They could certainly have mentioned that planetary positions don't match last recorded data but magnetic interference was inhibiting long distance scans. Possibly a huge rogue asteroid or some such might have been part of the cause of the woes. Either way there should have been an asteroid belt in the Star system where a planet used to be.
GEN: Clean up the concept of The Nexus considerably...hopefully eliminating the basic plot holes of "why didn't Picard pick another period in time to go back to?" More conversational interaction between Kirk and Picard to establish a genuine bond...maybe one of Kirk's Nexus destinations is the bridge of the Enterprise. Do something a little different with how Kirk dies...something a little more emotional / poignant? FC: More detail / time spent on the opening Borg battle. Get rid of the "Borg Queen seduces Data" elements. Tighten up / expand upon the Cochrane/Phoenix back story. INS: Less goofy humor / singing / wink wink stuff. Make me care about the Ba'ku. More emotion and higher stakes to make the lame space battle in the Briar Patch meaningful. NEM: Re-write Shinzon to have more clear motivations and goals...or just make it clear he is a raving lunatic. A little more "palace intrigue" with regard to the Romulan coup and those events. Put back in the discussion between Data and Picard over a glass of wine.
ST: Make Kirk less of a womanizer...OR make it a little more clear in the writing that the absence of his father in his life led to this behavior somehow. Deal with the 25-year gap for Nero. Tighten up the whole "you will watch from Delta Vega" thing that seemed kind of ridiculous. ID: No transwarp beaming. No KHAAAAAANNNN yell from Spock (please). No last act of the movie consisting solely of people punching people over and over and over and over and over and over again while Kirk is revived via magic blood. BEY: Make Altimed a more interesting planet to explore...not just a bland forest. Explain the backstory of the planet and the technology left behind a little better. Expand upon this whole idea of a nebula that is hard to navigate and that Starfleet has never explored beyond (their hearts were in the right place on this one...but it reminds me too much of the Great Barrier in that it wasn't really a big deal in practice).
INS Some dialog as to why Data is on the ring planet at all. Have the Ba'ku possess the same skin color as the Son'a (without the wrinkles), or as a alternative have the Ba'ku appear racially mixed. When Ru'afo want to send Son'a warships after the Enterprise, Admiral Dougherty tries to convince him not to. When Ru'afo says he's going to any way, Dougherty scoffs and says the Son'a ships won't stand a chance. This will get away from the "evil admiral" cliché and have Dougherty be a competent Starfleet officer. One or more of Picard's senior officers disagree with him and his course of action, arguing that collecting the particles is a good idea that will help billion. Picard summarily dismisses their viewpoints. Beverly would be a good pick for this, maybe Worf as well.
Exactly. IV had a logical reason for a more humorous story: Kirk and his crew were out of their comfort zone. V was only humorous because IV was so successful, which wasn't a good reason to do it.
Everyone says this, but what's the source of that? I forget if it was mentioned in the Shat's Trek V book.
It's been a while since I read that book...but I seem to remember reading it in a couple of TEH various "making of" books. Was it potentially mentioned in the BR commentary as well? For whatever reason, I thought it was spelled out pretty clearly. But, I must admit, it has been a while since I read Shatner's Movie Memories or the Lisabeth Shatner book.
Changes I'd make: TMP 1. Fix the shot with Kirk when he exits the Enterprise in his rocket suit, so the exterior of the Enterprise looks finished. 2. Stick with the 1979 post-production work (except where indicated in #1), not the Director's Edition. 3. See #1 and 2. TWOK 1. Nothing 2. See #1. 3. See #2. TSFS 1. Instead of having Admiral Morrow say "Jim, the Enterprise is 20 years old, we feel her day is over", have him say, "Jim, with the Excelsior about to be launched, the Enterprise will be obsolete. We feel her day is over." 2. I'd still have the Genesis Presentation with Carol Marcus. 3. Leaving Uhura behind comes across as sexist. "I'll have bearing and distance for you" is bullshit. TVH 1. Nothing 2. See #1. 3. See #2. TFF 1. Tone down the Enterprise malfunctions. 2. The Enterprise doesn't have 78 decks. 3. Don't have the Enterprise head to the Center of the Galaxy. TUC 1. If Praxis is really the moon of Qo'noS, then Qo'noS should've been completely destroyed when Praxis exploded. Have some other type of disaster that would impact Qo'noS for the next 50 years and would wipe-out a key energy production facility. 2. Make it clear if Kirk and the crew are still together or not at the beginning of the movie. It looks like they're about to retire but they're all getting back together? So have they been serving on the Enterprise or not? And if Sulu's been Captain for three years, why would McCoy need to be told by Kirk? Shouldn't he have known three years ago? 3. "Shakespeare in the Original Klingon" and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle being an "ancestor" of Spock is Nick Meyer over-indulging himself. How about "You have not experienced Shakespeare until it's been translated into Klingon," and have Spock say "My favorite author maintained..." instead of "An ancestor of mine maintained..." I'll stick with the Original Six. I won't go into the TNG or Kelvin Films. I'm not out for major changes, just simple fixes.
