Something that has always puzzled me about TFF is...the thread's title, incidentally. Kirk queries what this entity would need with a starship. And...it's never answered. "To get off the planet" is the assumed answer, I suppose. But for a being that has the powers that not-God apparently does, there wasn't a less convoluted way to accomplish it?
From reading the novelization the Great Barrier was a prison for that being. It could not pass through it but a Starship with the right sheilding could and it could ride along.
That makes sense. It's too bad that didn't make it into the movie in any explicit way. As it stands, in the film, it is kinda like "So you can shoot lightening and float around and whatnot, but you can't... float away?"
@ Saito S: Oh sorry, bro. I misunderstood. I was pretty tired when I responded to that so please forgive any asinine snarkiness on my account. Somehow I read to that mean that you wanted more villain-driven action movies. My mistake.
I respect your opinion. But I still Like TFF.
And TMP.
--Alex
P.S. I would bury Nemesis in the same graveyard as Congo.
Fair enough. And hey, I don't mind snark, I just snark back.
But in seriousness, I really do wish one of the movies had taken another shot at the serious, conceptually deeper sci-fi plot. I very much doubt we'll see such a thing now, with the follow-ups to XI.
Man, you really think
Nemesis is THAT bad? I wouldn't bury ANY Trek movies with "Congo" or the other two movies I mentioned, personally. Ah well.
As you say, it's all just opinion anyway. Obviously we don't agree, but IDIC and all that jazz.
Something that has always puzzled me about TFF is...the thread's title, incidentally. Kirk queries what this entity would need with a starship. And...it's never answered. "To get off the planet" is the assumed answer, I suppose. But for a being that has the powers that not-God apparently does, there wasn't a less convoluted way to accomplish it?
"Well," says God, "The Devil challenged me to create a rock so big that even I couldn't lift it, and I'll be Me-damned if I didn't get caught in the gravitational field. I won't make that mistake again, no sir!"
He's a trained Starfleet captain who has gone through a hell of a lot of training. Why would he start making silly quips like that just because of a little adrenaline? he's been in far more stressful situations before and not cracked jokes.
The simple answer is that after the success of TVH, the producers wanted to do it again. So they tried to make the script light hearted. But whereas TVH had the ability to do it simply because of the story, in TFF the humour had to be cramed in. And it shows.
In all honesty, I actually didn't have too much of a problem with the "Hi Bones!" line at that moment. A
little silliness is ok sometimes, and I think the situation warranted it (especially since he's on vacation at the time and almost died rather suddenly). Obviously I think the movie has tons of problems, but that specific line never bothered me.
However, the larger issue that you are pointing out here, that they were trying to reproduce the success of TVH by infusing lots of humor into TFF, rings very true to me. It felt much more forced in TFF, perhaps partly because the lightening simply didn't strike twice (most of humor in TFF just wasn't as good, on its own, as the humor in TVH), but also because it was kind of jarring. The movie ended up with an identity crisis: it wanted to be an irreverent, light adventure comedy, yet tried to present a serious, introspective concept and plot; it ended up falling on its face on both counts. Years later, Insurrection made a very similar mistake, which plays a role in that movie's failings as well (though I didn't think it was nearly as bad as TFF overall).
Yes, I've seen Nemesis. I've seen ALL of the Trek films; let me just say that now so there's no ambiguity.
