Movies Star Trek Beyond [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Binks

2016-07-22, 10:36 AM

(I checked and the only other thread I can see for this is from January, so figured I'd start a new one rather than necro)

Went and saw Beyond yesterday with some friends (free tickets, why not?). To put it bluntly, I was not expecting much. I did not enjoy 2009 and I actually got angry at the second one, so I went into this movie expecting to come out with some jokes about how bad it was.

However I must give it to them. Star Trek Beyond is actually good. Not, good in comparison to the first one, not good enough not to hate it, but actually an enjoyable experience. I'd watch it again.

Some random thoughts on it, spoiler alert if you haven't seen it.
Firstly, the Yorktown battle. The moment they mentioned interfering with frequencies I knew they were going to play music on the channel. It was so blindingly obvious...and yet so amazingly good. That's partially due to the music (I like Sabotage, and the choice was so hilariously good I had to laugh) but mostly because it actually fit as a plot point, was appropriately foreshadowed, and was very well handled on screen. It reminded me a lot of a (obviously louder and faster paced) the scene from ST6 where they perform surgery on the torpedo.

New action lady was good. I was afraid she was going to be either of the standard Hollywood tropes for female characters but she was actually an interesting character, was well acted, and fit the movie quite nicely. A substantial step up from 2009's Carol Marcus.

Restoring the Franklin was cool. I do like the semi-mythology reference with it looking like an NX-01 type ship, though I guess actually the NX-01 technically looks like it since the Franklin was a warp 4 and the Enterprise a warp 5 prototype. That just occurred to me and is actually interesting.

'Got to reach terminal velocity to go up' was the dumbest part of the movie. Moderately cool scene, but so dumb.

The battle of Enterprise vs. Swarm was dumb. I know it was necessary to lose the ship for the plot, but really? Torpedoes need tracking and must impact to detonate? Shields magically do nothing against these ships for no adequately explored reason? Whatever.

The effect for seeing a ship flying at warp is cool. Not sure if it was used before (as the other two movies are entirely forgettable) but I liked it here.

On the topic of the whole gay character controversy, it's a lot of adieu about nothing, as usual. I can see why they made sure to include a main character's loved one on the station, for dramatic impact in the scene. Anyone who got worked up about it was just wasting effort.

Pros:
Pretty good story, maybe not on the level of ST 2 or 6, but still good.
Visual Effects work, for the most part (way more subdued and blended in then the lens flare fest of 2009)
New characters are interesting and not one-note (looking at you movie Nero)
The movie's climax is one of the best action scenes I have seen in a long time. For a (not even remotely spoilery) comparison point, it feels like the A-Team scene with the tank.

Cons:
There's still some places where the logic is terrible
A couple of spots feel like pasted over plot holes (they obviously made an effort to fix the plot hole, but it's obvious where it was)
The final fight is kind of stupid, but at least they subvert a trope at the last minute
Relatively long run-time for not a huge amount of stuff happening
The macguffin is silly

Overall, and I never for a moment imagined I would say this about a new series ST movie, I would recommend seeing it. Anyone else gone to see it? What did you think?

Cikomyr

2016-07-23, 09:22 AM

Went to see it yesterday.

It was entertaining. Banter was, at times, Avengers-grade repartee. Simon Peggs really put his soul into this writing.

Final battle was cheesy, but freakkin' epic. The two sides charging at each other really was awesome to behold.

The movie did not drag in the least, in my.opinion. it moves, its awesomely paced. Music is good, villain is meh until you get his back story; and even then i think his best characteristics are those you reflect upon oncr the movie is over rather than during it.

Edit: goddamnit. Forgot the point i wanted to discuss the most.

The sci-fi concepts presented in this.movie were awesome. The weird gravity thingies. The Flippin' Space Station Yorktown was... almost a Culture Habitat.

Legato Endless

2016-07-23, 05:34 PM

So it's kind of like The Force Awakens, but less well made.

A fairly average runaround.

Good: The film is light and fluffy. If you like shoot em ups, you should be pretty satisfied. The new alien badass is fine, and she's got some good chemistry to fill a role in the crew. Especially as I'm hoping they don't recast Chekhov for the sequel. The dialogue is spiffy at times, and the crew gets more interaction overall then the core three. This works well, and some of the pairings are fantastic. We finally get some good Spock-McCoy after 2 films of minimal interaction. It's still not a balanced ensemble by any stretch of the imagination, but each film in the reboot gives the supporting characters more to do. The character centered material is a cut above the rest of the film. The effects are better integrated that, and the new Star Base looks excellent.

Meh: This is a 'Star Trek Episode', but it's not an especially good one. It's a very conservative move back to the series roots, which is understandable after the furor of the last two films, but the complete lack of new ground is disappointing. You've seen everything here before if you've seen a Star Trek series. A film where the Enterprise gets destroyed? Yawn. What's worse, it proudly continues the NuTrek tradition of failing to be about anything of substance. If you were looking for anything penetrating as a commentary on current events in the world, or future social issues, or you know, the Science Fiction of this Space Opera, this film doesn't have it. Instead we have a cheerful Aesop about family as crew and loyalty and not losing your way you'd expect in a more sugary Disney film. Thematically, this is as empty as Star Trek 2009. Minus all the action scenes, there's really not much here in terms of plot either, but the film doesn't suffer from that so much as it's fundamental shallowness.

Crap: The antagonist is probably the worst we've had since Picard's clone. Maybe since Spock's brother. I'm not even going to bother spoiling this, as in every recent Star Trek film, we have a villain out for revenge against Star Fleet. For the silliest reasons yet. Idris Elba is normally a power house, but here he's mostly stuck gargling lines in half english, all of which not involving yet another Super Weapon are the suitably cartoonish 'only through struggle are we strong', 'your unity make you weak', blah blah your friendship is no match for my evil. Later we get some equally thin (and completely unexplored) motives thrown into the mix off his myspace account, turning the social darwinist into a grab bag of generic villainy. *In his spare time he doubles as a half baked foil for Kirk.

Overall, it's kind of meh. I won't remember it a month from now, and it's not going to revitalize Trek in pop culture. Any hope on that front you can hang on the series, if you're especially idealistic. But if you've a yen for an old Kirk and crew fight some monsters, the film delivers on that front.

After Nero's one dimensional vengeance and Khan being...Khan, Krall is basically Garth of Izar, except the writing is less self aware about how ridiculous he is.

Lord Raziere

2016-07-24, 01:09 AM

I found it a good movie myself. Definitely liking all the crews interactions, how funny it was, how intense some scenes were, and they did a good sendoff of the previous generation while being its own thing. The only weakness was the villain wasn't as good as he could've been, but he worked.

But then again, I'm not much of a Star Trek guy, its an interesting franchise and up my nerd alley but not really my favorite or my focus, and I prefer other sci-fi, but I definitely like Star Trek 2009, and definitely liked this one.

not much else to say other than that.

Rodin

2016-07-24, 02:59 AM

I wonder if I should try and rewatch Into Darkness before watching this one. I saw that one while extremely jet-lagged so I missed about the middle third of the film as I kept nodding off. From what I gather, that probably improved the movie no end.

Is there any need for me to put myself through that, or is Beyond self-contained enough that it won't matter?

DataNinja

2016-07-24, 03:13 AM

Is there any need for me to put myself through that, or is Beyond self-contained enough that it won't matter?

Beyond's self-contained enough, so you should be fine.

For my part, I found it fairly enjoyable. I feel like some stuff might have been better explained, but it all has to do around the villain. Other than him, I felt that it was fairly well done.

SiSoo

2016-07-24, 10:11 AM

Adore this movie, 9.5/10 for me

RCgothic

2016-07-24, 01:50 PM

I'm very much in agreement with previous poster. I loved the intro vignette, and it just got better from there. Every moment with Scotty and Jaylah, and Bones and Spock were gold. The crew actually had chemistry this time round, which went a long way towards capturing the feel of the television series. It's much easier to have that chemistry in a series when you have a lot longer to work on it. With Star Trek Beyond they finally got the formula right.

Ok, destruction of the Enterprise has been done before. But this was done really well.

And if Jaylah isn't Chekhov's replacement it will be a travesty.

Cikomyr

2016-07-24, 09:47 PM

They really put a lot of soul into that movie by highlighting Leonard Nimoy's departure...

Kislath

2016-07-25, 01:03 AM

I loved it!! Much better than the previous films. My only complaint is the villain. He's lame. Exceedingly dangerous and driven, yes, but lame. The problem is his motivation. We don't see how and why he went from what he once was to what he is today. When his motive is finally revealed, it's lame
I was like, what? That's it? Seriously?
Aside from that, everything else is awesome.

thirsting

2016-07-25, 03:34 AM

It was... okay. (way better a movie than the new SW though imnsho)

Movie gets one big minus from me for the way they dealt with the huge swarm at the end. Their critical systems seriously don't have better defenses against electromagnetic radiation? In SPACE? Why?!
Sure was lucky they ALL bumped into eachother and exploded. Those things that could survive penetrating starfleet ships... argh.

Also, once again; Oh hey, unarmed enemy! Let's abandon our phaser/laser/plasmagun and fight them with bare fists!

Didn't even realize the older Spock was Nimoy in the previous movie(s?). Thought it was masked up Sylar Zachary Quinto. That was a great touch, indeed.

And Bones. The ham. Oh gods there was ham. But somehow it was pretty good.

Cikomyr

2016-07-25, 01:06 PM

By the way. I REALLY dont get this criticism:

"Its feels like an episode of the old series!"

...yhea, exactly. Why isnt that a good thing, again?

Its not like we currently have a regular fix of "regular episodes" of Star Trek on TV at the moment. I am happy they stepped away from artificially inflated stakes and just went for a bona fide Space Adventure movie.

Binks

2016-07-25, 01:42 PM

Final battle was cheesy, but freakkin' epic.
Exactly my feeling. I was laughing my head off and having so much fun with that fight that I didn't even care how little sense it made. One of my friends who I went with had more of an issue with it, but we all agreed it was substantially better plot-hole covering than anything from the prior Trek movies (or TFA's lame superweapon ploy).

The sci-fi concepts presented in this.movie were awesome. The weird gravity thingies. The Flippin' Space Station Yorktown was... almost a Culture Habitat.
Fair enough. I've never gotten into the Culture series, so I guess it had less of an impact on me. Personally I just thought it looked strange and kind of silly, but it was never bad enough to bother me and the usage of it during the final battle was actually creative.

So it's kind of like The Force Awakens, but less well made.
Alright. You and I have very different opinions on TFA, but that's fine. Probably why we had different opinions on this movie.

Good:
I agree completely that the character centered stuff in this film is the best part of it. The dialogue is great and the characters are actually 3 dimensional, unlike the prior movies.

Meh:
The drone things were at least moderately new, haven't really seen anything like that outside of DS9, and not even really in there. Personally I don't mind if the movie doesn't really have a major theme, because that's not what draws me to movies, but I agree with you that, if you're looking for a big commentary or something, you're going to be disappointed.

Crap:
Eh. Elba's char is actually pretty scary, and they bothered to try and explain his motivation this time. That's leagues beyond Nero, Spock's bro, or evil Picard clone. He's no Khan or General Chang, but he's at worst mid-tier for ST villains, in the same ballpark as Lursa/B'etor, Ru'afo, or Kruge. Maybe even slightly above those three. Yeah, his reasons are kind of silly, but I felt like I somewhat understood his character. He's the old archetype of the soldier who never stopped fighting the war, in the same vein as Ronan from Guardians. You can kind of see how his rage started out as a simply 'they left us here to die' type thing and, by the time he would have learned about how Starfleet couldn't have known what had happened he was too far gone. Personally I liked him as a villain, though I wish we'd had more time to see his descent. I especially liked the fake-out at the end with him, too many movies would have tried to redeem him.

Is there any need for me to put myself through that, or is Beyond self-contained enough that it won't matter?
Actually had a family member ask me that same question since they never saw Into Darkness. Nothing from that movie mattered in this one. Realistically, nothing from that movie mattered at all. It really didn't do anything to the characters. You need to watch the first one (despite it flaws) to learn how the new characters work, but you can just skip Into Darkness entirely and be better off for it.

And if Jaylah isn't Chekhov's replacement it will be a travesty.
That...is a really good idea. She's already in the same vague model (great at tech even though they shouldn't be), she has great chemistry with the rest of the cast, and she's given a hook at the end that could work that way. Sad that we lost Anton but wouldn't be a terrible replacement, especially if they go the (suspected) way of saying Chekhov got assigned to the Reliant.

I loved it!! Much better than the previous films. My only complaint is the villain. He's lame. Exceedingly dangerous and driven, yes, but lame. The problem is his motivation. We don't see how and why he went from what he once was to what he is today. When his motive is finally revealed, it's lame
Fair enough. Question to everyone who thought the villain's motive was lame. Did you watch Enterprise? I'm wondering if having seen the MACO related stuff from that series is the reason I though the motive was at least semi-reasonable in this movie. Would be dumb if you had to watch a mostly-unrelated series to understand the villain's motive (and show that it was poor directing or editing or whatever), but would at least explain why I didn't have the same disappointment with the villain in this movie.

Movie gets one big minus from me for the way they dealt with the huge swarm at the end. Their critical systems seriously don't have better defenses against electromagnetic radiation? In SPACE? Why?!
Less no defense against EM, more 'need to communicate on that specific frequency and Enterprise is jamming it'. Presumably the drones could be switched to a different frequency, but apparently Krall didn't know how to do that. I remember hearing at some point that they weren't originally built as weapons, so that would explain a jamming weakness, but I might have misunderstood.

Sure was lucky they ALL bumped into each other and exploded. Those things that could survive penetrating starfleet ships... argh.
I mean, yeah, the explosions should have been much more sporadic, but I found it awesome enough to not care personally. I recognize that it could easily be an annoyance if you don't get fully into it, however. It's definately a plot-hole, but I found it to be patched over just fine by how cool the scene was.

Legato Endless

2016-07-25, 07:45 PM

By the way. I REALLY dont get this criticism:

"Its feels like an episode of the old series!"

...yhea, exactly. Why isnt that a good thing, again?

If this is directed at me...because it was missing one of the things I loved about the old series? One of the fundamental things that makes Star Trek tick?

Alright. You and I have very different opinions on TFA, but that's fine. Probably why we had different opinions on this movie.

Depends on if you throughly hated episode 7. I thought TFA was fairly meh overall. The homage elements were annoying at their most potent, but I liked some of the new characters. This film I'd place below that a bit, but still within the range of I didn't hate it but it wasn't amazing either.

The drone things were at least moderately new, haven't really seen anything like that outside of DS9, and not even really in there.

Naw, we've gotten tiny swarms assaulting Starships before in VOY, they're even called the same thing.

http://www.startrek.com/legacy_media/images/200303/voy-149-the-swarm-pursues-voya/320x240.jpg

Eh. Elba's char is actually pretty scary, and they bothered to try and explain his motivation this time. That's leagues beyond Nero, Spock's bro, or evil Picard clone. He's no Khan or General Chang, but he's at worst mid-tier for ST villains, in the same ballpark as Lursa/B'etor, Ru'afo, or Kruge. Maybe even slightly above those three. Yeah, his reasons are kind of silly, but I felt like I somewhat understood his character.

The question here is, does having any motive trump none? Not every antagonist must have a motive. Sometimes less is more; if I have to choose between no motive and a ridiculous one, I'd prefer the mystery endure. Obviously we'd both prefer a good motive, but if that's off the table...

Question to everyone who thought the villain's motive was lame. Did you watch Enterprise? I'm wondering if having seen the MACO related stuff from that series is the reason I though the motive was at least semi-reasonable in this movie. Would be dumb if you had to watch a mostly-unrelated series to understand the villain's motive (and show that it was poor directing or editing or whatever), but would at least explain why I didn't have the same disappointment with the villain in this movie.

I don't think the MACO bit is strictly necessary, as Krall exposits about having been a solider to Kirk, so you don't need the context of the service rivalry they had with Starfleet. It's a bit of nice texture for longtime fans. There's also the implication that constantly absorbing foreign DNA could have further destabilized him, and there's the lingering question of what precisely happened to his crew. None of which makes him easier to take seriously, but there's definitely layers for fan fiction to develop everything the film didn't. Furthermore, I think there's too much stock being placed in there being an explanation at all. Krall is still a fairly one dimensional character. He's just one with half dozen unexplored stock motives and a loosely implied backstory.

Binks

2016-07-25, 09:21 PM

Naw, we've gotten tiny swarms assaulting Starships before in VOY, they're even called the same thing.
Ah. Fair enough, I wasn't familiar with that. Never actually got around to watching Voyager, so my fault.

I don't think the MACO bit is strictly necessary, as Krall exposits about having been a solider to Kirk, so you don't need the context of the service rivalry they had with Starfleet...
I mean, soldier is pretty generic, MACO is a lot more detailed. Feels to me like the context of the MACO stuff helps, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. It's a fair assessment that they could have done a lot better with his explanation. Maybe I'm just feeling generous after new Khan and Nero.

Giggling Ghast

2016-07-25, 11:02 PM

Yeah, there were some really cool sci-fi bits there, particularly at Yorktown Station. I was reminded of Ringworld.

About my only complaint is that the whole lost ship angle could have been set up sooner.

Velaryon

2016-07-26, 11:06 AM

Binks

2016-07-26, 11:29 AM

I have a question for those who have seen the movie.

If I hated Chris Pine's performance as Kirk in the first two films, is there a chance I will like him in this one? To me he has always been the biggest problem with the rebooted Trek films (except for the writing in Into Darkness, perhaps). I love how well Karl Urban nailed his role as McCoy, but feel that Pine missed Kirk by a country mile, both times. Is he playing the character any closer to Shatner's version than before?

