I think you're overselling Nick Meyer a tad bit. The soul of Trek? Fans wanted to burn him at the stake over Star Trek II when it first was released. Saying many of the same exact things people said about the Abrams films when they were released.
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I think you're overselling Nick Meyer a tad bit. The soul of Trek? Fans wanted to burn him at the stake over Star Trek II when it first was released. Saying many of the same exact things people said about the Abrams films when they were released.
^ I understand what you are saying, what I am suggesting is that in the intervening 25 years since he did Star Trek he may have understood more about what Roddenberry was going for in TMP and TNG. Either he realises this or he discovers it because of other people on the production team who would have pushed for Genes vision over someone elses.
edit:You are also downplaying Meyer. His work on 2/4/6 is highly respected/adored by fans including me. So he can write good Trek. I think Meyer and Roddenberry Trek combined together would be great.
edit:You are also downplaying Meyer. His work on 2/4/6 is highly respected/adored by fans including me. So he can write good Trek. I think Meyer and Roddenberry Trek combined together would be great.
He worked on six out of seven hundred hours of Star Trek. So I don't think I'm downplaying him impact.
Sure he worked on an insignificant quantity of Trek hours but its not about quantity is it.
Quality over quantity.
You are totally right here. Meyer will gladly throw canon straight out of the window if it's in the way of telling a good story. Which is IMO the right approach.
What seperates Meyer from the JJ-Abrams-movies writer duo Orci&Kurtzman is: He will NOT violate internal logic or break the "rules" of it's own universe. Because he knows this would throw people right out of the illusion.
Here on the other hand you are indeed downplaying his impact. Significantly. He was the driving force of 3 out of 13 movies. Which are universally known as "the good ones". The quality of all other Trek movies (except FC) is often times the center of heated debate. His work stands as franchise-defining above that. The bigest form of criticism his movies face is usually some form of contrarian "it's not as good as everyone praises it to be". That's quite a feat.
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gene Roddenberry didn't know what he was going for in either TMP or TNG - Proof:
TMP - Most fans thought TMP was 'soulless' when it was released - yes, it looked pretty and the original actors were there, but the relationships and overall character relationships and chemistry from thje TV series just wasn't there on the screen. STII:TWoK was the first film where many fans thought the chemistry and cast character relationships were back, but GR didn't like the film calling it too militaristic.
The inclusion of "Dr. Pulaski" (whose character was a EXACT female version of Dr. McCoy right down to the distrust of Transporters and her being "an old country doctor". They brought her in because they felt they could re-create the McCoy<-->Spock badgering dynamic; but Data wasn't written like Spock; and it just came across as Pulaski badgering and more innocent/naive person who was honest and didn't have the capacity to really return comments in kind. GR also wanted to redo at least one original TOS script a season - but after the fan backlash and response to the HORRIBLE "Naked Now" (a bad, ham-fisted attempt to remake the classic "Naked Time" episode - that idea was quickly abandoned.
An interesting notion. I never heard of this before, though. Is this written down somewhere?
To this day I've despised that episode. The TOS version was a classic. The TNG version wasn't just bad, it came off as a beat-by-beat cheap, lazy copy with no real insight of its own. And it turned Data into a walking sex toy for no good reason.
I think it would have been better towards the end of the season. But the second episode? Thats just ridiculous. I'm not sure who in their right mind would think the best way to establish characters after the pilot was to get them space-drunk and act like a bunch of tits.
But they quickly redeemed themselves by following it with the amazing Code of Honor.
I have never seen anything of the kind. My recollections of TWOK from critics and fans alike was that it was a massive improvement over the first one.
And honestly, you're downplaying Meyers contribution due to number of hours T.V and Movies combined? Weak. Compare his movies to the others and there is no comparison.
TMP was such a disappointment that Paramount only agreed to a second one with a tiny budget. Had TWOK flopped there would not have been another movie and probably no TNG, no DS9, no Voyager and no Enterprise. So Nick Meyer, along with Harve Bennett, deserve a lot of praise because without them Star Trek would have died in the early eighties.
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Agreed. It was WAY too early for that type of episode. That's an episode you do at earliest near the end of the season after the characters have been established.
Or not at all. Unoriginal self-plagiarism.
It was GR himself. Unless you are talking about a rewrite where most (read:all) of the episode didn't happen, there's nowhere they could have stuck that stinker to make it work.
Crusher: "Captain, you owe me (for getting my husband killed in the line of duty??). I have needs. [unzips uniform in the doorway to the ready room]. They whole first season was terrible, and most of the second, but we were still happy to have Trek back. Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself (DSC: Naked Again)
Uh, yes. Reimaginations that aren't official are no different than proposed retcons. The definition of official/unofficial, published/unpublished, aired/unaired has nothing to do with retcon/not retcon, reimagination/not reimagination, reboot/not reboot. Not sure why that's a hard thing to get. Put "proposed" in front of retcon, reboot or reimagination instead of "fan". That shouldn't make a difference, but maybe it will.
You know, in principal it really isn't such a bad idea. In my experience you do get to know some people better if you had something to drink with them. They lose their inhibitions, talk more freely and honestly. Obviously that's not true for everyone and only when they don't drink too much.
I'm not trying to defend “The Naked Now” or make a case for alcohol consumption here, but it's just that on paper it might have seemed like a good idea to bring us nearer the characters when they are intoxicated. The problem with “The Naked Now” is more that the crew's behavior hasn't really much to do with intoxication. They just behave completely wacky and out of the norm. No real insights about the characters are revealed.
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