How can you praise this movie and bash VOY, ENT and Nemesis?

[Trekker4747]

Easy:

Voyager was bland and blantantly ripped off TNG every chance it could and had ZERO internal consistancy or adherence to its own premise. How many shuttles did they destroy and how many shuttles are inside of a ship that small? None of the characters -shy of The Doctor and Seven- were interesting. Janeway was bordeline psychotic, Chakotay was a wooden plank of dull, Torres was attractive and ANGRY!!!!; Neelix you wanted to punch, repeatedly, with a Klingon death stick; Tom was a douche, and there was that one guy. What was his name? He was kind of just... there.

Enterprise was dull, slow, and didn't take full advantage of it's premise. It didn't get interesting or a level of "good" until the last season.

Nemesis was... feh. For what was likely to be the last TNG outing it could've been much, much more. MELTING ROMULAN FACES OOOOOOO. DIFFERENT! :yawn: Retarded Data we happened to find on planet of overesposed film!!! OOOOOO. Humanity and emotional ties!!! :yawn: It was movie that wanted to be more than it was and just had a... "quality" to it.

ST09 had me into it, excited, interested and thirlled. Nemesis did not.

Voygaer some of it I can... "stand" it had its moments. Enterprise I liked okay enough to watch it its full run. Nemesis was just plain dull.

 

[Vigilance]

Wait, you want to say people didn't complain about those things? What did they complain about then?
And like I said, i'm saying that they are praising the movie IN SPITE of the very same things Trek got bogged down earlier. I'm just not seeing anything new, 'reinvigorating' in the movie.

I am saying you wrote a lengthy rant complaining about people who hated Enterprise for the very reasons they praise this movie.

Back it up.

Let's make it easy.

Find ONE EXAMPLE of a poster complaining about something in Enterprise or Voyager and praising this movie for that very reason.

You can do that right?

 

[neozeks]

Who exactly is the "people" in this scenario? I would image people who like the movie or hate the movie have all sorts of variety of opinions on the Trek shows. For example I liked the movie and I feel TOS and Ds9 were the best. I also like Voyager and Enterprise better than I do TNG. Janeways is my second favorite captain behind Kirk and I think Ds9's second season was it's best. Most Ds9 fans proably don't even like the second season and most Ds9 fans proably won't admit they liked Janeway better than Sisko, even if they do like Janeway better.

I guess what I am saying is people aren't cliches. People are going to have a variety of opinions on trek and you can't really judge those opinions based on their opinion of the movie.

Jason

By people i mean the audience and the critics in general. VOY, ENT and NEM obviously had lower ratings than the earlier productions, and i'm pretty sure they were recieved more negatively than previous incarnations. Not many people use DS9 or FC as an example why earlier Trek needed rebooting, but many will use ENT or NEM. And this movie is much closer to the latter than to the former.

^Except for maybe that fact that it's fun.

Yeah, fun, but the simplest form of fun. Big booms, pretty actors, action, action. The problem is it was ONLY fun and in a very generic way.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Well, i can't name names, it's just the general feeling you get when you read people's comments. And i'm not saying they loved the movie because of it, i'm puzzled they were ready to excuse the very same same failings.

I managed to find plenty to like in VOY, NEM and ENT, but they all had hundreds of missed opportunities.

VOY promised big things: the other side of the galaxy, and two rival crews, torn apart and slammed together into one. The first enemy aliens we met in VOY were the Kazon, who looked rather like Klingons on a bad hair day. And the Maquis mostly played happy families with Janeway's people from Episode #2. And how stupid to train the alien with the nine year lifespan to be the new nurse on a 70 year journey. All downhill from there, with a spike of interest from the arrival of Seven of Nine. It was too familiar, and not different enough.

NEM promised big things. Then they killed off my favourite character, and left us with a brain-damaged, physically-identical duplicate of an actor who'd already said he was done with the character. It was all very familiar, what with Picard having a young duplicate with a blood disorder - which had been an interesting episode of the seventh season already - and not to mention that B-4's story had kinda already been done several times with Lore and Lal.