I really wanted to phrase this as "Has Chris Pine learned to play Captain Kirk yet?" but I'm trying really hard to be nice.
Short answer, yes. I actually had much the same feeling towards him as you did from the first two, and I liked him in this one. Giving exactly details would require spoilers, but suffice it to say he's playing a much older and wiser Kirk than either of the first two movies. Feels a lot like early movie (TMP, Wrath, Search) Kirk, to me at least.

Velaryon

2016-07-26, 11:39 AM

Cikomyr

2016-07-26, 12:22 PM

It should be noted that, in my opinion, they dialed back Kirk's character moments to give more focus to the ensemble cast. Kirk's scenes about his character were limited, effective. Everywhere else he was the standard action hero, doing a good job.

I feel like Spock, McCoy, Scotty and UHura had better character moment, while at the same time being less action hero compared to Kirk.

Does that make sense?

Lethologica

2016-07-26, 12:38 PM

This was the first NuTrek film that basically worked for me. It was still mostly a shallow popcorn flick, but at least it was populated with likable characters.

Legato Endless

2016-07-26, 03:16 PM

Short answer, yes. I actually had much the same feeling towards him as you did from the first two, and I liked him in this one. Giving exactly details would require spoilers, but suffice it to say he's playing a much older and wiser Kirk than either of the first two movies. Feels a lot like early movie (TMP, Wrath, Search) Kirk, to me at least.

Yeah, Kirk is much more tolerable in this movie. He's not playing the man child learns token responsibility arc he went through twice in the prequels.

Ah. Fair enough, I wasn't familiar with that. Never actually got around to watching Voyager, so my fault.

Eh, no one should have to suffer through all of VOY. :smallsmile:

BannedInSchool

2016-07-26, 04:35 PM

Eh, no one should have to suffer through all of VOY. :smallsmile:

Get this cheese to sickbay!

Olinser

2016-07-26, 05:23 PM

Saw it today while being out of town for a couple days.

Pretty decent movie overall, some minor plot holes but I enjoyed it... up until the last 10 minutes.

Playing that stupid freaking song that studios do to death in trailers makes ships EXPLODE? Ship surfing a wave of exploding ships in space? SERIOUSLY!?!?!??!?!!?

I literally facepalmed in the theatre.

I also still feel like the whole 'Kirk would do anything for his crew' thing in the movies is being undermined by the fact that we see him interact with so few people outside the bridge crew. They really need to put in more interactions with Kirk and random crew members to establish the relationship there.

But overall pretty positive. I did like how they resisted the impulse to have the arbitrary Weird Skinned Space Babe hook up with anybody.

Rodin

2016-07-26, 06:02 PM

Just saw it, and overall I liked it. I still think it didn't feel like Star Trek, but I've come to the conclusion that's never gonna happen at the movie theatre anyway.

Still though, would it kill them to have a threat other than some crazy guy? It's Star Trek for crying out loud, give us a tense standoff with the Klingons/Romulans, or a Negative Space Wedgie that's going to eat a hole in the galaxy or something. We've now been through three iterations of "nutty dude with a superweapon", and it's starting to wear thin.

The characters were the best thing about this movie, and I loved the performances from absolutely everyone (apart from Elba, but that wasn't his fault). The only Enterprise crewman I thought got a little shafted was Sulu, who didn't really have a whole lot to do in this one. My favorite character was Chekov, and I think wherever Anton Yelchin may be now he can look down with pride on his final performance. He was simply stellar and he will be greatly missed.

I was annoyed about them blowing up the Enterprise again (not spoilering since this was in the trailers) until something occurred to me...which NuTrek movie is this? The third one.

And which TOS movie did they blow up the Enterprise in, hmmm?

Clever.

ImperiousLeader

2016-07-26, 09:43 PM

I should be delaying my thoughts on the matter. Because I came out of Star Trek Into Darkness quite liking the movie, it's been subsequent viewings that made its flaws readily apparent and vexing.

That caveat aside, I walked out of Star Trek Beyond quite happy. A great use of all the characters, some actual emotional resonance, and some good action. While the villian wasn't much, despite good work from Idris Elba, and some of the plot was a little ridiculous, I found those to be minor flaws.

Side Notes:
- OMG, the Yorktown was so gorgeous. I might go again to see that in IMAX, 'cause it's beautiful.
- I'm loving random Greg Grunberg appearances in my space sci-fi. My headcanon is that he's totally playing a Betazed.
- The new uniforms are really nice.
- Karl Urban. MVP
- I hope they get Sofia Boutella back for the next one, I really enjoyed her.
- The tributes to Nimoy and Yelchin were very well done.
- It still hurts that the new Trek verse still has bloody Enterprise as canon, after wiping out the other series. And the references to Enterprise were okay, but still ...

SuperPanda

2016-07-26, 11:00 PM

This won't come out in China (I'm an American ex-pat teacher over here) until September 2nd (just after school starts back up but shortly before my birthday) and I've been dreading it since I love Trek and want this to be good.

I liked the 2009 film well enough and despite having growled at the "Super Nova that threatened to destroy the galaxy" plot (mostly because it just needed some trek-no-babble to work:

The Hobbus star's supernova somehow entered subspace because of an interaction with our new slip-stream star drives. The rapidly expanding explosion threatened to destabilize the quadrant and put hundreds of billions of lives at risk.

There were other problems, but the characters were fun - about the only recasting choice I didn't like was Kirk and he was fine overall (and had the best explanation for being different from the original time-line). I didn't like how thick the star-fleet people were about the overt cheating on the Kobayashi Maru (or how heavy handed the cheating was) but I was fine with it. Overall it was a fun ride with a lot of promise.

Into Darkness doubled down on the parts I didn't like as much and felt like the production team didn't care about their own canon, or previous stuff, but rather about making a quick buck regardless of quality (Sort of like X-men 3).

I've been very skeptical of Beyond but everything I'm hearing makes it sound more like a sequel to 2009 with alot of the stuff I liked about that one.

Count me excited again to see it in September.

JadedDM

2016-07-27, 12:04 PM

I have a question. Please feel free to put the answer in a spoiler, so as to not spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet. But if the Enterprise is destroyed in this one, do they hint at what they're going to fly in the fourth movie (which has been greenlit already)? Are they going to build the Enterprise-A now?

Rodin

2016-07-27, 12:38 PM

Darth Ultron

2016-07-27, 04:26 PM

It was a good movie

Sure it had a simple plot, but that is just modern Hollywood.

All the actors got a bit to do, making a bit better ensemble movie. It is nice to see all the actors much more comfortable as their characters.

I really did like the Leonard Nimoy bit and Zachary Quinto really nails playing the logical ''emotionless'' Spock.

I really liked where Nu Spock finds the Wrath of Khan promo picture and it speaks volumes of ''stay in starfleet''. Showing Spock with his crew mates really puts the high light on how much he cared for them. And Old Spock even said as much back in the first New Trek movie.

I was not happy with the villain, he was just boring. And Jaylah was just a waste of screen time. And it does bug me that they, for some reason, just refuse to use all the Star Trek aliens. I wonder if they planned it, like they are saying ''look at our cool aliens they are better then the dumb old ones''?

huttj509

2016-07-28, 01:59 AM

Lord Raziere

2016-07-28, 02:22 AM

Part of it might be, for example, that the ST alien races carry a LOT of baggage with them.

Can they get away with putting their own spin on Klingons, or would it not work well?

Well here is the thing about Klingons: They are such a big thing in Trek fandom that it has entire language that is the most popular fictional spoke language in the world, with grammar and everything. there has been at least one Klingon wedding in real life. Klingon's probably one of the most cosplayed things ever on top of that, and who knows how far Klingon Trek fans have made their own fanon about Klingons to expand upon the official lore they have, you know how dedicated a fan can get about that, give them all the decades that they've been around? and you have one of the biggest nerd things you could possibly mess up in the world.

So its like, your asking them to study and get right Klingons, which is probably full of a bunch of cultural stuff and societal structures you have to get right and this and that....especially when they have this certain honor code thing apparently, its a whole thing, that you risk when you touch upon it.

Its like having to make a movie about Homestuck and then deciding to include the Trolls: having to make a Homestuck movie is already bad enough, but now your including this weird alien culture deliberately designed to not map to our current values that only hardcore Homestuck fans really understand or talk about on a daily basis, when your already trying to get the general entry stuff right. You do it, at your own risk.

Cikomyr

2016-07-28, 06:18 AM

They should go with Cardassians. They make very interesting enemies, with plans within pland within plans.

Plus, their State-controlled medias can lend themselves to most interesting social commentaries.

Mando Knight

2016-07-28, 06:27 AM

Can they get away with putting their own spin on Klingons, or would it not work well?

They did do Klingons for a few scenes. Gave them forehead piercings, helmets, trenchcoats, and an Osprey-like Bird-of-Prey as a planetary defense machine.

Cikomyr

2016-07-28, 06:40 AM

Now that I think of it, Cardassian villains would be awesome. Just imagine if the secondary villain is an agent of the Obsidian Order, played by Christopher Waltz...

And he is in fact Young Enabram Tain, at the relatively early stage of his career...

Rodin

2016-07-28, 06:51 AM

Well here is the thing about Klingons: They are such a big thing in Trek fandom that it has entire language that is the most popular fictional spoke language in the world, with grammar and everything. there has been at least one Klingon wedding in real life. Klingon's probably one of the most cosplayed things ever on top of that, and who knows how far Klingon Trek fans have made their own fanon about Klingons to expand upon the official lore they have, you know how dedicated a fan can get about that, give them all the decades that they've been around? and you have one of the biggest nerd things you could possibly mess up in the world.

So its like, your asking them to study and get right Klingons, which is probably full of a bunch of cultural stuff and societal structures you have to get right and this and that....especially when they have this certain honor code thing apparently, its a whole thing, that you risk when you touch upon it.

Its like having to make a movie about Homestuck and then deciding to include the Trolls: having to make a Homestuck movie is already bad enough, but now your including this weird alien culture deliberately designed to not map to our current values that only hardcore Homestuck fans really understand or talk about on a daily basis, when your already trying to get the general entry stuff right. You do it, at your own risk.

The thing is, most of that stuff is Expanded Universe stuff that doesn't show up in the shows. You risk alienating the most dedicated fans, but if they weren't alienated when they blew up Vulcan in the first movie then I can't see them getting too up in arms over mucking up a little bit of the Klingon customs. It's also a tiny fragment of Trekkies that would know enough to care.

I tend to think of it the other way around. There's all this lore out there that you don't have to come up with, because it's already out there. You can write the dialogue in actual Klingon, and there's ready-made references to customs that we saw Worf partake in that can give easy shout-outs to the original timeline. And if you get it a little bit wrong in places, 99% of the people watching won't have a clue. I watched all of TOS, TNG, and DS9 and I couldn't name a Klingon ritual off the top of my head. But I would probably recognize one if I saw it on-screen, and appreciate the reference.

There's this whole wide universe of lore out there for them to pull from, and they really haven't done much. There's the Vulcans from the first one, and I think the Klingons got a few brief cameos in Into Darkness (remember: jetlagged), but that's about it really. I don't really count Nero, since he had very little that could be identified as classically Romulan.

Getting rid of the old canon was very helpful in unencumbering the movies from the vast lore. Now I'd like to see them draw from it, put their own spin on it, and explore the Trek universe.

Rogar Demonblud

2016-07-28, 01:51 PM

Forget the big names. I want Andorians and Telllarites, and Tholians and Orions and...

You know what, drop that. I want the Organians, so the crew has to face someone they can't just punch.

Darth Ultron

2016-07-28, 07:42 PM

Forget the big names. I want Andorians and Telllarites, and Tholians and Orions and...

You know what, drop that. I want the Organians, so the crew has to face someone they can't just punch.

Well, we have seen a couple Orions....

If they would just take all of five minutes of CGI computer time and have ''two Andorian security guards enter the room'' or ''Yorktown Commander is a Bolian''.

I'd love to see a Tholian plot though....not some ''crazy guy again'', but a whole race/government of evil folks that want to be evil. How does Starfleet with all it's ''give peace a chance'' deal with ''die in the name of the fractured crystal! (boom).

Cikomyr

2016-07-28, 09:47 PM

Hehe.. went to swe it again tonight.

I had completely forgot that Scotty shot himself :smallbiggrin:

russdm

2016-07-30, 03:40 PM

My take)

I saw it last night and enjoyed it. I especially liked the villain, but this is mainly because I like Idris Elba more. I felt strongly that there was a story missing with Krall's motivations that would have helped to explore more about how he got to where he is. Most of his motivation is understandable, but would like to have seen the descent into madness, and how he became crazy. Felt that it should have been included more, maybe his career as a MACO should have included some nasty battles with few survivors? Something that could explain his whole combat and survival better, or maybe the horribleness of how his crew died with bits about his inability to save them? More to help further explore his motivations

I fee like they could make a movie just featuring Krall as pre-krall, and show pre-krall becoming Krall. It would really take advantage of Idris Elba's acting abilities. If not a movie, then maybe a book or novel to contain that material? I came away from the movie wanting to hear/read/watch Krall's story.

I liked

1) The bit with Scotty's little weird short guy that had an acidic breath/spit with I guess some kind of offspring that wasn't wearing pants? Would like to know more about that guy's(girl? No way to know) race
2)I love that Scotty jumped into a torpedo as his escape pod
3)The concept of Yorktown, the big floating city thing, I original thought was space-dock around earth, or Yorktown was supposed to be another starship. It took a bit to realize that the city ball was Yorktown
4) While I liked that they referenced Enterprise, the Xindi Arc was rather bad, compared to the rest (not including the Time-Travel bit, because it was really stupid) but the references to Romulans and conflicts with them was nice
5) Nice design on the alien ships.

My only real issue with the film was Krall. I wanted more about his intentions like why he was doing what he was doing and how he was doing it. Which is what I feel could be another movie on its own. Maybe Star Trek should get something Anthology going like how Disney is going to do with Star Wars? Breathe some life into other corners of this NuTrek to see.

Curious how NuTrek is going to handle relations with the Klingons. Wasn't the prospect of war with the Klingons a big deal in Into Darkness? What happened with that?

Aeson

2016-07-30, 05:44 PM

some kind of offspring that wasn't wearing pants
I'm reasonably certain that that was one of the things that was beamed aboard with Kirk at the start of the movie and could be seen being chased through the corridors later in the movie.

LordRahl6

2016-07-31, 03:04 PM

Definitely a movie more true to Rodenberry's Star Trek than the previous two. Simon Pegg and Justin Lin understand it better than Abrams. Though Pegg and Urban nailed their characters down pat when they inherited the roles basically everyone else now fits into their established characters especially Pine as Kirk. (just look at the opening prologue)

Also there were a few other references that haven't been mentioned yet on this thread. First besides blowing up the Enterprise, ST: The Search For Spock put the events around Kirk's birthday. While I can understand George's response of his Sulu not being gay, did anyone see that Sulu here had a daughter. Also the Commodore's name was great. Nicholas Locarno anyone?:smallwink::smalltongue:

Also kept getting that feeling with the Franklin that Archer was going to pop up at any moment and demand his ship back. That's how good their work constructing a similar era vessel was to me. Nicely punned with Kirk looking at Jaylah sitting in "The Chair."

With Yelchin's death, there are any number of characters that could fill that void. Jaylah could fill it after another four years or so. Kevin Riley almost immediately. There are a few others, but they are either one offs or weren't in that kind of field of work in the time period. Rand for example.

Rodin

2016-07-31, 07:07 PM

With Yelchin's death, there are any number of characters that could fill that void. Jaylah could fill it after another four years or so. Kevin Riley almost immediately. There are a few others, but they are either one offs or weren't in that kind of field of work in the time period. Rand for example.

Jaylah is probably the most likely replacement, but if that doesn't work out (say, her actress doesn't want to return for whatever reason) I'd say Yeoman Rand is probably the best bet. Most Trekkies will recognize Yeoman Rand, wheras I had to look up Riley. I really only remembered him as "that guy who took over Engineering and sang songs" after looking up who he was. Expanding Yeoman Rand's role from glorified secretary would be a very good move, I feel. Sticking either Jayla or Rand in the bridge grew also helps with the gender imbalance, which the movies have done their best to address but are still a little stuck based on the original casting of TOS.

The other possibilities would be Arex and M'Ress from the Animated Series. Both have the advantage of being aliens, to mix up the bridge crew a bit and make things feel more sci-fi. Arex was actually a navigator, so he'd fit well but I don't think he's as well known as M'Ress.

Scowling Dragon

2016-07-31, 07:10 PM

This was a mediocre film, and goddawful star trek. I have no idea what people mean by it "Being different" more mcguffins, ,more mindlessly evil villains, lots of action, very little interesting sci fi concepts, lots of dumb explosions.

Very neat envrionmental design, but not much else.

Chen

2016-08-01, 07:54 AM

Quiver

2016-08-01, 08:06 AM

Can I just chime in as someone who likes Enterprise and say that I loved all the references that that show got out?

I know that Enterprise is... not exactly the most popular (or for that matter best) show in the franchise... but it's the one I watched the most of, and I felt had the most squandered potential. So.

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-01, 09:13 AM

Really it felt like a long ToS or early TNG episode. I think that's why people are saying it felt more like Star Trek than the last one.

Agreed, the movies are always going to be more shallow than the show was, simply due to having to appeal to a wider audience. But it felt more like Star Trek than the last two. Incredible Technology (Yorktown), Ancient Doomsday Weapons (The MacGuffin wheel thing), even a touch of Philosophy (Kirk's log about finding himself, Kraal being a bit of 'what happens to warriors without war), it was pretty fun, and they've definitely got a better handle on the setting and characters than they did in the last two.

I agree that I'd like to see something with the Klingons or Romulans or Cardassians. The Cardassians never got a movie about them after all.

