Yeah but those worlds are like redshirts--you don't know enough about them for it to carry much in the way of emotional resonance. On the otherhand, Vulcan was like killing off a main character--you expect a bit more. Could you imagine if TWoK had Spock die and then you hear nothing more about his death.
How can you praise this movie and bash VOY, ENT and Nemesis?
- Thread starter neozeks
- Start date
Doomsday machine also sees a personal friend of Kirk lose his entire ship, go slowly insane and then kill himself.
And again, we don't have a huge outpouring of emotion.
which i thihk was the purpose of chosing vulcan..
the audience would feel emapthy for the loss.
it has meaning..
and i still dont see where you are getting the no reaction thing..
spock very cleary is being affected by the loss.
we get to see a little of how spock prime is affected by the way kirk reacts after the meld it finished.
but the characters were also focused on what was left to save.
sometimes you dont have time to morn until that is done.
but really the me the question is how are they going to handle this in the next movie.
even if the loss of vulcan isnt the main plot i do think it has to be part of the back ground atmosphere.
as for the little bits of humor there have been theories for centuries that a little bit of humor has its place within tragedy.
But I personally didn't feel anything at the loss of Vulcan and that is my point. This is a reboot. For all intents and purposes this is a different Vulcan to me. It was up to this film to make me care for it as well as this film's Amanda as though this was the first time I was introduced to them. I shouldn't need to project what I felt for Wyatt's Amanda to Ryder's. And what about those that never saw Trek--supposedly the target audience.
Like I've said many times I felt more when Betazed was invaded offscreen on DS9 or when the Breen attacked San Francisco and the pang it generated seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in ruins or when Cardassia was nearly wiped out in the DS9 series finale or when the ENT crew reacted when they had returned home to a scar defacing Florida.
I felt it was acknowledged only in the most superficial unsatisfying way possible. It was sufficient for you and many others-that's fine--but it simply didn't work for me.
That's fine but we didn't receive a satisfactory coda akin to Spock's funeral in TWoK after Khan was dispatched.
I never said I opposed that. I even specifically mentioned the scene in "Rocks and Shoals" where the crew laughed over O'Brien's torn uniform. I just didn't care for the monster chase on Delta Vega or the transporting into the tube for Scotty.
actually a friend of mine who never saw trek thought they handled it well since we did get to meet amanda and saw what she ment to spock.
that she was symbolic of all the people who were lost.
I'd say that's still hardly comparable to genocide.
And anyway, why does something being one way in TOS automatically means it's good?
^It doesn't automatically make it good. But how can you bash something about the new movie, and yet we never hear it complained about for TOS?!?! 
A
Amaris
Guest
A few more reasons:
Star Trek XI played it dangerously. People died, we saw them, we saw people sucked out into a vacuum, we saw the utter destruction of Vulcan. Space is deadly, it's dangerous. Bones said it best when he said "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence".
VOY, ENT and Nemesis made space nice and safe. Even when things were at their worst, we knew things would work out for the best and nothing bad would really happen to anyone.
VOY: The ship stayed relatively in one piece. Not bad for being thrown across the galaxy in an unknown quadrant with other aliens who may or may not have been hostile or even had compatible resources for the crew. Always cleaned and pressed uniforms, clean sets, sleek designs, holodecks, living in comfort, no real suffering, which is amazing for being 75,000 light years from the nearest Starbase. Again, everybody lived, no one really suffered, the reset button was hit constantly, which negated any suffering and hardship that may have been.
ENT: For being out on the frontier in this new experimental ship, things seem to go rather swimmingly. Not once did I feel any real hint of danger. I knew things would work out. Trip dying, was of course one of the dumbest ways for it to happen. The show was so damn safe the only way to kill somebody was to have him do something obscenely stupid, rather than make it at all realistic, as there are many opportunities in space to do so quite realistically.
NEM: Data being killed off was a non-starter because there was B4. The Scimitar powering up it's incredibly slow moving and exposition building superweapon. The personal transporter unit. Every base was covered. Sort of a "Don't worry kids, your favorite heroes aren't in any real danger, and we've added these visual cues so that you don't have to worry or care, which makes the climax all the more boring."
