Disappointment with TOS films?

[RAMA]

The only disappointing TOS films are STV and STVI. STV's problems have been well documented so I won't go deeply into how its an utter piece of filth unworthy of the ST name. STVI is a decent movie but too obvious, filmed in TV style and almost immediately appeared dated (more dated than STTMP in fact). STTMP was disappointing to fans in 1979, but there were good moments, and the fabulous production and music could not be ignored. The STTMP: DE restored respect to it in my opinion, and it won several awards for its release.

RAMA

 

[JarodRussell]

I've been rather disappointed with TOS after I've seen the TOS movies first. The movies are superior to the show in so many ways.

 

[Julian]

To me, the Star Trek movies, while not unenjoyable, are in the end basically bad. TMP is a derivative 2001 knockoff, right down to Spock's line about the "possible next stage of our evolution," where the "evolution" in question is not Darwinian evolution through random mutations, but a mystical, teleologically-oriented conception of evolution with its ultimate goal in some kind of transcendence. There's that same theme about homo sapiens being overwhelmed, or bested, by the technology of their own making, and that same attempt at an epic take on space exploration. The latter is much more successful in 2001, because TMP can't seem to decide whether it wants to be mainly an epic or a drama, and fails as either. But while TMP can still be considered a work of art, the rest of the films are little more than crowd-pleasing hackwork. As hackwork, some (TWOK and TVH) succeeded better than others (TSFS and TFF), but really they were never intended to do more than earn a certain box office return and then fade into oblivion. The problems with TWOK, for example, are well-known: the sudden technological retrogression, unexplained (and unexplainable), compared to TOS and TMP; Terrell as the beginning of the trend (to continue in subsequent films) of unrealistic incompetence of (presumably trained and experienced) Starfleet personnel (other than the main characters, of course) for the sake of the plot; the lack of any plausible motivation of the main villain (Khan acts like a mindless zombie whose sole purpose is to be evil and stupid, and die in the end after causing sufficient havoc to create some drama); the departure from science fiction, based on any real science or technical plausibility, with that ridiculous "genesis bomb" (does this even need comment?). The rest of the TOS films have similar weaknesses. I'm not going to comment on the TNG movies due to admitted ignorance, but I think it is safe to say that the best TOS episodes tower over the TOS films as earnest attempts at quality science fiction.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I disagree about Khan's motivation. I think he has a very clear motivation for exacting revenge against Kirk. He blames Kirk for the death of his wife, and for not checking up on the colonists after their exile. His superior intellect has clearly been compromised due to his emotional state.

 

[Jonas Grumby]

^ I agree that the Khan of TWOK was not without motivation, but I still found him very disappointing. In TWOK, he was just a teeth-gnashing, shrubbery-chewing, one-note revenge seeker. I found the Khan we saw in "Space Seed" vastly more interesting.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Of course Khan in "Space Seed" was more interesting...it'd been the first time anyone had seen him before! I don't really see how much more interesting though. He tries to take over the Enterprise and Kill Kirk. That's pretty straight forward villainy to me. Again revenge for having been forced to leave Earth and feeling hard done by isn't anything complex either.

 

[RyuRoots]

I disagree about Khan's motivation. I think he has a very clear motivation for exacting revenge against Kirk. He blames Kirk for the death of his wife, and for not checking up on the colonists after their exile. His superior intellect has clearly been compromised due to his emotional state.

Okay, fine. He HAS a motivation, but it's an imbecilic one at best. And his intellect sure as hell has been compromised. Severely, severely, SEVERELY compromised. Although I'd say his alleged intellect was compromised before Space Seed, since his only purpose was to be a creepy, evil, jerk with no foresight there, too.

 

[Warped9]

It is often said, but I don't think TMP was ever intended to be a 2001 wannabe---I think that's just become a catch-all phrase folks use. I think TMP's problem initially is based on the studio not knowing what to do with Star Trek, not knowing what kind of story they needed. I think TMP's biggest failing is that it needed more character drama. I also would have preferred a more "out there thataway" type of story rather than "save the Earth" kind of story.

For me it would have been a case of looking at the best TOS had done and understanding, "What made these work? Why are these so good?"

That said...

I think it is safe to say that the best TOS episodes tower over the TOS films as earnest attempts at quality science fiction.

This I can't really disagree with.

The other issue with TMP is one of context, one that may not resonate if you didn't see it when it first came out. In 1979 it had been a decade dry of live-action Star Trek. There was tremendous anticipation among fans. The unveiling of the refit Enterprise was fantastic for many of us aching for a close look at her. The opening and detailed look at the Klingons was amazing. Neither of those things would likely be bothered with now. Big screen f/x, popularized with Star Wars, Close Encounters and Superman were tantalizing audiences with never-before-seen WOW factor.

