Yeah, we got two beautiful utopian cities in one summer.
Spoilers Yorktown Base
- Thread starter Neumann
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Yeah, we got two beautiful utopian cities in one summer.
I liked both...
See, what I hated about Yorktown - apart from the fact that (gravity angles aside) it looked completely indistinguishable from Tomorrowland and that Nova planet from Guardians of the Galaxy - was its scale. It was so gigantic, so huge, that it made the humans within it look utterly insignificant. And even if I buy the excuse of a space colony instead of planetary colonies for purposes of neutrality (never mind that there are M-class planets everywhere in Trek ripe for colonization), why would hundreds of thousands of people want to live and work there, rather than on planets?
It may be that if the shows had had bigger budgets, they would have gone for similarly gonzo-scaled colonies. But, call me old-school if you like, one thing I actually like about Trek is how it tends to keep things fairly small and human-sized, even when it explores the infinity of the cosmos. I freaking love that when Kirk and Picard meet, it's in a rustic mountain house, and that they chat while riding horses. Indeed, I think its human scale is a key part of its core humanism - even if that scale was previously imposed by budget limitations.
But when you've got a space colony so massive that it utterly dwarfs the Enterprise, and when the Enterprise is torn to shreds by thousands of bee-ships and yet the majority of the crew seems to survive because magic, and when Scotty can pull himself off a cliff from the tips of his fingers, something I'm sure most professional athletes couldn't do, that human scale is utterly lost, and with it, to me, is taken Trek's very spirit.
I can see your point. But the nitpicker in me wants to remind you that we never did see Scotty pull himself up, now did we? Perhaps we got a rare bit of "failure is always an option" realism there, and Scotty survived by dropping down... 
It's not as if much of the crew would have survived, either. Scotty rescued, what, 20 times a dozen, tops with that transporter thing. Probably fewer, matching the number of extras actually seen.
It's really "gritty realism" that loses the human scale here, or rather puts it where it belongs: any two of us might be people, but a million of us are just statistics.
Timo Saloniemi
It's not as if much of the crew would have survived, either. Scotty rescued, what, 20 times a dozen, tops with that transporter thing. Probably fewer, matching the number of extras actually seen.
It's really "gritty realism" that loses the human scale here, or rather puts it where it belongs: any two of us might be people, but a million of us are just statistics.
Timo Saloniemi
Location, location, location?
See, what I hated about Yorktown - apart from the fact that (gravity angles aside) it looked completely indistinguishable from Tomorrowland and that Nova planet from Guardians of the Galaxy - was its scale. It was so gigantic, so huge, that it made the humans within it look utterly insignificant. And even if I buy the excuse of a space colony instead of planetary colonies for purposes of neutrality (never mind that there are M-class planets everywhere in Trek ripe for colonization), why would hundreds of thousands of people want to live and work there, rather than on planets?
It may be that if the shows had had bigger budgets, they would have gone for similarly gonzo-scaled colonies. But, call me old-school if you like, one thing I actually like about Trek is how it tends to keep things fairly small and human-sized, even when it explores the infinity of the cosmos. I freaking love that when Kirk and Picard meet, it's in a rustic mountain house, and that they chat while riding horses. Indeed, I think its human scale is a key part of its core humanism - even if that scale was previously imposed by budget limitations.
But when you've got a space colony so massive that it utterly dwarfs the Enterprise, and when the Enterprise is torn to shreds by thousands of bee-ships and yet the majority of the crew seems to survive because magic, and when Scotty can pull himself off a cliff from the tips of his fingers, something I'm sure most professional athletes couldn't do, that human scale is utterly lost, and with it, to me, is taken Trek's very spirit.
And we saw kirk fight 7ft lizards, fist fight khan, free climb el capitan in his 50's among other things. Star Trek has never been gritty and realistic has it?
^ I didn't ask for either of those things, did I? No; I asked for a scale of action and locations that don't utterly overwhelm the human dimension the way Beyond does generally and Yorktown does specifically. (And your implication that Kirk fistfighting Khan wasn't realistic is bizarre, as the action in "Space Seed" - two humans grappling in an engine room - was far more plausible than the superhero fighting of Into Darkness.)
In regards to what? San Francisco and Paris are desirable locations. What's so special about a bunch of skyscrapers in a soulless artificial colony in space, when there are plenty of perfectly hospitable and uninhabited M-class worlds to settle on?
Kirk hanging with a genetic superman in a physical fight is implausible. Khan should've wiped the floor with Kirk.
