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Kudos to all the hard-working crew of STC for 4-5 years of continued ( ouch) efforts behind the scenes, those include soundman Ralph Miller, dp Matt Bucy, the costume and hair people (though McCoy`s wig was completely the wrong colour for whatever reason).
The FX guys worked overtime for this one, though I was really mainly impressed with the one shot where one of the ships`s hull was eaten up by the Romulan fireball, and i was tickled more by the low-key FX shots like the lightning fingers.
Most of the new music was enjoyable, but sorry, the V'Ger blasts and reuses/sampling from James Horner`s music was flirting with ridiculousness...too much contrast with the rest of the episode with its jazz orchestra-based style. Some people liked it, myself less so.
As for the story, here goes:
In two episodes totalling about 90 minutes, there should have been focus and development for both returning ''villains'', the Romulan commander and the Espers. To put it bluntly, that entire ''side story'' with Sentek and the sharp detour into the Neutral Zone and the Commander should have been entirely excised from the story. None of it made any sense, kirk needed to get to the barrier in the first place, but the worst offender is that Robert Sawyer did NOTHING new with the Romulan Commander, he just revisited all the plot points from her original episode (her unresolved flirtation with Spock, her conflict with Thal) but the worse thing is, at the end from the point of view of the Romulan Empire, Thal is the one in the right. The Espers were no longer a threat, and the commander should have done her duty and accepted to sacrifice herself for the benefit of her Empire who would have had a conclusive victory against Starfleet.
At the end of the episode, no mention is made of the Commander`s fate...she probably returned back to Romulus to be executed for treason, but that`s ok, because Thal has been made aware that ALL of Starfleet's Constitution class ships are now destroyed entirely except for the broken down Enterprise...so long humans!!
the Romulans should simply have NOT been a part of this story, because they also impeded any development for the Espers, who are barely even there in the story. They desperately needed the extra 20 minutes that was parsed out to the unneeded Romulans sub-plot.
The Espers: all I can say is that the writing team completely misunderstood Gary Mitchell's arc as well as the entire nature of his transformation. Mitchell`s powers during Where No Man Has Gone Before rapidly increase towards omnipotence (exponentially, spock says...he never implied a limit), yet in the span of days during Mitchell and Kirk's death battle his might is MUCH greater than Lana`s who seems stalled at the same low level throughout the entire story, yet she had acquired her powers weeks if not months earlier (at least shortly before STC's 6th episode).
In WNMHGB, Spock clearly states that in a matter of days Mitchell was to be as evolved over regular humans as humans were over a mouse, IIRC. That doesn`t mean just in power levels, but also consciousness.
As that episode went on, both Mitchell and eventually Dehner were losing their human perceptions and were fast evolving beyond. I'll repeat what I've previously said, while Gary Mitchell was written like Alan Moore's Kid Miracleman character, Lana was written like a 1950s Phantom Zone villain from the Superman comics.
I have no idea what the point even was to have 25 Espers with ''powers'' if they're stuck in a starship and we only really see 2 of them use their powers...
here is the major difference between Gary Mitchell and Lana, if I use the scene at the end of part 1. Lana and Sentek burst out of the turbolift and spout comic book villain dialogue: ''Relinquish command, or the Enterprise will suffer the same fate as the Hood''...(what? hasn`t she acquired her powers for weeks at this point?) then has a semblance of a fight and runs away after being blasted once by someone who just manifested hers (even Dehner took some time before she could fire those bolts, while Smith does it instantly)...
If this were written like WNMHGB, Mitchell would have rampaged all throughout the ship and knocked out/killed a sizeable portion of the crew and taken over the systems well before making his way to the bridge. But for the sake of argument should he head directly for the bridge: no supervillain dialogue, just grabbing crewmen telekinetically and snapping their necks or some other more impressive feat (remember he knocked out Kirk, Spock, Piper and who knows who else before escaping with Dehner).
