STAR TREK: PHASE II "The Child" Teaser Sneak Peek
- Thread starter Ryan Thomas Riddle
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^Good to know. Thanks!
Looks good! Nice setup.....
Looks great! Can't wait to see this one 
I am already queueing up for the download. It looks excellent as expected from Mr. Cawley and crew.
This clip illustrates a pet peeve of mine: fanfims write the characters as utterly unprofessional and downright foolish. The Enterprise has had all kinds of weird shit happen to it encountering phenomenon that seemed harmless on scanners (energy barrier, anyone?), and yet a crewman who should know better flies straight through an unusual phenomenon that appears to be only a few shiplengths across...and doesn't bother to tell the Captain. Kirk's "Deltans" line is also so out of character as to be embarrassing. Bones, maybe. Kirk, no.
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doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
The audio could be improved. Does this contain the final sound mix? I ask because the blue-shirt ensign Sulu talks with at the beginning sounds really far away from the mic, whereas Sulu sounds fine.
Wasn't crazy about the booze & donuts binge nap Scotty seemed to be on at first, but now that I think about it, it's sort of growing on me.
Visually, the show looks fantastic. The visual effects are outstanding, and apart from what felt a little like too much of a shot-for-shot recreation of the TNG episode, (which I admit, I could be wrong about as I haven't watched that episode in a while), I was very pleased.
Wasn't crazy about the booze & donuts binge nap Scotty seemed to be on at first, but now that I think about it, it's sort of growing on me.
Visually, the show looks fantastic. The visual effects are outstanding, and apart from what felt a little like too much of a shot-for-shot recreation of the TNG episode, (which I admit, I could be wrong about as I haven't watched that episode in a while), I was very pleased.
Yes, The Child was the second season opener for TNG and was loosely based on a script planned for the Phase II TV series that never was. This looks great and I hope it is as good as the teaser!
And here I thought that female Deltans were all bald like Ilia in ST:TMP. Oh, well.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
I am aware of that, thanks.
I guess my larger issue with it is simply that given this opportunity to tell the story the way it was originally intended, I had hoped there would be a little more original camerawork and editing involved as opposed to simply recreating (nearly) the same shot-for-shot sequence as was done for TNG back in 1988.
Its not completely a bad thing, mind you, I'm just a little disappointed in that choice.
Deltans were bald. But, as James Cawley stated yesterday on his FB page where I brought up the same item for discussion, you'd be hard-pressed to find a working actress in Hollywood who will shave their head for a non-paying fan film gig.
Besides, James indicated that the hair/baldness element will be addressed, so I'm fine with that particular choice.
Well, yeah...there are always "fanplot" devices or there wouldn't be any interesting stories.
There are some other minor glitches that don't detract from my enjoyment of the story. In fact, they make it more interesting for me usually and provide some BBS fodder. To wit:
1) The "nebula" appears on the viewscreen and Sulu soon thereafter says "put in on the main viewscreen."
2) The Enterprise slows to warp 1, Sulu orders the helsman to take them through at warp 1, and then we hear the engines "rev up."
3) The obvious "could have gone around the thing" mentioned earlier.
Any others?
Sulu comes across as having a very nonchalant (read: arrogant) attitude about the entire thing. More than that, he doesn't even order a course correction to avoid the phenomenon. His actions are merely a function of "because the writer needs the ship to enter the phenomenon so it move the plot along." The thing is that it is an easy script fix (see below to my response to boobatuba.)
While that bit did pique my writerly ire, it wasn't as egregious as Kirk's "Deltans" line. Kirk sees an obviously distraught crewmember and dimisses it so easily. Would he have done so in the original series? No. What's worse is the line and its delivery is no better than Kirk saying, "must be that time of the month," which is the exact tone this bit conveys.
Even out of Bones, as Maurice suggests, this line would still be off-putting. Certainly, Bones would stop Lt. Illa-substitute and ask her what's wrong, as he did for Uhura in "The Tholian Web."
There are plenty of interesting stories that don't rely on the characters acting like idiots. Quite frankly, it's lazy writing to just have characters act because the writer needs them to (I'm looking at you JMS and you as well TNG writing staff). Hell, I'm guilty of it myself.
But this could've been an easy fix. Had Kirk been on the bridge or called to the bridge, he could've made the call. Kirk could've been given all the same information as Sulu, then deemed it wasn't too much of a risk, but thought it was interesting. After all, Kirk has a natural curiosity, so it wouldn't be out of character for him to order a pass-through. Thus, Kirk later causes the problem he must solve in the episode (Lt. Illa-substitute's child and the radiation sickness that follows — yes, I read the original PHASE:II script). Much like in WNMHGB, Kirk has created the very problem he has to fix. Now, that's much more dramatic than having the entire thing as happenstance.
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If only makeup could help, like with a, oh, I dunno, baldcap or something. They can do full Klingon head appliances but not a bald head?
What? The story here is not about Sulu being an idiot. The story is what follows—in this instance—Sulu being an idiot. The simple fix was just to have him steer around the phenomemon and it gravitates towards the ship. That's all it would have taken. It would have made the crew look professional and not morons.
But Middyseafort's got it right. The drama's better if the problem comes from a decision the character has to make.
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I concur that it's a pretty bad problem for the characters to be either foolish and acting out of character or saying offensive things.
Some other problems I have:
Some other problems I have:
- The CBS in color intro is getting on my nerves. This isn't produced by CBS (is it?).
- I know it's night shift, but it's too dark on the bridge.
- I found it odd that the space entity entered in the secondary hull and seemed to go immediately to crew quarters (and then exit the saucer).
- The visual effects look really good. Unlike in other episodes, the motion of the ship is now really appropriate, generally speaking.
- I like Kirk's quasi-TMP style duty shirt.
- I like the screensaver mode on the sickbay medical scanners.
- In general, the production standards seem very high now. To my (nonprofessional) eye I think it's approaching a professional look, certainly head and shoulders above other fan films.
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The "light" going from room to room seemed a bit long (maybe because I wanted to see who it was going to enter), and the Deltan with hair threw me a bit too, but otherwise, it's very impressive.
Generally speaking, most professional writers don't consider being paid for their work to be getting "ripped off."
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