Absolutely Right(TM).
There hasn't been anything "intellectual" about Star Trek in a long, long time.
The Ultimate Poll: JJ Vs. Bay
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Absolutely Right(TM).
There hasn't been anything "intellectual" about Star Trek in a long, long time.
But there is some basis in reality for a lot of the technology in Star Trek and there was effort put into giving some realistic explanation for many things in Star Trek.
There has never been any of that in Star Wars and there was none of that in Trek 2009.
And I'm not saying Trek hasn't used the fantasy element many many times.
On other comparison to Star Wars is every original Star Wars character had a type of "hero" element to them... Hans,Luke,Leia,ObiWan, Darth, etc.
In ToS, Uhura wasn't some genius linguistic officer, she just seemed pretty normal. In Trek 2009 every single character is now a GENIUS at his/her field of expertise. In ToS, Sulu was shown fencing. In Trek 2009 Sulu is apparently an expert swordsman.
Star Trek is intellectual when you compare it to Star Wars.
I think it was in some other thread here that someone was pointing out that even spells/magic in LotR could possibly be explained scientifically if it were necessary, just as you could explain transporters. And that's a good point, you could even go so far as to talk about midichlorians (still highly fantastical) and try and explain the force more.
But fundamentally Lucas and other developers of Star Wars have zero amount of interest in explaining how it might actually work, nor was it ever even partially a focus. Hyperdrive just gets you places, light sabers just work, and everything is just a dressing.
To a large degree, Star Trek is the same way with the key difference being that someone, typically a science adviser, actually came up for a way for things to sound somewhat plausible. Like for instance, how do you combat the inertia of traveling so fast? Why, simply inertial dampeners. Sure, that device is purely fictional, but it at least gives a small level of thought to the technology. That's what makes it at least slightly science fiction.
So ST09 actually had a science adviser, yet the film has a couple notably big scientific blunders in it, which means that she was there just for show and to make things seem like legitimate science fiction when it's clearly fantasy. And on blunders I'm not talking about complaints about red matter or building starships on the ground, but actual real science such as the whole supernova thing. Failing at the fundamentals of science and not even bothering to try and come up with a pseudo-explanation of the fantastic devices just puts it in the category of Star Wars where 12 parsecs is a unit of time and things just happen.
Now don't get me wrong, there's not a single thing wrong with this. Sometimes you can just take advantage of other works of science fiction and just not explain one thing about it when it comes time for your story. You have a built-in explanation for why there's gravity on a ship. Some stories don't even require it, especially if they're really good and people don't start scratching their head thinking how the light saber blade stops where it does. It's just that lots of Star Trek in the past has made an effort to be somewhat different than this, and now that divide is gone. It's a fair comparison.
I think it was in some other thread here that someone was pointing out that even spells/magic in LotR could possibly be explained scientifically if it were necessary, just as you could explain transporters. And that's a good point, you could even go so far as to talk about midichlorians (still highly fantastical) and try and explain the force more.
But fundamentally Lucas and other developers of Star Wars have zero amount of interest in explaining how it might actually work, nor was it ever even partially a focus. Hyperdrive just gets you places, light sabers just work, and everything is just a dressing.
To a large degree, Star Trek is the same way with the key difference being that someone, typically a science adviser, actually came up for a way for things to sound somewhat plausible. Like for instance, how do you combat the inertia of traveling so fast? Why, simply inertial dampeners. Sure, that device is purely fictional, but it at least gives a small level of thought to the technology. That's what makes it at least slightly science fiction.
So ST09 actually had a science adviser, yet the film has a couple notably big scientific blunders in it, which means that she was there just for show and to make things seem like legitimate science fiction when it's clearly fantasy. And on blunders I'm not talking about complaints about red matter or building starships on the ground, but actual real science such as the whole supernova thing. Failing at the fundamentals of science and not even bothering to try and come up with a pseudo-explanation of the fantastic devices just puts it in the category of Star Wars where 12 parsecs is a unit of time and things just happen.
