ST Continues "To Boldly Go": A Fan Edit

[Shaka Zulu]

It's how I always saw it while growing up, and throughout the movie TWOK Uhura, Sulu, was just visiting and had a helping hand for a training mission and later an emergency situation. After the movie, I was thinking grandeur ideas and the exploration of Kirstie Alley's and Merritt Butrick's characters along with other young upstarts ala TNG before TNG, TMP 2.0. When I saw TSFS, I knew Star Trek would not be going for grand ideas, and as much as I sincerely love TVH, I wanted Star Trek to go beyond Earth, beyond super -Khan-esque villains. When I finally saw VI, I thought it was okay, and kept thinking an intergalactic conflict between the Klingons and Earth should be epic than a predictable murder mystery. Sigh. I digress, it's fine, all of TOS movies are fine except for III, that movie ultimately disappointed me.

Get this through your head; Merrit Butterick was NEVER going to continue as David Marcus-he didn't want to be typecast as 'Kirk's son' for the rest of his life, rightfully or wrongfully, he wanted to do other things, so he asked the producer and director to kill him off. And Robin Curtis didn't want to be Saavik forever (plus the writers probably didn't have any more story for her to be in) -how hard is that to get?

I enjoy Star Trek 3 for many reasons, one of them is having Christopher Lloyd and John Laroquette as Klingons. But let's admit that Kirk using his former bridge crew was an act of pandering to the movie audience more than what the character of James Kirk might have done.
It kinda stings that Spock managed to singlehandedly fool Starfleet and his ship's captain and kidnap Admiral Pike to return him to a forbidden planet like Talos 5, and yet Kirk with all the resources from Starfleet still needed others to help him? So be it, but why use 5 senior citizens when Kirk surely knows a LOT of younger, stronger fighters who probably also owe him a blood debt.
Sure I liked seeing Sulu do some martial arts and Scotty give Styles his comeuppance, but Kirk's plan was seconds away from failing.
Let's not forget it resulted in the death of his son David.

Ironically (for me anyway) this is the same argument I've used to talk to others elsewhere on the Internet about Luke, Leia & Han acting as they used to in the current Star Wars movies (specifically Luke not going full The Force Unleashed as many of them wanted him/Mark Hamill to do in The Last Jedi. On the other hand, Merrick Butterick didn't want to continue as David Marcus, so even if Kirk had younger assistants to help him search for Spock, David might still have ended up dead.

I find that an interesting comment considering who wrote this 2 partner. I'm a huge TOS fan and think Continues nailed it. Comparing it to season 3, it is a worthy successors. My only issues with the finale were the destruction of ships specifically called out in canon production materials. I've considered making some fan edit tweeks to fix that. I found all of Continues to be better in nearly every area to the first season of Discovery.

Yes, a small-budgeted all-white fan show with amateur acting and scriptwriting that's basically a farrago of fan service is better than a modern day million dollar budget TV show with a very diverse cast and a main female character who's not just eye candy but very capable (and more capable than the females on TNG and TOS, IMHO.)

 

[STEPhon IT]

Get this through your head; Merrit Butterick was NEVER going to continue as David Marcus-he didn't want to be typecast as 'Kirk's son' for the rest of his life, rightfully or wrongfully, he wanted to do other things, so he asked the producer and director to kill him off. And Robin Curtis didn't want to be Saavik forever (plus the writers probably didn't have any more story for her to be in) -how hard is that to get?



Ironically (for me anyway) this is the same argument I've used to talk to others elsewhere on the Internet about Luke, Leia & Han acting as they used to in the current Star Wars movies (specifically Luke not going full The Force Unleashed as many of them wanted him/Mark Hamill to do in The Last Jedi. On the other hand, Merrick Butterick didn't want to continue as David Marcus, so even if Kirk had younger assistants to help him search for Spock, David might still have ended up dead.

