Comments on: Spiner and Sirtis Talk About Treks That Might Have Been

By: That One Guy

That One Guy — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:40:24 +0000

Welcome to 2008!

By: Omar Baez

Omar Baez — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 15:11:25 +0000

My idea for the next Trek Film would be Tiberius Kirk from the mirror universe causing all sorts of hell in the “regular” universe. We (the fans) would have Kirk back in some manner and he could probably show the TNG crew what a Star Trek film is.

By: Adam Cohen

Adam Cohen — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:49:58 +0000

Dom, that’s interesting re: the “Jim” issue from Generations. I had never heard of that story before. It’s obvious that Berman didn’t “get” the orignal series, and I absolutely cannot stand watching Generations, but I have to admit the actors’ talent shone thru in the Enterprise-B scenes. That’s the difference between TOS and TNG, and something you were alluding to– the actors in TOS had more going for them. Were they all better actors? No. But they were far more charming. And in Star Trek, that means a lot.

By: Dom

Dom — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:27:53 +0000

Uhura has three possible ‘non-canon’ names, but none was ever used in any show or film. There is a common misconception that Kirk calls Uhura by her first name in STIV, but that is a result of a mumbled line by Shatner. The first ‘official’ use of Hikaru, I’m pretty sure, was when he used his own name in STVI at the beginning.

As for the use of ‘Jim’, there was precedent for Scotty to call Kirk by his first name as far back as TOS. Certainly, the retired former Captain Kirk on vacation with Scotty and Chekov would have been likely to be on first-name terms with men he’d served with for decades.

Doohan, Koenig and Shatner wanted to use ‘Jim,’ but Berman insisted they use ‘Captain’ which is a much more TNG thing (along with most of the TOS characters’ dialogue in the movie, which just doesn’t sound like them!)

By: trekmaster

trekmaster — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:33:10 +0000

Related to the TNG series the TNG movies didn’t feel theatrical at all, and that was the big problem – the reason why it had to fail.
I only know the german versions of Star Trek, so I´m not sure who names whom how. But I’m absolutely sure that only Bones and Spock said “Jim” to Captain Kirk. For all the others he was just the captain. And if I remember correctly, Sulu was called “Hikaru” in Star Trek 5, while Uhura got her first name “Nyota” in one episode of the original series.
It’s hard for a new generation of prducers to get back the old feeling, if even the old producers at last didn’t know or even did forget what exactly the typical star trek feeling was. I hope this eleventh adventure will satisfy all of us.

By: Dom

Dom — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:19:49 +0000

Hmm. If I’m honest, what I saw in the TNG movies was TV acting, which wasn’t helped by the TV series producers running things.

In Generations, Rick Berman, presuming to know the characters better than actors who had played the roles for 30 years, insisted Chekov and Scotty call Kirk ‘Captain’, when everyone knows they’d have called him ‘Jim.’

I wonder how TNG would have fared in films written, produced and directed by the likes of Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennet and Leonard Nimoy.

When a TV show with its TV cast transfers to the big screen, things that were once dealt with in nuance are dealt with in broad strokes. The TOS crew were always painted in broad strokes: I mean Uhura was never given a first name and Sulu didn’t get one officially until Star Trek 6, but no one really noticed.

TNG’s arrival in cinema was kinda doomed by its backroom staff from the beginning. None of the TNG films really **felt** like theatrical movies. They were always more like TV episodes projected on a big screen.

Hopefully Abrams can balance the nuance and broad strokes just right for his film.

By: trekmaster

trekmaster — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:19:00 +0000

Well, I think, that TNG and its actors weren’t unqualified for cinema. It was the producers’ fault that the style of TNG has changed on the big screen. There was no need to alter it into a more TOS-like style or to leave the philosophical style behind. Because you must know that the cinematic TNG-style wasn’t the same as the succesful TV-style of TNG. They shouldn’t have changed it, there was no need to make Picard to a action hero or to destroy the Enterprise-D. Patrick Stewart and the others are great actors especially for the big screen. Unfortunatly it went wrong. The character development had come to late in “nemesis”, instead of being made after “generations”.

By: Dom

Dom — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:34:29 +0000

I think TNG worked fine as a TV show, albeit a frightfully dated one now – philosophically, it’s more out of touch with our times than TOS.

But TNG is a small-screen concept. It’s storytelling is rooted in 80s/early 90s TV storytelling styles. The characters and actors’ performances are similarly TV in feel.

DS9, Voyager and Enterprise all suffered because they were also locked into that late-80s formula, their stories and characters blithely continuing and out of date style, ignoring the advent of The X FIles, Buffy/Angel, Alias Lost, 24, new Battlestar Galactica and so on – mostly because they were saddled with a worn-out production team who appeared to be blissfully unaware of the rest of the business.

TOS, which I’ll admit is my favourite, was ‘filmic’ right from the start. The characters were larger-than-life archetypes, played by actors who had no problem taking those characters on to the big screen.

Look at the two main movie Trek captains. Right up to the bitter end, Shatner conveyed charm, confidence and humour. Patrick Stewart seemed to be underplaying – he wasn’t, but Picard, as a character, wasn’t right for the cinema.

Film and TV are very different, in spite of how much they cross over. The TNG crew was fine for TV, but they should have stuck with the original crew (not necessarily cast) or certainly the more dangerous 23rd century for movies.

In an ideal world, TNG should have had a more ‘elastic’ cast: more characters should have been killed off or moved on and there should have been more additions to the cast. It was just too . . . safe.

By: trekmaster

trekmaster — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:12:51 +0000

The Spiner/Logan idea would have been a good comic but not a trek movie.

By: Adam Cohen

Adam Cohen — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 18:10:27 +0000

I really don’t like the Brent Spiner/John Logan writing tandem. Look what they did with the last movie! And a Legion of Doom re-hashing all these old Trek villains is just stupid. Obviously that was never going to happen because Berman had Jendressen working on a totally different concept anyway. Spiner, go back to doing dinner theater in Cleveland, ok?