One bigass ret-Khan they would need to do...
- Thread starter Sabataage
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Out of curiosity, how do you even control half of Asia? Each part of Asia hates pretty much all the other parts.
One of these days I might read 'em, but I remain dubious about the concept. Like you said, they sound more like Assignment: Earth novels than Star Trek ones, with crazy pseudo-Bond tropes that have little place in Trek outside of a holodeck episode featuring Julian Bashir. Dr. Noah: Augment?
It doesn't instill much confidence in me that the global danger plot of Moonraker is recapitulated. I mean, I actually loved the movie, but it's the high camp approach to James Bond, which works well there, but I suspect would work horribly in the context of Khan (maybe ironically, since high camp was a staple of TOS). Edit: Mem Beta says that Khan had an ozone laser. Alright. I guess.
Edit: also, I have some moral qualms with the tack apparently taken in the novels. Correct me if I am wrong.
The first I call the "Hitler is an alien" effect. Enterprise had a version of this, for example--a relatively innocuous one, but many other works have premised their fiction with aliens either helping Nazi Germany or actually forming the upper echelons of the Nazi Party itself. These stories can be fun, but at their core is the morally offensive concept that the crimes of Nazi Germany were excused because of alien influence, or that humans aren't capable of such evil without outside assistance. At the least, the underlying idea that "wouldn't it be cool if aliens helped kill Jews and Russians?" is a tad disrespectful to Germany's victims. I have kind of the same problem with evil Augments orchestrating real life crimes and tragedies. Yeah, it's fun, but it's still a tad disrespectful. Humanity is perfectly capable of fucking up its own world. Going by Mem Beta here--is southwestern Sudan riven by racial strife wearing the cloak of dangerous religious fundamentalism? Hell, no! Khan did it.
Secondly, and this is something Cox inherited from Space Seed, is the "superior ability breeds superior ambition" conceit, which automatically puts the Augments in the category of villains, or at least megalomaniacs, instead of just people. I've never understood Star Trek's anathema to genetic engineering. In a few years, "Space Seed" will look even more chauvinistic than "Turnabout Intruder." This approach to the Eugenics War isn't very IDIC. Besides, if superior ability breeds superior ambition, why haven't the Vulcans exterminated us by the 24th century? They've had 300 years.
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I happen to be one of the people who don't find Khan to be a particularly interesting, complex or compelling villain. He was one of the several more or less memorable villains from TOS, he was in one solid episode, and then, yeah, he happened to be the villain in an excellent Trek movie. But while I like the movie, I don't think that he was the main reason why the movie was good. He was a convincing adversary to Kirk, but I don't see what else is there to explore about his personality or why I should find it interesting. And I certainly don't see what new and challenging things could be done by rehashing his story.
Unless they do something really radical, like making him Kirk's ally this time, but I'm not sure how that would work.
Otherwise, if it is just a rehash of the old story, what is the point?
1. They should not do Khan again. Or any other TOS story line. this is a chance to take ST in new directions and it shouldn't be squandered re-making the stories we've already seen.
2. The history of the ST universe isn't the history we live in. We live in a world where the events of ST have taken place on TV and movie screens. ST takes place in a world where that stuff actually happened in real life in the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries. In their history the Eugenics Wars DID happen, but that does not need to mean it did in ours. And apparaently it didn't.
2. The history of the ST universe isn't the history we live in. We live in a world where the events of ST have taken place on TV and movie screens. ST takes place in a world where that stuff actually happened in real life in the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries. In their history the Eugenics Wars DID happen, but that does not need to mean it did in ours. And apparaently it didn't.
startrekrcks
Fleet Captain
but what kind of story would you like to see in the sequel I hope they work at it soon.
What kind of story for the sequel?: If there's no time-travel, and no re-hash of an existing TOS story I'm willing to give it a look.
Well, if Trek09 is going to represent what you think Star Trek should be from here on out, you can stay in your time line for all I care.
