I mean... one, final thing where it does copy the Star Wars prequels
It is held up in better esteem because hating Disney is in style right now.I wonder if anyone could ever rehabilitate the Star Wars Holiday Special?
Some things never get better with time.
Same with Enterprise. It's in style to hate Kurtzman who is somehow the worst thing ever yet people still watch. It's absolute absurdity to me and makes the hatred ring extremely hollow.
'Fair-weather fan: A fan who only pays attention to their favourite team when they are performing well.'
You should have seen the hate for STII: TWoK when they announced the episode it was based on.
Harve Bennett was a talentless hack and the fact he watched all 79 Star Trek episodes and pick this one showed he was clueless about what Star Trek fandom really wanted.
And who was this talentless musical hack, James Horner? Why ditch Jerry Goldsmith?
And this Director Nicholas Meyer? Hell he admits to not being a Star Trek fan and never really watching the show.
^^^
Yeah this film is going to be a massive shit show!
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Tbh, without the context of all later Trek being influenced by it - it IS a pretty weird & violent follow-up to TOS & TMP.
In the film - Khan pretty much carried pout the threats he made to Kirk and his crew IN TOS S1 Space Seed.
^^^
If he wasn't stopped with the help of Marla McGivers, Kirk would have been dead and Spock would have been next. Kahn was just as violent in Space Seed as he ultimately was in STII: TWoK. The only difference? The scientists on the Regula One station failed o stop him before he carried out various threats.
Oh I know - Khan was a magnificent presence in space seed, that's why Nicholas Meyer carried him over to the movie.
But imagine they based a whole movie on "conscience of the king" instead. That would have also been a little bit weird.
What made TWOK "too violent" for Trek at the time were the clearly "Alien" inspired ceti eel monsters, and that there wasn't any type of humanistic twist - they didn't make him a prisoner in paradise as punishment in the end or whatever - they fucking killed him to death, and everyone with him, and had him spitting blood while cursing his last words. That doesn't exactly scream "colorful family show" or "the human adventure has just begun".
(Still love this movie in it's own right - but it IS somewhat of a culture shock compared to the previous TOS adventures).
I thought it was Bennett who chose Khan.
I joined fandom in 1980, due to TMP, so yes, I was well aware of the rampant rumour mill.
However, I wanted really TMP II, not "Space Seed II", so although I did enjoy the movie we ended up with, there were elements that did not satisfy/extend my love for TMP. Of course, I was told that not being a TOS watcher from the 60s, I would never be "a true fan" anyway.
IIRC, there were numerous script treatments. One had Khan, Bennett's selection of the episode most worthy of a sequel. One had a weather machine. One had a young male Vulcan, "Dr Savik". One used Dr Sarah Wallace (Sarah Marshall played her in "The Deadly Years") and her son, David Wallace. Etc.
Bennett asked Meyer to cannibalize a new storyline out of the best of all the elements on hand.
I'm curious. There was no internet then, so where was this hate being demonstrated? I remember seeing it in the theater and don't recall any backlash. But I was just a kid so....
Fans talk.
In my rush to divest from Paramount/CBS, I have recently gotten (almost) all the completed shows/movies on physical media.
Been bouncing around a bit, but have made it all the way thru Season 1 and am liking it way more than I remembered. "Broken Bow," "The Andorian Incident," and "Shuttlepod One" held up pretty well. My memory banks would have said that was about the extent of good S1 eps. But "Shadows of P'Jem," and "Fusion" were good T'Pol/Archer/Vulcan eps. I just watched "Detained" and the WWII Japenese internment camp topic seems pretty relevant. I thought "Unexpected" was outright funny. Nice callbacks in "Acquisition" and "Oasis." Even "Fight or Flight" and "Silent Enemy" had some good stuff.
Now, is it fantastic? No. Is there some cringe? Sure. But I really liked the way they explored the Vulcan/Human/Andoran thing. Shran is great. And Archer/T'Pol/Trip is a worthy big 3 with Phlox, Hoshi, & Reed supporting.
The various magazines that covered Star Trek and Star Wars at the time like Starlog, and Cinefantastique; not to mention a number of Star Trek fanzines that fans put out.
No we didn't argue online we argued via snail mail in the letters columns.
(Yes I know it's hard to believe that fans still managed to express their opinions in the days before it was easily done here on the internet.)
I remember some of the letters people wrote into Starlog back in the day, and yeah, it's the kind of thing people post on internet forums or other forms of social media today.
Yes, but does it fit in the canon?
Because that was the contention. Now, I personally do not care for Archer either and think Shran is a unenjoyable character but that's me.
It was. Meyer didn't have a vote.
Part of why ENTERPRISE has been reassessed is that there's those who long for the Rick Berman style production. Fans can be very forgiving when it comes to surface level things, you can see that with the adoration STAR TREK CONTINUES gets. Trek during 1987-2005 basically had a very consistent filmmaking language that established a certain rhythm and cadence when it came to camerawork, dialogue, acting style, etc. That just happens when you have the same dozen people like Livingston, Howard, Lauritson, Rush, etc doing the same shtick for 20 years. It's partly why THE ORVILLE has been embraced by those fans, because MacFarlane reached out to a lot of those Berman era creatives because he wanted to make a show that felt as close as it could to the Rick Berman era.
Every fan club had a newsletter, most with a regular "letters-to-the-editor" section. There was also the letters section of "Starlog" and pro-zines, such as "Enterprise Incidents" and "Trek" (republished as paperbacks entitled "The Best of Trek"). Also live fan panels at conventions, often involving cast members and BNFs (Big Name Fans).
Pre-Internet, there was also UseNet and GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange) and FidoNet, all of which had dedicated Star Trek threads/groups. These grew very large in the early 80s, partly due to Trek fans discussing Trek.
The "Spock Must Not Die" campaign and "Paramount, the Choice Is Yours", took out ads in the "Wall Street Journal" and "Variety", warning Paramount of the intention of boycotts of the upcoming movie and all related Trek products if Spock died in ST II. In turn, this caught on in the mainstream media.
See also at:
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Concerned_Supporters_of_Star_Trek (1981 onwards)
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