If you weren't there then you might not forgive those indulgences.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

As a kid, I liked the films well before I really ever got into the series. Took me till I was in my teens to really get TOS. Not as good at telling science fiction stories? Probably.

Better gateway drug for the uninitiated? (I should use a metaphor with fewer negative connotations, but sue me, I'm lazy) Definitley.

 

[Jonas Grumby]

^ Of course Khan in "Space Seed" was more interesting...it'd been the first time anyone had seen him before!

No, I really don't think that's the reason.

I don't really see how much more interesting though. He tries to take over the Enterprise and Kill Kirk. That's pretty straight forward villainy to me. Again revenge for having been forced to leave Earth and feeling hard done by isn't anything complex either.

I saw no evidence whatsoever in "Space Seed" of Khan being motivated by revenge. His goal is to find a new planet on which to found a new empire, the same goal that led him to leave Earth in the first place. With great cunning and deliberation, he concocts and executes a plan to further that goal.

The Khan of "Space Seed" was a supremely cunning, resourceful and intelligent man, a man with a clear and rational vision of his objectives and how to achieve them. That's a far cry from the irrational, fixated and easily-manipulated Khan of TWOK.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yeah...Khan and his people left Earth as criminals, and he acted like a criminal onboard the Enterprise. He wanted to demonstrate his superior strength and intellect but ended up being beaten and exiled again. I really don't see the difference between "Space Seed" and "The Wrath of Khan" except as I mentioned he is emotionally compromised in the latter and is only concern is exacting revenge on the man he believed to be responsible for the death of his wife. Khan never takes any responsibility for his actions at any point. He's a typical villain in both of his appearances. He's just more himself in "Space Speed".

 

[Julian]

I disagree about Khan's motivation. I think he has a very clear motivation for exacting revenge against Kirk. He blames Kirk for the death of his wife, and for not checking up on the colonists after their exile. His superior intellect has clearly been compromised due to his emotional state.

But is it believable?

Given how Space Seed ends, does it even make sense for Khan to blame Kirk for his wife's death? Or to expect Kirk to be his babysitter on Ceti Alpha V? After all, Khan was sent there with his wife and followers as a punishment, for acts that may well have merited a death sentence under normal protocol. In the TOS episode it is clear that Khan is grateful to Kirk for giving him another chance, and is perfectly aware of the difficulties he will face, of how things could end up.

Another issue is that men of great calculating intelligence and ambition would not typically become transformed into complete imbeciles by a fairly banal personal loss. If Khan were that psychologically fragile, if he had that little self-control, he would never have become the Earth's leading tyrant in the 1990's.

Even we accept that Khan is now single-mindedly bent on revenge, there is no reason why he should not be more methodical about it. In the film, there is no internal logic to what he does; his actions are simply necessitated by the requirements of the plot. For example, when Khan follows Kirk into that nebula, even though he has the Genesis "superbomb" and knows that Kirk is a vastly more experienced starship commander than himself, he is not believable; he is acting like a caricature of a man. What would Kirk have done if Khan had some minimal self-awareness and refused to follow him in? One line of psychobabble about “the human ego” can’t cover the bad writing (and in fact exacerbates it further), because real human beings don’t behave like mindless automatons.

It is clear what Meyer and Bennett were aiming for. But instead of a great and brilliant man who became consumed by bitterness and revenge as a result of a personal tragedy, what we’ve ended up with is more akin to a mental 5-year old who has lost a favorite toy.

 

[Too Much Fun]

One of the biggest differences between TNG and "Star Trek" is that I imagine it would be very easy for many people to become more interested in "Star Trek" based on its movies.

I shudder to think what people introduced to TNG through its movies (with the possible exception of "Star Trek: First Contact") would assume about that show. I don't think the movies would make me want to see it if they were my introduction. I believe knowledge of the series is required in order to gleam any enjoyment from them (and with three of them, I don't think there's much enjoyment to be had even with that).

I think I saw "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" long before I ever saw the series they were based on and they definitely helped motivate me to check out the series. Despite supposedly being part of a trilogy, I think they work better as standalone movies than any of the TNG flicks.

 

[Doug Otte]

TWOK is most people's favorite Trek film, but I agree w/ others here that it does have problems.

I had seen TMP on the tube (still regret not seeing it when it opened at the Uptown in DC). I found it a bit dull at the time, but it's since grown on me. So, when TWOK was released, I wasn't that interested. I finally went to see it w/ a friend at a second-run discount theatre, and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, that enjoyment was flavored by camp. I thought the whole thing was rather wink-wink making fun of Trek and space opera in general, and I accepted it at the time because I wasn't that closely tied to Trek after high school. It wasn't until subsequent viewings that I began to take it more seriously, and really got back into Trek again. Now, it's hard for me to remember my impression of that first viewing; the campiness became so integral to the films that it now seems like it was always part of Trek. If I was seriously into Trek at that time, the tone of TWOK might have insulted me.