Oh and seeing them use the Minmei attack had me laughing too much to care about how dumb it was. It could only have been better if the Franklin had been named Daedalus or Prometheus.

Legato Endless

2016-08-01, 09:44 AM

I know that Enterprise is... not exactly the most popular (or for that matter best) show in the franchise... but it's the one I watched the most of, and I felt had the most squandered potential. So.

Indeed. Voyager is probably first for me of a premise I'd love to see that was in no way explored by the show. Surviving completely alone and then setting up a new Federation out in the depths of unknown space could have been pretty fantastic to watch, had the show possessed any consistency and continuity or ambition to be anything other than the retreat it was. Instead we watched this pristine model explore the depths of space for 7 years, pretty much unchanged. Hell, the whole Federation-Maquis Crew integration could have been the subject of a full season of characterization rather then, well I guess we're all in the same crew now.

LaZodiac

2016-08-01, 11:32 AM

I'm surprised no one asked the question I did with this movie.

What happened to the original race of planet Ultimate?

We know they had a bee like hive mind network of mining vessels, and they had strange nanomachine bio weapons...hmm.

Could it be...we're building up to the Borg?

Spojaz

2016-08-01, 01:06 PM

What happened to the original race of planet Ultimate?

I figured they were all killed by the Ultimate Frisbee, the vampire armor, or the space bees.

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-01, 01:28 PM

I figured they were all killed by the Ultimate Frisbee, the vampire armor, or the space bees.

It was implied that they lost control of the weapon, which would in turn imply that their numbers were devastated. I assume once they shut it off and separated it, the last of their people separated to take the pieces of it far from one another.

Why they didn't toss it into a star of a black hole is beyond me though.

Chen

2016-08-01, 01:41 PM

It was implied that they lost control of the weapon, which would in turn imply that their numbers were devastated. I assume once they shut it off and separated it, the last of their people separated to take the pieces of it far from one another.

Why they didn't toss it into a star of a black hole is beyond me though.

Or you know, shoot it with some sort of energy weapon they appeared to have. Or break it with a rock. It didn't look particularly indestructible or anything.

Janus

2016-08-01, 02:53 PM

"You gave your girlfriend radioactive jewelry?"
"The radiation is miniscule and harmless, however it is easily recognizable when scanned."
"You gave your girlfriend a tracking device?"
".....................that was not my intention."

I wanted Jaylah and Scotty to get married and have babies.

Lethologica

2016-08-01, 04:02 PM

Apropos of nothing, it occurred to me that Krall's ideology would be 100% correct if he lived in the Pokemon universe. Time for a crossover.

Legato Endless

2016-08-01, 05:53 PM

Apropos of nothing, it occurred to me that Krall's ideology would be 100% correct if he lived in the Pokemon universe. Time for a crossover.

Really any universe with RPG mechanics.

Rodin

2016-08-02, 07:57 AM

Or you know, shoot it with some sort of energy weapon they appeared to have. Or break it with a rock. It didn't look particularly indestructible or anything.

Possibly a case of making it impossible for any one faction to use it? The weapon is considered too powerful to be trusted to anyone, so they divide it up but don't want to destroy it in case they need it. Of course, that does raise the question of why they never reunited the pieces to prevent whatever disaster wiped them out. And why they couldn't just destroy the current one and then build a new one if necessary. I guess that last one could be justified by "it's really difficult and time consuming and it's easier to re-unite the two pieces then build it from scratch".

Overall though, not gonna try and defend it. Like I said previously, the villain was the weakest part and I really wish they'd cease with the super-villain of the week syndrome. I mean, you could actually remove Krall and stick in some lore about the super-weapon and the race that built it instead and the movie would be improved. He really wasn't necessary for the plot of the movie to happen.

factotum

2016-08-02, 10:26 AM

Just read a news article saying Beyond's takings have crashed hard in its second week and that it may not even turn a profit if the trend continues. Could be bad news for the rebooted Star Trek franchise if so.

Spojaz

2016-08-02, 10:35 AM

That is the case for a lot of established brands. Any new movie in one of those comes with a group of people who will see it regardless, and a group of people who won't see it regardless. Die-hard fans see it in the first week, and it doesn't have much of the "oh I heard it was good from a buddy at work" the way unbranded movies do, it's more "no thanks I don't really like ____".

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-02, 02:15 PM

It's also a result of studios releasing ALL THE MOVIES at the same time. One of the reasons Deadpool did so well was that it came out on Valentine's Day, and had no competition of a similar Genre for weeks.

Rodin

2016-08-02, 04:32 PM

Yeah, looking at major movies that are out right now or about to open (just going by the front page of Rotten Tomatoes):

Star Trek: Beyond
Secret Life of Pets
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ghostbusters
Finding Dory
Legend of Tarzan
Jason Bourne
Suicide Squad
Independence Day: Resurgence

-------

I've found myself getting movie fatigue myself, so I'm not surprised that numbers are depressed.

Palanan

2016-08-02, 09:16 PM

BlueHerring

2016-08-02, 09:22 PM

It's a definite improvement over Into Darkness, that's for sure. It isn't perfect by any stretch, but it's a solid film on its own right.

Mando Knight

2016-08-02, 10:27 PM

The strengths of the movie are, I feel, in how it uses the main characters. The plot isn't perfect, the villain's motivations are weak and under defined (though probably not really much more so than, say, Colonel West's from Undiscovered Country), and yes they did write a certain scene in a way just so they could use Sabotage in the film proper.

However, unlike Into Darkness, if you liked the original TOS cast and characters, you'll probably enjoy how the characters in Beyond feel. It's really a movie about the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic, almost like a TOS episode with a new-Trek flair.

LaZodiac

2016-08-02, 11:09 PM

Okay, I've scrolled down this page without looking at any comments, because I haven't seen the movie yet and wanted to ask a simple question: Should I?

I enjoyed the first reboot in 2009, mainly because I was willing to roll with it and give the new team a chance. Unfortunately I loathed Into Darkness, for more reasons than I care to tell.

So, given that…where does Beyond fit in? Is it a high-octane, low-neuron wild ride with a dash of sincere emotion? Or, as I fear, is it embarrassing garbage with all the hokey and none of the heart?

Does it rescue the trilogy, or grind it thoroughly into the dirt?

As someone who did actually like the first two, I can say that Beyond is the best of them.

Lethologica

2016-08-03, 01:27 AM

Okay, I've scrolled down this page without looking at any comments, because I haven't seen the movie yet and wanted to ask a simple question: Should I?

I enjoyed the first reboot in 2009, mainly because I was willing to roll with it and give the new team a chance. Unfortunately I loathed Into Darkness, for more reasons than I care to tell.

So, given that…where does Beyond fit in? Is it a high-octane, low-neuron wild ride with a dash of sincere emotion? Or, as I fear, is it embarrassing garbage with all the hokey and none of the heart?

Does it rescue the trilogy, or grind it thoroughly into the dirt?
Well, it's a low-neuron ride with humor and a dash of sincere emotion. Not that high-octane, not that hokey. The main characters aren't deeply engaging, but they're entertaining and not cringe-worthy. It won't rescue the series, but it isn't a series-killer.

Binks

2016-08-03, 11:41 AM

Okay, I've scrolled down this page without looking at any comments, because I haven't seen the movie yet and wanted to ask a simple question: Should I?
Well considering you were more forgiving of the first movie than I, I would say you probably should at least give it a shot. I almost didn't, because I disliked 2009 and hated Into Darkness, but I greatly enjoyed this one. I wouldn't say it's quite as dumb as some others are making it out to be. It has it's plot holes and idiot balls, but they're no more noticeable than in a standard movie these days. Once the movie gets to the planet and we're through the preliminary stuff it's really good, good enough to make me not care about how dumb some of the plot points were at least.

At worst, wait for the DVD release and give it a shot then. I loathe theaters, and I don't think it was quite good enough to overcome that enough for me to recommend that as an experience, but it's certainly worth a watch.

Rogar Demonblud

2016-08-03, 11:50 AM

If you're going to see it in the theater, you may want to try for the discount matinee if you're this unsure about it. If nothing else, you have more money for popcorn.

Lacuna Caster

2016-08-03, 02:01 PM

I'm a bit perplexed by the reviews, since this was the first Star Trek movie that actually bored me stiff for about an hour-and-a-half. Even when previous installments had been bad, they at least held my attention.

I felt that the entire first, second, and half of the third act were empty stakes-free gymnastics where I knew perfectly well that no-one was remotely in danger, no scheme, however hare-brained, could fail, and I had no idea why the villain was doing anything or going about it in such a convoluted manner. I already know who these characters are, so I don't feel particularly enlightened by the knowledge that Bones is probing and querulous or that Kirk is all gumption, while the writers continue to use a very odd definition of 'logic' so they can dump all over it through Spock's thin screed of rationalisation.

I warmed a bit in the second half of the third act once the movie bothered to explain who the villain is and what his beef was meant to be, but at that point it seemed pretty perfunctory.

...We are definitely still in Kansas, Toto.

Olinser

2016-08-03, 07:02 PM

Okay, I've scrolled down this page without looking at any comments, because I haven't seen the movie yet and wanted to ask a simple question: Should I?

I enjoyed the first reboot in 2009, mainly because I was willing to roll with it and give the new team a chance. Unfortunately I loathed Into Darkness, for more reasons than I care to tell.

So, given that…where does Beyond fit in? Is it a high-octane, low-neuron wild ride with a dash of sincere emotion? Or, as I fear, is it embarrassing garbage with all the hokey and none of the heart?

Does it rescue the trilogy, or grind it thoroughly into the dirt?

It's a solid movie (up until the ending and the stupid way they killed off the ships). Definitely not the best Trek movie, but definitely nowhere near as bad as train wrecks like Nemesis.

It was 8/10 before the ending, that bumped it down to about a 6 or 7 out of 10 for me. Worth seeing in the theatre once, but you aren't going to come out saying OMG THAT WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

Olinser

2016-08-03, 07:34 PM

Possibly a case of making it impossible for any one faction to use it? The weapon is considered too powerful to be trusted to anyone, so they divide it up but don't want to destroy it in case they need it. Of course, that does raise the question of why they never reunited the pieces to prevent whatever disaster wiped them out. And why they couldn't just destroy the current one and then build a new one if necessary. I guess that last one could be justified by "it's really difficult and time consuming and it's easier to re-unite the two pieces then build it from scratch".

Overall though, not gonna try and defend it. Like I said previously, the villain was the weakest part and I really wish they'd cease with the super-villain of the week syndrome. I mean, you could actually remove Krall and stick in some lore about the super-weapon and the race that built it instead and the movie would be improved. He really wasn't necessary for the plot of the movie to happen.

My understanding was that the weapon WAS the disaster that almost wiped them out, they separated the pieces because they didn't have a safe way to dispose of it, and then what was left of their species died out leaving all of their tech abandoned on the planet.

Remember, the weapon wasn't destroyed at the end. It was just launched into space but is still active. Sooner or later it's going to hit something. Presumably its creators did not consider that an acceptable option.

Rodin

2016-08-03, 09:10 PM

My understanding was that the weapon WAS the disaster that almost wiped them out, they separated the pieces because they didn't have a safe way to dispose of it, and then what was left of their species died out leaving all of their tech abandoned on the planet.

Remember, the weapon wasn't destroyed at the end. It was just launched into space but is still active. Sooner or later it's going to hit something. Presumably its creators did not consider that an acceptable option.

Because Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! :smallbiggrin:

Tyndmyr

2016-08-05, 10:51 AM

As someone who did actually like the first two, I can say that Beyond is the best of them.

If you liked the first two, it's a cinch you'll like this one. Basically, they're all the same movie.

Opening shot on background stuff. Oh look, conflict. Turns out the big bad is someone who is pissed at Starfleet for some long ago event that our heroes are of course, entirely blameless in, and who is gonna use a poorly defined superweapon on 'em. He will be defeated via blowing up everything, but mostly the Enterprise. At the end of the movie, everyone's motives and desires will be the same as they were beforehand, and the board will be reset for the next installment of Star Wars: Blowing Stuff Up.

Kitten Champion

2016-08-05, 12:24 PM

If you liked the first two, it's a cinch you'll like this one. Basically, they're all the same movie.

Opening shot on background stuff. Oh look, conflict. Turns out the big bad is someone who is pissed at Starfleet for some long ago event that our heroes are of course, entirely blameless in, and who is gonna use a poorly defined superweapon on 'em. He will be defeated via blowing up everything, but mostly the Enterprise. At the end of the movie, everyone's motives and desires will be the same as they were beforehand, and the board will be reset for the next installment of Star Wars: Blowing Stuff Up.

Yeah, except Into Darkness didn't have a super-weapon, just a bigger ship. Though, that answers the question of why I think this should have been the first movie here, it accomplished everything the others did yet again but without the Kurtzman and Orci-ness that was just painful as someone who likes movies in general.

That is to say - despite motorcycling Kirk and the Beastie Boys - this wasn't slathered in "this ain't your parent's Star Trek, to da X-treme!!!1" or lots of annoying or confusing script moments like obnoxious TOS references or just plain apathy at the logic of their script leading to eye-rolling contrivances like magic blood or transwarp beaming.

This movie certainly isn't perfect in that regard, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't going out of its way to smack me in the face with them either. As if the people writing it actually liked Star Trek... even if they were very much running with 2016 summer action blockbuster blinders firmly on.

Kato

2016-08-05, 04:33 PM

So, just got back (more or less) and I liked it well enough.

I... won't say more than Into Darkness because I really liked that, albeit I'll admit in large part because I liked Cumberbatch's Khan. Yes, yes, get your torches and pitchforkes right here, people :smalltongue:

Beyond... hm, I really can't say I cared much for the villain. The reveal towards the end surprisingly helped a bit but maybe because I didn't give a **** about him beforehand. That made him kind of relevant.
The character dynamics were fine up to good. The best parts were just characters being themselves for me. Especially from a comedic POV.
While this is not a subject I enjoy... I felt the female characters were pretty useless. The double agent alien felt pretty pointless and suddenly died. The survivor alien felt like nothing would have been lost without her (maybe apart from a few jokes) and Uhura was there to... be Spock's love interest. Again.
The action was mostly fine. A few things were weird, like Kirk and Chekov's run through the crashed Enterprise and the camera suddenly zooming in and out... yay? Or the end of the rescue/escape sequence... I'm sorry, that was terrible. I know this is Kirk but do you really need such cartoony action?
Of course, logic has to take a back seat once in a while and I could hear CinemaSins blabbering on and on about all kinds of things already (not sure if that is a blessing or a curse)

minor note: The scenes related to Old Spock all worked well for me.

Again, conclusion: Good movie, entertaining enough, but could have used a way better villain.

norman250

2016-08-05, 04:45 PM

I actually didn't care for it all that much, as the dialogue was pretty janky and the villain was one-dimensional and paper-thin with absolutely no motivation.

Other than that, sound, editing, action, comedy, all great. Solid 6-7/10 for me.

norman250

2016-08-05, 04:47 PM

It's a solid movie (up until the ending and the stupid way they killed off the ships). Definitely not the best Trek movie, but definitely nowhere near as bad as train wrecks like Nemesis.

It was 8/10 before the ending, that bumped it down to about a 6 or 7 out of 10 for me. Worth seeing in the theatre once, but you aren't going to come out saying OMG THAT WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

Pretty much my take on it as well.

Rodin

2016-08-05, 09:18 PM

Yeah, except Into Darkness didn't have a super-weapon, just a bigger ship. Though, that answers the question of why I think this should have been the first movie here, it accomplished everything the others did yet again but without the Kurtzman and Orci-ness that was just painful as someone who likes movies in general.

That is to say - despite motorcycling Kirk and the Beastie Boys - this wasn't slathered in "this ain't your parent's Star Trek, to da X-treme!!!1" or lots of annoying or confusing script moments like obnoxious TOS references or just plain apathy at the logic of their script leading to eye-rolling contrivances like magic blood or transwarp beaming.

This movie certainly isn't perfect in that regard, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't going out of its way to smack me in the face with them either. As if the people writing it actually liked Star Trek... even if they were very much running with 2016 summer action blockbuster blinders firmly on.

What I kinda suspect happened here is that Pegg wrote it as true Star Trek fan, and then it got run through the Hollywood blender and they had to shoe-horn a supervillain and action sequences into it. That's why there appears to be two different movies - one molded very much on a classic TOS episode, and one that is a summer blockbuster in the vein of the first Abrams movie. The attempt to smoosh the two together into one coherent movie was only partially successful - they did a decent job, but them having to do so at all makes me wonder what we could have gotten.

Hopeless

2016-08-06, 05:43 AM

Finally watched Into Darkness yesterday.

Quite liked it, couldn't help noticing it could have been better but until I read the novelisation my head canon is that "Khan" is actually the grandson of the original.

When Marcus found the Botany Bay he revived the kids and reared them as his personal new recruits.

So Khan Jr finds out about his grandfather and is ordered by Marcus to bomb that archive to help set up the Federation-Klingon War.

Experimented upon, Khan Jnr develops a healing factor that apparently is able to rejuvenate recently deceased cells and even heal radiation damage.

The Not Mickey whose daughter is dying from a radiation based illness chooses to sacrifice his life to save his daughter but he notifies a friend before he sets off the bomb.
With "Harrison" revealed, Marcus pins the blame for the bombing on Khan Jr and sets up the next part of his plan which is how Khan Jr knows when and where the Starfleet Officers are having their urgent meeting about dealing with him.

Kirk neatly disables Khan's jump ship forcing him to use Scottie's one shot portable transwarp transporter eventually arriving on Kronos via a series of beacons that are neatly destroyed afterwards to cover up the fact Harrison is working for Section 31.

