I've gone through and updated my transcript, adding in the scenes mentioned by Grant, and also cleaning up the formatting.
Star Trek II - Workprint Transcript (UPDATED)
Star Trek II - Workprint Transcript (UPDATED)
TWOK deleted scene question
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I wish they had kept those lines. It's true they don't contribute specifically to TWOK's plot, but they do expand the life of one of the original characters and show that time and their careers moved on.
Also that would have forced them to keep Sulu as captain of the Excelsior in TSFS. Then he would have willingly, if illegally, provided his own ship for Spock's rescue, and it would have been the Excelsior getting destroyed. I think it would have worked plot-wise. That way we could have retained the real Enterprise, instead of the Ersatzprize in the last couple of movies.
Also that would have forced them to keep Sulu as captain of the Excelsior in TSFS. Then he would have willingly, if illegally, provided his own ship for Spock's rescue, and it would have been the Excelsior getting destroyed. I think it would have worked plot-wise. That way we could have retained the real Enterprise, instead of the Ersatzprize in the last couple of movies.
^The Excelsior getting destroyed wouldn't have had the same dramatic impact. It would've been a meaningless sacrifice for the fans, because they had no reason to care about the ship.
Besides, if the heroes had the most state-of-the-art ship in the fleet, then their pursuers would've posed them no threat, and their escape would've been too easy. They had to be the underdogs, with the supership being the one chasing after them. If Sulu had gotten the Excelsior, then his role might've been as the one pursuing his former shipmates to try to bring them in. Perhaps he could've been in a reluctantly adversarial role in the first two acts, then come to their rescue in the third when he decided that loyalty mattered more than orders -- basically the same arc he would later have in TUC.
Besides, if the heroes had the most state-of-the-art ship in the fleet, then their pursuers would've posed them no threat, and their escape would've been too easy. They had to be the underdogs, with the supership being the one chasing after them. If Sulu had gotten the Excelsior, then his role might've been as the one pursuing his former shipmates to try to bring them in. Perhaps he could've been in a reluctantly adversarial role in the first two acts, then come to their rescue in the third when he decided that loyalty mattered more than orders -- basically the same arc he would later have in TUC.
^^ that would have probably been more interesting than Stiles ^^
I could see another reason for cutting Sulu's command out of TWOK, prior to release, the idea was to inject some youth into the crew with David and Saavik; however, until it was known how that would be accepted by the audience, the production may have decided it wasn't a good idea to jettision members of the original cast.
I could see another reason for cutting Sulu's command out of TWOK, prior to release, the idea was to inject some youth into the crew with David and Saavik; however, until it was known how that would be accepted by the audience, the production may have decided it wasn't a good idea to jettision members of the original cast.
That's a nice revision, but at that point they didn't know how - or if - they were going to bring Spock back.
I don't recall this either, but speaking only for myself, I wasn't necessarily dying to see them again. When they both popped up in Star Trek III, it seemed (somewhat) that these were the new characters we were 'supposed' to like. That's a tough spot to be in for anybody. I know on tv shows, that can be very risky: what if audiences don't warm up to the new character?
The two had quite a bit of screen time in III, then they oddly kill David. I have no idea what that was all about. On the one hand, it did break the "expected expectation" of Kirk's son filling his fathers' shoes in some capacity, but on the other hand it sort of went nowhere by killing him. All said, it really was a very odd move.
The frustrating thing about the Trek movies is that any attempt to change or advance things ended up getting reset within two movies to satisfy the audience's preference for the status quo. Spock died and he came back. The ship was destroyed and they got a new one just like it. Kirk became an admiral and then became a captain again. New characters were added and then removed. The crew moved on and then came back together aboard the Enterprise. And in the TNG movies, Data got an emotion chip in the first movie, barely used it in the second, removed it in the third, and acted as though it had never existed in the fourth. The only movies that got to make any permanent changes were the last ones in each series.
Yeah...once it "no longer mattered".
The Data emotion chip thing was frustrating, yes. It almost reminded me of things like Florida returning to Good Times, after supposedly having left and marrying that other guy, which was never mentioned again...
