The deleted scene where he apologizes for using Gaila but is talking to the wrong green girl--ha ha! Not only does this Kirk exploit a girl's feelings to score a meaningless victory, but all green girls look alike to him!
Good thing thay cut that.
NuTrek's Faulty Moral Compass
- Thread starter Brutal Strudel
- Start date
The deleted scene where he apologizes for using Gaila but is talking to the wrong green girl--ha ha! Not only does this Kirk exploit a girl's feelings to score a meaningless victory, but all green girls look alike to him!
Good thing thay cut that.
It wasn't the racial insensitivity of that scene that made me glad they cut it (Although it sure helped), but the fact that this scene is played at the expense of a character who was murdered just a few hours earlier. The way Kirk just moves on from the scene makes it seem like he doesn't care if Gaila is dead or alive.
He probably had no idea which ship Gaila was assigned to.
I think it's hilarious that people are going on and on about nuKirk's "action hero line." I mean it's not like we had :
"That will be the day" from Picard in "Yesterday's Enterprise" as crewmen were dying around him
"I have had enough of you!" from Kirk in TSFS
"Yes!" from Data after a Bird-of-prey was destroyed with all onboard in "Generations"
"saddle up, lock and load" from Data at the thought of myriad dead Son'a and Baku in INS
And wasn't there a cut line of "don't worry, it's dark in hell" from Riker to the Reman viceroy in "Nemesis?"
nuKirk just can't get a break
If Gaila was on the Enterprise, Kirk could have done what he did with Uhura. Use a bloody terminal to locate her. If she's not on the Enterprise, she was on one of the seven ships that get destroyed. Either way, Kirk doesn't care.
That Picard was from an alternate reality where he was a hardened battle commander fighting a losing war with the Klingons. If you want an example of what the real Picard would do when facing an entity that literally devours all life it comes across, here's what he would say.
PICARD: We're not hunters, Doctor. Nor is it our role to exact revenge.
MARR: What do you propose? We track it down, greet it warmly and ask if it would mind terribly not ravaging any more planets?
PICARD: I don't denying that it may be necessary to fire on it. But I look on that as a last resort.
MARR: What do you propose? We track it down, greet it warmly and ask if it would mind terribly not ravaging any more planets?
PICARD: I don't denying that it may be necessary to fire on it. But I look on that as a last resort.
NuKirk will literally shout in front of Spock's face that they should be, and I quote "Hunting Nero down!"
Kruge was literally trying to kill Kirk at that very moment. Enough was enough.
I'd argue that he's only now experiencing emotions for the first time, but I have no desire to give credit to this movie. Data was just overall terrible in a movie that was a terrible mess.
Incorrect assumption since Data doesn't kill a single Son'a. But it is funny how the supposed "bad guys" of the film use non-lethal means of fighting the good guys when the good guys are all armed with phasers, phaser rifles and bazookas. Another bloody mess of a film.
Maybe, but I don't know because it wasn't in the film so why bother commenting on it?
Well, it's kind of hard to catch a break when the standards of being a good Captain are so incredibly low.
And Prime Kirk would have hunted the damned thing down with the intention of killing it.
Kirk is not Picard.
Also its kind of funny how people are complaining about red matter not making any sense when its late 24th century technology, of course it doesn't make any sense.
24th century science hasn't made any sense since Voyager when they started relying more on technobable to save the day, and hell even TNG had some frequent moments where plausible science was thrown out the airlock.
A point I find odd since I was not comparing Picard to Kirk but Picard to another Picard. Why would I want Kirk to be more like Picard?
The real issue with technobabble isn't the fact that the characters are talking nonsense, it's the fact the story is literally pulling something out of it's rear to solve quickly solve an issue. Just because JJ's Trek doesn't have the babbling part doesn't mean it doesn't have the same issues. They story still pulls things out of it's rear in order to make something that should be impossible work and they come up with even more ridiculous reasons why it can never work again (HOW DO YOU CONFISCATE AN EQUATION THAT YOU'VE FIGURED OUT AND CAN IMPLEMENT INTO ANYTHING??).
As for Red Matter? It's just a plot device who's only purpose is to do whatever the writers want it to do without any effort at being consistent. Sometimes it can consume a galaxy threatening super nova, sometimes it can only consume a planet. Sometimes it will harmlessly suck ships inside, sometimes it will destroy them. When your method of using science fiction technology depends on hoping audiences don't remember how it worked within it's own universe, you're dealing with the worst kind of technobabble.
