Star Trek: The General Discussion

Ok, I was avoiding this thread for the last few weeks and I finally have a few minutes to knock out a post about Into Darkness.

Spoilers Within I'm just putting everything inside tags to be safe.

My initial impression is that Into Darkness was a good, fun sci-fi movie, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. If it was anything but a Trek film, I would have probably loved the film, but I think that Into Darkness was far too much Space Marines and not nearly enough "Trek". To me Trek has always been about exploring the nature of humanity, society, and what might be possible for human growth. I just didn't get that from Into Darkness, there was only one line of dialog at the end that had anything to do with any type of social commentary. Star Trek: TOS was groundbreaking in it's portrayal of women, women of color, interracial relationships and even religion; in Into Darkness the leadership of Starfleet was all old white men - not one woman, not one person of a different ethnicity. It felt very un-Trek to me. There were no strong female characters; we went from Uhura being the only woman to stand up to Kirk's charms to her being Spock's arm-candy and little more than a plot device to humanize him. Dr. Marcus was a completely flat character with no purpose except to be a damsel-in-distress (and not even a very good one). Dr. Marcus in Wrath of Khan was at least clever, resourceful, and stood up to Kirk; this Dr. Marcus is a flat, vapid, weak character who is apparently cast only for her ability to look good in her underwear.

Then there is the portrayal of Spock. I don't know if it's Chris Pine being a mediocre actor or Zachary Quinto being a really good one, but Spock is the strongest character in the film, and also the most emotional. It seems like JJ Abrams is getting far too attached to Spock losing control. Nimoy's strength in the portrayal of Spock was in the subtlety, the minor jabs at MacCoy, the hint of a smile, the slight change in inflection, that let you know he wasn't a robot. Quinto's Spock needs to go through an Anger Management class and possibly be medicated; the guy gets more angry, more frequently than any other character.

There are also a number of glaring plot holes, the biggest one is the fact that they detonated 72 torpedoes inside the secondary hull of the Vengeance and not only is the ship not an expanding cloud of dust, but it was quickly made maneuverable again by a single person. Those torpedoes might as well be party poppers for all the good they did. Then there's the fact that a super-secret Section 31 facility gets blown up by a defrosted super-soldier and the first thing Starfleet does is gather all the leadership together into a building with floor-to-ceiling windows in unregulated airspace after they know Khan stole a gunship. Seriously guys, get yourselves a situation room, or meet in the Admiral's basement or something. Finally, why are you flying your flagship to the Klingon homeworld? Why not just use Scotty's transwarp beaming equation to beam him back, or beam an armed warhead to his location set to detonate one second after arrival? Instead they use this Rube Goldberg reasoning to fly Enterprise past the border, past any patrol pickets, and park it in orbit around the homeworld without being noticed. This doesn't give me much faith in the Klingon reputation for being mighty warriors when they can't even see an enemy ship in orbit over Kronos.
 
Ok, I was avoiding this thread for the last few weeks and I finally have a few minutes to knock out a post about Into Darkness.

Spoilers Within I'm just putting everything inside tags to be safe.

My initial impression is that Into Darkness was a good, fun sci-fi movie, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. If it was anything but a Trek film, I would have probably loved the film, but I think that Into Darkness was far too much Space Marines and not nearly enough "Trek". To me Trek has always been about exploring the nature of humanity, society, and what might be possible for human growth. I just didn't get that from Into Darkness, there was only one line of dialog at the end that had anything to do with any type of social commentary. Star Trek: TOS was groundbreaking in it's portrayal of women, women of color, interracial relationships and even religion; in Into Darkness the leadership of Starfleet was all old white men - not one woman, not one person of a different ethnicity. It felt very un-Trek to me. There were no strong female characters; we went from Uhura being the only woman to stand up to Kirk's charms to her being Spock's arm-candy and little more than a plot device to humanize him. Dr. Marcus was a completely flat character with no purpose except to be a damsel-in-distress (and not even a very good one). Dr. Marcus in Wrath of Khan was at least clever, resourceful, and stood up to Kirk; this Dr. Marcus is a flat, vapid, weak character who is apparently cast only for her ability to look good in her underwear.

