Revisiting Star Trek Continues...

[CmdrJoe]

I love Continues, especially the way it perfectly bridges TOS with TMP. I see it as the best fan-made production out there, not the Vic Mignogna show. That said, Vic's portrayal of Kirk was quite good. Todd Haberkorn as Spock was outstanding. And Chris Doohan playing the part his dad made famous is icing on the cake (I love Scotty! And cake. Cheesecake, specifically.)

 

[Bixby]

Falling behind on my re-watch, I'll deal with Lolani later this week, Warped.

You can feel the compulsive fanboying happening in this episode by the needless linking of the Tantalus field weapon with the Tantalus 5 penal colony from Dagger in the Mind.

My biggest gripe with this episode is that despite an interesting premise, following up Mirror Mirror with a sequel seen from the other side, the showmakers just didn't seem to understand the characters. In Mirror Mirror, the alt-universe characters are supposed to be uncontrollable and wild "animals", near-psychotics. The way the actors portray them in Fairest of them all is far from the original portrayal. For example, early on when Kirk refers to Kipleigh Brown as Jones and she mumbles "the name is Smith, sir" might have seemed to the cast as a fun callback to Smith's only original series appearance, but the Mirror Mirror version of Kirk would have savaged her for even this small reply.

The same for Marlena Moreau: in Mirror Mirror Barbara Luna played her as confident, icy and calculating, but all of a sudden in Fairest of Them All, she's constantly nervous, twitchy and submissive. Actress Asia Demarcos looks very similar to Barbera Luna apart from the height difference, but she wasn't playing her the same way. This was not just limited to the women, many of the male actors just weren't displaying the needed amount of viciousness.

One of the perplexing things in OG Trek was how its corridors were often shown as either filled with crewmen racing through, or other times when they would be completely empty (just how many people would be walking by with a crew complement of 400 inside a gargantuan ship?)

That same problem happens in Fairest, which to the STC crew's credit they were ambitious in the many locations across the ship during this episode, with film extras in uniform walking through or standing while listening to the Captain's intercom message...There probably was about 15 to 20 extras during this episode alone...However, this just emphasized how ridiculous it looked in their bridge scenes with a maximum of 3 crewmen handling this most vital command center during a battle scene. On the one hand, they needed to keep the bridge crew down to bare numbers during the 3rd act's mutiny scene, or else there would have been many casualties during this power grab...but it made no sense to have so few people there during a space battle.

Same thing during the resolution: only enough Empire loyalists to fill one tiny shuttlecraft went with Kirk? I know many of them would have been cheesed off at him for his dismissive speech, but it's odd to think that they would have been so easily swayed to Spock's side...

i guess by this point the STC gang hadn't yet decided what producer Steven Dengler's character was going to be in the series going further (he only appeared at the very end in the shuttlecraft bay)

Anyway, this episode was pretty well executed, despite some glaring logic holes. I could have done without the reusing of a lot of Mirror Mirror's sick bay battle against Spock in the briefing room dustup between Spock and Kirk, but what can you do...

 

[Kor]

Instead of a 1980s pop psychology type of therapist as a regular character, I think there should have been occasional appearances from a psychiatrist with a doctorate similar to Elizabeth Dehner in TOS or Sidney Freedman in M*A*S*H.

Starfleet as depicted in the 1960s was still somewhat more along the lines of real-world armed forces of the time, with the worldbuilding taking some cues from producers' and writers' experiences in the navy or other branches of the service.

Kor

 

[Warped9]

Instead of a 1980s pop psychology type of therapist as a regular character, I think there should have been occasional appearances from a psychiatrist with a doctorate similar to Elizabeth Dehner in TOS or Sidney Freedman in M*A*S*H.

Starfleet as depicted in the 1960s was still somewhat more along the lines of real-world armed forces of the time, with the worldbuilding taking some cues from producers' and writers' experiences in the navy or other branches of the service.

Kor

Yes, agreed. If they had done this with McKenna it would have worked better, but as is every time she appeared we’re reminded of them injecting TNG era ideas into TOS.

 

[Richard Baker]

One thing Doug Drexler did differently with the ship shots was instead of having a large ship being filmed by a virtual camera like a full scale setup, he scaled the Enterprise to the size of the original miniature and then created a virtual lens which duplicated the one used in the original sfx shots.
When planning the camera moved he tried to keep within the bounds of how they filmed things in the sixties instead of getting overly dynamic

I think this approach really contributed to giving this series the same feel of TOS, even more so than the official remastered editions

 

[Warped9]

One thing Doug Drexler did differently with the ship shots was instead of having a large ship being filmed by a virtual camera like a full scale setup, he scaled the Enterprise to the size of the original miniature and then created a virtual lens which duplicated the one used in the original sfx shots.
When planning the camera moved he tried to keep within the bounds of how they filmed things in the sixties instead of getting overly dynamic

I think this approach really contributed to giving this series the same feel of TOS, even more so than the official remastered editions

Yeah, I remember him talking about that. He also advised on how the ship should flyby in the opening credits, noting the Enterprise should sorta “slide” out of the distance rather than come right at you.