It was a pretty important plot device in First Contact - Data's "temptation" is only believable because the Borg Queen gives him new things to feel.
It's pretty obvious that only Moore and Braga were interested in the emotion chip though. Piller wasn't a fan, and dumped it from his film script, and self-confessed "Brent Spiner fan" John Logan didn't seem to know it existed.
But they still copped out by giving him the ability to turn the chip off at will, an abandonment of the premise in Generations that he was stuck with it for the rest of his life and would just have to learn to deal with emotions like everyone else. They took what had been intended as a fundamental, irreversible transformation in Data's character and reduced it to merely a plot gimmick.
I can see why they got rid of it, though, since the emotion chip basically overwrote one of TNG's most popular characters with a completely new one. At least with Spock we got to see an evolution of the character in the movies.
I don't agree. He was still Data; but he was a Data who believed he'd achieved what had been his life's goal, only to find that it didn't give him the answers he'd hoped for. There was a lot that could be done with that; I did it myself in my post-GEN story "Friends With the Sparrows" in the TNG anthology The Sky's the Limit. But the movies just gave up on it in the laziest way possible, and they systematically evolved him backward from one movie to the next.
You can see why they did it. Data emoting at every turn can get a bit wearying. Also, the chip "fused with his neural net" during an emergency situation, but they may well have had months/years afterwards to get it out or adjust its settings. It is a shame they didn't make a bit more of his "learning to live with emotions", though.
That's how he reacted when it was new, when he hadn't had time to adjust to it. It makes no sense to assume that would always be the case even years later. It would certainly have been possible to show him learning to cope better with his emotions in a more organic and less lazy way then just gaining the ability to "turn them off."
Whether it can be rationalized is not the point. The point is that it's a cheat, a copout, a refusal to deal intelligently with the ramifications of the original premise. Storytelling should be about challenging your characters, not making things easy for them. Forcing Data to learn to deal with emotions the hard way is a real challenge for his character. Giving him the ability to just switch them off at will takes that challenge away. It coddles the character, and that's bad writing.
That's the movies for you. If it had happened during the series, we probably would have gotten at least a season of stories featuring Data having to deal with his emotions, before some new, onscreen development changed the situation.
^I just don't accept that as an excuse. There should've been a way to develop Data forward in successive movies, not reset him and pretend it never happened. Look at Spock. He, like Data, underwent an emotional transformation in his first feature film. His meld with V'Ger revealed to him the barrenness of a life without feeling, and for the rest of the film, Spock, like Data, was dealing with a heightened emotionality, even weeping on the bridge. Then, in TWOK, we saw a Spock who had had years to find a comfortable balance between logic and emotion, who was still serene and controlled but able to be unabashedly sentimental and express friendship openly. And that characterization has been the norm for Spock ever since. Even dying and coming back to life didn't undo the change; by the end of TVH, he was again at peace with both his logical and emotional sides, and if anything had integrated the latter even more fully. He changed in a permanent way while still remaining himself.
Since the TOS movies were able to do that, there's not one reason why the TNG movies couldn't have handled Data's growth in the same way. There was nothing to prevent them from advancing and growing his character in a way that acknowledged the change while still being true to his core character. But instead they chickened out and went the laziest possible route, retconning the change out of existence in a way that wasn't even internally consistent.
Since the TOS movies were able to do that, there's not one reason why the TNG movies couldn't have handled Data's growth in the same way. There was nothing to prevent them from advancing and growing his character in a way that acknowledged the change while still being true to his core character. But instead they chickened out and went the laziest possible route, retconning the change out of existence in a way that wasn't even internally consistent.
Which I liked when I was a kid but wish were different now; life is about change, not insisting that everything stays the same. A series of movies with Decker or Spock in command and Kirk popping in to use the Enterprise as his flag-ship could still have been interesting. Additionally, including a second ship like the Reliant (Terrell and Chekov) or the Excelsior (Sulu) would have opened up other possibilities for the films.
I never liked the fact that interesting characters like Saavik were abandoned; I'd have liked seeing her as part of the crew until the old guard stepped down in TUC.
--Sran
