A Semi-Hater Revisits Voyager

[Tomalak]

Frazzled wrote:

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Apologies for dragging this up again days too late in the Voyager forum, but I finally managed to see it last night and

I NEED TO SHOUT ABOUT IT - IT'S FANTASTIC!!

I'm still on a high today after seeing Trek on the big screen again. Loved it, loved it, loved it

Yeah, that's the initial sugar rush. You'll hate it in a week!

[TheGodBen]

Tomalak wrote:

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Yeah, that's the initial sugar rush. You'll hate it in a week!

He will if I do my job right.

[Frazzled]

Heh heh

[startrekwatcher]

Well since we are discussing the film I'll throw my two cents into the mix

When I first watched the film so much is going on that while I saw some problems I really didn't see the deficiencies in the film to the degree I did later because everything is moving so fast, maybe too fast. But once you see the film again or you sit back and try to make sense of all the stuff in the film and actually analyze the story the film really starts to have problems. Maybe the writers thought that with the whirlwind of events that occur in the film that you wouldn't catch on but I like to examine the story especially when it comes to films or tv series that go out of their way to cover a lot of ground as it tends to be the preferred style these days.

I did love the exciting visual effects sequences--the Narada vs the Kelvin, Spock's ramming of the Narada with the ship from the future--, the epic visuals--Vulcan's destruction-- and inventive stunts like the atmospheric jump to the drill. I loved the updates on the TOS uniform. The colors were vibrant and rich and looked good on everyone. I didn't mind the cosmetic license the designers took with the Enterprise from either the interior or from the outside. I loved the clean white look and have ever since seeing it on the Prometheus from Voyager's "Message in a Bottle" and the Engineering set paid homage to the original and looked like I envisioned if it had a bigger budget. The Enterprise was a beauty to behold as was the Narada.

All the actors were well cast. I thought Chekov, McCoy, Kirk, Spock and Amanda did an excellent job capturing the mannerisms and essence of their original counterparts. Uhura felt a little different. Here she had a bit of spunk and sass which wasn't a bad thing. Scotty was a little over-the-top for my tastes. I didn't care for Pegg's Scotty. He was too over-the-top. From what little we saw this crew had chemistry and I liked all of them. In fact, I liked them so much I would have liked them to have had more focus and interaction than they received. If there was one thing that I felt was missing was the emotional undercurrent. Trek is at its best when mixing its humanity with the action. Even weaker Trek films like Generations or Insurrection had those moments of reflection that were pretty much absent here. This was mostly jumping from one action piece to the next with little time to absorb what just happened.

This definitely stood out when they destroyed Vulcan yet it didn't register much of a reaction. It wasn't carrying the kind of shock and impact it really should have viscerally. This is afterall a founding member of the Federation and a world that has been part of Trek since the beginning yet its destruction carried about as much resonance as a nameless planet of the week or destroying a planet in a video game. It wasn't a grim sequence a la ENT's "Twilight" and we didn't see the shock like even B&B captured in "The Expanse". It seemed the writers wanted to do something big and decided to destroy Vulcan but they didn't do enough to do the idea the justice it deserved. DS9 manged to generate more reaction from me with just hearing that Betazed was invaded by the Dominion on DS9. As I was trying to figure out why it donned on me that there was so much else going on around it got lost in the mix--it was just one of a thousand plot points. I think they crammed too much material into these two hours. By trying to do so many things none of them really receive the kind of development they deserved.

Yes, they tried to capture the loss with Spock in his scenes with Uhura and with Sarek but they didn't succeed for me. Not enough had been done to give those scenes the kind of richness demanded of them. And for a long time fan such as myself feeling this way I can only imagine the lack of resonance by the uninitiated who are just introduced to this race and its world. Same with Amanda's death, you really have to earn those emotional payoffs and just destroying a planet or killing off Spock's mother, which was a little iffy in its execution, doesn't automatically guarantee those expected responses especially since Amanda had sum total of about a minute of screentime and comes off no better than a redshirt. We had no reason to invest in it. Maybe they expected any emotional attachment would be transferred from TOS to this film but that wasn't the case for me.