Jumping ahead to the space dogfight, it made kirk look impotent to have him split his ship in two and teaming with the Romulan BoP against the kongo. The Enterprise even if it was controlled by the m-5 managed to beat 3 ships on its own, and all the advantage it had was surprise and a single computer consciousness to help shave off a few seconds of response time.
As for Kirk, Spock and McCoy`s transition between this episode and their reappearance in TMP:
McCoy: (sad enough he was barely even in this episode, seemed like he just popped up to invite Kirk for dinner) His departure was way too amicable at the end of ep11, far from the visibly angry TMP bearded McCoy who clearly was ready to knock out Kirk in the transporter room.
Spock: Spock and McKennah at the beginning of Ep10 seem like good friends, but the circumstances behind her death (contrived and necessitated having Spock this time behaving out of character) are a huge leap of logic between this and TMP Spock. I could more believe him troubled by the death of the Romulan Commander if there had been significant progression in their relationship, or even his guilt over Zarabeth from All our Yesterdays.
Kirk: all of a sudden feeling pangs of guilt over crewmen's deaths might have been more credible if there had ACTUALLY been visible crewmen deaths in front of Kirk this episode, but the bridge fight scene wasted this opportunity completely. Lana slapped a few crewmembers around and didn`t even snap the necks of the two redshirts in the turbolift (wow, what a villain).
at least if a couple of people had died protecting kirk it would have made his decision less out of nowhere...
Ok, i was too long-winded, but I'll conclude with a couple of things that were kind of annoying
- The navigator and helmsman musical chairs bit...i know you want to give a chance for people to get camera time, but man, every time they went back to the bridge there was somebody else sitting in those seats...
- the illusion-casting bits were totally ridiculous (where was this in WNMHGB, and why wasn't it explained by Spock?)
-Why wasn`t there a squad of redshirts along with Smith to board the Kongo?
With THOUSANDS of Starfleet crewmen killed off (from both the Enterprise and all the other ships) the Admiral seems unconcerned that this might complicate recruitment for the future. I know I'd reconsider going off to die in space so easily...
Peace out
I forgot to add, I should give praise to one aspect of the production that Vic Mignona and I assume some of the other actors work hard on to contribute, and that's the crafting of the dialogue. I find myself sometimes rewinding back over some bits because there is some genuinely well thought-out lines of dialogue, praise to them...
Kudos to all the hard-working crew of STC for 4-5 years of continued ( ouch) efforts behind the scenes, those include soundman Ralph Miller, dp Matt Bucy, the costume and hair people (though McCoy`s wig was completely the wrong colour for whatever reason).
The FX guys worked overtime for this one, though I was really mainly impressed with the one shot where one of the ships`s hull was eaten up by the Romulan fireball, and i was tickled more by the low-key FX shots like the lightning fingers.
Most of the new music was enjoyable, but sorry, the V'Ger blasts and reuses/sampling from James Horner`s music was flirting with ridiculousness...too much contrast with the rest of the episode with its jazz orchestra-based style. Some people liked it, myself less so.
As for the story, here goes:
In two episodes totalling about 90 minutes, there should have been focus and development for both returning ''villains'', the Romulan commander and the Espers. To put it bluntly, that entire ''side story'' with Sentek and the sharp detour into the Neutral Zone and the Commander should have been entirely excised from the story. None of it made any sense, kirk needed to get to the barrier in the first place, but the worst offender is that Robert Sawyer did NOTHING new with the Romulan Commander, he just revisited all the plot points from her original episode (her unresolved flirtation with Spock, her conflict with Thal) but the worse thing is, at the end from the point of view of the Romulan Empire, Thal is the one in the right. The Espers were no longer a threat, and the commander should have done her duty and accepted to sacrifice herself for the benefit of her Empire who would have had a conclusive victory against Starfleet.
