Do fans want the prime timeline back? Part 2: Poll edition.

[Ilaliya]

Time travel has given us many of the best stories across all the Trek series. I'd say keep it.

That's just the thing. It should not become a crutch for the writers.

But the thing is, is it really a crutch? When you look across the totality of the franchise, we have maybe four dozen actual time travel episodes out of seven-hundred plus episodes of material.

Across the Original Series, there are five time travel episodes (six if we count TAS).

I was honestly fine with time travel until ENT. I felt like the "temporal war" actually weakened the Star Trek universe. Because it means in every age, there's 29th century technology running around. It takes the mystery out of exploration for me -- you're not forging a path for future generations. Those future generations are there alongside you, making sure you are on the "proper" historical path.

Just bugs me.

Again, don't want to diminish any enjoyment you get out of time travel episodes. I just wish they would be more self-contained, and serve a specific purpose within the narrative structure of that episode. And not be the purpose. If that makes any sense.

 

[Greg Cox]

You don't think they've tapped that well dry?

They've tapped many wells dry over the past seven hundred episodes and twelve movies. It doesn't mean that there isn't room for more well crafted stories. I'd point most recently to the novel The Rings of Time by fellow TrekBBS member Greg Cox.

Thanks! And dare I mention that I have another time-travel Trek adventure coming out in February?

(Just turned in the final, final revisions last night!)

 

[F. King Daniel]

I was honestly fine with time travel until ENT. I felt like the "temporal war" actually weakened the Star Trek universe. Because it means in every age, there's 29th century technology running around. It takes the mystery out of exploration for me -- you're not forging a path for future generations. Those future generations are there alongside you, making sure you are on the "proper" historical path.

They did a pretty crappy job of it in ST'09 (unless you count Old Spock making sure Kirk and Spock end up BFF's)

 

[BillJ]

That's just the thing. It should not become a crutch for the writers.

But the thing is, is it really a crutch? When you look across the totality of the franchise, we have maybe four dozen actual time travel episodes out of seven-hundred plus episodes of material.

Across the Original Series, there are five time travel episodes (six if we count TAS).

I was honestly fine with time travel until ENT. I felt like the "temporal war" actually weakened the Star Trek universe. Because it means in every age, there's 29th century technology running around. It takes the mystery out of exploration for me -- you're not forging a path for future generations. Those future generations are there alongside you, making sure you are on the "proper" historical path.

Just bugs me.

Again, don't want to diminish any enjoyment you get out of time travel episodes. I just wish they would be more self-contained, and serve a specific purpose within the narrative structure of that episode. And not be the purpose. If that makes any sense.

I'm not saying that all time-travel tales have been stunning successes. But, by and large, the time travel episodes usually turn out to be fairly solid and I don't see a reason there should be a prohibition on them in whatever form Trek takes next.

 

[Ilaliya]

You don't think they've tapped that well dry?

They've tapped many wells dry over the past seven hundred episodes and twelve movies. It doesn't mean that there isn't room for more well crafted stories. I'd point most recently to the novel The Rings of Time by fellow TrekBBS member Greg Cox.

Thanks! And dare I mention that I have another time-travel Trek adventure coming out in February?

(Just turned in the final, final revisions last night!)

That's cool!

If you don't mind me asking... do you have any general writing tricks that you could talk about to prevent time travel from becoming a maguffin? (I mean... Star Trek series writers have gotten that wrong)

I ask for my own purposes.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, the time-travel eps and movies actually have a pretty good track record: "City on the Edge of Forever," "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "All Our Yesterdays," "Trials and Tribble-ations," "Little Green Men," "Yesterday's Enterprise," "Assignment:Earth," "Future's End," "Timeless," "Relativity," and, of course, The Voyage Home and First Contact.

Ilaliya: To be honest, it depends on the story. Christopher Bennett has probably put much more thought into figuring out the physics and mechanics of time-travel than I have. I'm usually more interested in throwing the characters into interesting situations and eras than dealing with the actual time-travel mcguffin itself.

