Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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GloryHole Stalker said:
I have the Blu Ray Directors cut version of the movie and I listened again to the commentary (the text commentary was from Mike Okuda) and the only thing I got out of it other than what I've already stated was Meyer did offhandedly mention that "they kept shooting down my more extreme ideas". So It's possible, I suppose, that Meyer originally wanted the movie to end with Kirk, in the engine room, slumped over, staring blankly next to the corpse of Spock, fade to credits. But jeez, if you wanted to absolutely destroy a franchise...that would be the way to do it.
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RumblyTumbly said:
Yeah, wise choice not ending it on Kirk slumped over right after Spock died.

The ending we got is pretty beautiful and while we're all still sad from losing Spock, there is a sense of hope from it, and Kirk saying that he feels young is great.

My guess is that Meyer was working with people that still understood Star Trek and knew when to say no and guide things in the right direction. Compare that to Star Trek today, and I doubt anybody involved understands Star Trek much at all.
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I get the impression that either way he started out as kind of a punk who was willing to do highly unconventional things with the franchise. He does mention in the commentary that as time went on he started to realize that he wasn't just making a big dumb sequel to a doomed franchise and that everyone really seemed invested in what they were doing, so I think he was willing to meet them half way.

Either way, my point at the beginning was that Wrath of Khan is pretty damn graphic compared to the other movies and most of the TV shows. At the same time, its quintessential to the tone of the franchise. They nailed the character interaction and effectively reproduced the feel of the original franchise, even though the movie is quite grim and violent especially compared to its precedessor. Even the exploding consoles during the attack sequence are loaded with a ridiculous amount of pyrotechnics compared to the little puffs of smoke and sparklers we get in pretty much everything else. Also I forgot to mention they basically had James Horner doing a horror movie score for Khan's various themes throughout the movie.

So putting a guy like Tarantino in charge of Star Trek and letting him up the violence a bit isn't neccesarily a bad idea. I'm more worried about him doing Kill Bill in Space or inserting something as ridiculous as the ending to Inglorious Basterds, but he seems to be a big Star Trek fan so I'm inclined to bet he wouldn't dick around with the lore any worse than we've already seen. I wonder if Simon Pegg is sick to death of working on the franchise yet; I could see him and Tarantino getting along pretty well in the writing room.
 
I just finished binge-watching deep space 9 and wow just wow. It's the first time I see a whole star trek series and I'm genuinely impressed. The first season was a bit boring tbh, but, the later season were great.

Unlike voyager that had only 3 people I cared about, I loved all the main characters in DS9 Gonna miss Jadzia Dax. And even some secondary ones like Vic Fontaine.

This show made me realize how much potential this universe has. I think I finally get why people love trek so much. You can go explore new worlds and have entire shows about weird things happening to the crew like the Orville, or be a political thriller about spies and politics if you stay at home or fall in love with some of the many alien cultures.

I love how morally grey Sisko as a captain is. I think what sets him apart from other captains, but. specially, Picard would be that Sisko would sacrifice his principles for the greater good and Picard will always put his principles over everything. A pale moonlight is the best example. But I would also add that episode with Dax going in a revenge quest with some Klingons. I recall everyone looking at her all weird, including Sisko. All while Picard would've given a speech about how revenge is poisonous or something.

"It's easy to be a saint in paradise" is a brilliant quote and it pretty much sums up DS9 for me.

What I loved the most about section 31 is that its very existence dares to say, you only get play heroes and give moral speeches because someone dares to play dirty. Your principles wouldn't survive in the real world.

Though, I would like to think that Bashir and Odo saving the founders kept the optimism by finding a better way proving that compassion and forgiveness were a better answer to section 31's genocide.

Could write entire essays about how great all characters were, but this is too long as it is so I just wanna say. Thank for recommending this great show. Call me a Trekkie, even if a fairly new one.
 
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When it ended I wanted a DS9 movie about the rebuilding of Cardassia. Hell, we could get a Star Trek: Garak series that would be totally grimdark and woke with Garak trying to sex up a Romulan senator or whatever.
 
