J J Abrams New Star Trek and VOY (spoilers)

[Lynx]

I have to disagree with your statement that "It's been a long time since Star Trek was fun." It's still fun for me (despite that big spoiler in the movie, which saddens me greatly), but I'm sorry it's not fun for you. I don't know what else to say. You seem to want a lot more control of your fiction than you are likely to get.

Might I suggest something? I really don't mean this as insulting, so I hope you won't think of it that way. Have you thought about children's literature? I'm serious. When I'm feeling down and want something optimistic to read, that's one of the places I turn to. There is some wonderful children's literature out there that I am not in the least ashamed to read even though I am oh, so far from childhood. It's not sure-fire, because sometimes sad things happen there, too, but not as often and not as devastatingly. Good luck.

No, I didn't take your suggestion as an insult. In fact, you may have a point there. I might check it out to see if I can find something that cheers me up!

Otherwise, I do have a lot of interests besides Star Trek. OK, I'm re-reading the Voyager book "Bless The Beast" right now but when I'm finished with that one, I will take a break from Trek reading and read a biography I bought yesterday about a famous rock star instead.

Besides that, I watched NCIS yesterday and that series still gives me the same feeling as when I watched Voyager many, many years ago. OK, there have been some things in NCIS which I didn't really like but it's still entertaining to watch. One of the few series which I haven't turned my back to.

blitz wrote:

Spoiler: Spoiler about TrekXI

even in this AU there's still a chance that all our favorite characters from the respective modern series can still exist with the exception of one. with vulcan being destroyed now, tuvok most likely will not be able to exist in this universe.

damn! a brutha can't even get some love on vulcan!

There we have one thing I find annoying with the new movie and everybody's unconditional acceptance of the new timeline. What we have is

Spoiler: Spoiler

Further character destruction which really p***es me off!

First Kes, then Janeway and now the creator of Jar-Jar Binks has caused a situation in which Tuvok will be erased too. Who will be the next Voyager character to be destroyed by those Idiots In Charge? Maybe I should start some betting over it and earn a fortune?

 

[Freman]

Working... and playing World of Warcraft, Anno 1401 A.D., and Assassin's Creed. I've kept myself busy. Oh, and I got engaged. The better half tends to demand my time.

BUT, with the new Trek movie, she's giving me room because now all I want to do is talk Trek, and I need other ner... fans in order to do that. So, here I am! Good to see you're still here Exodus.

Sorry, that was WAY off topic. Two days back, and I'm going to get a warning...

Anyway, something else that occurs to me about this. Time travel has long since been a very regular staple of the Trek diet when it comes to story lines. If anything Voyager ripped the idea of Year of Hell what if's from TOS. If Kirk saved what's-her-name, the timeline would be ruined... yadda, yadda, yadda... I can't even say YoH did a better job.

Don't get me wrong. I loved that two parter. Janeway kickin' ass, going crazy, rampaging... did it just get warm in here? *clears throat* But, this movie has no reset button and now, unlike any other time travel Trek story, we get to see what happens after everything is changed.

It's an exciting time for Trek.

You're a Star Trek fan AND a WoW fan, and somehow you're engaged???? WTF??????

Seriously, though. Congrats!!!

 

[iguana_tonante]

blitz wrote:

Spoiler: Spoiler about TrekXI

even in this AU there's still a chance that all our favorite characters from the respective modern series can still exist with the exception of one. with vulcan being destroyed now, tuvok most likely will not be able to exist in this universe.

damn! a brutha can't even get some love on vulcan!

There we have one thing I find annoying with the new movie and everybody's unconditional acceptance of the new timeline. What we have is

Spoiler: Spoiler

Further character destruction which really p***es me off!

First Kes, then Janeway and now the creator of Jar-Jar Binks has caused a situation in which Tuvok will be erased too. Who will be the next Voyager character to be destroyed by those Idiots In Charge? Maybe I should start some betting over it and earn a fortune?

Things happening =/= character destruction (whatever that means)

also

Not everything revolves around VOY.

 

[brcarthey]

Not everything revolves around VOY.

it doesn't. oh man! no one told me. well, that explains so much now. thank you for pointing that out. wow! was any other voyager fan aware of this?

 

[Trek Survivor]

They're nothing alike. Trek XI is much better for one thing!

 

[Karnbeln]

Bringing this thread back to the topic rather than yet another debate about whether or not a reboot was the right decision or if characters should die...

I don't see it. Besides time travel, which has been featured ad nauseum on Trek, can anyone enlighten me on what exactly is similar between the two stories?