Shaka Zulu, I know this. We discussed this before. I can't tell you how I felt about the movie, and I what I hoped for after TWOK??? Geez. All in all TOS had a good run and we're blessed to have those movies.

 

[Timewalker]

Yes, a small-budgeted all-white fan show with amateur acting and scriptwriting that's basically a farrago of fan service is better than a modern day million dollar budget TV show with a very diverse cast and a main female character who's not just eye candy but very capable (and more capable than the females on TNG and TOS, IMHO.)

Wow. Today I learned that Uhura and Sulu were played by white actors in STC. How could I possibly have mistaken them for black and Japanese actors, respectively?

And yes, STC is better than DiscoTrek, in my estimation. It did a better job of entertaining me, and while there were certainly aspects and even whole episodes I didn't like, those were not enough for me to shut the computer off in disgust like I did the TV (we get DiscoTrek and Picard on one of our cable channels here in Canada).

STC did not have stomach-turning Dr. Who-style monsters masquerading as Klingons, and it didn't have subtitles that meant the viewer could choose to ignore them and focus on the action and miss understanding what all that blathering was about, or they could read the subtitles and lose track of the action.

STC did not act like they did a goshwowboyoboy wonderful thing by attaching Burnham to Spock's family (fanfic writers did it first, people, decades ago). They did have an anachronistic character (the counselor character), but I'm willing to forgive that.

I don't care about budget. Spending $$$$$$$ as opposed to $$$$$ doesn't guarantee I'm going to like the former more than the latter. An excellent example is first-season Classic Doctor Who vs. any season of nuWho. The budget for early Classic Who was minuscule, it showed, but I don't care. I loved most of it. Fast-forward 57 years... and I gave up on nuWho before Capaldi's final season. Money doesn't guarantee good writing or likable characters.

The most important thing about comparing STC with the new series is that DiscoTrek and Picard just bore me. I found them both annoying and boring, and STC was neither.

Such are my not even remotely humble opinions.

YKMV, of course.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

LOL... sorry to burst you bubble, but I don't find screenplays that hard to write. I find novels harder. A novel is easier to sell making them more profitable to spend your time on. If you can write a short story and if you can write in different voices, it shouldn't take much to master a screenplay. Being able to craft a cohesive story of the right length is the hardest part. When you have that, the rest is format.

One reason novelists have a problem is if they try to adapt their own work. Unless you have experience you'll probably focus on the wrong things and have an unwieldly script. It has to be rewritten to remove what isn't needed and to compresses what is into the right length. But a novelist with experience in short stories should be able to easily write a good original screenplay.

I neither have time nor the inclination to go through the misconceptions here on selling novels and their profitability to the ones on screenwriting difficulty.

I will say that @Maurice generally knows what he's talking about in this field, as he has a lot of street cred, including a screenplay with actors Anthony Mackie (The Falcon), Elodie Yung and John Rhys Davies attached. And as I've personally collaborated with him, I trust both his skill, craft and instincts in these matters. He knows his stuff.

 

[Maurice]

LOL... sorry to burst you bubble, but I don't find screenplays that hard to write. I find novels harder. A novel is easier to sell making them more profitable to spend your time on. If you can write a short story and if you can write in different voices, it shouldn't take much to master a screenplay. Being able to craft a cohesive story of the right length is the hardest part. When you have that, the rest is format.

One reason novelists have a problem is if they try to adapt their own work. Unless you have experience you'll probably focus on the wrong things and have an unwieldly script. It has to be rewritten to remove what isn't needed and to compresses what is into the right length. But a novelist with experience in short stories should be able to easily write a good original screenplay.

In order to "burst [my] bubble" you'd have to know something I don't, which is a pretty presumptuous thing to say.

Going to what is "more profitable to spend your time on" is an entirely different subject. I had posited that "screenwriting is a different animal than novel writing, and what works in one doesn't necessarily work in the other," which is not about difficulty, it's about form and that one skillset does not necessarily translate to the other.