I lean a bit towards what I think of as the "Twilight Zone" approach to time-travel which is less about the technobabble and temporal mechanics and more about disorienting characters by putting them in the wrong era!

 

[Kemaiku]

(4) The PG-13 rating didn't exist until July of 1984, so the first three TOS films couldn't have been given it (and obviously weren't going to be rated R).

Good point! I suspect Khan at least would have been rated PG-13 had that rating existed back then . . . .

TWoK still has a 15 rating in the UK. Or at least it did for quite a long while.

(UK series would be: U, PG, 12, 15, 18, X), most of the others are PG/12.

 

[borgboy]

I love time travel stories usually. They're a chance to contemplate the results of out choices, explore different time periods, and generally break the rules of living in linear time.

 

[HaventGotALife]

I find all these scenes more disturbing than a slug coming out of the ear of Chekov.

Way to miss everything else I posted on the matter.

My response took the most gruesome of anything you mentioned, and compared it to NuTrek.

As for whether I skipped over something, people in glass houses shoudn't throw stones. I asked for someone to name a world that hasn't been destroyed or faced extinction, your response was "Well, we don't know if that was Praxis." So what? Does the planet look healthy?

Just so there's no confusion over what I am talking about:

Name me a world in Star Trek re-boot that hasn't been destroyed or faced extinction (Nibru's world, Romulus and Remus in prime universe, Vulcan, Kronos because Praxis has already exploded, Earth because of the drill in '09, the destruction of terrorist attacks in STID, etc.). It's incredibly dark. It isn't some of the time and Kirk and Crew stopping it. It mostly affects the Federation. It's not a very bright future, despite what JJ Abrams has said. It will militarize Starfleet.

We simply don't know if that was Praxis or not in Star Trek Into Darkness.

I find the Abramsverse no darker than TOS.

 

[Harvey]

The ear scene is certainly more memorable, but I always felt the hanging, tortured, bloody bodies onboard Regula One was the most gruesome image in the film.

 

[Greg Cox]

Wait? Endangering planets is too "dark" now? But planets blow up or get threatened in practically every Trek movie. Earth comes under attack in movies one, four, eight, and ten. Soran was going to destroy some poor inhabited planet in Generations. Ceti Alpha V turns into a hellhole in Khan. The Genesis Planet goes ka-blooey in Movie Three. Etc.

Threatening planets is a time-honored space opera tradition, going back to E.E. "Doc" Smith at least. Hell, Star Trek was inspired by Forbidden Planet, which ends with the planet blowing up . . . .

This is hardly new to the Abrams films.

 

[HaventGotALife]

The ear scene is certainly more memorable, but I always felt the hanging, tortured, bloody bodies onboard Regula One was the most gruesome image in the film.

Whatever the case, I don't think it's important to argue about it. One is a steady diet of destruction, the other has actually gone to a world that wasn't facing annihilation. There's nothing hopeful about people dying. There is something hopeful about creating a new life at the end of the Motion Picture. It was simply misguided, not vengeful and hate-filled. It didn't fully understand the universe and how destructive it was. These may sound like semantics, but they're embodying the tone difference between STID's hopeless story and everything else.

As for whoever said "Star Trek has always been violent, why shouldn't it continue?" I think it's important to remember that motivations make a huge difference. It's the difference between someone going to jail (I tried to murder him) and not (the gun just went off; no malicious intent). And I am talking about the antagonist of the movie. Star Trek, the original series movies, managed to vary it up a little. This probe is looking for whales, not try to destroy earth. This Captain is looking for the ultimate weapon. This Captain wants more power by killing Kirk.

What has ST '09 and STID done? Revenge. It's so much a part of STID that we show 3 or 4 characters lashing out when they are wronged. That's not very hopeful, and a reason why I wouldn't show the movies to someone. The adults I know would become sickened by it, and the children I know would emulate it.