I suppose both villains were motivated partially by losing their wives, but even that is similar only when you state it in the way I just did. Annorax was intentionally erasing worlds from history repeatedly to try to bring her back after he himself accidentally erased his homeworld. Nero was accidentally thrown into the past while seeking revenge on someone he irrationally blamed for the destruction of his world, and then decided to burn the Federation to the ground like any other vengeance-based villain. There really is no comparison.

Also, the main focal point of the stories have been missed. "Year of Hell" was about watching Voyager and its crew slowly destroyed, first and formost. The Enterprise, by contrast stayed bright and shiny until the end, and focused on the "new" characters and the race to stop Nero from getting "revenge". Anything else in either story was a B-plot or superficial, hardly enough to call one a ripoff of the other.

So, yeah. I don't see it. Someone enlighten me.

 

[Tachyon]

Not everything revolves around VOY.

it doesn't. oh man! no one told me. well, that explains so much now. thank you for pointing that out. wow! was any other voyager fan aware of this?

Wot? I don't understand the concept of 'not everything revolves around VOY'.

 

[kimc]

Not everything revolves around VOY.

it doesn't. oh man! no one told me. well, that explains so much now. thank you for pointing that out. wow! was any other voyager fan aware of this?

Wot? I don't understand the concept of 'not everything revolves around VOY'.

Amazingly enough in the universe of a VOYAGER forum everything DOES revolve around Voyager.

 

[Tachyon]

Tee hee. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Not everything revolves around VOY.

it doesn't. oh man! no one told me. well, that explains so much now. thank you for pointing that out. wow! was any other voyager fan aware of this?

I was replying to Lynx that suggested that the big spoiler thing would necessarily spell doom for Tuvok, calling it another (purposeful?) character destruction against a Voyager character. Obviously, it doesn't need to be for two reason: i) Original Tuvok is safe is the original timeline, and even then ii) Alternate Tuvok could be born someplace else if the writers want to use him in the alternate timeline. I don't understand why people have to choose the alternative they despise the most.

On the rest, I stand corrected: around here, everything revolves around VOY.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

I swear I thought papa Kirk was going to say:"Time's up!!" when he rammed that ship. Seriously.

 

[Lynx]

Not everything revolves around VOY.

it doesn't. oh man! no one told me. well, that explains so much now. thank you for pointing that out. wow! was any other voyager fan aware of this?

I was replying to Lynx that suggested that the big spoiler thing would necessarily spell doom for Tuvok, calling it another (purposeful?) character destruction against a Voyager character. Obviously, it doesn't need to be for two reason: i) Original Tuvok is safe is the original timeline, and even then ii) Alternate Tuvok could be born someplace else if the writers want to use him in the alternate timeline. I don't understand why people have to choose the alternative they despise the most.

On the rest, I stand corrected: around here, everything revolves around VOY.

I did bring it up because we've already had a debate about Tuvok on this forum where the outcome of the movie was discussed.

Forgive me for being a bit negative and suspicious but there have been too much of unnecessary character destruction in the recent years (Kes, Kirk, Data, Janeway) and I don't trust certain writers. They seem to mess up things just for the sake of messing it up.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Forgive me for being a bit negative and suspicious but there have been too much of unnecessary character destruction in the recent years (Kes, Kirk, Data, Janeway) and I don't trust certain writers. They seem to mess up things just for the sake of messing it up.

What the hell means character destruction? It's just a buzzword: you use it when the writers take direction with the characters that you don't like. I can understand not liking it: there are some writing decisions that I don't care much either.

But to call it character destruction is just a way to solicit an emotional response from people to get them to agree with you. You make it sounds like the writers are purposeful messing with some characters for some reason: that's disingenuous.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

Forgive me for being a bit negative and suspicious but there have been too much of unnecessary character destruction in the recent years (Kes, Kirk, Data, Janeway) and I don't trust certain writers. They seem to mess up things just for the sake of messing it up.

What the hell means character destruction? It's just a buzzword: you use it when the writers take direction with the characters that you don't like. I can understand not liking it: there are some writing decisions that I don't care much either.

But to call it character destruction is just a way to solicit an emotional response from people to get them to agree with you. You make it sounds like the writers are purposeful messing with some characters for some reason: that's disingenuous.

When you like it, its called character development.

 

[JB2005]

Forgive me for being a bit negative and suspicious but there have been too much of unnecessary character destruction in the recent years (Kes, Kirk, Data, Janeway) and I don't trust certain writers. They seem to mess up things just for the sake of messing it up.

What the hell means character destruction? It's just a buzzword: you use it when the writers take direction with the characters that you don't like. I can understand not liking it: there are some writing decisions that I don't care much either.

But to call it character destruction is just a way to solicit an emotional response from people to get them to agree with you. You make it sounds like the writers are purposeful messing with some characters for some reason: that's disingenuous.

