ST XI good for fandom

[Shaw]

Shaw,

While I understand your concerns (I am similarly protective of anything Tolkien and several other literary properties), the new movie was my first exposure to the characters from the original series. I found them charming and have since been watching the old episodes and reading various databases, trying to learn the lore of the universe. I am enjoying my exploration of the world that is so dear to you and many others.

I'm sure your Batman analogy rings true in many cases, but some people are genuinely interested in experiencing Star Trek beyond the realms of the new movie. Isn't it kind of fun to share something you love?

I love sharing Trek with others, and in fact dedicate more hours to sharing than I can honestly afford at times. Sharing is fine... better than fine, it is absolutely great. And I have never felt that Trek should be exclusive in any way, but that there is also no need to water it down.

Maybe Trek is truly an acquired taste... but is it being honest to hide that taste (specially from those who might have truly loved it) in order to sell Trek to the masses? Sadly good Trek and good business rarely occur together.

But let me be very clear... my comment about fair weather fans only applies to fair weather fans. Some people exposed to Trek for the first time will truly fall in love with it, and those aren't the people I'm talking about.

Are you someone who might truly love Trek?

While time will tell, odds are that if you like Tolkien (who worked hard for internal consistency within his stories) then you'll appreciate the efforts on older Trek. Those who wish to discard the past of Trek missed out on many of the other dimensions that Trek had to offer (or worse, only saw value in Trek in what they enjoyed and thought the other stuff was worthless).

I don't follow the Trek books, but I don't hold a grudge against them either. I enjoy the aspects of Trek technology and history (both of which have fallen under attack of late), but not to the exclusion of compelling stories.

Trek is a metaphor for the world around us. And when taken seriously, one can learn quite a few skills that translate to valuable skill sets in the real world. Watered down Trek, getting rid of the harder aspects, is like watering down life... and for some people, that is exactly what they need.

But this has no effect on me, personally. Trek without this movie is so vast, and rich and thriving that I don't see the success or failure of it as anything to worry about. Those same people who think that Trek is dead would also call Tolkien's world dead. And the faithful bringing of the Tolkien stories to the screen as a perverse form of necrophilia.

But as I said, for some the only thing that matters is that more people agree with them... and all other considerations are trivial. And for people like that the fair weather fans are a welcome addition.

 

[pookha]

More is better.

Is that the general consensus here? That more Trek, more Trek fans, no matter how it happens, is better?

no it just happened with what a lot of us "real" trek fans consider to be a good movie.

Personally, I don't need others to validate my likes and dislikes. If people agree with me, I don't care. If people don't agree with me, I don't care. I'm my own person.

that is fine if you had just stopped there but you dont.
you go after people who like the movie with following often wrong assumptoions..

But I've noticed that these days (specially in the age of the internet), many people need others to validate their feelings on any number of topics. Even more disturbing, people have become openly hostile towards those with differing views because those differences makes them uncomfortable.

of course this brush has stroked both ways in this forum.
many who dont like the film seem to be threatened by those who do..
thus attacks on intelligence level, their status as true fans ect..

It required diluting Trek... but the goal wasn't better Trek, it was to make more money.

just what is diluted trek.. is trouble with tribbles diluted trek?
shore leave? piece of the action?

We have watered down "Trek", designed for non-Trek fans. We have an influx of fair weather "Trek" fans who are following the latest fad (last year they were Batman fans, and next year they'll be onto something else). They don't care for old Trek because they are just here riding the wave of popularity and really don't want to invest themselves in something they know they'll have forgotten a few months from now.

But hey, this is apparently all good... more "Trek" and more "Trek" fans seems to be what many of you guys wanted.

actually i just see it as nice by product of getting a good trek film after
years of wretched ones.
a lot of people who loved it are the ones who grew up on trek and remembering why they loved tos so much.

For me, quality over quantity, and less is more. Had I gotten the best Trek ever that no one else liked and guaranteed that no future Treks were even made as a consequence, it would have been worth it rather than to dilute a really good thing. But of course I can live with less, and I can enjoy things without requiring that enjoyment be validated by others.

by why be bothered that so many trek fans loved the movie??

This was an entertaining movie to me. I don't need the influx of new fans,

well as someone who watched tos first run if we had not been getting new
fans over the years starting with the first syndication runs and later the other series we wouldnt have any of the movies and the vast majority of the books..

