*Applause* If it's a good movie without the cop out then it doesn't need the cop out.
Crisis on Infinite Treks???
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*Applause* If it's a good movie without the cop out then it doesn't need the cop out.
I'm part of the "change whatever-the-hell-you-want" group and I think they do need to address it. It doesn't need to be a complicated or even particularly cogent explanation; it's fiction after all, but for the sake of the narrative, it needs to be done.
I'm talking about the experience of reading it as a series. I found it to be great. If you didn't, you didn't. It's all the same.
Oh. Well, in that case yes, I did think CoIE was great. Read it all in one sitting in a bar when I was in college.
Exactly so. Why should the contentious legacy of the thing matter more to you than your own experience? It shouldn't, IMAO, and it doesn't to me.
On the time travel story. Everyone is assuming Spock is time traveling to fix it, I thought he was time traveling in pursuit of Nero, not after the fact. Yes, I understand how this work. But there is a first time for any of these time travel paradoxes, so I figured this was that first and Spock was trying to keep damage to a minimal.
I'm talking about the experience of reading it as a series. I found it to be great. If you didn't, you didn't. It's all the same.
Oh. Well, in that case yes, I did think CoIE was great. Read it all in one sitting in a bar when I was in college.
Exactly so. Why should the contentious legacy of the thing matter more to you than your own experience?
Well, as I said, the only real gripe that I have is that every time DC tries to once and for all *fix* things, it never works. CoIE was supposed to fix everything. It didn't work, so they had Zero Hour. *That* apparently didn't work, so they gave us Infinite Crisis. And lo and behold, that didn't work either, so now we've got Final Crisis. Where does it all end? Is there no point at which DC will say that it's OVER?
Probably not. I pick up comics from time to time and rarely try to fit them into their "Universe" or ongoing storylines so I'm not as troubled by it as some. The closest I get to following any kind of continuity is the Geoff Johns-era resurgence of "Green Lantern" and those books take place almost within their own "universe" IMAO despite sharing characters and events with the rest of DC.
And it's probably the only one that ultimately matters. As I was reading it I thought COIE was hackneyed, contrived and full of bad melodrama. Plus the art was awful.
Actually, if an in-continuity reboot is in fact what occurs, I don't think we can really say that it was the primary reason for the time travel story. I have to admit, I thought the whole time travel idea was goofy, and wondered why they couldn't do a straight story, whether it was a true reboot or inside of continuity. But I don't see Abrams and Co saying "We need to reboot Star Trek, but we need to do it inside of continuity so that the fans wont be offended. So lets come up with a convincing time travel story" Abrams already knows that a good number of fans are going to show up, unless its complete and total nonsense. It's not about maintaining the fans you have (because you only need to throw them a few bones), but attracting the new fans you don't have. It's like politics. Democrats and Republicans, unless they screw up big time, are always going to have certain demographics in the bag. But if you can get the swing voters, that's what counts.
So a convoluted time travel story just to limit continuity issues among hardcore fans doesn't make too much sense to me. What makes sense is that time travel is being used because time travel is ALWAYS used, and a divergent timeline is just a bonus, if that's what is going to happen.
To use a political reference, maybe XI is sort of a Sarah Palin. Conservative enough to shore up the party base, different enough to perhaps attract others.
And please everyone, Palin is just an example. We don't need to carry it out any further and compare XI to what actually ended up happening with Palin
I'm not sure what you mean by time travel is always used - in ten movies, it's been used twice, and in over 400 episodes of the various Trek series it's been used maybe 10% of the time. There's certainly nothing inherent in time travel that requires its use.
I think that they probably sat down and said - how can we do this new and bridge it to the existing Trek? And they said let's have a cameo and let's use Nimoy because Shatner's a giant pain in the ass and will bug us for more screentime. Somewhere along the line someone pointed out that they had to make a call on the whole reboot issue. Then along came the time travel story that both allows for a cameo and gives them an out on the existing continutiy. Whether the "out on existing continuity" or "time travel" came first - who knows? And what difference does it make?
The point, for me, is the contortions being done to hook it to existing Trek while also overwriting what has come before. It's called having your cake and eating it too - trying to attract new audiences and appease old ones at the same time. I understand their logic, but I hate to see a story bent to fit such things. I would be much more confident of this project if someone had come up with a good story first and then said - wow, that's so good we really could revive Star Trek, rather than - hey, we need to revive Star Trek 'cause it's a cash cow and how can we do that to make sure it brings in as much cash (has the biggest audience) as is possible? Let's write this story!
