What follows is a record of my comments on and conversations with the author for Structured Dream and his posts for Star Trek by the Minute.
Star Trek by the Minute 022: Leap Without Looking
- R. Anthony Steele said…
- I always saw that scene with Scott and his nephew as Scotty’s throwing the cost of avoidable battle in Kirk’s face. It’s possible he expected Bones to be on the bridge, since that is where he seems to spend most of his time on the show.
In any case, while WOK is one of my favorites, I don’t consider it to be exactly ‘canon’. None of the films really work in the context of the original show (except the first one) since they are all products of the writer/producer/director team makes them.
Having said that, I have to say that I no longer consider myself a Trekkie or a Star Trek fan, after this last film. It’s dead for me now. I can’t think of anything that could have been more of a betrayal of the Trek that I followed and loved than this latest film is.
I have enjoyed every minute of the review that I’ve read so far. Thanks for writing it, it has saved me the pain of doing it myself, as I pointed out on my blog.
- March 14, 2010 12:19 AM
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BurntSynapse said…
Thanks for the feedback and the links, Anthony. You’re the type of fan I’m trying to reach, and I enjoyed your Abramination posts. I would like to read your TrekBBS posts; Are they accessible?
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R. Anthony Steele said…
- if you go into the interface and do a search for ‘ranthony’ you should get all my posts in a list.
There’s really not much there, if I remember correctly. I reposted the RIP blog post, and was looking for feedback (it’s still there, in the closed thread) and then was attacked, repeatedly, for daring to ask where my posts went, and for not liking the film.
It’s funny. I used to run a Trek fanclub. When I see my former club members, almost all of them *love* the film. When they find out I don’t, the questions begin, and it almost follows a script.
“Loved the action” Yep, it was great.
“Loved the actors” Yep, they were great. They clearly all had respect for the characters they were portraying, and they did good jobs with what they were given.
“So, what don’t you like?” EVERYTHING else. A story would have been nice. Some science would have been good too (red matter. It would be funny, if it wasn’t in a Trek film) REAL FEMALE CHARACTERS sort of tops my charts of complaints. Where are they in this film?I have a theory, and I wish I had the money and permission to give this a try. Take STV, and remove every special effects scene. Rework it with state of the art effects, and the budget this film had. I think it would be every bit the seller this film was. And it would be a real Trek film, to boot.
That film was thrown to Shatner as a bone, and the studio never got behind it. But it has some of the best scenes with classic characters interacting. There are some really bad scenes (the birth sequence, as someone else noted, is horrible) but mostly it suffered from a lack of a real effects budget. Compare the comic moments between the two films. I don’t see the difference.
…and yet STV is routinely panned as the worst film. Why? Because of the laughable effects, IMO.
Anyway, thanks for reading my linked posts.
-RAnthony
- March 14, 2010 5:33 PM
Star Trek by the Minute 025 Safety Belts
R. Anthony Steele said…
- The bike sequence is the moment in the film when I could no longer suspend disbelief. The antique car at the beginning, far fetched as that sequence was, was an artifact of the past.
Kirk’s bike is a tool of the modern age, and it has wheels, which is completely outside of the trek universe (It’s also why Nemesis doesn’t make it as a trek film, btw) and it’s appearance pulled me right out of the film. So much so that I couldn’t even enjoy the grand entrance of the under construction Enterprise.
The ‘giving away things’ comment in the novelization is probably a wrong-headed attempt to incorporate the (poorly conceived) notion of money and property in the ST universe that previous screen writers have failed to communicate in their own right.
They would have had to have some grounding in philosophy, money and ethics in order to understand it themselves, much less communicate it to others.
As you pointed out, the film addresses none of this, doing even less (if that’s possible) to incorporate past conceptions of Trek into the story.
-RAnthony
- March 14, 2010 5:36 PM
- R. Anthony Steele said…
- Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. That was the first thing in my mind. Maybe they invented some Red Dwarf type games to pass the time. Soap suds slalom down the cargo ramp, perhaps.
Still, they aren’t the last Romulans alive, and they traveled to this time period to change the timeline. Why not just go to Romulus and CHANGE IT. Just a thought.
-RAnthony
- March 14, 2010 6:10 PM
- R. Anthony Steele said…
- It’s been my opinion, since the announcement of this film, that this scene was the reason for setting the film as a prequel.
It should have been the shining moment in the film. I kept thinking how much I hated that smug bastard in the Captain’s chair.
Funny, I never felt that way about Shatner’s performances.
-RAnthony
- March 14, 2010 6:37 PM
