Star Trek: Axanar

[Karzak]

Read Cushman's books, esp the first one where he details GRs efforts to make Trek as literate as possible within the constraints of his studio mandate. He routinely sought out writers specifically with a SF background for just that reason.

I'll take actual documentation generated by Roddenberry himself over third, forth and fifth hand recollections and poor research done by Marc Cushman.

And, I'll save you the typing... it has been pretty well proven what Cushman did was a hack job where he inserted his own opinions instead of doing actual research in many places. There's a whole thread in the TOS forum about it.

He cites the documents and interviews in the books, including where GR works with (and sometimes screws over) known sci-fi and other professional writers .

Yes, he does cite official documents, but he does so poorly. His conclusions are assumptions pulled out of thin air because he was too lazy to check his work. If you spend the time to scrutinize the work, you'd see how poorly researched those books are, even if you can't tell that they're also poorly written as well.

 

[Phantom]

Once again, with feeling. Marc Cushman is not a reliable source.

+1

In your opinions.

I've read two of the three books and Cushman is very careful to cite his interviews and documents accessed.

Cushman's interviews are backed up by independent accounts in other publications, including accounts by the same people that were interviewed (Inside Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry: The Man and the Myth..., Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History, et al.


The only significant issue there is with Cushman's books is the dispute over exactly how ratings were compiled and their relative weighting, which is a controversy that neither began nor ended with Star Trek, and still crops up today from time to time.

 

[Indysolo]

The only significant issue there is with Cushman's books is the dispute over exactly how ratings were compiled and their relative weighting, which is a controversy that neither began nor ended with Star Trek, and still crops up today from time to time.

This isn't ratings related. And neither is this.

I could go on (many of us could) but it's not Axanar related.

Neil

 

[Phantom]

Y

NuTrek haters -- and they ARE that....have no OPINIONS about the films, just a general emotional reaction to those films not being exactly like the old ones in some (to them) extremely important way.

That's just it: "People who don't like JJs efforts" are not, at the end of the day, finding fault with the films, they're finding fault with the man who made them.

This is insulting beyond the pale.

Very much so. Speaking for myself, nowhere have I indicated any personal hatred for JJ Abrams whatsoever. He seems to be doing moderately well (from what I've seen so far) with Star Wars, for example. Of course he actually likes Star Wars and it's very straightforward and simplistic structure and narrative depth are more in tune with what I've seen of his efforts to date.

And before someone starts accusing me of "hating to hate" on Star Wars, I like Star Wars very much for what it is: epic fantasy in sci-fi trappings.

Quite a few people--myself included--have laid out specific reasons why we disliked the films since they first started coming out. But that isn't good enough. And it gets ignored simply to label dissenters as haters and thus easy to denigrate and discredit. And few chances are missed to do so.

Yep.

But even so I (and others like minded) simply have to utter one simple word of criticism, no matter how mild, and it's leapt on with rolling eyes and exclamations of exasperation.

Yep.

In the end time and the shear weight of materiel that came before nuTrek will diminish any of its significance. TOS alone still garners new viewers even after forty years and fan productions also fuel the interest. In the end nuTrek won't register much against that once it's done and they've gone on to the next inevitable reimagining.

This I'm going to have to maybe disagree. And I'm not just seeing this with Trek. It's happening, for example, with a lot of long running media properties that have either been "reimagined" (BSG), or that have changed media (Marvel characters).

Everyone has opinions here, and only opinions. If that fact is uncomfortable for posters who'd like to position their observations as weightier than those of posters they disagree with, that's unfortunate...for them.

Please explain that to the poster than spent several screen inches lecturing about how his opinion was more valid than mine as to the merits of Axanar's FX vs Abrams' because he was a "professional VFX artist".

Back to Axanar:

as to the ages of various actors, such as Alec Peters, I didn't think he was that old. He looked like maybe mid-late 30s to me. Mind you, even if he had appeared to be in his 40s or early 50s that would not be inappropriate for a senior captain.

In real life, a Naval officer would not make the rank of captain (esp of a major command) w/o at least 20 years of service under his belt. In Trek terms, Commodore Wesley and/or Decker are more realistic models for what a starship captain would be age-wise than someone like Kirk.

