If "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" had been the last classic-era film

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Admiral Archer, Aug 15, 2018.

  1. TrickyDickie

    TrickyDickie Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It could have been interesting if the Ambassador-class Enterprise had been the B instead of the C. Then Yesterday's Enterprise could have involved the A.

    But that might have worked better if there had been no TFF and TUC had come out in 1988.

    "This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew." That could have set the A up for appearing in YE.
     
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  2. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    Interesting factoid: on Doug Drexler’s blog, Michael Okuda once stated that there was a possibility that they wouldn’t have enough in the budget to build a new Enterprise-C model, and that they’d possibly have to reuse either the TMP Enterprise model or the Excelsior model for the episode. However, he never made it clear if the models would have been upgraded to represent a newer ship class, or that the script would have to be changed to the ship being either the Enterprise-A or the B.

    But they did build the new Enterprise-C model, so it was all moot.
     
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  3. SpyOne

    SpyOne Captain Captain

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    As others have said, TVH would have been a good place to stop.
    So would TUC.
     
  4. Khan 2.0

    Khan 2.0 Commodore Commodore

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    and that's why the Orci ST3 wudve been interesting to see imo - another (last) bite at the cherry for TOS (or Kirk anyway). would it have made things right..
     
  5. Doc Mugatu

    Doc Mugatu Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    That, I think speaks to what I was attempting to allude to, that timing was different. The zeitgeist of Star Trek was not "there" yet in terms of "saying goodbye." Fundamentally, all the films could technically have acted as the final TOS adventure, however, Paramount, I believe did do it right. It let TOS continue while it groomed TNG. So when TNG matured and folks could see the stars of TOS aging out of the realm of "willful suspension of disbelief" so that it became time to retire one and promote the other. That was, in part, the "by design" I alluded to regarding TUC in a previous post.
     
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  6. Galileo7

    Galileo7 Commodore Commodore

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    I guess TVH being the final film would have been acceptable:
    • TMP
    • Trilogy:WOK, SFS,TVH
    However, I am happy that we got the guilty pleasure TFF and the more impressive final TUC.
     
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  7. Phoenix219

    Phoenix219 Commodore Commodore

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    Personally, tvh should have launched the next tv show, with the reset, and it should have been phase 2 on the A, with riker, data, and troi complimenting the tos cast.
     
  8. Armus

    Armus Commodore Commodore

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    I could live without Star Trek V and VI. I may never watch them again in fact. Star Trek IV would have been a great sendoff. Its probably my third favorite of the films, behind TMP and TWOK.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2018
  9. Burning Hearts of Qo'nOs

    Burning Hearts of Qo'nOs Commodore Commodore

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    ...But that would leave us in a world without The Picard!
     
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  10. Mojochi

    Mojochi Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    While at the time, I might've wished for different things from the franchise, I can honestly look back at them now & say I don't dislike any of the TOS movies. Each was what it was & were worth having been made imho.
     
  11. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Absolutely agree. It's a chicken and egg scenario this Klingon alliance issue, where did peace begin? TNG started it, TFF tried to imply it, then 'Yesterday's Enterprise' got the ball,before TUC ultimately became the setup. The truth is probably all these fathers, lol. ;)
     
  12. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    And thank God (or "God") that we didn't stop at TFF. The idea of TOS's grand journey ending with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." is just too painful to contemplate.
     
  13. Phoenix219

    Phoenix219 Commodore Commodore

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    I would happily and with no hesitation or remorse trade The Picard for more Nimoy, Shatner and Company. No contest. Not even close.

    Star Trek IV reset the status quo *perfectly* to launch a new TV show. An entirely new crew serving under the veteran department heads would be rather realistic and could have worked perfectly.

    I've thought this ever since I saw the "pilot episode" cut of Star Trek V..... the TOS cast was not so much older then Stewart to preclude them. The skeleton crew from TFF would have been filled out with all new characters for the next 5YM. They were already cribbing so completely from Phase II for TNG (Riker/Decker, Data/Xon, Troi/Ilia). I could see Kirk bristling under the regulation-minded new XO trying to keep him off landing parties, and I could see quite a few differences of opinions between Troi and McCoy, for example - why are we saddled with this counselor on board? Geordi could still be the blind pilot, and Worf could still be the Klingon Exchange Officer type. (TFF *did* end with the Klingons coming over for drinks, and the Nimbus III concept.)

    I've always thought it would an interesting mental exercise to go through the TNG catalogue, and speculate how the episode with the TOS cast would have differentiated, or how differently it could have been plotted, or what decisions they would have made differently.

    It would definitely be SPOCK getting assimilated, though.....giving Kirk vs the Borg so much more emotional impact. Imagine the fun in Data/Kirk interactions, considering how many computers Kirk has confused with illogic. Kirk trolling.... teaching? Data, a twinkle in his eyes, with Spock smirking wryly in the background, and McCoy not really knowing where he fits into the new dynamic of jokes could be fun. really, all three of them could have really fun interactions with Data.... even Kirk/Wesley could have been explored, since he lost David - what would he think of having a young cadet on his new crew?

