Oh, please. My reasons for hating it has nothing to do with "lord Gene Roddenberry." Not everything about liking TOS is about Roddenberry.
ST Continues "To Boldly Go": A Fan Edit
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It's a joke...I do that...
As with many things in life there is a vast ocean with heights and depths of middle ground.
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I can see your point from a plot perspective, but it's also the movie that gave us three really awesome ships that got reused throughout TNG. The Excelsior is probably my favorite ship in all of Star Trek. So I can't really hate the movie, if only for that reason. Plus it has Christopyer Lloyd.
I enjoy Star Trek 3 for many reasons, one of them is having Christopher Lloyd and John Laroquette as Klingons. But let's admit that Kirk using his former bridge crew was an act of pandering to the movie audience more than what the character of James Kirk might have done.
It kinda stings that Spock managed to singlehandedly fool Starfleet and his ship's captain and kidnap Admiral Pike to return him to a forbidden planet like Talos 5, and yet Kirk with all the resources from Starfleet still needed others to help him? So be it, but why use 5 senior citizens when Kirk surely knows a LOT of younger, stronger fighters who probably also owe him a blood debt.
Sure I liked seeing Sulu do some martial arts and Scotty give Styles his comeuppance, but Kirk's plan was seconds away from failing.
Let's not forget it resulted in the death of his son David.
(I've had enough of talking about STC for at least 2 more years)
It's not a bad thing that Kirk isn't some sort of superduperman. Protagonists who never make mistakes are tiresome. Remember that Spock can outthink Kirk in matters of logic and making a plan and sticking to it. Kirk can outthink Spock in matters of gambling, risk-taking, and intuition. They balance each other nicely.
(btw, it was Talos IV, not V
)As for "senior citizens"... good grief. Ageist, much? They're not senior citizens by 23rd/24th-century standards, though the actors were by RL standards.
These characters are the people who Spock worked with for many years. They are his friends, though he won't say it aloud about any of them besides Kirk and McCoy.
Kirk gave them the chance to back out. They refused and insisted on continuing with the mission. They might not be youthful anymore, but they were hardly ready for the rocking chair.
I may be wrong since I don't obsess with Star Trek beginning with TNG, but I do believe they are long-lived meaning they live for an extended number of years, but I don't think the aging process for humans has slowed down (for example they do not retain the vitality and strength of a 20 year old until their 60s). They just keep getting older.
Lol ageist. In TNG Picard had Worf and Riker to do most of the running and fighting. For an important mission/possible suicide mission, Kirk would have had strapping young security redshirts, as he always did.
Again, this is the Producers wanting to please the audience by having the original crew along, even briefly. rather than sound tactics. After arriving at Genisis they seem to almost completely fade into the background.
It's how I always saw it while growing up, and throughout the movie TWOK Uhura, Sulu, was just visiting and had a helping hand for a training mission and later an emergency situation. After the movie, I was thinking grandeur ideas and the exploration of Kirstie Alley's and Merritt Butrick's characters along with other young upstarts ala TNG before TNG, TMP 2.0. When I saw TSFS, I knew Star Trek would not be going for grand ideas, and as much as I sincerely love TVH, I wanted Star Trek to go beyond Earth, beyond super -Khan-esque villains. When I finally saw VI, I thought it was okay, and kept thinking an intergalactic conflict between the Klingons and Earth should be epic than a predictable murder mystery. Sigh. I digress, it's fine, all of TOS movies are fine except for III, that movie ultimately disappointed me.
Sigh.
A bad villain. A poorly drawn villain. A villain which did not maintain the suspension of disbelief.
You had a lot of words to choose from, a lot of expressions, and you went there? And to make sure we all got a good look at it, you bolded it for emphasis.
I realize we are a page and a day later. But I did want to acknowledge this. The term is offensive, antiquated, and for God's sake it's neither clever nor accurate.
Kindly do better next time.
Many thanks.
That's nice. Neither do I. My Star Trek preferences are TOS and Voyager. The vast majority of my print 'zine collection is TOS. The vast majority of the fanfic I read online is Voyager. I like the rest of the older series to a greater or lesser extent. I'm even tolerating Enterprise somewhat. I loathe DiscoTrek and Picard and the nuTrek movies. So kindly do not imply that I worship at the altar of Berman.
We're talking about the movies here. I seem to recall that Patrick Stewart/Picard had quite a lot of action scenes and sequences in the movies, as opposed to the TV series, and he didn't have much help from either Riker or Worf.
Kirk/Shatner may not have been as youthful in the movies as he was in the TV show, but if he'd had a squad of security guys to kick the crap out of the Klingons, Khan, etc., the movie would have been much shorter. I suppose you'd have preferred the fan version of The Search for Spock someone came up with:
(Grandiose music and opening credits)
Kirk and McCoy beam down to the Genesis planet.
SPOCK
Captain, what took you so long?
Captain, what took you so long?
(Grandiose music and closing credits)
So? If they "fade into the background" can't you just pretend they aren't there and let the rest of us enjoy seeing them?
Ok, I'm jumping off here since none of my points seem to matter. but before...
If a screenwriter, when being told that one approach to a film needs to change because of xyz reasons, and as a result the only thing he/she can come up with is the least dramatic, least interesting take possible...then he/she really isn't much of a screenwriter
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That's a preposterous example and a false alternative. This is not some either/or.
I find that an interesting comment considering who wrote this 2 partner. I'm a huge TOS fan and think Continues nailed it. Comparing it to season 3, it is a worthy successors. My only issues with the finale were the destruction of ships specifically called out in canon production materials. I've considered making some fan edit tweeks to fix that. I found all of Continues to be better in nearly every area to the first season of Discovery.