Marcus sends Kirk to Kronos disabling the Enterprise's warp drive when it wasn't necessary forcing Kirk to use a capture trade ship to pick up Harrison who realises what's really inside those torpedoes.

Marcus has no idea Harrison hid his people inside the modified torpedoes, he finds out when Kirk tells him and ports them along with his daughter once he realises she's aboard.

The prototype Titan class starship (well given how big it is...) is Scottified and ask the crew of the Excelsior if you think that's not a thing!

No matter how much faster the Titan is, its still can't blast away at a starship at warp speed now my version it clips the warp field of the Enterprise causing its fail safes to activate returning it to sublight speed.

The sabotage warp core after all would need to be jettisoned to avoid blowing up the Enterprise but that alerts Starfleet as Kirk's communication to Marcus is actually transmitted openly and Marcus already in full on psychosis fails to understand he just admitted to everything that happened allowing for the Earth forces to turn on him.

This gives Kirk and Khan Jr the chance to board the understaffed warship as Scottie runs interference.

Khan seizes control of the Titan but whilst he monologues one of Scotties parting gifts disables his ship sending it careering down to the planet below.

Have Kirk get hurt jettisoning the warp core rather than just exposure to the core itself so he needs a blood transfusion from Khan Jr to survive.

Most of the rest is fine.

Most of the mistakes stem from the first Star Trek reboot movie, for example the Romulan Borg ship having survived time travel through a black hole has a system failure allowing the Klingons to seize the ship so the Kelvin survived the battle but use Marcus and his ilk treating Kirk Senior as if he betrayed the Federation to highlight there is something very wrong with Starfleet.

That helps set up the Into Darkness sequel better.

Kirk enters the academy normally and Pike recruits him to serve as part of his bridge crew rather than recruit him into Starfleet and the ignore the fact he hasn't spent enough time in training nor actual service to get anywhere near a starship as an officer!

Have Kirk serve aboard the Farragut and make his dad involved in the resulting battle that destroys Vulcan so rather than Kirk being dumped on that moon to find Original Spock he ends up on his dad's ship and they rendezvous with the Enterprise and with the realisation that Kirk's dad has prior experience with the bad guy they set up the plan necessary to board the enemy ship and get Spock to Original Spock's ship and then have the two ships involved in the subsequent rematch except the Farragut helps tow out the Enterprise once it ejects its warp core...

Haven't watched Star Trek Beyond yet does any of the above make those a better movie as far as you're concerned?

Misery Esquire

2016-08-06, 08:54 PM

That is to say - despite motorcycling Kirk and the Beastie Boys - this wasn't slathered in "this ain't your parent's Star Trek, to da X-treme!!!1" or lots of annoying or confusing script moments like obnoxious TOS references or just plain apathy at the logic of their script leading to eye-rolling contrivances like magic blood or transwarp beaming.

To note first off ; movie is fairly good. Certainly not bad. Not incredibly impressive, but it successfully felt as if we had a two-episode special presented out of the middle of a Star Trek series. Not lacking, not amazing but enjoyable. The... Pause in the middle to show how teh evulz the villain is was pretty awkward, but so was Star Trek Insurrection's brief segue into torture-murder.

Now, then. The first thing that came to mind as they setup the climax was how many other songs would be hilarious/excellent to dub over it. Live and Let Die, Ride of the Valkyries, Halo's Rock Anthem For Saving The World, something something DragonForce... or Nyancat. :smalltongue:

Kitten Champion

2016-08-07, 05:54 AM

My main issue with the villain is simply that, they're trying to convey a point with him being this regressive militaristic extremist juxtaposed to the happy-shining contemporary Federation (Beyond being the most complementary to the Roddenberry ideal of these reboot movies) but at the same time he's clearly insane. It presents no real ideological conflict when the main villain is obviously irrational, it can, if you give the villain some restraint and mix madness with a degree of sense like with the Joker and his nihilistic misanthropy in Dark Knight, but he didn't get time for that.

They were more interested in keeping him enigmatic for the twist at the end, but at that point they were in full action mode and he decayed considerably.

Kalmageddon

2016-08-07, 06:22 AM

This is probably the first time in my moviegoing experience that I don't understand why people are liking a movie so much, especially in the geek department.
I went to see this movie with exactly 0% hope that it would be anything more than an average action movie experience, good to pass an evening with friends but nothing more.
Afterwards I got out of the theatre thinking I got exactly what I was expecting.
Then, out of curiosity, I check out the public reaction to this movie and I find out that everyone is loving it. :smallconfused:

Because it feels like an actual episode from Star Trek? I guess it does, but none of the good ones. There is no important theme being tackled here, no sense of coming out of the experience with some interesting thoughts to ponder over.

All the other praises merge into a blur for me. I didn't like the movie but I didn't hate it. I thought it was completely forgettable. The only thing I felt was deserving mention was that the action sequences were too fast and too closely shot to make out what was going on far too many times. And when it wasn't it just wasn't very good.
The movie was completely "ok" in all departments and I just can't understand why it's getting all this praise.

Lacuna Caster

2016-08-07, 07:02 AM

If you liked the first two, it's a cinch you'll like this one. Basically, they're all the same movie.

Opening shot on background stuff. Oh look, conflict. Turns out the big bad is someone who is pissed at Starfleet for some long ago event that our heroes are of course, entirely blameless in, and who is gonna use a poorly defined superweapon on 'em. He will be defeated via blowing up everything, but mostly the Enterprise. At the end of the movie, everyone's motives and desires will be the same as they were beforehand, and the board will be reset for the next installment of Star Wars: Blowing Stuff Up.
While agreeing 100% with this synopsis, I think this was the basic reason why I felt so bored this time around. There's nothing here to surprise me.

I didn't dislike the first two reboot movies- I recognised they were perfectly functional action flicks that neatly coloured in the pre-established Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity and did... something with the supporting cast, even if they weren't really Star Trek in anything but name. (I should remark that Star Trek, for me, means something closer to 'high-concept murder mysteries in space' rather than 'pan-racial humanist utopia'. Props to the latter and all, but I'm a rationalist.)

Lacuna Caster

2016-08-07, 07:09 AM

Kitten Champion

2016-08-07, 08:06 AM

Also this.

But seriously- do all these folks who complained about transwarp beaming and super-blood suddenly have no problem with humans turning into scaly chi-vampires for reasons of suspense and FM radio being the achilles heel of 24th-century swarm AI? How does that work?

The problem with the beaming and blood was they're used to resolve problems for the screenwriter who was cobbling together a story wherein its internal logic could bend to whatever was convenient. The beaming was needed so that Pine could have a scene with Nimoy in which he could explain the overall plot and motive of the villain while also being a cameo, and then in Into Darkness it got Khan to Klingon territory instantly so the plot could move there from the terrorist attack at Starfleet headquarters. The magic blood let them reuse Wrath of Khan's ending but without any of the emotional impact because it was clear they weren't going to kill Kirk for franchise reasons and the method of his resurrection was obvious.

In Beyond, it was stuff I've seen in Trek constantly. Using techtech to get around problems straight force couldn't resolve is 90% of their repertoire - the other 10% being shirtless fist fights - and humans changing into monsters is a regular feature throughout the franchise. That's well-trodden ground, is what I'm saying. The only thing that makes the former notable is they used it to play Sabotage as per Abrams' and likely Paramount's marketing departments designs, rather than interferometrics or poking Locutus Picard with a stick. It's not at all original, but it doesn't feel like they simply didn't care and went with whatever.

LaZodiac

2016-08-07, 09:30 AM

Legato Endless

2016-08-07, 11:44 AM

Because it feels like an actual episode from Star Trek? I guess it does, but none of the good ones. There is no important theme being tackled here, no sense of coming out of the experience with some interesting thoughts to ponder over.

Agreed.

If you're going to see a blockbuster this week, it's a fair choice better than most of the competition, certainly better than the Bourne Regression or Suicide Squad. But I could forgive the minor nonsense in the film as the usual Trek if it had some ideas to crunch on.

Lacuna Caster

2016-08-07, 12:59 PM

In Beyond, it was stuff I've seen in Trek constantly. Using techtech to get around problems straight force couldn't resolve is 90% of their repertoire - the other 10% being shirtless fist fights - and humans changing into monsters is a regular feature throughout the franchise. That's well-trodden ground, is what I'm saying. The only thing that makes the former notable is they used it to play Sabotage as per Abrams' and likely Paramount's marketing departments designs, rather than interferometrics or poking Locutus Picard with a stick. It's not at all original, but it doesn't feel like they simply didn't care and went with whatever.
I dunno. I was kinda getting that vibe. Like... continuously, for 90 minutes.

I know that Star Trek's specific presentation of RL physics/biology/economics/etc. is usually (A) pure nonsense or (B) entirely fictitious and hopelessly self-contradictory, so... ah, jeez, this is hard to explain. I guess it's more about procedure than content- if you pick a particular episode and look at the story structure, they're often about using some combination of fact-finding, experiment and *gasp* math to solve problems (with a hat tipped to intuition or diplomacy or socialism or whatever the bleeding heart issue might be that week.) My point being that while the final solution might well be gibberish, the format used for the logical teasing apart of an exotic phenomenon isn't.

So sure, a wizened-castaway-lizard-Sisko isn't especially outré by Trek norms. But resolving his identity is purely incidental- it changed nothing about how to negate the threat he posed and did little to illumine his motives. And they don't spend large chunks of the second act elaborating on how to sabotage the enemy fleet. They extricate a solution from their collective asses in under fifty seconds. I wasn't expecting much better by now, but it still feels borderline-contemptuous.

Because "I have techtech that eats lives to make me live longer, but it slots their DNA into me like building blocks to do so and thus makes my appearance warp and change" is such a standard Star Trek thing it just makes intrinsic sense in the universe.

Beastie Boys Save The Universe is ridiculous but it's also really fun.
...I was not familiar with the term 'techtech'. Thank you for that.

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-08, 10:30 AM

I still really want to see the part where they play Sabotage dubbed over with something from Macross because COME ON.

laotze

2016-08-08, 10:35 AM

Star Trek 13 was pretty ok. Better than the last one anyway. First half hour of it and about 40 minutes more throughout could've been cut for pacing and to make the plot feel a little less idiotic. Was interesting to see Mass Effect's Citadel stolen part and parcel, kind of a neat little circle of life when you think about it.

Tyndmyr

2016-08-08, 11:37 AM

Yeah, except Into Darkness didn't have a super-weapon, just a bigger ship. Though, that answers the question of why I think this should have been the first movie here, it accomplished everything the others did yet again but without the Kurtzman and Orci-ness that was just painful as someone who likes movies in general.

Khan was the superweapon. Not in some metaphorical sense, they straight up say as much. They decided that race as superweapons, then loaded them into torpedos. And, of course, Khan provides the 11th hour threat.

There's a definite pattern to these, I think.

While agreeing 100% with this synopsis, I think this was the basic reason why I felt so bored this time around. There's nothing here to surprise me.

I didn't dislike the first two reboot movies- I recognised they were perfectly functional action flicks that neatly coloured in the pre-established Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity and did... something with the supporting cast, even if they weren't really Star Trek in anything but name. (I should remark that Star Trek, for me, means something closer to 'high-concept murder mysteries in space' rather than 'pan-racial humanist utopia'. Props to the latter and all, but I'm a rationalist.)

Yeah. It wasn't bad, it was just...not really surprising or exciting. Lots of pretty shots.

I do think it had a lot more potential, though. Like, swarm-fighting is cool. Seeing that was nifty, and I hoped it would develop into something interesting. How does the Federation deal with swarms that convert things into itself, borglike? Different take on an old theme or whatever. Nah. I guess the answer is because strength and individuality, which doesn't even make sense.

Olinser

2016-08-08, 07:33 PM

Khan was the superweapon. Not in some metaphorical sense, they straight up say as much. They decided that race as superweapons, then loaded them into torpedos. And, of course, Khan provides the 11th hour threat.

There's a definite pattern to these, I think.

Yeah. It wasn't bad, it was just...not really surprising or exciting. Lots of pretty shots.

I do think it had a lot more potential, though. Like, swarm-fighting is cool. Seeing that was nifty, and I hoped it would develop into something interesting. How does the Federation deal with swarms that convert things into itself, borglike? Different take on an old theme or whatever. Nah. I guess the answer is because strength and individuality, which doesn't even make sense.

Meh. They've done swarm ships a few times in Trek - the Suliban from Enterprise, the Swarm ships from Voyager (that I don't think they ever got an actual name, the episode was literally titled 'The Swarm'), and I vaguely remember something from TNG. The problem with swarm ships is that the tech necessary to actually make a swarm size ship WORK is directly contradictory with everything else in the ST universe.

Namely, if ships that size actually were capable of carrying weapons that could threaten full sized ships, why would any military build capital ships? The fact that groups that explicitly build combat ships like the Klingons or the Romulans are not building carriers and fighters tell us that smaller ships are inferior. Even the Jem'Hadar 'fighters' from DS9 were effectively small capital ships, they had a crew of around 20 and could carry more troops. The runabouts from DS9 were more because the Federation couldn't spare actual full sized ships to be at the station, and they couldn't even scratch the smallest capital ships without some DXM helping them out.

Something the size of a swarm ship would have incredibly weak weapons and shielding, to the point a couple wide dispersion torpedoes should be able to take out the whole swarm. Their success against full size ships has completely relied on gimmicks. The only reason they were able to take out Enterprise was they caught them completely by surprise, when they attacked Yorktown they likewise caught it completely by surprise and still had to draw off the ships normally stationed there before they could risk attacking the station.

Lacuna Caster

2016-08-09, 03:44 AM

Yeah. It wasn't bad, it was just...not really surprising or exciting. Lots of pretty shots.

I do think it had a lot more potential, though. Like, swarm-fighting is cool. Seeing that was nifty, and I hoped it would develop into something interesting. How does the Federation deal with swarms that convert things into itself, borglike? Different take on an old theme or whatever. Nah. I guess the answer is because strength and individuality, which doesn't even make sense.

Namely, if ships that size actually were capable of carrying weapons that could threaten full sized ships, why would any military build capital ships?
I think the idea was more that the individual ships were the weapons, with the pilots mostly being a boarding crew? I felt it was a pretty good take on the drones/guided-missiles vs aircraft-carrier interplay that you... don't really see happening because there's been no major war between superpowers for decades now, but in theory, big costly capital ships with lots of points of central mechanical vulnerability that are mainly kept for global interstellar policing would stack up poorly against a barrage of cheap, dispensable kamikaze units. You can take out 90% of the swarm but it only takes 1 to ram itself into your reactor core. Not clear on why they ignored shields, though?

Legato Endless

2016-08-09, 06:18 AM

Not clear on why they ignored shields, though?

Krall had been monitoring them for some time before the ambush, and he had a spy aboard. Maybe he got ahold of their frequencies a la Generations?

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-12, 08:22 AM

Krall had been monitoring them for some time before the ambush, and he had a spy aboard. Maybe he got ahold of their frequencies a la Generations?

Yeah I'm chalking it up to a matter of having been monitoring them for a long time, and they were also hitting the ship with energy weapons weren't they? That was weakening the shields too.

Kantaki

2016-08-12, 06:30 PM

Good movie. I would even call it a good Star Trek movie. Sure, its not The undiscovered Country or First Contact, but it is definitely better than some other Star Trek movies.

Sure, the way they dealt with those swarm-ships is ridiculous, but in the best way.
And it is something that wouldn't be entirely out of place in a classic Trek episode. (Okay maybe not quite in this way, but destroying the enemy fleet by jamming their communication, turning their advantage against them? Definitely something that would fit.)

The villain... could have needed a bit more background, but he was interesting.
I can even understand why he rejects the Federation philosophy* and feels betrayed. I don't agree with him- even if I dislike the Federation -but can see how his history (and a century of using some kind of technological vampirism melting his brain) shaped his worldview.

*He can be grateful he didn't have Picard as a opponent.

Foeofthelance

2016-08-12, 06:40 PM

Also this.

But seriously- do all these folks who complained about transwarp beaming and super-blood suddenly have no problem with humans turning into scaly chi-vampires for reasons of suspense and FM radio being the achilles heel of 24th-century swarm AI? How does that work?

Because using FM radio to beat the swarm actually made logical sense. When you have a lot of things moving very quickly in a very small space, they need to be coordinated extremely well. hile in swarm-mode, the drone ships were slaved to an external guidance system. Interfere with the guidance system, and you suddenly have a lot of very quickly moving items in a small space operating under their own control. If the pilots don't have fast enough reflexes, they smash into things. It's why they told McCoy and Spock to get clear before they launched the attack, because once they did the swarm was going to become entirely unpredictable. It's also why they had to get into the middle of the swarm; most ships are vast distances apart, and so use whatever subspace communications device they rely on to get FTL communications. The swarm was using something relatively short range and outside most communications systems ability to interfere with. If they had just tried to play FM at the Swarm, the signals wouldn't have arrived in time to do Yorktown any good. Playing Sabotage was just because it was fun for the crew.

What's really bugging me, though, is why, when they were rebuilding the ship at the end, was the NCC1701-A? Isn't this the third one they've had to build so far? Shouldn't that make it the C by default?

Legato Endless

2016-08-12, 07:01 PM

What's really bugging me, though, is why, when they were rebuilding the ship at the end, was the NCC1701-A? Isn't this the third one they've had to build so far? Shouldn't that make it the C by default?

The Letter bit is meant to be symbolize a succession following the 'original', so like in Star Trek IV it's the beginning of a series starting with A. You could retroactively give them letters...but that's arguably more confusing for the audience and the general public. Also, there's been a lot of vessels previously named Enterprise. Archer's NX, the XCV, NASA's OV-101 Shuttlecraft, that US naval ship they steal nuclear materials in The Voyage Home, etc.

