We've got a Sequel!
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Correction: alienate a small bunch of narrow-minded, canon whores who can't get over their disturbing obsession with William Shatner.
Shatner in Star Trek 2? No thanks. There was a very good reason he was left out of this film. Nimoy is passing the torch, any AbramsTrek after this should let this current cast stand by themselves.
Lightinspire
Lieutenant Commander
He meant 'Voyager' I'm sure.
You're half-right. Sorry, I meant Enterprise. I was just watching DS9 and I still had Children of Time and Time's Orphan stuck in my head.
Voyager did some dumb time travel, to be sure, but it was Enterprise that took it to an unforgivable level. Time Traveling Aliens helping Nazies? Really?
I think the best time travel episode in Voyager was Relative, about the USS Relativity.
+1
Agreed entirely.
It's Abrams' Trek so it'd be Star Trek 02.
Because we know Star Trek is all about war.
You haven't played Star Trek: Conquest or read a lot of the newer novels? That is apparently what the new custodians of the Star Trek name consider appropriate.
Because we know Star Trek is all about war.
You haven't played Star Trek: Conquest or read a lot of the newer novels? That is apparently what the new custodians of the Star Trek name consider appropriate.
In a way, Star Trek has always been a metaphor for the world we live in at this moment - the klingons were always the Russians, until they became our friends, in which case they became Japanese, for example. A lot of TOS episodes were about the complete destruction of planets and cultures, and were written during the cold war.
DS9 turned the page and talked about terrorism, religion and the meaninglessness of wars, and was written in the 1990's when terrorism started creeping into our subconsciousness, when the place of religion in America started to become a talking point, and when we were essentially warless for the first time in a long while. We were looking back on the cold war and finally reflecting on both our sins (Korea, Vietnam, et al) and also on the necessity of our actions (communism was ultimately evil and had to be fought, and the Federation = America trying to justify its compromising of its own ideals).
Enterprise, of course, was written while we existed in a world of misguided motives, and that shows up on screen: The Xindi arc was so obviously a reference to the 911 attacks and the American response that I trouble watching it.
The problem was not that Archer boldly took the fight to the enemy and found the few sinister men that believed that Humans (Americans) were ultimately a great threat. For me, it was that the Xindi were ultimately swayed to the righteous side of OUR HEROS because of some strange virtue that Archer possessed-- it was as if the writers believed that America would defeat its enemies if it could find sympathetic elements in Afghanistan and Iraq, convince them of our benevolence, and then turn them against their own people. It is a self-gratifying story arc where it is assumed that the human race (America) has no real fault in the matter. The truth is that while the enemies of America were certainly misguided and sinister people who used a political situation to create further hatred and zealotry, the atmosphere that these men exploited was one of our own creation.
The Xindi arc ignores all of this and makes the attack completely unprovoked. Humans and Xindi had no previous contact in the story.
Furthermore, it is ultimately revealed that the Xindi are spurred into action because the Sphere Builders, a time travelling race of near-gods, told them that the humans were a threat and would destroy them. Insert our nouns here. It is revealed that the Muslims are spurred into action because Allah, a God, told them that the Americans were a threat and would destroy them. Clearly, this whole arc is some attempt to justify American actions after 911 and to show that our enemies are acting out of fear and ignorance. I have a problem with this.
But, back to the point at hand:
Star Trek has always been about the world we live in. Early TNG talked a lot about cloning and genetic manipulation, late TNG was filled with Technophobia. Star Trek IV was centered on man-caused-extinction; Star Trek VI was about the end of the cold war. The Ferrengi were those who worshiped the almighty dollar, and the Romulans became the Chinese, secretive but oh-so suddenly powerful.
And So: Why wouldn't current Star Trek be about war? We live in a world where we are suddenly surrounded by it, and yet, it has a feeling of inevitability, or rather that it was unavoidable - Iran and Israel, Pakistan and India, China and Tibet, N. Korea and S. Korea, Sudan, Russia and Chechnya, America and Iraq and Afghanistan... The world is filled with wars and the brink of wars. Why shouldn't we write about it?
Star Trek is a family adventure show about a motley group in their space ship out exploring space and meeting aliens and sometimes there's a little social commentary thrown in. There were three new versions (remakes, reboots, reimages, whatever) of it and one spin-off.
Its nothing more, nothing less.
Its nothing more, nothing less.
Because we know Star Trek is all about war.
You haven't played Star Trek: Conquest or read a lot of the newer novels? That is apparently what the new custodians of the Star Trek name consider appropriate.
And what's wrong with a gritty action film in the TREK universe set around the Klingon Empire thinking they can take advantage of weaknesses in the Federation and striking while the iron is hot? TOS et. al. featured numerous conflicts and random battles while the overall franchise promoted understanding, exploration and peace.
They're not MUTUALLY exclusive, you know Clegg. TREK can't be like some damn antiwar activist march in London or Paris with flowers all the time.
Of course, they are not.
Just look at the British Empire in the second half of the 19th century - a nation of soldiers and explorers, conquerors and humanitarians. Star Trek's fictional universe is large and intricate enough to incorparate both...
I never said it had to be.TREK can't be like some damn antiwar activist march in London or Paris with flowers all the time.
The show's mantra is "Seek out new life and civilizations," and not "Blow shit up!" Yet, just going by some of the talk that goes around here, one would never guess.
And the sequel to that would feature events that took place directly after Star Trek IV.
Indeed, and for me at least, they're pretty much all a good way to spend some time.
I seem to recall seeing it pointed out that, while the various series often did show or refer to wars in individual episodes or story arcs, wars in the movies were usually distant or not present at all, and the combatants/opponents were usually individual entities -- even ones not strictly living -- or small groups of individuals, rather than whole races. The conflicts on the big screen tended more often to be smaller in scope and more personal. This movie (or what we know of it now) seems to fit that category in some ways, but not in others.I never said it had to be.TREK can't be like some damn antiwar activist march in London or Paris with flowers all the time.
The show's mantra is "Seek out new life and civilizations," and not "Blow shit up!" Yet, just going by some of the talk that goes around here, one would never guess.
One other problem with making a new Star Trek movie a war story is "how do you fit a whole war, from start to finish, into a movie running a little over two hours?" One thing I can't see happening at all is a war arc of several movies, and space is just too big and even Federation territory too vast to have an entire war fit into a single movie without feeling like it's War Lite™. It's got nothing to do with Trek being anti-war or marching with flowers in its hair (seriously, when did Trek ever do that, anyway?) I think that, strictly from the standpoint of storytelling in the Trek universe, a war movie wouldn't be the best bet, it isn't a good fit for the Trek movie format and it might not be the best for attracting a larger audience, either.
Don't worry, eddie, they can still blow some shit up, (and probably will) even without a major shooting war on.
Exactly.
There are only a couple of decent episodes of TOS about war -"Errand Of Mercy" and "A Taste Of Armageddon." They're both about what a stupid waste it is.
Hell, even the war episodes that sucked - like "A Private Little War" - were about how stupid it is.
Nonetheless, Kirk and company managed to find things to blow up with some regularity.
In fact, one of their best combat episodes was "The Doomday Machine," which involved them having to defeat a device which only existed because...well, because an unknown war somewhere in the Universe had turned out to be a real stupid idea.
Imaginative writers can invest the Trek format with a lot of action and combat without resorting to the laziness of war stories per se.
I really like A Private Little War - don't go dissin' it!
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