At the end of the episode, no mention is made of the Commander`s fate...she probably returned back to Romulus to be executed for treason, but that`s ok, because Thal has been made aware that ALL of Starfleet's Constitution class ships are now destroyed entirely except for the broken down Enterprise...so long humans!!
the Romulans should simply have NOT been a part of this story, because they also impeded any development for the Espers, who are barely even there in the story. They desperately needed the extra 20 minutes that was parsed out to the unneeded Romulans sub-plot.
The Espers: all I can say is that the writing team completely misunderstood Gary Mitchell's arc as well as the entire nature of his transformation. Mitchell`s powers during Where No Man Has Gone Before rapidly increase towards omnipotence (exponentially, spock says...he never implied a limit), yet in the span of days during Mitchell and Kirk's death battle his might is MUCH greater than Lana`s who seems stalled at the same low level throughout the entire story, yet she had acquired her powers weeks if not months earlier (at least shortly before STC's 6th episode).
In WNMHGB, Spock clearly states that in a matter of days Mitchell was to be as evolved over regular humans as humans were over a mouse, IIRC. That doesn`t mean just in power levels, but also consciousness.
As that episode went on, both Mitchell and eventually Dehner were losing their human perceptions and were fast evolving beyond. I'll repeat what I've previously said, while Gary Mitchell was written like Alan Moore's Kid Miracleman character, Lana was written like a 1950s Phantom Zone villain from the Superman comics.
I have no idea what the point even was to have 25 Espers with ''powers'' if they're stuck in a starship and we only really see 2 of them use their powers...
here is the major difference between Gary Mitchell and Lana, if I use the scene at the end of part 1. Lana and Sentek burst out of the turbolift and spout comic book villain dialogue: ''Relinquish command, or the Enterprise will suffer the same fate as the Hood''...(what? hasn`t she acquired her powers for weeks at this point?) then has a semblance of a fight and runs away after being blasted once by someone who just manifested hers (even Dehner took some time before she could fire those bolts, while Smith does it instantly)...
If this were written like WNMHGB, Mitchell would have rampaged all throughout the ship and knocked out/killed a sizeable portion of the crew and taken over the systems well before making his way to the bridge. But for the sake of argument should he head directly for the bridge: no supervillain dialogue, just grabbing crewmen telekinetically and snapping their necks or some other more impressive feat (remember he knocked out Kirk, Spock, Piper and who knows who else before escaping with Dehner).
Jumping ahead to the space dogfight, it made kirk look impotent to have him split his ship in two and teaming with the Romulan BoP against the kongo. The Enterprise even if it was controlled by the m-5 managed to beat 3 ships on its own, and all the advantage it had was surprise and a single computer consciousness to help shave off a few seconds of response time.
As for Kirk, Spock and McCoy`s transition between this episode and their reappearance in TMP:
McCoy: (sad enough he was barely even in this episode, seemed like he just popped up to invite Kirk for dinner) His departure was way too amicable at the end of ep11, far from the visibly angry TMP bearded McCoy who clearly was ready to knock out Kirk in the transporter room.
Spock: Spock and McKennah at the beginning of Ep10 seem like good friends, but the circumstances behind her death (contrived and necessitated having Spock this time behaving out of character) are a huge leap of logic between this and TMP Spock. I could more believe him troubled by the death of the Romulan Commander if there had been significant progression in their relationship, or even his guilt over Zarabeth from All our Yesterdays.
Kirk: all of a sudden feeling pangs of guilt over crewmen's deaths might have been more credible if there had ACTUALLY been visible crewmen deaths in front of Kirk this episode, but the bridge fight scene wasted this opportunity completely. Lana slapped a few crewmembers around and didn`t even snap the necks of the two redshirts in the turbolift (wow, what a villain).
at least if a couple of people had died protecting kirk it would have made his decision less out of nowhere...
Ok, i was too long-winded, but I'll conclude with a couple of things that were kind of annoying
- The navigator and helmsman musical chairs bit...i know you want to give a chance for people to get camera time, but man, every time they went back to the bridge there was somebody else sitting in those seats...