 

[gazomg]

Decisions that were to be made are being made by older experienced people, hence why kirk in the recent trek films being a captain of the flagship vessel at such a young age prancing around the galaxy is beyond ridiculous.
Picard and his older age and "experience" was just right for TNG, Sisko was hardly a spring chicken and he was only a commander.

Um, seeing as Kirk was 32 in season 1 of TOS and the writer's bible had him having commanded the ship for 4 years at that point Kirk Prime would have been 28 when he became captain of the Enterprise.

Which thought was ridiculous. also.
You validated my point

As for kirk in the abrams movies, that is just completely retarded, he sneaks on to the ship and by the time the movie is over he is captain

Only in the mind of JJ could something like that happen.

 

[Harvey]

The only significant issue there is with Cushman's books is the dispute over exactly how ratings were compiled and their relative weighting, which is a controversy that neither began nor ended with Star Trek, and still crops up today from time to time.

No.

How the ratings were compiled and what they measured in the mid-to-late 1960s is a matter of public record. That Cushman failed to understand these things, preferring to extrapolate a conspiracy theory from a series of bad assumptions and false premises, is proof positive of his remarkable deficiencies as a scholar.

And although his theory about the ratings and NBC could reasonably be described as the thesis of These Are The Voyages (as much as it has one), it's far from the only significant failing of the books. Cushman's propensity for conjuring up details about the production out of thin air would be the big one, by my estimation. Neil was kind enough to link to a couple of articles I've written scrutinizing portions of the first two books, but it's safe to say I have only scratched the surface of their failings.

But... remember Axanar and all that? If you want to watch These Are The Voyages be unravelled before your very eyes, there's a forum for the original series and a forum for Star Trek books.

 

[fireproof78]

Decisions that were to be made are being made by older experienced people, hence why kirk in the recent trek films being a captain of the flagship vessel at such a young age prancing around the galaxy is beyond ridiculous.
Picard and his older age and "experience" was just right for TNG, Sisko was hardly a spring chicken and he was only a commander.

Um, seeing as Kirk was 32 in season 1 of TOS and the writer's bible had him having commanded the ship for 4 years at that point Kirk Prime would have been 28 when he became captain of the Enterprise.

Which thought was ridiculous. also.
You validated my point

As for kirk in the abrams movies, that is just completely retarded, he sneaks on to the ship and by the time the movie is over he is captain

Only in the mind of JJ could something like that happen.

No, I'm sure other people could think of it as well.

Personally, I don't care what age the characters are, so long as they are presented as people in interesting situations.

 

[JoeZhang]

We had a younger Captain again in TNG didn't we? Captain Scott wasn't it? When Riker refused his first Captaincy he wouldn't have been much older would he?

 

[Ithekro]

This talk of age suggests that we need to see something of a cast list for USS Ares in the near future.

 

[Tom Servo]

Please explain that to the poster than spent several screen inches lecturing about how his opinion was more valid than mine as to the merits of Axanar's FX vs Abrams' because he was a "professional VFX artist".

It's not that my opinion was any less or more valid, it's that your basic premise was factually flawed and you seemingly had no concept of how the industry worked.

 

[BillJ]

Please explain that to the poster than spent several screen inches lecturing about how his opinion was more valid than mine as to the merits of Axanar's FX vs Abrams' because he was a "professional VFX artist".

It's not that my opinion was any less or more valid, it's that your basic premise was factually flawed and you seemingly had no concept of how the industry worked.

I do find it funny that many folks talk about facts and objectivity but then are in bitter denial when someone that actually works in the industry comes in and shoots them down.

 

[DCR]

I don't worry much about the age factor in casting. Kirk's age in TOS was obviously driven more by the requirements for 60's TV leads than the exigencies of a fictional service.

As for comparing it to the Abrams movies, which I enjoyed well enough, I wouldn't want to do a straight up comparison. I do expect, or at least hope, that Axanar gets right the one thing that Abrams got horribly wrong, but besides that I'll judge it on the same grounds as any other unofficial Star Trek film.

I'm not associated with either production, but I always thought the difference between Axanar and Renegades in terms of being "independent" had to do with the latter film's stated purpose of drawing CBS' attention towards itself as a potential series idea. Both films are being produced independently, but for different goals.