One thing to keep in mind--Paramount approached Abrams, not the other way around. What was Paramount's mandate? Did they require that Abrams and his production team include some sort of linkage to the rest of the franchise (probably not, but who knows)? Maybe Abrams and co. thought they could, without satisfying everyone, satisfy enough existing fans (those who, like me, don't care too much about canon) and non-fans with the "split down the middle" approach (not anticipating the noisy backlash of "purists"--though I think such "backlash" is not nearly as important or noticeable as the "purists" like to imagine). Or maybe we should take them at their word when they say they really wanted Nimoy--and the best way, to them, to include Nimoy and a young cast was to have a time travel element.
What I meant by time travel being always used is that it's a frequent feature of not just Star Trek, but science fiction in general. But specifically regarding Trek, twice in ten movies is kind of a lot in my opinion.
But, I definately could see a conversation happening between the writers/producers, etc. on how to bridge it with the existing canon, even more so if it was a Paramount mandate. I just don't think that they would make that decision primarily to please fans.
But, I definately could see a conversation happening between the writers/producers, etc. on how to bridge it with the existing canon, even more so if it was a Paramount mandate. I just don't think that they would make that decision primarily to please fans.
It was a great series. The problem is that they never really enforced the new continuity... so the problems it was supposed to resolve were simply replaced by new ones.
Nope. You're talking about what it achieved or didn't in terms of continuity. I'm talking about the experience of reading it as a series. I found it to be great. If you didn't, you didn't. It's all the same.
You've got to have continuity for storytelling to work. You can play with "Elseworlds" concepts, but the audience has to know what they're seeing.
And because of the tendency to lose track of what's "really" in-continuity, they keep getting things screwed up. The latest time, I THINK they may have finally fixed it... but since I've stopped reading these things ("52" was what I decided to make my "bookend" series to wrap up my comic-book-reading era), I no longer feel any stake in it. When Ted Kord died, Max Lord was made into a villain and then killed, and Vic Sage died of cancer... that pretty much sealed it for me. The new "DC universe" is fine, but it's not MY "DC Universe" anymore, and I no longer have any interest in following it.
wHY
True, but in my opinion (and perhaps only in my opinion), that's a lot. Ten is not a large number of movies to use the same main plot device in. It's like having two out of ten movies in which someone's half brother takes over the ship, or two out of ten movies in which some vast intersteller empire is on the edge of collapse. And don't get me wrong, I didn't slap my head when FC came out and say "Time travel AGAIN?" But it seems that time travel is a pretty handy tool to be used by the writers in Star Trek.
Because apparently, JJ Abrams has said that he's not making a movie for Star Trek fans, he's making a movie for fans of movies, or something to that effect. So I don't think he contorted the story to please Star Trek fans, because like I believe you said, it's not even necessary. I could of course be wrong, but those are my thoughts.
Apologies for the previous fragment.
Good Will Riker
Admiral
I am all for the "Crisis on Infinite Treks" idea.
After all, if J.J. Abrams wants to re-introduce Khan Noonien Singh in the future, there is no way he can follow the events of TOS's "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to the letter.
Which is like redoing the Joker's origins in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, as opposed to how Tim Burton did it for Batman (1989).
As long as they get the basic details right, I am all for it!
After all, if J.J. Abrams wants to re-introduce Khan Noonien Singh in the future, there is no way he can follow the events of TOS's "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to the letter.
Which is like redoing the Joker's origins in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, as opposed to how Tim Burton did it for Batman (1989).
As long as they get the basic details right, I am all for it!
Um... do you think that they "redid the origin" in "The Dark Knight?"I am all for the "Crisis on Infinite Treks" idea.
After all, if J.J. Abrams wants to re-introduce Khan Noonien Singh in the future, there is no way he can follow the events of TOS's "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to the letter.
Which is like redoing the Joker's origins in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, as opposed to how Tim Burton did it for Batman (1989).
As long as they get the basic details right, I am all for it!
All they did was ignored the made-up "Jack Napier" bit from Burton's crap-fest (IMHO, of course) and took it back to who the character was always supposed to be.
They didn't give him a new origin. Like has been the case in the books for decades, he simply makes up a new "origin" every time he tells it. And (in the books) he has no idea which, if any, might be true.
Which origin story from "TDK" did you think was the "real" one?
Crisis on Infinite Treks
Isn't that what David Mack is doing in Star Trek: Destiny
Sorry I've been wanting to do that since some of the plot details for Destiny came out.
Isn't that what David Mack is doing in Star Trek: Destiny
Sorry I've been wanting to do that since some of the plot details for Destiny came out.
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