"Buck...Ah ah...saviour of the universe!" 
A new 'Buck Rogers' film? Great, says Gil Gerard, but no bleakness
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
- Start date
The discussion is terribly skewed if people are seriously using Star Wars as an example of good writing. It had one elegantly simple idea, turning God into a pseudoscientific "Force" so that the hero could triumph by divine intervention without internet nerds writing about "Deux ex machina." It had marvelous execution in set design, a brave return to classical movie scoring, FX. The basic story hit all the fairy tale/mythological beats (stolen from Joseph Campbell but the greats steal from the best, they say.) The characterization was even worse than the dialogue. The way that both Luke and Leia iignore the deaths of their parents shows this.
That's my point though. Why do you assume it was forgotten about ten minutes later just because it wasn't shown onscreen due to the time and storytelling limitations of the movie format? You acknowledge that they were right to continue their mission yet criticize the fact that they temporary set aside their feelings in order to do their jobs.
There was an indefinite span of time between the destruction of Nero's ship and the ceremony officially awarding Kirk his captaincy. How do you know that period wasn't filled with memorials and grieving? How do you know it won't continue for years or decades after the film ends? Nero was still suffering and behaving erratically because of the destruction of Romulus and the death of his wife 25 years later, so it's not like the filmmakers don't acknowledge the existence and effect of long term grief.
As far as it being sociopathic, that's a rather ironic choice of words where it comes to Spock, at least, as it is his and his species' goal to purge their emotions and to especially not show them in the presence of others. How else would you expect him to react except to be cold and emotionless? Yet his grief was such that even he lost control and had a completely understandable (yet crossing the line in its violence) angry outburst when provoked, which you criticized as well. You seem to want things both ways.
You don't think being told by your older self from a parallel universe that your friendship with Kirk is a destiny of galactic importance might be enough to convince you to change your mind? It's not like he decided to not go to the new Vulcan colony on a whim, it took being convinced by extraordinary circumstances.
Plus, as mentioned, he has the unique ability to be in two places at once. Old Spock can offer all of his intelligence to the Vulcan refugees while his younger alternate can fulfill his destiny among the stars. Not to mention that being on the Enterprise does not preclude him from returning home during pon'farr, contributing ideas for helping his people via subspace communiques, or from making new contacts and finding new ways to help his people during the Enterprises' journey.
Who cares when it happened? My point was that Star Trek was no stranger to post-apocalyptic and genocidal stories right from the start. Furthermore, it still had immediate effect in that the Talosians had not fully recovered from their war even then.
I haven't missed anything, we simply have a difference of opinion. I don't feel that anything was re-written or inconsistent with the themes of previous Trek iterations. There were a lot of continuity inconsistencies to be sure, but the themes present in Trek XI are no different from ones explored countless time before in Trek.
No they haven't. Exploration is key to the survival of the Federation as a economic, political, and cultural entity. The tragedy of Vulcan - while terrible - wouldn't cause isolationism and an end of exploration, especially since doing so and spreading diplomacy can help prevent future events of this type.
Nor is there any reason to assume that the crew of the Enterprise wouldn't return to their original mission of exploration. While all of them would be saddened of course, Spock was the only one who experienced a personal loss, and as pointed out above, he had ample reason to continue on the mission.
The Federation was also clearly in conflict with the Klingons at the time and engaged in a massive fleet manuever in the Laurentian System, not to mention that a number of cadets and ships had been wiped out, so they probably wouldn't allow anyone to bow out from undergoing an exploratory mission evwen if they wanted to.
They did. Just because you didn't like it and it was different from some of the original hinted at origins of the characters doesn't mean it didn't happen.How about telling the story of the origins of the original crew?
I mean that they saved their greiving for appropriate times, like when they were in transit following the destruction of Vulcan (as showed with Spock and Uhura), after they and Earth were safe (as showed with the two Spocks together at the end), and when they weren't in the middle of an immediate crisis, which occupied the entire rest of the film.
I still don't follow your logic that the destruction of Vulcan should break up the crew. They have duties to perform and signed on to serve out their commissions and enlistments.
So again you're indirectly suggesting that there can't be anything which would cause massive grief in the stories without dedicating the entire movie to showcasing that grief, which is unreasonable. The movies can have terrible events happen and still be entertaining; it's not mutually exclusive.
There were plenty of examples of a lack of storytelling logic in the movie, this wasn't one of them in my opinion. They handled the grief over Vulcan about as well as they could in the span of a two hour movie with a concurrent action story to show as well.