I also thought Nero was more of a plot device than a flesh and blood adversary. I would have liked more interesting/intriguing definition to his motivations. And while I didn't mind the time travel aspect to the story but could it have been any more basic. It preserves TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT and allows from here on out for Abrams to play around and bring in races that in the original timeline couldn't appear and do shocking things like destroy Vulcan which I was surprised by but I would have liked a more interesting scenario than simply Romulus being destroyed by a super nova. It felt like a big chunk of relevant information was missing in order to be able to understand why Nero was doing what he was doing and it turns out there was something missing. What is up with shows or films providing supplemental and critical information regarding the storyline in extraneous sources like webisodes, podcasts, comic books, interviews. If it is important don't relegate it to someplace other than the actual film. Moore had a bad habit of this with BSG. Apparently that is what happened here.

According to what I've heard, there was a comic that explained in more detail the events in 2387 that leads up to the blackhole that deposits Spock and Nero in the past. The comics explain the significance of the teral'n and why the Narada crew sports tattoos. It was too bad we didn't get to see more of the late 24th century than the very brief glimpses via Spock's mind meld.

As far as Nimoy's Spock's inclusion it might have been handled better. When I heard he was going to be in the film and that we would see the origins of the TOS crew it seemed an interesting way to merge these is to have Spock on his deathbed remembering these individuals and reflecting on his life maybe via a mindmeld with someone. I think that might have been more interesting and certainly more poignant. Given that this in all liklihood will be the last time we ever see Old Spock I would have liked a more satisfying use of him other than as a plot device and a more satisfying sense of closure akin to Sarek's sendoff in "Unification". Here they left it open. But if this is ever the last time we see Old Spock it's disappointing that he didn't receive a better curtain call.

And unlike instances in the past when a figure from TOS popped up, Old Spock's presence didn't evoke that warm nostalgia and sentimentality the way Admiral McCoy or Scotty's did. And I found it a tad too convenient Kirk runs into Old Spock and then Scotty the way they did but I like Scotty's little alien buddy.

The Spock/Uhura romance I don't know what to make of it. It didn't get in the way but I'm not that into the idea but then we didn't get a lot of insight into and I thought the Orion looked awful.

What little we got of namedropping I could have taken or left. I prefer any references to other shows to be in service of the story(like ENT's "The Forge") and not just randomly mentioning things like Delta Vega or seeing a tribble.

I guess my one complaint is it lacked substance and despite all these issues I had did enjoy myself the first time but it wasn't all it might have been. It wasn't solid. It wasn't awful. It had its strengths and weaknesses so I guess that would place it squarely in the middle so I'd give it an average. 2.5 stars out of 4 stars. I'd also add that with Abrams input it pretty much confirms what I had thought all along--namely LOST's excellence can be contributed to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and the writing staff they assembled not Abrams.

I personally think Trek works better as a tv series. Most of the time after seeing a Trek film I leave not completely satisfied. The last one that really worked was Star Trek 6. This film is okay. It's not the best Trek film ever. It has issues that prevented me from being completely engrossed in the film as it unfolded. It's entertaining on a superficial level but it has its issues.

[kimc]

Personally I would reverse the ratings for "Concerning Flight" and "Mortal Coil". Sure, the use of holograms on Trek in general has always been problematic but those issues pale in comparison with Seven's magic nanoprobes bringing people back from the dead. Hello!?

Besides, it was fun to see Janeway and Tuvok get off the ship for a change.

[Praetor]

Tomalak wrote:

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I half wonder if it was initially pitched as a Chakotay story, but was changed for fear of offending Native American beliefs. I've got nothing to back that up with, but it would explain why Neelix's faith seemed to come out of the blue swirly vortex.

GodBen wrote:

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Chakotay would have made more sense, but I can't see him being driven to suicide over it. I can believe that Neelix was a dark soul who overcompensated by being overly cheery, but sometimes the writers completely forgot the dark soul part and only remembered the annoying part.

You know, I started to say the same things - but weren't Chakotay's beliefs already examined in "Tattoo" when he met the Sky Spirit aliens in person? I don't think it would have really worked with him in that regard. Been there, done that.

[Jaespol]

Let's not talk about the film in here, it just gets everyone off track. I just saw it for the second time and liked it more than I did the first, it was a great film..but let's stick to slagging off Voyager.

