Star Trek V..... what the?

[Nebusj]

TeutonicNights said:
Whoever was the security officer at the time (Chekov?), or in command (Chekov) was not doing his job. Imagine Sybok had been some bloodthirsty Terrorist.

What did Chekov have to stop them with, a stern glare? The ship had a sub-skeleton crew, which was established early on; the people who should be handling securing potentially dangerous captives were the assault team which was left down on the surface of the planet after having done its job in rather good order.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

The Enterprise definitely was not in great shape...

 

[Maurice]

^^^All of which is SLOPPY plotting. There's a dozen ways they could have made it credible for Sybok and his followers to take the ship...they took the shortcut through the Lazy Zone (dumb da dumb dumb).

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Still, a good popcorn flick...

 

[Timo]

Take a look at LET THAT BE ... again. That wasn't a bluff.

Well, the ship didn't go kaboom, now did it?

Kirk wouldn't blow up the ship over an extradition matter when he flat out refused to blow her up in order to save the entire galaxy from a massive invasion. Suicide just wasn't his style. Inviting hostiles to his lair and then outsmarting them, OTOH, was standard fare for him...

The Enterprise definitely was not in great shape...

Frankly, I would like to downplay the problems of the ship as much as possible, so as not to make Starfleet Command look like complete idiots for sending this vessel. I mean, it would be perfectly okay today to send a destroyer to support a peacetime, anti-terrorist SEAL sortie when all her guns and missiles were undergoing repairs - but not when her engines or radios were unreliable.

It already stretches credibility a bit that Starfleet would send a ship without transporters, seeing how those would be extremely handy in hostage situations. But the great effectiveness of the shuttle assault team alleviates those problems. Yet for the ship to be so crippled that Scotty can't even contact the bridge... Ugh.

So I still prefer to think that Sybok radiated a sort of "you don't want to hurt me" psi-energy, allowing him to stop the farmer in the teaser, then Spock in the shuttlebay scene, then whatever resistance stood between him and the bridge (we didn't really see what he faced on the way there).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TGTheodore]

Peach Wookiee said:
Still, a good popcorn flick...

Well, the POPCORN was good ...

--Ted

 

[Kegek]

I hate popcorn. Good nacho movies are way better.

But seriously, TFF starts out promisingly enough, has some nice character interactions with the troika, but pretty much falls apart the moment Sybok gets onboard the Enterprise.

Goldsmith's score is his best Trek score after TMP, but that's damning it with faint praise - basically, while it reprises many of the themes from TMP it does include the effort to reorchestrate some of them and also compose new music, which is a good deal more than his NEM score (a mishmash of direct TMP quotations and lackluster new compositions).

 

[Squiggy]

Timo said:
It already stretches credibility a bit that Starfleet would send a ship without transporters, seeing how those would be extremely handy in hostage situations. But the great effectiveness of the shuttle assault team alleviates those problems. Yet for the ship to be so crippled that Scotty can't even contact the bridge... Ugh.

Stick Kirk on a working ship.

Problem solved.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I still like the movie...

 

[Sharr Khan]

Peach Wookiee said:
I still like the movie...

So do I.

Sharr

 

[Timo]

Stick Kirk on a working ship. Problem solved.

Exactly. Which means problem caused if the ship is not working sufficiently.

* Transporters down (possibly repairable in time) - sufficient for the job.
* Turbolift doors and Captain's log recorder down - sufficient for the job.
* Communications and internal security down - insufficient for the job.

It was a balancing act, making the audience buy the idea of sending a ship that wasn't shipshape. If we have to think that Sybok succeeded in his takeover thanks to those malfunctions, then our heroes become idiots. If Sybok did it some other way, then the heroes are off the hook.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TGTheodore]

Squiggyfm said:
Stick Kirk on a working ship.

Problem solved.

What amazes me is that they just DID the understaffed and/or "broken" ship in TMP, II and III. (Yeah, yeah -- they fixed it in TMP, but not after using it to make a major plot point and yet another "ship in peril" thing).

Did no one have the cajones to say, "Bill, we just DID that ... THREE out of our first four movies!"

--Ted

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

TG Theodore said:

Squiggyfm said:
Stick Kirk on a working ship.

Problem solved.

What amazes me is that they just DID the understaffed and/or "broken" ship in TMP, II and III. (Yeah, yeah -- they fixed it in TMP, but not after using it to make a major plot point and yet another "ship in peril" thing).

Did no one have the cajones to say, "Bill, we just DID that ... THREE out of our first four movies!"

--Ted

Perhaps, if they had gotten a better screenwriter other than David Loughry.

 

[TGTheodore]

middyseafort said:Perhaps, if they had gotten a better screenwriter other than David Loughry.

Loughery WAS dating one of Shatner's daughters at the time ...

--Ted

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ Out of curiosity, was it the same daughter who's in the one Bridge scene, wandering around with Kirk's coat?

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[TGTheodore]

I don't recall. But all three of Shatner's daughters were quite attractive. I assume they still are.

--Ted

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

TG Theodore said:

middyseafort said:Perhaps, if they had gotten a better screenwriter other than David Loughry.

Loughery WAS dating one of Shatner's daughters at the time ...

--Ted

Really? Didn't know that. Interesting tidbit that explains a great deal.

I've always wondered how tighter and smoother the script would've turned out if it had been worked on by the first, second and third choice of writers. IIRC, it was novelist Eric Van Lustbader, Nicholas Meyer and I believe Harlan Ellison said he was contacted as well in his intro to his COTEF scriptbook.

For the vision of a more "hard-edge" and visceral Trek that Shatner had, Meyer may have been a decent fit who also introduced a more tactile version of Starfleet.

 

[Galactic Alignment]

middyseafort said:

Trekwatcher said:
Plus, to me, the goofy costumes the crew wore (the shapeless sweaters, etc) did nothing to make them look any younger.

Shatner, according to the making of book recommended by Therin, which I still have a copy of and throughly read back and forth when TFF came out, wanted to change the design of the uniforms completely for his movie. Budget constraints limited the production to reusing the Fletcher designs with the assault fatigues, and other costumes, being designed by production artist Nilo Rodis.

New uniforms? Not again! Good thing they didn't have the budget there; not that I've ever liked the 'Mountie' uniforms, but I like a bit of consistency in my Trek.

I would ask what Shat planned to do with new uniforms, but I can't resist making a joke about the cast's increasingly-flabby waistlines.

(BTW, with reference to the 'broken ship' aspect of the plot, it really doesn't make sense when one considers that the Enterprise-A presumably was damn-near the same as the old vessel, being just a less battered Connie. It's not like they were on a swish new Excelsior.)

 

[A beaker full of death]

Rattrap 64 said:

(BTW, with reference to the 'broken ship' aspect of the plot, it really doesn't make sense when one considers that the Enterprise-A presumably was damn-near the same as the old vessel, being just a less battered Connie. It's not like they were on a swish new Excelsior.)

Not so. We know it was an entirely new ship. That means it had lots of new bugs to be worked out. After all, Enterprise was at least 35 years old when she blew up (Admiral Dipshit's line notwithstanding).

 

[InklingStar]

Rattrap 64 said:
(BTW, with reference to the 'broken ship' aspect of the plot, it really doesn't make sense when one considers that the Enterprise-A presumably was damn-near the same as the old vessel, being just a less battered Connie. It's not like they were on a swish new Excelsior.)

I've read in places that the new Enterprise was a recommissioned USS Yorktown. The Yorktown was mentioned in TVH as one of the ships disabled by the Probe. I've always rationalized that the ship needed a complete overhaul after that incident.