Right, just like he did in Devil In The Dark! Only in Devil In The Dark he had the opportunity to make a coup de grace, and just because in those few seconds the creature wasn't acting aggressive he saved its life. He would have reacted the same way in Silicon Avatar, and taken any opportunity he got to neutralize it as a threat without killing it.
There is a big difference between killing somebody because it's the only means of self defense and killing somebody out of revenge.
Prime Kirk was VERY averse to killing, offering mercy to his enemies the moment they were no longer a threat no matter what horrible things they had done to him.
There's a difference between science not being true to real life and not being internally consistent.
That too. Jim Kirk was many things but he was never a callous, racist frat-style bad boy douchebag. As much as I enjoy J.J. Trek, I'm still waiting for Captain Kirk to arrive.
I mentioned "I have had enough of you," yes I did. Right in my first post. And I made it clear that Kirk, who was not simply rebuffed when he offered to help Kruge but facing imminent death via murder-suicide, was more than justified there. Indeed, I said that, had Nero similarly tried to drag the Enterprise down with the Narada, I'd have no problem with a call-back. Indeed, all your examples come from situations where the Enterprise or our hero was in (Ima shout coz you seem a little hard of hearing--how can you be deaf with ears like those?) IMMINENT MORTAL PERIL, not facing a .00078% chance that a ship that most likely had no functioning structural integrity field and was exploding from within and breaking apart could survive a trip through a wormhole generated by the interaction of all the red matter with its own mass to form a singularity.
(Data's "Lock and load" was dumb but it was the line from a man about to go into deadly combat, not a man who had just vanquished his foe--and besides, I also said I rate NuTrek above all the TNG movies.)
I mean oy vey, my friend.
And I appreciate the in-depth and thoughtful reply even though we remain at an impasse on the subject matter. I'd reply with more content myself, but I think I would just be rehashing many of the same points again. But thank you for the discussion.
Jeyl said:
This, of course, has already been addressed, and probably more than once; the only ship that was destroyed had a singularity created within it. Different circumstances, different outcome - which, incidentally, is how things work, fictional or otherwise. What we see here is consistency being dressed up and labeled as inconsistency.
I wouldn't--I thought he Nibiru stuff (Enterprise cum Seaview included) was pretty rad. I liked that Kirk. And I liked the way they showed his budding love for Spock--one year is plenty of time for t'hy'las to realize they are t'hy'las. Hell, Edith Keeler saw it in TOS's fisrt season and I figure Kirk and Spock were friends for a little over a year there.
I really like these movies, folks. I just wish Pine's Kirk had a bit more of Shatner's first season gravitas.
I really like these movies, folks. I just wish Pine's Kirk had a bit more of Shatner's first season gravitas.
Actors of today, sadly or not, are not trained the same way as actors of the mid-20th. Even Pine's dad, a competent enough actor himself, is not in the same category as those just a decade before.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if a group of aspiring actors were isolated from modern TV and theater and were trained in the same way as Shatner and Nimoy and Warner and Plummer. We might see some actors come out who could do the broad style of days gone by.
Of course, they'd likely be dismissed as hammy.
Also, the nerds writing modern day Trek don't really know what a good guy is--we've been steeped in this shitty "bad boy" archetype (ooooh, they're so sexy) for so long that the complexity written into Kirk--particularly, the Kirk of the first season--is beyond them.
I don't know... I think it's still perfectly possible to get convincing, heroic good guys off the pen of modern writers if that's what they're tasked with delivering. And I don't think there's any deficiency in Chris Pine's acting chops, far from it. It's that the character of Kirk has been written to be a younger, more adolescent version of himself, one that jives with what pop culture remembers about Kirk's traits and that also "appeals to a younger demographic"*; in fact the whole cast are younger versions of themselves, per the perpetually-unrealized Starfleet Academy idea that's been floating around forever.
Actually this wouldn't be a terrible idea if we were watching Kirk learning how to be a Starfleet officer and working his way up the ranks, he's only unconvincing because he's been thrown into the Captain's chair because Kirk Must Be Captain, with no sign that he's actually a leader of men. There are characters in NuTrek that look and feel convincingly like leaders of men: Pike (whose only unconvincing trait is that he keeps trying to secure commands for Kirk) is one; another is Robau, who is every inch a disciplined, heroic, hard-charging Captain for all five of his minutes onscreen and has acquired a curiously disproportionate following as a result. (Honestly... I'd kind of like to see that guy's adventures. He was pretty compelling.
