Oi! Come on. I won't have that... There was absolutely nothing wrong with Armus the oil slick. 
Abrams wanted to blow up more than Romulus
- Thread starter brian577
- Start date
Oi! Come on. I won't have that... There was absolutely nothing wrong with Armus the oil slick.
Kind of surprised Armus never returned, he could have been a great Q-calibre foil for the TNG cast. Or even better, have Armus in the movies. Imagine what late 1990s movie budget could have done for him...
I always felt a bit sorry for that oil slick. Most of that was probably due to Patrick Stewart's acting. Exactly the type of role he'd probably been dreading, doing some serious talking with a pile of goo. The ending is genius and Tasha Yar's death also very well done. More adventures under her belt and I'd agree a random sudden death wouldn't satisfy. But as it turned out, just enough of an acquintance for it to be shocking, have an impact and be what everybody remembers about her.
Anyway... the story about the new universe creative team having wanted to lay waste to the old one, just doesn't sit right with me. Not because it wouldn't have been dramatic. More because it seems a bit unnecessarily spiteful, in a situation where they've creatively decided not to continue with Star Trek set in that original universe. Pretty cowardly and irresponsible. Do some further damage, safe in the knowledge it's not their problem anymore. Or even of any importance to whatever stories they want to tell. Why do it? Every time there's a new spin-off, a different iteration of Star Trek... it's first act isn't to put the boot into what came before, or indeed is still going on while it is. Quite the opposite is what I expect to see in fact.
Anyway... the story about the new universe creative team having wanted to lay waste to the old one, just doesn't sit right with me. Not because it wouldn't have been dramatic. More because it seems a bit unnecessarily spiteful, in a situation where they've creatively decided not to continue with Star Trek set in that original universe. Pretty cowardly and irresponsible. Do some further damage, safe in the knowledge it's not their problem anymore. Or even of any importance to whatever stories they want to tell. Why do it? Every time there's a new spin-off, a different iteration of Star Trek... it's first act isn't to put the boot into what came before, or indeed is still going on while it is. Quite the opposite is what I expect to see in fact.
Last edited:
It does kind of fit LeVar Burton's accusations of Abrams being egocentric and immature.
Why?
They wanted to make the biggest bang they could make. It's great they destroyed Vulcan and killed Amanda, but I honestly didn't have any emotional investment in those versions of the character/planet.
That's a bit of a shame. Besides the necessary younger (not to mention alive) recasting, isn't Amanda exactly the same character? Recreating scenes that are the same, right up until Nero arrives at Vulcan?
The prospect of destroying the Earth (and deaths among the TNG cast) back in the original universe has too much emotional investment. Just to be thrown out there, in a tie-in and moved on swiftly from. It's even worse than Vulcan, where at least there's opportunity to show fall-out and consequences through Spock or whatever might happen onscreen in successive films.
Ah, it's so disappointing, it's like you're not really trying anymore.
It's kind of a rite of passage that each succeeding generation wants to take a sledgehammer to the one before it, just to be able to assume your rightful place in the sun. You know, the rebel without a cause thing. Whether what came before actually had some redeeming value is rarely considered. It's all about developing the ego on the road to maturation.
The problem is that in the old days, this used to be done by creating new icons that were the antithesis of the old. These days, our icons are not replaced with new icons. They are re-inhabited by the remakes. So if you don't like your father's Star Trek, then you just repossess the franchise and remake it in your own image. You don't create the anti-Trek show with its own unique characters. You just repackage it AS Trek.
So basically it's a rebelling AND embracing what you're rebelling against at the same time.
That's how Abrams and the rest can say they love Trek, and then go off in such a different direction. Trek, like any other franchise, simply becomes a means in which people can express not Trek in a traditional sense, but themselves.
The original idea behind franchises was to world-build and part of that means being willing to submit to rules that you yourself may not have created--all for the sake of consistency. This flies in the face of today's individualism where everyone has their own "take" on things and wants to express it. I think that's why the remakes happen and why audiences are increasingly comfortable with them.
I am happy with this from a certain extent. But what it also does is set up a constant battle over which take on the material is best.
What you're saying is not based on anything that actually happened in reality. The reason media franchises are called "franchises" in the first place is because they're about the franchising of intellectual properties, i.e. treating characters and fictional universes like chain stores brands. Media franchises are not and have never been following a utopian vision of artistic collaboration.
Meh, destroying the Federation and Earth isn't all that new of an ideal in Trek. In a way it's a tradition: if you want to show how screwed up your future/timeline is, you nuke a the Federation. So it comes off less "He is dissing the old timeline!!!!" and more "Oh for fuck, this again?"
Yeah, franchises are about the brand name not the continuity or the "world building". The Star Trek brand name includes books, movies, TV shows, comics, toys and collectibles. They don't all have to fit in the same "world".
Well the comics (including Countdown) were all under Roberto Orci's direction. I don't know that Abrams had any participation in it (beyond creating the move to which Orci's story leads).
I'd love to see the original script for the comic and see how they planned for all this to go down.
I'd love to see the original script for the comic and see how they planned for all this to go down.
Yes, it's taken me a while but I've finally come to that conclusion as well. The destruction of Romulus could just be in the future "All Good Things" timeline if necessary. Whether or not the Earth and the TNG crew had ended up destroyed there too, wouldn't have made any difference ultimately. To fix that and carry on writing adventures for them, you'd just retcon Nero and Spock as having come from 2387 in an alternate to the Prime and proceed by avoiding or changing the outcome to that whole Hobus event.
I was speaking hypothetically, had the original completely destructive to the Prime Universe in 2387 approach gone ahead. Obviously fans invested in Star Trek which came before JJ Abrams, wouldn't have been too happy with that definite time limit, imposed on future directions the books or whatever else might want to take.
The books are always limited by what the TV shows and movies establish. Why start complaining now?
So they wanted to destroy Earth and the Federation too....
Should we really be surprised that a Star Wars fanboi would want to do this?
But seriously, if that's what they were going to do why not make it a full reboot. Rather pointless to have such a galaxy shattering event happen and then go away to an alternate universe that will have nothing to do with it.
Should we really be surprised that a Star Wars fanboi would want to do this?
But seriously, if that's what they were going to do why not make it a full reboot. Rather pointless to have such a galaxy shattering event happen and then go away to an alternate universe that will have nothing to do with it.