ENT had an opening list of credits that read like an ensemble show, but the supporting cast (Hoshi, Travis, esp.) often had less lines than Uhura and Chapel in TOS. Heck, often they had less lines than the two-line extras! The stories, esp. in Season Two, were tiresome. Things usually only got really good whenever Shran walked into an episode.

JJ's ST was two hours of pure entertainment: well cast, talented, likeable actors, fantastic sets and SPFX, lots of nostalgia and easter eggs for longtime fans, including particiption from Nimoy and Barrett, and a whole new sandbox to play in that is familiar but different.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

This movie doesn't compare at all to Voyager, which I love, or even to Enterprise, which is just ok as a sci-fi series. Basically, Voyager and somewhat Enterprise, use Sci-fi allegory to study social and philosophical question pertaining the human nature of our time. Which is something both TOS and TNG did. But its something this new movie didn't do.

Its comparable to Nemesis since this movie tried to be an action movie, but was lacking a bit. NuTrek was much better in that department and had good humor.

 

[archeryguy1701]

^Except for maybe that fact that it's fun.

Yeah, fun, but the simplest form of fun. Big booms, pretty actors, action, action. The problem is it was ONLY fun and in a very generic way.

Does it matter? Fun and entertaining to me is fun and entertaining, no matter how you add it up. If a movie isn't going to be fun or if it isn't going to be entertaining, then what's the point? Sure, there are different forms of fun, but they're still fun and one form doesn't have a specific step up over any other form. I think that Trek XI did what it did very well. Sure it wasn't the most intellectual movie this year, but that's certainly not a strike against it in my book.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The problem is it was ONLY fun and in a very generic way.

No, it was also nostalgic, visually interesting, and - with the destruction of Vulcan - sets up a future that, while familiar, is once again unpredictable, since we do not know the futures of these characters any more.

 

[neozeks]

Easy:

Voyager was bland and blantantly ripped off TNG every chance it could and had ZERO internal consistancy or adherence to its own premise. How many shuttles did they destroy and how many shuttles are inside of a ship that small? None of the characters -shy of The Doctor and Seven- were interesting. Janeway was bordeline psychotic, Chakotay was a wooden plank of dull, Torres was attractive and ANGRY!!!!; Neelix you wanted to punch, repeatedly, with a Klingon death stick; Tom was a douche, and there was that one guy. What was his name? He was kind of just... there.

Enterprise was dull, slow, and didn't take full advantage of it's premise. It didn't get interesting or a level of "good" until the last season.

Nemesis was... feh. For what was likely to be the last TNG outing it could've been much, much more. MELTING ROMULAN FACES OOOOOOO. DIFFERENT! :yawn: Retarded Data we happened to find on planet of overesposed film!!! OOOOOO. Humanity and emotional ties!!! :yawn: It was movie that wanted to be more than it was and just had a... "quality" to it.

ST09 had me into it, excited, interested and thirlled. Nemesis did not.

But why, what's so different in St09 in comparison to Nemesis? And i mean a little more detailed, you gave detailed descriptions for everything except the new movie.

I am saying you wrote a lengthy rant complaining about people who hated Enterprise for the very reasons they praise this movie.

Back it up.

Let's make it easy.

Find ONE EXAMPLE of a poster complaining about something in Enterprise or Voyager and praising this movie for that very reason.

You can do that right?

One more time, i'm not saying anyone PRAISED those things in this movie! Just that people are, judging by the success of this movie, now ready to overlook the very same flaws.
And you really believe i can look through thousands of posts to find a specific example? Well, come to think of it, just look at the post above you. 'had ZERO internal consistancy or adherence to its own premise' for VOY - i think the same could be said for ST09 and yet it isn't a problem for this poster.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

This is a thing that totally puzzles me. People say the old timeline got stale and boring. They blame Voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis for killing the franchise. This movie is hailed as a reinvigoration, making Trek relevant again or somesuch. And yet, surprisingly, when i look at the movie what do i see? The same thing people were complaining about in VOY or ENT or NEM, only now it doesn't really matter cause it's, you know, fun!