I don't know how he keeps getting work but Alex Kurtzman is working on another show for CBS All Access based on the movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth". As usual he claims that it's not a remake or a reboot and that it will respect the novel and the movie.
variety.com

‘Man Who Fell to Earth’ Series Set at CBS All Access From Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet

“The Man Who Fell to Earth” has fallen to CBS All Access. The streaming service has ordered a series based on Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel and the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film that starred …
variety.com variety.com
 
Hollywood is weird. You can be the reason why several shows failed as long as you're the guy who was kinda sorta involved when some other show was a success.
Was Kurtzmann ever actually genuinely competent or is he riding the coattails of his former far more competent subordinates that made something good while he was just the asshat taking credit?

Or is the Hollywood approach something akin to "The lowly crowd does not understand the supreme skill and refinement of Kurtzmann, so it's not his fault that audiences hate his work in STD and STP"?
 
Pixy Misa said:
I just finished binge-watching deep space 9 and wow just wow. It's the first time I see a whole star trek series and I'm genuinely impressed. The first season was a bit boring tbh, but, the later season were great.

Unlike voyager that had only 3 people I cared about, I loved all the main characters in DS9 Gonna miss Jadzia Dax. And even some secondary ones like Vic Fontaine.

This show made me realize how much potential this universe has. I think I finally get why people love trek so much. You can go explore new worlds and have entire shows about weird things happening to the crew like the Orville, or be a political thriller about spies and politics if you stay at home or fall in love with some of the many alien cultures.

I love how morally grey Sisko as a captain is. I think what sets him apart from other captains, but. specially, Picard would be that Sisko would sacrifice his principles for the greater good and Picard will always put his principles over everything. A pale moonlight is the best example. But I would also add that episode with Dax going in a revenge quest with some Klingons. I recall everyone looking at her all weird, including Sisko. All while Picard would've given a speech about how revenge is poisonous or something.

"It's easy to be a saint in paradise" is a brilliant quote and it pretty much sums up DS9 for me.

What I loved the most about section 31 is that its very existence dares to say, you only get play heroes and give moral speeches because someone dares to play dirty. Your principles wouldn't survive in the real world.

Though, I would like to think that Bashir and Odo saving the founders kept the optimism by finding a better way proving that compassion and forgiveness were a better answer to section 31's genocide.

Could write entire essays about how great all characters were, but this is too long as it is so I just wanna say. Thank for recommending this great show. Call me a Trekkie, even if a fairly new one.
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Deep Space Nine is pretty spectacular since it takes the existing Star Trek lore and expands it, rather than inventing a new species every single episode like Voyager and TNG did. If anything, that's the aspect I like the least about those shows. There are so many alien races in the Star Trek universe that it just borders on flat-out ridiculous. I know sci-fi has a long and beloved tradition of creating scenes filled with weird alien races and cultures, but I wish every so often a series would turn around and give up a little more characterization for the races they created. It worked great with DS9.

The Cardassians showed up like, a handful of times in TNG? DS9 fleshed them out to the point where they now have as much detail as the Klingons and Romulans. Same with the Ferengi, which were basically a joke race built to mock capitalism. DS9 made them more detailed AND kept the parody, to the point where Quark's speeches are way funnier interpretations of capitalism than the inital space Jews with laser whips ever were. Discovery was such a missed opportunity because I would have killed to have another TOS-era series where we get to see more of the Gorn and Tholians. Could have made the Gorn into Space Orcs and I guarentee you nobody would have complained since we know so little about their culture.

PS, closest we ever got to a TOS revival was In a Mirror, Darkly. If you get around to watching TOS but decide to give Enterprise a pass, you should still check that episode out.
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
Deep Space Nine is pretty spectacular since it takes the existing Star Trek lore and expands it, rather than inventing a new species every single episode like Voyager and TNG did. If anything, that's the aspect I like the least about those shows. There are so many alien races in the Star Trek universe that it just borders on flat-out ridiculous. I know sci-fi has a long and beloved tradition of creating scenes filled with weird alien races and cultures, but I wish every so often a series would turn around and give up a little more characterization for the races they created. It worked great with DS9.

The Cardassians showed up like, a handful of times in TNG? DS9 fleshed them out to the point where they now have as much detail as the Klingons and Romulans. Same with the Ferengi, which were basically a joke race built to mock capitalism. DS9 made them more detailed AND kept the parody, to the point where Quark's speeches are way funnier interpretations of capitalism than the inital space Jews with laser whips ever were. Discovery was such a missed opportunity because I would have killed to have another TOS-era series where we get to see more of the Gorn and Tholians. Could have made the Gorn into Space Orcs and I guarentee you nobody would have complained since we know so little about their culture.

