Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/Discu

[Maurice]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Black and white isn't subtle, but the first time you saw it, did you catch that their colorations were opposite until it was pointed out? I think that was brilliant, because it points out how wholly subjective such things are. You just look at them and think "what's the difference", and when it's said, you realize how ridiculous and pointless that so-called difference is.

 

[FalTorPan]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

DS9Sega said:
Black and white isn't subtle, but the first time you saw it, did you catch that their colorations were opposite until it was pointed out? I think that was brilliant, because it points out how wholly subjective such things are. You just look at them and think "what's the difference", and when it's said, you realize how ridiculous and pointless that so-called difference is.

I didn't notice until it was pointed out.

 

[Rat Boy]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

MeanJoePhaser said:
I found the male "camel-toes" too distracting.

Oh, it could have been worse, trust me:

 

[Plum]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

^^^
Haaa!


The revelation of the 'hidden' racial hatred is part of this eps smarts. I love this one. Perfect Trek allegorical story telling. Though, yea, I get how it puts our heroes into the background. However, for a serialized set of stories I don't think that's a bad thing, in moderation.

x/post!

... The cuts to this one will be murder for me. Why? The dialog. I love this episode.

I love how this episodes dialog showed how Beal and Loki were too extremes. It wasn't ALL about race, it was their fundamentalism. They were both convinced their views were so pure that anything was justified to attack the other. Racial purity was, well, the obvious part.

Having said that, and though I haven't seen this ep in a few years, I was always impressed by the FX in this one. Beal's personal force field is definitely impressive.

I'd love to know the actual origin of the burning buildings. Some random fire? London in the war? Any stock footage geeks out there?

 

[Broccoli]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

"Riddle me this, Captain Kirk! What is black, white, and red all over?"

"You, after I beat shit out of you."

"Umm...it was suppose to be the other guy..."

 

[jayrath]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Another highlight is Spock agreeing that, in fact, he and Kirk are brothers. A great sequence.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

The remastering was a cut above average for the series. Lots and lots of Enterprise pr0n in this episode, especially the parts where the Enterprise goes off course and later is going at warp 10 "nowhere mighty fast!" The one disappointment in this episode was the decontamination sequence... it would have been nice to see spray or beams or something being emitted from whatever that thingamabob was on the underside of the secondary hull.

As for the episode, I rated it an A-. Yeah, the delivery was sometimes a bit in-your-face, but this was classic Star Trek allegorical storytelling. Considering contemporary events when this episode was filmed and originally aired, you've gotta salute TPTB for shooting for the stars on this one. We can also thank this episode for the origin of the Enterprise destruct sequence that finally played out sixteen years later in Star Trek III. It was a great gimmick and very suspenseful... Chekov looked like he was about to faint as the countdown reached single digits!

 

[Stag]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Anti_Drone said:
...And you know, I was thinking a little more about this episode today and it isn't about what you think. I have to give props to the make-up department for their really nice work on this episode. I don't think any of you realize how difficult it is to get a smooth even coverage like they did with the white make-up. And I am even more impressed with the super clean line down the middle.

They used some of that blue non-stick masking tape, I'm sure of it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Flukie said:
The fast zoom-in zoom-out on the red alert indicator

Yep, it was satirizing "Batman" for Frank Gorshin. Bele = Riddler!

The other innovative, unusual shot in this episode was the transporter, as seen from the pad view.

 

[ClayinCA]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

jayrath said:
Another highlight is Spock agreeing that, in fact, he and Kirk are brothers. A great sequence.

I haven't seen this episode for a long time, but isn't that "Whom Gods Destroy"...? Or does Spock say it in this episode too?

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

The CGI Remastering is much better than the heavyhanded, in-your-face story...no matter how much more prescient it might have been in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement and King assassination. The new Lokai shuttlecraft sequence looks a million times better and more realistic as does the new orbital appearance of Cheron with burning and smoldering cities glowing on the surface, but the story is still very hamfisted.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

I really like this episode.

Reducing the character designs to a rediculous cartoon-like extreme, I think makes the point really well. I find a lot of the dialogue is really well written in this episode and does sound very like the things the opressors and opressed say.

Both Lokai and Beale are too comfortable in their identities to want to move to better life. It is easier to maintain the status quo and carry on hating than to try to start something new.

Not sure about the sequence where Beale and Lokai run through the coridoors of the Enterprise, but the burning buildings worlk really well IMHO.

 

[Capn Flukie]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

This ep kinda reminds me of a lot of threads in TNZ.