Then there is the portrayal of Spock. I don't know if it's Chris Pine being a mediocre actor or Zachary Quinto being a really good one, but Spock is the strongest character in the film, and also the most emotional. It seems like JJ Abrams is getting far too attached to Spock losing control. Nimoy's strength in the portrayal of Spock was in the subtlety, the minor jabs at MacCoy, the hint of a smile, the slight change in inflection, that let you know he wasn't a robot. Quinto's Spock needs to go through an Anger Management class and possibly be medicated; the guy gets more angry, more frequently than any other character.

There are also a number of glaring plot holes, the biggest one is the fact that they detonated 72 torpedoes inside the secondary hull of the Vengeance and not only is the ship not an expanding cloud of dust, but it was quickly made maneuverable again by a single person. Those torpedoes might as well be party poppers for all the good they did. Then there's the fact that a super-secret Section 31 facility gets blown up by a defrosted super-soldier and the first thing Starfleet does is gather all the leadership together into a building with floor-to-ceiling windows in unregulated airspace after they know Khan stole a gunship. Seriously guys, get yourselves a situation room, or meet in the Admiral's basement or something. Finally, why are you flying your flagship to the Klingon homeworld? Why not just use Scotty's transwarp beaming equation to beam him back, or beam an armed warhead to his location set to detonate one second after arrival? Instead they use this Rube Goldberg reasoning to fly Enterprise past the border, past any patrol pickets, and park it in orbit around the homeworld without being noticed. This doesn't give me much faith in the Klingon reputation for being mighty warriors when they can't even see an enemy ship in orbit over Kronos.

You raise some very good points; however, I'm going to have to agree to disagree with your comments about Spock.

Remember, the Spock in TOS was a Spock who had both a mother and a homeworld. This Spock lost his mother and almost everyone he ever cared about. That's bound to give him a few issues. So yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that he has anger management problems. Vulcans, despite what a lot of non-Trekkers believe, do have emotions - they just choose to suppress them. (Albeit not very well during the run of Enterprise.)

As far as the rest of it goes - yeah, some of it just seems down to the Rule of Cool.
 
Yeah, I know that Vulcans feel, and feel very deeply. As for T'Pol, even her mother pointed out that she was never very good as suppressing her emotions.

T'Pol never tried to beat the shit out of an augmented human in a fit of rage
 
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Yeah, I know that Vulcans feel, and feel very deeply. As for T'Pol, even her mother pointed out that she was never very good as suppressing her emotions.

T'Pol never tried to beat the shit out of an augmented human in a fit of rage

T'Pol also wasn't half human, either.
 
I definitely agree with the film not really being in the spirit of Star Trek, but what can be expected out of Hollywood these days....
 
I remember writer Jeri Taylor once saying that a Star Trek story has to be something that you can't get anywhere other than in Star Trek.
 
Blind_Io: Interestingly, you are saying very much the same thing about Into Darkness as Felicia Day. And I have to agree, too.
 
Ok, I was avoiding this thread for the last few weeks and I finally have a few minutes to knock out a post about Into Darkness.

Spoilers Within I'm just putting everything inside tags to be safe.

yep, I can't argue w any of those glaring plot holes. It is what it is.
 
Enjoyed it. Not a huge trekkie, so I enjoyed it for what it is. Fun, sci-fi film. Thought it could have been longer. Got to the penultimate boom and was sorta like ".... already?"
 
Okay, I finally got around to seeing Star Trek Into Darkness; and though I doubt there is anybody who frequents this thread who hasn't seen the movie, I'm going to spoiler it just in case.

I was disappointed.

Okay, let me explain. Unlike the rest of you, I am old enough to have seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when it hit theaters back in 1982. The movie was incredible. It took the characters that I had been following since the mid-Seventies and shook them to their core. Admiral Kirk had gone through life happily avoiding consequence after consequence; walking up to Death himself and tweaking Death's nose. (If Death had a nose.) But then his best friend, practically his brother, sacrifices his life to save the ship and his friends. Kirk's "death", and subsequent resurrection to me was a poor rehash of Spock's death scene from ST2. Not only did it rehash it, it cheapened it. It would have been far better for someone else to have made that sacrifice (Chekhov, perhaps?) and stayed dead. This is an alternate timeline after all.

Which brings me to my second point - why Khan? What if Benedict Cumberbatch's character was actually an Augment named John Harrison? Because, let's face it - as good an actor as Cumberbatch is, (And he's very good.) there's not much about him that says "Indian" to me. At least Ricardo Montalban had a tan in TOS. But I guess Spock yelling "HARRISONNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!! didn't have the same ring to it.