GEN: Make Harriman a competent and effective Captain, someone who clearly deserves to have been given command of the E-B Do away with the nautical misadventure for Worf's promotion, make a party in Ten Forward Don't make Picard such a wuss when facing off against Soran on Veridian III FC: Make the Starfleet vs Borg space battle bigger More focus on crew members not called Picard or Data (such as a renewed Riker/Troi relationship) Establish Hawk as having a husband/boyfriend (either onboard the E-E or a ship involved in the big epic space battle at the beginning) INS: Drop the cringy attempts at humour Make the Ba'ku interesting and actually a species that we care about what happens to them (plus remove the awful child actor) Have Riker and Troi getting married at the start of this film, with them both leaving for Riker's new ship at the end NEM: Shinzon to be played by Patrick Stewart Shinzon has no interest in attacking Earth, he has amassed a fleet of Reman and rogue Klingon forces that want to quash Romulus, which puts the crews of the E-E, Titan and the Dax (a new class of Klingon warship commanded by Ambassador Worf) facing off against them in order to protect the Federations oldest enemy. This would see three separate plots that follow Picard, Riker and Worf as they work towards figuring out what is going on and how they can stop it Remove B-4. First Officer Data sacrifices himself for his family, the most human thing he can do ST: Remove the Spock/Uhura romance Change the timeframe so they were not all at the Academy at the same time (Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy are all officers, the others would be cadets) Redesign the aesthetics (the ship is so hideous, the interiors are as glaring and hard to look at, women have sleeves) STID: (where to begin!) Remove all mention of Khan. John Harrison is a man of intellect and means with a very personal beef against Starfleet and wants to incite a war that would see the Federation become less expansionist and focus more on what it already has Remove any need to show Carol Marcus in her underwear Remove the whole opening sequence (no breaking the Prime Directive and no starships underwater) BEY: Create an adversary with a better grudge/agenda Design a more practical starbase Kirk being tired of command a ship is very out of character, change that aspect of the story (perhaps make something of his relationship and break up with Dr Marcus, especially after finding out she was pregnant but wanted nothing more to do with him) so he is questioning what more his life could hold rather than just his career
TMP: TOS-TAS Enterprise NCC-1701 is retired to the Starfleet museum. Admiral Kirk takes command of the 100% new most advanced ship in Starfleet, Enterprise NCC-1701-A. Uniforms. WOK: Lt. Marla McGivers(Madlyn Rhue) was alive and would have replaced the Judson Scott character advisor role to Khan. Khan, McGivers and the followers would have captured a Klingon K'Tinga from Klingons, not the Reliant. So, we would have seen the WOK battles revised to have been between Khan's K'Tinga vs. Kirk's 1701-Refit. Kirk and Khan to have an in person meeting/fight, not just through view screens.
TMP 1) Increase pacing or reduce runtime before filming stage. (I recognize and accept the f/x scenes were showing off the ship as a character and to cash in on "The Star Wars Fad" (though at least TMP didn't have any pointless robots whizzing around like in Star Wars) 2) Agreed, add some more humor. TWOK had more humor... TSFS had more humor... all of which felt integral to the plot and not slapping it in the audience's face. 3) Needed the actual VGER ship exterior to properly show off the scale and size of the threat (it's easily the best thing about the director's cut DVD) TWOK 1) agreed and great point 2) Apart from people in the 23rd century? What was Sulu supposed to be saying, stuff such as "Captain, like I want to see all the new tech and then stop by the lounge to get some merch! Angels and ministers of grace, defend us indeed... Otherwise, agreed. 3) I disagree with Kirk/Khan meeting. That would be expected/cliché. I'd say, fix the continuity issue where Chekov instantly recognized Khan and not as "the inwenter of the nucwear wessels in Leningrad"... TSFS Ditto, all 3 counts. TVH Ditto, all 3 counts. and, yeah, Saavik w/Spock in 20th century Earth would have added more humor... how much of it wouldn't end up so dated, however... TFF 1) Agreed. A large glowing ball of light that can show projections of humanoid faces feels like an anticlimax. Hearing voices, coupled with Sybok's ability to hypnotize people, would have been more compelling in some ways, but there would be other problems when they reach the fabled land. and I liked the rock monster in concept, which wouldn't work nearly as well if it's just due to Sybok hearing voices... 2) Different tangent for me as I liked the literal brother angle and McCoy was also acting weird enough and not knowing what was going on that he probably couldn't find his way around all of Spock's memories, which would be a lot more given his age... I'd say, TFF should have been a serious film from start to finish. Paramount wanted the stupid ha-ha comedy because of TVH and if it wasn't forced in that one, in TFF virtually none of it feels natural and manages to do more to make the crew look utterly stupid. The fact the movie gets serious in the second half is actually very refreshing and it improves immensely as a result. 