Worf sings a lot yet he looks horrified at the idea of singing in this scene.
maybe he hates british opera in general, or gilbert and sullivan specifically, and the "new personnel" line is a deflection
My impression of Piller's book was that he had some major blind spots and was not good at judging his own work.
Yes, I think he's honest about that. It didn't help that the people critiquing and offering suggestions were Berman and Stewart, who are not writers.
On the show they had the writers' room and would often break stories together.
I can oddly hear Worf saying, “I do not sing human musicals… except perhaps Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
I skimmed through Fade In last night. We can say that Insurrection had too many cooks -- and it does -- but there's also a tension that Piller approaches and skirts around that is never really resolved, and that tension is over who this movie is for.
The studio wants "the whale movie." They want a film that reaches outside of the Star Trek box into the mainstream, a film for people who maybe even haven't seen Star Trek. And Stewart looks at the things Piller wants to do in the script to achieve that and says, "No, the television series already addressed that. There's no need for that here. I don't want Picard to be thoughtful. The characters don't need to be defined. The audience already knows this stuff. Let's do something new."
And both viewpoints have merit.
I get Piller's POV. He didn't feel that Generations and First Contact were good at introducing and definind the characters. I would agree with him. These films take no time to introduce anything. First Contact doesn't even bother to introduce the new ship. The films assume a level of knowledge on the audience's part that isn't necessarily there. I've said before, I can't imagine how a non-fan would begin to understand Generations, and First Contact is not any better.
I also get Stewart's POV. This is the third film in a franchise. Treating it structurally like the first, spending time on character and setting as though audiences didn't know these things, would be a waste of time to the core audience that's likely to see the film. And Stewart didn't want to play beats in Picard -- the thoughtful, introspective hero who applies a lifetime of knowledge and experience to the problem -- that he'd done on television over 100 times before.
I'm more sympathetic to the Piller/Berman/Studio POV. The first two TNG films were films made for fans, and, to riff on a Stan Lee quote, every Star Trek film is going to be someone's first Star Trek film. If you want to get outside of the Star Trek box, you need to make a film that's new viewer friendly.
I don't understand why Stewart thinks Picard would be so different (much more gung-ho) from the character he played on television, though. It's only been four years in real time and in-universe time. If you want a different Picard, show, don't tell. More importantly, I don't think it makes sense from an acting standpoint. Stewart's a Shakespearean actor. The words on the page were written four hundred years ago. Actors bring their ideas about Shakespeare's characters to the text in their performance. They don't deform the text to get their desired outcome. And Stewart's memos suggest an actor who wants the text deformed.
I also don't get why Stewart fucking hates the Romulans, but oh does he ever.
It's frustrating as a fan to read through passages and think, "This film only exists because no one was willing to ask 'Why are we doing this?'" It was made because all of the stakeholders wanted to make a Star Trek movie. That works for other film series, like James Bond, but I'm not sure it does for Star Trek. The lack of introspection on anyone's fault really stands out.
I'm now imagining Worf belting out "The Music of the Night."
I’m picturing “The Beauty Underneath.”I skimmed through Fade In last night. We can say that Insurrection had too many cooks -- and it does -- but there's also a tension that Piller approaches and skirts around that is never really resolved, and that tension is over who this movie is for.
The studio wants "the whale movie." They want a film that reaches outside of the Star Trek box into the mainstream, a film for people who maybe even haven't seen Star Trek. And Stewart looks at the things Piller wants to do in the script to achieve that and says, "No, the television series already addressed that. There's no need for that here. I don't want Picard to be thoughtful. The characters don't need to be defined. The audience already knows this stuff. Let's do something new."
And both viewpoints have merit.
I get Piller's POV. He didn't feel that Generations and First Contact were good at introducing and definind the characters. I would agree with him. These films take no time to introduce anything. First Contact doesn't even bother to introduce the new ship. The films assume a level of knowledge on the audience's part that isn't necessarily there. I've said before, I can't imagine how a non-fan would begin to understand Generations, and First Contact is not any better.
I also get Stewart's POV. This is the third film in a franchise. Treating it structurally like the first, spending time on character and setting as though audiences didn't know these things, would be a waste of time to the core audience that's likely to see the film. And Stewart didn't want to play beats in Picard -- the thoughtful, introspective hero who applies a lifetime of knowledge and experience to the problem -- that he'd done on television over 100 times before.
I'm more sympathetic to the Piller/Berman/Studio POV. The first two TNG films were films made for fans, and, to riff on a Stan Lee quote, every Star Trek film is going to be someone's first Star Trek film. If you want to get outside of the Star Trek box, you need to make a film that's new viewer friendly.