    No more stuffy preachy Picard, a last go-round of serious weekly stories for the TOS gang, and integrating the best characters of TNG into the old gang sounds amazing to me. Maybe Geordi gets into engineering after his VISOR is required for Mr. Scott to pull off a miracle, or when Spock uses it for some various solution.
     
  14. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I find that a fascinating ( :vulcan: ) hypothesis ;)

    TNG was effectively already a retooled Phase II. The concept that Roddenberry could, instead of revisiting Phase II's ideas and updating them, instead simply launch Phase II lock stock a decade later than originally planned is an interesting idea. :)

    Shatner, for his part, was not opposed to TV work. He was still fresh from.TJ Hooker at the time.
     
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  15. Phoenix219

    Phoenix219 Commodore Commodore

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    1986: Trilogy wrapped up, Shatner gets a brand new Enterprise and restored to the rank of Captain for the first time since '69/'79.

    1987: Spinoff launched.

    To me, this is a no brainer..... especially with all of the movie quality sets and models already standing and to be built on.

    How much fun would holodeck episodes be?

    Would it have ever been Q, or one of the TOS evolved beings?

    You could still do all of the other new TNG races. TMP onward implied a large galaxy full of very alien looking beings.
     
  16. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I've often expressed similar views.

    From 1986 to 1994, the Trek movies and Trek TV shows had different production teams. One was really good at making TV. The other had honed creating Star Trek movies into an art form. Each had specialized skills for their particular production branch, basically.

    1994 saw the amalgamation happen where the TV guys were handed the keys to the entire franchise, including making the movies, and even the much vaunted First Contact still feels like something you might be able to get on TV, just with more money thrown at it. I truly believe that Berman/Piller/Moore/Braga/Carson/Frakes were excellent at producing mass market television with the sausage factory penny pinching production line approach TV needed, but when brought over to making feature films, their instincts for making great TV hindered them. They couldn't ever quite concieve 'big picture' ideas, coming at them from a small picture perspective.

    One great example: the TOS movies, unlike the episodic show, explored ongoing narratives and sequel escalation to create an epic feel you couldn't find on TV. But the TNG movies are almost uniformingly episodic and individual by nature.

    Just my POV of course ;)
     
  17. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Q could easily be replaced by a returning Trelane, obviously. Hide & Q is basically already a mash up of The Squire Of Gothos and Where No Man Has Gone Before ;)
     
  18. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Reading old Best of Trek collections and other fanzine lettercolumns from the time, there were some fans thinking/hoping the new series would literally be another season of TOS, picking up where STIV left off.
     
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  19. Bad Robot

    Bad Robot Commander Red Shirt

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    I think I share it. There is "something" about every TNG film that anchors it to the TV series in a disappointing or uncomplimentary fashion compared to what you've come to expect from movies I-VI. Whether it's the music of Generations, the medium-shot cinematography of First Contact, the TV-quality post-production work on Insurrection or just the general feeling about Nemesis that its scope exceeds its production value (stellar cartography, Romulan Senate, etc). And nothing ever came along and kicked the TNG films (or the Kelvin movies, unfortunately) into a higher concept long-term game than just planning each production one film at a time. I "suppose" it took Nimoy threatening to not do ST again to accomplish that.

    But the frustrating thing is, Harve Bennett and his team were mostly themselves TV people, and their money was still being closely monitored by Paramount's TV department. So it's harder to understand what held Berman's team back aside from just being used to filming ST as a TV series.

    The Voyage Home really is my favorite ST these past couple of years, and two of the most striking images in that film are the ones that seem to get ridiculed the most. The first is the Whale Probe itself, which too often gets compared to a cigar or a tootsie roll, as if implying the visual effects are somehow chintzy or cheap. And that has just never been my experience at all; in fact its imposing presence over Earth creates for the kind of abstract visualization that I love about The Motion Picture, the 2009 film, and even (in small part) certain aspects of the Kelvin sequels, such as the Vengeance's hiding near Jupiter, or the nebula and initial bee-swarm attack in Beyond. My other favorite TVH image is the time-travel sequence, which it seems to me people in the aftermath of the Berman era just wonder why that's even there. As if viewers maybe just prefer a simpler TV world in which everything makes sense, and would rather the Whale Probe aliens actually come out and show themselves to be dolphin-foreheaded humanoids courtesy of Michael Westmore's TNG make-up department.

    But even just a simple shot of Kirk and Spock (in headband) walking side-by-side near Fisherman's Wharf somehow looks bigger on a projected screen than almost anything to come out of the later TNG films. Although breaking the movie theaters up into cineplexes might also be part of the problem.

    I love those older books; wish I had held onto the few that I had.

    Some things never change though. In some of those essays, it's apparent fans back then had as much problem with the individual style of each new Kirk/Spock movie as people now have with accepting new retroactive designs for the klingons and general production design under both Kelvin Trek and CBS.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2018
  20. Admiral Archer

    Admiral Archer Captain Captain

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    Dear Lord..., what have I done? I've created a monster... LOL