TMP's V'Ger & TVH's whale probe: villains or not?

[Galileo7]

Of the current thirteen STAR TREK films only two are about exploration, not about conflict with a villain, i.e., STAR TREK:THE MOTION PICTURE(1979) and THE VOYAGE HOME(1986), right?

TOS "The Changeling" plot idea was similar to TMP

• Nomad=V'Ger

TOS "Assignment:Earth" plot idea was similar to TVH

• "Assignment:Earth" Kirk & crew time travels to 1968

• TVH Kirk & crew time travels to 1986

If one wants to argue that all thirteen Star Trek films have a villain, then in TOS "The Changeling", TMP and TVH all had a villain of an alien probe.

• TOS "The Changeling" had Nomad.

• TMP had V'Ger.

• TVH had the alien whale probe.

Can both V'Ger and the whale probe be considered villains or just catalysts for the exploration in TMP and TVH?

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Personally, I don't consider V'Ger or the whale probe to be villains any more than Charlie Evans or the Horta was.

 

[Tosk]

They're antagonists, not villains.

 

[BillJ]

Bob was the real villain of The Voyage Home.

 

[cardinal biggles]

That's one of the reasons I like both TMP and TVH, even though they're about as different in tone as you can get within the Star Trek framework. There isn't a villain at all in TMP, not once they solve the riddle of V'Ger. And the true villain in TVH is our own ignorance -- by not being good stewards of the Earth in the 20th century, we unwittingly set up this global crisis 300 years later. It doesn't get much more Trek than that.

 

[Shalashaska]

I don't think V'Ger or the whale probe had any evil intentions. They're adversaries, if anything.

 

[RAMA]

There are no Trek movies simply about exploration. STTMP is the closest it gets...they are forced to explore V'ger because it's a threat..it's a mission.

STIV isn't about exploration at all. They are forced to go back to Earth to fight another threat. Whatever it's intentions they learn very little about it. The fun is going back in time and they are not there to explore culture or afield trip.

They are not "villains" as such, but people have a harder time latching on to a concept as adversary rather than a personality. To their credit, they were the 2 top ST box office winners from the first 7 movies.

There was more exploration in the first 10 minutes of STID than any of the other non-TMP movies combined. ST Beyond's plot started off as exploration..they were there for a 5 year mission into the unknown. Even Starbase Yorktown is brand new and designed to bring new members of the UFP together to explore culture.

Of the current thirteen STAR TREK films only two are about exploration, not about conflict with a villain, i.e., STAR TREK:THE MOTION PICTURE(1979) and THE VOYAGE HOME(1986), right?

TOS "The Changeling" plot idea was similar to TMP

• Nomad=V'Ger

TOS "Assignment:Earth" plot idea was similar to TVH

• "Assignment:Earth" Kirk & crew time travels to 1968

• TVH Kirk & crew time travels to 1986

If one wants to argue that all thirteen Star Trek films have a villain, then in TOS "The Changeling", TMP and TVH all had a villain of an alien probe.

• TOS "The Changeling" had Nomad.

• TMP had V'Ger.

• TVH had the alien whale probe.

Can both V'Ger and the whale probe be considered villains or just catalysts for the exploration in TMP and TVH?

 

[Tosk]

There was more exploration in the first 10 minutes of STID

How are we defining exploration here? Running from natives doesn't seem more like exploring than say, Saavik and David charting a brand new planet.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

They were there to observe the culture before they realized about the volcano.

 

[Shalashaska]

There was more exploration in the first 10 minutes of STID than any of the other non-TMP movies combined.

The opening to STID feels like something I'd see in a show that's been on-the-air way too long. Feels like the characters are just going through the motions.

 

[RAMA]

How are we defining exploration here? Running from natives doesn't seem more like exploring than say, Saavik and David charting a brand new planet.

Not sure how you missed out on it but..

While not on a 5-year mission, they were clearly in deep space on a mission and clearly doing research, we got to see the tail end of it. We can infer it took some time since it involved researching a primitive culture without revealing themselves, and hence when they discovered the geological activity would threaten them with a supervolcano, they devised a plan involving Spock's makeshift device and the time it took to come into the atmosphere at night time in order to hide themselves from the natives. It also took the decision of Kirk who couldn't help himself from breaking the PD and if Spock went along with it, then there had to be a discussion about it.

Scotty's line about being "explorers" is directly derived from the mission(s) they'd been on including to Nibiru.

Now WHEN exactly was the last time we explored a totally new culture...on an alien planet, that was alien looking that was about events on that planet in a Star Trek movie?

Not on Genesis. It was a moon with life, technologically created by the UFP and tunneled out by the SCoE! The events in STIII were to study something they themselves made. There was no alien life, just overgrown microbes.

Insurrection had an alien culture...that was totally human, not even any bumps. Ostensibly they were being studied, but the S'ona knew everything about them. They weren't even originally primitive, they traveled there in space and knew about holograms. They wound up being the same race as the S'ona. There was really very little alien about the scenario. It all felt really familiar and comfortable.