[Vykan12]

In regards to the nanoprobe reviving, I can see how the producers would've found it tiresome for every dead person to have their potential lifespan extended by a few hours (up to 70 according to 7) before they could truly be declared dead. It's a lot like having to invent technobabble to explain why quickfix solutions like transporting or comms systems cannot be used to deal with a specific problem.

Though more likely, the producers didn't really care about the future consequences of this technology because they wrote the show to be mostly episodic.

[Tomalak]

Maybe it only worked on Talaxians - there's a few suggestions that they are very hardy folk, so perhaps the brain can survive longer than a human's.

[TheGodBen]

startrekwatcher wrote:

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This definitely stood out when they destroyed Vulcan yet it didn't register much of a reaction. It wasn't carrying the kind of shock and impact it really should have viscerally. This is afterall a founding member of the Federation and a world that has been part of Trek since the beginning yet its destruction carried about as much resonance as a nameless planet of the week or destroying a planet in a video game. It wasn't a grim sequence a la ENT's "Twilight" and we didn't see the shock like even B&B captured in "The Expanse". It seemed the writers wanted to do something big and decided to destroy Vulcan but they didn't do enough to do the idea the justice it deserved. DS9 manged to generate more reaction from me with just hearing that Betazed was invaded by the Dominion on DS9. As I was trying to figure out why it donned on me that there was so much else going on around it got lost in the mix--it was just one of a thousand plot points. I think they crammed too much material into these two hours. By trying to do so many things none of them really receive the kind of development they deserved.

Yes, they tried to capture the loss with Spock in his scenes with Uhura and with Sarek but they didn't succeed for me. Not enough had been done to give those scenes the kind of richness demanded of them. And for a long time fan such as myself feeling this way I can only imagine the lack of resonance by the uninitiated who are just introduced to this race and its world. Same with Amanda's death, you really have to earn those emotional payoffs and just destroying a planet or killing off Spock's mother, which was a little iffy in its execution, doesn't automatically guarantee those expected responses especially since Amanda had sum total of about a minute of screentime and comes off no better than a redshirt. We had no reason to invest in it. Maybe they expected any emotional attachment would be transferred from TOS to this film but that wasn't the case for me.

It has been two weeks since I've seen the movie so I may not be remembering this correctly, but one of the problems with the destruction of Vulcan is that the scene following up on it was the reveal of the Spock/Uhura romance. Destroying Vulcan is a huge deal, it would be like New York state suddenly sinking into the sea, but rather than allowing us to absorb it we get a huge WTF thrown at us. I don't have a problem with them destroying Vulcan but this movie did not do it justice, it was just one of a million poorly developed plot points.

And I completely agree about DS9 being much better at this sort of thing, I was shocked when I heard that Betazed was captured even though it happened off-screen and Betazed isn't anywhere near as important as Vulcan. This movie's big failure was the fact that it failed to get an emotional response from me beyond the Kelvin scenes, and even those scenes didn't elicit much of a response.

[Brit]

You know though, from the Borg point of view, those nanoprobes make a lot of sense. The shock of assimilation could actually result in the deaths of huge amounts of potential drones but for that particular nanoprobe.

Brit

[TheGodBen]

Waking Moments (*½)

Once again we have a group of aliens who want to kill the crew of Voyager for some reason. The episode suggests at one point that they might be doing it to protect themselves from invaders, but later in the episode we find out that their planet is well hidden and can only be found because of the fact that they are sending the magic sleeping beam to Voyager. That's not the smartest tactic for a group of isolationists, they may as well put up a sign telling people where to find them.

The first part of the episode is interesting and somewhat fun, and there is some good scenes such as Tuvok trying not to talk about his naked dream, but once the aliens turn evil the show becomes very generic. There is a lot of potential at the beginning of the episode and it is a big pity that the second half becomes so uninteresting.

And it could have been done on TNG.

[Praetor]

Ah, yes, "Waking Moments."

Zzzzzz...

[startrekwatcher]

I'd give Waking Moments 3 stars.

I enjoyed it. It was a fun alien of the week, high concept episode with some nice imagery and twist here or there. I also enjoyed the crew working together leading to some interaction that we rarely saw in the show.

I also think this was the episode where B'elanna's engineering smock debuted. I liked it.

[Praetor]

Oh yeah, Roxann's pregnancy jacket.