Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND

[eyeresist]

Don't get me wrong -- I liked the deleted Shatner cameo they had written for the '09 movie, and though it would've been a bit self-indulgent, I would've liked to see it there. But the window's passed, and STID showed that too much gratuitous nostalgia only hurts the series.

I agree with this. The moment has passed. NimoySpock served a purpose in ST09, but anything beyond that is gratuitous - some might enjoy the fanservice, but it will detract from the story and the legitimacy of the new films.

OTOH, Shatner should obviously be the centrepiece of any big anniversary TV special. (I'm not suggesting the others should be slighted, just that the Shat was there first.)

 

[Christopher]

^Well, technically Jeffrey Hunter was there first, but yeah.

In fact, the only surviving main cast member from "The Cage" now is Laurel Goodwin (Yeoman Colt), which is sobering to realize. So aside from her, Shatner is the one who made the earliest screen appearance among surviving main cast members.

 

[HIjol]

IMHO, you are all absolutely correct in your various good words about "no Cameo"...

...but I bet they will, anyway.

 

[Nerys Myk]

What? Cameo is great. And Geordi is in this video!

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjAantupsA[/yt]

 

[fireproof78]

Don't get me wrong -- I liked the deleted Shatner cameo they had written for the '09 movie, and though it would've been a bit self-indulgent, I would've liked to see it there. But the window's passed, and STID showed that too much gratuitous nostalgia only hurts the series.

I agree with this. The moment has passed. NimoySpock served a purpose in ST09, but anything beyond that is gratuitous - some might enjoy the fanservice, but it will detract from the story and the legitimacy of the new films.

OTOH, Shatner should obviously be the centrepiece of any big anniversary TV special. (I'm not suggesting the others should be slighted, just that the Shat was there first.)

If there is one thing that would be fun for the 50th TV special, it would be for Shatner to read the scene that had been written for the 09 movie. That feels like a fitting thing to do.

Also, I think a TV special would be the best best, as that was Star Trek's largest presence in terms of media. 12 movies is not really enough to justify centering the next film around the TOS cast.

 

[eyeresist]

What? Cameo is great.

That is an awesome song. Did they have any others?

 

[Cyke101]

And Geordi is in this video!

That's actually one hell of a cameo!

 

[Starborn Dragon]

Well, i certainly hope so.

Star Trek is about EXPLORATION, not fighting terrorists.

And I'd like to see a movie about exploration.

Maybe even having some issues with the Prime Directive and exploring what the Prime Directive means.

 

[ralph]

Well, i certainly hope so.

Star Trek is about EXPLORATION, not fighting terrorists.

And I'd like to see a movie about exploration.

Maybe even having some issues with the Prime Directive and exploring what the Prime Directive means.

I agree.
Next movie needs something different rather than terrorist attacks, villains threatening the Earth.

Something about exploration, discover new worlds, solving mysteries, with humor and action.
So I want to see something that stimulates the imagination and opens one's mind. That is Star Trek.

 

[Khan 2.0]

agreed lets hope they do all that stuff (and a Shatcam of course)

 

[Christopher]

Honestly, although I like exploration stories and hope to see one, the fact is that not as much of Star Trek is about exploration as we tend to think. Just to look at TOS's first season:

"Where No Man Has Gone Before": Exploration (gone horribly wrong)
"The Corbomite Maneuver": Exploration/first contact
"Mudd's Women": Chasing a criminal, repairing the ship
"The Enemy Within": Transporter malfunction (with a backdrop of exploration)
"The Man Trap": Colony resupply, killer monster
"The Naked Time": Disease with exploration backdrop
"Charlie X": Dangerous passenger
"Balance of Terror": Fighting off invading enemy
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?": Rescue of lost explorer, android threat
"Dagger of the Mind": Routine penal-colony visit exposes corrupt administrator
"Miri": Exploration/disease
"The Conscience of the King": Investigation of war criminal, murder mystery
"The Galileo Seven": Exploration/rescue
"Court Martial": Court martial
"The Menagerie": Another court martial (well, preliminary hearing)
"Shore Leave": Shore leave (gone horribly wrong)
"The Squire of Gothos": Routine mission interrupted by nasty alien
"Arena": Fighting off invading enemy
"The Alternative Factor": Investigating dangerous cosmic anomaly
"Tomorrow is Yesterday": Accidental time travel
"The Return of the Archons": Exploration, but in search of lost ship
"A Taste of Armageddon": Diplomatic contact (gone horribly wrong)
"Space Seed": Stumbling across mysterious ship
"This Side of Paradise": Investigating incommunicado colony
"The Devil in the Dark": Investigating deaths at mining colony
"Errand of Mercy": War story
"Operation -- Annihilate!": Fighting monsters

That's just a limited sample, of course, but Trek episodes that are really about exploration and first contact are few and far between. And many of those that start out with exploration missions make them just an incidental backdrop to a story about something else. There have always been plenty of episodes about fighting monsters and enemy aliens and conquerors and lunatic killers and the like.

