Ptrope said:
and it's not necessary to reboot, reset, or otherwise rewrite or ignore the existing material just to make those stories possible.
There's a difference between rewriting what's came before and not giving enough of a shit to care if what you're writing fits with the past.
Given the target audience and studio expectations for this movie, it simply wasn't worth the time or effort to get the little details right. And that's supposing for a moment that the little details were
worth getting right.
TOS was never concerned overmuch with internal consistency, I don't see why this movie should be any different.
Which, frankly, is the problem with a
lot of today's so-called "entertainment" (not to mention communications, reporting, etc.), the attitude that the audience is stupid, that the writer's ideas are better than the material he or she is writing for, and that no one knows or cares enough to "give a shit."
You're casting a wide net here. What's your point? That there is a bucket-load of lowest-common-denominator programming out there?
So what else is new? There's been drek on the air since TV was invented. Today is no different. Casting your argument as an attempt to capture the 'good old days' of entertainment doesn't do you any favors. For every American Idol, I can give you a 'West Wing.' We're living in an age where there is unprecedented choice available in terms of entertainment. With the good, comes the bad.
The folks doing this movie say out of one side of their mouths that they "really respect the original and this movie is deeply true to it and we're just awfully darned concerned that we don't mess with what the fans have known for years," while out of the other side of their mouths they say, "the fans just aren't that important to us or to our bottom line, and all of the stuff they've known for years is just, gosh, really inconvenient to research or to write around, so we're going to use Time Travel to explain why nothing is the same - but, hey, it's all going to be so much better as a result!"
We don't know the degree of the changes made for this movie, so I can only speculate. However, telling us that 'the movie is deeply true' to the original concept could be correct if every single detail was changed, so long as it felt the same and spoke to the same ideals. It is in this way that the reimagined
Battlestar can be true to the original concept of a genocide wiping out a race of humans. In fact, the new show is a fair bit more honest with the concept than the family-friendly casino planet romp of the original.
I bring up 'The West Wing' because it is universally hailed as one of the best television dramas in recent memory.
It never, ever, in a million years got any of its own 'little details' right. The continuity is a mess, various stock crises are used (I can't count the number of times the same exchange rate between the dollar and the yen is used as a launching point for a policy discussion) and secondary characters dissapear without a trace between seasons. (I'm looking at you, Mandy.)
It didn't matter one bit. The characters were real. I believed in them and hung on their every word. Part of that was the artistry of the dialogue, and part of that was that Aaron Sorkin knew what was important: that the people working in his West Wing be real and that they were portrayed honestly.
I care about the dynamic between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I want to see the interplay between Kirk's impulsiveness and his reason play out in a verbal sparring match between the Doctor and the green-blooded son-of-a-bitch. I want to see Spock struggle to find balance and inclusion when he is always the outsider. I want to see McCoy's irrascible persona only partially concealing his deep and abiding humanity.
Those people matter to me. The ship, when they graduated Starfleet Academy, their various personal chronologies don't. I can't tell you how little I care about those details.
How many times do people have to use, "Well, TOS was inconsistent, too," as an excuse to continue being inconsistent? At what point do you say, "You know, maybe we should be reading what's been written and use that as a framework?" Not to base sequels or backstories on what's been written, but to write new stories that, at the very least, don't contradict it? I'm more astounded by the idea that people who call themselves "fans" (and surely everyone who takes the time to join a fan board and post on it qualify) don't seem to "give a shit" about it - the very thing they claim to be fans of - than that TIIC don't feel it's important. The latter are in it for the money, so I can understand that - I don't agree with it, but I understand it - but what are the so-called "fans" in it for if they don't even care about it?
See above. I'm not watching for the 'universe.' I dont' see a grand narrative of Trek stretching back from TOS to NEM. I just see a shoddy and disjointed pile of terrible storytelling, cliches and just the scarcest few nuggets of genuine human storytelling.
Maybe that's why I'm the most fond of Trek when Nicholas Meyer is at the helm and Gene Roddenberry is as far away as the bounds of this planet will allow from the production.
It's amazing just how close the new model looks to the old. Sure puts the lie to the true-believers when they kvetch about how 'ugly' the new ship is.
Hardly. In a world where two people can have the same form, dimensions, number and placement of eyes, noses, mouths, ears, etc., why is it that some people are handsome and others are homely? Many things that are strikingly similar are also strikingly different at the same time, to the point that we perceive one as beautiful and another as ugly. There's not that much technical difference between a '58 Studebaker and a '58 Edsel, but the Stude was a sweet car and the Edsel became a benchmark of homeliness.
The "true believers" not only have a right to their opinion, they've got plenty of evidence to back it up. You may not agree, but you sure can't call them mistaken, just because the two ships are 'close.' Or maybe it's just that
you can't see the differences.
Now you're just being mean.
Of course
I can see the difference. I used to draw these ships when I was a kid, designing my own universe and Starfleet.
I grew up, and those details stopped mattering so much. I realised that the trappings and artifice of Trek are only there to provide a backdrop to the real story being told.
I'm quite glad that we're coming back to that way of thinking, after decades of Trek being so fascinated with itself and the ridiculous treknobabble settings that it forgot the people using all that patently ridiculous technology.
