How often do you watch Star Trek?
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
I know what you meant.
I don't feel that way at all. If Nimoy was happy dappy about TMP and was into continuing with a smile and a wave, they never would have had to entice him with a "great death scene." Just so happened that Spock's death was one of the magic ingredients that made Kirk's arc resonate more strongly.
I feel like Harve Bennett wanted Kirk to truly pay a heavy price for the return of his friend. While David would have died either way, the Enterprise was the one thing that Kirk would give up that would hurt as much as losing Spock.
Really, though, TSFS was more about burying TWOK than the original series. The first two films were about moving forward and TWOK could have been an perfect conclusion to Star Trek. But they wanted to move onto more films. Star Trek III was the first step to RESTORING the original series. Sure, the Enterprise was gone but so was David (and Carol was briefly mentioned in Kirk's Genesis recap but never seen). Star Trek IV was the final step: Saavik was ushered off stage without so much as a "thanks for playing" and never to be referenced again. By the end, the Enterprise was restored, Kirk was Captain and his entire crew was back in their old positions on the bridge. TFF was all about an adventure with the core cast. As soon as Bennett left, they went back to deconstruction: Sulu was on another ship and everyone was retiring.
I really think Harve Bennett should be commended by those who loved the feel and closeness of the original series characters. He made sure the films he produced retained that. Personally, I thought moving forward was more interesting, but there ya go.
I'll go along with that. It's a pilot episode....as it was originally conceived.
That's what I've always said about TNG. Sarek has Alzheimer's. Scotty comes back and looks like a fool. Spock is still around and looks like a fool. Kirk dies, not in a space battle, not doing diplomacy on some far off world, but falling off a bridge.
I watch a few episodes of TOS whenever it strikes me, every year or so. No particular set time of the year, that's just how it happens. The last time I watched large batches of the series was in 2008. Since then, I've probably re-watched about a third of the series in the last 13 or 14 years, if you add up everything.
That’s too bad. I am a “mostly-TOS-only” fan and thought about watching those episodes. You don’t recommend them?
I felt that the episodes had nothing but respect for the returning TOS characters, even if a certain character sometimes wanted one of them to stop bothering him at work.
I'm most I'm also a mostly "TOS-only fan", but I have seen all the episodes mentioned, and I agree with ChallengerHK's sentiments.
And all those episodes the TOS characters come across as either overly naive and at times borderline incompetent; and yeah if anything the film Generations shows a complete lack of knowledge of the Captain James T Kirk character, as yes they should have had him in command of a Starship because that's what he does best. As both Spock and dr. McCoy have commented, anything less is a waste of his talents/ability.
The fact they had Kirk lose to an alien scientist on a bridge on some Backwater planet, to me just shows the utter contempt they have for the character. You'd think with all the time travel possibility that the Nexus concept offered; you could have set up a situation where the ships and crews Enterprise-A and the Enterprise-D work together to solve a major crisis...
But no we got a very contrived situation ( and I say that because the Enterprise-B was in such a condition that it should never have left spacedock, not to mention the Trope of it suddenly being the only Starship in range...; that ends up getting Kirk trapped in the Nexus, and we have a very mundane situation that get him and Picard of the Nexus (not to mention that even Nexus guinan said it would be very hard to leave the Nexus - yet both Kirk and Picard simply ride their horses into a light and end up exactly where they need to be.)
So yeah excuse me if I don't believe any of the TNG writers have the first clue as to how to properly write TOS era characters. They've honestly failed to do them justice in any situation they've written them into.
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To give them a tiny bit of credit, Nimoy and Kelley didn't want to come back. They felt their characters got proper send-off's in The Undiscovered Country. I get that the parts were underwritten (they slotted in Scotty and Chekov with almost no dialog changes), but having both full crews involved wasn't gonna happen.
Had they let Kirk die saving the Enterprise B, then I would have been dandy with that. His "first" death was a Jim Kirk death. Taking command and then saving everyone would have been a fitting exit for my childhood hero. I wasn't "bothered" by his second death. Actually, it had no effect on me at all. None. It was just there. I actually liked the original version better because at least we got to see one last protracted Kirk fight.
I liked Generations well enough, though.
Thanks, I’m not going to watch Generations. More curious about Sarek, Unification, and Relics after seeing them included in the 1995 Concordance.. But I kind of made a separate thread for this.
Also, remember that teh only reason Leonard Nimoy agreed to do the TNG S5 Episode "Unification" was because the episode was planned to be aired (and did air) the same week STVI:TUC premiered in theatres, and both he and Paramount saw it as a way to promote STVI:TUC as it did have a small dialogue reference (and said dialogue didn't really 'spoil' anything and basically re-affirmed what was being shown in the films advertising trailers) to the events in that film.
I found something to like in all of them. Relics is the best of that bunch.
Scotty's understandably out of sorts at first, but he's hardly a fool by the end, and Spock certainly wasn't.
For Kirk there are always the Shatnerverse novels.
In all fairness, it depends on what you're after. In general, TNG was a different type of storytelling, more toward "realistic" than "mythological" on that spectrum. It did its own thing, and often did that thing pretty well, but when they tried to bring in TOS, they tried to force the somewhat more mythological characters into their realistic format. Failure was likely, if not a given; it's possible to tell those kinds of stories where the mythological meets the real world, but you need the right talents and attitude, and as has been said, too many of them didn't care for TOS to begin with. They used the crossovers to draw audience.
Spock was the worst. He's supposedly incredibly intelligent, but yet he not only failed to see through a simplistic plot but then he also failed to take any logical precautions even if he didn't see it coming. I've always interpreted that episode as the early onset of Sarek's dementia in Spock himself.
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You make a lot of great points, but I differ on this one. In fact, I frequently watch only the beginning of Generations, until the pullback from Enterprise-B into space. Kirk is recognizably himself (unlike TMP) but he shows growth as a person. He wants to take command so much that he's almost licking his chops, but unlike TMP, where he'll throw anyone under the bus to do so, here he realized that what he wants is not necessarily in the best interests of all concerned. And in the midst of all that, he still has a hero's death. I view the beginning of the film as Kirk's death, and the death he deserved, brave and self-sacrificing.
Any plot point in an entertainment is "contrived" to set up the story the writer wants to tell. Whether or not the plot points seem organic depends on the skill of the writers involved. The TNG writers, aside from Ron Moore, seemed to be lacking in that skillset. Still, all in all, I'm willing to take the beginning of Generations because of Kirk's great moments.
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Looking back at it now, I’d rather they had buried TOS.
I agree his first death was heroic, but I think the ending was even better.
Forget Soran or bridges or whatever…Kirk gave up eternity in paradise to save 230,000,000 people who will never even know he existed.
That’s pretty damn heroic in my book.
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