Finally, how "easy" something is do for an individual ≠ doing it well. Heck I hammered out a 120,000 word novel when I was 17, and it wasn't difficult. That doesn't mean it was any good.

 

[Bixby]

LOL... sorry to burst you bubble, but I don't find screenplays that hard to write. I find novels harder. A novel is easier to sell making them more profitable to spend your time on. If you can write a short story and if you can write in different voices, it shouldn't take much to master a screenplay. Being able to craft a cohesive story of the right length is the hardest part. When you have that, the rest is format.

One reason novelists have a problem is if they try to adapt their own work. Unless you have experience you'll probably focus on the wrong things and have an unwieldly script. It has to be rewritten to remove what isn't needed and to compresses what is into the right length. But a novelist with experience in short stories should be able to easily write a good original screenplay.

If screenplays are not that hard to write, how come the big studios have vaults and warehouses FILLED with craptastic to unworkable screenplays they`ve been amassing for decades?

The reason novelists find it difficult to switch gears from novels to film has nothing to do with compressing the size of the novel, but everything to do with being ignorant of film as a separate artform. It's like if suddenly Bernie Taupin changed careers to become a sculptor: It`s still art, but you need to use entirely different muscles..

A novelist can spend 50 pages droning on about how his married couple are having infidelity problems that have nothing to do with the actual story, whereas in film it`s all about subtext and would likely just have a quick scene showing the husband and wife waiting for an elevator, both standing awkwardly apart from each other for example (length of film to show what took 50 pages in a book? 5 seconds)

 

[Timewalker]

If screenplays are not that hard to write, how come the big studios have vaults and warehouses FILLED with craptastic to unworkable screenplays they`ve been amassing for decades?

The reason novelists find it difficult to switch gears from novels to film has nothing to do with compressing the size of the novel, but everything to do with being ignorant of film as a separate artform. It's like if suddenly Bernie Taupin changed careers to become a sculptor: It`s still art, but you need to use entirely different muscles..

A novelist can spend 50 pages droning on about how his married couple are having infidelity problems that have nothing to do with the actual story, whereas in film it`s all about subtext and would likely just have a quick scene showing the husband and wife just waiting for an elevator, both standing awkwardly apart from each other (length of film to show what took 50 pages in a book? 5 seconds)

I hope people here realize I'm not arguing facts, just opinions. I have participated in NaNoWriMo since 2007 and it took until 2016 before I pulled off a win - which in NaNo terms means I made it to 50,000 words in 30 days. It was a first draft and I'm the first to admit that it needs a great deal of revision and editing and I can't publish it anyway since it's fanfic based on a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. But it was a worthwhile thing to do, as it taught me about being disciplined, and that if you want to be serious, you can't just do it when it's "fun".

I've had more wins since then, but I'm most proud of that 2016 effort. My current project took on a life of its own a couple of years ago and has become a series - again, that I can't publish because it's fanfic, but damn, I'm having a wonderful time doing it. And I finally succeeded at the real goal of NaNoWriMo - which is to write every day, and keep it up, improve my skills, and enjoy it even when writer's block happens or the characters have different ideas about what they want to do than I'd originally intended.

Years ago there used to be a competition called Script Frenzy. The idea was similar to NaNoWriMo, in that the project had to be completed in 30 days, but if memory serves, the script had to be 50 pages long. I tried it one year, and I think I gave up before page 5. It's definitely not as easy as people think, even if you're like me and find dialogue easier to write than action.

According to Frank Herbert in one of his interviews about the 1984 Lynch movie, he took a crack at writing a Dune script. He admitted it wasn't any good, because as you say, writing a novel is very different from writing a script. And Dune presents challenges that the average novel-to-movie adaptation doesn't.

