Changing ONE thing about the TOS movies...

[Qonundrum]

That would be hilarious. Mr Adventure as a bored museum security guard, ripe for defeat in his red shirt...... the whole scheme to steal the ship would have been different, and comedic, and awesomely 80s.

Enterprise as a museum piece would be interesting, but might be seen the wrong way. Especially if they did make a 1701-A in 1979 and left the original 1701 as a lifesize museum where the crew would have to remove the velvet ropes and all as well as fetch compatible lithium and so on. That'd almost be a movie in of itself. Plus, TMP did establish it's the same ship but a major refit so III had to stand as it were. It doesn't not work...

As for comedy, it's the other way around for me. Comedy is the cancer that killed the franchise, especially during the 1990s.

STIV had it and was a hit given its forcing the crew into modern day Earth. "Fish out of water" works. Some humor has dated but the story is still more or less watchable. But it started the trend...

The rot really starts when the demand for comedy was rolled into STV, where the fish out of water trope no longer begins to hold up (much less be applied because they're back in their proverbial stream) and the crewmembers are used as joke fodder and little more. At least Kirk was used as the butt of jokes as well, it'd be worse if he hadn't. Note that STV's best scenes are played out utterly seriously too... The comedy sticks around and hampers STVI, with Uhura getting by far the worst treatment.

TNG time: People laugh at "Oh ****!" in that comedynonfest of VII only because it's a shock, not because it's actually thoughtful comedy. Do I need to mention Captain Stewart Wimpy's "by Tuesday" routine, which was played out even before the first instance was uttered? VIII falls flat with its comedy despite edging back into "fish out of water" but making the mistake of mixing comedy with a more dire and palpable situation than "The whales, what if". But the plot is so cliche and it's the direction, not the pee joke and title reference joke that keep the movie afloat. IX holds back on the comedy, but the problem is the script is laughable and I've not mentioned that stupid singalong yet. With X they all finally realize the comedy act diluted the series' credibility. But there's too much in that script that's even more laughably bad and even the horror and grim aspects feels a bit forced. Then there's the bottomless pit, which must have been the worst joke of them all...

Then come the Dyn-o-mite JJ Kelvin reboots, which are more throwaway comedyfests, using superficial stereotype traits and generally lacking the sort of depth that good Trek is known for...

But some people like comedy. Others, not so much. For me, anyway, the occasional joke that flows with the plot and not aimed at or hinted at or nudged/winked to the audience (e.g. McCoy vs Spock a zillion times in TOS) just works best as, to me, it's the most tactful. YMMV... The debate will never end.

 

[STEPhon IT]

One small thing I think would be nice is to involve the TOS Klingons in The Undiscovered Country somehow. I like it perfectly fine how it is, but a part of me would like to see a contrast between Kirk being wheeled out vs Kor, Koloth and Kang, perhaps intimating that they're uneasy allies in trying to put aside past differences and save the conference (unlike Chang or the Federation cronies, trying to sabotage it).

You could even make the link explicit. The Enterprise crew, including Kirk, find themselves scared of what the future brings. The Klingon Trio likewise. But they find their heads beginning to overpower their hearts as the movie develops. Maybe the trio help Kirk and Bones escape Rura Penthe.

Another way would have Nimoy's vision by having Kirk be exiled on a Klingon planet and he happened to meet at least one of those old villains. Once a villain now an educator, making Kirk understand Klingons are people too, and not all think like the government.

 

[Phoenix219]

sounds preferable to what was done. youd think the writers would've considered something more like a classic ship battle finale with Kirk on 'his' Ent B and Picard on Ent D in a battle against the Klingons. ok maybe they felt it had already been done to perfection at the end of Yesterdays Enterprise but its not like TMP and TVH hadn't mined episodes/sequences to do big for the cinema screen.

So something like at some point the Ent D encounters the Ent B that has just broken free out the nexus (they think its like a day/week but its 78 years Cause&Effect style) then at the end they battle the Klingons (probably have to be more than 1 ship YE style) Soran coudve beamed down to the planet followed by Picard and played out similar way with the nexus approaching , Picard outwits Soran (maybe Picard briefly ends up in the nexus but no Guinan or Kirk/logcabin/horseshow/burial - Kirk be on the Ent B/D destruction/sacrifice etc) then beams back up to Ent D watches Kirk die (who's just saved the D) or maybe not and Kirk stays alive (having Kirk stay alive in the 24th century would've probably been just as shocking as his death. and lent Kirk a Buck Rogers type element)

I agree with every word of this. There was no reason not to do "Yesterday's Enterprise" over again, not after TMP (Changling), TWOK (Space Seed), TVH (too many to count), TFF (Way to Eden). They could have bookended the series in that way - completely paralleling Kirk's taking the "B" the same way he got the "refit" - but with all the character growth from the movie series. He stole it from Decker; He was gracefully given it by Harriman. They could have paralleled the beginning of TMP more closely. He is firmly in the center seat by the time the Nexus hits; not running around down in the torpedo bay.

Having Kirk be a legacy character, fish out of water, Buck Rogers type for the 24th/25th century would have been *perfect.*

I've always said the TNG movies needed to be a combination of the whole universe, and go for bigger, more epic stories, and the ability to mix and match crewmembers. This would have put Kirk and Spock both alive and viable in the TNG timeframe.

Then he and Nimoy would have both been around in '09.... and so on.

EDIT. They could have closely paralleled the approach of v'ger with the approach of the Nexus, right down to Klingons intercepting it and an epsilon station of some sort. That would have been an interesting way to bring some TOS Klingons into the future as well. It should have been a love letter to both the original series and the new generation - not killing one to prop up the other.

 

[Falconer]

Probably the biggest thing that bugs me about the TOS movies is that they go back to earth too much. I’d prefer if the only time we saw earth was in TVH.