Then you'd miss out on the excellent On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
"Planet of the Titans" Revisited
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Then you'd miss out on the excellent On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
I can certainly live without "Moonraker" and "View To a Kill", but I'm quite fond of "The Spy Who Loved Me", "For Your Eyes Only" and "Octopussy".
trevanian
Rear Admiral
They could have shot it as Dalton's second or third outing, and probably still had a Barry score, since he wouldn't have had to put up with Lewis Gilbert misusing Dolby on MR and other annoyances that chased JB away from JB after TLD.
While I can understand the need to re-invigorate the franchise, and there were a few elements in J.J.'s version that I liked, overall this is not the way I would've chosen to re-invigorate things. To that extent, I'm with Trevanian on this one. I still can't believe that there wasn't a 'snappy' way to bring Trek into the 21st century movie theater that would've kept with the existing universe.
Abram's film was a good movie; I'm just not convinced that it was really good Star Trek.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
The reason he did what he did was very clear. None, and I mean none, of the other TREK shows resonate with America as much as TOS. Even after all those Berman Treks, Captain Kirk/SPOCK are still, by far, the most famous TREK characters...and so they went with what sells...TOS...
Rob
^
Don't get me wrong Rob, I agree totally with you in that regard. I just wish that they could've made a movie in one of the two following ways:
1. With the new cast, do a proper 'pilot' or origin story, that would've been in keeping with the original timeline. Start the story with Kirk as a young officer serving on board the Farragut or as XO of the ship he previously served on just prior to being promoted to captain. Wrap that around the very beginning of the 5YM and a story that truly did explore strange new worlds.
-or -
2. A story that literally picked up where TOS left off, a mission set at the beginning of Year 4. A new movie franchise could've explored those missing two years, with stand-alone stories that could've been told without having to incorporate every single bit of Trek lore into them. Hell, Trek novelists have been doing it for decades.
That's just my wish. I understand the logic of creating the Abramsverse, but I just wish that it felt a bit more like TOS.
Don't get me wrong Rob, I agree totally with you in that regard. I just wish that they could've made a movie in one of the two following ways:
1. With the new cast, do a proper 'pilot' or origin story, that would've been in keeping with the original timeline. Start the story with Kirk as a young officer serving on board the Farragut or as XO of the ship he previously served on just prior to being promoted to captain. Wrap that around the very beginning of the 5YM and a story that truly did explore strange new worlds.
-or -
2. A story that literally picked up where TOS left off, a mission set at the beginning of Year 4. A new movie franchise could've explored those missing two years, with stand-alone stories that could've been told without having to incorporate every single bit of Trek lore into them. Hell, Trek novelists have been doing it for decades.
That's just my wish. I understand the logic of creating the Abramsverse, but I just wish that it felt a bit more like TOS.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
I agree with you on this.
What? That's not true. Barry wasn't "annoyed away". Barry was suppose to score TLK, but was undergoing surgery, so had to turn down the job.
By the time of GoldenEye, he was offered, but turned down job suggesting the producers go in another direction given the long break since the previous movie (link).
His relationship with the Bond producers was still good by the time of TND as he was the one who personally called Babs to suggest David Arnold for the job.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Hey, so I guess nothing ever panned out?
And you know, as much as I liiked TMP, I think this would have made a cool movie. I don't like the idea of Kirk disappearing for half the movie or the Enterprise redesign (although it is interesting and kinda cool) but at least it isn't a retread of a TV episode. And it seems like it would have had a cinematic scope and feel to it, without resorting to the usual "Earth is gonna be destroyed" thing.
I hope a screenplay surfaces someday, because I'd love to give it a read.
Regarding the above topic, I dropped a PM to Ryann866 just prior to the holidays, hoping to wheedle a bit more info from him pertaining to the actual existance of a script. I'm staying optimistic, hoping that one will surface and be available in public domain to be read.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
You've got your sources, I've got mine. John Glenn makes it pretty clear in his book that it was obvious Barry would never be scoring another Bond after TLD, and that fed into his cameo in that picture. I admire Barry tremendously, but there is a lot of backNforth over the origins of TheJamesBondTheme that call into question the accuracy of his recollections.
Just wanted to pose some non-news in my ongoing investigation of this. I swapped some messages with Gene's one-time assistant Susan Sackett: who was nice enough to answer some questions of mine. The non-news is in the intervening 30+ years she doesn't remember the details of if there was actually a script or not. Too bad! The mystery remains...but my thanks to her for putting up with my pesky questions.
Has anyone seen a character description of the new Enterprise captain Gregory Westlake? His age? Nationality or ethnicity? Did Chris Bryant and Allan Scott have anyone in mind when they wrote their script? Did Philip Kaufman have anyone in mind when he re-wrote the script? Or is the character pretty much an unknown?
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Re: "Planet of the Titans" Revisited / Adam's Enterprise
Pardon my resurrecting this thread, but there's some new info and I thought I'd add it to the existing discussion rather than start a new one.
Propworks is currently doing an auction that features at least one Planet of the Titans item: one of the study models built of Ken Adam's take on the Enterprise. These are the most diverse set of photos I've seen of this model, so I'm sharing them.
The text from the auction is as follows
Pardon my resurrecting this thread, but there's some new info and I thought I'd add it to the existing discussion rather than start a new one.
Propworks is currently doing an auction that features at least one Planet of the Titans item: one of the study models built of Ken Adam's take on the Enterprise. These are the most diverse set of photos I've seen of this model, so I'm sharing them.
The text from the auction is as follows
Thanks for the pics!
The catalogue's wrong: It was "Unification", not "Best of Both Worlds"
The catalogue's wrong: It was "Unification", not "Best of Both Worlds"
That's likely correct.Thanks for the pics!
The catalogue's wrong: It was "Unification", not "Best of Both Worlds"
I dunno - I remember being shown this and another study model for the same vessel in the TNG art department over the summer of 1990 and being told that they were going, along with a bunch of kitbashes there, to be photographed for Part II of BOBW.
I never actually noticed what ships were in those shots, though, although I know that identifying them has become a bit of a fannish cottage industry.
Those kitbashes were cool - it was the first time I saw art markers and the like repainted and used as "warp engines." They had commercial model kits of the Enterprise D in two scales and were doing this trick of designing them to forced perspective by putting really big windows on the larger scale saucers in some cases and lots of little windows on the smaller scale variety.
I never actually noticed what ships were in those shots, though, although I know that identifying them has become a bit of a fannish cottage industry.
Those kitbashes were cool - it was the first time I saw art markers and the like repainted and used as "warp engines." They had commercial model kits of the Enterprise D in two scales and were doing this trick of designing them to forced perspective by putting really big windows on the larger scale saucers in some cases and lots of little windows on the smaller scale variety.
It's possible that they were filmed for BoBW, but the footage wasn't actually used until "Unification".
At least, none of the obsessive websites like EAS have spotted it in BoBW, yet.
At least, none of the obsessive websites like EAS have spotted it in BoBW, yet.
Several of the ships were used in both episodes as some of BoBW footage was recycled for Qualor II's depot.
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