3) Effects, certainly, but as much as TFF feels like an episode of TOS, it's just too jarring to show a bar that had a Human, Klingon, and Romulan walking into it (with the punchline of the joke involving a burp and 6' anthropomorphic lioness with three b00bies walking around the beer mugs as opposed to anything deeper regarding the plot, the three hostages have absolutely zero bearing on the story and are nothing more than an afterthought the moment Captain Chekov arrives.) TUC Ditto, all 3 counts. GEN 1) pre-credits bit with Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov as intended 2) original Kirk ending. It's a tragedy of Shakespearean depth. Yes, audiences hated it. Yes, audiences wanted something different. Yes, the replacement death scene is about as cliché and lame as anything could get. If one is going to kill a legend, do it with something big or not at all. Tragedy or otherwise, it's hard to argue that Kirk's original death wasn't big. What we got was one big dripping cliché. 3) Tighten up rough edges with the plot (reduce Xmas In The Nexus yawnfest, make Guinan a little more consistent, force the writers to remember what they did with Data's emotion chip since they scuppered continuity both after and before this movie was written!!!!!) FC 1) No forcefield windows for ersatz dramatic scene 2) no comedy relief 3) no time travel as that bit alone created so many massive plotholes 4) bring in Deep Space 9/Defiant crew properly 5) Awesomely acted or not, I can't get it out of my head that the Queen is antithetical to the Borg's core concept (or any Borg concept) 6) How many more times are we treated like inattentive baboons where they say "We have one or two shots at best" and nearly dozen shots later do the Borg finally adapt 7) Why only one cube for a subsequent invasion? To adapt means they bring in 2 cubes and be done with it. Like, duh... 8) even 'first contact' with the Vulcans is too fanwanky and inward-set, far more so than anything GEN had done 9) make Picard give a damn about his crew since, you know, they put their asses on the line for him and here he is saying "oh they're better off dead" after ripping them apart to see a comm badge after shooting them with hologramatic bullets-- 10) really, a safety switch in a holodeck? Well, TNG never had consistency with how holodeck 'matter' is constructed or used apart from "it can't leave the holodeck" (apart from the time that Wesley lobbed that holodeck snowball that had the virus that almost killed the crew in that tacky season 1 episode) 11) ditch the "John Maclane in space" routine 12)-- Okay, I'd otherwise be here all evening rightfully ragging on that flick when I could be out scoring for illegal drugs and "escorts" INS 1) Don't let Worf de-age before they get to the briar patch 2) of all 8,999,934,367,357,892,378,932,789,432 plot holes in this film, the most glaring one is that "Nemesis" is quick to unintentionally answer the unaddressed question that should never have had to have been postulated because doing so would disintegrate the movie and, oops, it did: the whole movie was based on a false or inaccurate premise regarding the metamagic radiationrainbow. Geordi still has implants, so leaving the planet or bottling and distributing the metamagic radiationrainbow would have been absolutely and utterly pointless. 3) why not, I suppose, ILM could have finished the bluescreen effects in the Collector's self destruct/relative cliché chamber. 4) no singing 5) John Maclane is back 6) movie needed Picard/Anij nude love scene 7) the baku and sona being the same species inadvertently ends up making the goodies (baku) being the actual baddies - but regardless, they all make up at the end (which would have been better if they knew in this movie that the metamagic radiationrainbow wouldn't have worked) 8) make the Earth historical references a bit more accurate 9) Ditch the song (it's so bad, I'll mention it twice) 10) Get rid of the waiter jacket outfits the senior staff wear 11)-- Um, time for me to join Bender in making a casino on the moon... NEM 1) Add wig to picture of young Picard 2) Redo some plot points as it's too contrived to be even remotely believable that little slave boy Anakin - er, I mean Shintzon and I think I put in a typo in his name, one too many "n"'s - can somehow remove his shackles and build the biggest most dope badassery bodacious borg-sized spaceship where no Reman or Romulan or Klingon or Federation or TFF's God could have noticed... 3) get rid of the pointless dune buggy (and bizarrely lit chase sequence) 4) bottomless pit in the Enterprise? That makes NCC1701-A's 99 decks plausible by comparison... 5) the movie tries way too hard to cop TWOK's feel, even stealing from TSTS at the end due to Data's big pus-filled cliché of a non-death. 6) Who wrote this pitiful hack of a movie anyway? 7) Troi has new magical powers that were said to be beyond her scope of abilities in TNG. That and she used them on Hellboy. That's two sins right there! 