I'm willing to endure mediocre Trek (and an influx of mediocre Trek fans) on the off chance that we might stumble across a truly compelling Trek story in the future. After all, there were a few pearls in the Trek of the last few decades, so maybe...

this kind of stuff is why i am glad most of my friends dont come around this place.
several of them are either rediscovering tos or discovering it for the first time.
glad they wont find out how some people considering them to
mediocre because of that.

 

[Shaw]

you go after people who like the movie with following often wrong assumptoions.

I like the movie, what assumptions have I made about myself? After all, if what I stated was definitive and all inclusive, then I must be lumped into that group as well.

Or are you seeing aspects of yourself in what I said, and are therefore defensive because of it?

just what is diluted trek.. is trouble with tribbles diluted trek?
shore leave? piece of the action?

Ask Abrams what it is. He set out to keep as many people with prior Trek experiences out of this film as possible.

Did all Trek before Trouble with Tribbles need to be excised for that episode to work? Did all Trek before Shore Leave need to be excised for that episode to work? Did all Trek before Piece of the Action need to be excised for that episode to work?

It was an artistic choice, and one he decided to make. I don't think the story would have suffered had he kept more consistency (though the story obviously allowed for a lot of changes).

by why be bothered that so many trek fans loved the movie??

Where did you see that? I liked the movie, I'm a Trek fan, and I'm neither bothered by my liking it or anyone else.


pookha, you obviously are the type of person who is threatened by differences of opinion though. I expressed mine honestly and you attempted to rewrite what I said so that I better fit those you seem to want to rally against.

I suggest self examination on your part.

Why accuse me of taking positions I didn't take? What motivated you to read that type of thing into what I said? Why are you defensive and threatened here?

I don't care if you don't agree with what I said, but at lease stick to what I said when disagreeing with me. Honest differences discussed honestly.

Fair enough.

 

[pookha]

i will say this the post would have been different if i seen your second post at the same time.
it was say far milder.

what ever it wasnt just your post but rather a culmination of what has been going on.
and it isnt so much self defense for me but a lot of the new fans who are coming in here.
and the fans who are returning to the fold.
i can see some of them peeping in and then going away .

and as far as reflection.. you say you like the movie while claiming it is watered down trek and trek for the masses..

but you liked it..ok.

as for ..

Ask Abrams what it is. He set out to keep as many people with prior Trek experiences out of this film as possible.

Did all Trek before Trouble with Tribbles need to be excised for that episode to work? Did all Trek before Shore Leave need to be excised for that episode to work? Did all Trek before Piece of the Action need to be excised for that episode to work?

It was an artistic choice, and one he decided to make. I don't think the story would have suffered had he kept more consistency (though the story obviously allowed for a lot of changes).

orci actually addressed this.
it had as much or more to do with opening up the future of the characters as anything else.
now you dont know that everyone will be safe and this happened at that moment to them in that date.

and some to be able to use canon as they wanted but to not deal with the often contradictory crazy nature of it every step of the way.

the nature of telepaths? go more with where no man has gone before or in beauty is there no truth?
non corporeal beings first encountered in errand of mercy or return to tomorrow?

abrams had more to do with giving the characters origin stories.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

orci actually addressed this.
it had as much or more to do with opening up the future of the characters as anything else.
now you dont know that everyone will be safe and this happened at that moment to them in that date.

No one frankly of any consequence was killed. Abrams was not about to kill any of the Big Seven, and still won't, Orci's protestations notwithstanding.

 

[Shaw]

pookha,

When I say watered down Trek, most of it has been watered down... not just the last movie.

When was the last time a Trek story ask you to ask yourself a hard question?

Trek as a story device (in my opinion) should force us to see ourselves from outside our selves. And we haven't had a lot of that recently.

Consider Star Trek VI... Kirk and company were very much like President Bush and many in his administration. The Klingons were like the USSR, and the destruction of Praxis was like both Chernobyl and the economic collapse they faced. That movie asked us to take a hard look at recent historical events and consider the context.

Sure, Star Trek XI was fun... but so are a lot of other movies. The first 10 minutes or so of it knocked the wind out of me, and honestly, the rest of the movie should have kept doing it.

There were parts that should have been working in the rest of the film that were run over by the pace... and made meaningless. So even if the film hadn't had current relevance, it could have ask more emotionally from the audience.

