How Far Should TOS-R Have Gone?

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by ZapBrannigan, Feb 11, 2013.

  1. Warped9

    Warped9 Admiral Admiral

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    Lenny Nurdbol is evidently describing fanon. A lot of it was interesting and often enough more so than later "official" canon. Often enough it often made a lot more sense than what came later from TBTB. Some good stuff came out of fanon and even made it into print such as some of the earliest novels. James Blish's references to the Earth/Romulan war in his adaptation of "Balance Of Terror" became part of fanon which in turn became part of Diane Duanes's The Romulan Way and Diane Carey's Final Frontier. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Steven's Federation is a far better take on Zefram Cochrane than the nonsense of TNG's FC. And, of course, there's John M. Ford's The Final Reflection which is a great bit of Klingon backstory more interesting than what TNG gave us.

    Fanon did predate FJ which in turn encouraged even more fanon. I didn't always agree with some of it, but it could be fascinating.
     
  2. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I'm fine with fanon, read quite a bit of it over the years. But it's just ludicrous that people get twisted in knots when live-action contradicts it. No writer should be required to read and be consistent with every bit of non-licensed/licensed material out there that is only read by a very small portion of the fan-base.
     
  3. Warped9

    Warped9 Admiral Admiral

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    I can't argue that. A big difference between then and now is that then the fans were the ones who kept things going built on a mere 79 episodes of TOS, 22 episodes of TAS, a few books and then later the earliest films. But from the mid '80s onward the weight of materiel became ponderous even as source materiel drifted further from its origins. After ten to twenty years of fan speculation some could have felt pushed aside (in a manner of speaking) as TBTB put their heavy stamp of "official" on everything.

    Fanon still exists, though, as evidenced by new novels and fans still speculating and drawing and modelling new ship designs regardless that any of it could be "officially" negated in a forthcoming film or TV series.
     
  4. Lenny Nurdbol

    Lenny Nurdbol Lieutenant Commander

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    Nobody is saying that writers should be required to read every bit of non-licensed material. In fact, you may find this hard to believe, but Most of the non-licensed material (Hate that term!) tries hard to Be consistent with the mainstream materials. I mean, after all, we Are all dealing more or less in the Same Universe here. The non-licensed material in fact does best when it's trying to Explain inconsistencies and fill-in the blanks which mainstream/call it Aired materials fail to do...

    But there are certain basic things which are not in the more substantial material which should be but never made it and which most fans Do buy into... Such as how and why the Klingons are using a ship called a Klingon Bird of Prey in ST III: the end result of the brief Klingon-Romulan alliance (of "The Enterprise Incident" which is obviously how and why Klingons are using cloaking devices)... E ignored this... Likewise in 2009 Trek we have "Klingon Warbirds" in the Kobayashi Maru simulator as well...
    Really, all that's needed is a genuine f-a-n to proofread scripts so as to avoid stupid errors like these...

    Getting back to the above, don't sweep everything into a "non-licensed" category: because much of what I'm at least speaking of is covered in the novels and they are all licensed, even the old Bantam ones...
     
  5. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    They should have turned those static 'displays' ringing the Enterprise bridge into REAL displays.
     
  6. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I didn't, which is specifically why I put "non-licensed/licensed" in my post. :techman:
     
  7. Lenny Nurdbol

    Lenny Nurdbol Lieutenant Commander

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    We'll have to agree to disagree Big Time...
    I'm tired of this old "FJ was not a fan" bunk... If he wasn't a fan he wouldn't have sunk so much time and effort into what he accomplished! Duh! One brief interview repeated over and over again does nothing for me and in a court of law would be dismissed as hearsay... The fact that Gene Roddenberry Loved and approved of the end results speaks for itself... Not to say the least about legions of fans who've studied his stuff, modeled his stuff, and were just plain inspired by his stuff... And don't hit us over the head how GR changed his mind afterwards... Yeah, decades later after numerous strokes he was Far from the original man he was in the 60s and 70s, too, but let's not get into that story...

    The liberties taken in those blueprints are due to many things... The Independence class freighter of TAS for one was rough for the simple reason that it was blueprinted in the mid-70s before we had these things called DVD and even before VHS tapes... There was very little to go on, and TAS stills alone were Very very hard to come by back then... I know, because I hunted for them like crazy and eventually was lucky enough to tape some edited episodes off the air circa 1980; prior to that I only had over the air audio tapes to go by...

    Tech Fandom takes into account minute differences as yard changes, upgrades, and at the very worst sub-class offshoots...