8) When all else fails, make a completely nonsensical excuse to waddle over to Earth to blow it up, despite taking into account the villain wanting to go there is already known for being a total nutter - as with everything else, it's all just slopped in and with no narrative-driven reason, and it's actually worse than how I slop my review writings together. Now, that's bad. 9) Show more of the USS Titan instead of 4 hours of deleted scenes of Wesley and Guinan and others thrown in for no reason 10) Reduce the length of the movie. Start the movie at at the timestamp when the Enterprise rams the Scimitar and end the movie once the ram is complete. Save peeps a lot of time, especially as there are two massive problems with the follow-up separation scene: a) no "beep beep beep" noise as Enteprise goes into reverse gear b) for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction - there's nothing really there that allows Enterprise to back away like that in the first place. Not even a thruster steam like what was done in "Booby Trap". Having Picard go out, bend over, and "vent gas" at Scimitar would have been at least a visual cue, pathetic as that would be. Oh well, at least this isn't as epic as Star Wars when it comes to saying "Little Bunny Fufu to you, pesky laws of physics". 11) If they're keeping the stupid waiter outfits that will show dirt and stains like there's no rest of the day (never mind no tomorrow), have them serve some hors d'oeuvres (made with real horse) or pu pu platters (made with real pu pu) to guests or something... 12) Amazing at how quick the Romulans reform into goodies, along with everything else that subplot felt hollow as well 13)-- ST2009 1) make it a movie about the characters, not the catchphrases and superficial mannerisms with any underlining meanings stripped away because aiming for nostalgia as the only reason to make a movie isn't going to have any lasting value, or potentially even initial value 2) Build the ship in outer space, where it's plausible 3) Nix product placement ads 4) this movie isn't going to date well 5) even if you go see it with a date 6) All the pointless in-jokes, don't exacxtly work with the veneer of catchphrases when it comes to appeasing the new fresh audiences they want to capture. Is there a target audience? Like "Family Guy", in jokes without a plot isn't a plot. 7) If you want to see where ST2009 got influenced the most by, look up 1995's "The Brady Bunch Movie". It's the same structure: Pinch scenes of numerous prior shows, string them into a slightly different format, phone in every catchphrase or moment (Davy Jones, football hits the nose, glass horse broken by throwing the ball inside the house, etc) and bring back original cast members as cameos for the theater audience to apparently be surprised over. STID 1) No magic blood 2) Kirk and Khan's alliance feels too forced, especially by the time they're flying through space at the 3) "USS Vengeance" is not only antithetical to what Starfleet is, it's a bit much of a giveaway that Admiral Robocopin1979fashionsuit there is doing an extra doublecross of his own 4) nix the "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN" role reversal 5) magic blood, seriously... this is freakin' 2013. 6) See #8 from ST2009 above STB None I can think of or remember, actually... including the use of pop culture music as that took me by pleasant surprise given the handling/writing over its inclusion and usage
TFF: Rogue Klingons, not Sybok, take control of the Enterprise 1701-A. TOS "Day Of The Dove" basis deck by deck battles without the alien influence. The Enterprise 1701-A course is to Kronos so the rogue Klingons can use her to attack their homeworld to trigger a war with the Federation.
Before I was born, but I've talked with people who insist they saw the movie in December 1979 with scaffolding visible in the scene where Kirk comes out of the air lock. The movie say Klingon moon, not moon of Qonos/Home-world. Across the Empire there might be hundreds or thousands of moons. There's a cut scene in the travel pod in TWOK where McCoy hears for the first time about Sulu's captaincy, when it's apparent known to everyone else. Maybe McCoy and Sulu aren't particularly close?
Good point. That could work if the crew split up three years before TUC, then Sulu became Captain of the Excelsior. If everyone stayed on the Enterprise though, it would seem kind of weird that McCoy wouldn't hear about Sulu leaving for the Excelsior. Unless -- literal thought I had just as I was typing this -- Sulu transferred off the Enterprise not too long after TFF, served as First Officer somewhere, then went to the Excelsior. So I guess there are ways it could work out.
They're mis-remembering. What happened was that stills of that shot being produced were widely publicized in the SF magazines of the time. So, it was part of the expectation of what constituted the film, even though it wasn't in the movie. Then, they must have seen the ABC version on TV which had it and then thought, oh, yeah, it must have been in there all along. Again, they're just mis-remembering what was on-screen in 1979.