Is Abrams the first to do this to Trek?

NOT AT ALL!

And as I said, I hold out hope for something more to come.

But this thread is about fandom... and is it helped by this movie. And I honestly worry when anything (no matter how good or bad it is) becomes a fad.

 

[Tribbles]

Thanks for responding to me, Shaw. The endless complexities of Tolkien's world are what keep me enraptured by it, and it seems that Star Trek has a similar wealth of detail to offer. I'm not sure yet if I will be interested in series beyond the original (my dad watched TNG when I was a little girl, so I actually recognized Picard more than Kirk before my current dive into TOS), but TOS is wonderful just in itself. I'm kind of kicking myself for being so uncool as to not "discover" it until after the new movie.

Just out of curiosity, is it primarily the alternate timeline plot device that causes you to view the new movie as watered down, as you put it? Or perhaps the characters? I have to admit, I like Kirk in the series much better than Kirk in the new movie, despite having watched the new movie first.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

double post

 

[Shaw]

Thanks for responding to me, Shaw. The endless complexities of Tolkien's world are what keep me enraptured by it, and it seems that Star Trek has a similar wealth of detail to offer. I'm not sure yet if I will be interested in series beyond the original (my dad watched TNG when I was a little girl, so I actually recognized Picard more than Kirk before my current dive into TOS), but TOS is wonderful just in itself. I'm kind of kicking myself for being so uncool as to not "discover" it until after the new movie.

Just out of curiosity, is it primarily the alternate timeline plot device that causes you to view the new movie as watered down, as you put it? Or perhaps the characters? I have to admit, I like Kirk in the series much better than Kirk in the new movie, despite having watched the new movie first.

The original series was an attempt to ask socially difficult questions in an engaging format. On some levels it worked, and on others it didn't. And I would like Trek to ask more of us rather than being just a fun ride... something I don't think it can do as a series of movies (in my opinion).

But what we, as people of 2009, miss when looking at Trek of the late 1960s is that things that are familiar to us technology wise really were science fiction back then. Asking a computer to give you background information on a subject or person, or comparing images of someone on a computer screen... those things were unthinkable back then. In fact the movie 2001 saw the future of computers as still being based on punch cards by our time.

I could list dozens of technologies that Trek inspired it's viewers to make real... but did we see anything like that in this movie? Did Abrams and company ask what the future might hold for us? They went for a future look, but didn't ask us to aim any higher than Trek of the last 40 years.

As much as anything else, this was a missed opportunity. If you were going to reboot, give us something new to shoot for in the next 40 years or so. Warp drive and transporters are effectively fantasy, but the rest of Trek has always been based on plausibility. What fantastically plausible ideas could have been showcased here?

There was a real belief in the makers of this film that attention to that type of stuff would weaken the story... which is sad.


But yes, I liked the Kirk of TOS who was a human that was superior to Spock in intellect, who was a book worm/over achiever and originally awkward with women, that Kirk spoke to me more than the rebel Kirk does. But that Kirk had a different life, so I understand where Abrams was going with it.

They made Uhura smart, but she was gifted in mathematics in TOS, she is gifted in languages in the movie (I liked that she was good with math). In TOS she could man any station, in the movie she seemed only good at communications. But at least they attempted to keep her smart.

There are differences, and I can enjoy both TOS and the movie for them.

 

[pookha]

orci actually addressed this.
it had as much or more to do with opening up the future of the characters as anything else.
now you dont know that everyone will be safe and this happened at that moment to them in that date.

No one frankly of any consequence was killed. Abrams was not about to kill any of the Big Seven, and still won't, Orci's protestations notwithstanding.

they killed off amanda who was one of the favorite guests and took out vulcan.

personally i dont want them to take out any of the regulars but wouldnt be
suprised if they did.

 

[TheArsenal]

More is better.

Is that the general consensus here? That more Trek, more Trek fans, no matter how it happens, is better?

No. Looking at the polls, comments and threads around here, the consensus seems to be that this is a very good movie. So Trek fans enjoying that others are discovering that this film - and Trek as a larger whole - is good entertainment is not so mysterious.

It also follows: More Fans = Profit = Viability = More Good Trek.

Simple really.

If this were a one off film, like say Watchmen, I could not care less if no one saw or liked it but me. But this "franchise" is like a favorite restaurant. I need enough people to like the food to keep the doors open for me.