Yeah, did they build that reactor underground to melt the core and give the planet an atmosphere?
There was a Tyrannosaurus which was a story impediment for a few scenes, and then La'an punched a dromaeosaur in the face (which took all of five seconds). They both could've been swapped out for some sort of generic monster, without changing much.
When I think of a story that uses dinosaurs creatively, I think of Robert J. Sawyer's End of an Era, where a paleontologist goes back in time and discovers during the time of the dinosaurs intelligent viruses from Mars had colonized earth during the Mesozoic, using dinosaurs as their hosts, and even modifying the local gravity to be more like Mars (which helped lead to their gigantism). It's still goofy pulpy shit, but it uses the dinosaurs as more than big dumb monsters.
Another example I liked when I was younger was Michael Swanwick's Bones of the Earth. There's a plot synopsis right on the wiki page, but the book does a lot with science while adding saw awe-inspiring speculative elements.
I mean, I guess showing there was a crashed alien spaceship showed the world was a bit beyond what we expected. And as I mentioned upthread, the iridium thing was fairly smart (I knew where they were going the second that was mentioned - everyone knows about the iridium layer at the K/T boundary). But I just expected more than "Dinosaurs, RAWR!" Hell, give me some dinosaur that we don't know about - it's sci-fi, and there's certainly things that didn't end up in the fossil record.
I dunno, the reaction of myself versus other people in this thread make me realize I come to Trek for different things than most people. I'm a very trope-allergic sort of guy, and I love stories when they go somewhere new and weird, rather than just reference a thing we're already familiar with.
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She tries to take over the galaxy, Spock is forced to kill her, hence his TOS personality. Which is why he can advice Kirk about Gary Mitchell
The weird focus SNW has on genetic determinism is one of the worst aspects of the show thematically.
Yup. Also starfleet orders Spock, Kirk and anyone that knew La'an not to ever speak about her again and to basically not acknowledge she ever existed. This is a precaution in case any starship ever finds the cryo ship with Khan aboard and it slips out that he has family still alive in the 23rd century. Lol
She goes back in time to that alternate timeline and raises him herself - a guardian of history who makes sure what is meant to happen, happens; or if the boy is actually '96 exile Khan's son, she protects him from their shared heritage.
When TV shows or movie franchises become self referential or think about doing crossovers with other similar shows they probably should not be doing crossovers with, it's a huge sign that the franchise is creatively bankrupt or the writers are getting lazy .Didn't work for Freddy Vs Jason, didn't work for Alien Vs Predator and it most certainly would not work for Star Trek and Doctor Who for obvious reasons. Fast and Furious is another franchise that started to "wink" at the fans and it has progressively gotten worse from the 7th movie on. Car in space (fans constantly joked about it) and characters making references about denying physics and surviving ridiculous amounts of danger.
So these types of gimmicks rarely work.
Amusingly enough the Who people and Trek people were talking about It..thankfully the whole people have been fired...
I just hope Pelias references were in jest since she lived when Who was on the air. The call box in the debris was just an Easter egg like the botany bay in star wars or R2D2 floating in debris in the 2009 Trek film.
Stuff like this stopped being kewl or interesting long ago...
So what?
The Tyrannosaurus was cooler than "a generic monster" - that's more than sufficient reason for it to be a Tyrannosaurus because - by your own logic - putting Generisaurus Meh in as a substitute would make no plot difference at all.
The producers had a Tyrannosaurus on hand so they used it. Much better than having a tiger around on Happy Fun Death Park in "Shore Leave."
This isn't even a nitpick. It's a nit-picayune.
Let me first say, that everyone's opinion is valuable and no disrespect to anyone with what I'm about to say.
- I've never seen Dr. Who, so I haven't gotten a single Dr. Who reference since whenever those started dropping.
- I had to google search The Voth as that Voyager episode was so long ago I had completely forgotten about it. Mentioning them would not have made the episode better and would have just been put in for nostalgias sake.
- Star Trek has failed the science test from the very beginning(there is no sound in space) , so a few things not being scientifically accurate means nothing to me.
"Punched the dinosaur" is a synonym for awesome.
I couldn't put my finger on what this episode reminded me of, last evening. It came to me a few minutes ago: the way I felt watching "The Doomsday Machine" when it ran on NBC. Just overdosing on "OMG WTF this is so cool!"
Minus eating an entire box of Bugles and two cans of cream soda.
I couldn't put my finger on what this episode reminded me of, last evening. It came to me a few minutes ago: the way I felt watching "The Doomsday Machine" when it ran on NBC. Just overdosing on "OMG WTF this is so cool!"
Minus eating an entire box of Bugles and two cans of cream soda.
Yeah this is pretty much my response too. I can't pinpoint what was up.
The premise itself is one of the best this show's done, and possibly one of the best in Star Trek as a whole has ever done. A thriving Martian society during Earth's prehistory, a lost extra planet in our solar system with an insectoid race, an ancient war between the two. It's all brilliant. It's the kind of mid-century pulp that SNW has been trying to tap into for ages. I don't even mind La'an punching a dinosaur, on paper that's a fun scene.
Somehow, despite the superb setup, the end result was drab, downbeat, tonally muddled, and just weirdly hollow. I dunno what caused it.
I enjoyed it, but it took too long for Pike and the crew to realise there was an extra planet in the system. I guess they had the same astronomy teacher that Chekov and the Reliant Captain Terrell had.
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You see, SNW does respect continuity.
But it was a Cyberman Space ship that killed the dinosaurs!
Okay, was interesting and fun, though some of the specifics were kind of Horrifying.
We had aliens, now we have Starship Troopers.. they even destroyed Klendathu. The martian captain done her part!
Ancient Martians.. Why didn't they just move to Earth??
And the now abiltiy for a starship to destroy a planet. 1 big bucket of antimatter, Who needs Red matter!
Missed the opportunity to make the martians tripods.. and the war machine sound.
Okay, was interesting and fun, though some of the specifics were kind of Horrifying.
We had aliens, now we have Starship Troopers.. they even destroyed Klendathu. The martian captain done her part!
Ancient Martians.. Why didn't they just move to Earth??
And the now abiltiy for a starship to destroy a planet. 1 big bucket of antimatter, Who needs Red matter!
Missed the opportunity to make the martians tripods.. and the war machine sound.
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I'm going to say a combination of the effects not 100% working, dare I say the T-Rex scene in the first JP film is still undefeated?
And the final scene wasn't entirely well rendered either. It looked... silly. Not like a prehistoric Earth. If thr final scene had Pike musing over his decision things would be different.
The box office for Freddy v Jason would disagree with you.
I thought it was a very entertaining movie and I still go back to it from time to time.
I won't disagree that crossovers are usually the point when franchises run out of ideas. Eg: Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, House Of Dracula, House of Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein etc. But those movies were very successful and looked back on very fondly. As long as the creative stays true to what was established for both franchises and puts them together in an interesting wat, a crossover will work.
This was an episode clamoring for a much higher budget than what we got. We heard about an inhabited Mars, but never got to see it other than as a distant CGI visualization. We barely got to see the bug aliens at all. Some of the design elements we did get to see were also a bit generic/underdone.
Really, it's a feature film plot, sandwiched into an episode. Also not helped by about 1/6th the runtime set aside for the achingly slow intro.
TBH, I thought it was strange they figured out it was the solar system so quickly, given the extra planet, Mars not being in the correct location, the star positions totally having changed over 65 million years, etc. One might guess it was close enough they'd figure it out in time, but nothing would be that clear from a quick computer scan, because the surfaces of every planet would be different from what we know now.
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