STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Kemaiku]

On the one hand I could see it being very useful, fast responce and reports for ship wide problems, but on the other he is connected to systems that could be taking damage.

In an old fic of mine I had the main computer represented as a holographic avatar as a character, made for interesting story ideas for problems with the computer but brought up the idea that damage to the computer or ship could cause "pain" to the program.

An actual flesh and blood 'person' hooked up to the computer could have all sorts of unforseen dangers, hacking, brain damage, the fact that the computer is on 24/7, so is he as well? etc

 

[Flake]

There was Andromeda where one of the lead characters was a hologram personification of the ship.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yeah, this is an idea that's easily more than fifty years old in the sf prose world - so Star Trek was right about on schedule adopting it.

 

[Kemaiku]

I still have reservations about it, whether damage to this crew member could somehow affect the computer in some way.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Only if it's useful to the writers for that to happen - in which case it's a good thing.

 

[trevanian]

Never had the impression they just got there all that fast, thought it showed that the battle took hours, since the fleet was only mostly decimated by the time they arrived.

It didn't seem to take the Borg very long to kick the Fleet's ass in The Best of Both Worlds. And we have absolutely no proof that it took them any longer in First Contact.

It seems to me that those that like a Trek movie will go out of their way to defend a 'goof'. Those that dislike a film will condemn it based on the same exact thing.

That'd be well reasoned -- if I actually liked FIRST CONTACT.

However, I have always found it to be one of the biggest blown opportunities in the whole film series. I imagine that I've spent more wordage on this board bitching about this one than any other of the first ten films, except of course SEARCH FOR SPOCK.

See? I wasn't defending it, simply noting the way it played for me when I saw it.

And now that I think of it, BOBW was pre-DEFIANT too, so Starfleet's stuff would have been at least a little more effective after years of R&D, or so one could assume. Plus I think there's dialog to the effect that the borg ship has been damaged to some extent, which also suggests Starfleet was able to damage and/or slow down this cube.

 

[Therin of Andor]

my turn
The film was certainly entertaining and provided much more fan wank than i had anticipated...

• Section 31
• Tribbles
• Carol Marcus (and mum)
• Ketha Province
• Gorn
• Khan

And K'Normians (ST:TMP). Twice.

Security Guard "Cupcake" is credited as such in the closing scroll, but Kirk calls him Hendorff (as suggested by several IDW comics). From "The Apple".

Christine Chapel.

And, on third viewing last night, we noticed that the "Mudd" incident is actually namedropped. ("Countdown to Darkness".)

 

[Shazam!]

What I think is being said is that we accept Trek for what it really was, not some idealized head canon. It didn't bother us before, why should it matter now?

I think we do but we were/are much more forgiving of 'old' Trek, given the financial and time restraints in churning out episode after episode. And in regards to the films, pretty much everyone rips into Generations or First Contact for its internal plot inconsistencies. Why should 'nu' Trek be immune to such criticism?

 

[I am not Spock]

my turn
The film was certainly entertaining and provided much more fan wank than i had anticipated...

• Section 31
• Tribbles
• Carol Marcus (and mum)
• Ketha Province
• Gorn
• Khan

And K'Normians (ST:TMP). Twice.

Security Guard "Cupcake" is credited as such in the closing scroll, but Kirk calls him Hendorff (as suggested by several IDW comics). From "The Apple".

Christine Chapel.

And, on third viewing last night, we noticed that the "Mudd" incident is actually namedropped. ("Countdown to Darkness".)

And the model of Archer's NX 01 Enterprise on Admiral Marcus's (a possible descendant of Paxton ? ) desk

 

[I am not Spock]

How's the international box office going? It's been out since Thursday in several countries. How often do Box Office Mojo update the global figures? I don't really care that much about box office, I just hope films I like make enough to warrant a sequel

 

[Pauln6]

What I think is being said is that we accept Trek for what it really was, not some idealized head canon. It didn't bother us before, why should it matter now?

I think we do but we were/are much more forgiving of 'old' Trek, given the financial and time restraints in churning out episode after episode. And in regards to the films, pretty much everyone rips into Generations or First Contact for its internal plot inconsistencies. Why should 'nu' Trek be immune to such criticism?

It bothered me before. I laughed about it, enjoyed the episode, and moved on. I think it's probably partly because now that there is no Trek on TV we only get a fix once every few years and partly because of the nature of the reboot and because the nuTrek writers seem almost brazenly and deliberately sloppy and that there are so many dodgy plot patches in such a short amount of story-telling that people seem to get a bit more animated about these movies.

 

[Flake]

How's the international box office going? It's been out since Thursday in several countries. How often do Box Office Mojo update the global figures? I don't really care that much about box office, I just hope films I like make enough to warrant a sequel

According to boxoffice.com forums and worldofkj.com forums I know that it is doing twice the $$ as ST09 in Germany, about the same as ST09 in UK and OZ and it has flopped in Hong Kong (same as ST09). Thats it for now.

EDIT: If I had to take a guess I would say STID will not do as well as Paramount will have hoped for overseas and I think the target should be approximately $180-$200m. Though that is a decent increase on ST09 (128m) it may not be a sufficient return on investment assuming Paramount upped the international marketing budget. I don't think that jeopardises another movie being made but perhaps they might consider changing the release date or lowering the budget.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It didn't bother us before, why should it matter now?

Ummmm, which universe was this?

 

[Dick_Valentine]

My unoriginal and pointless thoughts on the film, move along

Just in from the film. WOW. Loved this a bit more than the first one and that's saying a lot from me.