 

[BillJ]

As for whether I skipped over something, people in glass houses shoudn't throw stones. I asked for someone to name a world that hasn't been destroyed or faced extinction, your response was "Well, we don't know if that was Praxis." So what? Does the planet look healthy?

I was actually conceding the point. Were you conceding as well?

 

[Harvey]

I know this has been said a zillion times in this thread alone, but Marcus wasn't motivated by revenge. He ordered the murder of Khan (and sabotaged the Enterprise) to start a war with the Klingons. He then tried to destroy the Enterprise himself when this plan failed, to cover his tracks. His motivation there wasn't revenge -- it was self-preservation.

 

[BillJ]

The adults I know would become sickened by it, and the children I know would emulate it.

Where in the world are you living? The 1940's? The adults I know love it (ages 18 to 70), my 16-year old son enjoyed it and my 6-year old sniffled and cried at the death of Kirk and attempted to build a Lego Enterprise (no attempts at emulation, no skull crushings).

In the context of what Hollywood currently puts out or what I grew up with as a kid, Star Trek Into Darkness wasn't very violent. No more so than Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (actually less so in my opinion).

The ear scene is certainly more memorable, but I always felt the hanging, tortured, bloody bodies onboard Regula One was the most gruesome image in the film.

I always thought Terrell shrieking as he disintegrated was the most gruesome/haunting.

 

[BillJ]

I know this has been said a zillion times in this thread alone, but Marcus wasn't motivated by revenge. He ordered the murder of Khan (and sabotaged the Enterprise) to start a war with the Klingons. He then tried to destroy the Enterprise himself when this plan failed, to cover his tracks. His motivation there wasn't revenge -- it was self-preservation.

Some people are convinced the movie is about revenge and no amount of proof to the contrary is going to change that.

 

[HaventGotALife]

The adults I know would become sickened by it, and the children I know would emulate it.

Where in the world are you living? The 1940's? The adults I know love it (ages 18 to 70), my 16-year old son enjoyed it and my 6-year old sniffled and cried at the death of Kirk and attempted to build a Lego Enterprise (no attempts at emulation, no skull crushings).

In the context of what Hollywood currently puts out or what I grew up with as a kid, Star Trek Into Darkness wasn't very violent. No more so than Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (actually less so in my opinion).

The ear scene is certainly more memorable, but I always felt the hanging, tortured, bloody bodies onboard Regula One was the most gruesome image in the film.

I always thought Terrell shrieking as he disintegrated was the most gruesome/haunting.

Not the 1940s. The 2010s in Michigan. You never played Star Trek in the backyard? I certainly did. I also played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and got more than a few scrapes because of it. We also played like Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn when we played basketball.

The adults I know would turn it off because they have become convinced there is more violence than sex on television and in the movies. It wouldn't be their 'cup of tea,' as it has been said to me. My then 61-year-old mother who has seen all the Star Trek series, said "I've had enough" and left the living room after I showed her '09, right after the destruction of Vulcan.

 

[HaventGotALife]

I know this has been said a zillion times in this thread alone, but Marcus wasn't motivated by revenge. He ordered the murder of Khan (and sabotaged the Enterprise) to start a war with the Klingons. He then tried to destroy the Enterprise himself when this plan failed, to cover his tracks. His motivation there wasn't revenge -- it was self-preservation.

Kirk, Spock, and Khan were. Khan was the antagonist, not Marcus.

 

[Harvey]

Structurally, isn't Marcus is the real antagonist of the movie? Khan just lives longer.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I know this has been said a zillion times in this thread alone, but Marcus wasn't motivated by revenge. He ordered the murder of Khan (and sabotaged the Enterprise) to start a war with the Klingons. He then tried to destroy the Enterprise himself when this plan failed, to cover his tracks. His motivation there wasn't revenge -- it was self-preservation.

Kirk, Spock, and Khan were. Khan was the antagonist, not Marcus.

Khan, the guy being forced to build weapons for Marcus? And they were all about revenge all the time? I thought the theme was how far you would go to protect your loved ones...