• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

15 Reasons JJ "Ruined & Destroyed" Star Trek

Not only just now posts it on the 'net, but it passes for a "headline" regarding 'Trek. Enough so, ever Trek board and fansite out there--it seems--is reporting on it :rolleyes:

I used to dislike the '09 movie with a passion. Had issues with trying to make it all work in "canon" and all that old noise. Still don't like the Engine Room set. But you know what, I actually enjoy it as a fun little popcorn-flick on it's own merits. I stopped worrying about how it was supposed to fit with the older stuff, took it for its own thing, and moved on. I still think it's more action and style over substance and story, but that's okay; sometimes that's all someone needs out of a movie.

See, I loved the movie, and still do, but I went in for similar reasons. I had been burned out on Star Trek, and my thoughts were "help me love Trek again". I came out of that theater feeling like a new fanboy, feeling the same way I did when TNG premiered (having been raised on TOS, I was thrilled to death when the promos ran). Trek was alive and relevant again!
If they kept this take on the characters strictly in movies, I could follow a film-franchise of this type of Trek. I don't think I"d like it--or that it'd work--on a weekly TV level.
Yeah, who'd ever watch a show about a starship exploring strange new worlds with it's captain, it's alien first officer and it's grumpy medic?

It'd never work.
 
...

brewery_the_same.jpg

What I find really impressive about the above comparison is how everything of the left side looks like a twentieth century factory of some sort (in one or two cases perhaps a milking shed) and the other side looks futuristic. How the heck did you do that? ;)

You know, once you stop counting pipes and tanks (which is like observing that a chimp and a human both have arms and legs) and just look from one side to the other, you would have to put on a welding mask and close your eyes to get the impression there is a comparable degree of apparent technological advancement. Or are you actually saying you don't see that? That to you, the left side appears just as "advanced" as the right?


I thought it looked a lot more like a real engine room than anything we saw in TOS.

:lol: I believe there's a reason for that.
 

What I find really impressive about the above comparison is how everything of the left side looks like a twentieth century factory of some sort (in one or two cases perhaps a milking shed) and the other side looks futuristic. How the heck did you do that? ;)

You know, once you stop counting pipes and tanks (which is like observing that a chimp and a human both have arms and legs) and just look from one side to the other, you would have to put on a welding mask and close your eyes to get the impression there is a comparable degree of apparent technological advancement. Or are you actually saying you don't see that? That to you, the left side appears just as "advanced" as the right?
The stuff on the right looks like a set, attempting to resemble the stuff on the left on a modest TV budget from the 1960's. Note the forced-perspecive pipes behind the grate, to give the illusion of scale and, well, more big pipes.
The only thing "advanced" is the bank of computer consoles, and STXI had touchscreen terminals dotted throughout their brewery.

Compared exclusively to TMP I could see your point. But TMP changed engineering from TOS as much as they changed the Klingons. It went a decentralized load of pipes and tanks, none of which had a set function (in fact, Engineering's location itself fluctuated between the rear of the saucer and the secondary hull!), to a chamber built around a glowing blue tube.

As I said in my earlier post, the engineering section in TOS was supposed to be much larger and more complex than what they could afford to depict in the 60's. Ben Finney certainly could not have remained hidden for days in the TOS engine room as we saw it!
 
I don't think the main problem with the engineering are pipes. It's the fact that it doesn't look at all futuristic. It's a brewery, and it sure as hell looks like one. And even though I never quite liked it, I don't mind it that much.

But just look at how Scott Chambliss envisioned it:

27zww2q.jpg


35i90ev.jpg


THAT would have been something. But yeah, budget issues and all...
 
Overall, I think the engine room in Enterprise is pretty good.. looking fictional, futuristic, but also interesting, with two levels that give the characters something to do
 
The brewery debate again...my apologies for starting that one running. Look, folks, if you liked the look of the engine room, then good for you. My complaint, voiced in plenty of other threads, is that - to me - it looked like exactly what it was: a brewery. I've worked in a brewery, so I recognized it as such immediately and it slammed me back to the 21st century, destroying my willing suspension of disbelief. They could have used the engine room of the liberty ship Jeremiah P O'Brien for much the same effect, and it would have resulted in the same response from those who know what a steam engineering plant looks like.

I really hope they build a decent set this outing rather than reusing the brewery.
 
I really hope they build a decent set this outing rather than reusing the brewery.

How exactly would you explain away the blatant and drastic change the Engineering set from one movie to another? And before anyone points out that we've had several movies already where this is already the case, I preemptively call BS.

ST:TMP - Introduces the Engineering set design which will influence all future Engineering sets.
ST2 - Uses essentially the same set, but different camera angles are used and the focus is shifted from the warp core to a glass-walled side room.
ST3 - What little we see of it appears to be the same set.
ST4 - We don't see the Enterprise's Engineering set at all.
ST5 - All Scotty gets is a console in a hallway with dangerously low-hanging pipes.
ST6 - The set designers slightly re-dress the TNG engineering set. But, since we really didn't see a set last movie it's largely a moot point.

I think a major chage to a set at this point would be even more glaring than leaving it as it is. It would represent J.J. and Co. giving into the demands of a vocal minority of Star Trek fans who happen to know a lot less about set design than they do.
 
The Enterprise took a pounding, right down to ejecting the warp cores. This could easily explain changes to engineering. Heck, I hoped it would be used to explain some external design fixes that would improve the appearance and reception of the new ship.

And did I misread your tone, or are you trolling for a fracas? This is all personal preference and opinion and I am tired of it degenerating into a p*****g contest. That's why I avoided the board for about two months.
 
Trolling isn't my intent. My apologies of it sounded that way. I do get annoyed at fans (like the one in the OP) who blindly level the same tired arguments that could be leveled at any of the Star Trek films and most of American cinema of the last 20 years for that matter.

You do make a good point about the amount of damage, but I don't know that the damage excuse would wash as she took comparable damage in TMP and more damage in TWoK with little signifigant cosmetic change (Not that there was time to make chages between II & III).
 
Hollywood wants money

You could have stopped right there, and your point would have been made.

That said, while I also had my problems with 2009's story logic, I didn't hate the movie and don't think JJ ruined Star Trek anymore than I thought Rick Berman and Brannon Braga did.
 
The brewery debate again...my apologies for starting that one running. Look, folks, if you liked the look of the engine room, then good for you. My complaint, voiced in plenty of other threads, is that - to me - it looked like exactly what it was: a brewery. I've worked in a brewery, so I recognized it as such immediately and it slammed me back to the 21st century, destroying my willing suspension of disbelief. They could have used the engine room of the liberty ship Jeremiah P O'Brien for much the same effect, and it would have resulted in the same response from those who know what a steam engineering plant looks like.

I really hope they build a decent set this outing rather than reusing the brewery.

Thing is I don't care what the frak it looks like. I know a lot of people are into their ship pron, with their pulsating nacelles and the constant measuring of size. That's cool. But really the engine room could look like a MacDonalds and I'd be fine about it.
 
...
I really hope they build a decent set this outing rather than reusing the brewery.

Thing is I don't care what the frak it looks like. I know a lot of people are into their ship pron, with their pulsating nacelles and the constant measuring of size. That's cool. But really the engine room could look like a MacDonalds and I'd be fine about it.

I agree up to a point, but I don't buy your McDonalds analogy, though it would make SF films a lot cheaper to make. :)

I never saw the infamous concrete in the Kelvin for example (God knows how many times you have to watch it to spot that sort of thing!). But when you see something that you either know what it really is, or just blatantly doesn't belong, it can be jarring. For me it was those stainless steel vats complete with drainage caps and chains!
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top