Strange New Worlds' showrunners advise fans to write to Skydance and Paramount if they're interested in a "Year One" Kirk sequel series

[Christopher]

I was more thinking in the sense that Nemesis was the first one with direct parallels to TWOK

Yes, that was clear the first time. I was saying that it had an earlier and more pervasive influence in deeper ways than simple reiteration of its plot beats. Its entire philosophy of how Star Trek stories should be told has been overwhelmingly influential on all Star Trek movies ever since, and frequently on the shows, especially these days. The direct emulations you're talking about are just a symptom of that wider influence.

 

[The Wormhole]

One of the most popular TOS episodes, frequently at the top of lists of favorites, is "Balance of Terror," which is little more than a thinly-disguised remake of The Enemy Below. It has nothing intellectual to offer, unless you count cat-and-mouse battle tactics. The subplot involving prejudice ends up having no bearing on the overall story. The loss of Tomlinson is a war-story cliché, it feeds melodrama and offers nothing intellectual. Kirk's final line of there having to be a reason for the loss is trite and banal, devoid of intellectual content.

It's hard to say TWOK got it wrong, when this is one of the go-to examples of a top-rated TOS episode.

For that matter, it seems everyone and their dog claims the appeal of TNG is its optimism and focus on science and exploration and that it wasn't "pew-pew action." Yet, topping the lists of fan favorite TNG episodes are Yesterday's Enterprise and TBOBW. The former set in an alternate timeline where Starfleet is legitimately military and the Enterprise is intentionally a warship where the Federation is embroiled in a war they're on the losing side of. The latter being the kind of "fate of the universe" story everyone claims they're sick of seeing today. Granted, TBOBW was one of the first of such stories and accomplishes in two episodes what modern shows milk out for ten episodes.

 

[FredH]

In a broader sense, it began right away. TMP aspired to be a thought-provoking, intellectual science fiction drama in the 2001 mold; TWOK went for crowd-pleasing action and space battles in the Star Wars mold. And nearly every subsequent Trek movie followed the latter precedent, prioritizing action and spectacle over intellect and cramming in space battles even when it weakened the story. (The battles were shoehorned in with particular blatantness in Insurrection.)

Which is why I've never understood the attitude that TWOK was the one that "got it right." To me, it got Star Trek fundamentally wrong by dumbing it down into a battle-driven action franchise, and I hate that it set a precedent that subsequent moviemakers -- and TV makers, these days -- felt obligated to follow.

I simultaneously agree and disagree. While I prefer the TMP model, I don’t feel TWOK itself dumbed anything down — it’s a pretty smart script, Roddenberry’s opinion notwithstanding. But it’s certainly true that the movie franchise as a whole was subsequently dumbed down — based, I’m sure, on drawing the wrong lessons from TWOK’s success (the same way that years later, a properly dark approach to cinematic Batman led to an improperly dark approach to DC superheroes in general).

Ironically, I thought the main space battle in Insurrection was quite well done, but then the pacing in general was one of the better aspects of a middle-of-the-road film.

 

[FredH]

The subplot involving prejudice ends up having no bearing on the overall story.

???

 

[Nerys Myk]

One of the most popular TOS episodes, frequently at the top of lists of favorites, is "Balance of Terror," which is little more than a thinly-disguised remake of The Enemy Below. It has nothing intellectual to offer, unless you count cat-and-mouse battle tactics. The subplot involving prejudice ends up having no bearing on the overall story. The loss of Tomlinson is a war-story cliché, it feeds melodrama and offers nothing intellectual. Kirk's final line of there having to be a reason for the loss is trite and banal, devoid of intellectual content.

It's hard to say TWOK got it wrong, when this is one of the go-to examples of a top-rated TOS episode.

Indeed. I think TWOK took more than a little inspiration from BOT.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

???

That's not English, so I'm sorry, I don't know what it is you're trying to communicate. I assume you have an issue with what I said that you quoted, but what the issue is and with what part of it, I've no idea.

 

[Set Harth]

based, I’m sure, on drawing the wrong lessons from TWOK’s success (the same way that years later, a properly dark approach to cinematic Batman led to an improperly dark approach to DC superheroes in general).

I was thinking the same thing. The Dark Knight Returns is the TWOK of Batman.

 

[Christopher]

I simultaneously agree and disagree. While I prefer the TMP model, I don’t feel TWOK itself dumbed anything down — it’s a pretty smart script, Roddenberry’s opinion notwithstanding.

