Is it just me, or is Star Trek going the wrong way?

[Mudd]

so Berman did what he usually does...just gave the lines verbatim to the character who would be 'replacing' Spock in that scene; so Scotty suddenly becomes a 23rd century science officer who sounds eerily like Spock...

Oh, is that what he usually did? How many times did he do that?

 

[Coops]

so Scotty suddenly becomes a 23rd century science officer who sounds eerily like Spock...

Yes, that did stick out But in response to "My god, was anyone in here?" Doohans simple "Aye" was pretty damn good.

 

[Noname Given]

Oh, is that what he usually did? How many times did he do that?

Write banal and lazy dialogue that didn't really fit the character who was saying it?

During the 18 year run of his tenure on Star Trek and the TNG feature films... Quite a bit in my opinion.

 

[Quinton]

I maintain that it is just LunaticBurnout.

 

[Mudd]

Write banal and lazy dialogue that didn't really fit the character who was saying it?

During the 18 year run of his tenure on Star Trek and the TNG feature films... Quite a bit in my opinion.

Really?

He shares story credit on several Trek movies, and wrote several teleplays for the TV series. He has no screenplay credit on Generations* - the script was written by Moore and Braga. How much of the dialogue do you think Berman wrote?

*Or any other Trek movie.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I can just picture someone who started with TNG watching TOS for the first time. "It's so dark. There are bigoted bridge officers. Crew members bicker and insult each other. Kirk keeps supporting wars. Trafficking women is almost played as comedy. Where is Gene's vision? This isn't real Star Trek!"

Nowhere is this evident than this Star Trek fan podcast, in which the podcaster is (IMHO) hateful of the original series for not being like TNG, DS9, or Voyager.

Nowadays people can comment on the toilet with their phones, as I am doing now. I don't need to write a letter and affix a stamp, and hope some editor at a magazine or fanzine prints me. So it's fair to say the current toxic culture has a lot to do with accessibility, and the ease of which malcontents can immerse themselves in what they hate.

A new recent paradigm has cropped up on the 'Net in which comments are first held to be checked for anything offensive, then allowed to be printed if the person who runs the site/blog finds it acceptable (this was only part of certain sites like Racialicious, but now after what happend to Leslie Jones in '16 and the uproar over her being insulted online, it's now de rigeur.)

Khan as written in STID tracked with the character in TOS and TWOK remarkably well - if you paid attention to those stories, you understood his behavior in STID.

I understood him pretty well, and I also understood that he was Cumberbach because (in reality) having him be brown and doing what he does in the context of what the story was saying about terrorism would've offended people (of course, they were then offended because he wasn't brown); in the story, he was white because Admiral Marcus had changed his appearance to make sure he wasn't recognized as Khan since Khan was most likely a wanted war criminal in the 23rd century (and he was part of a covert agency.)

 

[Amaris]

Only because those lines were originally written FOR the Spock character (except ultimately Leonard Nimoy declined to participate in the film for what he felt was just a glorified cameo appearance); so Berman did what he usually does...just gave the lines verbatim to the character who would be 'replacing' Spock in that scene; so Scotty suddenly becomes a 23rd century science officer who sounds eerily like Spock...

I think it was jarring also because Scotty had never really spoken that way before. I mean, I would wager the Chief Engineer of a starship would have a solid working knowledge of quantum physics and the like, but Scotty going from "my wee bairns!" to "the gravimetric distortion is blah blah blah" it just doesn't ring true for him as a character on screen.

Still like the movie, though.

 

[flandry84]

I’ve always thought that the whole point of Trek was that it didn’t matter if you were white,brown or green with pointy ears.

 

[Danja]

Nowadays people can comment on the toilet with their phones, as I am doing now.

TMI!

If someone shoots up comicon because of Star Trek/Batman/Marvel/Luke Skywalker/whatever, then it becomes a serious problem.

Shooting up ComicCon because they don't like Burnham?

That's a person with MAJOR mental health issues.

 

[The Wormhole]

I think it was jarring also because Scotty had never really spoken that way before. I mean, I would wager the Chief Engineer of a starship would have a solid working knowledge of quantum physics and the like, but Scotty going from "my wee bairns!" to "the gravimetric distortion is blah blah blah" it just doesn't ring true for him as a character on screen.

Indeed. Scotty is basically a grease monkey in space. I can imagine a scenario where all the chief engineers from all the shows are assembled discussing how to solve the malfunction giving long technobabble filled monologues about inversing the quantum manifold past .47 microns or some such shit, but Scotty just walks away from them saying "I'll just fix the bloody thing." Then climbs into a Jeffries tube and does exactly that.

 

[Amaris]

Indeed. Scotty is basically a grease monkey in space. I can imagine a scenario where all the chief engineers from all the shows are assembled discussing how to solve the malfunction giving long technobabble filled monologues about inversing the quantum manifold past .47 microns or some such shit, but Scotty just walks away from them saying "I'll just fix the bloody thing." Then climbs into a Jeffries tube and does exactly that.

It's funny because I can see him doing exactly that. Scotty's a doer, not a sayer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Geordi, and Miles, B'elanna, and all the good engineers of more modern Star Trek, but Scotty was the guy you wanted in the trenches fighting rather than strategizing in his office.

 

[Noname Given]

It's funny because I can see him doing exactly that. Scotty's a doer, not a sayer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Geordi, and Miles, B'elanna, and all the good engineers of more modern Star Trek, but Scotty was the guy you wanted in the trenches fighting rather than strategizing in his office.