 

[Bixby]

Get this through your head; Merrit Buttrick was NEVER going to continue as David Marcus-he didn't want to be typecast as 'Kirk's son' for the rest of his life, rightfully or wrongfully, he wanted to do other things, so he asked the producer and director to kill him off. And Robin Curtis didn't want to be Saavik forever (plus the writers probably didn't have any more story for her to be in) -how hard is that to get?

This is NOT a good example of de-escalation

 

[jespah]

Yeah, let's tone down the get this through your head stuff - because everybody knows the unspoken word between your and head is either stupid or thick.

We are talking about fan productions here, not the Cuban Missile crisis.

If someone peed in your Wheaties(tm) this morning, then toss the bowl and get a new one, and don't blame us.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

We are talking about fan productions here, not the Cuban Missile crisis.

But STC is why we're 100 seconds from midnight on the Doomsday Clock!

 

[yotsuya]

I hope people here realize I'm not arguing facts, just opinions. I have participated in NaNoWriMo since 2007 and it took until 2016 before I pulled off a win - which in NaNo terms means I made it to 50,000 words in 30 days. It was a first draft and I'm the first to admit that it needs a great deal of revision and editing and I can't publish it anyway since it's fanfic based on a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. But it was a worthwhile thing to do, as it taught me about being disciplined, and that if you want to be serious, you can't just do it when it's "fun".

I've had more wins since then, but I'm most proud of that 2016 effort. My current project took on a life of its own a couple of years ago and has become a series - again, that I can't publish because it's fanfic, but damn, I'm having a wonderful time doing it. And I finally succeeded at the real goal of NaNoWriMo - which is to write every day, and keep it up, improve my skills, and enjoy it even when writer's block happens or the characters have different ideas about what they want to do than I'd originally intended.

Years ago there used to be a competition called Script Frenzy. The idea was similar to NaNoWriMo, in that the project had to be completed in 30 days, but if memory serves, the script had to be 50 pages long. I tried it one year, and I think I gave up before page 5. It's definitely not as easy as people think, even if you're like me and find dialogue easier to write than action.

According to Frank Herbert in one of his interviews about the 1984 Lynch movie, he took a crack at writing a Dune script. He admitted it wasn't any good, because as you say, writing a novel is very different from writing a script. And Dune presents challenges that the average novel-to-movie adaptation doesn't.

I've also participated in NaNoWriMo. If by winning you mean succeeding in the words for the month, I succeeded several times. And I think there is a mistake concerning what I was saying. I did not say anyone can write a screenplay. I was saying any writer can write a screenplay. It is just a different voice and written format. The craft of creating a story remains the same. You must be able to catch the reader, weave an interesting tale, and conclude it successfully. The vaults are filled with people trying to be writers and thinking their script is awesome. People who aren't writers. I'm talking about someone who can write a good story, not some novice who knows nothing about the craft of story telling. And adapting an existing story into a screenplay is probably the single hardest writing assignment that exists. Few good screenwriters can master that task.

Writers have a choice of telling a story in many different ways. There is 3rd person narrative that most use. Then there is 1st person. And the story can be told in past or present. A screenplay is just a another format. You use present tense and you are limited to dialog and minimal descriptions. It changes your tools, but anyone who has mastered one type should be able to convert their story telling into any of the others. some writers frequently write in different ways and others find one they like and stick to it. Screenplays are driven by dialog. So I guess if you suck and dialog you wouldn't be any good at a screenplay. I would imagine that if Isaac Asimov had tried to write one that it wouldn't have been very good because he admittedly had issues with dialog. But the majority of writers out there should be able to craft a descent and sellable screenplay. I doubt many of them could adapt their own work successfully, but if they did something original and adapted to the format. A story is a story no matter how long or short. If your writing skills include stories of the 10k to 20 length with dialog, you can write TV or movie screenplays.