PS, closest we ever got to a TOS revival was In a Mirror, Darkly. If you get around to watching TOS but decide to give Enterprise a pass, you should still check that episode out.
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DS9 is a good science fiction war drama in the TNG setting.
As much as I like it as a TV show I understand the arguments that are made for it not being a good "Star Trek" show.
 
XYZpdq said:
DS9 is a good science fiction war drama in the TNG setting.
As much as I like it as a TV show I understand the arguments that are made for it not being a good "Star Trek" show.
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I understand those arguements but in my perception they're usually made by people who think TNG is quintessential Star Trek, which I just flat-out disagree with. I'm very biased towards TOS, but it did distill the formula of "Go to new place -> That's interesting -> Oh shit -> Here's the plan -> Resolution" that is pretty much typical Trek. DS9 seemed to be the first Trek show that posited that we can discover strange new worlds within the existing framework.

I did both love and hate the huge fleet battles though. On the one hand, they were pretty cool to watch. On the other hand, I really miss the Enterprise dueling some opponent at range and the idea that Starships are so powerful even the biggest empires can only have a few of them at once. DS9 pretty much confirmed that Star Trek is just like Star Wars or Warhammer with hundreds upon hundreds of ships for each faction. It crossed a line for Star Trek that really fucked with that core conciet that every single big starship is a "hero" ship and the loss of even one of them is a staggering blow both in terms of hardware and the brilliant minds the crew presumably had. Also made the dynamics of space warfare more boring; now Starfleet fights conventional ground wars and fleet engagements instead of just blowing continents off planets or deploying small squads of supersoldiers like in Classic/Hard SF.
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
The Cardassians showed up like, a handful of times in TNG? DS9 fleshed them out to the point where they now have as much detail as the Klingons and Romulans. Same with the Ferengi, which were basically a joke race built to mock capitalism. DS9 made them more detailed AND kept the parody, to the point where Quark's speeches are way funnier interpretations of capitalism than the inital space Jews with laser whips ever were. Discovery was such a missed opportunity because I would have killed to have another TOS-era series where we get to see more of the Gorn and Tholians. Could have made the Gorn into Space Orcs and I guarentee you nobody would have complained since we know so little about their culture.
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You will probably enjoy this.

Heck, DS9 even gave the Klingons more depth than TNG did (and TNG did a LOT for them).
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
I understand those arguements but in my perception they're usually made by people who think TNG is quintessential Star Trek, which I just flat-out disagree with. I'm very biased towards TOS, but it did distill the formula of "Go to new place -> That's interesting -> Oh shit -> Here's the plan -> Resolution" that is pretty much typical Trek. DS9 seemed to be the first Trek show that posited that we can discover strange new worlds within the existing framework.

I did both love and hate the huge fleet battles though. On the one hand, they were pretty cool to watch. On the other hand, I really miss the Enterprise dueling some opponent at range and the idea that Starships are so powerful even the biggest empires can only have a few of them at once. DS9 pretty much confirmed that Star Trek is just like Star Wars or Warhammer with hundreds upon hundreds of ships for each faction. It crossed a line for Star Trek that really fucked with that core conciet that every single big starship is a "hero" ship and the loss of even one of them is a staggering blow both in terms of hardware and the brilliant minds the crew presumably had. Also made the dynamics of space warfare more boring; now Starfleet fights conventional ground wars and fleet engagements instead of just blowing continents off planets or deploying small squads of supersoldiers like in Classic/Hard SF.
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Yeah when Trek tries to do military scifi it's like trying to do detailed combat in some tabletop RPG system geared more to roleplaying. It _can_ do it but it ends up being a bit of a stretch at times and it can really throw the weaknesses of the system into a spotlight.
 
Cardassians/Bajorans showed up in TNG to set up DS9, and they showed up a lot.

Maquis showed up in DS9 to set up VOY, and then they were quickly forgotten about, except for one episode where a Bajoran hijacked a transmission the Voyager got from the Alpha Quadrant in a later season to hypnotize Tuvok into a Vulcan killing machine.