 

[ancient]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

The episode is heavy-handed, but then again so is the racism it was mocking. LTBYLB was fighting hammers with hammers, as it were. It was certainly a bold move to present it in such a black & white (sorry), in-your-face way, and I think it works perfectly.

I think the scene where Bele explains the 'obvious difference' between Loki and himself is excellent, since the audience has the same WTF reaction as Kirk and Spock, while at the same time finding Bele's 'logic' all too familiar.

 

[Timo]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

...the new orbital appearance of Cheron with burning and smoldering cities glowing on the surface...

So the final war has ended just before our heroes arrive? That's a massive coincidence that wasn't part of the original episode!

Admittedly, cities could keep on catching fire for several decades after everybody was dead, but not much longer than that. Given how Bele and Lokai have been playing cat and mouse for thousands of years, it's still a whopper to swallow that their return would coincide with the end of the war.

...but the story is still very hamfisted.

And apparently the new effects made it more so.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Timo said:

...the new orbital appearance of Cheron with burning and smoldering cities glowing on the surface...

So the final war has ended just before our heroes arrive? That's a massive coincidence that wasn't part of the original episode!

Well, even the cheesy old WWII Blitz stock footage superimposed over Bele and Lokai's chase through the corridors shows burning cities and collapsing buildings...so even in the original incarnation of the episode there's the impression given that the carnage was very recent.

 

[Nebusj]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Timo said:

...the new orbital appearance of Cheron with burning and smoldering cities glowing on the surface...

So the final war has ended just before our heroes arrive? That's a massive coincidence that wasn't part of the original episode!

It had been recent enough for there to be ``vast numbers of unburied corpses'' in the cities, though. That is, there hasn't been enough time for the bodies to be reduced to skeletons or to ash.

Admittedly, cities could keep on catching fire for several decades after everybody was dead, but not much longer than that. Given how Bele and Lokai have been playing cat and mouse for thousands of years, it's still a whopper to swallow that their return would coincide with the end of the war.

It can't have been more than decades just going from dialogue: animals and vegetation are ``encroaching'' on the cities, not that they've covered or reclaimed them. If the war had finally ended, say, 500 years before there'd be very little left of recognizable cities and essentially none of corpses.

 

[Timo]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

Good points. So, a coincidence after all. (Or then not - Bele should have been keeping in touch with home at least every century or so!)

Well, even the cheesy old WWII Blitz stock footage superimposed over Bele and Lokai's chase through the corridors shows burning cities and collapsing buildings...

Ah, I supposed that was all in the minds of the two idiots...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Noname Given]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

cooleddie74 said:

Timo said:

...the new orbital appearance of Cheron with burning and smoldering cities glowing on the surface...

So the final war has ended just before our heroes arrive? That's a massive coincidence that wasn't part of the original episode!

Well, even the cheesy old WWII Blitz stock footage superimposed over Bele and Lokai's chase through the corridors shows burning cities and collapsing buildings...so even in the original incarnation of the episode there's the impression given that the carnage was very recent.

No, it wasn't - that was supposed to sympolize them BOTH thinking about waht the other side had done to 'destroy the world' in their absence; and that the hatred still seethed in each of them even after they knew it had destroyed their civilization. The fires were un-neccessary CGI-'penis-waving'.

I thought it was ridiculous when I heard it, but Bele stated he'd been persuing Loki for thousands of years in the script. The say that the 1701 arrived 'just after' the final cataclysm contradicts Spock stating that the extensive traffic systems show that they haven't ben used in decades.

 

[Timo]

Re: Star Trek-RM: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield… Grade/D

...Although "unburied corpses" and "burning cities" would still be compatible with a couple of decades of daisy-pushing. If a few billion people died and were left unburied, their flesh might be gone, but Spock would still be picking enough to prove they were once people. And cities would remain susceptible to fires for a long time, with new reserves of volatiles gradually becoming exposed to the elements.

OTOH, the traffic systems might have fallen in disuse decades before the actual end.

And as said, a policeman should have been keeping in touch with the home base relatively often, so the destruction shouldn't be centuries old. And it's not a major coincidence as such that Bele would catch Lokai at the exact time their culture collapses, because Bele apparently has often caught Lokai, only to lose him to those who agreed to assist the fugitive. One might even claim that since Lokai happened to be fairly close to his homeworld when caught, this was a sign of things coming to a breaking point, of people rallying up in his name back home, and bringing about the final disaster.

Still, it would IMHO have been better if the destruction were centuries old. At least if we buy the timeline of thousands of years of pursuit.

Timo Saloniemi