God, the only thing worse than TMP's anti-climatic ending would be a remake of its anti-climatic ending.
Star Trek XIV: What do you want?
- Thread starter Danlav05
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Blowing up V'Ger by ramming the Enterprise into it while detonating the warp core has a bit more punch to it, I think.
One the benefits of JJTrek changing the timeline was that the characters can have different destinies. I think the real life tragic death of the actor should be incorporated in saying that in this timeline, Chekov is killed. I think an onscreen memorial service they all attend is a reasonable respectful way of handling that. But I get not wanting to even touch it as well. Opinions will differ.
Redoing TMP will be like X-Men doing Phoenix twice and we all know how that was received.
Redo Star Trek VI instead. They could do twisted versions of familiar events. Praxis was already destroyed 25 years earlier, so the catalyst would have to be something else...
Redo Star Trek VI instead. They could do twisted versions of familiar events. Praxis was already destroyed 25 years earlier, so the catalyst would have to be something else...
But a whole lot less Star Trek to it. V’Ger wasn’t an enemy to be destroyed, it was an alien mind to be understood. That’s the whole point of not only the film, but the franchise: if at all possible, you understand your way out of the problem, not shoot it. (You shoot when you have to — but more often than not, you don’t end up having to, if you put in the effort of trying to figure out an alternative. Khan and Chang were outliers, not the model.)
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My problem with the resolution to the V'ger issue in TMP was that this thing murdered the entire Epsilon station crew, wiped out the Klingons, tried to murder the ENT crew and was about to exterminate all life on Earth. Apparently in learning all that was learnable, it didnt learn that carbon based life has a right to live and that genocide is wrong. It stopped not because it realized how wrong and evil genocide is, but because it got what it wanted. It merged with a stand in for its creator. In the 100s of years V'Ger has been wandering the Universe, god only knows how many it's killed. V'Ger was a racist, speciest WMD that ripped a path of mass murder in it's entirely self interested, selfish quest. It deserved exactly what the Planet Killer did. To be stopped. It absorbed Ilia, that didnt change its mind about genocide. So why would it absorbing Decker matter? Did it stop killing? Who knows? But destroying it would have.
V’Ger absorbed Ilia, but didn’t understand her anymore than we would understand a roach we somehow learned to puppet. Only at the end of the film does V’Ger finally get that the disgusting little carbon units are the Creator, which it didn’t get before. And it’s spelled out in dialogue that the joining with (as opposed to absorption of) Decker and awakened-Ilia creates a new entity, not the same as before.
But even earlier at its worst, V’Ger isn’t acting out of malice; it thinks it’s collecting data, not killing life — and it’s about exactly as morally culpable as your average loved one is for calling the exterminator when your house gets infested with bugs. It’s wrong from our perspective, sure, because we’re the bugs; and Kirk would not have been wrong to destroy V’Ger as he planned to — until he found there was another way. But doing that last is what Trek is generally about. It’s got nothing to do with whether V’Ger “deserved” it.
The short version: Doomsday Machines needing blowing up happen, sure; but they aren’t the point, or anything like what Trek is generally about.
The end of "The Doomsday Machine" might say otherwise.
Or the dirkonium (sp?) cloud creature.
Or the Salt Vampire.
Or the giant Space Amoeba.
TOS had a different view of dealing with machines and weapons that involved some action being taken or acknowledgement of some responsibility on the part of the actor. Calling V'ger a "child" doesn't absolve it.
Or the dirkonium (sp?) cloud creature.
Or the Salt Vampire.
Or the giant Space Amoeba.
TOS had a different view of dealing with machines and weapons that involved some action being taken or acknowledgement of some responsibility on the part of the actor. Calling V'ger a "child" doesn't absolve it.
Again, “absolution” had nothing to do with it. Also again: Kirk would not have been wrong to destroy V’Ger as he planned to — until he found there was another way. In the cases you cite, no such other way presented itself. Unlike what happened with the Talosians, the Fesarius, the Gorn (if anyone deserved destruction, it was the Gorn!), the Horta, the Capellans, the masters of Triskelion (who if anything deserved it more), the Kelvans (seriously, fuck those guys; nevertheless…), the Klingons in “Day of the Dove”, the Platonians, the Vians (who are practically Space Mengeles)…
TOS had a *very* clear view: if you can find a way around blowing them up, you do. If you can’t, you do what you have to — and very often when you can’t, such as in all four of the examples you cite, it’s precisely because they’re literally instinctual animals or programmed machines with no moral agency of their own. You kill the Space Amoeba out of sheer necessity, not to “punish” it — the latter would be meaningless. There’s no “person” there to be punished. Even when someone is there — say, the Romulans in “Balance of Terror” — you kill them because in that particular situation that’s the only “good” resolution possible, not because they “deserve” it.
Not very just.
Not in the sense of righteous vengeance, no. But (in Trek) it saves more lives going forward and makes more progress. (And if he grabs your outstretched hand and tries to pull you down into the lava anyway, fine, then kick him off. If he’s still clearly trying to kill you and others after everything, fine, arrow that guy. But it’s central to Trek that you tried finding options first.
We know V'Ger got what it wanted, but whether it now sees carbon based life as "true" life forms is not clear. Absorbing Ilia did not give it that insight. Her tour of the ship didnt do it. Reading the ENT database about the Federation didnt do it. V'Ger made a purely transactional deal. Give us the creator, or you all die. It could not have believed that Decker created V'Ger since hes in his 30s and V'Ger would have known that. I think we are led to believe that vestigial remnants of Ilias love for him is what tipped the scales.
In any case, unlike with M-5, there is no clear sense of remorse or regret for the actions that it took. Or any guarantee that it will stop killing in future. But if this thing has spent 100s of years attacking and destroying any ship that scanned it (which is what nearly any ship of any alien civilization would do) how many has this thing killed? Possibly billions. But it was at least willing to exterminate all life to get what it wanted.
With M-5, the Planet Killer and Nomad the resolution was destruction. Nothing un-Trek about that IMHO. Of course, Kirk would rather not sacrifice himself and his crew if he didnt have to blow it up. As long as V'Ger withdraws from Earth, it's mission accomplished. I get that. But I do think destroying it is just as Trek an ending as Decker sacrificing himself to meld with the Ilia-ized AI.
You have a lot of interesting ideas here. I don't think I would do all of them, but still interesting.
Though, tangential point: in neither Phoenix movie did they actually do the Phoenix saga, which really might have helped.
Let's get the Kelvin crew back for one more.
Taking a page from current events, where a major European war is being decided by drones, and US doctrine is swinging towards mass drone attacks to fight China's numerical superiority, the new movie should consider whether starships are obsolete...Could work in Kelvin universe. The new Enterprise should be a drone carrier.
Taking a page from current events, where a major European war is being decided by drones, and US doctrine is swinging towards mass drone attacks to fight China's numerical superiority, the new movie should consider whether starships are obsolete...Could work in Kelvin universe. The new Enterprise should be a drone carrier.
I recall quite a bit of "where's Number One" back then too.
Transwarp beaming from planet to planet exists, which makes starships obsolete as it is, and BEY basically ignored it.
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