)* I imagine to be the reasoning, anyway. Although I've never understood this persistent notion that you need the characters to be adolescent in order to appeal to a younger demographic. The younger demographic, it seems to me, doesn't go to adventure fiction wanting to watch the heroes being awkward teenagers; they idolize and fantasize about being accomplished adults, minus the need to worry about bills. But it's one of those self-reinforcing entertainment industry memes that seems to be unkillable.
Indeed. Robau was great--George Kirk was in that mold, too, I think.
Kirk is a hard charcter to get a handle on, I think, because he doesn't easily reduce to a type.
Kirk is a hard charcter to get a handle on, I think, because he doesn't easily reduce to a type.
Oh snap, I almost forgot about this:
... and thank you for that mental image, BTW...
But that of course was not at issue. What was at issue was examples of comparable ridiculousness to the Hobus supernova, which is on a whole other level from whether the term "impulse" is used consistently or the precise mechanics of reentry in "The Naked Time."
Figuring out what is comparable to what is complicated in itself, sometimes, but is complicated all the further by the urge many a continuity tailgunner seems to have to convince themselves that their interlocutor is unfairly nitpicking and obsessing over tiny details. But stuff like Red Matter or the Hobus supernova is not about obsessing over tiny details; it's about overall issues of quality of storytelling and of believability.
Like I said earlier, I'm glad you brought up the TOS Writer's Guide, because it provides an opportunity to set a better frame for this kind of discussion, one that's more faithful to Trek's original goals and distinguishing characteristics. And so:
So when I'm saying that NuTrek ought to be allowed to stand on its own merits and that defense-by-precedent is a fairly useless exercise, I guess that's what I'm really getting at.
And I think that's all I've gots to say on that score, too. I leave last word to you if you'd like it, many thanks for an interesting discussion.
... and thank you for that mental image, BTW...
But that of course was not at issue. What was at issue was examples of comparable ridiculousness to the Hobus supernova, which is on a whole other level from whether the term "impulse" is used consistently or the precise mechanics of reentry in "The Naked Time."
Figuring out what is comparable to what is complicated in itself, sometimes, but is complicated all the further by the urge many a continuity tailgunner seems to have to convince themselves that their interlocutor is unfairly nitpicking and obsessing over tiny details. But stuff like Red Matter or the Hobus supernova is not about obsessing over tiny details; it's about overall issues of quality of storytelling and of believability.
Like I said earlier, I'm glad you brought up the TOS Writer's Guide, because it provides an opportunity to set a better frame for this kind of discussion, one that's more faithful to Trek's original goals and distinguishing characteristics. And so:
We are all, of course, aware that Trek from the outset was pretty explicit about wanting to tell stories about characters, and not give lectures about science. But being familiar with the TOS Writer's Guide, you will of course be aware that what it really hammered at explicitly, over and over again -- when talking about characters, situations, or settings -- was believability.
This of course would come as a surprise to many who today mistakenly imagine Trek to have been indistinguishable from other pulp SF of its era. But it was precisely what made it distinguishable. Trek was centered around a ship with a mission that would be comprehensible and believable to an American audience of the day (essentially the Navy in space); its characters were built to be believable in that setting and to respond believably to even the wackiest of situations; its stories were supposed to draw on the believability of contemporary fiction in other genres. Obviously this did not always play out smoothly in practice -- hello, "Spock's Brain" -- but it was ultimately the aspiration to believability that made Trek stand out from the crowd, that made it seem like the kind of universe you could explore and want to be part of, that acquired it a fandom.
And that believability applied also to the setting. No, you were not expected to tell stories about gadgets or the fine details of how supernovas worked. But you were still expected to follow the basic dicta of decent SF writing: to set up the rules for any ideas you introduce and play by them; to not introduce wildly illogical or incongruous elements into the setting; and so on. Basically, to not wilfully break suspension of disbelief.
