What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

CorporalCaptain said:
Both The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Andromeda Strain (1971) are better science fiction films from Wise than TMP. The problem is traceable to the script, I think. The scripts of those earlier two films are far superior to the TMP script. TMP needed at least one more rewrite to make it into the league of the earlier two.
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The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the few, true sci-fi movie classics--not just a "good" film, but a classic. Its execution in every category was class--top of the line. OTOH, Star Trek - The Motion Picture was an extremely poor misrepresentation of the concept which TOS established and excelled at routinely. Its as though Roddenberry, et al., were resentful of everything which made TOS a cultural phenomenon, and fought to take the soul and heart of the concept.

I find it quite undeniable that in an alternate reality, if TOS was produced like TMP (specifically its characters, reason to be, etc.), it would have been rejected as a series, or cancelled as fast as The Tammy Grimes Show.
 
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Has anyone who is a fan of TMP ever watched "Poltergeist" and noticed the soundtrack similarities?

I mean not just that it's Jerry Goldsmith in both instances; there are parts of "Poltergeist" that are eerily similar.

I love both movies, but the music is probably my favorite part of both films.
 
Moviefan2k4 said:
Well, TOS started airing 14 years before I was born; my older cousin who loved the show didn't even exist at the time. My own mother would've been 7 back then, the same as I was when TNG started, but I don't know if she watched the earlier show in her youth, either (in fact, I don't know if her family even had a TV at all).
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I wasn't born either but my dad thoroughly enjoyed TOS and had several episodes on VHS so I got in to TOS in the 80s because of that.
 
TREK_GOD_1 said:
The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the few, true sci-fi movie classics--not just a "good" film, but a classic. Its execution in every category was class--top of the line. OTOH, Star Trek - The Motion Picture was an extremely poor misrepresentation of the concept which TOS established and excelled at routinely. Its as though Roddenberry, et al., were resentful of everything which made TOS a cultural phenomenon, and fought to take the soul and heart of the concept.
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There are some that feel TMP is the only (or one of the few) movies that best presents Roddenberry's concept of Star Trek, with the majority of the subsequent movies focusing more on action adventure instead of the human adventure
 
Praetor said:
Has anyone who is a fan of TMP ever watched "Poltergeist" and noticed the soundtrack similarities?

I mean not just that it's Jerry Goldsmith in both instances; there are parts of "Poltergeist" that are eerily similar.

I love both movies, but the music is probably my favorite part of both films.
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Oh heavens yes. Also The Secret of NIMH. It's all of a piece of early 80's G'smith. I'm sure there's others. If you like his Enterprise bits in TMP then check out Explorers for some of the same vibes.
 
Shawnster said:
There are some that feel TMP is the only (or one of the few) movies that best presents Roddenberry's concept of Star Trek, with the majority of the subsequent movies focusing more on action adventure instead of the human adventure
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Though I liked most of the movies, I largely agree. The TOS movies after TMP focused on action-adventure, TWOK and TUC specifically on “naval adventure” (which is why I’ve always said The Hunt for Red October is one of the best TOS movies); and at least something blowing up remained the model thereafter.
 
Praetor said:
Has anyone who is a fan of TMP ever watched "Poltergeist" and noticed the soundtrack similarities?

I mean not just that it's Jerry Goldsmith in both instances; there are parts of "Poltergeist" that are eerily similar.
Click to expand...
I haven’t seen Poltergeist in maybe 35 years, but I was watching something else Goldsmith scored around the same time recently and it was also very reminiscent of TMP (unfortunately, my addled old man brain can recall what the movie was, lol).
Praetor said:
I love both movies, but the music is probably my favorite part of both films.
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Sometimes I consider TMP to just be a long form music video.
 
The final confrontation in 48 Hrs. (1982) had a little V'ger flyover-like music.

