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When Trek insults our intelligence

What about those of us who also had a problem with how ENT looked? (At least, the ship exteriors. Interiors seemed more plausible.)

As for the Kelvin, it was literally the only ship in the Abrams films that looked like it fit Starfleet's design lineage. Although even then, the notion that a ship that early had 800 crew and 20 shuttlecraft was laughable. Abrams really had a thing about size...


Not a new conversation around here (of course), but FWIW, as I've posted before, the point to me always seemed to be that the Federation had a post-scarcity economy. That says nothing about conditions on colony worlds or other interstellar territory outside the Federation's domain, which could and did have different economies of their own, and with which the UFP (and its personnel) would at least occasionally need to trade. It also doesn't say that every single problem had been solved, or that people are without any conflicts of interest... that kind of utopia would just be boring.

Granted, sometimes characters (that is to say, writers) didn't do such a great job of remembering this, or (at the very least) used "outdated" figures of speech about economic transactions ("earn your pay," "buy you dinner"). I'd agree that this muddied the waters on occasion, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "contradictions and hypocrisy... insulting to the audience." Obviously none of them were economic or political theorists, and at any rate the shows were never really about exploring the details of life inside the Federation.


I fundamentally disagree with this. You're claiming that all opinions about a given story (including about its logical coherence) are 100% irreducibly subjective, and claims to the contrary are nothing but ex post rationalization. I think that amounts to an insult to the intelligence (and integrity) of the viewers, and of course if it were so it would render a thread like this completely moot. (And lots of others as well... if matters of taste are purely "inherent" and lack any other causation or consistency, then lots of aesthetic and critical discourse falls to pieces.)

I disliked ST09, from the very start, because it slapped me in the face with one egregiously stupid scene after another. It's not as if I developed some inchoate abstract dislike of it, and then invented those objections after the fact. These weren't even classic "fridge logic" problems; they literally jumped out at me as I was sitting in the theater watching the movie. STID was almost as bad.

FWIW, those are hardly the only Trek films or episodes that do so. I think the same kind of flaws run through STV:TFF, and even to an extent STIV:TVH (despite its fan-favorite status), although not remotely to the same extent as in the Abrams films. And of course VOY was infamous for it, with "Thresholds" being the example that really dials it up to 11.


Okay, this baffles me. When a story really "makes no sense," that severely interferes with my enjoyment. At best I might put it in the "guilty pleasure" category, if it has other outstanding qualities to help balance things out. (But the Abrams films don't qualify on that front, either.)


Umm, what Christians have you been hanging out with?... :wtf:

If the assessment of a story's effectiveness/quality is somehow objective and not subjective, than I suppose my argument about the overwhelming positive critical reception of the Kelvinverse movies (written by people whose job it is to assess the effectiveness of stories) will essentialy win the day then, correct?

No, of course not, because we'll then have a bunch of rationalizing and arguments about the merits of THAT.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I can't convince you of anything you don't want to hear. Because your reality is completely built by your thoughts, biases and opinions. Just like me and mine.

So, yes, unless there is a rare case where someone has an open mind and/or can simply admit that it's a matter of personal tastes...these threads are pretty much moot!

I love Star Trek V. LOVE IT. But I'm not going to try to convince anyone that it's a good story or that it's a well made movie, because all the measures in the industry would say otherwise, so I know it's a matter of taste. And I couldn't give less of a shit about what anyone else thinks, because none of that matters when I fire up the BR disk on my 109 inch projector screen in the mancave and immerse myself for 2 hours is an experience I personally enjoy!

All those same measures would indicate that the Kelvinverse films were good. Great critical response, good box office, good disk / media sales. So forgive me if I challenge your subjective opinion that the movies are stupid. It's 100% ok for you to feel that way, just like I can bathe in the glory that is my love of TFF, but it ain't "reality." It's nothing more than your own personal truth.
 
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But this was set up at the beginning with McCoy/Spock chastising Kirk about leaving Spock's body on Genesis:


And McCoy/Spock is trying to charter a ship to Genesis for this very purpose. Although not stated in the movie I figure that retrieval of Spock's body was necessary for some reason and a living Spock was an unexpected bonus.

Kirk's log at the end of TWOK:

"Captain's log, Stardate 8141.6. Starship Enterprise departing for Ceti Alpha Five to pick up the crew of the U.S.S. Reliant. All is well. And yet I can't help wondering about the friend I leave behind. 'There are always possibilities' Spock said. And if Genesis is indeed 'Life from death', I must return to this place again."