I don't think anyone was. It was fun pulp entertainment, and so was Trek XI (and much of Trek as a whole). No one's holding it up as Shakespeare or anything, and it was never intended to be a masterpiece of writing anyway.
Fuck Gil Gerard - just, you know, generally. No use for the guy whatever, and he thoroughly deserves the career he's "enjoyed" for the last quarter century.
Any particular reason that your comfortable talking about? I'm not criticizing your post, just curious about what happened to make you feel that way, because I don't know much about the man outside of Buck Rogers.
This is the destruction of an entire planet-- six billion people. They witnessed it and failed to stop it. That's more than grief.
No, I don't want things both ways. I'm just pointing out that it's stupid no matter how you look at it. You can justify the angry outburst as a reaction to the death of Vulcan, I suppose, though it's still an adolescent storytelling device, but there's no way you can justify the attempt at premeditated murder (not without acknowledging that he needs to be put away-- or at least without acknowledging that the writing was incredibly bad
).No, because it was equally stupid for Old Spock to suggest such a thing. The near-total annihilation of the Vulcans really should kinda sorta take precedence over recreating a bromance between Old Spock and a completely different guy from another dimension. What's so important about him and Kirk that it would take precedence over a tragedy of such mind-boggling proportions? This is just another example of how incredibly shallow the writing was.
Of course it matters, just as the terrorist attacks of 2001 mean more to us than the Norman Conquest.
If you say so-- but I don't see how destroying one of the founding planets of the Federation, turning the main characters into morons, psychopaths and mental defectives and replacing thoughtful, mature storytelling with a sequence of explosions is consistent with original Star Trek.
Exploration and discovery will be the first thing to go with the loss of the resources of Vulcan (not to mention the destruction wrought upon Starfleet). They would rightly assume that the Romulans and Klingons would both be anxious to take advantage of their vulnerability.
Even putting aside the stupidity of assigning Kirk as captain at age 25-- ten years younger than his more competent double in the original universe-- I hardly think Starfleet would keep together a crew of cadets that witnessed, and failed to prevent, the worst tragedy in Federation history. They would be split up and given ground assignments while they were appropriately counseled and determined to be fit for deep space duty.
Again, exploration would be the first to go under these circumstances.
They didn't. This is a completely different story about completely different people.
See above. Nobody seems to grasp the enormity of the disaster and the effect it would have upon the people who were there-- to say nothing of its effect upon the culture of the Federation.
Nevertheless, the original Star Trek was entertainment intended for adults-- reducing it to a big-budget Asylum movie is quite a comedown.
You can justify the angry outburst as a reaction to the death of Vulcan, I suppose, though it's still an adolescent storytelling device, but there's no way you can justify the attempt at premeditated murder (not without acknowledging that he needs to be put away-- or at least without acknowledging that the writing was incredibly bad
Justify it? No. It was absolutely wrong. Think it's somewhat understandable when your planet was just destroyed, your mother killed, and a mutinous cadet taunts you on that fact in order to provoke a response? Yeah, a little.
Besides, you're assuming that the incident was reported to Starfleet. The main people who would be responsible for reporting the incident were:
- Kirk, who wouldn't report it or press charges since he intentionally provoked the attack.
- Sarek as the highest ranking Federation official aboard, who is Spock's father and understands the instinctive Vulcan bloodlust which they try to repress and Spock's unique emotional situation as a half-human/half-Vulcan.
- Uhura as nominal head of communications, who is Spock's girlfriend.
- Dr. McCoy as CMO, who is Kirk's best friend and would follow his instructions.
- Cupcake (possibly the head of security), who hated Kirk anyway.
The junior officers and enlisted personnel aren't going to step on their commander's toes if they choose to sweep the incident under the rug.
You're forgetting that Old Spock had lived through countless events of galactic importance where Kirk, himself, and the Enterprise crew had personally saved the day; including saving Earth on several occasions. The assumption he would make, if the course-correcting universe idea is correct (and it seems to be), is that events of equal import would happen to the two of them in this universe.
Again, what can he do on the Vulcan colony itself that he can't do aboard Enterprise? He can return during the mating cycle. He can send them ideas for improving their status via subspace. And he has an older doppelgänger who can quite literally take his place at the colony.
The specific date the destruction occurred was irrelevent to my sole point that post-apocalyptic stories had been dealt with on the show. That's it. I'm not saying the suffering is the same if it's a millenia old conflict, just that it's not new subject matter for Trek.