Criticisms of "the science" in a bad Trek movie, or NuTrek movie, are usually criticisms of this, of believability. Red matter and the Hobus supernova are not the problem in and of themselves, but neither are they "irrelevant;" they're manifestations of a deliberately casual attitude toward believability. And the problem that believability presents for continuity tailgunning is twofold:
- First, old Trek -- especially prior to TSFS or in the pre-Voyager TNG era -- was not nearly as casual about believability as it is popularly imagined to be, for all its camp and wacky moments, and so attempts to pretend that NuTrek's deliberate OTT recklessness on this score is equivalent to questions about the impact of rocket explosions in "Assignment: Earth" are doomed to failure, because the case being made is factually wrong.
- Second, the liberties that old Trek did take with believability are owed in part to the fact that believability itself changes over time. The expectations of audiences change and mature: modern audiences are willing to forgive a lot for the sake of nostalgia, which is what made ST09, but for actual believability the bar is higher now than it was in the Sixties, when having Apollo show up on an alien planet didn't seem problematic. So even being able to demonstrate that NuTrek does genuinely share a trait with the old shows does not necessarily mean that it meets standards of believability appropriate for our era; we forgive the appearance of Space Nazis and Space Romans in TOS because that was the Sixties and we love it despite and even partly because of the foibles and restrictions that were forced upon it, but that doesn't mean we would want or need to applaud modern-day Trek reproducing those tropes.
(This sort of reasoning-from-precedent is exactly what eventually robbed PrimeTrek of the aspiration to improve storytelling and try new things; and make no mistake, it can kill NuTrek just as surely once the novelty of Big Dumb ActionTrek wears off.)
This of course would come as a surprise to many who today mistakenly imagine Trek to have been indistinguishable from other pulp SF of its era. But it was precisely what made it distinguishable. Trek was centered around a ship with a mission that would be comprehensible and believable to an American audience of the day (essentially the Navy in space); its characters were built to be believable in that setting and to respond believably to even the wackiest of situations; its stories were supposed to draw on the believability of contemporary fiction in other genres. Obviously this did not always play out smoothly in practice -- hello, "Spock's Brain" -- but it was ultimately the aspiration to believability that made Trek stand out from the crowd, that made it seem like the kind of universe you could explore and want to be part of, that acquired it a fandom.
And that believability applied also to the setting. No, you were not expected to tell stories about gadgets or the fine details of how supernovas worked. But you were still expected to follow the basic dicta of decent SF writing: to set up the rules for any ideas you introduce and play by them; to not introduce wildly illogical or incongruous elements into the setting; and so on. Basically, to not wilfully break suspension of disbelief.
Criticisms of "the science" in a bad Trek movie, or NuTrek movie, are usually criticisms of this, of believability. Red matter and the Hobus supernova are not the problem in and of themselves, but neither are they "irrelevant;" they're manifestations of a deliberately casual attitude toward believability. And the problem that believability presents for continuity tailgunning is twofold:
- First, old Trek -- especially prior to TSFS or in the pre-Voyager TNG era -- was not nearly as casual about believability as it is popularly imagined to be, for all its camp and wacky moments, and so attempts to pretend that NuTrek's deliberate OTT recklessness on this score is equivalent to questions about the impact of rocket explosions in "Assignment: Earth" are doomed to failure, because the case being made is factually wrong.
- Second, the liberties that old Trek did take with believability are owed in part to the fact that believability itself changes over time. The expectations of audiences change and mature: modern audiences are willing to forgive a lot for the sake of nostalgia, which is what made ST09, but for actual believability the bar is higher now than it was in the Sixties, when having Apollo show up on an alien planet didn't seem problematic. So even being able to demonstrate that NuTrek does genuinely share a trait with the old shows does not necessarily mean that it meets standards of believability appropriate for our era; we forgive the appearance of Space Nazis and Space Romans in TOS because that was the Sixties and we love it despite and even partly because of the foibles and restrictions that were forced upon it, but that doesn't mean we would want or need to applaud modern-day Trek reproducing those tropes.
(This sort of reasoning-from-precedent is exactly what eventually robbed PrimeTrek of the aspiration to improve storytelling and try new things; and make no mistake, it can kill NuTrek just as surely once the novelty of Big Dumb ActionTrek wears off.)
So when I'm saying that NuTrek ought to be allowed to stand on its own merits and that defense-by-precedent is a fairly useless exercise, I guess that's what I'm really getting at.
And I think that's all I've gots to say on that score, too. I leave last word to you if you'd like it, many thanks for an interesting discussion.
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