 

[F. King Daniel]

While I get the whole "rooting for the underdog" thing in this Axanar vs. Abrams thing, it really amuses me since Axanar's Federation ships are all direct lifts from the Abramsverse, several scenes are obvious homages to the movies (ships rising from clouds, the Klingon ship crashing into a city etc) and even the Stardates are in the EARTHYEAR.DAY format which so upset a few die-hard fans. The rest of the visuals (the Klingon designs, the Archer arena, Vulcan) and even one of the lead characters (Soval) are directly lifted from Enterprise, which was far from popular in its day. It must be kinda awkward to love it so much when it takes so much from the "worst" of Trek.

 

[KennyB]

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, yes, but have some perspective.

If someone has seen a fair serving of genre as well as mainstream films and television over years to decades then thats plenty for a baseline from which to judge Abrams' Trek films. Thats plenty of perspective from which one could judge Abrams' work as seriously wanting.

This just made my day better.........brilliant.

 

[Warped9]

If someone has seen a fair serving of genre as well as mainstream films and television over years to decades then thats plenty for a baseline from which to judge Abrams' Trek films. Thats plenty of perspective from which one could judge Abrams' work as seriously wanting.

This just made my day better.........brilliant.

And you missed the entire point.

 

[northstar]

While I get the whole "rooting for the underdog" thing in this Axanar vs. Abrams thing, it really amuses me since Axanar's Federation ships are all direct lifts from the Abramsverse, several scenes are obvious homages to the movies (ships rising from clouds, the Klingon ship crashing into a city etc) and even the Stardates are in the EARTHYEAR.DAY format which so upset a few die-hard fans. The rest of the visuals (the Klingon designs, the Archer arena, Vulcan) and even one of the lead characters (Soval) are directly lifted from Enterprise, which was far from popular in its day. It must be kinda awkward to love it so much when it takes so much from the "worst" of Trek.

As far as I know, no one of the actual production team has mentioned here that they hate the JJ Abrams Trek movies. In fact, they specifically tried to bridge the gap.

Everything up to the Narada incident is pretty much similar in both universes, the split appears after that. The only thing they critizied and changed is the size of the "old" ships (like the Kelvin), to make a bit more sense out of that.

Visually they pretty obviously got inspired by some of the shots in the JJ movies, and why shouldn´t they. Visually, these movies are outstanding.

So Axanar I´d say can appeal to both "groups" and I applaud them for that.

 

[gazomg]

Please explain that to the poster than spent several screen inches lecturing about how his opinion was more valid than mine as to the merits of Axanar's FX vs Abrams' because he was a "professional VFX artist".

It's not that my opinion was any less or more valid, it's that your basic premise was factually flawed and you seemingly had no concept of how the industry worked.

I do find it funny that many folks talk about facts and objectivity but then are in bitter denial when someone that actually works in the industry comes in and shoots them down.

who works where and who does what has ZERO basis when it comes to a persons own personal choice of favorite.
A members own personal opinion does not need to be justified, and people lecturing him because of his opinion serves no purpose.

If a person thinks rightly or wrongly the graphics in one movie is better that is his choice, and whether you or someone else works in the industry dont mean squat to a members personal preference, no matter how much you try to lecture or make out you are better qualified to decide.

I know this might be hard for some to digest or grasp, but give it a try.

 

[KennyB]

This just made my day better.........brilliant.

And you missed the entire point.

Nope---don't think so. But thank you ever so much for telling me what points I am or am not aware of.

I thought the GIF was humorous.......still do.

 

[Karzak]

While I get the whole "rooting for the underdog" thing in this Axanar vs. Abrams thing, it really amuses me since Axanar's Federation ships are all direct lifts from the Abramsverse, several scenes are obvious homages to the movies (ships rising from clouds, the Klingon ship crashing into a city etc) and even the Stardates are in the EARTHYEAR.DAY format which so upset a few die-hard fans. The rest of the visuals (the Klingon designs, the Archer arena, Vulcan) and even one of the lead characters (Soval) are directly lifted from Enterprise, which was far from popular in its day. It must be kinda awkward to love it so much when it takes so much from the "worst" of Trek.

As far as I know, no one of the actual production team has mentioned here that they hate the JJ Abrams Trek movies.
.

Robert Meyer Burnett actually despises those movies. Anyone who followed him on Twitter in the months leading up to Into Darkness can attest to this; he was not shy at all about how much he hates the Abrams films.

 

[GSchnitzer]

So much snark and acrimony. High noise to signal ratio. Getting close to closing thread. Will see if posters can change the direction/tone before I do.