That's kinda what I meant - to bring back the well known (and loved by the Trekkies) characters back for a new generation. I just put it really badly
Should novels set in the JJVerse rectify the film's plot holes?
- Thread starter EJA
- Start date
That's kinda what I meant - to bring back the well known (and loved by the Trekkies) characters back for a new generation. I just put it really badly
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Because nothing says rollicking, adventuresome spirit like a double shot of planetary genocide that killed billions. Whh-hoo, I'm having a good time now!
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Which had a planet we'd never seen even the surface of. We'd not met not met anyone from there. There was no emotional context other than to show that the Empire were bad guys and the Death Star was a really big gun.
Vulcan and Romulus, supposedly the same planets we've known for decades. Makes it into some sort of pointy eared snuff film.
Well, just as we usually expect the TV cast of a ST series to survive each episode, we were told the main JJ cast had signed contracts for a film and two sequels. Therefore I wasn't expecting Sulu to die in the first film, but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone important doesn't make it through film #3.
Mind you, after losing Amanda in the last movie, I fully expected we'd lose Sarek as well - and I was waiting to see Pike die so that Kirk would be elevated to captain. Plenty of surprises.
I recall an interview with Bruce Greenwood where he said he was surprised that Pike survived to be a viable character in the sequels and was thrilled that the producers liked him enough to want him included in future films.
I did!
It makes it a bit more realistic that way, showing that the main characters aren't immortal.
Relax,it's fiction, they weren't real people. Ups the emotional ante when fictional characters we like and "know" die. I call it the "Stephen King Maneuver".
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
We were TOLD Leia was from Alderaan. We'd never been there. We'd never met anyone from there other than Leia. As a matter of fact, we'd only JUST found out she was from Alderaan.
Spock was from Vulcan. As were all the other Vulcans we'd met before. We've been to the planet many times. We knew a lot of it's culture and history.
It was destroyed for an easy tug at the emotions. It required the Vulcans to be oblivious to what was happening above their own planet and for Star Fleet to be idiots.
Romulus was destroyed simply to give motivation to a cardboard character.
In both cases, rather than being treated as major parts of Star Trek, both planets were turned into red shirts.
Just because you didn't approve of the destruction of Vulcan and Romulus Prime, it doesn't mean others didn't. I thought the anarchic destruction was just what Star Trek needed to get out of the comfort zone it's been stuck in for too long. A universe where anything can happen, and there are lasting consequences is far more appealing to me than the Voyager Reset Button(tm).
Besides, are you somehow suggesting that destroying planets are "plot holes" that need to be fixed? Becuase otherwise this has just become a(nother) bog-standard "STXI sucks" thread.
Besides, are you somehow suggesting that destroying planets are "plot holes" that need to be fixed? Becuase otherwise this has just become a(nother) bog-standard "STXI sucks" thread.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Nerys Myk;4122222Relax said:What? It's fiction? Thanks for clearing that up.
It would have upped the emotional ante if it were treated as more than a drive by shooting. And Romulus was an innocent bystander that was driven over while the shooter was on the way to Vulcan.
It ws a cheap way to say "Hey, we're not the other guys. We're different. Look, the Vulcans are dead. Isn't Nero the baddest of the bad?"
^You show me another Trek villain that actually got his revenge (doubly no less!)
Like him or not, as far as evil deeds in Star Treks go, Nero is the baddest of the bad. By miles.
Like him or not, as far as evil deeds in Star Treks go, Nero is the baddest of the bad. By miles.
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In fact I've been watching the first 2 seasons of TOS on Blu Ray and I've noticed that the NuTrek version ARE a lot like their Primeverse counterparts, especially Kirk.
DO you know how many times whole inhabited planets have been destroyed or had thier populations wiped out in TOS?
Writing a good villain, and the villain's impact on the hero characters, is a question of "quality over quantity".
Khan killed a dozen people in TWOK, Nero killed 6 billion. Yet the deaths of Scotty's nephew (?) and Spock had a far greater impact on me (and also on the characters) than anything that happened in Star Trek 2009. Except for Amanda's death. Spock was greatly affected by it, but I myself didn't care somehow (I was kinda chuckling at how predictable her death was).
It's like this 63 billion death toll in Destiny. I. Don't. Care. Such numbers are just way too big. It gets uninteresting and loses impact.
Khan killed a dozen people in TWOK, Nero killed 6 billion. Yet the deaths of Scotty's nephew (?) and Spock had a far greater impact on me (and also on the characters) than anything that happened in Star Trek 2009. Except for Amanda's death. Spock was greatly affected by it, but I myself didn't care somehow (I was kinda chuckling at how predictable her death was).