Why do you suppose that Kirk did what he did with Spock's body in the first place?....loaded it into a torpedo tube and shot it off toward Genesis, instead of keeping it on board and returning it to Vulcan?

He doesn't like to lose. What Carol showed him in the cave and what he witnessed with the formation of the planet got him to thinking about those 'possibilities'. He didn't know about the Vulcan katra, because they don't discuss it. Not being a Christian, he was not constrained by the notion that you need your body in order to be resurrected (their prohibition against cremation).

It was a last-ditch effort to try something. I doubt that he would have shared his motivations with the crew. Even if McCoy or Scotty had asked him about the torpedo idea, he could have offered a vague answer that it was a 'Vulcan thing' that Spock had requested. A katra newly transferred, especially to a non-Vulcan, might reasonably take a bit of time to 'manifest' its presence.

They couldn't hang around Genesis for Kirk to be able to wait and see what might happen. This was a personal thing for him, not part of the mission. They had a job to do in going to pick up Reliant's crew. The best that Kirk could do was plan to come back to Genesis at a later time. Before finding out about the katra, it was likely his plan to return alone....while Enterprise was being repaired (so he would have thought, not knowing at that point that the decision would be to decommission her rather than fix the battle damage) and everyone was given time to rest and recover from the ordeal with Khan.

Kirk spent years out on the far frontier. He saw a lot of very strange things....some of which demonstrated abilities far beyond human understanding.

The Genesis Project itself was brand new. It was terra incognita. Would every little nuance of its capabilities be absolutely known? No. Not to the project's engineers and certainly not to Kirk. And David Marcus had not mentioned the use of proto-matter to anyone, so that was another wild card in the situation.

But there's yet another thing that might have been running through Kirk's mind. This was not the usual way for a planet to be formed. What if higher beings had some sort of alert system to let them know when something like that happened? Would they come to investigate? What might they do? What might they be able to do? Not even from a religious standpoint, but simply from having abilities far in advance of what humans can do.

Spock was right. There are always possibilities. Because it's science fiction.

We don't know how many different ideas were running through Kirk's mind.

Kirk had no reason to go back to Genesis?

As McCoy would say, "BULL!"

Guys- you're all just proving my point (pleasantly...I'm not saying that insultingly).

We will make all kinds of gyrating excuses for something that's, on the page and on the screen, a CLEAR hole in logic and plot. Nowhere in the actual dialogue or hard plot of Star Trek III are there any explicit excuses as to why they need Spock's body. We fill in the massive gaps in logic and storytelling because we like the film, and that's fun! I'd argue that a HEALTHY behavior in fandom, as opposed to the toxic behaviors were more accustomed to. I do the same. I love TSFS. So this doesn't bother me at all...I buy all these explanations too! But my core intellect (no matter how small it may be) cannot deny that this is, without a shadow of a doubt, a massive flaw in the logic of the narrative.

The difference is that I don't care.

My point is that we have this capability for just about anything in the franchise. We just chose / discriminate when to use it based on our biases and tastes and our need to somehow be "right" in our beliefs.
 
My favorite sci-fi movie of all time is probably the original PLANET OF THE APES.

The entire plot falls apart the minute you wonder why Taylor never notices that the apes are speaking English.

Doesn't matter. Still a classic movie.

It's at a point like that where I feel it is a representation of, not literally the way it is.

Some people feel the need to make a movie with correct language for the content. Like Germans speaking German in....'U-571', I think it was?

I don't feel the need for that level of 'authenticity'. I am comfortable with a movie like 'Battle of the Bulge'. I know that the Nazis in Germany didn't speak English as their primary language. I set that aside and concentrate on the story.
 
Somewhere along the line, IIRC, someone put forth the idea that the Intrepid #1 was a special case....that Starfleet loaned the ship to the Vulcans, as a courtesy. Advantages to both sides. The Vulcans would have the opportunity to test and evaluate the technology, and Starfleet would have the opportunity to find out if there were any possible advantages to an all-Vulcan crew. In a scenario like that, the crew would not have had to go through Starfleet Academy. The Vulcans may have had a big part in designing the Constitution-class ships.
Seems a rather convoluted explanation rather than just assuming that it's a regular Starfleet ship with an all-Vulcan crew.
Oh? I've never seen that one?
I envy you.
My favorite sci-fi movie of all time is probably the original PLANET OF THE APES.