You've inadvertently hit on something key here. Wait for it... When people find a movie or TV series "fun," they can easily overlook problems that they might otherwise consider more important in movies and TV series they find less fun.

When they made Vulcans arogant and unlikable it was bashed. Now the movie makes them out and out racists and it's fine.

Never understood this complaint myself. People keep holding up the Vulcans as this virtuous race when from what I've seen they have every bit as much potential to be assholes as humans do, from TOS on.

Voyager was bashed for the crew and the mood being too happy for a ship alone in the other side of the galaxy. Now, Vulcan is destroyed (i would say just for the shock factor), and yet by the end of the movie by the action of the charachters and the general atmosphere you couldn't tell a BSG-scale genocide just took place (ahem, 6 billion people, please!). Yes, we see Spock agonizing a bit (though to me seems it was more because of the death of his mother), but the rest, well, y'know it's sad and all but we can't ruin Kirk becoming captain.

Eh, was the level of happiness on Voyager a frequent complaint? There were some complaints about the two crews meshing together too quickly, complaints about a ship with no support being able to magically repair itself too easily, or the fact that they were supposed to be rushing home yet were almost always at impulse at the start of each episode even before the events of the teaser had appeared sometimes (not a big complaint, but I always found that funny). But happiness was never a big issue that I noticed, and there were episodes that focused on their being unhappy with their predicament on several occasions.

In dark times people often seek out heroes and heroic stories to give them hope and to see the good in bad. Surely you don't think people weren't still frequently happy during the worst of WWII for one example, or handed out medals and higher ranks by the dozen? That's when people need examples of the good in others the most.

People complained charachters on Voyager never changed. Well, Kirk jr doesn't really change either. No journey, no consequences for his actions (say, cheating), nothing, he's just destined to become The Captain.

Umm, the original Captain Kirk was given a commendation for original thinking for "cheating" on the Kobayashi Maru test, and that was without SAVING EARTH THE SAME DAY. People tend to overlook things like you making an obvious point (as in not trying to get away with it) about what you percieve to be an unfair test when you save the planet later that afternoon.

Kirk did grow as a character. At the beginning, he couldn't stand Spock or what he stood for, yet by the end he was adopting Spock's personal philosophy of logic and saw that their different styles and personalities worked better when used in a complimentary way rather than against each other.

Kirk offered rescue to the man who killed his father, many of his friends, destroyed Vulcan, and threatened Earth. How that can not be described as character growth from the arrogant punk at the start of the film is beyond me.

Technobbable - i was amazed to see some reviews praising it for getting rid of technobable - ahem, red matter? Transport in warp over how many light years pulled out of the hat? The drilling rig conveniently blocking transporters and coms?

Well, they simply called it "Red Matter." If they were overly obsessed with technobabble they would have called it a "Trans-Crimson Gravimetric Spherophasic Doomballoon."

Cliches? Whew, boy! Time travel? Check. Romulan villain (although we had one just in the last movie)? Sure. Pupil/mentor a la Skywalker/Obi Wan? Yes. Two guys beam through shields it seems and defeat 10 times the number of oponents? Yup. Oh, and there's a huge chasm in the middle of the ship for the evil guys to drop in. No railings, of course!

The pupil/mentor relationship is The Hero's Journey 101, and didn't remotely begin with Star Wars. You might as well get rid of half the adventure stories written since the dawn of literature.

They didn't beam through the shields. The whole point of coming up behind Titan was to beam aboard Nero's ship by surprise specifically to avoid them raising shields, which they didn't do until later.

