What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say "our future is ashes", but I do think that as humans, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves. Yes, we are capable of so much good, and certain times in history have proven that. But we're also capable of almost untold evil, and that side of us can't be completely ignored or glossed over. Attempting to do so, in my opinion, just paints a false portrait of us as being 100% holy or infallible...and such a view doesn't match up to reality.
Well, it depends. I think Trek carries a quintessential message ('we have the potential to create a better future for our species'), and any writing that denies that, I simply cannot see as 'good Trek', even though it may be a very good story in other terms or on its own merits.
Not that I think the message is necessarily true either, (depending on how you interpret that message exactly, TOS for example did it in a different way than early TNG), but that's a different discussion as far as I'm concerned.
Nurture requires care. Care requires empathy and emotion.
Care perhaps in that sense. Not care about Star Trek.
That's called doing your job.
I disagree. Hence my post about how Nemesis could have been the best TNG movie ever.
Speaking of this, I've always wondered how writers that are hired for a longrunning TV/book/comic franchise with deep and longrunning history and detail, but haven't consumed any of that content "catch up" before they write.
I mostly blame director Stuart Baird, for the failure of "Nemesis". He was new to the franchise when he did the film, and he cut at least 30 minutes of character-building scenes...not realizing that such moments are a large part of what "Star Trek" is about. Without memorable characters, you can have all the tech and space-battle stuff you want, but it will ultimately fizzle out.
Care? Maybe not, depending on your definition. If by care you mean "Lifelong fans with a definite preference for certain elements", then certainly not. Look at Nicholas Meyer, after all. If by care you mean "concerned about what drew fans into the series to begin with", then that's absolutely false.
Respect? No matter how you slice it, yes, the writers of any show need to respect it, and its audience. If you don't, why are you even there? A lack of respect is evident in Stubbe of the worst the franchise has to offer, notably Nemesis and Into Darkness, both of which stole whole-cloth from the most popular Trek film while simultaneously disrespecting every other aspect of it.
"Khan was a Sikh? Screw it, make him white and British. We've shown a young Picard with hair multiple times? Screw it, make him a 20-year old cancer survivor."
No. You absolutely need to respect what you are writing, or your audience won't respect it either.
How so? I find respect towards a fictional franchise such a nebulous, poorly defined, quality as to be nearly useless. Unless you have a better definition, I think caring about your work is all the care needed, because that will motivate understanding and research, not respect.
Caring about your work for yourself is one thing, but if you're doing it for an external medium - radio, TV, movies, whatever - you also have to remember that your work will be exposed to an audience...and right or wrong, they will all have an opinion about it. You obviously can't please them all, but doing your best to respect what was done earlier is a large step in making something admirable.
Hoe though? No one will answer how you show respect to a fictional work. Hell, by some decisions Meyer did not with The Wrath of Khan.
I gave you examples from Nemesis and Into Darkness, but you ignored them.
Respect is understanding the general concept of the sandbox you're playing in and not disregarding it for the simple sake of doing your own story.
The fact that you can't understand how to respect another person's work says a lot. So often, writers and other artists are disrespected because people don't see an intrinsic value to what they create beyond the shallowest level of entertainment. They don't look at it as the culmination of someone's hard work.
I might, for instance, not like how Michelle Paradise ran Discovery, but if I ever get the opportunity to pursue my dream of writing for Star Trek, I'm certainly not going to directly contradict or outright invalidate what she created just to suit my whims. I would work within the framework of what she and everyone else has established, because I respect their work even when I don't particularly like it.
That is what it means to respect such a "nebulous" concept.
You've defined it better than anyone in the past. I don't think respect is the best term but I'll grant I see your point.
Well, no. Neither of those is true.
I can't comment on that film, since I never saw it all the way through, or the "Space Seed" episode it was based on. But I respectfully disagree with you, about not being able to respect fiction. Many writers, producers, directors...they do their best with whatever they're working on, to please the fans of that property, and keep the overall legacy intact.
I've cited this comment on many other message boards and such, and I think its appropriate here. One of my favorite directors, Robert Zemeckis, had this comment about sequels: "When you make a movie, and no one knows about it, its your baby and you can do whatever you want. But when you make a sequel its harder, and you have to be careful because everyone, consciously or subconsciously, is writing their own sequel...and you can't please everyone."
To me, that's care, not respect, precisely because I can't possibly respect everyone.
I never understood the White Khan backlash. Joker has had multiple origin stories and every one of them is the Joker, so I go into the movie with that attitude. Yes there's the alternate branching timeline stuff, but that's obviously a handwave for a reboot.
SNW and Disco exist, and they don't have more than an offhand line about Romulans delaying the Eugenics Wars. But they change what they want.
I think fans lose sight of it all being fantasy.
SNW and Disco exist, and they don't have more than an offhand line about Romulans delaying the Eugenics Wars. But they change what they want.
I think fans lose sight of it all being fantasy.
Being a writer myself, and actually getting paid and being published by Penguin, really shifted a lot of my opinions on how I view these things.
For one thing, I realize now that even the shittiest stuff is written by someone who at least had enough passion about it to finish it. And that's hard. So I try not to just completely disregard someone's work like that.
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