Whereas in Star Trek XI, Amanda dies. The planet Vulcan is destroyed along with billions of it's inhabitants. In the normal timeline, even Romulus is destroyed, showing that in neither timeline is anything safe. We see in the opening scenes where the Captain of the Kelvin is killed, people sucked out into space, and an enemy's total disregard for life. Now that's one dangerous asshole. Yeah, he seems a little weak and quiet, but holy crap he just blew the hell out of Vulcan and didn't bat an eye! This guy is insane! So when Captain Pike was brought aboard, I thought he was dead. Why not? They killed Captain Robau, they killed billions of Vulcans, they were going to kill the people of Earth and every other Federation homeworld. It was a blank slate for the future, I didn't know who would survive and who would die, and I felt that excitement, that sense of danger that should be present in a universe like Star Trek's. It brought the movie to life, and infused it with that feeling of the unknown, even in the midst of familiar and friendly faces, who knew what could happen, and I loved it.
J.
Star Trek XI played it dangerously. People died, we saw them, we saw people sucked out into a vacuum, we saw the utter destruction of Vulcan. Space is deadly, it's dangerous. Bones said it best when he said "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence".
VOY, ENT and Nemesis made space nice and safe. Even when things were at their worst, we knew things would work out for the best and nothing bad would really happen to anyone.
VOY: The ship stayed relatively in one piece. Not bad for being thrown across the galaxy in an unknown quadrant with other aliens who may or may not have been hostile or even had compatible resources for the crew. Always cleaned and pressed uniforms, clean sets, sleek designs, holodecks, living in comfort, no real suffering, which is amazing for being 75,000 light years from the nearest Starbase. Again, everybody lived, no one really suffered, the reset button was hit constantly, which negated any suffering and hardship that may have been.
ENT: For being out on the frontier in this new experimental ship, things seem to go rather swimmingly. Not once did I feel any real hint of danger. I knew things would work out. Trip dying, was of course one of the dumbest ways for it to happen. The show was so damn safe the only way to kill somebody was to have him do something obscenely stupid, rather than make it at all realistic, as there are many opportunities in space to do so quite realistically.
NEM: Data being killed off was a non-starter because there was B4. The Scimitar powering up it's incredibly slow moving and exposition building superweapon. The personal transporter unit. Every base was covered. Sort of a "Don't worry kids, your favorite heroes aren't in any real danger, and we've added these visual cues so that you don't have to worry or care, which makes the climax all the more boring."
Whereas in Star Trek XI, Amanda dies. The planet Vulcan is destroyed along with billions of it's inhabitants. In the normal timeline, even Romulus is destroyed, showing that in neither timeline is anything safe. We see in the opening scenes where the Captain of the Kelvin is killed, people sucked out into space, and an enemy's total disregard for life. Now that's one dangerous asshole. Yeah, he seems a little weak and quiet, but holy crap he just blew the hell out of Vulcan and didn't bat an eye! This guy is insane! So when Captain Pike was brought aboard, I thought he was dead. Why not? They killed Captain Robau, they killed billions of Vulcans, they were going to kill the people of Earth and every other Federation homeworld. It was a blank slate for the future, I didn't know who would survive and who would die, and I felt that excitement, that sense of danger that should be present in a universe like Star Trek's. It brought the movie to life, and infused it with that feeling of the unknown, even in the midst of familiar and friendly faces, who knew what could happen, and I loved it.
J.
^It doesn't automatically make it good. But how can you bash something about the new movie, and yet we never hear it complained about for TOS?!?!
Well, who says I wouldn't complain about it?
I just haven't seen TOS that much.
A
Amaris
Guest
Exactly. It wasn't a "Ha ha ha! And now I, the bad guy, am going to kill you Captain Robau. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! ...ha ha ha! ...ha!" He just up and stabbed him!
J.
Trek XI had great characters, humour that was actually funny and intense action from start to finish.
Voyager had characters ranging from bland to awful (i.e Kneelix), stilted attempts at humour and for 98% of the time bored me to tears.
Enterprise had a strong premise which it utterly wasted (BOTF) and 2 boring seasons, by which time I'd basically turned off. I wasn't fond of Bakula really either.
What little I recall of Nemesis (like others here I've wiped parts of it from my memory and haven't watched it again since the original cinema release) was poor. Clone Picard and retard Data did not impress me a whole lot, I know that. To compare it properly I'd have to re-watch it and I have no intention of doing that anytime soon.
Voyager had characters ranging from bland to awful (i.e Kneelix), stilted attempts at humour and for 98% of the time bored me to tears.
Enterprise had a strong premise which it utterly wasted (BOTF) and 2 boring seasons, by which time I'd basically turned off. I wasn't fond of Bakula really either.
What little I recall of Nemesis (like others here I've wiped parts of it from my memory and haven't watched it again since the original cinema release) was poor. Clone Picard and retard Data did not impress me a whole lot, I know that. To compare it properly I'd have to re-watch it and I have no intention of doing that anytime soon.
Basically the fact that we all know that Kirk survives unscathed until he leaves the nexus in the 24th century, Spock is still alive and well, Scotty is still alive and well, and so on and so fourth.
