I fell asleep while watching TMP yesterday

[Peach Wookiee]

Which assassination attempt? There are two, and the first is successful, and therefore not a mere 'attempt'.

The boarding of Kronos One. Obviously that's what I meant, otherwise my comment makes no sense in this context. so, I'm assuming you decided to be a nitpicky jackarse for some reason?

Ease up on the ad hominem nonsense. You don't know me, and you don't want to make me angry at you.

And learn to take a joke.

FormerLurker, I really hope that was an Incredible Hulk reference. I don't want to have to give out an infraction.

As for the movie, I never watch TMP when I'm rather worn out and don't want to fall asleep just yet. I love the movie; I just know when not to watch it.

 

[mswood]

Instead of acting as a natural evolution of all TOS established, TMP took off in a direction that was best served for some other kind of sci-fi production, as it lacked the spirit and colorful, earthy heart of what made ST work.

I have to disagree on this. The entirety of TOS dealt with Spock's two parts contending with each other. TMP shows that contention having come to a fever pitch and then resolved. There is no movie that comes close to being a more natural extension of TOS.

If it can be faulted for anything, it is that it didn't do the same for Kirk. It merely used his obsession with command as a vehicle to get the story going. We never learned anything about why he was the way he was. No other movie ever tried to do that - except the first Abrams film. And while I didn't like Abrams' take on that question, at least it tried.

But of course at heart, TMP is a Spock story. The tale of an entirely logical super entity seeking out its human creator so parallels Spock's trials with his mother's human ancestry that if we didn't know the history of the TMP story we'd be tempted to think it had been created specifically to serve the need of resolving his fate. I daresay his death in TWoK doesn't come close to being as important. After all, everyone dies. But not everyone gets the answers they spend a lifetime seeking.

I have to disagree. Not that Spock has a character arc. But the Motion Picture in style and tone bares very little with Star Trek that had existed previously, besides the characters themselves, and even they are far more restrained. TOS was campy, it was over the top, it had a rich and vibrant color scheme. This film was shot and produced in the style of 2001. And in fact after this film, the design and style of all the remaining films changes to a faster paced, more vibrant, and more emotive style.

For myself the closes show to the style of Motion Picture would be TNG (and even that is stretching it).

 

[aridas sofia]

I agree that TNG is the closest in style and tone to TMP, which is no surprise given they share common roots and creators. As for the dissimilarity to TOS, I agree to a point. TMP is quite similar in its palette and serious tone to The Cage, and in its straining efforts to get even the smallest details of the setting right to the first eight or so episodes of TOS. Early TOS was very concerned with showing a crew going about the humdrum ordinary naval-ish business of space patrol duty suddenly having some mind-blowing Fesarius-Charlie X-Salt Vampire-Et Cetera jump out and become the business of the day. THAT is the TOS to which TMP bears a strong stylistic resemblance. The difference is in TMP, the ordinary lives they are living are -in Kirk, Spock and McCoy's cases - apart. The rest of the crew is doing the humdrum testing and packing and prepping for the next mission. Then this THING comes along and pulls the Big Three back. This particular aspect of the story is the least probable and most troubling for a story mimicking the verisimilitude-rich early TOS episodes. But the fact this movie is imperfect is one thing all of us - even those of us that love it - can likely agree about.

 

[Terok Nor]

People have managed to stay awake during TMP?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

This isn't the TOS Spock I remember. He starts out wearing his emotions much more readily. In "The Cage" he is more demonstrative than almost any of the other characters. He is more reserved by WNMHGB, but not much.

Keep in mind that the pilots--especially the 1st--were not designed to show deliberate or rich character growth, as by their nature, a pilot is an isolated piece, trying to sell a series. Nimoy has stated numerous times that the reason he started to alter his portrayal in WNMHGB (and beyond) was due to the personality and acting choices of Shatner, so there was no grand character design on the part of Roddenberry. The two actors found contrasts in the other they could work with--an artistic situation Nimoy did not have with Jeffrey Hunter.

Throughout the first half of that first season, he speaks loudly,

That was Nimoy still carrying over that--I guess you would call it--"military barking" from the pilots. But he did not behave that way throughout any of the entire episodes to follow, so it cannot be said to be some developing character trait in the way the open "dealing with my human side" would be later on. In other words, that "barking" was related to functioning on the job, as opposed to Spock's emotional state.

catches himself veering into human displays of emotion, in short seems less in control. If anything, I think he goes from being more comfortable displaying human emotions as a young man to vying within himself for greater and greater degrees of self control during TOS.

Spock was more than comfortable expressing whatever amount of human emotion for any situation throughout the series, which illustrates how much he had changed from trying to fight his human side, to accepting it. Someone on YouTube posted the following link, which showcases Spock's growing comfort with humor, irony and sarcasm from season 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldezDyDDhRg

He was not clumsily experimenting with emotion, or faking it, but living within his "natrual skin," which makes any post-TOS (TMP) idea of Spock trying to shed himself of all emotion completely out of character with no precedent, since TOS was not sketchy on how settled Spock was with successfully merging his "of two minds" state.

he realizes the Vulcan way cannot encompass enough of what he has experienced.

One would argue that his experiences in "Amok Time" and his relationship to his mother (a window into that seen in "Journey to Babel")were proof that he was covering that part of the journey.