And while I do appreciate the little touches that the writers threw in for the fans like myself who have followed Trek for nigh-on 40 years, they may have thrown in a few too many. (Let's count them, shall we? Harry Mudd, the tribble, Christine Chapel, Carol Marcus, Zefrem Cochrane's Phoenix warpship, the NX Enterprise...) Oh, another thing - someone should have told Admiral Marcus that if he's going to build a top-secret warship to start a war with the Klingons, he probably shouldn't keep a model of it on his desk.

Oh, one more thing - in addition to the plot holes that Blind_Io pointed out. (I do have to mention though that the Enterprise was not orbiting Qo'noS, it was in fact on the edge of Klingon space.) Kirk died of... what? That's right, radiation poisoning. So why did Bones have Kirk's body lying out in the open in Sickbay flooding the area with radiation?

While Into Darkness was a fairly good movie, it wasn't Star Trek. The thing I always liked about Star Trek was that it never talked down to its audience. This clip from Frankie Boyle sums up how I feel about the movie:
 
Another plot hole that bothered me:

After the tribble comes back to life (Which reminds me - is tribble and human physiology that similar that Dr. McCoy knows Augment blood will restore Kirk? Or is he just hoping it'll work?) Bones says, "Don't kill Khan! We need him alive if we have any chance of saving Jim!

Um, why? You have 72 other Augments with the same genetic enhancements on board. Why do you need Khan? Just kill him with a phaser blast, and use one of Khan's brothers and sisters to save Kirk.
 
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They were big enough to drive a Super Star Destroyer through.

(Like the classifed, black-op starship being built in orbit of Jupiter that exists in model form on the Starfleet Commander's desk. Kind of like General Powell having a model of the F-117 Stealth fighter on his desk back in 1988.)
 
Another plot hole that bothered me:

After the tribble comes back to life (Which reminds me - is tribble and human physiology that similar that Dr. McCoy knows Augment blood will restore Kirk? Or is he just hoping it'll work?) Bones says, "Don't kill Khan! We need him alive if we have any chance of saving Jim!

Um, why? You have 72 other Augments with the same genetic enhancements on board. Why do you need Khan? Just kill him with a phaser blast, and use one of Khan's brothers and sisters to save Kirk.

Because,..

... Khan was not like the others, he was way stronger/better, only his blood had the potential to do that, only he could regenerate so fast.

At least thats what I recall.
 
Because,..

... Khan was not like the others, he was way stronger/better, only his blood had the potential to do that, only he could regenerate so fast.

At least thats what I recall.
And they knew that how? I think perhaps defrosting one of the others would not have been a viable option in time, simple as that.
 
How they knew that..?

Well iirc they revived this weird little fluffy thing with his blood, after wondering why he wont die. Or more specific, after Kirk was dead bones then saw that this little guinea pig thingy he treated with Khans blood earlier was alive. At least thats what I recall :D.

Actually, that makes it entirely possible that the others have that too, I guess. But considering they found out while he was already dead, they didn't really had the time or didn't wanna take the chance to kill/lose Khan.
 
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Because,..

... Khan was not like the others, he was way stronger/better, only his blood had the potential to do that, only he could regenerate so fast.

At least thats what I recall.

When "Harrison" said he was better at everything, he meant better than humans.

From Memory Alpha:
The Augments were designed to be remarkably agile, five times stronger than, and twice as intelligent as a normal human, resistant to sickness and with enhanced senses, possessing heart muscles twice as strong and lung efficiency 50% better. Their blood contained platelets capable of regenerating from any disease or toxin, which could be used to cure or revive medical subjects via transfusion. They also had twice the average lifespan. Even their resistance to directed energy weapons was improved, as it took multiple shots with a phaser or a phase pistol to stun one. In combat, they were even capable of resisting a Vulcan nerve pinch and mind meld.

And they knew that how? I think perhaps defrosting one of the others would not have been a viable option in time, simple as that.

That may well have been the case. But if it was, why not have a couple of lines explaining it? That's what pisses me off about Michael Bay's films. There are gaping plot holes that could be explained with a line or two of dialogue, but nobody makes the effort. (At least, not since The Rock.)
 
Where was the Harry Mudd reference?

I must have missed it.

It was in a throwaway line of dialogue in that second act of the film when they took thay civilian shuttle to Kronos.
 
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