- the illusion-casting bits were totally ridiculous (where was this in WNMHGB, and why wasn't it explained by Spock?)
-Why wasn`t there a squad of redshirts along with Smith to board the Kongo?
With THOUSANDS of Starfleet crewmen killed off (from both the Enterprise and all the other ships) the Admiral seems unconcerned that this might complicate recruitment for the future. I know I'd reconsider going off to die in space so easily...
Peace out
Kudos to all the hard-working crew of STC for 4-5 years of continued ( ouch) efforts behind the scenes, those include soundman Ralph Miller, dp Matt Bucy, the costume and hair people (though McCoy`s wig was completely the wrong colour for whatever reason).
The FX guys worked overtime for this one, though I was really mainly impressed with the one shot where one of the ships`s hull was eaten up by the Romulan fireball, and i was tickled more by the low-key FX shots like the lightning fingers.
Most of the new music was enjoyable, but sorry, the V'Ger blasts and reuses/sampling from James Horner`s music was flirting with ridiculousness...too much contrast with the rest of the episode with its jazz orchestra-based style. Some people liked it, myself less so.
As for the story, here goes:
In two episodes totalling about 90 minutes, there should have been focus and development for both returning ''villains'', the Romulan commander and the Espers. To put it bluntly, that entire ''side story'' with Sentek and the sharp detour into the Neutral Zone and the Commander should have been entirely excised from the story. None of it made any sense, kirk needed to get to the barrier in the first place, but the worst offender is that Robert Sawyer did NOTHING new with the Romulan Commander, he just revisited all the plot points from her original episode (her unresolved flirtation with Spock, her conflict with Thal) but the worse thing is, at the end from the point of view of the Romulan Empire, Thal is the one in the right. The Espers were no longer a threat, and the commander should have done her duty and accepted to sacrifice herself for the benefit of her Empire who would have had a conclusive victory against Starfleet.
At the end of the episode, no mention is made of the Commander`s fate...she probably returned back to Romulus to be executed for treason, but that`s ok, because Thal has been made aware that ALL of Starfleet's Constitution class ships are now destroyed entirely except for the broken down Enterprise...so long humans!!
the Romulans should simply have NOT been a part of this story, because they also impeded any development for the Espers, who are barely even there in the story. They desperately needed the extra 20 minutes that was parsed out to the unneeded Romulans sub-plot.
The Espers: all I can say is that the writing team completely misunderstood Gary Mitchell's arc as well as the entire nature of his transformation. Mitchell`s powers during Where No Man Has Gone Before rapidly increase towards omnipotence (exponentially, spock says...he never implied a limit), yet in the span of days during Mitchell and Kirk's death battle his might is MUCH greater than Lana`s who seems stalled at the same low level throughout the entire story, yet she had acquired her powers weeks if not months earlier (at least shortly before STC's 6th episode).
In WNMHGB, Spock clearly states that in a matter of days Mitchell was to be as evolved over regular humans as humans were over a mouse, IIRC. That doesn`t mean just in power levels, but also consciousness.
As that episode went on, both Mitchell and eventually Dehner were losing their human perceptions and were fast evolving beyond. I'll repeat what I've previously said, while Gary Mitchell was written like Alan Moore's Kid Miracleman character, Lana was written like a 1950s Phantom Zone villain from the Superman comics.
I have no idea what the point even was to have 25 Espers with ''powers'' if they're stuck in a starship and we only really see 2 of them use their powers...
here is the major difference between Gary Mitchell and Lana, if I use the scene at the end of part 1. Lana and Sentek burst out of the turbolift and spout comic book villain dialogue: ''Relinquish command, or the Enterprise will suffer the same fate as the Hood''...(what? hasn`t she acquired her powers for weeks at this point?) then has a semblance of a fight and runs away after being blasted once by someone who just manifested hers (even Dehner took some time before she could fire those bolts, while Smith does it instantly)...