Now don't get me wrong, there's not a single thing wrong with this. Sometimes you can just take advantage of other works of science fiction and just not explain one thing about it when it comes time for your story. You have a built-in explanation for why there's gravity on a ship. Some stories don't even require it, especially if they're really good and people don't start scratching their head thinking how the light saber blade stops where it does. It's just that lots of Star Trek in the past has made an effort to be somewhat different than this, and now that divide is gone. It's a fair comparison.
I guess I disagree in that any other time they needed to throw science to the wind to make a story element work, they did in the past as well as in the JJ movie... The moon of Praxis exploding past the neutral zone is about as believable as a supernova that threatens several star systems, wouldn't you say?
If they had just said it was just an explosion, yeah. But they just went and gave it that qualifier of being a subspace explosion. Yep, it's total bull, but it at least gave a second of thought to how an explosion could travel so fast.
Hey, in the few seconds that it took you to type that, you already put more thought into that particular element than the writers did. Good job.
Not until later on. And even then it was usually irrelevant to most people and has been cited as the decline of Star Trek starting from TNG on. We called this "technobabble."
Good. Now you know why more people liked Star Trek 2009 than any other Trek in a long time.
As it should be. If you want to start talking about "realism" then you better hope that lead officers of the fleet's most important ships ARE of great minds.
This is simply completely untrue.
In ToS they had communicators that flipped open... today we have cell phones.
Again "warp" has a basis in science, hyperdrive does not.
Devon said:Good. Now you know why more people liked Star Trek 2009 than any other Trek in a long time.
Actually I already understood that's a partial reason for why Star Trek 2009 is more appealing to a wide audience than prior Trek.
The TNG crew was perfect for a deep science fiction story. Maybe ship action but certainly less action amongst the crew.
As Plinkett said, no one was excited to see Riker fight some monster in the bowels of the ship. That's not what the TNG crew did well.
And I don't think a deep science fiction TNG story would be more of a commercial success than Trek 2009, but it might've been a better movie.
Commercial success and quality don't go hand in hand, unless you think the Transformers movies are some of the greatest works of modern art and cinema.
Devon said:
But they were all cadets. In ToS, other than Kirk and Spock, no one was portrayed as a pure genius at their job. Sure they were all more than competent, but the heroism wasn't there.
I don't find the genius/hero like treatment of the 2009 crew made them any more (or less) realistic.
I DO think it makes them more of a comparison to StarWars heroes then to the original ToS characters. imo. I mean, Kirk was "destined" to captain the enterprise and Vader was "destined" to bring balance to the force, ya see what I'm getting at there?
See, that's the thing though. It doesn't matter if a TNG movie would have been better, because it (probably) would have been commercially unsuccessful. In fact, Nemesis proved this. This told Paramount that they needed to do something to start getting a decent cash flow out of the Star Trek franchise. Thus, they change the formula and it got them great results monetarily.
Also, commercial success and quality don't go hand in hand, but they don't have to. Sure, it is nice if they do, but not required. Commercial success matters much more then quality. If the Transformers movies made, and continue to make, a ton of money, then their quality is irrelevant and they are successful.
What it really does is make it not science-nonsense, which is pretty much what fantasy is anyways.
The way suspension of disbelief should work is that if you see something like red matter or dilithium crystals, you should just accept that it does what it does because that's the fiction part of science fiction. But if you see someone walk on a tiny asteroid as if it had Earth's gravity (which happened on Enterprise), then you know there's something fundamentally wrong with the science. If the basics of real science can't be kept, it becomes science-nonsense, or fantasy.
I meant to reply about your point of "realistic explanations."
This film used your two examples of warp speed and communicators as well.
That's down to personal opinion. Nothing definitive.
I never said one thing about financial success at all.
Devon said:
In the academy they were. They are ranking officers now.
