What I think Star Tek XI will be about

[Sharr Khan]

xortex said:
Well, it's Abtams trying to reinvent Star Trek, not me. I just hope it's not another episode of Andromeda. Don't you ?

I doubt it will be that. One needs only to read an interview with Leonard Nimoy to be assured of that.

Of course I want it to be good, in point of fact I expect for it be good - but that doesn't mean I want Star Trek to transform itself into "2001 A Space Odyssey" been there, done that and it didn't come out so well...

People should be leaving the theater happy they've re-met Kirk and Spock not wondering what the message of the film was, or going "Wait what was Spock philosophizing about?" other then his friendship of James T. Kirk of course!

Sharr

 

[xortex]

Things and ideas should come through actions and events. You're right, TNG was all talk and moralizing. I never said it shouldn't be personal in any way but I still liked 2001 and Star Trek I the best. Oh, I also like Star Wars, if that is anything to you.

 

[Sharr Khan]

xortex said:
Things and ideas should come through actions and events. You're right, TNG was all talk and moralizing. I never said it shouldn't be personal in any way but I still liked 2001 and Star Trek I the best. Oh, I also like Star Wars, if that is anything to you.

Interestingly enough I didn't start to like Star Wars until I got older - used to be a die-hard Trek only fan for all the expected fanboi reasons.

This was always my point:"Things and ideas should come through actions and events." organic and not foisted onto the story. Of course these ideas should be delivered from the experiences of the characters.

There's also no need for it engage in complicated abstractions just to show that "Even Star Trek can be 'highbrow'".

Even I have been known to take in a watching of TMP, but Cinematically it falls flat for me and feels totally unlike the Star Trek that made me into a Star Trek fan. TNG only continued this trend.

Sharr

 

[xortex]

I like it when complex things and ideas are revealed in simple ways and don't like to neccessarily understand everything at the end of an episode or even during an episode.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Cary L. Brown had a post a while ago in another thread that helped explain why the characters are so important:

by Cary L. Brown
ID, Ego, and SuperEgo.

Or, in probably more "easily recognizable" terms... the heart, the mind, and the will.

McCoy was always the heart. Spock was always the mind. And Kirk was always the will. And the three of them, together, were stronger than the sum of their parts.

I don't think this was Roddenberry's original intention... at least, not entirely. But it ended up working out that way, and that's a large part of why classic Trek worked so well. Basically, you had three character who, together, could voice all the internal struggles we all go through. We all have those three sides, and they're often in conflict... but nobody hears what's going on inside of our heads (unless we're the sorts who walk down the sidewalk of San Francisco talking to ourselves!)

The three characters added together equal the human psyche. If we were to have only one protagonist in this film, and we wanted to know how he was dealing with the situation at hand, we would need comic-book thought bubbles or the old cliched "devil and angel on his shoulder". This would be quite silly, so instead we are given the human psyche as three characters -- each free to voice their opinions to the other two.

Many of the best Star Treks used this simplistic -- but clear and easy to understand -- illustration of how a human
psyche will react to a situation.

The "big ideas" and the characters are very important to the story, because without the "ideas" there would be nothing for the three characters (different parts of our psyche) over which to have a conflict, and without that conflict among those characters, the story would be very boring indeed.

When I say "conflict", I'm not saying I want to see a big fight among the three main characters. But in every good Star Trek, there was always a slight -- but respectful -- difference of opinion among those three...just like what happens inside your head when you are presented with a situation that requires a resolution.

That "situation that requires resolution" does not need to be "Plucked from Today's Headlines". It could be one of the classic plotlines that spring from human nature -- Greed, Ambition, Love, Revenge, Survival. The types of stories that Shakespeare wrote, or the ancient Greek playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Their stories still ring true today, even though their basic plotlines were about human nature.

I don't mind social commentary, but this should be about how we as Humans "deal with" social issues -- this should not be about the social issues themselves.

 

[Franklin]

Topical shows and movies have a short shelf-life, no matter how good they were at the time.

In the best tradition of Trek, Abrams's story may have a "grand idea" and speak vaguely to contemporary issues, but I doubt his intent is to use the story to deliver a specific message or address a very specific contemporary concern. That would be decidedly not keeping with Trek storytelling, IMO.

 

[xortex]

Andromeda, here we come, and I don't want to hear any complaining.

 

[Sharr Khan]

xortex said:
Andromeda, here we come, and I don't want to hear any complaining.

And you won't because it will be a hit. This movie isn't being made with the a philosophical intent as its prime motivation. There may or may not be an underlaying philosophical point but I doubt its going to go further then the friendship between Kirk and Spock. Frankly at this time, that's all we need.

Andromeda by the way was actually better then most modern Trek when putting out "ideas", it actually dealt with technology in a much better fashion. But Andromeda developed one of Star Trek's problems, it let its lead star begin to have say in the show. Robert Wolfe's Andromeda was a deep philosophical show Kevin Sorbo's less so.

Sharr

 

[Peter the Younger]

Good fiction of any sort begins with well-written characters. You can have the characters driving the plot form the get-go, or the plot crashing down on the characters and forcing them to react, but either way they have to be your focus.

Luckily, Abrams seems to know this (if Lost is any indicator.)

 

[xortex]

They can still be the focus in a plot driven story.

 

[Balthier the Great]

I think you can honestly do both. I'd point to Dr. Who as a good modern example of a good adventure with a subtext to the story. It's will make you think if you want it to, but if all you want is the adventure, there's enough adventure there to make the "message" (which is there in every Dr. Who I've seen thus far) not all that important unless you want it to be.

I think that would be the best approach. Wrap the "message" tightly in a solid action-adventure plotline, and let the audience decide for themselves which part is more important to them.

And I won't complain about andromeda. I like andromeda. Although Tyr seems a bit like worf without the ridges.

 

[Sharr Khan]

BalthierTheGreat said:
I think you can honestly do both. I'd point to Dr. Who as a good modern example of a good adventure with a subtext to the story. It's will make you think if you want it to, but if all you want is the adventure, there's enough adventure there to make the "message" (which is there in every Dr. Who I've seen thus far) not all that important unless you want it to be.

I think that would be the best approach. Wrap the "message" tightly in a solid action-adventure plotline, and let the audience decide for themselves which part is more important to them.

And I won't complain about andromeda. I like andromeda. Although Tyr seems a bit like worf without the ridges.

That works.
Both the Rhadas were cooler then Tyr any day!

Sharr

 

[LegionMk59]

Hi Everyone I'm new here so if this has already been brought up forgive my ignorance
I think it will be Kirk in his first command of the Enterprise.....
I think the new film could sort of echo an earlier draft for a reinvention that was written by J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel......Wouldn't it be great if Kirk, Spock and Bones were actually hiding something from the rest of the crew?
"We know Kirk was the youngest starship captain in the Federation... but what led to this? We know that the Enterprise was sent out to explore where no human had gone before... but if you stop and think about it for a moment, isn't that an odd assignment... to take one of the finest ships in the fleet, give it to the youngest captain in the Federation, and tell them to just go drive around and see what they can find?
It's peculiar... until you allow for the possibility that they were looking for something specific... something they had to keep secret even from the rest of the crew."

I also think this 'something' could tie in great for the future Spock and Kirk where perhaps this thing has somehow caught up with them now as old men and they are recalling how it all began.....

 

[xortex]

Ulterior motives aside, it seems they were looking for more allies to fight their new found enemies.