My Gripes with STID!

[urbandefault]

Kirk asked Chekov about shadowing Scotty in Engineering before telling him to put on the red shirt. If Chekov is the Big Damn Genius and Kirk trusts him and knows what the kid can do, why not put him in the position? It's not unlike what Pike did with Kirk.

 

[Sindatur]

Let's not forget Geordi flew the ship with a Red Command Shirt in the First Season.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Kirk asked Chekov about shadowing Scotty in Engineering before telling him to put on the red shirt. If Chekov is the Big Damn Genius and Kirk trusts him and knows what the kid can do, why not put him in the position? It's not unlike what Pike did with Kirk.

Plus I have to wonder if Kirk wasn't just having him as a seat warmer until he could somehow talk Scotty into coming back.

 

[fireproof78]

Kirk asked Chekov about shadowing Scotty in Engineering before telling him to put on the red shirt. If Chekov is the Big Damn Genius and Kirk trusts him and knows what the kid can do, why not put him in the position? It's not unlike what Pike did with Kirk.

Plus I have to wonder if Kirk wasn't just having him as a seat warmer until he could somehow talk Scotty into coming back.

I think both are probably likely scenarios. Kirk figured it was a brief mission, then, once he got back, he would work it out with Scotty. Obviously, he knows what Chekov can do (starting with the whole warp in to Titan's atmosphere calculations) and likely has confidence in the junior officer to get the job done.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I am a strong family man. I have difficulty reconciling my beliefs with the actions of the father in the film who kills himself to save his child. I feel that this family was disposable to the plot, for a scene between the family and Kirk was cut.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Isn't that the point? "Is there anything you would not do for your family?" - Harewood and Khan are willing to murder for theirs, but ultimately Kirk will only give up his own life for his.

 

[BillJ]

I am a strong family man. I have difficulty reconciling my beliefs with the actions of the father in the film who kills himself to save his child. I feel that this family was disposable to the plot, for a scene between the family and Kirk was cut.

Of course they were disposable to the plot. I'm not sure I really see the problem there.

As far as reconciling beliefs, you don't have too. That man made his judgement based on his desperation. It's a wondrous thing about humanity, our behavior in a given situation really can't be predicted.

 

[Jedi_Master]

LoB does have a point - perhaps nuChekov will be the designated problem solver/fill in guy.

To be fair, he did kind of have that role on TOS: he seemed to be something of a 'jack of all trades'. But I do think sending him all the way down to engineering, when that department should have a whole bunch of engineers who are specialised in their job and are in a line of succession behind Scotty, is a real wtf moment.

Sometimes I think the nuTrek people have gotten Chekov confused with Wesley Crusher.

Not that. Never that.

I hope they give Chekov a more defined role in the next film, but that is a minor gripe all things considered.

I didn't enjoy the fact that they never resolved the story of the Starfleet officer who sacrificed himself to save his daughter, but they can't tie up every loose end.

 

[JWPlatt]

I am a strong family man. I have difficulty reconciling my beliefs with the actions of the father in the film who kills himself to save his child. I feel that this family was disposable to the plot, for a scene between the family and Kirk was cut.

Of course they were disposable to the plot. I'm not sure I really see the problem there.

As far as reconciling beliefs, you don't have too. That man made his judgement based on his desperation. It's a wondrous thing about humanity, our behavior in a given situation really can't be predicted.

Lakenheath might be equating it with a character snuff film where the writer is out to kill his own characters for no other reason than his own twisted fantasies (or to "leave his mark" on a franchise such as Picard's family's death and Kirk's death in "Generations" or Newt, Hicks, and Bishop's death in "Alien3" that render the struggles or episodes that have come before as meaningless). The characters have no say or choice in the matter and are completely at the whim of the writer. Imagine a story like "Purple Rose of Cairo" but the script says the characters all shoot each other dead. They would rebel and demand to choose their own fate. So it comes down to allowing the characters to live if they write themselves that way. It's about the organic process of allowing the characters to "write themselves" and choice over fate.

But in this case of George Kirk's fate, one needs to ask whether all would have perished, include George and James, if not for the actions of George Kirk. As Klaatu said in the questionable remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still," "If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives." It's the same sort of thing that really leaves little choice.

 

[Jedi_Master]

^ I have no idea what you just wrote. Please run that by me one more time.

 

[Sindatur]

LoB does have a point - perhaps nuChekov will be the designated problem solver/fill in guy.

To be fair, he did kind of have that role on TOS: he seemed to be something of a 'jack of all trades'. But I do think sending him all the way down to engineering, when that department should have a whole bunch of engineers who are specialised in their job and are in a line of succession behind Scotty, is a real wtf moment.

Sometimes I think the nuTrek people have gotten Chekov confused with Wesley Crusher.

Not that. Never that.

I hope they give Chekov a more defined role in the next film, but that is a minor gripe all things considered.

I didn't enjoy the fact that they never resolved the story of the Starfleet officer who sacrificed himself to save his daughter, but they can't tie up every loose end.

What do you mean tie up that loose end? He blew himself up, so, what is there to tie up?

 

[Jedi_Master]

tie up loose end:

Explaining to the family why their father killed himself and all those other people, and whose influence he was under.

 

[Franklin]

tie up loose end:

Explaining to the family why their father killed himself and all those other people, and whose influence he was under.

There was a very short scene filmed where Kirk met the little girl and her mother after he gave his speech at Starfleet at the end of the movie. It was cut. I thought that was a good choice because especially by then, it was extraneous.