I am curious though. What did it for you? The constant bickering and shouting that passes for development? The sexual harassing? A Federation devoid of equality between genders? Important pieces of Trek lore destroyed/ignored? All the lead characters being unlikable a**holes? The wafer thin story filled with cut out character motives that are hardly expanded upon? The out of place and out of nowhere romance that adds nothing to the characters or the story? Turning the Enterprise into a "Hot Rod" thing? Glorifying Earth as the center piece of all Star Trek instead of "where no one has gone before"? The lack of alien looking aliens? The concrete floored and screwed down steel beam sets with knob riddled pipes, suspended light fixtures and constant steam blowing vents?
I'm having a difficult time understanding why this universe is more appealing than the old one.
And as for Khan's rule being shifted to the 21st century instead of the 20th century? Here's one. It's a fictional story. They have their universe, we have ours. I mean, honestly. When 2063 comes around and there was no World War III, no warp flight ect, should we change everything around in the Trek universe? Just leave the established facts alone. So what if there was no Eugenics War in real life? All that does is establish that the story is what it is. A work of fiction.
Why is it that a lot of people are so anti re-hashing of characters and story yet they welcome Trek09 with open arms and delight? Isn't Trek09 for all intents and purposes a REHASH of an existing Star Trek story and characters?! You could say that the only thing Star Trek about Trek09 was the constant rehashes of character lines and traits.
I just find this whining for new material to be silly because that is not what we're going to get as long as we have Kirk, the Enterprise and crew. You may toss them something they've never encountered before, but it's still a rehash no matter how different it is because it's the same story and characters.
I guess if you want something new, you should have asked for either a new crew all together.
I disagree. The problem isn't in having the same characters. The problem is taking those characters into new stories and situations.
I think the abrams movie made a good start to this. Kirk and and Crew are still recognizably the same characters for the most part, but enough differences have been introduced to make things somewhat unpredictable.
There is no point in simply retelling the same stories we've already seen in the 79 episodes of TOS when we've been given a clean slate, for all intents and purposes, by the new ST being set in an alternate timeline.
Why can't the same thing happen with Khan? Take his character and give him a new situation to deal with that gives us a new story? Just because a previous character appears doesn't mean it's going to involve the same story or situation.
I'll try to explain my point one more time: It's a total waste, IMO, to take the clean slate Abrams has laid out and use it to just re-jigger stories that have already been told. If you want to see The Wrath of Khan or Space Seed, those stories are already available.
From the ending of the most recent movie, the Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, and everyone else can literally go anywhere story-wise. Wouldn't it be more fun and exciting if the folks making the movies took full advantage of this rather than re-hash a 42 year old tv episode, or a 25 year old movie that you've already seen?
Yes, the movie did involve familar character we already know, but we saw them doing new things. We'd never seen a story about how the crew of the Enterprise met on screen. Now we have. We hadn't seen Kirk facing the Kobyashi Maru Test, now we have.
I'd much rather see the next movie take us and the Enterprise somehwere we have not been yet. Tell me a new story. If they're just gonna re-make old TOS epsidoes or movies, then what's the point? I love those episodes and movies, don't get me wrong, but I've already seen them. Show me something new.
Do you understand my point now?
It's not a clean slate. It's Star Trek. And Star Trek has it's established lore. If you want to ignore every character and every story that's come before it, why not just make a completely different scifi series all together?
But they did. They rehashed everything. They just made it different.
And you think that was an element that was significantly lacking in the original series? I'm sure the old Kirk would have been much more acceptablie and (quoting JJ) 'cooler' if there was more sexual harassment.
Ya. You don't want Star Trek in Star Trek. I get that. If anything has been done before, don't do it no matter how different you want to make it. What's next? You want to say that all the aliens from every series except for the ones seen in Trek09 don't exist anymore simply because they would be a rehash of previous stories? Most illogical.
Vulcan is gone and as a result the Federation is notably weaker. The Klingons have lost 47 ships. The Romulans (probably) know, really know, their planet is destroyed in the future. Old Spock is around to ward off future catastrophies, like Khan or V'ger or the Whale Probe.
Time for new stories. Romulans swarm out of their empire? Klingons seek revenge on the Romulans for the destruction? Let's go.
Time for new stories. Romulans swarm out of their empire? Klingons seek revenge on the Romulans for the destruction? Let's go.
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