Which movie is most like a TOS episode?
- Thread starter RAO
- Start date
TFF really is underrated. Sybok is one of my favorite Trek villains of all time, probably second only to Khan, because he was ambiguous and fundamentally different than any other villain or even most villains of Sci-Fi. He was actually likeable. And Laurence Luckinbill is one hell of an actor.
I like TOS best when it offered strong morality tales. Yes, it often went over the top, but so many of the films never even bothered to try. (Anyone care to suss out a moral for NEM?) And so TVH and TUC, to me, are most like TOS.
TMP's moral was invented on the soundstage, tacked on to finish the script. WoK makes a good try at creating a message, though. I fear it was lost on me when I first saw it, in high school; in many ways, it's a film for those in mid-life and older.
TMP's moral was invented on the soundstage, tacked on to finish the script. WoK makes a good try at creating a message, though. I fear it was lost on me when I first saw it, in high school; in many ways, it's a film for those in mid-life and older.
Huh? Nemesis is probably the most blatant one out of all the films; What makes you who you are, nature or nurture? And then it tries to answer that question with "neither", that's it's our choices that define us.
Whether you like the film or not, it definitely had a moral.
STTMP: Not much like TOS. Different look, a more mature outlook to AI, but also a less warm feel.
STII: Closer to the feel of TOS: Still, a "villain" centered story, there weren't too many villains in TOS..and in this case Khan was underwritten in the movie, but redeemed by a great performance. Space Seed was better written for Khan. It was more military and had more battles.
STIII: Nothing but "family", the crew is even more close at this point. The Klingons dont feel much like the 60s Klingons, but there is something of a tv episode intimacy in this movie.
STIV: A lack of a central villain, a slingshot around the sun, lots of humor like several popular episodes, and a message. This feels a lot like a big budget TOS episode!
STV: SHatner kept this one from feeling like a TOS episode. Illogical characters, humor at the characters expense, bad writing, poor planning...about the only thing that feels like TOS is the FX.
STVI: Meyer made this feel like his own, there are things Roddenberry never would have put in this movie.
RAMA
STII: Closer to the feel of TOS: Still, a "villain" centered story, there weren't too many villains in TOS..and in this case Khan was underwritten in the movie, but redeemed by a great performance. Space Seed was better written for Khan. It was more military and had more battles.
STIII: Nothing but "family", the crew is even more close at this point. The Klingons dont feel much like the 60s Klingons, but there is something of a tv episode intimacy in this movie.
STIV: A lack of a central villain, a slingshot around the sun, lots of humor like several popular episodes, and a message. This feels a lot like a big budget TOS episode!
STV: SHatner kept this one from feeling like a TOS episode. Illogical characters, humor at the characters expense, bad writing, poor planning...about the only thing that feels like TOS is the FX.
STVI: Meyer made this feel like his own, there are things Roddenberry never would have put in this movie.
RAMA
But there is a reason why a movie is a movie and a TV show is a TV show. A Star Trek movie shouldn't feel like an episode of TOS or TNG, it should feel like a movie, it should have a more grandiose plot then a TV episode. That was one of the criticisms of Star Trek Insurrection it felt like a an episode rather then a movie.
If TMP and TFF are similar to TOS episodes, they are similar to the bad episodes, not the good ones.
You know what? I'll go with this.
I never thought about it that way. Traditionally, I'd always gone with TFF by default because it has the status quo of the series and nothing changes. TVH does work better even if Spock's not himself.
Easily Star Trek V, which is probably why I find it more enjoyable than any of the movies after VI, as much fun as I can find in First Contact and Insurrection if I squint really hard.
The Motion Picture is the best Star Trek movie ever made but doesn't really have much of a TOS-specific feel to it. Sure, TOS had it's slower and more cerebral episodes but the goofy exploration ones were in more abundance.
Not to diss TOS, one of my fave shows of all-time.
The Motion Picture is the best Star Trek movie ever made but doesn't really have much of a TOS-specific feel to it. Sure, TOS had it's slower and more cerebral episodes but the goofy exploration ones were in more abundance.
Not to diss TOS, one of my fave shows of all-time.
TWOK and TSFS are each like really good TOS episodes. Parts of TWOK are like Balance Of Terror distilled to perfection, while TSFS has got shades of things like The Trouble With Tribbles (with it's lighter touches) or even some of the mythological underpinings that came to the fore in something like Amok Time.
TFF is like a third season TOS episode after all the money has run out already.
TFF is like a third season TOS episode after all the money has run out already.
As others have noted, THE MOTION PICTURE and THE FINAL FRONTIER were essentially "remakes" of "The Changeling" and "The Way to Eden." To me, ST1 felt too much like a compilation of half-baked concepts with excruciating stretches of unjustifiably long VFX sequences.