Psyren

2016-08-12, 07:22 PM

If you had told me last year that

The Enterprise crew using rap music to defeat space vampires

would be the plot of a Star Trek movie, I wouldn't have believed you, but here we are.

Binks

2016-08-12, 09:23 PM

If you had told me last year that

The Enterprise crew using rap music to defeat space vampires

would be the plot of a Star Trek movie, I wouldn't have believed you, but here we are.
I mean, you can kind of do that with any of the Trek movies...

Captain Picard's old girlfriend comes back and goes for Data this time, the Enterprise crew forces a drunkard to build a missile for them

Olinser

2016-08-12, 09:44 PM

Because using FM radio to beat the swarm actually made logical sense. When you have a lot of things moving very quickly in a very small space, they need to be coordinated extremely well. hile in swarm-mode, the drone ships were slaved to an external guidance system. Interfere with the guidance system, and you suddenly have a lot of very quickly moving items in a small space operating under their own control. If the pilots don't have fast enough reflexes, they smash into things. It's why they told McCoy and Spock to get clear before they launched the attack, because once they did the swarm was going to become entirely unpredictable. It's also why they had to get into the middle of the swarm; most ships are vast distances apart, and so use whatever subspace communications device they rely on to get FTL communications. The swarm was using something relatively short range and outside most communications systems ability to interfere with. If they had just tried to play FM at the Swarm, the signals wouldn't have arrived in time to do Yorktown any good. Playing Sabotage was just because it was fun for the crew.

What's really bugging me, though, is why, when they were rebuilding the ship at the end, was the NCC1701-A? Isn't this the third one they've had to build so far? Shouldn't that make it the C by default?

No, the last one from Into Darkness was just seriously torn up but repairable. This one they had to rebuild from scratch, which is why it's got the 'A' designation.

Foeofthelance

2016-08-12, 09:50 PM

The Letter bit is meant to be symbolize a succession following the 'original', so like in Star Trek IV it's the beginning of a series starting with A. You could retroactively give them letters...but that's arguably more confusing for the audience and the general public. Also, there's been a lot of vessels previously named Enterprise. Archer's NX, the XCV, NASA's OV-101 Shuttlecraft, that US naval ship they steal nuclear materials in The Voyage Home, etc.

That's sort of what I thought the letters were for. As far as I'm aware, this is the third rebuild of this particular class of ship named Enterprise. So this would be the NCC-1701-C since the first two got blown up. Just as, if memory serves, when Picard took over it was the NCC-1701-D, having gone through several rebuilds by that point. Though looking through the wiki, apparently it should be the 1701-B, not -C, as Starfleet doesn't actually assign the letter until the second ship. Also, apparently Neo-Kirk is much harder on his ships than Prime-Kirk was.

Edit: Ninja'd by the above. I thought the [I]Darkness[I] Enterprise faceplanted into Earth?

Binks

2016-08-12, 10:00 PM

That's sort of what I thought the letters were for. As far as I'm aware, this is the third rebuild of this particular class of ship named Enterprise. So this would be the NCC-1701-C since the first two got blown up. Just as, if memory serves, when Picard took over it was the NCC-1701-D, having gone through several rebuilds by that point. Though looking through the wiki, apparently it should be the 1701-B, not -C, as Starfleet doesn't actually assign the letter until the second ship. Also, apparently Neo-Kirk is much harder on his ships than Prime-Kirk was.

Edit: Ninja'd by the above. I thought the [I]Darkness[I] Enterprise faceplanted into Earth?
In the original universe the only letter change without a change of ship class was the Enterprise -> Enterprise A. The B was an Excelsior, C an ambassador (seen in TNG), D a Galaxy, and the 0E a Sovereign.

Enterprise -> Enterprise A was because they had to build a brand new ship for it rather than taking the damaged parts and rebuilding the ship from them. And since Kirk had to man an Enterprise, Starfleet decided to just append a letter designation to the name that time, and it stuck. At least, original continuity.

Rogar Demonblud

2016-08-12, 10:02 PM

No that was Khan's Dreadnought.

edit: Apparently, it was named the Vengeance. Unsubtle.

Rodin

2016-08-13, 02:19 AM

In the original universe the only letter change without a change of ship class was the Enterprise -> Enterprise A. The B was an Excelsior, C an ambassador (seen in TNG), D a Galaxy, and the 0E a Sovereign.

Enterprise -> Enterprise A was because they had to build a brand new ship for it rather than taking the damaged parts and rebuilding the ship from them. And since Kirk had to man an Enterprise, Starfleet decided to just append a letter designation to the name that time, and it stuck. At least, original continuity.

I thought that Kirk and the gang stole the original Enterprise while the Enterprise A was under construction, and then self-destructed it spectacularly while the Klingons were on board? My very vague recollections of III also remember something about the ship being put out to pasture like the crew (although I may be conflating VI here).

Olinser

2016-08-13, 04:22 AM

I thought that Kirk and the gang stole the original Enterprise while the Enterprise A was under construction, and then self-destructed it spectacularly while the Klingons were on board? My very vague recollections of III also remember something about the ship being put out to pasture like the crew (although I may be conflating VI here).

That is what happened but the two aren't mutually exclusive.

The original Enterprise was almost 40 years old at that point. The Federation was going to decommission and scrap the original and replace it with the Enterprise A, which was still a Constitution class ship.

All other replacements of the Enterprise coincided with an upgrade to a new class of ship, so the progression went Original -> A -> B -> C -> D -> E, with ship types Constitution -> Constitution -> Excelsior -> Ambassador -> Galaxy -> Sovereign

hamishspence

2016-08-13, 04:35 PM

The original Enterprise was almost 40 years old at that point. The Federation was going to decommission and scrap the original and replace it with the Enterprise A, which was still a Constitution class ship.

Actually the Enterprise-A tends to be portrayed as having been renamed specifically for Kirk (since he'd been demoted so as to command it). In the Trek EU, there were several names given - Yorktown, Ti-Ho, and Atlantis. It's not clear what the "Trek Canon" name for the thing was.

Drifter

2016-08-14, 06:31 AM

huttj509

2016-08-14, 07:45 AM

Due to this thread I'm actually starting to get excited for ST:B now.
It sounds fantastic in many ways compared to Into Darkness, despite the best efforts of various cast members on that one, and the inclusion of an actually well-written second female role sold it to me.

I'm plannin to see the 10:30 am showing today (it's the only showing today at the theater by me).

Edit: Ok, I *really* had fun in that movie. Loved it, including the cheesy bit (maybe helps that I was 12 when that song came out, I was bobbing my head grinning like a loon). Felt it was a better Star Trek movie than half the Next Gen films.

Reddish Mage

2016-08-17, 06:53 PM

I think the idea was more that the individual ships were the weapons, with the pilots mostly being a boarding crew? I felt it was a pretty good take on the drones/guided-missiles vs aircraft-carrier interplay that you... don't really see happening because there's been no major war between superpowers for decades now, but in theory, big costly capital ships with lots of points of central mechanical vulnerability that are mainly kept for global interstellar policing would stack up poorly against a barrage of cheap, dispensable kamikaze units. You can take out 90% of the swarm but it only takes 1 to ram itself into your reactor core. Not clear on why they ignored shields, though?

Note that THE FACT that drones/guided missles/swarm ships are effective in contemporary combat is the THE REASON the US and others no longer make battleships or considers other supersize-mobile-weapons. Aircraft are used, not as weapons themselves, but as vehicles for the small size craft.

In Star Trek, we almost never see small ships, almost ALWAYS capital ships. It has been both speculated and mentioned outright by the production staff, that the reason for this is that small fighters are ineffective.

At the risk of yet another Star Trek vs Star Wars thread: Star Wars is different here in that the movies actually revolve around the ability of small fighters to pose a threat to HUGE capital ships even small moon planet-sized!

Kantaki

2016-08-17, 08:27 PM

Note that THE FACT that drones/guided missles/swarm ships are effective in contemporary combat is the THE REASON the US and others no longer make battleships or considers other supersize-mobile-weapons. Aircraft are used, not as weapons themselves, but as vehicles for the small size craft.

In Star Trek, we almost never see small ships, almost ALWAYS capital ships. It has been both speculated and mentioned outright by the production staff, that the reason for this is that small fighters are ineffective.

At the risk of yet another Star Trek vs Star Wars thread: Star Wars is different here in that the movies actually revolve around the ability of small fighters to pose a threat to HUGE capital ships even small moon planet-sized!

With the typical Trek tech fighters are ineffective, sure.
But the swarmships aren't really typical fighters. More like manned torpedoes that can survive the impact and come back to hit you again.
Sure, with their size they can't carry weapons that could hurt a Federation ship (at least not easily), but if they are well armored* they make pretty good ramming weapons/ boarding shuttles- especially if you deploy them in great numbers.
I'm not sure about the warpdrive, but I guess they could have found a way to „link” the individual units together or something like that.

*Speaking of armor, aren’t Starfleet ships mostly held together by spit, string and forcefields? Always seemed as if a hiccup could threaten their integrity. The shields might be the bigger problem and considering the way(s) Krall was observing the heroes finding out the correct frequency shouldn't be too hard.

Binks

2016-08-17, 11:38 PM

*Speaking of armor, aren’t Starfleet ships mostly held together by spit, string and forcefields? Always seemed as if a hiccup could threaten their integrity. The shields might be the bigger problem and considering the way(s) Krall was observing the heroes finding out the correct frequency shouldn't be too hard.
Enterprise era (NX-01) had a structural integrity field, but the Hull Plating was what kept the ship together and was used to reinforce the SiF.

Constitution-class vessels were not obviously armored in the prime timeline but at least one official source put the shield systems of the Enterprise as a replicator that built invisible hull armor (Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Scott%27s_Guide_to_the_Enterprise)). That source is pretty dubious given how the shields were handled in other episodes and in the Kelvin timeline. If we ignore it, there's no evidence that constitution-class ships in the prime timeline had any armor at all (beyond the basics required to maintain inner/outer hull sealing).

By TNG the ships were completely incapable of flying without the SiF for any significant duration. The TNG tech manuals explicitly stated that the Galaxy-class would sustain damage just trying to fly without the SiF. Voyager had a couple of episodes where they lost structural integrity and explicitly noted (on-screen) that Starfleet ships needed the structural integrity fields just to fly (Year of Hell, where the lost external hull plating flying without it, and One where it was apparently mentioned that the warp coils would fail without them).

So yeah, Fed ships aren't really armored. And we have previously seen (in the prime timeline) that the Federation doesn't build to resist collisions (DS9 Jem Hadar "fighters").

And, realistically, the fact that Fed/Rom/Klingon etc standard tech precludes powerful fighter craft doesn't make it impossible for any species to develop dangerous fighter craft. As mentioned previously we already saw Swarm ships in Voyager, so it's not something new to Trek to have a swarm of dangerous fighter craft. 1 of those little ships would have been useless, and 10 an easily handled threat, it was only because Krall found thousands of the things with pilots that he was able to take down the Enterprise. Alien tech has violated the 'rules' of trek in the past (Cytherian space travel that's faster than anything the Fed had, the Breen energy disruptors that were a magic bullet weapon against anything, etc).

Darth Ultron

2016-08-18, 12:05 AM

In Star Trek, we almost never see small ships, almost ALWAYS capital ships. It has been both speculated and mentioned outright by the production staff, that the reason for this is that small fighters are ineffective.

!

In the Dominion War both the Federation and the Cardasians had ''fighter wings'' . And the Dominion had thousands of them little ''beetle'' fighter craft. We also see the Federation use Runabout class ships as fighters. Most Star Trek ''fighters'' are big enough for a dozen or so crew making them more ''B-17 flying fortresses'' over ''F-22''s.

Mando Knight

2016-08-18, 01:26 AM

And the Dominion had thousands of them little ''beetle'' fighter craft.

The Dominion "bugships" were still about the size of Mirandas, Klingon Birds-of-Prey, and the Defiant.

hamishspence

2016-08-18, 02:12 AM

The Dominion "bugships" were still about the size of Mirandas, Klingon Birds-of-Prey, and the Defiant.

True - but attack fighters vary in size:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_fighter

the smallest one I've seen was the Reman fighter in Nemesis - that fits down the corridors of a ship.

Cikomyr

2016-08-18, 06:49 AM

Even the Federarion fighters during the Dominion War were refitted Courier vessels.

I have a personal theory. People say Starfighter are useless in Star Trek because we rarely see ships missing shot

What we should say is that we rarely see *Starfleet* ship miss a shot. We see romulans. Klingons, Cardassian, Jem'Hadar and even BORG ships miss shots.

I think things like ECM meant to counter target locks are a thing in Star Trek. Its just that Federation ships leverage their love of scientific capability by having the single best sensors and target locks in the galaxy, making their ships usually less heavil armed, but they NEVER miss a shot.

Hunter Noventa

2016-08-18, 01:58 PM

Yeah it seems to be a factor of Starfleet, most notably human, ship design that they aren't very armored and require the SIF to stay together at warp speeds. Pretty much the only Federation ship ever mention as having armor on-screen is the Defiant, though I would imagine that after the success of the class, other ships might be fitted with it too.

I imagine that Klingon and Cardassian ships also have armor, it certainly seems more their style. hard to say about the Romulans.

tonberrian

2016-08-18, 07:53 PM

though I would imagine that after the success of the class

Defiant

The Defiant was Worf: The Ship. Calling it "successful" beggars the imagination.

Cikomyr

2016-08-18, 09:40 PM

The Defiant was Worf: The Ship. Calling it "successful" beggars the imagination.

I am sorry. You must probably confuse the USS Ben Sisko's Mother****ing Pimp-hand for another ship.

Worf is allowed to take her on dates at times, but she has a 9PM curfew.

LaZodiac

2016-08-18, 10:18 PM

I am sorry. You must probably confuse the USS Ben Sisko's Mother****ing Pimp-hand for another ship.

Worf is allowed to take her on dates at times, but she has a 9PM curfew.

He's saying the Defiant is "the Worf of ships" in that it gets beaten a lot. But...I don't think it does?

Mando Knight

2016-08-19, 12:21 AM

He's saying the Defiant is "the Worf of ships" in that it gets beaten a lot. But...I don't think it does?

Times a Defiant-class ship loses a fight:

First Contact: Worf, commanding Defiant, is Worfed as Picard denies him a chance to ram the ship into the Borg Cube.
"Valiant" (DS9 6x22): the titular Valiant (a Defiant-class ship) is totally overpowered by the new Dominion battleship. This was more Red Squad's fault than the Valiant's, but sometimes arrogant cadets just gotta Worf.
"The Changing Face of Evil" (DS9 7x20): Defiant herself (along with much of the coalition fleet) is disabled by the Breen energy disruptors and made easy prey for the Dominion fleet. It gets replaced four episodes later with the Breen-proofed Sao Paulo, renamed the Defiant because it's Sisko's ship now (or rather, it is the Defiant for the last two episodes of the series).

It also ties with the refitted Excelsior-class Lakota in "Paradise Lost" (DS9 4x12) (both sides just a torpedo or two away from obliterating the other) and in "Sacrifice of Angels" (DS9 6x06) it is almost defeated (and its redshirt Miranda-class wingmates are destroyed) so that the Klingons can have their big heroic cavalry moment.

RCgothic

2016-08-19, 06:24 AM

Cikomyr

2016-08-19, 07:00 AM

It was also destroyed by the Energy-dampening field of the Breen.

At least it didn't got captured by two old Ferengi-crewed birds of prey

factotum

2016-08-19, 10:15 AM

It was also destroyed by the Energy-dampening field of the Breen.

Mando Knight already pointed that one out when he mentioned the battle in "The Changing Face of Evil". And, since that energy-damping field also took out pretty much every other ship on the Federation/Romulan/Klingon side, it seems a bit unfair to single out the Defiant because of it. This analysis also ignores the numerous times the Defiant *won* a battle.

Cikomyr

2016-08-19, 12:36 PM

My favourite moments were:

- Wrecking the **** out of the Cardassian Navy (Defiant)
- Fighting off a fleet of klingons with her shields down (The Way of the Warrior)
- Tanking the attacks of three Jem'Hadar ships without taking any defensive manoeuver (Call to Arms)

Sacrifice of Angels was also cool, but that was the single most awesome Star Trek space battle.

ellindsey

2016-08-21, 03:22 PM

My wife and I finally this today. Thought it was OK. Better than either of the previous reboot timeline movies, but that's not a high bar to pass.

What I liked was that the crew actually felt like a team, they seem to have a better idea now of who the crew members are and how they should be interacting. It felt more like the original series that way, more like an actual starfleet crew should act.

What I didn't like was the whole villain and his poorly fleshed out motivations and means. His doomsday weapon was surprisingly underwhelming - you went through all that to get your hands on a device that slowly kills people one at a time? I'm thinking he didn't really know exactly what it was, expected something more impressive based on the descriptions from the race that threw it away, but once he had his hands on it couldn't really say "Never mind guys, this superweapon is kind of crap". Have to go through with the plan, even if the swarm ships were far scarier than the weapon.

I'm also really not a fan of the poorly lit shakey-cam style of showing action scenes. Couldn't really follow what was going on during most of the fights.

Olinser

2016-08-21, 04:08 PM

Times a Defiant-class ship loses a fight:

First Contact: Worf, commanding Defiant, is Worfed as Picard denies him a chance to ram the ship into the Borg Cube.
"Valiant" (DS9 6x22): the titular Valiant (a Defiant-class ship) is totally overpowered by the new Dominion battleship. This was more Red Squad's fault than the Valiant's, but sometimes arrogant cadets just gotta Worf.
"The Changing Face of Evil" (DS9 7x20): Defiant herself (along with much of the coalition fleet) is disabled by the Breen energy disruptors and made easy prey for the Dominion fleet. It gets replaced four episodes later with the Breen-proofed Sao Paulo, renamed the Defiant because it's Sisko's ship now (or rather, it is the Defiant for the last two episodes of the series).

