My thoughts on and gripes with Star Trek Into Darkness

Look I can't quote quotes but I'll address your points in order.

I don't believe PrimeKirk would have ever entertained obeying Marcus' orders. But that's just my opinion. And as others have pointed out nuKirk isn't as experienced as PrimeKirk but you asked me to put STID in TOS.

I don't believe Kirk ever allowed himself to be used successfully as a hostage. There was always either a plan or he got himself out of it with help. But nuSpock was sort of blackmailed using nuKirk. It wasn't nuKirk who got them out of the problem but nuSpock's cunning plan.

Now for Stargate. I really think thought that the series (not the movie) was a bit too silly for me. Maybe its just too sophisticated and I didn't realise.

 

Which is, again, entirely beside the point.

Because if the writers had wanted Kirk to be in a situation like that in 1968, he WOULD have. And that's the question being asked here: if Star Trek Into Darkness had been made in 1968 instead of 2013, would it really have been unusual compared to the rest of TOS? Especially bearing in mind episodes like "The Errand of Mercy" and "The Enterprise Incident," I think it would have been received as unusually good.

My emphasis. To paraphrase Spock, "And since he was not used successfully in this case your record remains untarnished."

It's not. Not at all. But it's still measurably deeper than TOS.

 

No.

The Stargate TV shows are mediocre, cheesy and disposable fun with no sophistication or ambition whatever - and turning down the stage lights on Universe didn't actually turn it into gripping adult TV, either.

 

But it did save on the electric bill. So it's got that going for it.

 

Precisely.

Which sort of goes to my overall point. TOS remains a superior product, not because it was particularly deep (it wasn't) because it was really really good. The cheese factor in the original Star Trek is breathtakingly apparent, but we forgive the old series because
1) It's still somehow a lot of fun to watch and
2) What do you expect? It's 1968.

Despite what may people have claimed, depth and the pretense of intellect does NOT make for good science fiction. Sci-fi isn't about science and technology as much as it is about the people using it. That is, incidentally, one of the reasons why Steampunk is so popular: it's science fiction the strips the bells and whistles and lens flare and distills it down to the man at the wheel (on some level, this was also part of the appeal of Firefly and space westerns in general).

 

RE: CommishSleer

I may have it wrong but I thought these characters being different from their prime counterparts was kind'a the point?

It's unfortunate enough, imo, that prime universe events are being... reused, (albeit in a fresh way) but if the characters were also being retread in the same rubber as before then there would be absolutely no reason to watch NuTrek... except maybe for the updated effects.

 

Now this is funny.