What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[Ray Hardgrit]

If a story is set in the 1960s I want the vehicles to have designs I recognise from the era and the costumes to look the part or else I don't feel like I'm actually there. It anchors me in that place and time.

If a story is set in the 2260s I have the same expectations.

 

[BillJ]

I mean, Denmark is still Denmark.

Enterprise is still an Enterprise.

Phasers still phase.

Transporters still transport.

Warp drive still warping.

There comes a time when a new product is simply a new product. No one from TOS is involved, most are long gone from this world. Doesn’t make newer products good or bad, just their own thing.

 

[fireproof78]

There comes a time when a new product is simply a new product. No one from TOS is involved, most are long gone from this world. Doesn’t make newer products good or bad, just their own thing.

Sure and I'm not disagreeing. I just view them as events that occur together, represented differently.

Its fine as its own thing; it's fine taken together.

 

[Nyotarules]

I give up. Brilliant scene, and I obviously shouldn't have questioned it.

Its the controversial opinions thread, you do not have to defend your opinion here or reverse it

 

[fireproof78]

Its the controversial opinions thread, you do not have to defend your opinion here or reverse it

Noted.

 

[XCV330]

Sonak was TMP's redshirt.

The Enterprise is the STAR of the series.

Big difference.

they spent money on that model and on that soundtrack and they were going to milk for everything they had.
It's almost a defiant gesture against the visualization of Star Wars "What a piece of Junk!" where everything is old and cobbled together, or getting the hell blasted out of it. It helps that TMP Enterprise is gorgeous. It looks fast just sitting in a dry dock. It's telling old fans, here's your ship, all shiny and new and introducing the new fans.

Except showing off a relatively motionless ship is a weird beginning to this whole thing. At least TMP began with Klingons doing something.

Can you imagine a 10 minute multi camera view of the Falcon sitting in Mos Eisley? They went overboard on it in TMP, and it seems to take as much time to show off this ship as Kubrick did showing off the Space Station / Pan-Am docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Meyer managed to do the same thing Wise did, introducing the ship, in seconds rather than minutes, and it works.

I'm not a hater of TMP. I got to see it in the theaters as a young kid. It was formative. I've probably watched it almost as much as TWOK or TVH, maybe more cause I actually used to use it to go to sleep when i was having insomnia. It's a weird movie. Most of makes no sense, but ST should be weird and make no scientific sense. Its just not an exciting film.

 

[Shawnster]

There comes a time when a new product is simply a new product. No one from TOS is involved, most are long gone from this world. Doesn’t make newer products good or bad, just their own thing.

New. Their own thing. No one from TOS involved.

Cool. Now just set it somewhere other than the TOS era, without using any TOS characters, nor connect to any TOS episode.

Because retreading what has come before really is the opposite of new and own thing.

 

[BillJ]

Meyer managed to do the same thing Wise did, introducing the ship, in seconds rather than minutes, and it works.

I’d say TMP and TWOK are different beasts. TMP doesn’t have two drawn out starship battles to show off the Enterprise.

 

[BillJ]

New. Their own thing. No one from TOS involved.

Cool. Now just set it somewhere other than the TOS era, without using any TOS characters, nor connect to any TOS episode.

Because retreading what has come before really is the opposite of new and own thing.

You’re preaching to the choir.

 

[XCV330]

I’d say TMP and TWOK are different beasts. TMP doesn’t have two drawn out starship battles to show off the Enterprise.

fair enough. TMP did do a great job of showing the scale of the ship, something that hadn't really been possible before, with shuttle bay scene, the rec hall meeting, the fly around, the space suit workers outside. This ship is big.

It's almost like Kershner said, "I want some of that" and made a point of establishing just how huge the Executor was in Empire Strikes Back.

 

[Tallguy]

and it seems to take as much time to show off this ship as Kubrick did showing off the Space Station / Pan-Am docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I wonder if there is some kind of connection between the two?

Meyer managed to do the same thing Wise did, introducing the ship, in seconds rather than minutes, and it works.

Using the same footage. And it works because we already know the ship.

 

[CoveTom]

fair enough. TMP did do a great job of showing the scale of the ship, something that hadn't really been possible before, with shuttle bay scene, the rec hall meeting, the fly around, the space suit workers outside. This ship is big.

It's almost like Kershner said, "I want some of that" and made a point of establishing just how huge the Executor was in Empire Strikes Back.

The interior sets in TMP were absolutely stunning, perhaps the best Trek has ever done of showing a real living starship with its crew. From the cargo bay to the rec deck to engineering, they really pulled out all the stops. It gives the film a true sense of scale that we've really never seen anywhere else in Trek.

 

[137th Gebirg]

On the whole, I would agree, however I found many of the ship sets to be somewhat antiseptic and incomplete. When Meyer took over for TWOK, he took all of those sets and made them more used and lived-in. It just felt warmer than the initial TMP set dressings.

 

[Farscape One]

I can actually understand in TMP how the interior does not looked lived in. It was a brand new refit, so it's not going to look lived in yet.

 

[137th Gebirg]

True. By the time TWOK rolled around, Enterprise had been in service for a while (much longer than the 20 years that Morrow said upon their return, to my recollection), and didn’t have that fresh coat of paint like it did right out of spacedock. I was kind of disappointed that such an historical vessel was relegated for cadet training duty, but it made sense in the context of the story, though.

 

[cooleddie74]

Hell, there are 12 years just between TMP and TWOK. By 2285 the fresh coat of paint that Will Decker oversaw was long dull and flaking.

 

[korblborp]

(singing)
The internet is great...

For starship porn.

remembers i drew the Enterprise as a lady in a fashion that prohibits me from posting on this site...

 

[Maurice]

Even Wise didn't want the drydock scene to go on that long.

Here's a few salient quotes from an interview titled "A Very Sloppy Way to Make a Movie" (Best of Starlog Vol. VI), which is described in the introduction as having been conducted "In 1980, a few months after the release of the 1979 film."

STARLOG: The film's final cut is two hours and ten minutes...don't you think that the present cut is also a bit long at times?
WISE: Sure do!
STARLOG: There's the scene when Kirk is being taken by Scotty around the Enterprise in that spacepod shuttle.
WISE: That is one minute and 30 seconds [too] long, and the flight inside V'ger is about two minutes too long.*

WISE: ...One of the reservations I have about the film is that I didn't have time to fine tune it. I think we could have trimmed it by six-and-a-half minutes--at least! I was planning to do more cuts on the version which would be released overseas, but I found out later that Paramount had already made 150 prints, so it would have been too costly to go back an re-edit it...
Emphasis (underlines) mine.

* One can assume this means the V'ger cloud and flyover

So, right here, right after the film hit the theaters, Wise talks about two sequences he thought should be cut down, and how much he thought at minimum the film should have been trimmed back by.

 

[cooleddie74]

I think he sort of did trim six or seven minutes, didn't he, for the 2001 Director's Edition DVD? The Special Longer Edition on VHS ran 143 minutes and the 2001 DVD was 136?

 

[Maurice]

I think he sort of did trim six or seven minutes, didn't he, for the 2001 Director's Edition DVD? The Special Longer Edition on VHS ran 143 minutes and the 2001 DVD was 136?

The DE listed runtime is longer than the theatrical cut by 4 minutes, though some of that is the longer overture and the extended end credits. I'm unclear on how much shorter the body of the film is or isn't.

The Special Longer Version is an abomination of an edit and I choose to ignore it.