 

[Warped9]

"The White Iris" - 2/5

Stardate: Unknown - While on a diplomatic mission Kirk is seriously injured. He recovers, but soon finds himself haunted by apparitions from the past.

Okay, I foresee a lot of disagreement on this one. It's a story designed to pull on the emotions, but I'm calling it as I see it.

There is zero chance TOS would have ever done a story like this particularly about Kirk. This story is pure indulgence, pure fanfic to tell a TNG like story set within TOS. They're treating Kirk like Picard. Indeed with the fan service callouts to later productions and using TNG style technobabble as well as everyday jargon more common to decades long after TOS had ceased production this doesn't feel at all like a TOS story. People in the 1960s didn't use phrases like "needing closure."

Also a BIG logic flaw in this story is Kirk's supposed regret and guilt over losing a possible girlfriend aboard the Farragut. Excuse me, but we clearly understood Kirk's regrets over the Farragut in "Obsession" and by the end of that episode he had come to terms with it. No need to bring yet another old flame into the mix. So I call bullshit on this element of this story.

I also feel the writing is really off here as the characters don't seem like themselves and I mean that beyond the fact they're being played by different actors.

I don't have a lot to say about this episode because, while decently performed, I find it so disappointing. It doesn't feel like a TOS story. It feels like a TNG story but with the TOS characters. It doesn't feel or sound like something that could have been written in 1969. This is a contemporary mindset that says Kirk is broken and needs to be fixed. That isn't a mindset a writer for TOS in 1969 would have had. TOS would never have revisited three previous and disparate storylines like this story tries to do. Furthermore can you imagine them trying to get Joan Collins (Edith Keeler), Louise Sorel (Rayna) and Sabrina Scharf (Miramanee) back all at the same time for the same story? It never would have happened.

This doesn't feel remotely like it's 1969 again. After three reasonable previous outings STC falls on its face with this one.

The performances make it somewhat tolerable, but this comes across much more like a mediocre story published by Pocket Books.

 

[Maurice]

I have a lot of respect for many of the fan series were able to accomplish, even as I was sometimes critical of their script and story choices.

Although I was approached to direct on at least one major fan production post-Exeter, I never had any interest in doing so because I generally didn't like the approaches these shows took. NV, Farragut, Continues, et al, brought in influences from later works, some of those being bad habits scriptwise.

Continues always felt it was playing with one toe in the TNG era and did too many callbacks and call forwards for my taste (though nowhere near as much as NV), starting in its first episode with a holodeck and making an overt reference to Have Gun Will Travel for no narrative reason.

My preference was to do TOS as TOS. The rule on Exeter was to make it like it was contemporary to the original, with no foreknowledge of what was to come after 1970 (Startfleet Battles aside). Overt callbacks were minimal (the worst being connecting our "Quince" Garrovick to the TOS Garrovicks) and I think the only overt call-forward to later official Trek was Chang in "The Savage Empire," which many of us thought was a mistake, and something not repeated on "The Tressaurian Intersection" nor in my unfilmed "Atlantis Invaders" script.

So, I have nothing but respect for those other shows. They're just not the playgrounds I was interested in playing in or visiting much.

 

[Warped9]

I have a lot of respect for many of the fan series were able to accomplish, even as I was sometimes critical of their script and story choices.

It takes a lot of enthusiasm, dedication and effort to do this regardless of outcome, but particularly when striving for a degree of professionalism.

...I generally didn't like the approaches these shows took. NV, Farragut, Continues, et al, brought in influences from later works, some of those being bad habits scriptwise.

Continues always felt it was playing with one toe in the TNG era and did too many callbacks and call forwards for my taste (though nowhere near as much as NV), starting in its first episode with a holodeck and making an overt reference to Have Gun Will Travel for no narrative reason.

For me these things really undermine any sense of "authenticity" in trying to make it feel like something that TOS could have done back in the day. You are constantly yanked out of the suspension of disbelief by being reminded of something that couldn't possibly have been there originally. Many fans cannot resist the urge to indulge in fan service and display their knowledge of Trek lore. And they desperately want their production to be tied into official Trek in some way or other. But the fan service always undermines the effort.

I can forgive the holodeck (or holographic rec room) in the sense the concept was born during TOS' production, but they never had the opportunity to actually realize it. So this is a nod to something TOS could have done given a bit more time and money and given the chance. However, it needs to be acknowledged that if the TOS Enterprise had had a convincing holographic record room it would have undermined the crew's amazement with convincing illusions they encountered elsewhere.

The Have Gun--Will Travel tie-in is an indulgent nod to Doug Drexler who is a big HGWT fan (with his own outfit) and the fact Roddenberry wrote a lot of episodes for HGWT years before he developed Star Trek. Many viewers might not even get the tip-of-the-hat unless it's explained to them.

My preference was to do TOS as TOS. The rule on Exeter was to make it like it was contemporary to the original, with no foreknowledge of what was to come after 1970...

And this is the approach I think works best if you're striving for authenticity. In more than one interview Vic Mignogna made a point of saying he wanted viewers to feel like they were watching something from 1969. You could make certain allowances for slipping in some things that could have been done back in the day, but weren't due to limit of time and money. But, as we've agreed above, the constant fan service, whether little or large, immediately undermines the intent and suspension of disbelief.