New writers speak

They are both villains. Batty is the equivalent of a cancer patient who is so angry with his mortality that he shoots up a Burger King while shaking his fist to God. Sure, you can understand why he might be upset that he got the short end of the stick, and he gives a good death scene soliloquy, but that doesn't absolve him of his violent acts. He has dimension in the end, and one can feel some sympathy for his plight, but he's still a villain.

 

Out of all the movies there are really only two that can be described as lacking a 'villain', and one of those two (TVH) is still fairly highly ranked by a lot of people. I think a reasonably objective poll would find it roughly as popular as TUC or FC, if not TWOK. So the fact that there are more popular movies with villains may have less to do with the idea that people love villains than it does with the fact that the studios haven't bothered to MAKE non-villain movies very much. Look at the series where it is much more common and you will see (i would expect, at least) that the popularity gap between the two styles is much smaller.

See, for instance, City on the Edge of Forever, the Naked Time, the Inner Light, In the Pale Moonlight, etc.

 

TMP and TVH beg to differ.

 

Relatively few memorable Star Trek stories are primarily about space exploration.

 

And relatively few would have happened without it.

 

Certainly, but they are also not the most popular, or have the more iconic villains.

TVH stands out because it is so novel and a comedy. So, I will grant that.

But, which film is considered the most popular among fans (generally speaking). Obviously, your mileage may vary

 

Star Trek has no iconic villains. And they were the two most finically successful films for a long time.

 

Generally speaking, my impression is that TVH would stand at roughly the same level of popularity as TUC or FC. That they don't have iconic villains is a nonsense requirement, since they have no real villains at all (that being part of the point).

So that means out of 2 'exploration' films, 1 is highly popular, while the 'action' films that make up the other ten movies only seem to have three to five really popular stories (TWOK, TUC, FC, and maybe one or both of the new films, though they're too new to say for sure). Not a huge disparity in popularity. The main disparity appears to be in the Studio's faith in a project. And again - look at the memorable stories from the series: there are plenty of non- action stories in there.

 

I've never understood what folks meant when they say, "exploration" in the first place. Jim Kirk is not Vasco da Gama. Most of the time spent really exploring is probably pretty boring, too.

At the same time, they have met plenty of new lifeforms over their travels, from tribbles to Hortas, and from Balok to Gorn to Trelane. They've also experienced plenty of weird new phenomena, from "The Naked Time" to "This Side of Paradise". That's exploring after a fashion.

 

The way they did that makes me think that they're bigger fans than more than a few of us here on the boards, which is great. Not to be a Debbie Downer, though, but there's still the possibility of studio interference (ie, the way the execs wanted to jam *everything* into Generations).

THANK YOU. I hate that the past few movies (including TNG) were hyped up to be the next "Khan", and that STID took it to the next level. But Trek is so much more than one movie and one villain. One Khan movie is fine. No need to make "Clone as Khan," "Romulan as Khan," "Stretchy-face as Khan", etc. I'd love to see more elements of TUC added in; or better yet, I'd love to see the next movie simply be Star Trek.

I'm not sure I buy his answer, but it's a much better argument (for or against) than many others I've seen on the board.

 

Memorable, certainly. I am discussing popularity, which I will grant, is a fickle, fickle thing.

However, I just found that having an iconic villain, as well as the action beats seem to be associated with more popular films. And I don't have a problem with that.

Exploration is fine-as a start. I think that a movie that starts with exploration and has a growing threat as part of it would be incredibly entertaining and something that moves away from Earth.

But, that's me. And I certainly don't have a problem with the direction that Abrams took the franchise. It give a more action feel, but remember that Star Trek was originally conceived as Western in space, and 60s Westerns were not all about exploration. Not saying it isn't a part of it, mind you.

I'm not saying Star Trek has not taken a different take now, but I'm discussing TOS. And what TOS tried to do and mean in that time frame, and the inspiration from that to Abrams movies actually lends itself to more action style beats.

Like I said, I am hoping for more exploration and personally I wish that Harrison/Khan had been Gary Mitchell, and they had journeyed to the edge of the Galaxy in search of a lost ship. But, that's me.

Also, studios have no faith in any project. They simply use hard numbers to determine what risk they are willing to take. Right now, the formula supports the action-blockbuster. It's sad, and I hope it changes.

 

Which is like saying that relatively few Doctor Who adventures would happen without time travel or that relatively few episodes of Bonanza would have happened without horses.

Both of Abrams's Trek movies are as fully about exploration of the unknown as most previous Star Trek.

The Corbomite Maneuver is about exploration. The Doomsday Machine is not. Amok Time is not. Journey To Babel is not. The Trouble With Tribbles is not. Balance Of Terror is not. The Cage is. Where No Man Has Gone Before is. Because deep space is used as a setting against which a family drama or comedy or war drama or suspense story is played out doesn't make the story one about "space exploration," and very few Star Trek stories really were.

 

How? In what meaningful way?

The JJ camp have acknowledged critics by saying the next film will probably be more about exploration. Why contradict them by saying the first two had plenty of it when it didn't?

JJ Trek simply is not all things to all people.

TOS wasn't all exploration either, but over the course of 79 episodes, it had plenty of it.

 

I don't know, it's hard to do a count, but it seems in many, if not the vast bulk of TOS episodes, the crew was visiting a colony, a planet previously visited by some other ship, they were near a starbase, on a mission well within known Federation space, or something of the like.

Doesn't mean they didn't come across new things, but they seemed to spend more time in familiar places than in new or unknown ones.

If the next film truly has them in deep space far from where any Federation beings have been, before, it will be rather novel.

 

They should probably make Star Trek vs Transformers. What a hit that would be!

 

Since we've had one-off comics/novels of Star Trek/X-Men and Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes. Why not?

 

Indeed. I don't think Abrams Trek was all about exploring the unknown or anything like that. I think it took its inspiration from episodes like "Errand of Mercy" and "Balance of Terror" and the more military style ones and amped up the action.

It had plenty of social commentary to add to it, but I think the exploration aspect was toned down. Now, if we have more moments were Spock and Kirk and McCoy see a crisis occurring out in space and discuss what to do with it, and they have to make a decision right then without deference to higher authority, there will be more of that frontier vibe that TOS often had.

 

We'll know if it's exploration if we get long, lingering shots of Sulu staring at the viewscreen.

 

The majority of the audience probably haven't seen Star Trek before.

I think the moment that best sums it up is Kirk craning his neck to see when the Klingon commander takes off his helmet. Has he ever seen a Klingon before? And have we die-hard fans seen Klingons like this before? All that's old is new again.