ST2 was the one movie I really liked. It picked up threads from series episodes—Khan from "Space Seed," and the sickbay scene from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in the form of Carol and David Marcus. ("If I hadn't aimed that little, blonde lab technician at you..." "I almost married her!") The series had its Cold War superpowers—Federation and Klingon Empire—but what happens if some third world megalomaniac gets his hands on a super weapon? And the Kobayashi Maru scenario had several levels of significance, aside from being a continuity error. (The Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon was imposed by the Organians and is an "all visitors welcome" area, not a "no man's land.") There is a no-win situation between the Federation and Klingon, which is why Khan suddenly becomes relevant. The lesson of the no-win scenario for Kirk (who cheats) and Spock (who sacrifices) is that a price is always paid. Spock's sacrifice was the perfect resolution of the character's dichotomy because it was both logical (everyone was going to die otherwise, and Spock was the only one with both the stamina and technical knowledge to do the job) and compassionate. So while ST2 was my favorite movie, it was the least episode-like because a major character died.
ST3 was distressingly "series-like" because it rewound everything back to zero. Status quo. It completely short circuited Kirk's eulogy at the funeral in ST2, and was the beginning of the end. ST3 and every movie to follow had an over-abundance of "humor" so that they all felt like parodies of TREK, rather than continuations. Don't even get me started on Abrams-trek. (Engineering was turned into a brewery...
) Yes, I'm a hard-to-please grouch.
ST4, Saving the whales. Whenever the writers turn to time travel (e.g. MIB 3), you know they've run out of ideas. No, ma'am, no dipshit.
ST5, the comedy shtick gets worse (Rocket boots? Really?) and we revisit "The Way to Eden" and "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Kirk meets god and is not impressed because he is a god. ("I say he must prove he is a god!" —Salish, "The Paradise Syndrome") The one pearl in the movie was Kirk's "I need my pain" speech. That was TOS-worthy.
ST6 could have been good, but there was just too much stupid comedy stuff—The phaser rack in the galley, the thing with tree roots for feet, "Those weren't his knees," etc. The classically educated Chang (and Shakespeare in the throat-clearing noises that pass for the Klingon language in the movies) was a lame attempt to revive Khan.
I know I've seen most of the others, but dredging up the memories is too painful. So I guess that means ST3 wins "most series-like" for status quo, while ST2 wins most TOS-like for political relevance.
ST2 was the one movie I really liked. It picked up threads from series episodes—Khan from "Space Seed," and the sickbay scene from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in the form of Carol and David Marcus. ("If I hadn't aimed that little, blonde lab technician at you..." "I almost married her!") The series had its Cold War superpowers—Federation and Klingon Empire—but what happens if some third world megalomaniac gets his hands on a super weapon? And the Kobayashi Maru scenario had several levels of significance, aside from being a continuity error. (The Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon was imposed by the Organians and is an "all visitors welcome" area, not a "no man's land.") There is a no-win situation between the Federation and Klingon, which is why Khan suddenly becomes relevant. The lesson of the no-win scenario for Kirk (who cheats) and Spock (who sacrifices) is that a price is always paid. Spock's sacrifice was the perfect resolution of the character's dichotomy because it was both logical (everyone was going to die otherwise, and Spock was the only one with both the stamina and technical knowledge to do the job) and compassionate. So while ST2 was my favorite movie, it was the least episode-like because a major character died.
ST3 was distressingly "series-like" because it rewound everything back to zero. Status quo. It completely short circuited Kirk's eulogy at the funeral in ST2, and was the beginning of the end. ST3 and every movie to follow had an over-abundance of "humor" so that they all felt like parodies of TREK, rather than continuations. Don't even get me started on Abrams-trek. (Engineering was turned into a brewery...
) Yes, I'm a hard-to-please grouch.ST4, Saving the whales. Whenever the writers turn to time travel (e.g. MIB 3), you know they've run out of ideas. No, ma'am, no dipshit.
ST5, the comedy shtick gets worse (Rocket boots? Really?) and we revisit "The Way to Eden" and "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Kirk meets god and is not impressed because he is a god. ("I say he must prove he is a god!" —Salish, "The Paradise Syndrome") The one pearl in the movie was Kirk's "I need my pain" speech. That was TOS-worthy.
ST6 could have been good, but there was just too much stupid comedy stuff—The phaser rack in the galley, the thing with tree roots for feet, "Those weren't his knees," etc. The classically educated Chang (and Shakespeare in the throat-clearing noises that pass for the Klingon language in the movies) was a lame attempt to revive Khan.
I know I've seen most of the others, but dredging up the memories is too painful. So I guess that means ST3 wins "most series-like" for status quo, while ST2 wins most TOS-like for political relevance.
Similar threads
