The spaceship scenes really require motion blur. They looked really choppy when the ships move fast.
The first Dregon ship loses its starboard nacelle and spins to port. Umm...
what?
Uneven sound. "Energize," at 1:13 sounds like it's in a completely different room than the preceding lines.
When only two of the five team members who beam down make it, the lead—Hilton—doesn't even look around to register that the others didn't make it. At least phaser rifle carrying Lt. Nova turns her head to take a glance. Hilton just knows because he read the script (or his reaction shots weren't used).
Reactions, people.
Immediately, a firefight. Directional continuity is all over the place with the Dregons, who fire screen right, then in subsequent cut, left, then right, etc.. Then the Dregons seem to
duck the phaser shots, which missed by a mile anyway (look at where they hit the ground in the background). And—my pet peeve—our heroes keep
missing with a constant beam weapon...essentially a lightsabre a hundred meters long.
Wave it around! Hell, Mr. Freeze did it in
Batman back in '66!
Speaking of the Dregon, they remind me a bit of the
Ko-Dan soldiers and pilots from
The Last Starfighter, with their goggles. I wonder if their leader is Commander Krill?
Oh well, the Ko-Dan could afford more than space hoodies.
1st firefight. I actually had to rewind the video to realize Lt. Nova was hit in the knee, this because she fires her weapon at the same instant as she is shot, so at a glance it can look like she was hit in the upper body because your eye goes to the beam
from her weapon and not to the much lower to the ground enemy blast. The color of the enemy beams should have been clearly differentiated to prevent such misreading.
Neither Hilton nor Nova knows how to hold a communicator.
The constant blackouts were pace killing. The first one is like 178 frames! The next is 108! The 3rd, like 50-something... preposterously long. Towards the end they get shorter, but the early ones...OMG. Dead. Stop.
6:42 Is that dead guy's
intestines hanging out?
Throughout, Hilton points the controls and screen of his tricorder out towards the camera, so he's busily studying the black back of it. Spock sometimes did something like this, but usually he was looking down at the top of it. It always looks dumb. And is there any tricorder sound? I wasn't hearing it if it was there.
7:40 Bad action sequence. The Dregon has a fucking gun, and instead of just shooting Hilton—who does not have his phaser in hand—runs around in front of and the charges him so they can grapple in hand to hand combat and
then it fires. <forehead slap> And when did he lose his phaser so the kid can pick it up? We never see it knocked from his belt or dropped. Sloppy.
Camping. The lighting is mid afternoon, our hero is wearing short sleeves, and he says it's about to get cold. You are not selling this, Hilton.
So, Hilton goes inside this bunker thing, doesn't appear to close the door behind himself (and there is no sound effect) and when he goes to leave, now it's closed?
Huh?
Also, when he finally contacts the ship, he doesn't bother report anything other than that he has the kid. Not that 60% of his team never made it down. Not that he had to leave Nova behind and she'll need rescue. What kind of fucked up officer is this?
Oh, and while Hilton
must rescue ambassador Ellie at all costs...but the Captain won't risk lowering the shields to bring them up. How much of a priority is this kid? And just what qualifies her for this role? And why would the Dregons listen to her?
What's with the big THUNK sound when Ellie turns her shoulder to avoid Hilton's hand? Did she bang her lavalier mic?
Back to the
Valiant for that pointless pew pew revisit where they're all gung-ho to paste the Dregons. Maybe this is meant to illustrate what Ellie said to Hilton about enjoying killing. Is this Starfleet-wide? Is Hilton average? That could be interesting if intended, but it doesn't quite play off that way.
To make matters worse, Valiant subsequently gets a message from Random Captain that other starships are on their way, but in the end this factors into the story not at all. Stop. With. The.
Skype Zoom. Calls. They're antidramatic.
How does Ellie know how to operate the grenade launcher?
The tricorder makes no sound, but the heartbeat monitor in the sickbay is irritatingly loud.
I could not read the Captain's face at the end. Was he looking on with disapproval or pity? It looked like the former, but it's unclear.