You keep moving the goalposts, RJ. All I said was that the film shared themes that had been dealt with before in Trek, which is true. I can't dispute your subjective impression of the film (which is all the above are), but I can dispute whether or not the film deals with familiar Trek themes. It does.
Exploration is a necessary aspect of the Federation's defensive posture. They protect themselves by expanding their territory peacefully and cultivating allies and trading partners and by possessing intelligence on potential threats, all of which are achieved through exploration and diplomacy. It's not something they would completely stop even in the wake of such a massive disaster. Reduce, sure. Stop entirely, no. The "regular" universe Federation has faced disaster before and still conducted exploration immediately after and during those crises.
You say "failed to prevent" as if they did something wrong. Those cadets faced a vastly more powerful foe who had destroyed fifty Klingon ships and seven Starfleet ships without blinking an eye while almost succeeding in stopping them the first time, and did succeed the second time.
They performed extraordinarily well under the circumstances, which is precisely why Starfleet would keep them together, especially with the loss of so many new cadets, enlisted personnel, and officers. To paraphrase warrior poet, politician, and finest actor in the world Jessie "The Body" Ventura, "they ain't got time to bleed." They need everyone they can get out on the frontlines and the frontier.
You talk about how the destruction of Vulcan would change Starfleet's entire way of doing business and put them on a wartime footing yet at the same time say that they would prevent a very capable set of officers who just saved the freakin' capital planet of the Federation on the sidelines when countless numbers of personnel have just died. No, they'd tell them to suck it up and do their jobs. Starfleet quite simply has no other choice under the circumstances.
I acknowledged those differences. It seems like you're just ignoring things to keep making the same points.
And you can't seem to grasp that it is precisely the enormity of that disaster that would make it a necessity to keep as many capable officers as they can together and on the frontier watching out for the Federation's interests.
I can't really take your argument seriously if you think this movie has anything in common with an Asylum film, regardless of your opinion on its quality.
If Trek XI was an Asylum film it would be called 'Star Tracks' and Kirk would have been played by C. Thomas Howell, Nero by Lorenzo Lamas, the green girl by Debbie Gibson, and Nero's ship by Giant Octopus.
So they should be punished because they and nobody else in the 23rd century were even aware of the existence of a weapon that can make black holes?
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
Erin Gray should have some role in the reboot. My God, after all these years, she has still GOT. IT.
Or to put it another way: A reboot should have some rebooty. There, I said it.
To paraphrase myself: What happened on the other Buck Rogers shows/movies should stay with the other Buck Rogers shows/movies. This new project should be something that suits the current director, writer, and producer, not fans of a flawed, campy TV show.
The rage, perhaps (though it's bad storytelling to establish a hyper-logical character as a nutcase), but not the shooting him out of the ship in a tin can all by himself onto a frozen world full of deadly fauna with no way to survive. You'd think somebody would have said, "Uh, maybe confinement to quarters would suffice?"
I suppose a cover up isn't out of the question; even the prime characters did that from time to time. But I think with other people on the bridge, word would get around. But in any case, my point is about the low quality of the writing-- I'm not expecting any rational follow up.
Old Spock has all the dates and places and hardware requirements in his head; he can report all that to Starfleet and they can be ready for Doomsday Machine and Giant Amoeba et al. We're not talking about King Arthur and Merlin here.
They're going to have to disrupt that mating cycle and spread the genes around. I think Old Spock wanted all the hot young Vulcan babes for himself.
Not the subject matter specifically, but in this context it completely alters the concept of Star Trek. They've also had Starship captains go bonkers and take over planets a couple of times; but if Kirk did that, it would represent a fundamental change to the concept.
Well, that's kind of stretching a point; Trek has dealt with many themes. That's not the same as going back and changing the core concept.
I don't think we've ever seen anything on this scale before. And again, we're talking about going back and rewriting history.
No, I'm sorry, you misunderstand what I mean. I don't mean they are to blame. I'm talking about the effect it would have on them. They tried desperately to save the Vulcans and the Vulcans died. Imagine if somebody is going over a cliff and you grab their hand for a moment, but they slip through your fingers-- it may have been impossible for you to save them, but imagine how you would feel. Now multiply that by six billion.
Well, I have nothing solid really to argue with here-- but it's my feeling that having these people together when they return to active duty would be a constant reminder to each other of the holocaust. I don't think Starfleet would do it.