Using Romulans again isn't a problem considering Klingons or Klingon ships were featured directly or indirectly in every one of the first seven films (I'm not counting Worf in First Contact onward). Romulans have been sorely underused, and sadly still are even after two movies in a row using them, but always with a caveat of some sort.

Time travel I could have done without, but they apparently felt it was necessary in this case because they wanted to toe the line between a full reboot and maintaining the old continuity because they were worried about appealing to a new audience while also keeping old fans.

Lack of railings over large pointless chasms is to scifi as baseball is to America. People in the future have better balance apparently.

Now, what exactly is then the improvement that this movie brings us? Better writing, original ideas? I don't really see them. Sure, it was fun, it had nice (though essentially pointless) nods to the originals, the actors were good. But, Voyager was also often fun, with lots of action. ENT had lots of nods to the 23rd and 24th century Treks. Nemesis had Patrick Stewart and Brent Spinner.

But this is where it all comes down to a subjective impression of the film versus other films and TV series. You can present the facts all you like, but in the end it's still going to come down to whether people liked something or not, and whether it was fun, and that you can't really quantify. You found Voyager fun, others didn't (I don't really dislike any of those shows/films by the way, even if I might criticize parts of them. Just FYI.). You didn't find this film more fun than Voyager, Enterprise, or Nemesis; others did. Obviously quite a few people found this film to be immensly enjoyable. It's as simple as that.

 

[The Wormhole]

Voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis were Star Trek, complete with its patented depth and complexity.

XI is a loud and obnoxious summer popcorn flick that's empty and lifeless.

 

[neozeks]

Here, Vigilance, another poster in this thread:

VOY promised big things: the other side of the galaxy, and two rival crews, torn apart and slammed together into one. The first enemy aliens we met in VOY were the Kazon, who looked rather like Klingons on a bad hair day. And the Maquis mostly played happy families with Janeway's people from Episode #2. And how stupid to train the alien with the nine year lifespan to be the new nurse on a 70 year journey. All downhill from there, with a spike of interest from the arrival of Seven of Nine. It was too familiar, and not different enough.

NEM promised big things. Then they killed off my favourite character, and left us with a brain-damaged, physically-identical duplicate of an actor who'd already said he was done with the character. It was all very familiar, what with Picard having a young duplicate with a blood disorder - which had been an interesting episode of the seventh season already - and not to mention that B-4's story had kinda already been done several times with Lore and Lal.

Just like a revenge craving lunatic destroying planets and many other things in this movie were familiar. What was original again?

 

[Jayson]

Who exactly is the "people" in this scenario? I would image people who like the movie or hate the movie have all sorts of variety of opinions on the Trek shows. For example I liked the movie and I feel TOS and Ds9 were the best. I also like Voyager and Enterprise better than I do TNG. Janeways is my second favorite captain behind Kirk and I think Ds9's second season was it's best. Most Ds9 fans proably don't even like the second season and most Ds9 fans proably won't admit they liked Janeway better than Sisko, even if they do like Janeway better.

I guess what I am saying is people aren't cliches. People are going to have a variety of opinions on trek and you can't really judge those opinions based on their opinion of the movie.

Jason

By people i mean the audience and the critics in general. VOY, ENT and NEM obviously had lower ratings than the earlier productions, and i'm pretty sure they were recieved more negatively than previous incarnations. Not many people use DS9 or FC as an example why earlier Trek needed rebooting, but many will use ENT or NEM. And this movie is much closer to the latter than to the former.

Ds9 had low ratings as well so you do got to consider Ds9 in the equation. Basically your asking why this movie was more successful than all the spin-offs and movies that came after TNG.

I simply think it boils down to the fact that people like the new versions of the TOS crew and the movie had a sense of fun to it. It didn't get bogged down in technobabble or politics. It was a nice fun adventure story. Berman trek could take itself to serious, always afraid to break the Roddenberry rules or look hokey. It forgot how to have fun. Another thing is that this movie works as a action movie for the most part. Action-adventure was not a strength of any of the 24th century shows. Even Ds9 wasn't great in this regards. Ds9 had some good ship battles and but for the most part Ds9 worked best when it was dealing with the characters doing something other than shooting things with phasers. All the modern Trek's were like this. The problem is action-adventure should have it's place in Trek. I want drama but when the action happens I don't want to fall asleep.