I think we're lucky to have a director of JJ's quality who can look at the franchise from a neutral standpoint, cherry pick the best bits and discard the stuff that doesn't work.
As fans, I think we'd be the first to admit that across the entire franchise, not every episode and film is a winner yet we love it all anyway because they're our favourite family of characters on our favourite ships in our favourite universe.
JJ can take it all from a neutral perspective and just process what works to give us Trek 2.0, the most refined Trek product we've had to date!

And the secrecy? I'm so glad I got into this movie without knowing the true details of Harrison.
Brave move by JJ too, to have a secret wrapped in a secret wrapped in disinformation wrapped in misinformation wrapped in red herrings.....and then still not have him as the primary protagonist in the movie!
Brilliant.
And Nimoy? Didn't know that either! Great surprise, tho a twinge of sadness that I got the last time I saw Q on screen.....
Looking very old and I hope that's not the last time I see his face on my movie screen!
(Tho, did they touch up his image using CG or just heavy make up? Looked.....different somehow...)

Sleek new ship too, not enough of it. The TOS era version of the DS9 version of the Defiant class? Warship built to combat an oncoming threat? MORE OF IT PLEASE!!

And minor thing, but the new warp effect was hella cool.
Don't quite know why it needed changing, but it looked like a huge combo of the original movie era rainbow effect and the TNG era stretching, fantastic.

Now, Kahn and Klingons for Trek 3 please! C'mon, make Marcus right and make the Klingon war happen! NO BORG!

OK,. now I've finished saying the same things everyone else has probably said in threads I've deliberately stayed away from, I'm off to catch up on all the juicy threads I've missed!

 

[Therin of Andor]

The fact is that, maybe except the UK, and it´s a big maybe, TOS was never as popular as TNG or even Voyager in many European countries or Australia and New Zealand.

In New South Wales, Australia, it's very, very hard to compare. TOS aired once, in the 60s. Because of the way half of the episodes were rated ("Not Recommended for Children"; only 40 were "G"), TOS never got those "early prime time" repeats that the US got with syndication all through the 70s and 80s (and that Australia experienced with ubiquitous shows like "Lost in Space", "Bewitched" and "Gilligan's Island"). We finally got prime time reruns of TOS "for the first time in colour" in the hiatus between TMP and ST II.

The TOS movies all did very respectable business in Aussie cinemas, AFAIK. In Sydney and Melbourne, we had a cinema screening of five TOS episodes per month on the big screen. For several decades.

When TNG came to most international markets, it was presold to the home video rental sector. (Sell-thru was very expensive.) A year later, prime time airings were attempted, but the series didn't rate highly enough and ended up as late-night TV fodder (where it won its timeslot, thrilling advertisers).

DS9, VOY (and ENT) were buried even further into the late-night void. And home video sell-thru twin packs.

 

[Flake]

The fact is that, maybe except the UK, and it´s a big maybe, TOS was never as popular as TNG or even Voyager in many European countries or Australia and New Zealand.

In New South Wales, Australia, it's very, very hard to compare. TOS aired once, in the 60s. Because of the way half of the episodes were rated ("Not Recommended for Children"; only 40 were "G"), TOS never got those "early prime time" repeats that the US got with syndication all through the 70s and 80s (and that Australia experienced with ubiquitous shows like "Lost in Space", "Bewitched" and "Gilligan's Island"). We finally got prime time reruns of TOS "for the first time in colour" in the hiatus between TMP and ST II.

The TOS movies all did very respectable business in Aussie cinemas, AFAIK. In Sydney and Melbourne, we had a cinema screening of five TOS episodes per month on the big screen. For several decades.

When TNG came to most international markets, it was presold to the home video rental sector. (Sell-thru was very expensive.) A year later, prime time airings were attempted, but the series didn't rate highly enough and ended up as late-night TV fodder (where it won its timeslot, thrilling advertisers).

DS9, VOY (and ENT) were buried even further into the late-night void. And home video sell-thru twin packs.

Its strange that they did that. The BBC aired TOS from 1969 in the 5:15pm Saturday timeslot that Doctor Who aired in. Unsurprisingly it was a huge success and was repeated throughout the 70s probably because it was the ideal replacement for Dr Who. I wonder why the Australian censors did not follow the BBCs example?

I know for a fact the spinoffs where more popular in Germany than TOS though! Not sure why...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Maybe they were simply better distributed.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Its strange that they did that. The BBC aired TOS from 1969 in the 5:15pm Saturday timeslot that Doctor Who aired in.

Yes, but UK famously had four banned episodes that the censors decided couldn't be screened at all in the 60s and 70s.

The Aussie censors of the 60s decreed that only 40 TOS episodes could be played before 8.30pm. When the series was finally rescreened in the 80s in prime time, the network elected not to pay the $$$$$ required to send them through the censors again, for reevaluation - so when the show moved to weekend afternoons in the late 80s and early 90s, only the 40 "G" eps were shown.

The eps have since been back to the censors for the VHS and DVD boxed sets.

 

[Commishsleer]

About the Enterprise getting from Klingon space to Earth real fast, and forgive me if it sounds stupid as I only did first year University Physics - a very long time ago and it didn't even cover Warp Drive.
I was thinking that maybe Marcus' ship sort of pushed the Enterprise faster with its super capacities, or included it in its own Warp or transWarp tunnel.

 

[Tiberius]

About the Enterprise getting from Klingon space to Earth real fast, and forgive me if it sounds stupid as I only did first year University Physics - a very long time ago and it didn't even cover Warp Drive.
I was thinking that maybe Marcus' ship sort of pushed the Enterprise faster with its super capacities, or included it in its own Warp or transWarp tunnel.

Let's not forget that Archer's ship made it there in only a few days...