Well, you said it was the audiences' want for nostalgia. Perhaps you shouldn't try and pass of your imaging things as fact.
"That book never happened!"
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Well, you said it was the audiences' want for nostalgia. Perhaps you shouldn't try and pass of your imaging things as fact.
^Geez, why so hostile? We're just having a casual conversation here. It's not a courtroom drama.
These are facts though...
Star Trek: Phase II (the unproduced series prior to TMP) was created with the concept of introducing younger cast in my mind. Most of the cast decided to move onto other ventures and William Shatner was penciled in as a special guest star and not as a member of the regular cast (well not at first anyway).
The same thing happened in TWOK and from what I can tell from the numerous sources available - Saavik was featured so prominently because it was intended that she would replace Spock. There were plans to introduce other characters too, but they never came to fruition because Nimoy decided to return in TSFS.
Following the success of TVH, it was decided there would be a new series produced with TOS cast being phased out in favour of TNG cast. Still, financial success and the demand for another movie made Paramount go ahead with a fifth TOS feature film and then a sixth before TNG had even concluded it's TV run!
GEN was originally going to be a TNG-only movie, but Paramount decided that they needed to have Kirk, Spock and McCoy in it because this would generate more interest in the movie, regardless of the send off they give TOS cast in TUC. When Nimoy and Kelley declined to reprise their roles, Paramount got Doohan and Koenig instead and didn't bother to rewrite all of the dialogue for the two characters. This movie was supposed to be about TNG, but it ended up being an unneccessary passing of the torch that badly tainted the legacy of TOS cast and ruined what was supposed to be the much anticipated TNG motion picture.
The only good thing about GEN was that it motivated Paramount to make a considerably better follow up with FC.
I have to agree with Christopher here. He was just making a valid point. Not defending it or insulting another viewpoint. What's with the hostility?
Yes. Yes, you are very wrong. And obviously more people agree with me than you since the novelverse doesn't appear to be showing any signs of stopping.
Xortex, do you even like anything about the current Treks?
It is up to the author and editor. There's no Pocket Books mandate for consistency between novels; it's a choice, not a requirement.
Not really. Their competition with themselves and everything concievable thing is just so high that unless I see something inspired and wholly realized, I can't bring myself to buy it, whether it be it's thematic direction, the characters, the use of the Borg again and again as a device. I bought Troublesome minds and devoured it. It didn't hold up well to a second read but I bought Children of the Storm and enjoyed most of it but didn't finish it because I thought she missed the mark and nailing the concept which had alot of potential but seemed to fizzle out. Which is why I don't come to this forum.
....
What?
You post here all the time. And you constantly post complaints about the novels and talk about how you're convinced Pocket Books is messing things up.
I'll be honest here, I used to think Christopher was a really arrogant guy with a superiority complex. However, I've developed respect for him as an author, a TrekBBS poster and a person, and realised that anything he posts that may seem "arrogant" or "superior" is simply a result of him being a perfectionist.
He puts a great deal of work into ensuring accuracy and answering questions with comprehensive detail. When you put work into trying to provide definitive information, it's easy to get lost in translation. I have no doubt that Christopher's responses are meant to be helpful and informative and it's clear that he's not "passing stuff off as fact", unless it is actually fact. He's entitled to his opinion just as you and I and everyone should respect that.
If you are suggesting that Shatner used his influence in order to keep getting Star Trek roles (and in essence to continue earning big pay cheques) then you couldn't be further from the truth. Shatner's continued casting (just like the rest of TOS cast) was down to Paramount and the fact that they could make money out of the more familiar Star Trek faces.
Well, they had most of the original cast, except for Nimoy. And they had a commitment from Shatner to do the first batch of episodes, but it was undecided whether they could keep him on an ongoing basis. Decker was created to be the new action/romantic lead, with the older Kirk taking on more of a mentor/elder-statesman role -- basically the same dynamic that TNG set up with Picard as the mentor and Riker as the action hero (though that didn't work out as planned because Patrick Stewart was so much stronger a lead than they could've anticipated). A lot of TNG was recycled from Phase II -- Riker & Troi were Decker & Ilia, and Data was half-Xon, half-Questor.
Yeah, I guess that was what started the reversal.
Oh, it wasn't that bad. And I wouldn't say it was unnecessary. It made sense to have a transition for the benefit of movie audiences who weren't already viewers of TNG. Although GEN could've done a better job reintroducing the TNG crew and ship.
That's exactly what made it so bad for me. With the exception of Picard and Data (to a small degree), the TNG cast did nothing of any real interest. Riker commanded the ship during the battle with the Duras sisters - but this entire sequence operated with cuts to the surface of Veridian III.
Troi and Crusher did very little except pilot the ship briefly and get thrown in water and evacuate the lower decks, respectively. Geordi spent most of the movie in engineering (something which was solved come FC) or being tortured by Soran. His almost immediate recovery (both physical and mental) is pretty hard to swallow, given that he returned to engineering almost immediately without being signed off duty for even a few hours.
It wasn't so much lack of screen time, it was more lack of anything meaningful. I disagreed with the inclusion of the Duras sisters are the secondary antagonists because it could be confusing for a viewer who had followed TOS movies and seen little of TNG to wonder why the Klingons whom - the Federation had buried the hatchet with in TUC - are once again the enemy. This is further complicated for anyone who hasn't seen the Duras episodes.
But the absolute worst part of the movie for me was the gigantic absence of logic regarding Picard and Kirk's exit from the Nexus. Guinan clearly explained that Picard could leave and go anywhere he wanted, yet he chose to emerge during the critical moments of Soran's launch. I can accept the possibility of there being two Picard's had the Captain gone anywhere else, but that is rendered moot when you realise that Picard had emerged at a point where there could have been a past duplicate - and was none.
I know I'm just being pedantic and that the Hollywood action scene needed to take place, but given the Picard character that was established in TNG series, his decision should have been to simply emerge with Kirk at a point where Soran was aboard the Enterprise and posed no danger. He could then take him into custody, chase down the Duras sisters and introduce Kirk to the 24th century!
The plot hole was the nexus itself. All they probably new about it was that it was a cool word. Once again not developed enough. A place filled with ultimate joy. Why for what reason, because of what? Eh, who cares. I care. The story cares. If it can't be nailed down, move to another story. Now had they connected Guinan to Q there and the Borg I would have been interested but they didn't and I wasn't.
It might be worth bringing up that this occurred in the 1980s, at roughly the same time that Richard Arnold was making sure that the novel and comic books and whatnot would all be standalone with as little continuity or change or evolution as possible.
He's not imagining things. There are numerous Starlog, Cinefex and Cinefantastique interviews around that credit fans' nostalgic yearnings for the rejection of the plan to replace the Enterprise with Excelsior (ILM didn't like the many limitations of the heavy filming model of the Enterprise made for TMP). Ditto the return of Spock rather than Xon, the demotion of Kirk back to captain, and the rebirth of Spock rather than a series of telemovies with Saavik and David as leads.
RA worked on vetting tie-in manuscripts only from the hiatus between ST IV and ST V (ie. late 1986 or early 1987) and Gene Roddenberry's death in Sept 1991.
Sure. Might RA's ascendance, though, reflect a general predisposition on the part of the people who ran Star Trek to move away from the sorts of changes, in the core TV and movie shows as well as the tie-in documents, that would lead to changes in beloved settings and characters?
Well, since the audiences are seldom asked (Roddenberry's "... it would be shit" comment and all that), these are only justifications from those in charge unwilling to change a formula that was working at the time (generating money).
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