Again, I don't think so. Think of Commodore Decker, an experienced officer, when he lost his crew. I think these kids would need serious therapy; some would probably be on suicide watch.
My only point in this instance was that they should have told the origins of the familiar characters, not made up new characters with the same names. There's a reason Trek has been around for 45 years or whatever.
I don't think they would be very capable after that-- not for a while.
Now, see, that would be worth watching.
But think about it-- if this were a Saturday night Sciffy movie, and they changed the names from Kirk, Spock and McCoy to Dirk, Block and Rabinowitz, it would be the object of mockery because of all the stupidity. But since it says Star Trek on it, we have to embrace it without argument, lest we be seen as people who actually care about our hobby.No, you misunderstood what I meant. See my response to Locutus.So they should be punished because they and nobody else in the 23rd century were even aware of the existence of a weapon that can make black holes?
I would agree with that. It's like the rumors I've heard that they wanted to make the next Superman film or Fantastic Film film dark. Superman isn't supposed to be a dark character like Batman. Neither are The Fantastic Four.
Going dark worked wonders for Battlestar Galactica. For The Bionic Woman, not so much.
Friendship is a feeling. Old Spock can talk til he's blue as an Andorian and the feelings won't change. The new Kirk and the new Spock are both assholes, and they aren't going to become friends because Leonard Nimoy has the gravitas and the nostalgic appeal of Star Trek to convince us for a few minutes in one movie. The sequel is going to ring false, either because Spock and Kirk aren't friends, or because Kirk and Spock aren't assholes like in the new movie. The Kirk/Spock friendship was a core part of Star Trek. It was McCoy who was an asshole and even that was only part time.
The new Star Trek highlights how much a misnomer "dark and gritty" really is. That's the label and people use it because everyone has a rough idea what we mean. But it's easy to forget what's really objectionable about the "dark and gritty" fads is it's psychotic wish fulfilment. Not even Pollyanna wearing rose colored glasses could be so sure that assholes are erotic. That proposition is the essence of "dark and gritty." The new Buck Rogers should avoid this crap because it's silly and cliched.
If Buck is rewritten to be "serious," which is after all possible, it is extremely doubtful that Buck could be plausibly portrayed as adapting well enough to modern technology to function at all, much less be a hero.
The new Star Trek highlights how much a misnomer "dark and gritty" really is. That's the label and people use it because everyone has a rough idea what we mean. But it's easy to forget what's really objectionable about the "dark and gritty" fads is it's psychotic wish fulfilment. Not even Pollyanna wearing rose colored glasses could be so sure that assholes are erotic. That proposition is the essence of "dark and gritty." The new Buck Rogers should avoid this crap because it's silly and cliched.
If Buck is rewritten to be "serious," which is after all possible, it is extremely doubtful that Buck could be plausibly portrayed as adapting well enough to modern technology to function at all, much less be a hero.
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
I'm sorry, but you can't be fun-loving and bouncy minded while you're fighting a war and half of your homeworld's a blasted hell pit (the circumstances in the original story Armageddon 2419 A.D. and the 1979 TV show). There has to be some sense of what is happening, and a Buck Rogers movie/game/novel/comic book has to take that into consideration, or it will all fall apart, as be as castigated as the original show was in it's heyday. I'm not saying that there can't be some levity from time to time, but it should should be some levity. As for the adjustment to the future in the new movie, that will happen naturally-I hope.
This is a Star Trek forum. Who the hell else discusses things here?
I just find the debate baffling. I get that people hate the new Star Trek movie, and there are an endless amount of perfectly sensible reasons to do so - but to condemn it for being dark is sort of antithetical to the film; especially when the logic of your condemnation is it's dark because it treats death cavalierly. Treating death with a lot of grim angst is the hallmark of serious minded fare like Ron Moore's BSG; shrugging it off by going off to save the day, blow up the Death Star or gamble on the Ovion planet is the staple of more frivolous, pulpy narratives.
Well, just to be relevant, I think a new Buck would have to go dark. No one alive today believes the future will be better. A reimagined Buck could deal with the after effects of global warming, the permanent war on terror, the gulf oil spill, the elimination of social security and medicare, etc.
You could get two seasons worth of stories just projecting what's going on in the world right now.
This sort of viewer, however, should probably not watch anything "darker" than The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.
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You could get two seasons worth of stories just projecting what's going on in the world right now.
This sort of viewer, however, should probably not watch anything "darker" than The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.
.