If you look at the Prime-universe movies, there's virtually no exploration in them at all:

TMP: Defending against threat to Earth
TWOK: Fighting a terrorist/aspiring conqueror
TSFS: Searching for Spock
TVH: Defending against threat to Earth
TFF: Fighting a terrorist/religious fanatic
TUC: Fighting terrorists undermining the peace process
GEN: Fighting a terrorist who really misses his wife
FC: Defending against threat to Earth
INS: Exposing corruption within Starfleet
NEM: Fighting a conqueror who poses threat to Earth

Of those, you could consider TMP an exploration movie because there's a lot of discovery and sense-of-wonder stuff with V'Ger; TSFS has a subplot of the exploration of the Genesis Planet, but only as a secondary thread; TVH and FC arguably feature "exploration" of Earth's past, but only as a means to an end; TFF involves travel to an unknown frontier, but only under duress; and INS starts out with the exploration of the Ba'ku, but only as a cover for something more insidious. So there's never been a Trek movie that was about exploration as the primary focus of the story or as a mission undertaken for its own sake by the main characters. And yes, there are a lot of terrorists (i.e. non-state actors who use violence and destruction to pursue their goals). There's nothing new about either of those.

Which, again, is not to say that I wouldn't welcome an exploration story in Beyond. But if we get one, it will be impressive because it'll be the first of its kind, rather than a return to the way Trek movies used to be.

 

[Mudd]

One can always argue that invention, discovery and encounters with the unknown are recurrent themes in Star Trek and that these play a part in the majority of Trek movies.

TMP: encounter with the unknown
TWOK: invention, discovery
TSFS: discovery (check out that Genesis planet and, oh yeah, life after death)
TVH: encounter with the unknown
TFF: discovery, the unknown (God, duh)
TUC: Not so much
GEN: Check out that Nexus thingy.
FC: Not so much
INS: discovery (check out that fountain of youth)
NEM: Not so much
ST2009: discovery of whole other universes and people from the future
STID: Not so much

 

[Orphalesion]

Honestly, although I like exploration stories and hope to see one, the fact is that not as much of Star Trek is about exploration as we tend to think. Just to look at TOS's first season:

"Where No Man Has Gone Before": Exploration (gone horribly wrong)
"The Corbomite Maneuver": Exploration/first contact
"Mudd's Women": Chasing a criminal, repairing the ship
"The Enemy Within": Transporter malfunction (with a backdrop of exploration)
"The Man Trap": Colony resupply, killer monster
"The Naked Time": Disease with exploration backdrop
"Charlie X": Dangerous passenger
"Balance of Terror": Fighting off invading enemy
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?": Rescue of lost explorer, android threat
"Dagger of the Mind": Routine penal-colony visit exposes corrupt administrator
"Miri": Exploration/disease
"The Conscience of the King": Investigation of war criminal, murder mystery
"The Galileo Seven": Exploration/rescue
"Court Martial": Court martial
"The Menagerie": Another court martial (well, preliminary hearing)
"Shore Leave": Shore leave (gone horribly wrong)
"The Squire of Gothos": Routine mission interrupted by nasty alien
"Arena": Fighting off invading enemy
"The Alternative Factor": Investigating dangerous cosmic anomaly
"Tomorrow is Yesterday": Accidental time travel
"The Return of the Archons": Exploration, but in search of lost ship
"A Taste of Armageddon": Diplomatic contact (gone horribly wrong)
"Space Seed": Stumbling across mysterious ship
"This Side of Paradise": Investigating incommunicado colony
"The Devil in the Dark": Investigating deaths at mining colony
"Errand of Mercy": War story
"Operation -- Annihilate!": Fighting monsters

That's just a limited sample, of course, but Trek episodes that are really about exploration and first contact are few and far between. And many of those that start out with exploration missions make them just an incidental backdrop to a story about something else. There have always been plenty of episodes about fighting monsters and enemy aliens and conquerors and lunatic killers and the like.

^ Basically this. I was thinking about that the other day; Star Trek always, always used every plot but exploration, which most of the time was just a way of encountering the plot. There was never some "golden Age" of Star Trek where it was solely (or even mainly) about exploration before all those "unnecessary" other plots showed up that are not "real" Star Trek.

