Weird sickbay scene in ST VI

[suarezguy]

Did anyone really care whether or not Valeris betrayed Our Heroes?

It was definitely predictable if not obvious but I think it still worked, Nimoy and Cattrall established well that Valeris had been his protege with Spock already pleased and with a lot of hope for, then disappointment at her.

Granted I was a kid at the time, but until that "reveal" I thought that Valeris really was there to take over Spock's role as resident logician with whatever crew was going to be on the Enterprise-A in the 'next' movie. Because we were going to get a new group of heroes for even more post-TOS movies, right??

Even in general, the film does very much, pretty often try to be a bridge to a next generation, given that (and that the film on the whole is pretty feel-good) that the traitor was one of the main crew, and that transition character, is still somewhat surprising.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

It was definitely predictable if not obvious but I think it still worked, Nimoy and Cattrall established well that Valeris had been his protege with Spock already pleased and with a lot of hope for, then disappointment at her.

Must respectfully disagree.

They told us she was his protege. They certainly didn't show it. And the lack of connection between the characters, along with the audience's total lack of investment in her, made her betrayal more boring than painful.

Once they decided not to use Saavik, they should have dropped the "Spock feels betrayed" bit.

 

[DonIago]

A traitor with whom one of the main characters feels a not-entirely-successfully-executed connection is, for my money, better than a traitor with whom none of the main characters feel a connection.

If it had been Crewman Dax, for instance...who cares if some random guy we've never seen before and will likely never see again betrayed Our Heroes? At least there was some build-up of the Spock-Valeris connection.

 

[Ssosmcin]

A traitor with whom one of the main characters feels a not-entirely-successfully-executed connection is, for my money, better than a traitor with whom none of the main characters feel a connection.

If it had been Crewman Dax, for instance...who cares if some random guy we've never seen before and will likely never see again betrayed Our Heroes? At least there was some build-up of the Spock-Valeris connection.

Right. Imagine if this were movie #1 instead of #6. We know Spock, that's all we need. Valeris is important to him. It's Spock's betrayal, it wasn't supposed to bother us. How HE reacted was the point (and I loved how he took it). It's not like there were a dozen likely suspects anyway. She was pretty much all there was. It's not like Scotty was gonna be the reveal.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

There was barely any connection at all. A character we didn't care about, and the other characters didn't seem to care about.

EIther use Saavik, or drop the whole stupid plotline. It just didn't work at all.

 

[DonIago]

There was barely any connection at all. A character we didn't care about, and the other characters didn't seem to care about.

EIther use Saavik, or drop the whole stupid plotline. It just didn't work at all.

How would you rewrite it then?

There has to be a traitor on the Enterprise or the whole plan falls apart. Would you really prefer the traitor be some random crewperson with no established connection to Our Heroes?

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

There has to be a traitor on the Enterprise or the whole plan falls apart. Would you really prefer the traitor be some random crewperson with no established connection to Our Heroes?

You mean, exactly what we got?

Valeris might as well have been Roy from that episode of the Simpsons.

I'm just saying that "the traitor among us" plot was pretty impotent when the character was created to be the traitor and she turns on our heroes an hour after we're introduced to her. The one with the giant neon sign over her head flashing "I'M THE TRAITOR".

Once they decided not to use Saavik, they should have found a different hook for the story.

 

[DonIago]

^Like what?

It's easy to say 'This was bad writing.' If you don't have any better ideas, at least acknowledge that you don't have any better ideas.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

Wait, so I can't criticize a painter if I don't pick up a brush?

I can't criticize a politician until I have run for office, won, and finished my term?

Come on, that's just silly.

If you want me to fan fiction something, I guess I will. But that doesn't change the fact that writers can't afford to hold on to pet ideas when the story changes in development. This would have been so such a great idea with Saavik, it seems that they didn't want to let go of it once plans changed. Kill your darlings, people. Kill your darlings.

When Bennett or Meyer or whoever made the decision to create a new character, they should have reworked the script until it made sense with that new character. Blind copy-and-paste rarely serves the characters, and rarely serves the story.

 

[Qonundrum]

I like to think VI was paying homage to all of those TOS episodes where they did great whacking close-ups in fight scenes on excruciatingly obvious stunt doubles. Some of more unintentionally hilarious examples are in "I, Mudd" and "Space Seed". And, yes, even on a 12" CRT monitor with a dot pitch of 0.5mm or whatever, those fresh new color TVs were back then, one could still make out the differences.

 

[Qonundrum]

Wait, so I can't criticize a painter if I don't pick up a brush?

I can't criticize a politician until I have run for office, won, and finished my term?

Come on, that's just silly.

Shh, don't say that. Siskel and Ebert won't like that!

It's also more fun to use the analogy of "So I can't criticize a murderer if I don't kill anyone?". That generalized analogy about it being foul to criticize a movie despite never having written a script or did video production, direction, acting, etc, isn't quite perfect no matter how noble... especially in anything objectively subjective as art.

If you want me to fan fiction something, I guess I will. But that doesn't change the fact that writers can't afford to hold on to pet ideas when the story changes in development. This would have been so such a great idea with Saavik, it seems that they didn't want to let go of it once plans changed. Kill your darlings, people. Kill your darlings.

