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Terra Prime

Not everyone will see it opening day... I'd hope people would be courteous with the spoilers for at least a month after release date... though that's pretty much a forlorn hope.
 
Thank you HopefulRomantic! Feel free to berate and threaten for the next couple weeks on this matter!!
Thank you for your support. I surely will.

Not everyone will see it opening day... I'd hope people would be courteous with the spoilers for at least a month after release date... though that's pretty much a forlorn hope.
Six months is the typical respecting-spoilers period. Yes, it's time to dig that will power out of the trash can or the closet or wherever you ditched it, and use it here in our fair non-Trek-movie forum.

At LEAST until the movie comes out on BluRay/DVD. When leaves are turning color and falling. Months of self-control! It'll be good for you, and your efforts will be appreciated. :cool:
 
Heck, when I saw BoBW on Thursday, that was the first time I stepped into a movie theater in a couple years. I may well not get around to seeing Into Darkness until it comes out on DVD. Movie Theaters, or more precisely the inconsiderate people in them, annoy me to no end. :p
 
^^ Our home theater system sounds way better than a movie house. Plus the popcorn costs a lot less, lol. We often wait until BluRay to see a film. (Although I don't think I can wait that long for a Star Trek movie.) So I face this spoiler dilemma a lot. It's difficult to remain clueless about some monster billion-dollar-making movie everyone is talking about. But we try. :)
 
I don't think I've been in a movie theater since Nemesis. Health problems make it impossible to properly see a movie screen. I'm less than a foot from the monitor right now.
 
It never worked that well for me before the eyes got worse. Those stupid glasses you have to wear don't work that well with eyeglasses. I'm severely near-sighted with astigmatism. And I'm partially color blind. I'm not sure what method they use now, but anaglyph and the other type with polarized lenses never worked well for me. If they can perfect traditional real-world holography for moving images, that might. But right now, the damage to one eye throws off my sense of perspective with real objects.
 
The only 3D film I saw was Friday the 13th III, which was also the only F13 film I saw, and the first time Jason wore the hockey mask. I do remember a literal eye-popping scene. But the headgear the viewer had to wear was simply too cumbersome (cardboard with acetate lenses) and uncomfortable. My 3d animation program can do the anaglyph process, but I lost its glasses, and it was still a bother for the previous reasons. Since the required glasses had to be outside my own glasses, they never properly fit the ears either. The technology isn't there to make the process viable for all people.

And of course it's a complete waste of time for someone like Peter Falk and Sammy Davis Jr, who between them had two eyes.
 
The one major unresolved plot point that crossed my mind was, what about all the Terra Prime supporters that were protesting outside the foreign embassies? There were enough people that Soval remarked that humanity didn't seen ready to be joining nonetheless hosting such an interplanetary conference.

The actual number was never established, and while Soval certainly improved over the years, he's spent most of his career serving a military dictatorship on Vulcan; he seems to have no idea how to interpret the exercise of free speech by the citizenry, and the possibility that it is merely a small but vocal minority never crosses his mind.

And let's not sit here and pretend that the Vulcans have much ground to stand on. As of 2155, they had just come out of a decades-long imperialistic phase in which they dominated less-powerful governments and manipulated foreign societies to gain access to resources and to deny resources to their imperial rivals, the Andorians. And that's to say nothing of the decades during which they kept Earth's government under their thumb. Vulcan trying to decide whether or not Earth is "ready" for anything is like America trying to decide whether or not Egypt is "ready" for democracy.

Not to mention Nathan Samuels, who was a Minister of some sort, apparently had a prosperous and active political career despite his previous affiliation with Terra Prime, which would seem to indicate a lot of people were sympathetic or willing to turn a blind eye to the organization.

Samuels's prior affiliation with Terra Prime is established to be a closely-held secret. If he's keeping it secret, it's probably because he's worried it would ruin his career, not help it.

Not to mention all the racist scenes at Phlox's expense throughout season 4 in the San Fransisco area

All one of them?

But you seemingly have a significant percentage of the Earth population that is... against all this. So much for will of the people, I guess.

The percentage of Humans who are opposed to interstellar presence is never established.


Regardless, you seem to be missing the point. I don't care about a scene showing riots. I don't care about a scene showing peaceful people. The rioting was mentioned through exposition. It was brought up as a major plot point to show how much of a threat Paxton was.

"Terra Prime" never mentioned any riots. This is the exact transcript:

Terra Prime said:
SAMUELS: Ambassador?
SOVAL: Spontaneous demonstrations have already begun around the Vulcan compound.
SAMUELS: Isolated incidents, I'm sure.
THORIS: There are protesters chanting outside the Andorian embassy. And they're using words that aren't in the universal translator.
SOVAL: It's obvious Paxton's ultimatum is part of a co-ordinated plan.
THORIS: Why are we all still here? We could be obliterated at any second!
SAMUELS: Paxton's a fanatic, but he's a man of his word. He won't act before his deadline's up.
SOVAL: The deadline aside, the fact that Paxton has the support of so many of your people is almost as troubling.
THORIS: I agree. Earthmen talk about uniting worlds, but your own planet is deeply divided. Perhaps you're not quite ready to host this conference.

Spontaneous demonstrations are hardly the same thing as riots. The worst thing they did, apparently, was use some cuss words.

Seems both our memories were wrong. It was Thoris who questioned Humanity's "readiness," not Soval. Thoris, meanwhile, seems panicked about the possibility of Terra Prime blowing up United Earth Starfleet Headquarters; I'm not too impressed with his reasoning.

Then there's no resolution to this AT ALL. Exposition, scenery or otherwise. In true video game fashion, once Paxton his beaten his whole organization which apparently spanned the entire Earth Solar system

There is no evidence that Terra Prime was significantly larger than the single moonbase we saw.


To the protesters. Sure it could be a vocal minority. It could be the majority. We don't know, it was never addressed and no sort of resolution was reached on it. That's my main nitpick with the episode. They bring it up, simply to lend weight to the threat of the bad guy, that he's threatening the whole founding of the Federation, then don't bother to explain it or resolve it because it proves inconvenient to the apparent desire for a happy ending.

What makes you think this plot element wouldn't have been followed up on if the series had continued? There's nothing improbable about a story where it's clear that the proposed Coalition has enough support to go forward but where there's a lingering question about the opposition. That's not a bad resolution, it's perfectly reasonable. Hell, just look at real life politics -- Obamacare got passed, but there's still sizable opposition to it, and if you were to do a movie about how it got passed, you'd want to include the continuing opposition, if only to give yourself story elements for a sequel.

And "Terra Prime" doesn't have a "happy" ending. It's a bittersweet ending. Paxton is defeated and the Coalition will happen, but Baby Elizabeth died and there's still the lingering question of Human xenophobia. The last shot of the episode isn't our heroes standing in triumph; it's Trip and T'Pol holding hands as they mourn their daughter's death. Having a lingering question about xenophobia on Earth is an excellent compliment to that ending.
 
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