It's like this 63 billion death toll in Destiny. I. Don't. Care. Such numbers are just way too big. It gets uninteresting and loses impact.
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kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Agreed. The death toll in Destiny was so far over the top. It's a number you can't wrap your head around. It's just a way to make a villain seem bigger and badder. The problem is, where do you go from there? How do you top that? If this is the hero's biggest villain is it all downhill from here? It can't be.
Back to the topic, I don't think that the books should attempt to rectify the plot holes. Tghere's too many and they're too big. (Really, third year cadet to Captain?).
Back to the topic, I don't think that the books should attempt to rectify the plot holes. Tghere's too many and they're too big. (Really, third year cadet to Captain?).
No, it was destroyed to make a clear statement that this was a new reality where all bets were off. And it was destroyed because tentpole sci-fi movies are required to be blockbusters with high stakes, and because the relaunch of the Star Trek franchise had to be big to grab the attention of new audiences.
Again, that's the key point that mustn't be overlooked. This film wasn't made just for the established fans, the people who were familiar with Vulcan. This film was made to introduce the Star Trek universe to new audiences. To this film's target audience, Vulcan was just a name, probably less familiar to many of them than Alderaan. They came to know it only through what they saw onscreen, both of the planet itself and of the reactions of Spock and Sarek to its destruction. It wasn't about what Vulcan meant to the audience, it was about what Vulcan meant to the characters in the story.
In Star Wars, Leia gives no sign of being upset about Alderaan after her initial reaction to its destruction; the film cares more about Luke's loss of Ben than it does about Leia's loss of her family and whole planet, and at the end of the film Leia is smiling and happy. But ST'09 doesn't shy away from the emotional cost of losing a home planet; it's the single thing that drive everything Nero does, and it's evident in Spock's behavior (both of him) throughout the remainder of the film. It's far less of a trivial plot point because we're shown the cost, because it's not forgotten for a moment that these tragedies happened and are weighing on the characters. And that's much smarter storytelling and characterization.
No, it didn't. We saw that the Narada was able to destroy an armada of six Starfleet vessels without difficulty, and even the Enterprise, the most powerful Federation starship ever built, was defenseless against it in the initial attack. It's logical to assume that Vulcan's planetary and space defenses were entirely aware of Nero's attack but were neutralized just as easily.
A redshirt is someone whose death is incidental to the plot and the characters -- someone that Kirk spends 20 seconds mourning before moving on to the fighting and the kissing of space babes and the laughing with Spock and Bones at the end of the episode. A death that serves to provide a character's core motivation is more than a redshirt death. Romulus here is the equivalent of Marla McGivers to Khan, or Soran's wife. Vulcan here is the equivalent of, say, Sam and Aurelan Kirk. Using tragedy to motivate a character is a standard storytelling convention that goes all the way back to Gilgamesh and Grendel's mother. Was Hamlet's father a "redshirt"? Were Thomas and Martha Wayne, or Uncle Ben Parker? For that matter, what about the planet Krypton?
According to the transporter console graphics, that third year cadet already held the rank of leiutenant. For JTK to Lt. in his third year he must have already proven himself somehow.
That said, it was a film. He could have just as easily been an out of work actor (Galaxy Quest), an AWOL officer convicted of stealing and destroying a starship (Search for Spock/The Voyage Home) or a 20something repeatedly attacked by cyborgs from the future (Terminator 3). They all end as top dog.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
You could try to make sense of these numbers:
If you start counting now, you won't reach a billion by the time you die - not even close. Now, consider each number you counted was a person, with dreams, hopes, family. Now, multiply all this by a thousand and you'll have a pale ideea of what the federation lost in 'Destiny'.
In conclusion, the loss the federation suffered in 'Destiny' truly is beyond human comprehension. Realistically, the civilizational trauma such loss and helplessness causes should mark the federation for centuries to come.
And the same can be said about the megadeaths from Star Trek XI.
I find genocide (REPEATED AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN) out of place in the trekverse. The trekverse was intended to be optimistic, to affirm humanistic values.
And yet, lately, on-screen trek, lit trek, even the games turned the trekverse into battlestar galactica verse - death and misery ad nauseam.
Picard&co or Kirk&co saving the equivalent of a kitten from a tree won't change this - not even close.
As for the destruction of Romulus and Vulcan - it's uninspired also because these planets had well-developed mythologies; with their destruction, the scenarists greately empoverished the trekverse, the settings and ideas they (or others) could use for future stories - and I doubt they could replace them with something of equal value, equally developed (with certainty, they can't in the movies).
Isn't Trek XI one big reset button?