What exactly would a movie focused only on exploration/discover entail? Kirk and Spock documenting the eco system of an alien world?
That could make a very beautiful and (depending on the creativity put into the alien organisms) very intriguing mockomentary kind of like Expedition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_(book) and the movies based on it, but I doubt it would be very good cinema.
Or are people thinking more along Rider Haggard in space? That could work.

 

[Franklin]

One can always argue that invention, discovery and encounters with the unknown are recurrent themes in Star Trek and that these play a part in the majority of Trek movies.

TMP: encounter with the unknown
TWOK: invention, discovery
TSFS: discovery (check out that Genesis planet and, oh yeah, life after death)
TVH: encounter with the unknown
TFF: discovery, the unknown (God, duh)
TUC: Not so much
GEN: Check out that Nexus thingy.
FC: Not so much
INS: discovery (check out that fountain of youth)
NEM: Not so much
ST2009: discovery of whole other universes and people from the future
STID: Not so much

I think discovery is the key word over exploration. As Christopher pointed out above more empirically than I had other times in other threads, real exploration of places, truly going "where no man has gone before," was not really the bread and butter of TOS. It seemed they were always just a few days from the nearest star base, in known and friendly space, or on or near a colony.

Discovery and encounters with the unknown is a better way to put it because even in their own back yard, there were new and outstanding things to find. "The Devil in the Dark" is as great example of that type of story.

 

[Orphalesion]

Edit: Sorry, wrong thread.

 

[mos6507]

real exploration of places, truly going "where no man has gone before," was not really the bread and butter of TOS. It seemed they were always just a few days from the nearest star base, in known and friendly space, or on or near a colony.

Strongly disagree with this. TNG is what fits that criteria more than TOS. In TNG, the mission of the Enterprise was primarily diplomatic. They always showed up at a planet AFTER initial contact was established to negotiate with some group or another. With TOS you got much more exploration and first-contact situations. It shouldn't be necessary for every episode to feature exploration for TOS to still reign supreme in that category. It more than delivers the goods.

In fact I felt the reason Voyager was created (or Enterprise) was to try to get back to the first-contacts, but they still couldn't quite capture the TOS planet-of-the-week vibe.

 

[Christopher]

^Even so, it's not something that ever carried over to the movies. The only movies that started out with somebody surveying a new alien civilization were Insurrection and Into Darkness, and the former was actually a cover for exploiting the natives and the latter was about saving them from a volcano rather than just learning about them.

 

[Franklin]

real exploration of places, truly going "where no man has gone before," was not really the bread and butter of TOS. It seemed they were always just a few days from the nearest star base, in known and friendly space, or on or near a colony.

Strongly disagree with this. TNG is what fits that criteria more than TOS. In TNG, the mission of the Enterprise was primarily diplomatic. They always showed up at a planet AFTER initial contact was established to negotiate with some group or another. With TOS you got much more exploration and first-contact situations. It shouldn't be necessary for every episode to feature exploration for TOS to still reign supreme in that category. It more than delivers the goods.

In fact I felt the reason Voyager was created (or Enterprise) was to try to get back to the first-contacts, but they still couldn't quite capture the TOS planet-of-the-week vibe.

I guess my point is discovery happened even if exploration it wasn't the primary purpose of mission at hand. In "The Squire of Gothos" for example, they certainly made first contact with a new life form, but exploration wasn't the primary mission. The mission was for the Enterprise to deliver supplies to a colony.

"The Immunity Syndrome" was a type of first contact episode, but it occurred in known space, as the Enterprise was diverted from shore leave to a named system already known to have billions of inhabitants and just visited by the Intrepid.

That isn't to say they didn't end up making discoveries in unexplored areas (for example, "The Tholian Web" took them into uncharted space). But I'd say on the face of it, the discoveries occurred just as often in more or less known space as they did "out there."

That's why I like the idea of "discovery" better than "exploration." "Exploration" as what TOS did is overused in my opinion, and I'd say for that reason, it's not a very valid criticism of Trek movies to day they've forgotten "the mission" by taking place in our neighborhood.

 

[Ryan8bit]

They should change the monologue for the movies:

Space, that frontier that's outside of Earth where we usually are.
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
Its continuing mission: to fight villains with lots of lasers and explosions.
To stop the latest doodads from destroying the universe.
To boldly go where lots of people have already been.

 

[Kemaiku]

Either way. It's a movie with a lot of people already dead set on buying a ticket well over a year before it even hits cinema's, that says enough.