It also ties with the refitted Excelsior-class Lakota in "Paradise Lost" (DS9 4x12) (both sides just a torpedo or two away from obliterating the other) and in "Sacrifice of Angels" (DS9 6x06) it is almost defeated (and its redshirt Miranda-class wingmates are destroyed) so that the Klingons can have their big heroic cavalry moment.

You're missing several.

-On the initial mission Defiant was beaten and all the crew captured by the Dominion - only Kira and Odo escaped capture (Episode - The Search Part 1 + 2)

-It WAS going to be destroyed by Cardassian ships when Riker's clone took control of it (Episode - Defiant). Only Gul Dukat's intervention stopped its destruction.

-It BARELY won a fight with a handful of Jem'Hadar ships when they were looking for the Karemma - only writers and a faulty torpedo detonator stopped the ship from being destroyed (Episode - Starship Down)

-Defiant was beaten and captured by the Jem'Hadar in the episode where the shuttle shrank (I forget the title).

I'm sure there are more but those are the ones off the top of my head.

huttj509

2016-08-21, 06:32 PM

What I didn't like was the whole villain and his poorly fleshed out motivations and means. His doomsday weapon was surprisingly underwhelming - you went through all that to get your hands on a device that slowly kills people one at a time? I'm thinking he didn't really know exactly what it was, expected something more impressive based on the descriptions from the race that threw it away, but once he had his hands on it couldn't really say "Never mind guys, this superweapon is kind of crap". Have to go through with the plan, even if the swarm ships were far scarier than the weapon.

I dunno, getting flesh eating indestructible nano-grey goo into the ventilation system seems kinda terrifying to me.

And then you have the structures still there to base an attack from.

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-21, 09:15 PM

Could have just pumped cyanide into the air really. Or heck even just lots of Carbon Dioxide =P.

And what was his plan again? Destroy the federation cause they abandoned you because they can't follow you through a warphole? Like there is plenty of warfare going on in the federation as of right now if your curious.

Whatever this movie is a vapid facimile of a Star Trek series. This whole series is. Just every character stating "My personality Trait!+QUIP!" Every scene with some action, and maybe a mention of romulans or Klingon every once in a while.

I found the "Tribute" especially insulting considering just how vapidified of the OS it is. Its like a taco bell putting up one token excibit of a museum it bulldozed to make itself.

Kitten Champion

2016-08-21, 09:21 PM

Clearly the Federation shouldn't have bothered with Defiant/Escort Class ships, they had already produced the unsinkable juggernaut that was the Intrepid Class after all.

Legato Endless

2016-08-21, 10:31 PM

I dunno, getting flesh eating indestructible nano-grey goo into the ventilation system seems kinda terrifying to me.

And then you have the structures still there to base an attack from.

They had a DS9 episode about something similar. A pathogen which broke down the biological matter on a planet over a few weeks, then automatically dissipates, leaving the technology up for grabs from the aggressor. Thing is though, that was only alluded to, and it sounded much more impressive.

The Goo is extremely visible, fairly slow acting and moving, and requires a centralized distribution system to even spread effectively. We had bioweapons which are much more efficient by the mid 20th century. Not every Trek film needs a super weapon, and they don't all have to be planet-eating black holes or Star System cremating supernovas, but they should at least seem problematic. What exactly prevented them from just beaming the goo out later? Heck, Krall's attack plan and the complete lack of threat after letting his corpse drift out into space seems to imply merely locking and draining the surrounding oxygen would stop it cold. In Trek, you don't even need to technobabble that problem away.

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-21, 10:39 PM

And what was his plan again? Destroy the federation cause they abandoned you because they can't follow you through a warphole? Like there is plenty of warfare going on in the federation as of right now if your curious.

Krall's plan was more like "Decimate the Federation so that it changes focus from exploration to military escalation."

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-21, 10:40 PM

Man just his ARMY was way more impressive and dangerous.

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-21, 10:44 PM

I don't know that he intended to keep winning, just hurt the Federation ENOUGH that it was forced to change.

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-21, 10:44 PM

Krall's plan was more like "Decimate the Federation so that it changes focus from exploration to military escalation."

That was a super stupid because the Federation WAS also a Military organization that did have to engage in Military stuff often.

But again this is a stupid remake.

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-21, 10:48 PM

Anyone actually in the military could tell you the Federation is quasi-military at best.

russdm

2016-08-21, 10:57 PM

So yeah, Fed ships aren't really armored. And we have previously seen (in the prime timeline) that the Federation doesn't build to resist collisions (DS9 Jem Hadar "fighters").

I think is because the Federation are human designed ships, and by explorer types. The Defiant is unique in that it is the prototype for a fighting class of ships. I think that happens to be a significant point: How many times does the Defiant lost out compared to other class ships? Didn't the Jem Hadar destroy a Galaxy class?

Other species are better able to design fighting ships, with their more military focus. Recall when Chang managed to take on both Kirk and Sulu with a single bird of prey? That cloaking device Change had would have effectively destroyed the Federation's effectiveness. Yes, they built it with sensors, but they had to engage in modifications to a torpedo to make it work first. Work out those kinks and it would be pretty game-breaking.

Shinzon's ship had a close that couldn't be picked up by Federation sensors. That kind of development would probably become standard, and there was no way for the Enterprise to fire at the ship. Troi give them one lucky shot, but beyond that, the Enterprise E was firing blindly and having to target shield impacts. Once you could determine how the firing would occur, you could position attacks so the other side couldn't fire back at all (Like attacking from below or above in a complete perpendicular strike, since the Federation ships seem to be depicted as not having "Straight up" firing arcs)

Then there is how Federation ships seem to be made of boom, with so many exploding objects. It is like workplace safety was forgotten. A current day ship built with design features wouldn't make out of the drawing room, with numerous re-designs required to get rid of it.

Given how amazing the Federation is, it seems to rather lacking in terms of war-fighting technology compared to the others. Then you add in the sheer compliancy of the Federation where it takes a strike from a more powerful enemy to consider building a straight up fighting ship. It's like the Federation has abandoned or forgotten human history. Given the sheer number of dangers that are so frequently encountered, one would think the Federation would have made up considerably better ships but I guess maybe that was a Vulcan suggestion? I know in the Enterprise series, it gets made a big deal that humans really don't like listening to anything Vulcans have to say. And listening to any kind of danger warnings from Reed either.

I would think being the Chief of Security on board a Federation ship would require one to pick some kind of meditative exercises if only to soothe the sheer rage of wanting to murder your captain for taking the entire most vital members of the crew on away missions all the time.

To take over the Enterprise (any of them shown in the shows), the Klingons or Romulans just had to capture one of the away team non-red shirts (Yellow shirts in TNG). Then interrogate them for the command codes. Seriously, that would have the easiest method. After the Romulans in that one episode captured and brainwashed LaForge, they should have had him input a firing sequence into the main weapons at that colony, especially since they would have inflamed tensions better than having a Starfleet officer assassinate the governor. They could get LaForge to already hide away his activities, why not just have him make the Enterprise open fire? It would done more damage and been more visible action that couldn't easily be explained away. Make it look like it was ordered by Starfleet separate from the Captain, and then Profit.

It's sad actually utterly stupid the Intrigue-focused Romulans are, how much un-violent/un-confrontational the Klingons are, and how the Cardies are so not Militaristic or despotic, until the Gul Dukat takes over bit. Maybe that was a point? Still really disappointed how it was in DS9 that the Romulans were really doing something sneaky and underhanded. (Beyond the episode about that Admiral guy one, and the one with LaForge meeting a Romulan. The ones with Yar's daughter didn't really show any great success for the Romulans making plans) They started turning into the Ferengi.

I thought the Romulans were supposed to be Warlike and masters of Intrigue. Where was that?

Regarding Krall: I can totally get his attitude. Especially considering that the Federation is basically going for a Culture or Diplomatic victory for Sid M.'s Civilization the Universe. Or maybe the Universe modded into one of the Civilization games with the Star Trek powers. The Federation seems to only run only the premise of "Diversity makes you strong" without explaining about different viewpoints or ideas that make it that way. "Diversity makes one strong thanks to having different viewpoints to deal with a situation".

But then, Roddenberry failed to explain that anyway in the original series, and so we have to try to believe it. Maybe the Federation just runs on Imperialism anyway. It really seems that way with all of the speechifying about "Federation Diversity Good, Everyone Else However Bad".

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-21, 10:59 PM

Anyone actually in the military could tell you the Federation is quasi-military at best.

It engages in political shenanigans all the time and is surrounded by different flavors of enemies all the times.

Like did the bad guy not get messages like "Dangerous superpower at our border that wants to kill us"?

Wouldn't attacking the feds weaken them enough for all the superpowers to kill them? Again lazy shortsighted remake.

russdm

2016-08-21, 11:01 PM

That was a super stupid because the Federation WAS also a Military organization that did have to engage in Military stuff often.

But again this is a stupid remake.

I had to resist doing nothing but laugh; the Federation is not a military organization. It is basically Civilian Future NASA. Consider how many times actually military procedures would have solved any of the problems that occurred with a frequency.

At most, the Federation is essentially the UN, with less brains and considerably less skills in all important areas besides it oh so impressive technology. (Maybe that is the drawback of having the replicator? It removes any sense from people?)

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-22, 12:06 AM

LaZodiac

2016-08-22, 12:18 AM

Problem is that my point about how attacking the Federation will just weaken it to enemies that already exist stands though.

That's literally the point. The villain wanted to rock the boat, take them of their high throne, to remind them about what it means to be a soldier, not a diplomat.

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-22, 12:20 AM

Well, if you think about it, Krall's goals are not that different from that of the conspiracy in Star Trek VI. Faced with the prospect of laying down arms and making peace, a group of Klingons, humans and a few others decide to force the Empire and Federation into continued conflict. It's all about trying to force military escalation rather than adjust to peace.

russdm

2016-08-22, 12:24 AM

I will relent, in my anger against this movie I did start excusing nonsensical aspects from Star Trek in general.

Problem is that my point about how attacking the Federation will just weaken it to enemies that already exist stands though.

What enemies are those? So far it appears that there has been no war with Klingons, which was supposed to be a concern in the second movie, and the Romulans have been awfully quiet.

The mostly likely and Dangerous Foe for our heroes,

A Tribble

factotum

2016-08-22, 02:18 AM

-On the initial mission Defiant was beaten and all the crew captured by the Dominion - only Kira and Odo escaped capture (Episode - The Search Part 1 + 2)

Didn't that one only happen because they were deliberately shutting down main power in order to avoid detection while cloaked, and thus didn't have time to power up again when the shooting started?

RCgothic

2016-08-22, 04:55 AM

Taking out Yorktown wouldn't have crippled the Federation militarily, but it would have been one hell of a terror attack, which is what I think was the point.

Also I think it's harsh to mark down the Defiant for nearly being destroyed under Riker's command given the number of Cardassian ships it took down first.

Chang's Bird of Prey was only useful one time. Equiping every torpedo in Starfleet with a hardware update totally nullifies it, and then you don't have shields against return fire. Better to decloak after your first attack so that you at least have some defences in place.

This is what made Scimitar so dangerous. It had an improved cloak without a plasma exhaust and could keep it's shields up whilst cloak. It was also a totally stupid idea. The whole point of a cloak is that it nullifies emissions. Weapons fire is an emission. Enough disruptors were coming off that thing to give both position and vector. Enterprise should have been nailing that ship with every shot.

Cikomyr

2016-08-22, 05:58 AM

They made a point that Yorktowm's advanced technology would have given Kang(?) The capacity to conquer other Federation worlds

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-22, 10:14 AM

What enemies are those? So far it appears that there has been no war with Klingons, which was supposed to be a concern in the second movie, and the Romulans have been awfully quiet.

Because lazy stupid remake.

This isn't a Star Trek world. Its a Imitation Star Trek world, written for the sole purpose of maximum recognizability.

There is no logical world development behind ANY of this. Nor will there be. The point is to allow for semi annual summer blockbusters that sometimes reminds people of the Star Trek IP.

I have no idea what people mean when they say this feels "More Star Trekky" then any of the other series. It pretty much the same mush the whole way through.

russdm

2016-08-22, 05:17 PM

Because lazy stupid remake.

I have no idea what people mean when they say this feels "More Star Trekky" then any of the other series. It pretty much the same mush the whole way through.

Its just Star Trekky as Voyager and Enterprise was.

russdm

2016-08-22, 05:45 PM

and then you don't have shields against return fire. Better to decloak after your first attack so that you at least have some defences in place.

Wasn't it a deal in Generations about how little time the Enterprise D had to fire a torpedo during the cloaking phase? Kirk treated Scotty's shot when Kruge decloaked his ship in 3 like it had been a big deal? According to sources and movies, the ship had to drop shields to cloak or de-cloak, but shields were still active. Especially since the shields seem to prevent stuff like meteorites or smallish asteroids from punching into the ship, with a beam to deflect stuff away coming from the deflector dish.

As for the torpedo hardware upgrade, it basically made the torpedo essentially a special kind of heat-seeking it seems. Not exactly that safe, considering it is stated outright to follow "Plasma" or "Ionized Gas" according to Spock mentioning "whatever the Klingon designation" suggesting that both sides were using it. The same stuff that the Enterprise A and Excelsior had.

The upgrade also required certain kinds of probes according to Uhura, who came up with the idea in the first place. Said modification then needed a medical officer ( for the fun, mainly) and Spock to make modifications. And Kirk had to wait for the torpedo. Maybe torpedoes in the future Starfleet ships were modified with the changes to be usable so that there wouldn't be any time wasted.

Mainly this is a potential thing, the sheer potential of what the device could have done, and how utterly stupid Chang was for not getting more supporters with the toy. A small fleet of cloaked Klingon ships could have wreaked hell on the Federation, completely derailing the entire peace process alone, and maybe even better, Chang could have stolen a Federation ship, then attacked some Klingon outpost.

TNG practically makes it clear that the relations between the sides took a while to get going to full alliance, based on the events with the Enterprise C.

Regarding Scimitar: It was armed with Disrupters which don't link with the firing ship like Starfleet ships do when firing Phasers. There is no way any Federation ship could remain undetected firing a Phaser, because it shoots directly from the ship and remains connected.

Watch every single time any ship in the Star Trek Series fires a disrupter shot; in many cases that fired shot is not still linked to anyway with the ship. Heck look at the weapon employed by the Romulan bird of Prey in the TOS episode where Romulans first appear. It doesn't remain connected to the ship, but TOS Enterprise phasers do, aside from that episode employing them as depth charges.

Regarding the Movie: I think people are failing to recall that
Krall was eating aliens to stay alive, which definitely have messed with mental faculities, and that the bomb/goo stuff was apparently pretty powerful. It did eat people after all;

And know how much crazy time Krall had to go space nuts and remain so. We are probably talking more than a few hours of squirrely nut-job. And wasn't Krall basically Captain Ahab towards the Federation anyways?

There was his whole watching them, sending someone to them to lure them into a trap, and his whole spiel on the planet about Federation weakness. Add in some serious crazy, and that his plan might have been cooked up in his crazy kitchen, maybe he thought it would have worked out some how.

We know that Krall was a MACO, a soldier who had been fighting against races that the Federation was now breaking bread with, suggesting the idea of going from enemy to ally. That kind of adjustment combined with maybe his military service on the edge of known space (to humans) made him already a bit squirrely.

Given the Federation/Starfleet, which has been shown to have a somewhat not wonderful track record at picking captains in some of the media we have seen, and somehow things ending badly makes sense. Nu Marcus was pretty nuts. A few captains in prime universe series were also crazy, with also crazy admirals too.

I think I recall on that had taken control on a planet that had had some kind of Cold War gone hot, and also a few other planets wrecked by Federation/Starfleet types.

Rodin

2016-08-22, 08:40 PM

W
Regarding Scimitar: It was armed with Disrupters which don't link with the firing ship like Starfleet ships do when firing Phasers. There is no way any Federation ship could remain undetected firing a Phaser, because it shoots directly from the ship and remains connected.

Watch every single time any ship in the Star Trek Series fires a disrupter shot; in many cases that fired shot is not still linked to anyway with the ship. Heck look at the weapon employed by the Romulan bird of Prey in the TOS episode where Romulans first appear. It doesn't remain connected to the ship, but TOS Enterprise phasers do, aside from that episode employing them as depth charges.

How does any of that matter? Just because there isn't a straight line connecting the two doesn't mean you can't see where the shot came from. The Enterprise has sensors, and they can search for heat signatures (or energy signatures if you like) and locate with precision the instant the shot leaves the cloaking field. You don't know with 100% precision because the cloaked ship is presumably evading at the time, but you can set the computer to instantly fire the phasers repeatedly at the area of space where the shot originated, and since phasers appear to be light-speed weapons there is zero chance for a ship to avoid being in that area at the time. You increase the chance of evading some of the shots, but the lack of shields means that any hit that does land deals catastrophic damage.

For a ship to fire while cloaked effectively, you would have to generate a massive cloaking field over the whole area that can cover the heat signature of your weapon until it is a significant distance from your ship. That way you can fire a single time, move well away before the shot decloaks, then move to a totally different location and fire again.

huttj509

2016-08-22, 09:39 PM

And know how much crazy time Krall had to go space nuts and remain so. We are probably talking more than a few hours of squirrely nut-job. And wasn't Krall basically Captain Ahab towards the Federation anyways?

Krall's time was ~100 years before the events of Beyond. Federation forming was about 2150-ish, and Beyond is about 2260.

Friv

2016-08-22, 09:58 PM

Krall's plan was more like "Decimate the Federation so that it changes focus from exploration to military escalation."