I don't understand why Stewart thinks Picard would be so different (much more gung-ho) from the character he played on television, though. It's only been four years in real time and in-universe time. If you want a different Picard, show, don't tell. More importantly, I don't think it makes sense from an acting standpoint. Stewart's a Shakespearean actor. The words on the page were written four hundred years ago. Actors bring their ideas about Shakespeare's characters to the text in their performance. They don't deform the text to get their desired outcome. And Stewart's memos suggest an actor who wants the text deformed.
I also don't get why Stewart fucking hates the Romulans, but oh does he ever.
It's frustrating as a fan to read through passages and think, "This film only exists because no one was willing to ask 'Why are we doing this?'" It was made because all of the stakeholders wanted to make a Star Trek movie. That works for other film series, like James Bond, but I'm not sure it does for Star Trek. The lack of introspection on anyone's fault really stands out.
I'm now imagining Worf belting out "The Music of the Night."
Thank you all for sharing summaries of the various drafts.
The fountain of youth was always a stupid idea.
However, a malfunctioning data / heart of darkness movie would have been fascinating
Given actors like meatier roles than a romcom , I would have thought stewart and spiner would have jumped at the chance to do some “acting” ( have to say that in a team America world police voice)
The fountain of youth was always a stupid idea.
However, a malfunctioning data / heart of darkness movie would have been fascinating
Given actors like meatier roles than a romcom , I would have thought stewart and spiner would have jumped at the chance to do some “acting” ( have to say that in a team America world police voice)
I prefer the original drafts of INS, and what we got was a mess, but INS definitely has a plus in trying to be come across as more intellectual and less actionshlock, combined with not involving Earth as a frigging focal point for "muh draaaaaaaaaaama". This is still Star Trek, where the goal is to sell us a bigger universe using the characters as anchors in the otherwise realm of the unknown where the real excitements and terrors await. It's not like Trek hadn't done that before or whose best episodes gravitated down that path or anything.
Botched or not, INS has some ideas that still elevate it above action shlock, even if it succumbs to it with a ridiculous combat scene at the end that feels like a cheap "Die Hard" parody with the cliché one-liners used. Complete with dumb self-destruct button that was royally parodied in "Spaceballs" and would be again in "Galaxy Quest".
But, of the four, GEN still had the best themes played right, even if there were some logistical inconsistencies. Difference is, that film was rushed when those succeeding it were not.
I should get to rewatching this in the near-future. Mind you, it's going to be difficult to overlook the Gilbert & Sullivan belch-along contest.. and the joystick was cute. For localized, short-term maneuvering not requiring pinpoint precise mathematics for destination or fine-tuned turning, it does have a certain simplicity. Still easier to explain that than the Argo* at any rate.
For more on the original ideas for INS,
* the vehicle, certainly, but maybe for the corn starch too beyond use as a soup thickening agent
Botched or not, INS has some ideas that still elevate it above action shlock, even if it succumbs to it with a ridiculous combat scene at the end that feels like a cheap "Die Hard" parody with the cliché one-liners used. Complete with dumb self-destruct button that was royally parodied in "Spaceballs" and would be again in "Galaxy Quest".
But, of the four, GEN still had the best themes played right, even if there were some logistical inconsistencies. Difference is, that film was rushed when those succeeding it were not.
I should get to rewatching this in the near-future. Mind you, it's going to be difficult to overlook the Gilbert & Sullivan belch-along contest.. and the joystick was cute. For localized, short-term maneuvering not requiring pinpoint precise mathematics for destination or fine-tuned turning, it does have a certain simplicity. Still easier to explain that than the Argo* at any rate.
For more on the original ideas for INS,
* the vehicle, certainly, but maybe for the corn starch too beyond use as a soup thickening agent
I was late to the party but I'm not going to look up the thread and delete my video links above
^^this
The only time it worked was in TOS's "The Omega Glory", a story with mixed bags of dialogue but the explanation for the youth was brilliant. In INS, it's just treknobabble magic and all for naught as NEM quickly shows Geordi with the contacts lenses again. Oops.
^^this
^^this
The Anij romance subplot felt like padding, didn't go anywhere, and there'd be no sequel or spinoff just focusing on Picard's year-long tryst anyhow.
You haven't heard Phantom of the Opera til youve heard it in the original klingon
And that's what Patrick Stewart liked.
Berman didn't want to pitch it to him, because "no actor wants to hear that they're old" (paraphrasing how Piller remembers it in Fade In), and when Stewart vehemently shot down what Berman and Piller sold the studio on, Berman pitched the "fountain of youth" story and Stewart was enthusiastic about it.
I liked it for the scene were Geordi sees the sunrise with normal eyes. Given what we know about the lasting effects on Beverly from Picard -- the effect of the Ba'ku planet made her fertile again -- I'm unclear why Geordi lost his natural sight again. If the Ba'ku effect healed whatever was wrong with his eyes/nerves/visual cortex, why would he lose it?