When you like it, its called character development.

whoa whoa whoa...characters develop?

meh it'll never catch on...too controversial

 

[Lynx]

Forgive me for being a bit negative and suspicious but there have been too much of unnecessary character destruction in the recent years (Kes, Kirk, Data, Janeway) and I don't trust certain writers. They seem to mess up things just for the sake of messing it up.

What the hell means character destruction? It's just a buzzword: you use it when the writers take direction with the characters that you don't like. I can understand not liking it: there are some writing decisions that I don't care much either.

But to call it character destruction is just a way to solicit an emotional response from people to get them to agree with you. You make it sounds like the writers are purposeful messing with some characters for some reason: that's disingenuous.

I call it character destruction because it is character destruction.

Kes: Turned into a disgusting monster in a badly written story with no importance at all for the ongoing Voyager story. Perhaps a not so nice "response" to a letter campaign to have the character re-instated as a regular character again.

Kirk: Killed off in a TNG movie. What did he do there in the first place? Why bring him to the wrong timeline just to kill him off?

Data: Killed off in a lousy movie just to get some "effect". Totally unnecessary.

Janeway: The main character of Voyager, killed off for no acceptable reason at all.

That's what I call character destruction.

 

[JustKate]

^ I'll grant you Kes, and maybe Data, but...

I rather liked the way Kirk died. Realistically, there was never going to be another movie featuring the original cast, except in cameos, and Kirk was getting old, but he would never have wanted to retire to some armchair. He went out trying to save the galaxy. Not a bad way to go, for Kirk. For a lot of people, really.

Janeway wasn't old, and she died before her time (assuming she did, but let's not get into that), but she too went out fighting for what she believed in. It's not how I wanted to see it, but can either of us really say it wasn't acceptable to Janeway herself?

Edit: What you really mean, Lynx, isn't that these characters died for "no acceptable reason" - you mean that they died for reasons that are unacceptable to you.

 

[Praetor]

Yeah, I have to chime in because I've never really been bugged by Kirk's death either. Could one argue that it was unnecessary to really go there in real-world terms? Sure. But in-universe, the man died for a principle, not for any one specific person or people. I can think of worse reasons to die.

Would I have preferred they just left well enough alone and left his death to my imagination? Sure. But I can live with what they did. I think the measure of how effective what they did in that area could be gauged by the fact that it's still being talked about 15 years later.

Similarly, I'd have preferred Janeway not been killed in the books, but realistically, let's face it: the character will almost certainly never appear in a live-action production again anyway. The books have to do what they feel is appropriate and dramatically interesting for their universe. If you dislike their choice, I'd simply ignore it.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I call it character destruction because it is character destruction.

Kes: Turned into a disgusting monster in a badly written story with no importance at all for the ongoing Voyager story. Perhaps a not so nice "response" to a letter campaign to have the character re-instated as a regular character again.

Kirk: Killed off in a TNG movie. What did he do there in the first place? Why bring him to the wrong timeline just to kill him off?

Data: Killed off in a lousy movie just to get some "effect". Totally unnecessary.

Janeway: The main character of Voyager, killed off for no acceptable reason at all.

That's what I call character destruction.

Ok, then you meant character death. I thought you were talking about bad characterization and motives, acting out-of-character, etc.

I can understand it. I know a lot of people that can't stand anything short of a full happy ending "and they lived happily ever after". Character death is an important part of fiction. Hamlet dies. Romeo and Juliet die. There are good deaths and bad deaths, but personally I don't have problems with the notion.

^ I'll grant you Kes, and maybe Data, but...

I rather liked the way Kirk died. Realistically, there was never going to be another movie featuring the original cast, except in cameos, and Kirk was getting old, but he would never have wanted to retire to some armchair. He went out trying to save the galaxy. Not a bad way to go, for Kirk. For a lot of people, really.

Janeway wasn't old, and she died before her time (assuming she did, but let's not get into that), but she too went out fighting for what she believed in. It's not how I wanted to see it, but can either of us really say it wasn't acceptable to Janeway herself?

Edit: What you really mean, Lynx, isn't that these characters died for "no acceptable reason" - you mean that they died for reasons that are unacceptable to you.

I concur.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Kirk goes from cadet to starship captain within a few days?

That's debatable. The writers left it vague as to how much time had passed when the ending scene took place. Could have been days, weeks, months, even a year or two.

Spock and Uhura in a romance?

Okay, I agree, that's a stretch.

Chekov a full blown commissioned officer at the age of 17, when it has NEVER been hinted that he was a genuis?

He could have been on his cadet cruise, but with the provisional rank of Ensign. (Kirk did this in TOS.)