I think it's fair to assume that even though we never meet the girl or her mother on screen again after we see her immediate improvement in the hospital, she fully recovered, and at least her mother knows the truth of what went on with her husband.

 

[Jedi_Master]

tie up loose end:

Explaining to the family why their father killed himself and all those other people, and whose influence he was under.

There was a very short scene filmed where Kirk met the little girl and her mother after he gave his speech at Starfleet at the end of the movie. It was cut. I thought that was a good choice because especially by then, it was extraneous.

I think it's fair to assume that even though we never meet the girl or her mother on screen again after we see her immediate improvement in the hospital, she fully recovered, and at least her mother knows the truth of what went on with her husband.

Of course. The point of the overall thread is to find minor flaws and pick at them. STiD - in my opinion - is a fantastic movie, and one of the best Trek films of all time. B

But there are a few areas that were not resolved to my satisfaction, which is why I brought them up.

It wasn't made explicitly clear that the Starfleet officer explained to his wife what the motive for his actions were - either to her face or posthumously, and considering the classified nature of Khan's healing abilities, she may have always been at a loss as to how her daughter recovered, and why her husband died. The daughter was able to grow up, but without her father, life would have been more difficult for her, especially if according to all she knew, he was a traitor or the victim of a heinous act.

 

[kirkfan]

I think it would be cruel to let the little girl know that her survival came at the price of many lives.

 

[JWPlatt]

^ I have no idea what you just wrote. Please run that by me one more time.

Sorry, you have to know the secret handshake before I do translations.

Oh, okay.... It was plot-driven instead of character-driven; the plot needed George Kirk to die, so the writer killed him, and George always mindlessly obeys the writer regardless of whether he could have found another way as a character with free will where the writer basically channels the character. You'll see some authors speak of this more organic way of writing.

It's a little like "The Doors Read the Script." But just a little.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

For me, this isn't a trivial matter. We have people in our world who are committing acts of terror as horrific as the bombing in London. We live in a world of desperate people who have events in their lives that have brought them to this point. Yet, instead of committing an act of mass murder, I have seen these people reach out to the community. The community responds with donations and kind words. Only a small number commit these acts, and this comes after years of disaffection and indoctrination into an extreme form of thinking. This is our world now. The world of Star Trek is supposed to be better than our current world; we are the savages and they are the civilized people. This is one of the points raised in the film - that people of the 23rd century don't have the savagery of the 20th century, so Admiral Marcus coerces Khan into giving him aid. The act of the father undermines this point brutally.

 

[JWPlatt]

Wow, I totally misread the context previously. Sorry. I don't know where my mind was at but I applied your concern to George Kirk killing himself to save his wife and son in Star Trek 11.

But, anyway, yes, agreed about THAT father and child, his daughter. Another point of support for the self-describing title of STID (Darkness) and being not about the optimism we've come to understand about Star Trek.

 

[BigJake]

I don't have a problem with dad-who-blows-himself-up from a world-building standpoint. "Optimism" or not, a Star Trek villain who could coerce or manipulate people into dark and desperate acts isn't a bad idea in itself. But the way it happens is pretty hard to explain, because AFAICS Khan has no leverage after he cures the girl; there is really nothing to prevent the dad from pretending to agree to the bombing, waiting for the confirmation of the cure and then simply turning him in*. One rather has to squint at that.

(* At least nothing obvious onscreen, I'm sure there's some attempt at an explanation floating around in a novel or a comic or an interview or something.)

 

[CorporalClegg]

Whether or not you want to admit that the characters' shared history -- in particular Kirk's shared history with both the villain and with Spock -- were important to the dynamics that made Wrath work... they were. You're mistaken. How do we know this? We know because switching Khan out for a random slightly-rewritten player and running the same basic set of beats was tried. It was called Nemesis, and well... you can see how that worked out.

Nice try but no. But you get an A for effort.

"Space Seed" had no barring on their "shard history." As I already stated, the pivotal plot point(s--and cause of Khan's hatred--occurred completely off-camera. They existed solely in a few lines of exposition.

This would have been no different if they made up a bad guy of their own, and audiences would have perceived him any different from just about every other one-off movie bad guy who, told his story, muwa ha haed, and set out for revenge.

Even the McGivers connection is dubious at best. There is zero evidence she was even the wife in question. They weren't married at the end of the episode, and she's never mentioned by named in TWOK. It's just common assumption.

Greg and others have since "canonized" her as such, but that was all after the fact.

TWOK was written to exist solely on its own. How do we know this? Because a studio would never put out a film where the plot and conflict were dependent on a 15 year old story from a different medium.

Any perceived "significance" to the use of Khan is solely due to existing emotional attachment to the character. It's why Bennett chose to use him. As did Lindelof.


Oh, and...

The Nemesis example is so tangled in fallacy, I'm not going to dignify it with a response.

Khan's personal traits: intelligence, strength, ethnic/religious background, etc. had no impact on the film whatsoever. All parts of this statement are demonstrably false. (They're to some extent true of CumberKhan, obviously, but not the least bit of his predecessor.)

How exactly?

His ethnicity and religion were never brought up. We were told he was really smart but never actually presented any signs of intelligence. And his only "feat" of strength was lifting the charred piece of space junk off of Joachim. Except, in a world with force fields, see-though, super strong aluminum and thingamuboper alloys, there's no way to know just how heavy that thing really was. An even if it was as heavy as one would assume, lifting it really wasn't anything a fit normal human couldn't do under the influence of adrenaline.