Hm -- I find it an extremely stupid script. So much about it is just dumb. The Reliant crew not being able to count how many planets are in a system, or to tell the orbital parameters of two planets apart. (The writers of the recent Khan podcast, my friends David Mack & Kirsten Beyer, came up with a remarkably clever and plausible fix for this, but in the movie itself it's complete nonsense.) The idea that Starfleet somehow had no knowledge of the Botany Bay's presence even though "Space Seed" made it explicit that Khan's hearing was being documeted for the official record. Khan's crew somehow consisting of a bunch of blond twenty-somethings even though they'd been a multiethnic crew of adults fifteen years earlier. A simulator having live explosions going off. The absurdity of the Genesis technology, and how a device programmed to merely transform the surface layer of an existing planetoid was somehow able to create an entire planet from nebular gas, and possibly even a star. Scotty melodramatically carrying Peter Preston to the bridge instead of calling sickbay to send a medical team to engineering. Kirk saying he'd never faced death, forgetting Gary Mitchell, Sam & Aurelan Kirk, Edith Keeler, Miramanee, and his unborn child, not to mention dozens of crewmembers under his command. And so on.

I'm also not a fan of how it takes the nuanced antagonist that Khan was in "Space Seed" and reduces him to a melodramatic revenge-obsessed madman. Of all the Khan stories, TWOK is the one that portrays him the least intelligently and the least interestingly.

Ironically, I thought the main space battle in Insurrection was quite well done, but then the pacing in general was one of the better aspects of a middle-of-the-road film.

Maybe as a set piece, if you like that sort of thing, but it felt arbitrarily tacked on to a story that was more a thoughtful, low-key TNG-style exploration of ideas, but still had to be forced into the battle-driven action movie mode because that's what Trek movies have been expected to be since 1982 (with TVH being the only one that managed to avoid it).

 

[FredH]

Hm -- I find it an extremely stupid script. So much about it is just dumb. [..,.]

All fair to point out as flaws. I think most of these are either the film handwaving for the sake of drama, or Sowards, Meyer et al caring about as much about the science as Doctor Who did when a villain came from “galaxies away” but couldn’t find a habitable planet between his origin point and Earth. I think TWOK is excellent as drama; I’d never claim it was rigorous in any way as science fiction, or that it sweated the details much.

(Though I recall headcanoning Genesis as some combination of transporter technology and 300-years-from-now nanotech, which was of course a fanboy rationalization, and a few years before TNG introduced the holodeck. And it would make the “protomatter-in-the-matrix” thing from ST3 even more nonsensical.)

 

[Christopher]

I think most of these are either the film handwaving for the sake of drama, or Sowards, Meyer et al caring about as much about the science as Doctor Who did when a villain came from “galaxies away” but couldn’t find a habitable planet between his origin point and Earth.

But a lot of it isn't about science at all. You don't need a science education to realize that people stranded as adults 15 years before would not be in their 20s now. Scotty bringing Preston to the bridge isn't a science issue, it's just sacrificing credible character writing for the sake of a moment of corny melodrama and shock value. Kirk denying he'd ever faced death is a failure of character continuity. For that matter, TWOK is responsible for creating the myth of Kirk as a rule-breaking maverick who'd cheat on an Academy simulation, in contrast to TOS where he was a very duty-driven officer who obeyed orders even when he disagreed with them. (And who chose whether or how to apply the Prime Directive in a given situation because that was part of his rightful responsibility as the highest Federation authority on the scene, not because he was insubordinate.)

(Though I recall headcanoning Genesis as some combination of transporter technology and 300-years-from-now nanotech, which was of course a fanboy rationalization, and a few years before TNG introduced the holodeck. And it would make the “protomatter-in-the-matrix” thing from ST3 even more nonsensical.)

I can buy it being an elaboration of transporter technology and a cousin of the replicator. My problems are more with the logistical issues. One is that it's absurdly overpowered for such a small device. I read the novelization before seeing the film, and I assumed the Genesis Torpedo would be some enormous missile. When I finally saw it in the movie, I though it was ridiculous to ask us to believe that something so tiny could have the power to transform an entire planet.

And as I said, it doesn't make sense that something programmed to alter a planetoid's surface could somehow also magically create a new planet from gas and dust. That's a radically different physical process, so it should be completely outside its existing programming. When it was set off in the middle of a nebula instead of on the planetoid surface it was programmed to operate upon, it shouldn't have created a whole planet out of nothing, it should've just transmitted a "404 Planetoid Not Found" error message and shut down or crashed. Or just blown up the Reliant and had no significant effect beyond that, because it wasn't programmed to work on diffuse nebular matter. Maybe the Genesis Wave would've managed to convert some specks of space dust in the nebula into organic compounds, but they would've been too spread out to come together.

 

[Dar70]

And ENT doesn't feel like it belongs pre-TOS.

Also, funny that ENTERPRISE is now vaunted when when it aired it was derided as ruining canon

Fans need new complaints. Or just stop watching if these newer Treks are ruining, destroying, disrespecting, insulting, etc. to the Trek franchise. Because if something is actually destroying things then it's a problem, as in the old shows are no longer available to watch. That's actual destruction.

I enjoyed Enterprise. I think it's a better prequel than SNW for sure. Did it have some canon issues...sure. As I said before every TV series in history does.