To me this movie sort of represents what Trek should be about. Fun characters,some dark moments or comments on the human condition so as the movie is more than just fluff and fun action scenes with a little comedy tossed in. Star Trek should never treated like a serious drama and it should never be treated like a mindless action-adventure serious. It should be a combination of both of those things IMO.

Jason

 

[Scotty]

Well, I've liked all the shows, so I'm safe.

I really loved Voyager. Voyager might not have lived up to is full potential, but it had a brilliant cast of characters played by superb actors, and it told some great stories written by fantastic writers. Enterprise, besides its third season, did nothing for me. Why? Because the writers didn't do anything new with the show and forgot about the characters. Enterprise was a hollow show. It's only purpose was to continue the franchise. The stories were weak and the characters one dimensional. THAT is the reason why I don't like Enterprise, and it is also the reason why I do like the new Trek movie. Star Trek is exciting, fresh and the writers have taken risks with the Trek universe.

 

[donners22]

I like them all.

 

[Sabataage]

To me its alway been about character, cool space ships and a sense of wonder. The new Star Trek has all three. As a person who grew up watching TNG with my brothers (we would carry out our blankets and pillows into the living room like it was a sleep over in our own home) sitting in font of our parents big wood panelled television set. On that show there was a lot top like: Data, Picard, Riker and Worf (and the other people). On DS9 there was Odo, O'Brien, and Worf (and some other people). On Voyager there was The Doctor, Paris and (much later) 7 O'9. On ENT there was Tucker (?) and... uh the old guy who once starred in Quantum Leap . Not to shit all over these shows... My point is, that for me, I became less and less insterested in each sequential series (and the cool ships, etc) because there were fewer and fewer people I really liked watching. They became homogenized and bland. In the Original Series there was Spock who was more human than he let on, Kirk who was clever and cocky, McCoy who hated everything, Scotty, a jovial nerd who loved his ship, Chekov who was just wierd and funny, Sulu who never lost his cool and Uhura, who answered the phone. There was a more stand out group of characters in the original than in any follow up. Going back to the original means recapturing what existed in that form that was missing in each successor. That diverse group of people, that sense of wonder and excitemnet.

 

[neozeks]

Eh, was the level of happiness on Voyager a frequent complaint? There were some complaints about the two crews meshing together too quickly, complaints about a ship with no support being able to magically repair itself too easily, or the fact that they were supposed to be rushing home yet were almost always at impulse at the start of each episode even before the events of the teaser had appeared sometimes (not a big complaint, but I always found that funny). But happiness was never a big issue that I noticed, and there were episodes that focused on their being unhappy with their predicament on several occasions.

Well, happy may be a bad word for it. Maybe, not dark enough or not affected enough by their situation, too 'clean'. You know, like it is sometimes said BSG was in a way what Voyager should have been.

In dark times people often seek out heroes and heroic stories to give them hope and to see the good in bad. Surely you don't think people weren't still frequently happy during the worst of WWII for one example, or handed out medals and higher ranks by the dozen? That's when people need examples of the good in others the most.

Sure, but those happy moments were tiny compared to the suffering. How many light moments do you see in Saving Private Ryan or the Band of Brothers? Not that much. And in this movie you practicaly see no suffering for what is an equivalent of a holocaust. Imagine nuBSG done that way...

Kirk did grow as a character. At the beginning, he couldn't stand Spock or what he stood for, yet by the end he was adopting Spock's personal philosophy of logic and saw that their different styles and personalities worked better when used in a complimentary way rather than against each other.