Kirk was always destined to be Captain. Just as Spock said in another film, commanding a Starship was his first, best, destiny.
I disagree that the TNG was doomed to failure regardless of quality. I'm a believer that is was ultimately the quality that killed the TNG movies. I don't believe the TNG crew could ever have reached the commercial success of Trek 2009, unless maybe it was a passing of the torch to a younger sexier crew.
6079SmithW said:
I agree to an extent.
I don't agree that their quality is "irrelevant". Irrelevant to the commercial success of the film, ok. Irrelevant to the legacy of a movie as modern art... I think it's relevant in that perspective.
I'm sure some directors/producers don't give a damn about legacy though.
1bulma1
Lieutenant Commander
And that is what I am remarking upon. Where's the problem?
number6
Vice Admiral
We both know the problem. This new team created a successful movie and restarted the franchise, and there are a bunch of pissed off Star Trek fans who are taking leaps, moving goalposts, and making any excuse possible to rob this film of its legitimate place within the Star Trek franchise, despite the fact that they have absolutely no say in the matter. Sure they can "vote with their wallets" as they always say, but they'll see the film again and again and note in every detail every little thing the film got "wrong," pumping more revenue into the box office and they will do it with every Star Trek film. The option "Don't Go" will never occur to them because let's face it, they are going to be curious they secretly want to like the film even though they like to make all kinds of crazy excuses why they don't.
Or.. they just come here and complain to get a reaction from those who think otherwise, never listening to fact, expressing their own opinion like it's Trek Gospel, accusing all others of heresy if they, God forbid, have facts and reality on their side..
There's your problem. No need to bring Michael Bay into this.
At least you're keeping an open mind and not going over the top. Can't ask for more than that.
MOST things are intellectual when compared to Star Wars.
Yeah, 20+ years ago when TNG first came out. Since then it's devolved into "If we can depolarize the main deflector array with a phased graviton pulse, it might trigger a cascade reaction in the subspace aperture that will allow us to escape!"
Funny, I don't see you complaining about Spock's unexplained and inexplicable repair work in TWOK. Something about the warp drives means the only way to repair it is to stick your face directly into the main plasma line and hold it there for a few seconds... maybe the dilithium crystals needed a spitshine?
Perhaps Spock should have taken C3P0's advice and isolated the reverse power coupling? No... that's not it, bring me the hydro-spanner!
She was a glorified secretary with only a minor supporting role that was ultimately interchangeable with a half dozen extras. The only reason anyone remembers her to begin with is because she was black, and she was HOT.
Now she's black, AND hot, AND a genius. Spock's a lucky bastard.
In Star Wars they had droids... today we have ASIMO.
And in the prequel wars they had entire armies of droid fighters; today we have TALON-SWORDS and the MQ-9 Reaper.
And the space station's cupola?
http://www.andrewchaikin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Robinson-ISS-cupola-blog.jpg
CLEARLY derived from a tie fighter's cockpit!
[Also just as clearly hotlinked, and now converted to a link. Please be sure images posted inline are hosted on your own web space. - M']
No more so than hyperdrive. Either can be explained perfectly well if you slap enough technobabble on them. The only difference is Star Wars never bothered to do that, while Star Trek spent ENTIRE EPISODES trying to explain how warp drive worked.
No doubt, which is why STXI and TMP are still oscillating back and forth in my "favorite trek movie of all time" slot. It's basically a tie: STXI has my favorite ACTION Trek while TMP has my favorite ADVENTURE trek. If the next film is anything like TMP, I will be a happy man.
How does that follow, when Han Solo was mainly introduced as an ANTI-hero who only does the right thing because he's trying to pay off a loan shark?
Does he break Leia out of jail to save the rebellion? Does he do it to help Luke? Does he do it to restore freedom to the galaxy? No. He does it because "She's rich!"
And yet Vader went on to massacre women and children by the bucketloads... I'm not sure how that follows either.
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