    Maybe if you were there from the beginning in the 70s you'd have a different perspective... Back when you were lucky to be able to pick up a new novel once or twice a YEAR and anything new was gobbled up by fans and appreciated...
     
  8. Shaka Zulu

    Shaka Zulu Commodore Commodore

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    You, sir, have some serious issues concerning canon that need to be worked out-perhaps a talk with a therapist or psychiatrist might help.:vulcan:

    Ever better, I'll refer you to Leonard Nimoy's quote about the 2009 movie and butthurt fans like you trapped in the past:

     
  9. Lenny Nurdbol

    Lenny Nurdbol Lieutenant Commander

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    I've stated my opinions and I'm sure few if any will agree with them... That's the story of my life... I don't hop on the bandwagon and blindly follow crowds... I like to reason my own course out beforehand... I'm a thinking man in an unpopular world of herd instinct Borg...

    I for one do not believe that Star Trek is in the "right hands" as of J.J. Abram's ascent to the throne... I not only say this for Star Trek but for Star Wars as well...

    Science fiction films in general have deteriorated in the 21st Century to kids flicks; super heros and super villains, what have you... All CGI, ridiculously overblown stunts, explosions, shaky cam, lens flares, bad writing, bad acting, No plot, No character development... No Intelligence Left!

    I just don't want to see Star Trek take that route...
    It's probably too late already!

    Yeah, I can take a good bubblegum/popcorn flick and turn my brain off for a movie every now and the, too...but not Constantly Off... I miss meaningful SF... What do we have now? All in-your-face rollercoaster rides... FX for no reason other to keep the simplest of senses going in our attention-deficit world... No wonder 3-D is returning--they're desperate to introduce Any gimmick to keep alive the dying film industry! And they can use it to boost the price of tickets, too!

    But what do I know... Maybe I'm just this old fart who has trouble adapting to change...
     
  10. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Perhaps you're simply overthinking something that has always been entertainment for most of us? :p

    There's enough going on in the real world.
     
  11. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Seriously, how much "meaningful" SF has there been on film or TV? Very very little.
     
  12. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    But would it be available to watch at all on TV or via streaming, if it hadn't been remastered? We can't really now the answer to that can we?

    You know I think one of the reasons Star Trek stood the test of time unlike many other shows is that esp. in the first two seasons it told good stories. The effects whether they be the original or the re-mastered are secondary to the story and for the most part don't really detract from the story.

    Are the new effects perfect, no of course not.
     
  13. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Given the number of times the show has been resyndicated and sold on various home video formats, and given how many unremastered shows are on Hulu, etc., I'd say the show wasn't in any risk of disappearing utterly.
     
  14. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    ^There is always a risk no matter how small, even if it's infinitesimal.
     
  15. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    ^^^Which in no way justifies the what was done in the remastered effects.
     
  16. Lenny Nurdbol

    Lenny Nurdbol Lieutenant Commander

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    Who says Star Trek ISN'T the real world?

    If I've never kissed a girl and have to live in my parents' basement, I've got to get off on Something!
     
  17. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I put forth The Measure of a Man as the counter-argument as why the final product released to the public shouldn't be the 'final' product. The extended version of the episode on the TNG Season 2 Blu-ray set is awesome. In order to do it, they had to create special effects for thirteen minutes of new footage incorporated into the episode.
     
  18. destructive

    destructive Commander Red Shirt

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    Last edited: Apr 22, 2013
  19. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It doesn't mean he was a fan, just a professional. If you won't believe his daughter Karen, take it from Franz Joseph Schnaubelt himself, in an interview from 1976:

    http://www.trekplace.com/fj-fjwilliamsint01.html

    I love FJ's contributions to Trek. He set the standard and his contributions formed integral parts of the Trekverse. But like Harve Bennett, Nicholas Meyer and even J.J. Abrams, he was not a Trek fan.
     
  20. Lenny Nurdbol

    Lenny Nurdbol Lieutenant Commander

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    That interview's getting kinda old, don'tya think?
    I just think that you and your pals are trying to make a statement here about something...

    A friend of a friend of a friend of mine who ran into Leonard Nimoy during lunch, said that Lenny N proclaimed Star Trek and its fans to be trash (that's paraphrasing it, of course)... Since my friend of a friend of a friend heard That from The Leonard Nimoy, he denounced fandom and never watched another Trek episode ever again...

    But my bottom line is that I'm not paying to see Into Darkness... I'll see it free through my own unspeakable means, but TPTB won't make a cent off of me in a theater... Having endured the 2009 movie, its bad taste still lingers in my mouth and I have a pretty good idea of what's in store this time around... Like they say, "It's not your father's Star Trek"... It's not mine, either...