Nah. That was his claim, but his plan was clearly "Hurt the Federation for leaving me behind". Kirk pretty much throws that in his face. No part of his "I'll toughen up the Federation" argument really holds up, because it's an excuse. Krall is the simmering, hate-filled remains of a man who felt abandoned even before his ship was lost, taking out his bitterness on the people that he feels were responsible for him getting hurt, and rationalizing it to himself.

Man just his ARMY was way more impressive and dangerous.

The thing is, Krall's army was clearly not going to cut it.

When the swarm went toe-to-toe with the Enterprise, they had every advantage. They were attacking from close range, against an enemy who wasn't on combat alert until after the first shots were being fired. They had the codes to bypass the Enterprise's shields and confuse its targeting scanners (gained from their in-depth hacking of the Yorktown earlier), and they inflicted serious damage before the Enterprise was ready. The Enterprise itself had just come back from an extended tour; it wasn't outfitted with the latest tech, and Scotty had been complaining a few scenes earlier that a lot of the parts were strained to capacity.

Remember - Krall's attack on the Yorktown involved, as a key aspect, tricking the Federation into sending its escort ships to rescue the Enterprise by spoofing the distress call they sent. He was obviously concerned about how much damage his swarm would take from a concerted counter-attack by prepared ships who he couldn't hack. When he did attack the Yorktown, it was doing some serious damage to his drone fleet - not enough to stop them before the sabotage kicked in, but a noticeable amount.

By itself, his army could probably have destroyed Yorktown. They couldn't capture it, though, and Krall wanted the station and all of its state-of-the-art tech to merge with his drone army and start hitting nearby colonies. His superweapon was supposed to depopulate the station while leaving it fully intact.

digiman619

2016-08-22, 10:57 PM

Just saw it this afternoon. Here are my thoughts:

I really love the way Spock and McCoy interacted,
The Yorktown was gorgeous
The action scenes were top notch.
It was really smart to chop off the nacelles rather than blow them up
I thought that hiding the artifact in a crew member's head was brilliant.
I originally didn't like that they made Sulu gay, but I came around. (My problem wasn't a gay member of the Enterprise, is was that by making it Sulu it just made it seem like it was an allusion to Takei. Then I realized that Hikari was the only one of the bridge crew that was shown to have a family life, so anyone else they'd have to make of whole cloth.)
Greg Grunberg (I admit, I totally had to IMDB his name) is now perhaps the only person to be in both a Star Wars movie and a Star Trek movie.

The villain's motivation was really weak.
If the crash left only three alive (The big bad, his second -in-command, and the spy that sprung the trap), where did he get his massive ground forces?
There's no precedent for the villain's life-stealing tech anywhere in Star Trek. This is blatantly Wraith tech from Stargate: Atlantis.
How did he manage to effortlessly bypass the Enterprises shields? From earlier ST media, we know that Federation (and probably all the other races, but I can't prove that) modulate the shield at a specific frequency. This is how the Klingons managed to severely damage the Enterprise in Generations. However, that doesn't explain why the Big Bad's knowledge of the Franklin's shields would let it cut through the Enterprise's, unless the Federation uses the exact same frequency for every ship, and haven't bothered changing it in the last century or so.

Am I the only one that thought that Jaylah looked like a Kor from M:tG's Zendikar? Seriously, the white skin, the tendency for body/facepaint, the affinity for scavenged technology; all these things are trademarks of the race. Seriously; look at this art (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=402049) and tell me that you don't think it looks like the same species as her.
I've got no problems with the Beastie Boys song used as a jamming frequency, but you know for a fact that if this had happened to the original cast, their Scotty would be playing bagpipes.
Why did the anti-matter weapon take so long to kill Krall? Seeing how fast it killed the crewmember, he should have been vaporized before he even got out of the chamber!

All in all,it was OK; I'll probably buy it when it comes to DVD, but it'll never be my go-to pick for "I feel like watching a Star Trek movie".

Aeson

2016-08-22, 11:33 PM

Responses to selected things in digiman619's spoilers:

If the crash left only three alive (The big bad, his second -in-command, and the spy that sprung the trap), where did he get his massive ground forces?
As I understand it, they're supposed to be some form of android that he found on the planet with his vampirism tech. The movie did a poor job of explaining that, though; I too thought that they were some kind of humanoid alien when I saw the movie.

How did he manage to effortlessly bypass the Enterprises shields?
The movie does hint that he had a lot of access to sensitive information; we know he had access to mission reports and information on at least some members of the crew, and appears to have had some information on the structure of Yorktown Station and its defending forces, at any rate.

However, that doesn't explain why the Big Bad's knowledge of the Franklin's shields would let it cut through the Enterprise's, unless the Federation uses the exact same frequency for every ship, and haven't bothered changing it in the last century or so.
If I recall what I saw of Star Trek: Enterprise correctly, the USS Franklin would not have had shields, just 'polarized hull plating' acting as armor.

Most likely, he used his access to sensitive material to study up on how to defeat the shields of ships like the Enterprise.

Legato Endless

2016-08-23, 12:08 AM

Mainly this is a potential thing, the sheer potential of what the device could have done, and how utterly stupid Chang was for not getting more supporters with the toy. A small fleet of cloaked Klingon ships could have wreaked hell on the Federation, completely derailing the entire peace process alone, and maybe even better, Chang could have stolen a Federation ship, then attacked some Klingon outpost.

I don't think it's stupid because I think that presumes a lot more time and political capital than Chang actually had. I mean that's a good plan, but it wasn't feasible. Praxis blows up; the Klingons lose their key energy source. After this, and with their economy taking something of a downturn to put it mildly, Chang has a limited amount of time to put together his conspiracy before the peace process starts. It'd take quite a lot of support and maneuvering to get a small fleet together in that window, assuming it was even economically possible.

Chang clearly didn't have that support because Gorkon's regime was pretty ironclad.

1. Despite suffering a comically catastrophic public relations disaster, the assassination of the Chancellor does not derail the peace process. Gordon's daughter is named heir, and she's able to fairly effortlessly decide to keep the peace going. Which means the Empire is still agreeing to make peace relations with a decades old enemy it believes just fired on it's presidential transport under a banner of peace and then beamed aboard two assassins who successfully murdered their leader.

2. Despite Chang successfully prosecuting Kirk and McCoy, he's not able to get them executed. This would be a lot more helpful for his plan. Instead he has to get the leader of the Penal Asteroid to kill them during a manufactured escape. The Judge commuting the execution sentence is a cruel mercy, but it's also a very political move towards the alliance with the Federation by not executing one of their celebrated captains.

3. Kirk escapes, what does Chang do? Chang has to go to Khitomer in the prototype to stop them. He doesn't have any on site support to deal with this.

4. Chang doesn't even have the political capital to get one of his own loyal men planetside to assassinate the Federation President. They have to have a Federation officer impersonate a Klingon. This is a huge risk if Colonel West gets captured, but it's the only way they're able to get a man in position because...

5. All of the key conspirators outside of Chang are non-Klingons.

Chang didn't have the kind of influence you'd need to get a fleet into play in 6 months. After the recent two civil wars, the Klingon Empire was sick for the moment of power plays. Heck, Chang being Chief of Staff may well have been an example of Gorkon savvily throwing a disgruntled faction a bone while kicking his belligerent friend upstairs where he couldn't establish more of a power base against the peace efforts.

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-23, 12:25 AM

Krall's army is actually the automated workforce left behind by the ancient aliens who occupied the planet.

factotum

2016-08-23, 02:16 AM

There is no logical world development behind ANY of this. Nor will there be. The point is to allow for semi annual summer blockbusters that sometimes reminds people of the Star Trek IP.

Well, if that was the point, it failed utterly in this case--according to Box Office Mojo the worldwide box office for this movie so far is around $230 million. Sounds a lot, but when the film itself had a budget of $185 million before you take advertising etc. into account, it's not even close to breaking even. This could well be the final nail in the coffin for the "reboot" Star Trek franchise.

digiman619

2016-08-23, 02:58 AM

RCgothic

2016-08-23, 05:32 AM

The navigational deflector is separate from the shields generally. That's what the deflector dish is for. It's a combination sensor array / force beam emitter that can deflect objects when travelling at superluminal velocities.

A cloaking device needs to be tied into the shield grid to work, rendering them ineffective as shields. Scimitar is big/powerful enough to have primary/secondary shields and so remain shielded whilst cloaked.

Firing whilst cloaked was initially a big deal due to vast power requirements (Balance of Terror), but with conventional torpedo weapons I'm not actually sure why anyone was surprised that could be done. With lack of shields, auto-targetting phaser arrays are a pretty hard counter to subsequent attacks.

Again, this is because weapons fire is an emission. Fire once and your enemy knows where you were. Fire twice in succession and they now know where you were and your speed between those points. Three shots gives them your acceleration too. The more you shoot, the more accurate the return fire should get, and against an unshielded ship that's likely to hurt worse unless you caught your target totally by surprise. I suspect the real reason ships decloak to shoot rather than firing first is so they have a better chance of getting their shields up before the return fire comes back.

Scimitar was just utterly stupid as a concept.

factotum

2016-08-23, 06:00 AM

Fire once and your enemy knows where you were. Fire twice in succession and they now know where you were and your speed between those points. Three shots gives them your acceleration too. The more you shoot, the more accurate the return fire should get

Assuming you just fly in a straight line at constant acceleration, of course--and what kind of idiot would do that during a battle? Right at the beginning of the Battle of the Bassen Rift the Enterprise located the Scimitar via a random phaser strike (we'll ignore how vanishingly unlikely that was for now) and lobbed a bunch of torpedoes at them, which the Scimitar avoided by the ingenious and almost unheard of tactical manoeuvre of *moving out of the way*.

RCgothic

2016-08-23, 06:41 AM

One shot - position
Two shots - new position and vector
Three shots - new position, new vector, acceleration
Four shots - all of the above plus rate of change of acceleration.

The rate of fire coming off the Scimitar was extreme. It doesn't matter what evasives you're doing when you're constantly updating the enemy with your navigational data. Chang had the right idea. Fire and Manoeuvre. Shinzon not so much.

Legato Endless

2016-08-23, 08:00 AM

I'll grant the android soldiers (though that seems awful convenient), but I gotta call bull on the shields. Even if the Federation has no other enemies (which it clearly does), why would the Jamestown have a record of their shield modulation? That's a) begging to be hacked and b) not relevant data to the starbase. Even if he had access to the reports on the repair/refitting the Enterprise went through, there's no need for the repair crew to note the modulation frequency; I don't need to know your computer's password to plug my speakers into it.

The simpler explanation is Krall hacked the Enterprise while he spied on the Jamestown. Krall had access to Kirk's personal logs, he knew they had the artifact and where to findfind, so at some point he gained access to their systems. Which would also help explain how the item he needed was delivered right to his doorstep.

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-23, 01:38 PM

Its just Star Trekky as Voyager and Enterprise was.

Low blow man. Low Blow. :smallannoyed:

But true I guess. They both end up betraying Star Trek. Just in different ways.

Kantaki

2016-08-23, 02:14 PM

Low blow man. Low Blow. :smallannoyed:

But true I guess. They both end up betraying Star Trek. Just in different ways.

Eh, I don't know, Star Trek Beyond certainly isn't the best Star Trek (as are Voyager and Enterprise I guess), but I'm pretty sure there is worse stuff even in the "good" part of the Franchise. Especially if we include the (old) movies- about half of those are just as bad if not worse- and it is certainly a better Star Trek story than the previous two.

Scowling Dragon

2016-08-23, 02:51 PM

I'm pretty sure there is worse stuff even in the "good" part of the Franchise.

I have been to bad museums but at least those are museums. The New Star Trek Series is "Museumland!". Its a shallow imitation and recreation of the past.

Not to say that Star Trek is somehow super holy like a monument or a museum but I meant that metaphorically.

Kitten Champion

2016-08-23, 04:45 PM

Eh, I don't know, Star Trek Beyond certainly isn't the best Star Trek (as are Voyager and Enterprise I guess), but I'm pretty sure there is worse stuff even in the "good" part of the Franchise. Especially if we include the (old) movies- about half of those are just as bad if not worse- and it is certainly a better Star Trek story than the previous two.

I would say it's on a level with First Contact - a movie better than the others of its generation, but not too outstanding as an actual movie with it being riddled with issues that viewers/critics can choose to ignore or not depending on where your tipping point is. With the villain standing out as being the weakest part of it though conceptually neat and kind of interesting looking.

digiman619

2016-08-23, 05:42 PM

All I have to say about the musical countermeasure is that if this was done with the original cast, their Montgomery Scott would be playing bagpipes.

Cikomyr

2016-08-23, 09:49 PM

It was certainly better than:

- The Motionless Picture
- The Final Egotrip
- Star Trek's Undermining (Insurrection)
- Star Trek's Enemy (Nemesis)
- Star Trek GRIMDARK

Friv

2016-08-23, 11:39 PM

Olinser

2016-08-24, 12:12 AM

I would go so far as to say that this was the third-best of the twelve Star Trek films. It's hard to say for sure, because Star Trek IV is such a weird entry in the canon that I never know how to rank it. But it's definitely the best of the reboot Trek, it's better than any of the Next Gen entries (I could see people making an argument for First Contact, but First Contact pretty much has all the problems Beyond has and also ruined the Borg), and is better than three of the original series movies.

So original Khan is obviously better, but if you think its all the way up at 3rd what other movie do you think is better?

Myself I put this one about middle of the pack. A better villain and a better ending could have put it all the way up with Khan but alas, it was not to be.

LaZodiac

2016-08-24, 12:26 AM

Derthric

2016-08-24, 01:50 AM

I'd argue that Khan, Star Trek 3, and Final Frontier are all top three contenders. Final Frontier is the one that's basically Hamlet in space where Kirk needs to deal with his hate of Klingons to do peace talks right?

Nope that is ST:VI the Undiscovered Country.

ST:V the Final Frontier is the one where Spock's half brother tries to find god and Uhura does a fan dance in the desert.

I saw this movie not too long ago, and honestly its my favorite trek movie since Galaxyquest. I am someone who has not been a fan of JJ trek but this one just worked for me. Was it great? No, but it is definitely very good. And almost all of that has to do with giving everyone on the crew a spot in the action, some more than others. But really Sulu and Chekov felt like little more than window dressing in Into Darkness, as did McCoy too. But in this one I feel like we finally saw them as a crew and a team. Hell its the first time I felt we actually saw Captain Kirk, and not just blonde action lead no 4623.

Friv

2016-08-24, 09:12 AM

So original Khan is obviously better, but if you think its all the way up at 3rd what other movie do you think is better?

Myself I put this one about middle of the pack. A better villain and a better ending could have put it all the way up with Khan but alas, it was not to be.

My personal feelings:

The best Star Trek film is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is the one about the Klingon peace talks. It has the best pacing, plot, and themes. After that is Wrath of Khan. Then this one, and then First Contact.

Then there's a bit of a gap, and then you can slot in Generations (which would have been a great 43-minute episode of Star Trek but had a lot of bad around it), Star Trek III (which was about half of a good movie plus the first half), and the 2009 Star Trek (which was a pretty good Star Wars movie).

Then Stark Trek I, which was a neat idea and probably a much bigger deal for fans at the time, but was just so slooooooow.

Then a medium-sized gap, and then we hit Insurrection, which was just kind of wonky, and Star Trek V, which was very bad but also kind of unintentionally fun.

And then another gap, and sitting down at the bottom are Nemesis and Into Darkness, which aren't even fun by accident.

Star Trek IV is off to one side somewhere, because it's a pitch-perfect comedy but a really, really bad Star Trek movie so I have no idea where to place it.

russdm

2016-08-24, 01:01 PM

I would go so far as to say that this was the third-best of the twelve Star Trek films. It's hard to say for sure, because Star Trek IV is such a weird entry in the canon that I never know how to rank it. But it's definitely the best of the reboot Trek, it's better than any of the Next Gen entries (I could see people making an argument for First Contact, but First Contact pretty much has all the problems Beyond has and also ruined the Borg), and is better than three of the original series movies.

Is First Contact still good or bad? I never watched it again, can't really remember it.

Watching Borg episodes/movies give me nightmares for days. Thanks for that, Star Trek. I don't watch anything featuring them and skip over all of the episodes. Watching once was enough. (Maybe it was due to being deeply tired having been awake a while, and watching something? or something else? I don't know, I just know that they give me continual nightmares.

Legato Endless

2016-08-24, 01:36 PM

Is First Contact still good or bad? I never watched it again, can't really remember it.

First Contact is still fondly remembered, though it tends to oscillate between punching near the top or being merely solid middle of the pack. It's nigh universally considered the best Next Gen film, but whatever the merits of television, Picard's crew didn't fare as well on the silver screen. The Borg Queen is one of the films' best villains, but she's an awful concept to introduce for the Borg. Also, this film starts the deleterious trend of Trek really trying to be action films beyond the normal conceits of the franchise.

My personal feelings:

The best Star Trek film is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is the one about the Klingon peace talks. It has the best pacing, plot, and themes. After that is Wrath of Khan.

Undiscovered is also my favorite, though I can't place it above Khan on pure film merits. It's a pitch perfect Swan Song for the crew, but Roddenberry's forced replacement of Saavik with Valeris robs what would have been a huge moment for the franchise. Though this also assumes Kristie Alley returns, as Kim Cattrall does a far better Vulcan than Robin Curtis.

russdm

2016-08-24, 03:07 PM

First Contact is still fondly remembered, though it tends to oscillate between punching near the top or being merely solid middle of the pack. It's nigh universally considered the best Next Gen film, but whatever the merits of television, Picard's crew didn't fare as well on the silver screen. The Borg Queen is one of the films' best villains, but she's an awful concept to introduce for the Borg. Also, this film starts the deleterious trend of Trek really trying to be action films beyond the normal conceits of the franchise.