In other words, what the hell would be the point in making a prequel in the original timeline. Any situation that the crew were put into would never really be that exciting, as we know they cannot die, loose a limb or whatever.
Paramount and JJ have obviously thought long and hard about this fact which is why they did what they did, to allow the whole thing to get turned upside down and leave us never fully knowing if something could actually happen to one of the crew. Im not saying that Paramount would kill of Kirk or anything like that, but at the end of the day, part of the thrill of a good movie is sitting on the edge of your seat never fully knowing what might happen next and to whom.
This has changed everything, and as such makes things much more exciting exciting again, like when the original series and movies first aired and we never quite knew what might happen.
Good work I say, but tell me, exactly how would YOU have made it work in the original timeline, and filled the seats beyond only the hardest core of Trekkie geeks without doing something like this to the story line.
At this point in time, all I have to say is: the movie has made over $200 Million US, is a huge hit, and made Star Trek cool again and known to people who didn't care or ridiculed it before.
That's about it.
That's about it.
I thought with ENt they tried to reimage TOS and failed nem was just a rubbish film ,ENT they even dropped the name star trek for it then brought it back when it was doing bad.As for nutrek i prefer kirk and crew in what ever timeline as they to me are the best in trek history IMO.This is a thing that totally puzzles me. People say the old timeline got stale and boring. They blame Voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis for killing the franchise. This movie is hailed as a reinvigoration, making Trek relevant again or somesuch. And yet, surprisingly, when i look at the movie what do i see?The same thing people were complaining about in VOY or ENT or NEM, only now it doesn't really matter cause it's, you know, fun!
When Enterprise played with canon and continuity it was a big deal, now Abrams and co. take the easy route and throw it away, and now - canon and continuity aren't really that important (just to make clear, i'm not a canonboy, i didn't complain about it in ENT, i'm just observing). When they made Vulcans arogant and unlikable it was bashed. Now the movie makes them out and out racists and it's fine. And ENT even resolved that with the whole kirshara thing in the fourth season.
Voyager was bashed for the crew and the mood being too happy for a ship alone in the other side of the galaxy. Now, Vulcan is destroyed (i would say just for the shock factor), and yet by the end of the movie by the action of the charachters and the general atmosphere you couldn't tell a BSG-scale genocide just took place (ahem, 6 billion people, please!). Yes, we see Spock agonizing a bit (though to me seems it was more because of the death of his mother), but the rest, well, y'know it's sad and all but we can't ruin Kirk becoming captain. It's not as bad as the oldBSG and the casino planet, but you get the gist.
People complained charachters on Voyager never changed. Well, Kirk jr doesn't really change either. No journey, no consequences for his actions (say, cheating), nothing, he's just destined to become The Captain. Harry Kim was ridiculed for remaining an ensign for seven years (and if you want to go even further back, Wesley for becoming just an ensign). Now Kirk, completely inexperienced, barely out of the academy, if even that, gets the flagship! But hey, it's not really important for the story, so it's ok.
Going on - plotholes, inconsistencies, silly coincidences (or if i may say bad writing) - check, but while Nemesis was torn apart, here it's forgiven. Technobbable - i was amazed to see some reviews praising it for getting rid of technobable - ahem, red matter? Transport in warp over how many light years pulled out of the hat? The drilling rig conveniently blocking transporters and coms?
Cliches? Whew, boy!Time travel? Check. Romulan villain (although we had one just in the last movie)? Sure. Pupil/mentor a la Skywalker/Obi Wan? Yes. Two guys beam through shields it seems and defeat 10 times the number of oponents? Yup. Oh, and there's a huge chasm in the middle of the ship for the evil guys to drop in. No railings, of course! Come to think of it, what was exactly original in this movie? Okay, i'll give you there was no reset button, but it's an alternate timeline so we don't need one. Now, staying in the original timeline, say post-Nemesis and then destroying Vulcan, that would have been BRAVE.
Now, what exactly is then the improvement that this movie brings us? Better writing, original ideas? I don't really see them. Sure, it was fun, it had nice (though essentially pointless) nods to the originals, the actors were good. But, Voyager was also often fun, with lots of action. ENT had lots of nods to the 23rd and 24th century Treks. Nemesis had Patrick Stewart and Brent Spinner.
And then, why was a reboot exactly needed? What is so superior in this movie that couldn't have been done in the original timeline?
Sorry, if i came off as snarky at times, i'm just in such a mood.
They didn't play fast and loose with canon at all. In a weird way, this movie was more respectful of canon than any Trek that preceded it. The new timeline means nothing from the other timeline has changed. Not one thing.
TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and the movies all fudged canon or threw parts away when needed. The Trek world was full of contradictions and retconns. Abrams didn't throw away anything. He didn't contradict anything. What contintuity there was in that timeline we're most familiar with was completely untouched.
Well, I've always thought Vulcans were a bit too self-satisfied and hard to like. In TOS, Spock was a very isolated character. Part of it was him, and part of it was crew reaction. How do you warm up to a Vulcan? As far as them being racist goes, if you're referring to the scene where Spock turns down entry into the Vulcan Science Academy, I think there's more conceit than racism there. It's not that Spock has human blood that means he had a "handicap," it's that as half-human, he had even more emotional baggage to overcome than most Vulcans. Spock simply resented that his emotions would be seen by them as an impediment.
There may be a certain cultural isolation to Vulcans, too. As in "Amok Time", when T'Pau told Kirk that the Vulcan rituals were not open to outsiders. Yet, Amanda was allowed into the shrine in the movie. So, she must've been accepted. It's also hardly like Sarek was shunted aside professionally for marrying a human.
As far as the kids bullying Spock for being half-human goes, bullies are bullies in any culture.
Voyager was bashed for the crew and the mood being too happy for a ship alone in the other side of the galaxy. Now, Vulcan is destroyed (i would say just for the shock factor), and yet by the end of the movie by the action of the charachters and the general atmosphere you couldn't tell a BSG-scale genocide just took place (ahem, 6 billion people, please!
TOS was even worse at this. For example, in "The Changling", Nomad killed crewmen and wiped out Uhura's mind. Yet Kirk still cracks a joke about it all at the end of the episode.
I'm on record for disliking the idea of destroying Vulcan in the movie. It was too much gravitas for a movie trying to be a light adventure. Treating it with the seriousness it would've required would've dragged the movie to a hault. To that end, the shock of killing off Amanda would've been just as poignant for what they were trying to do.
Not a valid comparison. TOS characters never changed much, either. The changes occurred mostly in the movies. And even then, all but Sulu ended their careers right where they began them twenty-five year before. TNG characters changed little. The only Trek characters that seemed to have real character arcs were on DS9.
-- The difference is that in TNG, we'd have had Geordi and Data have a ten minute dialog about warp transport and how it works before doing it. Spock just gave Scotty the equation, and that was it.
-- No time was spent technobabbling how red matter worked. And, red matter as an idea was no more far-fetched than the Geneis device in TWOK.
-- As far as the drilling rig blocking transport and communications goes, the transporter or communicators not being usable at a critical moment is a long-standing Trek tradition.
Cliches? Whew, boy!
-- Time travel is not cliche is Trek. It's been used in only around six percent of all Trek episodes across all Trek series. There were only five time travel espisodes of TOS. In two of those, it was a very minor part of the story.
-- Pupil-mentor relationships are a common part of many stories across many genre.
-- Staying in the original timeline and doing what? Give me your plot and be sure it will turn into a movie that grosses over $200 million.
This movie wasn't old and tired. It had energy. It was both familiar and unfamiliar. And, moreso than in any Trek in recent memor, the folks on screen looked like they were having fun.
The last movie with Stewart and Spiner didn't even make what ST09 made in its first weekend. If you sincerely believe a story revolving around VOY or ENT would've done as well as ST09 did, fine. If you sincerely believe the public would've wanted Captain Janeway and first officer Chakotay instead of Kirk and Spock, fine. If you believe another go-round with AARP-elligble Stewart and Spiner would've resulted in a movie with the same pace and action as ST09, fine. I respectfully disagree.
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I dont think the TV series can be panned AS badly, but Nemeis was awful.Were it not for the space battle at the end the movie would have been worthless. Cliche plot, recycled storyline, convoluted plot turns, contrived devices and ships (because as we all know, slave races build WMDs all the time....), and Picard taking out the entire crew singlehandedly was oh so plausible....
I wondered about Vulcan too, but it does make sense that, with all the busy-ness of trying to deal with Nero that some of the mourning needed to be put on hold. I would think (I hope) that there will be some important and profound reactions in the next movie. Not the whole movie centered on mourning, but I would think some emotional scenes could be built into it. That's the thing to remember, there's another movie or two or three coming and a lot of the issues that this one brought up will be dealt with.
The idea that space is dangerous and things are uncertain is a powerful motivator for more thrilling stories in the future, too. Other posters above said it much better than me, so reread them and stop reading this.
The idea that space is dangerous and things are uncertain is a powerful motivator for more thrilling stories in the future, too. Other posters above said it much better than me, so reread them and stop reading this.
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