http://m.au.ign.com/articles/2014/12/20/how-star-wars-ruined-star-trek
Star Trek made its debut on television way back in 1966 with the episode "The Man Trap," a tale which saw Captain Kirk and his crew facing off against a deadly salt vampire (in space, no one can hear you season…). And now, almost half a century later, the crew of the USS Enterprise finds itself in another kind of trap altogether: Star Trek 3, the latest entry in the rebooted movie series starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, has recently become director-less and is reportedly undergoing behind-the-scenes creative upheaval even as the clock is running to get the film in front of cameras for the franchise’s 50th anniversary......
An interesting read and some details I never really connected before.
It's clickbait designed to draw readers in with a provocative title that they barely pay lip service to and poorly support in the nonsensical article.
To quote the article:
If Paramount Pictures hopes to hit a summer 2016 release for Star Trek 3 in order to commemorate that golden anniversary Skyfall-style -- which they certainly do -- a director needs to be found and the good (star-)ship Enterprise has to be righted STAT. But how did Gene Roddenberry’s beloved vision of the future reach this precarious point in the first place?
What precarious point? Replacing a director during pre-production is hardly a rare event in Hollywood, especially with a first time director like Orci. And if their implication is that the franchise is suffering and needs to be righted, I beg to differ:
-
Star Trek and
Into Darkness are respectively the #1 & #2 highest grossing Trek films domestically.
- Reversing positions,
Into Darkness and
Star Trek are the #1 & #2 highest grossing Trek films worldwide.
- Even adjusted for inflation,
Star Trek is the #1 and
Into Darkness the #4 highest grossing Trek film.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=startrek.htm
Critically, Star Trek is the highest rated Trek film on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and Into Darkness is the fourth higheest rated on RT and the second highest rated on Metacritic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film_franchise)#Reception
So, regardless of how one may feel about the films personally, I would hardly say their position is "precarious" under any circumstances. Plus, I'm at a loss what any of this has to do with
Star Wars ruining Trek other than being the aforementioned clickbait.
But still, there was a dumbing down of the sci-fi aspects of Trek that happened here as well, not to mention on the story and character level. Abrams, an expert entertainer, thrilled us so well with the 2009 Star Trek that we almost didn’t notice Kirk’s lickety-split leap from cadet to captain by the end credits roll, or the MacGuffin “red matter” that enabled time travel and a threat to the galaxy -- not to mention to common sense -- or Spock’s ability to see a planet blow up from ground level on another planet… with the naked eye. And so on.
While not nearly the meteoric rise of nu-Kirk, Picard went from being a Lt. Cmdr. and flight controller to Capt. (unclear whether just in title/position or also in rank) when he took command of the Stargazer after her captain was killed in a Ferengi attack, and Starfleet permanently gave him the post, making him one of the youngest captains in the fleet.
There have been too many silly MacGuffins that enable time travel in Trek to count, and with a few exceptions like Jacen Solo "flowwalking" through the Force and precognition, Star Wars generally tends to stay away from time travel most of the time, so still not seeing where the connection comes from.
As far as planetary/galaxy threatening superweapons (and the article is referring to Red Matter there, not the Hobus Supernova), similar WMDs include the aforementioned Genesis Device, Trilithium, the Planet Killer, Omega Molecules, Isolitic Subspace Weapons, Soliton Waves, the Krenim Timeship, the Species 8472 Planet Buster, and pretty much just the standard weapons compliment of a fleet of ships, like the Romulan and Cardassian one that liquified the crust of the former Founder homeworld in seconds. Trek has as many superweapons as Star Wars does, and its had them well before Abrams and co. showed up.
And finally, Spock's ability to see the destruction of Vulcan from a nearby planet with his naked eye. Well, let's see:
The second photo above, from the theatrical version of
TMP, has a white planet with a red moon (Vulcan canonically
has no moons) that's probably co-orbiting with Vulcan around a shared center of mass.
Star Charts named Vulcan's twin planet T'Khut and says it has one moon. If we lend credence to that, then there's an additional red planet with a white moon in the background of the top photo. Either the white planet or the white moon can be the site of the Delta Vega outpost (bottom picture). The white planet can also be seen rising above Vulcan in the third picture, from
TAS.
You see, that’s Star Wars style science fiction, which is to say science fantasy. Which is great, and which we all love. But it’s not Star Trek. And when applied to the world of Trek, it becomes an increasingly untenable situation, as we would come to see in Abrams’ 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness.
No, that's Star Trek-style science fiction/fantasy space opera too, Trek's just slightly further along the curve. Technobabble does not instantly make a piece of technology less fanciful. The chief difference between Trek and Wars is, Wars spends less time talking about how things work and more time just doing. Neither approach is wrong, mind you, just different. But I don't know what trend the author believes began with the Abrams films that wasn't there before.
This redefining of Star Trek as Star Wars-like would lead to more flagrant flights of fancy in that film, including the ability to beam from planet to planet, as Benedict Cumberbatch’s “John Harrison” does in Into Darkness, as well as the now notorious “Khan blood.” These two elements, while innocuous enough to the casual viewer, have huge implications on the world of Star Trek. The former essentially means starships are no longer needed now that instantaneous inter-planetary travel exists, while the latter grants immortality to the human -- and other? -- races. Captain Kirk and his friends are now, basically, gods.
One can look at such complaints about the film as fanboy whining, and there’s always going to be an element of that when talking about either of these franchises. But Star Trek has always been about world-building, and when such over-the-top concepts are introduced into said world, the foundation of the Trek universe starts to shake. Is the Enterprise even in the next movie? Why do they still need a ship? Does everyone carry Khan blood with them now, just in case? And if not, then why not?
Interstellar beaming of individuals has been featured in some variation in every live-action Trek series, so it's hardly unique to Abrams Trek:
TOS - Gary Seven's Transporter -
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Assigners'_planet
TNG - Subspace Transporter -
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Subspace_transporter
TNG & DS9 - Iconian Gateway -
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Iconian_gateway
(The Dominion also had the ability to beam their people off locations with no apparent ship nearby, meaning either they were cloaked or the had a very long range, possibly interstellar transporters)
VOY - Spatial Trajector -
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spatial_trajector
ENT - Sub-Quantum Transporter -
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Sub-quantum_transporter
As for why they still use ships, why do we still use ships today when we have airplanes? Because sometimes a task demands more than what you can carry in your luggage. It's great to beam to a planet, but unless you can do things once you get there, what's the point? Are you going to assemble your whole lab and habitat and cart in all your food everywhere you go? You need a ship to provide the infrastructure to perform your mission and to be prepared for any unexpected eventualities, like space pirates or Klingons showing up, natural disasters that require mass evacuations, disease outbreaks that require medical facilities and supplies, etc.
Star Trek also has had countless temporary means of reviving/repairing/recreating the dead that should logically be able to be replicated and put to mass use but aren't for whatever reason. Transporters should be able to do it, as well as the transporter duplication technique that produces two Rikers. Rapid cloning with memories is available. Transferring consciousnesses into holographic or android bodies or computers or other living beings is possible. Retrieving a duplicate from an alternate or parallel universe is possible. Going back in time to prevent someone's death is possible. Nanites can repair tissue and organs.
Abrams' Trek is actually rare in that it introduced a new, powerful technology like transwarp beaming in the first film, and followed up on it/improved on it in the second instead of pretending it never existed or finding some way to render it useless.