That is why i'm surprised that some didn't like Sawyer's story. He is skilled at novels and short stories and his two part screenplay flowed nicely. He is a very successful writer and a very big Star Trek fan. But then so are a lot of people who have worked both on the fan productions and the actual productions. I used to read all the Pocket Books Trek stories and every episode of continues was so much better and true to the original series than any of those (well, there were a few exceptions that were pretty close). I would say about the only area Continues didn't get right was the episodic feel. I wish they would have edited their episodes to conform to the 50 minute with commercial breaks format of the original. I could feel that difference when I watched them. but that is an editing thing, not a writing thing. As we can see from all the lost scenes we have learned of in TOS, that were written and shot and edited out.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Wow. Today I learned that Uhura and Sulu were played by white actors in STC. How could I possibly have mistaken them for black and Japanese actors, respectively?

I said 'all-white' because with the exception of those two, as much as people don't want to admit it, Star Trek: TOS is relatively all white, whereas Discovery has people of color front and center, and actually walks the walk and talks the talk about putting women front and center as credible competent members of Starfleet (only Voyager and DS9 managed that well enough besides Discovery.)

And yes, STC is better than DiscoTrek, in my estimation. It did a better job of entertaining me, and while there were certainly aspects and even whole episodes I didn't like, those were not enough for me to shut the computer off in disgust like I did the TV (we get DiscoTrek and Picard on one of our cable channels here in Canada).

Oh yeah, the 'it didn't entertain me' canard. And we all know why; Discovery wasn't a fan wank recreation of the Original Series, so that automatically makes it bad because it was somewhat more creative than just slapdashedly and fan-wankingly recreating TOS verbatim, and realizing that it's a professional TV show that must be shot like shown are now and not as if it was shot in the '60's 'just because'.

STC did not have stomach-turning Dr. Who-style monsters masquerading as Klingons, and it didn't have subtitles that meant the viewer could choose to ignore them and focus on the action and miss understanding what all that blathering ]was about, or they could read the subtitles and lose track of the action.

Oh yeah, the 'Klingons are too different' bullshit. Curse the showrunners for coming up,with a stylish update and not just a slavish fanwank recreation.

STC did not act like they did a goshwowboyoboy wonderful thing by attaching Burnham to Spock's family (fanfic writers did it first, people, decades ago). They did have an anachronistic character (the counselor character), but I'm willing to forgive that.

And Bill Shatner came up with Sybok for Star Trek V, so what? At least it worked this time, and made sense. I'm not going to blast STC for having McKenna, because many ships will have a shrink onboard as part of the medical staff anyway. But I will not consider it better than any official new Star Trek, ever.

I don't care about budget. Spending $$$$$$$ as opposed to $$$$$ doesn't guarantee I'm going to like the former more than the latter. An excellent example is first-season Classic Doctor Who vs. any season of nuWho. The budget for early Classic Who was minuscule, it showed, but I don't care. I loved most of it. Fast-forward 57 years... and I gave up on nuWho before Capaldi's final season. Money doesn't guarantee good writing or likable characters.

An amateur production is still an amateur production, and we all know why people like you can't stand the new Who; too much 'social justice' in it, along with stories that barely touch upon any current issues or that are like a show of the current day (only the '60's was better, in spite of women companions not being able to do anything other than be rescued by the Doctor or just be his assistant.

The most important thing about comparing STC with the new series is that DiscoTrek and Picard just bore me. I found them both annoying and boring, and STC was neither.

Bored people are boring people. And people like you are just foundamentalists (people stuck at the founding moment) who wouldn't know what good Star Trek is unless it's just exactly like the 1966 show.

Such are my not even remotely humble opinions.

Thankfully, they're in the minority, and both Discovery and Picard are more successful than an amateur fan show loaded with fan wankery, plus characters that are like real human beings this time.

 

[jespah]

I'm locking this topic because, apparently, this - https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/st-continues-to-boldly-go-a-fan-edit.302846/page-4#post-13498739 is being ignored.

Sorry to the folks who did not engage in personal attacks.

And for the folks who did (you know who you are), informal moderation can turn into formal moderation. I am quite sure you do not want that happening.