And it would've made Nemesis a touch cheaper without the SFX.
Berman should've been all on that!
Wait. Is that the one about horny trains?How about “Starlight Express”?
I think calling it "intellectual" is very generous, but it does have a moral aspect to it, which actually makes it pretty unique among Trek movies. And it doesn't have a universe-scale threat like the last movie, which was deliberate. You can't top the Borg, so you shouldn't try.
But that's why it comes across as rather small-scale and low stakes. I think they made the stakes a bit too small - nearly thirty years on people still question whether 600 people should deny benefits to millions, which means the moral dilemma was insufficiently developed. There's also the fact that they weren't actually native to the planet which complicates things.
Picard famously took precisely the opposite view in TNG on a couple of occasions, notably Journey's End. This entire aspect, on which the plot hinges, just doesn't work strongly enough.
Clearly the number was 600 because of budgetary limitations - they could only afford so many extras and the plot contrivances meant they all had to fit inside one small ship.
Because, IMO, they ignore the actual storyline and view the dilemma as a 'one or the other' situation. It wasn't one. They could leave the Ba'ku alone and still benefit without strip-mining the planet.
How/why does that complicate things?
True.Especially with loose connections mentioned or retconned from TBOBW. Amusingly, way too many Trek movies try to re-use if not one-up on the ol' chestnut of "revenge". Indeed, "Beyond" felt a lot like "Into Darkness", but done better. Not to mention the 2009 flick also had Nero destroying Rom
TSFS eschewed trying to do a big bad trying to destroy the galaxy too, but sewing the seeds for something more satisfying later should a sequel come to pass (which VI proves, IMHO.)
The funny thing is, TVH is arguably a revenge flick - though with only superficial reasons and the probe is just wanting to hear whales whose song somehow traversed the distances of space, so the owners of the probe can't be too far distant out in the galaxy and - based on the speed of sound since there's no bit of unusual electronic (what one would expect) or bio-engineering (uh-huh, implanted by Harry's magic wand too) where they came to Earth to give one species of whale the ability to transmit recipes for plankton pudding into outer space,.so they come back because (reasons, probably) to drain the oceans to try to find them and cause far more problems because Laboon and Keiko there weren't tooting. In one way, all sci-fi is "camp" ("ridiculous"), but then there's "campy" (designed for over-exaggerated, over the top, and/or cheap laughs) and while something can be both, . Then again, AI also just told me, among other things, that sci-fi isn't always camp and is more often "However, many sci-fi stories are completely serious, realistic, or even terrifying", which should put out the fire for that way-over-yonder tangential digression of an aside and oft-mistaken belief that all sci-fi is camp to begin with. But before I really digress...
Low stakes can be made to work, as I just had about a dozen or so Doctor Who stories pop into my mind, as well as the bulk of the 1970s "The Incredible Hulk" series about some guy in oodles of small situations getting angry all the time and in a show that could feel cinematic too, but INS's big problem is lacking grounding and consistency, some of which lead to too-glaring plot holes and contrivances that render it unsatisfying. Building a $75M set means nothing if the underlying plot needing it is total pants, filled instead with little more than empty spectacle. The movie was chucking in more and more bits of spectacle, but not meshing them in a way that made consistent narrative sense. The biggie is, of course, "the needs of the many" parallel where TNG is now being utterly apocryphal. And for so few people, who weren't supposed to be there in the first place. On a big-ass planet that can suppo-- it's just too easy to nitpick the film and I just thought of three more doozies of which I'm certain one was never brought up before, but we're supposed to think of the Baku as the good faction (in ways, perhaps, others not as much, but the story doesn't do much with it all either when I might argue doing so could have given it more depth and engagement with these factions as opposed to "just gawk at how hawt they are"), but the flick was just bad. Even the direction, which was solid, couldn't save it.
All that said, overstuffed or not, INS does put in a ton of stuff to think about.
^^this
It's not the first time that TNG was antithetical to previous TNG, or even TOS* for that matter. True, sometimes one has to nudge and bypass a little continuity if the new ideas are that much stronger.. Also, why did Plinkett's review of INS just cross my mind?
* Data is another, but he's okay because he's Questor and all those "icky" (not my word) TOS stories about robots and 'puters being "bad" (not my phrase) were probably mentally decanonized by someone anyhow, but still not necessary since Data is a strong character that worked quite well
True. But sci-fi has managed to give weight to small numbers before to hide the limitations. The number in this flick just adds fuel to the notion that there needed to be another draft... (of a movie that already went through a ton of drafts, somehow ending up worse as a result.)
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