See starting at 3:50 into this video:

Music by James Horner, not Goldsmith, though. And the two phrases are reversed compared to the similar passage in TMP. :lol:
 
Shawnster said:
There are some that feel TMP is the only (or one of the few) movies that best presents Roddenberry's concept of Star Trek, with the majority of the subsequent movies focusing more on action adventure instead of the human adventure
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The issue with "Roddenberry's concept" is that the actual TV series was the evolutionary and influential work of others in addition to Roddenberry, hence characters growing beyond writer's bible archetypes, unforgettable villains, and weighty moral dilemmas Roddenberry was not always responsible for. None of that was to be found in TMP, which came off like a less exciting 1970s PBS special about early spaceflight. One of the central reasons TWOK saved the franchise was its return to the soul and heart of its main characters' interaction and challenges through difficult / dark times, much like the best of TOS. This focus on characters and their unique kind of carried forward through the rest of the TOS movies, making TMP seem like some cold experiment--the outlier divorced from what made Star Trek...Star Trek.

Its no wonder the Roddenberry-guided TMP is more connected to the early, Roddenberry-controlled TNG than the rest of its own series; both moved far away from the non-GR parts of what TOS established about that fictional world.
 
TREK_GOD_1 said:
The issue with "Roddenberry's concept" is that the actual TV series was the evolutionary and influential work of others in addition to Roddenberry, hence characters growing beyond writer's bible archetypes, unforgettable villains, and weighty moral dilemmas Roddenberry was not always responsible for. None of that was to be found in TMP, which came off like a less exciting 1970s PBS special about early spaceflight. One of the central reasons TWOK saved the franchise was its return to the soul and heart of its main characters' interaction and challenges through difficult / dark times, much like the best of TOS. This focus on characters and their unique kind of carried forward through the rest of the TOS movies, making TMP seem like some cold experiment--the outlier divorced from what made Star Trek...Star Trek.

Its no wonder the Roddenberry-guided TMP is more connected to the early, Roddenberry-controlled TNG than the rest of its own series; both moved far away from the non-GR parts of what TOS established about that fictional world.
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TMP is one big weighty moral dilemma; and granted it has no villain — for some of us, that’s a feature, not a bug — but its antagonist is pretty damn memorable. Its characters have grown away from who they were a few years before, before the events of the story bring them back around to how they’d interacted before. That’s kind of the point of the story… And everything about the film’s final scene, up to and including the “Human Adventure” tag, epitomizes what made Star Trek what it was.

And for the “early PBS spaceflight special” thing — uh, sure, I’m sure there must have been some special like that, with drama and the aforesaid moral dilemma; no doubt I just missed it.
 
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TREK_GOD_1 said:
The issue with "Roddenberry's concept"...
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There seems to be a difference of opinion on what the Roddenberry concept is.

To boil it down the Roddenberry concept would be stories that have a message, moral, and meaning that supports the ieals and values that humanity will improve by applying the principles found in secular humanism. In other words, stories that aren't focused on mindless violence or popcorn action adventure.

Of course, such concepts do not bring in the casual viewers with their dollars.
 
Shawnster said:
Of course, such concepts do not bring in the casual viewers with their dollars.
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At his best, the Roddenberry concept is to present it in such a way that brings in casual viewers with their dollars. The trick is to not let the rubes (me!) know that they are being preached to. You do that with popcorn adventure and maybe some mindless(ish) violence.

Much of Trek (certainly since 1987) is pretty terrible at grasping this concept.
 
I mean, TOS' original idea was as an action adventure series, so moving away from that is always odd to me. Star Trek could espouse such values even with action elements, including recognizing when such ideals are valuable and when more direct action is necessary.

It always amazes me how quickly Trek installments get dismissed for daring to have action, while people ignore the foundation of Star Trek is action/adventure with social commentary and an optimistic viewpoint on human growth and potential. Also, that humanity, in order to grow, has to first encounter WW3 and a "post atomic horror," per TNG.
 
CorporalCaptain said:
The final confrontation in 48 Hrs. (1982) had a little V'ger flyover-like music.

See starting at 3:50 into this video:

Music by James Horner, not Goldsmith, though. And the two phrases are reversed compared to the similar passage in TMP. :lol:
Click to expand...

Horner being Horner, he'd recycle his 48 HRS percussion in COMMANDO. And PATRIOT GAMES much later.
 
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