Why is that surprising? Outside of Continues he has a singular Written by script credit, everything else is a Novel by or Based on the Novel by. And I'm denying him nothing by that observation. Even selling one script is hard...let alone getting it produced (helllllo Development Hell my old nemesis). But screenwriting is a different animal than novel writing, and what works in one doesn't necessarily work in the other. Lots of great novelists who've tried to make the transition and haven't been successful, especially at first (Michael Chabon's two early cracks at adapting his Kavalier and Clay were pretty bad...I've read them).
Actually, it's you who refuses to acknowledge the validity of other viewpoints.
We get it. You can't stand any of the post-TWoK movies that use the second-tier characters and would have preferred the bland newcomers instead (come on, David was an unethical scientist and Saavik 2.0 was less interesting than watching paint dry).
Fortunately, preferences are subjective and we both get to have preferences.
It does away with all the people whose presence annoy you. Kirk is there. Spock is there. McCoy is there. Nobody else is required, and this fan script provides for that.
BTW, the script was meant as a joke. In A Different Reality (a print 'zine I was subscribed to back in the '80s) ran a contest to see who could come up with the most creative way to revive Spock (this issue was between TWoK and TSFS)... and they received exactly one entry, which was the one I just posted (no, I didn't write it). I appreciated the humor of whoever did write it, and I should think that someone who is so profoundly annoyed by "senior citizens" on starships would appreciate such a concisely-plotted script.
Simmer down, folks, and let's cut the digs and the personal stuff, okay?
I haven't had coffee yet and it's like eating a Snickers(TM) bar for me.
We don't have to be one, big, happy family but I would greatly appreciate a step back and a thought before we go down the road of you refuse to this and you really think that and on and on ad infinitum.
And now to make you laugh (I hope) but also prove a point (I hope), I am hereby introducing the WANK method.
Before you write, is it...
Well within the topic or at least within shouting distance of it (we're people and not machines, we meander by definition. But let's not get into the price of soybeans in Madagascar if it's not relevant)
Accurate (as well as you can determine - opinion of course isn't fact and need not be accurate. I'm not asking you to do extensive research. I am asking you to at least not repeat groundless rumors unironically)
Necessary (e.g. piling on isn't) and
Kind ('nuff said)
Now, go WANK away.
I haven't had coffee yet and it's like eating a Snickers(TM) bar for me.
We don't have to be one, big, happy family but I would greatly appreciate a step back and a thought before we go down the road of you refuse to this and you really think that and on and on ad infinitum.
And now to make you laugh (I hope) but also prove a point (I hope), I am hereby introducing the WANK method.
Before you write, is it...
Well within the topic or at least within shouting distance of it (we're people and not machines, we meander by definition. But let's not get into the price of soybeans in Madagascar if it's not relevant)
Accurate (as well as you can determine - opinion of course isn't fact and need not be accurate. I'm not asking you to do extensive research. I am asking you to at least not repeat groundless rumors unironically)
Necessary (e.g. piling on isn't) and
Kind ('nuff said)
Now, go WANK away.
I disagree. Writing is screen play is not that big a challenge. You have to tell a story in a limited amount of space. About a page a minute. You are limited to scene descriptions, dialog, and some action and dialog cues. What is hard is writing for something that exists and getting the characters right. In this case he was writing for the producer who was also the main star. I thought the story was well formed and well done. I found no flaw in it. I myself have written screenplays. Haven't sold any, but I did two television stories and three movies. I also did the screenplay for a friend's movie (which didn't also didn't sell but had more potential than mine). So I know the craft. I have also written several novels. But I went the other way, having determined that it is too hard to sell a screenplay unless you live in LA and have an agent. But a screenplay is just a very audio/visual short story or novella. that is why it is so hard to turn a novel into a movie. A short novel is 4 times as long as a screenplay. And most novels are many times that making compressing things that much harder. A lot of novelists try to adapt their own stories without knowing what they are getting into.
I found the story for this two part finale to be well written, full of great call backs, and a very satisfying ending that led to TMP. Some people call those call backs fan service, but I don't agree. I find them satisfying connections. I loved bringing back the Romulan Commander. Continues did what a proper 4th season could have done. I found it the first Trek since TNG that got the formula right. And it did more than that, it also tapped into the TOS specific formula of production. So it looks like Star Trek. It feels like Star Trek. Most of the cast feed that feeling. The stories feel like TOS. And it tapped into several things that made TOS great - timely stories and stories with a message. I think New Voyages/Phase II was good, but Continues fixed many of the fannish flaws. And it was so amusing seeing the two Captain Kirks/Producers argue about accuracy. Continues' sets weren't quite as accurate, but other things were more accurate.
But back to Robert J Sawyer's screenplay, I found it very satisfying. I'm going to see how satisfying because I am finally getting around to watching TOS remastered and I'm going to watch Continues and then the movies. So I'm going to see if my initial feeling about Continues holds true. My only disappointment was that Sawyer or the production bought into the no longer canon idea that Enterprise was the only one of the Constitution Class to return. Yorktown, Kongo, and Republic survived as well. Republic being the museum ship Picard spoke of in Relics. But outside of that I enjoyed it immensely.
And...... we're done.
LOL... sorry to burst you bubble, but I don't find screenplays that hard to write. I find novels harder. A novel is easier to sell making them more profitable to spend your time on. If you can write a short story and if you can write in different voices, it shouldn't take much to master a screenplay. Being able to craft a cohesive story of the right length is the hardest part. When you have that, the rest is format.
One reason novelists have a problem is if they try to adapt their own work. Unless you have experience you'll probably focus on the wrong things and have an unwieldly script. It has to be rewritten to remove what isn't needed and to compresses what is into the right length. But a novelist with experience in short stories should be able to easily write a good original screenplay.
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