^ He'd been frozen for generations; nothing's more plausible than him not being in top superhero condition days after being thawed out. (If, indeed, "Space Seed" established him as being truly physically superpowered in his prime - I neither remember nor care enough to look it up.)
But then, that's neither here nor there. As I said, it's a question of scale. And I for one like my Trek to be restrained and human in scale in comparison to the new flicks. Disagree if you like, but my preference is as legitimate as anyone's.
But then, that's neither here nor there. As I said, it's a question of scale. And I for one like my Trek to be restrained and human in scale in comparison to the new flicks. Disagree if you like, but my preference is as legitimate as anyone's.
For a starbase?
He had no issue beating up a security guard and bending a phaser with his bare hands.
I want Star Trek to be spectacular. It is depicting a society that can manipulate matter and gravity, and can create and harness tremendous energy. A society like that should be spectacular, it should stretch the limits of our imagination.
On a side, Yorktown is possibly the first non-Earth location that I've ever been concerned about in a Trek film. I just didn't care one bit about our heroes saving other worlds like the Baku or Veridian III (which was handled so blandly that the stakes just didn't feel justified. we never even saw its people!). Most other Trek movies purposely have Earth as a target for that sake of relatability and concern (Nemesis even threw that in there at the last minute to give the audience reason to care, even though Shinzon had little logical grudge against the Federation). But Yorktown was handled so well that I really was concerned about the city coming under attack, just as much as I cared for Earth in the TOS movies.
Speaking as a city boy living in a neighborhood full of high rises, I sure would love to live there. The architecture, the diversity of cultures, the amenities, the sheer amount of engineering involved to create it, and the very fact that it's a bustling city in space -- those are huge draws for me. Heck, I wonder what their workforce is like -- social services, entertainment, local journalism, governance, etc. And, if I *did* want to spend a weekend in the grand nature of a planet, Yorktown doesn't seem to have any shortage of outbound transportation, either.
Plus, I would have limited flight thanks to "gravity streams," whatever they are. Krall and Kirk had fun up there.
Speaking as a city boy living in a neighborhood full of high rises, I sure would love to live there. The architecture, the diversity of cultures, the amenities, the sheer amount of engineering involved to create it, and the very fact that it's a bustling city in space -- those are huge draws for me. Heck, I wonder what their workforce is like -- social services, entertainment, local journalism, governance, etc. And, if I *did* want to spend a weekend in the grand nature of a planet, Yorktown doesn't seem to have any shortage of outbound transportation, either.
Plus, I would have limited flight thanks to "gravity streams," whatever they are. Krall and Kirk had fun up there.
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I don't remember anyone saying Yorktown was built specifically to be neutral. Spock and McCoy seemed, to me, to be talking about why the ship was sent to Yorktown for maintenance/shore leave instead of going to a planet. The station itself probably had many different purposes, and I suspect it would've still been built even if Starfleet had decided docking ships at member planets wouldn't cause problems.
The number of people isn't that big of a deal. Make more space, more people will come, as long as people are interested in living in space at all in the first place. And Star Trek's answer to that has pretty much always been yes. Seemingly millions of people voluntarily choose to live on starships and space stations throughout the various old series and movies.
That's exactly what I LIKED about it.
What, you were expecting a starbase that makes humans look like demigods?
Why do hundreds of thousands of people want to live and work ANYWHERE?
Because that's where the good jobs are; that's where the best labs are; that's where the best schools are; that's where the action is.
If a ground-based facility had better opportunities, they would go there instead. But Yorktown Starbase is on the cutting edge of Federation technology and poised on the gateway of the Final Frontier. It's not hard to guess what kind of people would find that kind of life attractive; they're the same kinds of people who voluntarily join Starfleet.
Oh really?
Then you've got a Federation that is FINALLY on a similar scale of most of the civilizations it is encountering in Deep Space.
I'd like to see him do cities atop an shaved off asteroid ship.
And who was that in command of the Yorktown, Worf's mom....
I believe you mean Commodore Paris.
So it's Worf's mom and a Tom Paris ancestor.
The Yorktown was not what I expected but visually spectacular. I also thought back to the Citadel when I first saw it. It was definitely more imaginative and inspiring than any of the other locations I remember from Star Trek. It was truly elegant science fiction. It reminded me of some science fiction books I read as a kid when they described massive artificial civilizations. Maybe in the next movie they will have something similar to the Halo rings!!!
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