baseless as any argument for it.

[Tenebrae]

I don't condescend - I just know better.

 

So, you think Abrams signed - and if you look into it, you'll find he signed as the Producer sometime before he agreed to direct - onto a project and went "oh, sure - I don't want any input, just whatever frakfest you guys half-assed up with Berman." I might dislike his work but I don't think the man had a lobotomy. A producer doesn't sit on his hands when he gets a project, old chap. He choose the college years nonsense. Go read his comments if you can't take me at my word.

 

If you look at the reaction to Enterprise - that is to say, people actively campaigning against it before it even aired and really, I can't say that was even slightly wrong.

 

Voyager survived by the narrowest of narrow margins and if RDM is to be believed - and he has no real reason to be doubted - it was a show that even the people making it hated. Having 7 of 9 walking around "practically naked" as RDM put it, was enough to keep the wolves from the door. Even more gratuitous fanservice didn't help Enterprise keep its head above water. I suppose that whatever one has to say of JJ Abrams - he isn't going to be using the hack team of Berman and Braga.

 

I write and edit in a professional capacity - amongst other things - poor formatting has yet to be justified to me. It's not personal - I just hate seeing it, thanks for putting in some breaks in the latest post.

[The Underscore]

It's becoming a matter of stating the same thing over and over. Perhaps you're intent on convincing me of what's in front of us - what I know is in front of us. Voyager couldn't hold its weight and survived by hanging on to Jeri Ryan's t*ts. Enterprise lacked everything that TNG and TOS had in common. Seven out of the ten Star Trek films have done poorly in the box office - despite their varying qualities. This I already know, and don't need to be reminded.

 

Abrams' projects so far have met with mixed feelings. You either like him or you don't, I suppose. This I know. And yes, I know a director has to be into the idea before he signs the contract, but as I said, Paramount has been tossing the prequel film idea around since 1990. It actually had nothing to do with Rick Berman, interestingly enough, and he never touched it. Roddenberry refused to support a prequel film, and as a result, Star Trek VI was made instead. I did my homework here. So this isn't a new idea, and it's not a Berman idea.

 

Now, it seems to me that this song and dance is because somehow you may have gotten the idea that I am rooting for the film. Not necessarily. I support continuing Star Trek. Like most things in the media, once Star Trek stops, it may never get started again. And all those fans that need Star Trek to go on a bit of a hiatus and collect itself, will find themselves crying over a grave they helped to dig. Film studios and TV networks see that, once something is in decline, or dying, you either revitalise it or you cut it loose and minimise your losses.

 

However, specifically regarding Star Trek XI, I am not yet either for or against the film. Like I've said umpteen times, I know nothing of it but what's on the Internet, and even the 'net has diddly. Is the "Teen Trek" idea the worst thing ever devised for the franchise? No. Half of the plots of the original series were either so ludicrous they were a treat to watch or they were adapted from classic stories and Shakespeare. ("Elaan of Troyius" = "The Taming of the Shrew" and so on)

 

It just saddens me to see people tear apart a film that hasn't even been finished yet, and that no one has seen more than a glimpse of.

 

Now, if Uwe Boll had been given the directing job, I'd understand this hubbub.

 

And, as for my paragraphing, I refer back to the last post. I am a print writer. Tabbing in forums doesn't work, and this is the first forum I've written posts for that are longer than one paragraph. And now that I'm on the topic - you're picking on me, when I've seen posts that lack punctuation and basic spelling? We need to prioritize and fix the real villains.[br]Posted on: April 09, 2008, 12:49:13 PM

---

Just a note about the "Shipyard on Earth" argument.

 

 

I found a reprint of this plaque on the Utopia Planitia website and decided to track down its source, and this is a photograph of the actual plaque on the original set of the Enterprise.

 

U.S.S. ENTERPRISE

STARSHIP CLASS

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

 

Nothing about the San Francisco Fleet Yards (which is actually referred to in the Motion Picture as being the drydock system somewhere in Earth Orbit). Since it was declared that there were only 12 Original Constitution Class vessels (as per information from TOS) by 2266, and Enterprise was built in 2245 (information from Roddenberry, as the Enterprise being a "20 year old ship" at the time of the show), Perhaps the Fleet Yards didn't pose large enough facilities at the time to build it in space. Of course, by 2270, there were drydocks big enough.

The plaque lists the city specifically. Food for thought.

[Tenebrae]

For a while I thought about rebutting you.

 

Then I thought "I don't really care that much". I've stated my points, you're going over points I've covered. This discussion is going around in circles.

 

It's at the "I'm right, you're wrong" stage.

[The Underscore]

This is going in circles because "someone" won't say, "Okay, you might have a point." I've already stated that you are right. But I'm right too. This isn't an argument because we aren't countering identical points! You're going on about how it's going to be the worst Star Trek ever, and I'm giving you reasons to keep an open mind. My last post was a total cessation to "You're f*king right". And you still insist on insulting me.

 

I don't have a reason to want to be right. This is not about right and wrong. Maybe in May of 2009, it will be about right and wrong. At that point, when someone actually watches the movie, we can get into "It's garbage/It's not garbage".

 

This circular argument is propagated by You. I state reasons to hold your arguments until the movie comes out, and you restate the reasons why it's doomed to failure. REASONS I HAVE REPEATEDLY AGREED WITH.

 

Hypocrisy much?

[Tenebrae]

No, I wasn't saying it'll be the worst Star Trek ever... with Final Frontier, Generations, Insurrection, Nemesis... it would have a hard time.

 

I was saying - here is why the FANS (my cynicism means I shall never be one) think it will be bad.

 

I agree, a film can't be judged until it is released... and I suppose even then, although any judgement I pass will be definitive that others may have their view.

 

Maybe we should agree to agree?

[The Underscore]

We shall, in the interest of not making an enemy.