In the early Blish novelizations there are forewords by a retired Captain Kirk. (Right? I don't have copies on hand.)
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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I don't recall that. Maybe you're thinking of Alan Dean Foster's TAS novelizations, which open with the notation:
Logs of the Starship Enterprise
Stardates [xxxx-xxxx] Inclusive
James T. Kirk, Capt., USSC, FS, ret.
Commanding
transcribed by
Alan Dean Foster
At the Galactic Historical Archives
on S. Monicus I
Stardate [xxxx.x]
For the curator: JLR
Stardates [xxxx-xxxx] Inclusive
James T. Kirk, Capt., USSC, FS, ret.
Commanding
transcribed by
Alan Dean Foster
At the Galactic Historical Archives
on S. Monicus I
Stardate [xxxx.x]
For the curator: JLR
("S. Monicus I" was a reference to Santa Monica, CA, where Foster was living at the time. JLR is Foster's editor on the series, Judy Lynn del Rey.)
I'm thinking specifically of Charlie X where a retired James Kirk says that the biggest trouble he ever had was a teenage boy named Charlie Evans.
Kind of like how the initial batch of Captain's Logs were written as if Kirk wrote them down after the fact with full knowledge of what had happened in hindsight.
Kind of like how the initial batch of Captain's Logs were written as if Kirk wrote them down after the fact with full knowledge of what had happened in hindsight.
Checking the book, I see that wasn't a foreword, just the opening paragraph of that particular story -- although that was the first story in the collection.
Makes me think of the "chapter arguments" in my own novel (which range from a few words to provide context, to naked info-dumps, to Biblical quotes).
The novelization of TMP does have a few pages of "Admiral Kirk's Preface" (I would argue that it should have been billed as a foreword).
The novelization of TMP does have a few pages of "Admiral Kirk's Preface" (I would argue that it should have been billed as a foreword).
I can't possibly agree with this more.
I know Terry Matalas gets a lot of grief around here, but after Picard season 3 aired and we find that all of the main TNG characters survive, he was asked about that and he said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know why people want to kill off their heroes." I agree with that. Of course, sometimes there is good reason for a character to die. However, this is a fictional world and, in most cases, I think it's better to not have a specific ending for a character. Having the last thing we see of the TNG characters be them sitting around a poker table is fine with me.
The ending of TUC was the absolute perfect sendoff to the TOS cast, and I think it should have been left as such. And if Generations had been strictly a TNG movie, instead of an attempt at a crossover, it would have been a better movie as a result anyway.
Perhaps, but the logic of the crossover approach was understandable. Not everyone watches everything; there were plenty of moviegoers who were fans of the TOS movies but had never watched TNG. So it made sense to begin the TNG movie series with a passing of the torch from the original crew, though there probably could have been better ways to achieve that.
In some ways, though, GEN fell short as an introduction of TNG to a new audience, because it was made right after the series ended by the same creative people, so it fell into a lot of the same old habits. For instance, we didn't get a clear establishing shot of the Enterprise-D until relatively late in the film -- we opened in the holodeck, then stayed in interior scenes, and the first exterior shot was only a partial rear view, while the second was a distant action shot. So they didn't really establish a clear enough sense of place for novice viewers.
I liked TNG's "The Outrageous Okona" (even though it wasn't really all that great) and I wouldn't have been opposed to Okona getting his own spinoff series at some point.
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I enjoyed his appearances on Prodigy. Not a lovable scoundrel. Just a scoundrel.
This is just me - but I've always been a fan of "heroic deaths" being also somewhat mundane, messy affairs. Like you only know it was a heroic death after the fact.
I hate these super dramatic, obvious deaths like in "No time to die", where everyone says goodbye, everything is super dramatic, and giant explosions.
Best example for me is Spock in TWOK. It only becomes a heroic death scene after we realize about the radiation. The scene isn't undramatic because it's behind plexi-glass in a 2x2m big cabin. It's the intention behind it.
As such, I always thought Kirk had a way better, more dramatic & realistic death scenes than many other heroes in media. But I realised I'm in the minority with this opinion.
Shame about the rest of the movie though.
It really felt like tv writers not fully grasping the "movie" concept.
The problem with Kirk's death is not that it isn't realistic or even that it isn't important in universe. It's not what Kirk knew he was risking his life for, but he DOES save the crew of the Enterprise.
It's that the audience (apparently) has a hard time caring.
Kirk has two deaths in GEN and his first one is PERFECT. Which, I guess is weird, because on the Enterprise-B he didn't realize he was risking his life. And on Plenit-O-Wek he did. But the first one resonates, and the second one does not.
Of course for the first one you have the reactions of people who knew him and then the movie moves on to a place where nobody should be bothered by Kirk's loss. The second one he's alone with Picard and then you're dealing with the loss of the Enterprise AND the end of the movie. So while there might be people who will recognize that a Hero from the Past has helped save them all at the ultimate cost, they really have other things to worry about.
I actually really like the end of Generations. I like the tone, I like the music. Unlike the Enterprise in TSFS we get a little more of a goodbye to our Good Ship Right and True. Ending with the ships leaving the planet is a little clunky but I gather they didn't want to end on the ground.
Similarly, I'd have been really interested in the proposed Lwaxana sitcom. It'd have probably caught hell from viewers at the time but I think retrospectively it'd get a lot of praise, especially if it continued being the usual high-concept stories, only with Lwaxana inexplicably caught in them each week.
I was very bothered by how stupidly they had Kirk die in that film.
As you are not on a starship in the late 24th century I would say that the MOVIE is in a place where it would be weird to see a character upset by the tragic loss of Captain James Kirk (ret) on the inaugural voyage of the Enterprise-B 78 years earlier.
Oh no. Lwaxana is great. In very, very, very small doses.
(Also, all of Kirk's 'sexism' really dwarves in comparison to her advances to, well, everyone. That wouldn't fly anymore even in the 80s).
Has modern TV become too prude these days? I get this impression when I watched older TV shows. It feels like we're almost going backwards. Is modern Trek too sanitized?
You can find posts claiming the opposite all over this place
Given how some fans melt down like Chernobyl over cuss words being used in streaming Trek I'd say Trek is less inhibited than it used to be, but that's just me.
I feel like media is getting squeezed from both sides. You have your cancel culture, and it's not progressive enough folks. This is like McCarthyism from the left. Then, you have your radical left folks that say it's not conservative enough.This is like let's bring back McCarthyism. If you're creating media, you're bound to make someone mad these days. Maybe this is why I've been reading a lot of older stuff these days. I get back to a more sane period of time.You can find posts claiming the opposite all over this place
Given how some fans melt down like Chernobyl over cuss words being used in streaming Trek I'd say Trek is less inhibited than it used to be, but that's just me.
I expect a lot of TOS fans in the '70s-'80s had a similar reaction to all the hells and damns and double-dumbasses in the movies.