The opening to STID feels like something I'd see in a show that's been on-the-air way too long. Feels like the characters are just going through the motions.

I can say I felt 0% of this from the sequence. It was a nice homage to ToS and it's red plant life in certain episodes. It felt fresh, new and exciting precisely because it's EXACTLY the sort of thing that was NOT in the other ST movies before the JJverse.

RAMA

 

[Tosk]

While not on a 5-year mission, they were clearly in deep space on a mission and clearly doing research, we got to see the tail end of it. We can infer it took some time since it involved researching a primitive culture without revealing themselves, and hence when they discovered the geological activity would threaten them with a supervolcano

So really the quote should have been, "There was more exploration in the off-screen set up of STID than any of the other non-TMP movies combined."

 

[In_Correct]

V-

Of the current thirteen STAR TREK films only two are about exploration, not about conflict with a villain, i.e., STAR TREK:THE MOTION PICTURE(1979) and THE VOYAGE HOME(1986), right?

TOS "The Changeling" plot idea was similar to TMP

• Nomad=V'Ger

TOS "Assignment:Earth" plot idea was similar to TVH

• "Assignment:Earth" Kirk & crew time travels to 1968

• TVH Kirk & crew time travels to 1986

If one wants to argue that all thirteen Star Trek films have a villain, then in TOS "The Changeling", TMP and TVH all had a villain of an alien probe.

• TOS "The Changeling" had Nomad.

• TMP had V'Ger.

• TVH had the alien whale probe.

Can both V'Ger and the whale probe be considered villains or just catalysts for the exploration in TMP and TVH?

V'Ger is the offspring of The Borg. Not necessarily malevolent, but very threatening and dangerous because of its size and capabilities.

The Whale Probe is an aggressive search and rescue device (possibly ship) built by a highly evolved species of Inter-Planetary Whales that we unfortunately do not see. It is very possible that the reason for it being shaped like a giant cylinder is because it is a giant tank of salt water and the whales themselves are traveling inside the ship, but it is mistaken to be a probe by The Federation.

Let me add a possible fourth creature:

The Crystalline Entity consumes everything by apparently turning matter into energy although Geordi in Datalore said it could be any number of things. It is possible that it is eliminating what it views to be inferior life forms because it is unable to find what it is looking for.

 

[Kemaiku]

There is nothing connecting V'ger and the Borg in canon.

In fact, it can't be. The length of it's voyage implies a great deal of time, and the fact it has seen many galaxies on it's linear trajectory to the Milky Way puts the Machine World dozens of galaxies away, centuries at least in the past.

She's a lot more like Destiny in SG:U in that respect.

The fact it's been travelling so long, that's warp field has collected a layer of material so emmense like a dust cloud building over it, would take many many years of constant warp travel through interstellar mediums to gather it all.

 

[RAMA]

V'Ger has nothing whatsoever to do with the Borg or vice versa.

V-


V'Ger is the offspring of The Borg. Not necessarily malevolent, but very threatening and dangerous because of its size and capabilities.

The Whale Probe is an aggressive search and rescue device (possibly ship) built by a highly evolved species of Inter-Planetary Whales that we unfortunately do not see. It is very possible that the reason for it being shaped like a giant cylinder is because it is a giant tank of salt water and the whales themselves are traveling inside the ship, but it is mistaken to be a probe by The Federation.

Let me add a possible fourth creature:

The Crystalline Entity consumes everything by apparently turning matter into energy although Geordi in Datalore said it could be any number of things. It is possible that it is eliminating what it views to be inferior life forms because it is unable to find what it is looking for.

 

[In_Correct]

 

[In_Correct]

Perhaps I should have said "Borg-Like"?

 

[Kemaiku]

The Borg are cybernetic organisms, they see achieving perfection as finding a way to bridge the two, partly because it seems to be easier to assimilate organic life and augment it over time.

The Machine race are entirely artificial, they despise organic life and see even the most advanced humanoid races as merely infestations to be irradicated, not embraced or acknowledged as important.

The two have very opposing views and methods.

 

[publiusr]

The fact it's been travelling so long, that's warp field has collected a layer of material so emmense like a dust cloud building over it, would take many many years of constant warp travel through interstellar mediums to gather it all.

I like that idea, the idea of dust tracing field lines and eddy currents--explaining a lot of what we see

 

[Greg Cox]

How are TMP and TVH about "exploration"? They're both about emergency missions to save Earth from imminent destruction, not exploration for exploration's sake.

Just because a TREK movie doesn't have an overt bad guy, doesn't mean they're about exploration. And in the case of those particular movies, they're very much about stopping a threat, not seeking out new life and civilizations.

Which is not unlike the TV series, which often involved rescue missions, diplomatic missions, medical emergencies, spy missions, courier missions, etc. As opposed to episodes where they're just checking out some new planet or phenomenon purely for exploratory reasons.