Well, the Borg still give me nightmares, so I am watching it again.

Undiscovered is also my favorite, though I can't place it above Khan on pure film merits. It's a pitch perfect Swan Song for the crew, but Roddenberry's forced replacement of Saavik with Valeris robs what would have been a huge moment for the franchise. Though this also assumes Kristie Alley returns, as Kim Cattrall does a far better Vulcan than Robin Curtis.

I always liked Undiscovered because they made Sulu a captain, and hearing Sulu giving a Captain's log was new. I don't recall there ever being a Captain's log being given by Spock or anyone else besides Kirk in any of the movies. Then the TNG ones had Captain Picard, Generations/FC/Ins/Neme. Just abbreviated the others.

I liked that they tried to show Kirk as being less than perfect, that he had issues about the peace, and it took him a bit to get with it. It was a major change, and it got treated properly.

I always found Insurrection interesting mainly for the Federation's stupidity in getting involved with the Son'a and not actually bothering to ask their motives. They did work for the Dominion, so why exactly was the Federation working with them with asking questions? And why did the Federation really need some Rejuv material anyway? Isn't the medical science already great?

The plot about moving people off planet made no sense, considering that the Prime directive was only about not interfering in other people's civilization. Why wouldn't it then apply to the Baku? Especially when it was against the PD (Prime Directo Estupido) to get involved in the Klingon Civil War, or that the Federation never supported dissident Romulans or the Bajorans. So why was it suddenly fine regarding the Baku?

Nemesis had some good ideas mainly about being human, then decided to make Picard give a speech to himself while ignoring all of Shinzon's culture. Because apparently, Humans have never been warriors, and Picard, who happens to know about human history according to all of the historical information that gets displayed, especially in the holograms; Picard, doesn't bother to mention any of that.

Great opportunity completely wasted)

Picard: "Humans have warriors, so we aren't so different. There were the Spartans, the Samurai, the Knights, etc. So you see, we aren't that different from the Remans. (Examples of humans fighting for their freedom, of which there are accounts mind). We have many things in common."

But nope, we get the Roddenberry version of...
Picard: "Being human means X/Y/Z, not being a warrior/Fighter/capable, because we evolved beyond the need to protect ourselves." (Maybe not fully right, but it seemed to be the gist. I don't think Roddenberry actually understood human nature enough, and he went further into his own head canon for TNG.)

factotum

2016-08-24, 03:31 PM

And why did the Federation really need some Rejuv material anyway? Isn't the medical science already great?

Their medical science is surely way beyond what we have, but that doesn't mean people don't die of old age around the same time they do now--it just means they're a lot more likely to *reach* that point without being taken early by medical issues, and while remaining hale and hearty. In "Wrath of Khan" Kirk is only 52 years old, yet is suffering age-related visual problems just as someone of that age in our society would--it's implied in dialogue that they would be able to fix that normally, but Kirk has some sort of rare genetic condition which prevents them being able to use the treatment.

Binks

2016-08-24, 03:51 PM

I always found Insurrection interesting mainly for the Federation's stupidity in getting involved with the Son'a and not actually bothering to ask their motives. They did work for the Dominion, so why exactly was the Federation working with them with asking questions? And why did the Federation really need some Rejuv material anyway? Isn't the medical science already great?

The plot about moving people off planet made no sense, considering that the Prime directive was only about not interfering in other people's civilization. Why wouldn't it then apply to the Baku? Especially when it was against the PD (Prime Directo Estupido) to get involved in the Klingon Civil War, or that the Federation never supported dissident Romulans or the Bajorans. So why was it suddenly fine regarding the Baku?
While Insurrection has it's plot holes these are at least pasted over fairly well.

The Fed admiral from the movie was the entire driving force behind the Federation's involvement, he'd worked out the deal with the Son'a and was keeping the details to himself (hence wanting to keep Picard and such out of it, and wanting to keep Riker from relaying what was going on later). It was pretty much a plot point that the Federation was in the dark about what was really going on in the badlands, and with the Dominion war happening it's pretty easy to see why they'd hear an admiral say 'I've got a plan to revolutionize our medicine' and approve it without looking into the details too much.

The Son'a involvement in the Dominion War pre-Insurrection was limited to being suspected of manufacturing White. They didn't become known/official Dominion allies until post-Insurrection. Kind of a 'we know these guys are doing this, but we don't officially know it, so we can't take any actions against them.

The Son'a had the collector tech, something which was mentioned in the movie as being impossible for the Federation to recreate for some reason (not really clear why they couldn't, but then again the Federation being magically incapable of replicating some tech was always a part of Trek).

The PD applying to the Baku was an interesting scenario and it was kind of brought up in the movie. The Baku were a warp-capable civ, and the Fed admiral guy knew this and, presumably, had mentioned it when presenting his plans to interfere with them to the rest of the Federation. The PD is a complicated and often inconsistent beast but it is usually applied as 'pre-warp = don't interfere / post-warp = don't mess with purely internal affairs'. Moving the Baku from one planet to another near-identical one wouldn't mess with their purely internal affairs (aside from the life-prolonging radiation, but they were sort of officially ignoring that) and the Fed is fine to interfere in most things as they're not pre-warp. It was, after all, a major plot point in the movie that while the Fed admiral was following the letter of the law he was blatantly violating the spirit of it, hence Riker's trip out of the Badlands to call up Starfleet and let them know what was going on.

Basically the entire plot of the movie was yet another corrupt Starfleet Admiral abusing his power. Someone really should start a psych screening program for Trek Admirals. Course we might not have any Admirals left if we got rid of the evil ones...

VI Undiscovered Country - Best movie, hands down. Funny, great action, great interesting villain, great characterization, marred only by Shatner's need to have the Enterprise save the day rather than letting Sulu and the Excelsior have their moment.
II Wrath of Khan - Great movie, great villain, great action, if a bit silly looking in the nebula scene, and probably the most dramatic event in all of Trek at the end.
IV Voyage Home - It's hilarious. That's really all there is to say about it. Humor stands up even today. Basically on par with First Contact, and I might swap them occasionally.
First Contact - Funny, awesome battle scenes, Worf getting probably the corniest Trek one-liner ('Assimilate this!'), and Cochraine's antics. Marred only by the stupid Borg Queen stuff.
Beyond - Great character stuff, fun action scenes, and it never falls into the 'too stupid to enjoy' stuff that hurts most of the other reboot timeline movies. I think it'll stand the test of time but won't be able to top First Contact, much less the big 3 originals.
Insurrection - I admit this one is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's not a great story overall, and the romance stuff is just dumb for the most part, but the characterization is so much fun (Riker in command, Worf's aggression, etc) I can't not have fun while I watch it.
III The Search for Spock - It's...alright. A severely middle of the pack movie. Some great moments (self destruct of the Enterprise for one) but mostly just a mediocre setup to a much better movie.
Generations - Too much stupidity to fully enjoy the good stuff. Probably one of the best looking of all the movies, however (I love the softer and darker lighting myself, though I know it's not everyone's forte).
Nemesis - And now we start getting into the bad. This movie, at least, had some cool ideas, but it's not very good overall.
2009 - Too many plot holes to enjoy, and reboot Kirk was just annoying in this movie.
I The Motion Picture - zzzzzzzzzzz. Seriously though, waaaaay to much time spent trying to be 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Into Darkness - You see where II is? Yeah, that has a lot to do with where this movie is. Overall it's not bad, but the whole Khan nonsense is just so frustrating I couldn't stand to watch this movie. Every scene with Cumberbatch (who I like as an actor, mind you. Sherlock is one of my favorite shows) just made me want to turn the movie off and go watch II instead. Trying to recreate a masterpiece is only going to make me want to see the masterpiece again, because you're not going to do that well a second time.
V Final Frontier - Do I really need to explain this one?

Legato Endless

2016-08-24, 04:46 PM

Generations - Too much stupidity to fully enjoy the good stuff. Probably one of the best looking of all the movies, however (I love the softer and darker lighting myself, though I know it's not everyone's forte).

I second the lighting and effects work. The saucer section crashing on Veridian III is spectacular. Not much else in the film works, but on a technical level it's quite something.

Olinser

2016-08-24, 09:47 PM

While Insurrection has it's plot holes these are at least pasted over fairly well.

The Fed admiral from the movie was the entire driving force behind the Federation's involvement, he'd worked out the deal with the Son'a and was keeping the details to himself (hence wanting to keep Picard and such out of it, and wanting to keep Riker from relaying what was going on later). It was pretty much a plot point that the Federation was in the dark about what was really going on in the badlands, and with the Dominion war happening it's pretty easy to see why they'd hear an admiral say 'I've got a plan to revolutionize our medicine' and approve it without looking into the details too much.

The Son'a involvement in the Dominion War pre-Insurrection was limited to being suspected of manufacturing White. They didn't become known/official Dominion allies until post-Insurrection. Kind of a 'we know these guys are doing this, but we don't officially know it, so we can't take any actions against them.

The Son'a had the collector tech, something which was mentioned in the movie as being impossible for the Federation to recreate for some reason (not really clear why they couldn't, but then again the Federation being magically incapable of replicating some tech was always a part of Trek).

The PD applying to the Baku was an interesting scenario and it was kind of brought up in the movie. The Baku were a warp-capable civ, and the Fed admiral guy knew this and, presumably, had mentioned it when presenting his plans to interfere with them to the rest of the Federation. The PD is a complicated and often inconsistent beast but it is usually applied as 'pre-warp = don't interfere / post-warp = don't mess with purely internal affairs'. Moving the Baku from one planet to another near-identical one wouldn't mess with their purely internal affairs (aside from the life-prolonging radiation, but they were sort of officially ignoring that) and the Fed is fine to interfere in most things as they're not pre-warp. It was, after all, a major plot point in the movie that while the Fed admiral was following the letter of the law he was blatantly violating the spirit of it, hence Riker's trip out of the Badlands to call up Starfleet and let them know what was going on.

Basically the entire plot of the movie was yet another corrupt Starfleet Admiral abusing his power. Someone really should start a psych screening program for Trek Admirals. Course we might not have any Admirals left if we got rid of the evil ones...

VI Undiscovered Country - Best movie, hands down. Funny, great action, great interesting villain, great characterization, marred only by Shatner's need to have the Enterprise save the day rather than letting Sulu and the Excelsior have their moment.
II Wrath of Khan - Great movie, great villain, great action, if a bit silly looking in the nebula scene, and probably the most dramatic event in all of Trek at the end.
IV Voyage Home - It's hilarious. That's really all there is to say about it. Humor stands up even today. Basically on par with First Contact, and I might swap them occasionally.
First Contact - Funny, awesome battle scenes, Worf getting probably the corniest Trek one-liner ('Assimilate this!'), and Cochraine's antics. Marred only by the stupid Borg Queen stuff.
Beyond - Great character stuff, fun action scenes, and it never falls into the 'too stupid to enjoy' stuff that hurts most of the other reboot timeline movies. I think it'll stand the test of time but won't be able to top First Contact, much less the big 3 originals.
Insurrection - I admit this one is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's not a great story overall, and the romance stuff is just dumb for the most part, but the characterization is so much fun (Riker in command, Worf's aggression, etc) I can't not have fun while I watch it.
III The Search for Spock - It's...alright. A severely middle of the pack movie. Some great moments (self destruct of the Enterprise for one) but mostly just a mediocre setup to a much better movie.
Generations - Too much stupidity to fully enjoy the good stuff. Probably one of the best looking of all the movies, however (I love the softer and darker lighting myself, though I know it's not everyone's forte).
Nemesis - And now we start getting into the bad. This movie, at least, had some cool ideas, but it's not very good overall.
2009 - Too many plot holes to enjoy, and reboot Kirk was just annoying in this movie.
I The Motion Picture - zzzzzzzzzzz. Seriously though, waaaaay to much time spent trying to be 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Into Darkness - You see where II is? Yeah, that has a lot to do with where this movie is. Overall it's not bad, but the whole Khan nonsense is just so frustrating I couldn't stand to watch this movie. Every scene with Cumberbatch (who I like as an actor, mind you. Sherlock is one of my favorite shows) just made me want to turn the movie off and go watch II instead. Trying to recreate a masterpiece is only going to make me want to see the masterpiece again, because you're not going to do that well a second time.
V Final Frontier - Do I really need to explain this one?

Specifically to address The Motion Picture - one of the reasons it is so padded and the plot is so weird is that it wasn't actually SUPPOSED to be a movie.

Roddenberry thought they were going to re-launch the series (I believe it was actually named Star Trek: Phase Two).

The script for the movie was originally the script for the pilot of the new series.

So they had a script that was originally supposed to just be the pilot of a TV series, and they re-wrote and padded it out to be a full movie with a LOT of the sets and visual sequences that were intended to be used throughout an entire season of the show, but instead they used them all at once because otherwise they were going to get binned. Not a shock the pacing was way off.

In fact, if you watch it and skip past the incredibly extended special effects sequences, the movie is a pretty decent Star Trek episode. It just fails as a full movie.

Fawkes

2016-08-24, 10:33 PM

I wanted Jaylah and Scotty to get married and have babies.

I liked that they held this back, and didn't immediately throw the new female character into a relationship. Although she was getting pretty close with Scotty in the final scene...

Ship away.

Beastie Boys Save The Universe is ridiculous but it's also really fun.

I loved the Sabotage sequence. It was so deeply silly but it totally worked.

Greg Grunberg (I admit, I totally had to IMDB his name) is now perhaps the only person to be in both a Star Wars movie and a Star Trek movie.

I practically cheered when he showed up. I love that guy. I really want his Star Wars character to train as a Jedi just so we get a scene of him doing a Jedi Mind Trick with the Matt Parkman eyebrow raise.

Kitten Champion

2016-08-24, 11:38 PM

I loved the Sabotage sequence. It was so deeply silly but it totally worked.

I was laughing through it, recognizing that while it was silly it was kind of ballsy and fun. The image of the - whatever the old Federation ship's name was - facing off against this black tidal wave of swarm ships was awesome, and then surfing through it as it exploded, very memorable in a way the rest of the movie (excluding the Yorktown Station, of course) wasn't.

I mean, we've seen the Enterprise destroyed (in the last movie even), while the motorcycle scene was a break from Trek (if you discount the dunebuggy scene from Nemesis) it's pretty typical of action movies in general if with a notable gimmick of holo-diversions, and the hand-to-hand fight scenes in general were all pretty run of the mill too (the gravity bit on Yorktown was a bit neat, though). Nothing yawn-inducing at least for me, but nothing I could point to in a year and say "that was a scene from Beyond" with any certainty. The Sabotage sequence however, yeah, I'll remember that... while secretly thinking of Macross, true, but still, I'll remember it.

tonberrian

2016-08-24, 11:54 PM

In fact, if you watch it and skip past the incredibly extended special effects sequences, the movie is a pretty decent Star Trek episode. It just fails as a full movie.

It was a fun episode, yes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changeling_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series))

Giggling Ghast

2016-08-25, 12:32 AM

Cikomyr

2016-08-25, 07:39 AM

Yup. Final Frontier was basically Shatner writing his own Star Trek Gary Sue fanfic and managing to put it on screen.

He wanted entire crew (including his deepest friends, and the crew who have been loyal to him for decades) to betray Kirk, so Kirk would show how awesome he is.

BannedInSchool

2016-08-25, 10:18 AM

In fact, if you watch it and skip past the incredibly extended special effects sequences, the movie is a pretty decent Star Trek episode. It just fails as a full movie.
What I saw about the FX was that the original FX produced were so bad they hired someone new to redo them all but didn't get them done with enough time to edit them into the movie properly. So that's why the FX sequences are mostly continuous and looong, at least that's what I heard.

ImperiousLeader

2016-08-25, 10:50 AM

I practically cheered when he showed up. I love that guy. I really want his Star Wars character to train as a Jedi just so we get a scene of him doing a Jedi Mind Trick with the Matt Parkman eyebrow raise.

I also adore Greg Grunberg, and really wish I could watch Geeking Out, but I've really lost all the love I had for Kevin Smith. Anyway, my head canon is that Greg is playing a Betazed in Star Trek Beyond.

Aotrs Commander

2016-08-31, 02:45 PM

Saw it today.

Not bad, not bas at all. I wasn't very struck at the start, with the obivation of more starship battles with jsut one-sided curb-stomps (I am REALLY getting to hate that's the ONLY way media shows any kind of fight these days - this side loses badly then comes up with a magic way to make the other side lose badly in the end; can we PLEASE just have some fights that are hard- and intelliggently- fought and even down the last wire?)

So I found the story a bit weak; however, Simon Pegg's handiwork could be seen thoroughly with the bits of minute... I loved the round-about references to Enterprise (which I liked, personally) and the character work, was, as with the previous films, very good.

Don't get me wrong the action scenes were perfectly fine and the movie did overall a nice job, but I think the curb-stomping thing just took the edge off for me. Especially as there have now been THREE movies in the quasi-reboot, and not a single decent starship battle between them. Might be nice to have something that doesn't end at the end of Kirk's fist, y'know? (Unfair comparison to Wrath of Khan and to a lesser extent Undiscovered Country, which I consider the two best, but there, in the former particularly, there was no need for fisticuffs.)

There were a few sciency-bits I raised my eyeglow at, but just dismissed as "you're trying, movie, I'll give you dramatic liscence."

I hadn't even heard anythign about Sulu, so me and Mum were like "okay, didn't see that coming, fair enough chaps...!"

Quite liked little bits they did with Nimoy and the original cast, especially they way thet tied it into the movie.

Did feel sad about Anton Yechin's tragic and very untimely death; but this was a good legacy and it was nice they managed to get the dedication in at the end there, along with Nimoy's, given how close his death was to the release date.

I wonder what they will do if/when they do another one, whether they will recast him or write him out.