If this were written like WNMHGB, Mitchell would have rampaged all throughout the ship and knocked out/killed a sizeable portion of the crew and taken over the systems well before making his way to the bridge. But for the sake of argument should he head directly for the bridge: no supervillain dialogue, just grabbing crewmen telekinetically and snapping their necks or some other more impressive feat (remember he knocked out Kirk, Spock, Piper and who knows who else before escaping with Dehner).
Jumping ahead to the space dogfight, it made kirk look impotent to have him split his ship in two and teaming with the Romulan BoP against the kongo. The Enterprise even if it was controlled by the m-5 managed to beat 3 ships on its own, and all the advantage it had was surprise and a single computer consciousness to help shave off a few seconds of response time.
As for Kirk, Spock and McCoy`s transition between this episode and their reappearance in TMP:
McCoy: (sad enough he was barely even in this episode, seemed like he just popped up to invite Kirk for dinner) His departure was way too amicable at the end of ep11, far from the visibly angry TMP bearded McCoy who clearly was ready to knock out Kirk in the transporter room.
Spock: Spock and McKennah at the beginning of Ep10 seem like good friends, but the circumstances behind her death (contrived and necessitated having Spock this time behaving out of character) are a huge leap of logic between this and TMP Spock. I could more believe him troubled by the death of the Romulan Commander if there had been significant progression in their relationship, or even his guilt over Zarabeth from All our Yesterdays.
Kirk: all of a sudden feeling pangs of guilt over crewmen's deaths might have been more credible if there had ACTUALLY been visible crewmen deaths in front of Kirk this episode, but the bridge fight scene wasted this opportunity completely. Lana slapped a few crewmembers around and didn`t even snap the necks of the two redshirts in the turbolift (wow, what a villain).
at least if a couple of people had died protecting kirk it would have made his decision less out of nowhere...
Ok, i was too long-winded, but I'll conclude with a couple of things that were kind of annoying
- The navigator and helmsman musical chairs bit...i know you want to give a chance for people to get camera time, but man, every time they went back to the bridge there was somebody else sitting in those seats...
- the illusion-casting bits were totally ridiculous (where was this in WNMHGB, and why wasn't it explained by Spock?)
-Why wasn`t there a squad of redshirts along with Smith to board the Kongo?
With THOUSANDS of Starfleet crewmen killed off (from both the Enterprise and all the other ships) the Admiral seems unconcerned that this might complicate recruitment for the future. I know I'd reconsider going off to die in space so easily...
Peace out
His departure was way too amicable at the end of ep11, far from the visibly angry TMP bearded McCoy who clearly was ready to knock out Kirk in the transporter room.
I never got the sense that McCoy was angry with Kirk outside of that situation. (Like he'd been holding a grudge for years or anything.) He was pissed because he just got drafted back into service and realized it was all Kirk's fault.
I never got the sense that McCoy was angry with Kirk outside of that situation. (Like he'd been holding a grudge for years or anything.) He was pissed because he just got drafted back into service and realized it was all Kirk's fault.
Yeah. According to Roddenberry McCoy left Starfleet because they promoted Kirk and ignored McCoy's insistence that it would be terrible for Kirk. At that point I think McCoy wanted to wash his hands of the whole organization. (TMP's Nagura could have given Lorca a run for his totally-exists-in-the-23rd-century money.)
It's interesting that STC kept the part of TMP novel lore (which is a sub hobby of mine) that the Enterprise was the only Constitution class to survive a five year mission, but they left out the (admittedly more complicated) storyline of Kirk having to be coerced (wooed?) into promotion and its ramifications for McCoy. I know "To Boldly Go" was pretty busy as it was, but if they were going to lean into TMP so heavily I wouldn't have minded seeing Lori Ciana show up. (We got Nogura and that was knocked out of the park.)