Kirk offered rescue to the man who killed his father, many of his friends, destroyed Vulcan, and threatened Earth. How that can not be described as character growth from the arrogant punk at the start of the film is beyond me.

Ok, here we'll just have to disagree. Maybe you saw it but i didn't see him adopting logic. He didn't really learn from his mistakes. He actually wasn't allowed to make mistakes, he was pretty much always right. And even if there was change i just think it wasn't done well. Why exactly did he change? What changed his mind about rescuing Nero?

 

[startrekwatcher]

You say lots of people loved this movie for the same reasons those same people hated Enterprise and Voyager?

Provide examples.

I'll try.

People bashed VOY for the over use of time travel. Here we have it. Critics bashed B&B's idea of someone going back in time to change Trek history with FG/Temporal Cold War and fucking over the Trek universe. That's exactly what Abrams did and everyone is loving it.

B&B gave more attention and reaction to Earth's attack by a probe on ENT than this film did to the actual destruction of Vulcan.

People complained that FG was just a plot device yet Nero is just as much of one.

People complained that B&B resorted to appealing to the hornboys with Seven & T'Pol in a catsuit yet I hear nothing of Uhura's superfluous striptease.

People complained that ENT just recycled earlier stories. Here we have a bald Romulan villian with a big old weapon that is heading towards Earth to destroy it because of a personal grudge with a member of the crew.

People complained that namedropping didn't substitute for a good story when ENT made mention of Malurians etc but everyone is all besides themselves over mentioning Delta Vega, Archer, Porthos etc.

People complained that VOY/ENT relied on action and VFX rather than good writing. Yet XI is great.

People complained about stunt casting like with Brent Spiner or the rumor of Shatner in ENT yet Nimoy isn't?!?

 

[neozeks]

Ds9 had low ratings as well so you do got to consider Ds9 in the equation. Basically your asking why this movie was more successful than all the spin-offs and movies that came after TNG.

I simply think it boils down to the fact that people like the new versions of the TOS crew and the movie had a sense of fun to it. It didn't get bogged down in technobabble or politics. It was a nice fun adventure story. Berman trek could take itself to serious, always afraid to break the Roddenberry rules or look hokey. It forgot how to have fun. Another thing is that this movie works as a action movie for the most part. Action-adventure was not a strength of any of the 24th century shows. Even Ds9 wasn't great in this regards. Ds9 had some good ship battles and but for the most part Ds9 worked best when it was dealing with the characters doing something other than shooting things with phasers. All the modern Trek's were like this. The problem is action-adventure should have it's place in Trek. I want drama but when the action happens I don't want to fall asleep.

To me this movie sort of represents what Trek should be about. Fun characters,some dark moments or comments on the human condition so as the movie is more than just fluff and fun action scenes with a little comedy tossed in. Star Trek should never treated like a serious drama and it should never be treated like a mindless action-adventure serious. It should be a combination of both of those things IMO.

Jason

Okay, fun, but exactly what kind of fun - bar brawling, simple slapstick, swolen hands, Scotty in a tube? How does that mesh with a genocide of a civilization? How can you mix that?
I hope you're not trying to say the Dominion War was action that makes you fall asleep?
Your last paragraph pretty much well describes, say, First Contact. That movie had a good balance. This one was much too tilted to the mindless adventure, and even that wasn't exceptional IMHO.

 

[Lynn Minmay]

Let the ratings (and numbers) do the talking.

Voyager declined, Enterprise ended early, and Nemesis BOMBED at the box office.

Star Trek is constantly praised, introducing new fans to the franchise, and breaking ALL previous Trek box office records.

Why is this so hard to accept? I hate people that can't enjoy a good thing when it's in their hands. Y'all are pathetic.

 

[Greg Cox]

only now it doesn't really matter cause it's, you know, fun!

You answered your own question, unlike all those others which tended toward the plodding this was in your own words fun. Perhaps thats' the element which was lacking from the last few incarnations of Trek - fun?

Sharr

Bingo.