As far as "Serious Neelix" episodes go, I thought it was at least admirable that they went that route, and I usually hate Neelix.
Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof should not Return.
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As far as "Serious Neelix" episodes go, I thought it was at least admirable that they went that route, and I usually hate Neelix.
Those kind of complaints have existed as far back as the first films. "THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN", why is it so special now? I just ignore those.
What about transporters? With a single-hair they were able to completely restore Pulaski to her normal self. Or when they were able to restore Picard from the transporter log.
Star Trek and technological non-sense have gone hand in hand for nearly fifty years now.
Of course then there's the biggest technological cheat... "sleep".
Oh, I don't doubt there are some oddball notions out there, going way back. Sometimes one just has to shake one's head and move on.
Nerys Myk said:
It depends ultimately on what you're looking for from a Trek story. In narrative terms the "magic blood" trope strikes me as a fantasy or comic book superhero idea. Probably the latter: I don't think the way Lindelof keeps talking about elements of the movies by analogy with superhero mythology is coincidence. It rubs me the wrong way because I don't really come to Trek for straight-up superhero or fantasy stories per se (same reason I never much cared for that TOS episode where they literally encounter a Greek God).
What about transporters? With a single-hair they were able to completely restore Pulaski to her normal self. Or when they were able to restore Picard from the transporter log.
Star Trek and technological non-sense have gone hand in hand for nearly fifty years now.
Of course then there's the biggest technological cheat... "sleep".
Oh God, even I was calling "Bullshit" on that when I first saw the episode--and I love BoBW. That's a good example of "we painted ourselves in the corner by showing how badass the villain of the week is, we need a gimmick to defeat them"
Probably even further with "Enemy Within" if you want to get into the transporter fucking around with biology. There's a reason that the transporter is my least favorite Trek tech.
Magic transporters go all the way back to The Enemy Within.
Does 'magic blood' seem fantastic? Of course it does, but no more fantastic than dozens of other things (good and bad) that we've seen the franchise hand us over the last fifty-years.
But here's the thing: I watch Star Trek for the fantastical elements. If it wasn't for those fantastical elements, I may as well watch modern day cop shows and political dramas.
Something that always bugged me about the episode: Where did the extra matter come from?
Think about it: Kirk beams up. Only the matter of one Kirk in the stream. Yet, the transporter created a complete, living, human being: minutes apart from the original transport. "Evil" Kirk is basically a replicated human being created from nothing, with the "dark side" of the original cut and pasted onto it's mind.
Tuvix has the same issue.
I'd say they're Star Trek done as comic book movies (with a fair amount of Star Wars under the chassis -- themes of destiny, culminating medal scenes, STID even gives us a Millennium Falcon-style shuttle chase on the surface of Kronos). Trek always had its share of pulp, but the gestalt of nuTrek is more purely pulp than it's ever been.
Pure pulp can of course be plenty entertaining... which is why even the worst Star Wars has always made money. It only irritates me to the extent it does in the context of Trek because whatever heights Trek climbed or depths it sank to in days of yore, it was a vessel for a more diverse kind of storytelling than that. I think that's the core difference some people feel between nuTrek and its predecessors. Certainly it's the core difference for me.
But Star Trek is full of such "Comic book" ideas. If it was an occasional anomaly, there could be a case, but its not. Science that works like magic is the norm, not the exception.
Thing is... Roddenberry admittedly lifted plenty from pulp science fiction magazines of the 50' and early-60's.
I wonder if some of the divide over the Abrams films could simply come down to folks who like serious drama played straight vs. folks who like to have a fun time with bigger than life heroes?
TOS was pulp science fiction. Seriously. Kirk was fighting lizard men, Greek gods, multi-color brains and Nazis.
Good point. TOS is pretty much an anthology series that uses that same cast and characters from episode to episode. It has a very pulp-magazine feel to it. Versus latter day, TNG and beyond, series where Trek began to take itself much more seriously as a dramatic series.
Kirk as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The White Hat cowboy riding in to save the town.
"Full of" is putting it a bit strongly, but like I said, I didn't care for Who Mourns for Adonais either. For my tastes, Trek's quality goes down the closer it comes to pure fantasy. It's more compelling to me as SF or as the use of an SF framework for telling dramatic stories from other fictional genres.
SeerGSB said:
Like I said earlier: let's not make the nuTrek the enemy of the good. People often seem to get so carried away in defending Abramstrek tropes that they actually forget that Star Trek did set itself apart, did deliver more than mere pulp, which is the reason it has a large fandom today and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon don't. There's nothing wrong with liking Abramstrek; throwing the achievements of old Trek under the bus to justify doing so isn't necessary.
The difference is that "The Enemy Within" explores the consequences of what happened after that transporter effect splitting a man in two, so I give it more leeway because at least it does something with it. When Kirk is revived with magic blood, what comes out of that other than him living? There has to be more to these kind of plot devices than a reset button. It's like the end of "The Naked Time", great episode, but the thing with the time travel is so out of place and nothing ever comes out of it "Oh, I guess someday we'll look into it".
It may be a reset button of sorts, but it serves its purpose in the story. Plus, I do think there was more to the device than just a reset button, it provided the driving force for the actions of the Starfleet officer who destroyed the Kelvin Memorial.
I really didn't need for them to dissect the philosophical ramifications of Khan's blood.
Everyone's a superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
—99 Red Balloons
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
—99 Red Balloons
Which is why I keep thinking that STID is two movies compressed. Everything post Khan reveal feels like ideas from a follow up movie that got jammed into STID's final 1/4.
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