Spock was Rodenberry's creation and he obviously thought this way too, because he chose to give Spock this story.

That does not mean his ideas were always best for the character--and he certainly was not the only person responsible for the development of the Spock that was so well explored on TOS.

And while other forces were also at work, this idea of Spock's evolution must have appealed enough to Nimoy to interest him because he, like Spock, abandoned his self imposed exile to return to the Enterprise.

Nimoy returning had many real world motives, too.

 

[OpenMaw]

People have managed to stay awake during TMP?

TMP, the longer VHS cut, was my first foray into Star Trek, when I was four.

I'm fairly certain TMP inspired one of my first childhood nightmares, and I mean that as no insult. The film captured my imagination to a fault.

It could still use a really good stem-to-stern restoration. Lot's of tiny edits and tweaks would really bring the film "up to speed" and it wouldn't lose anything.

 

[eyeresist]

He was not clumsily experimenting with emotion, or faking it, but living within his "natural skin," which makes any post-TOS (TMP) idea of Spock trying to shed himself of all emotion completely out of character with no precedent, since TOS was not sketchy on how settled Spock was with successfully merging his "of two minds" state.

I think it should also be borne in mind that movie makers have to think about the experience of people who aren't familiar with the back story. Arguably this was how Spock was addressed in the film: they set up that he's an alien, and that he's unemotional, then they have to warm him up and make him relatable by the end of the story.

 

[Terok Nor]

People have managed to stay awake during TMP?

TMP, the longer VHS cut, was my first foray into Star Trek, when I was four.

I'm fairly certain TMP inspired one of my first childhood nightmares, and I mean that as no insult. The film captured my imagination to a fault.

It could still use a really good stem-to-stern restoration. Lot's of tiny edits and tweaks would really bring the film "up to speed" and it wouldn't lose anything.

There's a good story in there...somewhere. I wish it wasn't so serious and didn't drag so much. I liked the addition of Ilia and Decker (...) to the crew but those uniforms were so bland to look at. Probably one of the reasons my attention drifted along with the slow pace.

 

[inflatabledalek]

I do find it a good film to have on in the background. It may not be my favourite Trek but it looks and sounds (thanks to the score) great, has a nice soothing pace and if you do nod off/get distracted by work you probably won't have missed anything vital when you come back to it (especially during the segments when the characters in the film basically sit down to watch the film. It makes me smile that after ages of sitting and watching V'Ger we get some sudden action with the Ilia Probe before Kirk then decides to sit down and watch her and Decker on his TV. It's like the world's worst in-vision commentary).

One thing that did strike me when watching it last week was how useless Chekov is as security chief/weapons officer. The guy cringes in a corner shitting himself when the probe comes aboard, and earlier he either doesn't know the phasers work through the engines or he's so stupid he'll try and follow an order from Kirk even if he must realise it will destroy the ship. No wonder that guy's career wound up stalling after Khan.

 

[VOODOOXI]

I think the Director's Cut is one of the best in the series.

 

[Terok Nor]

One thing that did strike me when watching it last week was how useless Chekov is as security chief/weapons officer. The guy cringes in a corner shitting himself when the probe comes aboard, and earlier he either doesn't know the phasers work through the engines or he's so stupid he'll try and follow an order from Kirk even if he must realise it will destroy the ship. No wonder that guy's career wound up stalling after Khan.

I had that epiphany about 5 seconds after I first saw the character

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm fairly certain TMP inspired one of my first childhood nightmares, and I mean that as no insult. The film captured my imagination to a fault.

I was 21 when TMP premiered, but I did have a recurring nightmare that I was sure was related to a movie I once saw as a young child. I eventually worked out it was... "Forbidden Planet" (and perhaps also Robby the Robot's return in "The Invisible Boy"). The weird musical "tonalities", the bottomless pits, the Creature from the Id - and the clunking sound of the window shields closing over in Morbius' house... Brrrrrrrr! Soooo scary.

I was totally floored when I noticed little "easter egg" references to "Forbidden Planet" in Bantam's "Star Trek Maps", rewatched the film and noticed the captain/first officer/medical officer triumvirate, so reminiscent of TOS, the transporter-like device for changing warp speed, and I then read a reference to the doorways in "Th Cage" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (in TOS) were so much like Krell doorways!

 

[Shaka Zulu]

The entirety of TOS dealt with Spock's two parts contending with each other. TMP shows that contention having come to a fever pitch and then resolved.

I'd say "fever pitch" is a serious overstatement.

I disagree. Spock had left what he'd been doing his entire adult life to isolate himself in an extreme ritual of meditation and deprivation. He was trying to literally purge himself of fully one half of who he was. If that isn't fever pitch, I don't what is.

That actually bolsters Nick Meyer's case for killing Spock off permanently. It's the most perfect epilogue for the Spock journey that led through TMP.

A comfortable, dare we say "happy" Spock, who has learned so much about himself thanks to his Kolinahr and V'Ger experiences, ends up sacrificing himself for duty and friendship.

I'm glad we got more of Nimoy and Spock than just that, but still. What a story!

I agree, though I think it also makes a very strong case that Spock and not Decker was the natural choice to join with V'ger. He'd melded with it. He had gotten his own act together. He'd "grown". The next thing for him was probably not the same "Starfleet science officer" thing he was doing five years earlier.

I like this a lot-maybe this should happen to Quinto's Spock in the next movie.