The entire plot falls apart the minute you wonder why Taylor never notices that the apes are speaking English.
Taylor said that there had to be something better than man. He never said that there had to be a language better than English. ;)
 
While Sarek doesn’t explain why Kirk should have brought Spock’s corpse to Vulcan, it’s clear that the ambassador thought it was of the first moment:
SAREK: Then you must know that you should have come with him to Vulcan.
KIRK: But ...why?
SAREK: Because he asked you to! He entrusted you with his very essence, with everything that was not of the body. He asked you to bring him to us ...and bring that which he gave you, his katra, his living spirit.
I mean, that’s if words spoken on screen mean anything anymore.
 
While Sarek doesn’t explain why Kirk should have brought Spock’s corpse to Vulcan, it’s clear that the ambassador thought it was of the first moment:

I mean, that’s if words spoken on screen mean anything anymore.

My interpretation of the complaint was that with the end of TWOK there was no reason for Kirk to go back to Genesis at all from that point. So I was addressing what I felt might hypothetically have been going through Kirk's mind long before he met with Sarek.

If a plot hole shows up in a movie, and someone can come up with a scenario that explains it, then....is it really a plot hole? Are we going to beat someone over the head for not fleshing out everything to the level of detail that we want? Isn't that where interactive viewing comes in?
 
My interpretation of the complaint was that with the end of TWOK there was no reason for Kirk to go back to Genesis at all from that point. So I was addressing what I felt might hypothetically have been going through Kirk's mind long before he met with Sarek.

If a plot hole shows up in a movie, and someone can come up with a scenario that explains it, then....is it really a plot hole? Are we going to beat someone over the head for not fleshing out everything to the level of detail that we want? Isn't that where interactive viewing comes in?

He wasn't going back to Genesis until speaking to Sarek was he?
 
He wasn't going back to Genesis until speaking to Sarek was he?
Kirk wanted to go back for vague sentimental reasons, saying in the opening log entry that he felt he’d left his “noblest part” on Genesis. At Spacedock, Kirk asked Morrow about his request, but was flatly overruled because of political considerations.

There was some grousing about Starfleet being “up to its brass in galactic conference,” but the crew wasn’t yet conspiring to steal a starship.

Enter Sarek.
 
Kirk wanted to go back for vague sentimental reasons, saying in the opening log entry that he felt he’d left his “noblest part” on Genesis. At Spacedock, Kirk asked Morrow about his request, but was flatly overruled because of political considerations.

There was some grousing about Starfleet being “up to its brass in galactic conference,” but the crew wasn’t yet conspiring to steal a starship.

Enter Sarek.
7A22F171-9D64-41E4-A91D-663FBB90F8EA.gif
 
Were any other Vulcans in Starfleet prior to Spock's entering Starfleet Academy?
It's always been believed by fandom that Spock was the first. The fact that there's an entire crew (including command staff) of Vulcans on the Intrepid seems to make this difficult but it's possible that these Vulcans were trained as part of the Vulcan fleet and transferred (at their existing ranks) across to Starfleet. Spock was the first because he was the first to enter Starfleet by going through the Academy.

And if you accept that T'Pol joined Starfleet in Enterprise then Spock can still be unique as the first Vulcan to go through Starfleet Academy even if he wasn't technically the first Vulcan in Starfleet.
 
My favorite sci-fi movie of all time is probably the original PLANET OF THE APES.

The entire plot falls apart the minute you wonder why Taylor never notices that the apes are speaking English.

Doesn't matter. Still a classic movie.

Yeah, I loved those movies too. I remember when I was a teenager one of the local TV stations was playing a Planet of the Apes marathon and played the first 3 movies. I had never seen it, or even actually heard about it and decided to watch it. I thought it would be some goofy B style sci fi movie (in fact I remember reading later the movie makers were really concerned people would take it as a joke--they really wanted this to be a serious sci-fi film and not a joke). I was blown away. I still remember my reaction at the end. I was just like Taylor. OMG.

I learned a sometime after watching those 3 that there were actually 2 more movies, movies that depicted the rise of the apes and I was dying to see those. But at the time, for some reason nobody was showing them on TV (at least not local to me). It was the late 80's so there was no internet, my local video stores didn't have them for rent and for whatever reason to buy them was prohibitively expensive (I looked into that but the first generation VHS for it was almost $70). Finally a local TV station played Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and I was so excited. It was heavily edited (I recorded it and it was literally about 60 minutes in length). Finally, they released a 2nd generation VHS that was under $20 and that's when I finally saw Battle for the Planet of the Apes (an ok film, but not nearly as good as the first 4).

I remember they explained the English thing in Escape from the Planet of the Apes when Cornelius says something like "Entlish, what is English, I speak the language taught to me by my father...."
 
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