TMP and the TMP novel is an odd little nexus of my fandom, so I get very hung up on it. For instance, TMP states that no Starship captain had ever assembled his (or her) entire crew as Kirk did in TMP. So I was relieved when I realized that the assembly hall (while adopting many rec deck details) was not actually on the Enterprise.
I'm sure there's many ST fans stinging from your criticism of their cherished Pocket Books, especially if they were reading that line since the glory days of the 80s.
Star Trek Continues: No fan film is perfect, so one can only be glad if the production manages to come close to the creative & professional standards of TOS. That said, after viewing every fan film based on TOS, STC is the head and shoulders best of the lot, surpassing Star Trek: New Voyages / Phase II and Starship Exeter.
If anything, the fan film era (of many subjects, not just ST) has been running with some consistency for nearly 2 decades, and as you know, its all been a trail and error process, with each new production learning from the old productions. On that note, I believe STC took the TOS fan film as far as it can go without becoming those fan films that exist just so super-fans can be glorified cosplayers (I will leave those ST fan films nameless).
The STC finale was by no means perfect, but its heart was in the right place by revisiting the story that introduced Kirk (and launched the franchise) as the cap to the series. Personally, TAS is the official continuation of TOS, so I do not see fan films as "filling the void" left by TOS' premature end, but as an exercise in creative speculation, or a "what if" production.
I thought this was... well, I won't say "enjoyable" considering how many characters died in it and it's the end of the series, but it was well done. It's nice to see some sort of reasonable explanation for Spock opting to undergo Kolinahr.
The Romulan Commander caught my attention, as the actress was very reminiscent of the original actress.
I don't recall any of the Romulans on the post-TOS series invoking the Elements... but I do remember that as part of Diane Duane's Rihannsu novels. Nice touch.
Star Trek Continues, for the most part, felt like watching the Original Series. I'll miss it.
Interesting how Michele said years ago in an interview that "The Enterprise Incident" was her favorite episode. Now we have the Romulan Commander in the final. Coincidence? I think not.
I don't see why TAS couldn't have occurred before/during the events of STC to begin with? So we didn't see Arex and M'Ress on screen.... doesn't mean they weren't there.
If STC had proper permission and funding, I wouldn't have minded seeing live action versions of a few TAS episodes. Imagine if they had done Yesteryear, or More Tribbles, or One of Our Planets. There were some gems mixed in with the oddball bag of TAS.
If STC had proper permission and funding, I wouldn't have minded seeing live action versions of a few TAS episodes. Imagine if they had done Yesteryear, or More Tribbles, or One of Our Planets. There were some gems mixed in with the oddball bag of TAS.
I went back and forth on my rating. The first part was very interesting, had a nice mystery and the fun having Romulans being allies rather than antagonists. The effects, costumes and model work are all amazing in their complexity and realism from the show. Definitely reflects the hard work and fan fever for TOS.
Ok, to the story, which will now be behind spoilers:
It started out strong, with the mystery, as I stated. I really liked seeing the Romulan commander again. However, it suffered from being overly long, and not really doing anything with the Romulan Commander character beyond the fact that she isn't ordering Kirk killed. Tal goes nowhere and the death count is absurdly high, for no reason. It doesn't showcase the powers of the Espers because it happens off screen. And then Smith is a deus ex machina.
The death count on this one really bothers me, because it doesn't showcase the power of Starfleet-it shows that only Kirk and company are able to solve the problem. A full three compliments of a Constitution class are lost and that's a huge blow but only Kirk seems to acknowledge it.
There were a lot of callbacks to the whole series, which I liked but also reflects what fan films often do, which is reference all the bits of continuity that were dropped or ignored but does little with them.
ouch) efforts behind the scenes, those include soundman Ralph Miller, dp Matt Bucy, the costume and hair people (though McCoy`s wig was completely the wrong colour for whatever reason).