I have the same feelings about Abrams' Trek. I sort-of enjoyed it, but it seemed so far from the original, and such an intentional comic-book take on grampy's Trek, that it doesn't bother me as much as it does others.

Doug

 

[Admiral_Young]

@Julian. I'll grant you that Khan's problems with Kirk are a bit of a stretch, but no less a part of his personality and character. He is a tyrant and a criminal. One with superior strength and intelligence but no less a criminal. Again blaming Kirk for the death of his wife and not bothering to check up on their progress are signs of a man who is in emotional turmoil about said loss of his wife. My point is that Khan has been emotionally compromised to the point where his entire actions are illogical and result in failure. He shows cunning and some tactics against Enterprise but his understanding of 23rd century starship battle tactics are flawed because he's basing his tactics on 20th century standards. Are these mistakes in the writing? Sure. I'm not disputing that. I think Khan is what he is in both of his appearances. Are his actions and motivations believable? I dunno, but the way Ricardo sells them in the movie I think they are. Could they have fleshed out his character and motivations in the film? Maybe but due to time restraints this wasn't possible. I guess I just don't have a problem with the way Khan is portrayed in the film as you and others seem to.

 

[J.T.B.]

The other issue with TMP is one of context, one that may not resonate if you didn't see it when it first came out. In 1979 it had been a decade dry of live-action Star Trek. There was tremendous anticipation among fans. The unveiling of the refit Enterprise was fantastic for many of us aching for a close look at her. The opening and detailed look at the Klingons was amazing. Neither of those things would likely be bothered with now. Big screen f/x, popularized with Star Wars, Close Encounters and Superman were tantalizing audiences with never-before-seen WOW factor.

I quite agree. For many people at the time, the most memorable thing about Star Wars had been the very beginning, when the star destroyer rumbled overhead and just seemed to go on and on. Nobody had seen such a fantastic object with that kind of scale and mobility before on a movie screen. Seeing the scale and presence that the new Enterprise had in on the big screen was a similar experience for many, myself included, who had grown up with the TV Enterprise which, fun as it was, looked like a model. The V'ger interiors were also impressively vast, but transiting them was probably over-long for most audiences.

I was only a 12 year old kid, but my experience at the time was that Star Trek fans were not disappointed with TMP, and I don't remember really hearing anything bad about it until after TWOK came out. Sometime within a year or so TMP was shown on the ABC Sunday Night Movie. The commercials and added footage not only made the film seem way too long, but the commercial breaks broke up the flow into something pretty unbearable. You came back from a commercial and the ship flew through another segment of V'ger and the crew spoke a couple lines and then it was another commercial, and you thought, "It's taking a long time for nothing to happen, here." The contrast with the action of TWOK was pretty striking, and that was when I really started to hear people bad-mouth TMP. It really fell out of fashion as the other movies came out, and I didn't really hear/read anything good about it till the mid-'90s on Usenet.

--Justin

 

[Captrek]

Is Khan’s anger at Kirk justified? Perhaps not. Is it plausible? Absolutely.

Khan had no promise of a babysitter, but he did expect a fighting chance. He was told he and his people were being left on a world that was “habitable, although a bit savage,” and it was up to them and their progeny to survive and conquer and tame the world. Little could anybody imagine that a cataclysm in six months would render the whole planet unable to support life.

There was a child on Ceti A5 in the script; I’m glad he was dropped from the final product. There is no future for these people. There is no world for them and their progeny to conquer. There is no chance and no hope. They are stuck on a dead rock hurtling through space. Other than perpetuating their miserable existence into old age before dying, there is nothing for them to accomplish. A reorientation center would be infinitely preferable because at least there would be a fighting chance to escape.

Should Kirk have “bothered to check on [their] progress”? Could anybody reasonably have anticipated that a cataclysm might destroy the world yet be survived by Khan and his men? Of course not, but Khan understandably feels betrayed, and since he can’t take revenge on something as nebulous as fate, he focuses his rage on Kirk.

Another factor is that Khan is simply unable to accept defeat. He has been defeated by Kirk, but if he triumphs over Kirk in the end it’s like he doesn’t have the defeat on his record anymore. That’s why Joaquin tries to convince Khan that he has in fact triumphed over Kirk, but Khan is obsessed to make sure there can be no question of his triumph — an obsession that was probably a major factor in his nearly complete conquest of Earth. Anybody who challenges him must ultimately be made his bitch.