I feel bad for Tim Russ, man. He was such a good actor in VOY and such a hardcore Trekkie . . . and he got what he got.
 
Ro Laren was originally supposed to have the second in command spot on DS9, but I believe they would have to pay royalties to whoever created her character. It's the same reason why Tom Paris wasn't the character he played on TNG, even though that would have been a better story. (I'm not sure if that also applied to Miles and later Worf)

Speaking of Tuvok, remember that time they retconned Russ's (originally human) character in Generations into being Tuvok? Fun times.
 
UnKillFill said:
I believe they would have to pay royalties to whoever created her character.
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Actually it's Michelle Forbes who declined the offer, she had a bunch of movie opportunities and didn't want to sign a contract that could get her stuck on a tv show for several years. Also I don't think a character like Ro Laren would work on DS9.
 
Miller said:
Also I don't think a character like Ro Laren would work on DS9.
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She would have just been Kira only the Bajorans put her there because of her past experience with the Federation.
Also she would now have been always on Bajor because the writers still forgot about Bajorans diasporating.
 
Honestly, I'm into Season 5 of DS9 and I'm really digging it. The real meat and potatoes of the "war" haven't kicked in yet, but it still feels very much like Star Trek to me with all the character interactions and the way the stories are focused. It isn't that far off from TNG. They tried new things, sure, but nothing so far that felt Anti-Star Trek.
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
I did both love and hate the huge fleet battles though. On the one hand, they were pretty cool to watch. On the other hand, I really miss the Enterprise dueling some opponent at range and the idea that Starships are so powerful even the biggest empires can only have a few of them at once. DS9 pretty much confirmed that Star Trek is just like Star Wars or Warhammer with hundreds upon hundreds of ships for each faction. It crossed a line for Star Trek that really fucked with that core conciet that every single big starship is a "hero" ship and the loss of even one of them is a staggering blow both in terms of hardware and the brilliant minds the crew presumably had.
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Major problem with the "hero" ship concept is that producers, directors and writers not just in Star Trek but science fiction in general is they believe the audience is too stupid to ID the title ship and another ship of the same class when they're on the screen together or in the scene series. With the Enterprises only one that could be called unqiue is the Enterprise B which was supposed to be the first of a refit/upgrade program for the entire Excelsior fleet but ended up instead an one off subvariant.

Another point is prior to DS9 is Star Trek always "tell, not show" its wars and major conflicts and the series were set after they have already ended. DS9 instead shown the prelude, the war itself and the conclusion.
 
RumblyTumbly said:
Honestly, I'm into Season 5 of DS9 and I'm really digging it. The real meat and potatoes of the "war" haven't kicked in yet, but it still feels very much like Star Trek to me with all the character interactions and the way the stories are focused. It isn't that far off from TNG. They tried new things, sure, but nothing so far that felt Anti-Star Trek.
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The only thing DS9 introduced that feels really anti-Trek to me is Section 31. Most people seem to like it but the implication that characters like Picard, and the Federation as a whole, only get to act morally because these Mission Impossible LARPers are running gay ops off screen kinda ruins it for me.
 
Uranus Pink said:
Major problem with the "hero" ship concept is that producers, directors and writers not just in Star Trek but science fiction in general is they believe the audience is too stupid to ID the title ship and another ship of the same class when they're on the screen together or in the scene series. With the Enterprises only one that could be called unqiue is the Enterprise B which was supposed to be the first of a refit/upgrade program for the entire Excelsior fleet but ended up instead an one off subvariant.

Another point is prior to DS9 is Star Trek always "tell, not show" its wars and major conflicts and the series were set after they have already ended. DS9 instead shown the prelude, the war itself and the conclusion.
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That was kind of the appeal though. TOS especially was like listening to grandpa tell WW2 stories, or reading one of those old books filled with black and white photos of old battleships. Is that really a picture of the USS Iowa? I have no fucking clue, still looks badass. (Funnily enough this did happen in Star Trek with the aircraft carrier USS Ranger, claimed to be the Big E herself in Voyage Home). Now, of course, TOS limited the number and specifications of Starships and the battle scenes because of both their limited budget and their special effects at the time, but the end result was pretty unique.
 
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