To this day that's a major issue I have with Berman era Star Trek, and that's the overalliance on techno battle because they couldn't come up with enough of a plot to fill 42 minutes. And when you think the ridiculous A/B plot structure of a majority of the episodes it becomes even more ridiculous.

The original Star Trek did 50 minute stories; and of the 80 episodes produced (If you include the unsold pilot); I think you can count the amount of episodes where TOS did an A/B episode story structure on one hand. Further when they did do that it still revolved around the main plot complication of an episode.

 

[seigezunt]

I love what they are doing. I was really worried they were going to try and re-hash 90s Trek. It's been a blast.

I learned in 1987 that you can't go home again. It'll be okay.

 

[The Wormhole]

To this day that's a major issue I have with Berman era Star Trek, and that's the overalliance on techno battle because they couldn't come up with enough of a plot to fill 42 minutes. And when you think the ridiculous A/B plot structure of a majority of the episodes it becomes even more ridiculous.

The original Star Trek did 50 minute stories; and of the 80 episodes produced (If you include the unsold pilot); I think you can count the amount of episodes where TOS did an A/B episode story structure on one hand. Further when they did do that it still revolved around the main plot complication of an episode.

I think it was the whole "interpersonal conflict = lazy writing" rule that led to all the technobabble as plot episodes as that was the only thing they were really allowed to write with that silly rule in place. It was how they "earned their paycheck."

 

[Amaris]

To this day that's a major issue I have with Berman era Star Trek, and that's the overalliance on techno battle because they couldn't come up with enough of a plot to fill 42 minutes. And when you think the ridiculous A/B plot structure of a majority of the episodes it becomes even more ridiculous.

The original Star Trek did 50 minute stories; and of the 80 episodes produced (If you include the unsold pilot); I think you can count the amount of episodes where TOS did an A/B episode story structure on one hand. Further when they did do that it still revolved around the main plot complication of an episode.

Yep. Now, I do like a nice, juicy piece of technobabble if it fits the plot well enough, and like Gates McFadden with a medical prop, in the hands of the right actors it just feels natural and unforced. For the most part, though, it often felt stiff and mechanical, and I hated that.

I love what they are doing. I was really worried they were going to try and re-hash 90s Trek. It's been a blast.

I learned in 1987 that you can't go home again. It'll be okay.

Star Trek IV disagrees.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Star Trek IV disagrees.

Yep.

They even did it four times: they went back to face the music, went back in time to save some whales, went back to the future to save the Earth, and went to the Enterprise-A to see what she's got.

Lotta voyaging home in that one.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Indeed. Honestly, this was the place where I really appreciated what people like about interconnected universes with Burnham being able to use her Vulcan history, as well as the united Romulan/Vulcan culture as presented. Her mom's appearance was a little bit much but I love the deep character struggle of Michael so it works.

Sorry it took this long to come back to this.

For me, Unification 3 actually changed how I look at the Star Trek franchise as a whole, if you can believe that. And forgive me if I struggle with words here. Unification 3 is where Star Trek, for me, became a saga.

I've always loved Star Trek as it has been presented. A fictional future history where Humanity strives to reach the stars and be all that it can be. What's not to love?

Each new iteration of the show has brought its own new history and world building to add to the overall tapestry, but there's never really been an overriding through line for the story. Overall, it's been an anthology, not a saga. Especially since the spin-offs started.

For me, for something to be a saga ( at least how I define the word, your mileage may vary) it has to have an over reaching thread throughout the story. The Skywalker line, or the One Ring. An overall story that's being told beyond the individual character arcs.

Star Trek has never really had that. That's not a bad thing. Anthologies are good. And, at its core, Star Trek is still more an anthology more than anything else. But, with Unification 3, I finally see The Saga of it. The Legacy.

The unifying (heh) element is, of course, Spock. Very appropriate. Very logical. If one were to try to encapsulate the entirety of the story of Star Trek, the focus of that story would be Spock. The story starts with him, and with one exception (Enterprise. It took place before he was born, but it still retroactively sets up a lot of things that will become important to the character), the character has appeared on or at least been mentioned in every single iteration of the show (even the JJverse) ever since. And his contributions to the story have been the longest lasting. We have seen Spock from his days as a small child, we saw him put his mark on the entire galaxy. We saw him dedicate his life to a cause that he knew he would never live long enough to see fruition and we saw the Legacy he created through that effort a thousand years later, where he is revered as one of the greatest Vulcans in history, supplanting Surak himself.

We know of the historical impact of his family. Sarek was one of the greatest diplomats the Federation ever saw. His adopted sister continues to carry on his legacy a thousand years later even as she tries to restore the Federation they both loved.

Hell, non-canon materials even identify the Vulcan who made first contact with Zefram Cochrane to be Solkar, father of Skon, grandfather of Sarek, which would put Spock's family there literally as the story began.
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Solkar

So, yeah, "The Star Trek Saga". Where the moral of the story is "Don't try and be a great (hu)man. Just be a (hu)man, and let history be the judge". I like it.

This is a level up moment to me. This is Star Trek going in the right direction.

Am I reading too much into things? I don't care.

LLAP, everyone.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Nope. I love it.

I think we're in a New Age of Trekiness.

 

[cooleddie74]

I liked "Unification III(DSC)." Sue me.

 

[Amaris]

I liked "Unification III(DSC)." Sue me.

I like seeing more of Vulcan in the TOS era.