When Bennett or Meyer or whoever made the decision to create a new character, they should have reworked the script until it made sense with that new character. Blind copy-and-paste rarely serves the characters, and rarely serves the story.

Great point, great link and great read, thanks!

 

[DonIago]

Wait, so I can't criticize a painter if I don't pick up a brush?

I can't criticize a politician until I have run for office, won, and finished my term?

Come on, that's just silly.

If you want me to fan fiction something, I guess I will. But that doesn't change the fact that writers can't afford to hold on to pet ideas when the story changes in development. This would have been so such a great idea with Saavik, it seems that they didn't want to let go of it once plans changed. Kill your darlings, people. Kill your darlings.

When Bennett or Meyer or whoever made the decision to create a new character, they should have reworked the script until it made sense with that new character. Blind copy-and-paste rarely serves the characters, and rarely serves the story.

Not what I said at all, but don't let me stop you if this is the interpretation you want to run with.

 

[FormerLurker]

"I couldn't begin to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference."

"You're joking."

 

[DonIago]

Heh.

But seriously, "Well, if you think this idea sucks, do you have an idea of your own?" is a far cry from, "You shouldn't be criticizing writing if you don't have experience as a writer."

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

It's not that far away from what you said, actually.

Because the rewrite isn't a simple patch, and I never said it was. Only that when you decide to remove a character from a script, that often means making substantive changes to more than just the name over lines of dialog.

They thought they could just re-assign all Saavik's lines to a brand-new character without doing anything else, and still have the same resonance. They were wrong.

 

[DonIago]

But as far as I can tell, you're the only one going so far as to say that the use of Valeris rather than Saavik, "made her betrayal more boring than painful."

I thought it was a little obvious, but I don't know that it would have felt less obvious if it had been Saavik, though probably a bit more painful.

We hadn't seen Saavik in quite some time though, and they weren't going to put her in this film purely for reasons of nostalgia.

I think TPTB did the best job they could of at least trying to build up Valeris. She gets scenes with both Kirk and Spock, and in the latter's case we see that there's a connection between the two, while in the former case she does seem to have some desire to win Kirk's approval.

Plotting-wise, if you take her out, then you don't have any connection between Our Heroes and the overall course of the film, which creates even bigger problems unless you start radically changing the film (at which point it's not really TUC), so I'm willing to give TPTB credit for doing the best job they could under the circumstances.

Which is why I feel as though if one is going to critique them without giving them at least some credit at the same time, then one should either acknowledge that there wasn't a good alternative or propose an alternative, rather than simply criticizing what we got.

 

[Ssosmcin]

It's not that far away from what you said, actually.

Because the rewrite isn't a simple patch, and I never said it was. Only that when you decide to remove a character from a script, that often means making substantive changes to more than just the name over lines of dialog.

They thought they could just re-assign all Saavik's lines to a brand-new character without doing anything else, and still have the same resonance. They were wrong.

Well, do we really know that they expected Velaris' betrayal have the same impact to us? They would be silly to think that a brand new character's betrayal would have had the same effect on the audience as an established fan favorite. The most important factor was the impact it was to have on Spock. It was a flimsy mystery since, as I said, there weren't a whole line of suspects. Unless they were just gonna pin it on Burke and Samno, two nobodies, it would have to either been the new character or one of the veterans. And fans would have lost their minds if Scotty was the traitor (although that would have been a genuine surprise).

It also didn't help that Cinefantastique magazine outed it before the film premiered by saying Saavik was intended to be a traitor. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together when the film was running. The point then is that Spock didn't know who it was. That was the entire point of his blindness to the traitor right under his nose. Someone he groomed and trusted. It gave Nimoy a lot to play.

The "mystery" wasn't a puzzle for the audience, it was a journey for the characters. Valeris wasn't supposed to be that important to us in the seats, she was supposed to be important to Spock.

On that level, it works just fine.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

I stand behind "boring." It's just such a stale and silly cliche: the traitor we've been hunting for turns out to be the brand-new character just introduced, one whom we're told (but not shown) is like a daughter to one of Our Heroes! No, Cousin Roy, it can't be you!

Dramatically, that's boring. And there's certainly no emotional resonance in the reveal.

And yes, they were going to put Saavik in it. The part was originally written as Saavik before Kirstie Alley's salary demands necessitated a rewrite. And at that point, they should have done a bigger rewrite than just copy-pasting her lines into a new character. It's a deep script problem not easily swapped out, which is why your request for fan fic is a bit unreasonable. The problem is foundational, and they would have needed to find another emotional hook to hang the story on. They couldn't tell the exact tale they originally wanted to tell without Saavik; lose the character, and the script doesn't work.

Now, I find the finished script itself to be rather lazy and haphazard, so it's perhaps not surprising that the process leading up to it was much the same.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I agree the script was in desperate need of another polish. The film was rushed to get it done in time for the 25th anniversary. I'm sure the easiest solution was to just change the name and a few lines because they didn't have time for a total rewrite. Honestly, the stuff happening on the Enterprise was never as interesting to me as Kirk and McCoy's situation.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

Agreed that it was rushed and shows it.

I just find it very frustrating because three decades later, the reason for rushing the script is long behind us, and yet the problems it caused continue to plague the finished product to this day.