Comments on: Flashback: Super Bowl 2009 Brings Star Trek to the masses

By: S. John Ross

S. John Ross — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:42:10 +0000

#58: “If you can tell a new story and put a new spin on a familiar character then why not?”

It has not been established that this creative team can tell a new story.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:05:16 +0000

#55 – If you can tell a new story and put a new spin on a familiar character then why not? THE DARK KNIGHT is proof.

By: Chris M

Chris M — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:59:00 +0000

It’s fun to look back on the moment a mainstream audience was exposed the STAR TREK! :)

By: The Disinvited

The Disinvited — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:21:23 +0000

Speaking of marketing, did anyone notice this?:

http://www.hd-report.com/2010/01/25/paramount-selling-blu-ray-discs-and-movie-memorabilia-online/

Note that this isn’t CBS’ Trek online store:

http://store.startrek.com/

but Paramount’s own gig.

By: captain_neill

captain_neill — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:19:47 +0000

About the Khan debate

I can dig two universes and I can use to new actors playing the crew even though I will always prefer the originals. But I cannot dig this universe being used only to retell the great stuff rather than do something different.

By: S. John Ross

S. John Ross — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:03:37 +0000

#52:

In fairness, while Star Trek occasionally has aliens who are really meant to be alien, most of the “alien” races (Klingons, Vulcans, Bajorans, Andorians, Romulans, Tellarites, whatever) are, at least in dramatic terms, _foreigners_, alternate takes on human cultures (or even flat-out analogues of them) and stories about them are still stories about the human condition.

By: Jeyl

Jeyl — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:09:16 +0000

@52: “Call me alienist, but I don’t empathise as well with aliens as I do with humans.”

Ever try District 9?

By: Mr Phil

Mr Phil — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:32:15 +0000

#47 “So far, this feels like a United Federation of Earth, not planets.”
Call me alienist, but I don’t empathise as well with aliens as I do with humans. I was never a big fan of the Klingon episodes of TNG, or most of DS9 which just went way too alien for me in its central storylines.

That said, I think most people got engaged with the Spock character. Maybe it’s just the lumpy foreheads of all the other aliens that put me off ;-)

By: Michael Hall

Michael Hall — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:26:43 +0000

Several years back I attended a panel at the L.A. Book Fair where Nick Meyer explicitly stated the lesson he took away from making The Wrath of Khan and the other Trek films he worked on: "When you're piloting someone else's ship, you take your flag and nail it to that f**cking mast as high as you can." For all of its over-the-top foolishness, Khan works because it very much reflects its maker's concerns: his love of literature and high adventure, the threat and promise of new technologies, the themes of aging, death, and rebirth. Yet, at the end of the day, what even a thoughtful actor like Walter Koenig took away from the experience was the belief that what every Trek film needed more than anything was a larger-than-life, scenery-chewing villain worthy of the Enterprise crew's attention. It was a depressingly shallow conclusion then--one shared by many fans and studio execs alike--and those still hoping for a great film based on Gene Roddenverry's creation have been paying for it ever since.

By: Jeyl

Jeyl — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:46:28 +0000

49. “the curse of the success of STII is that filmmakers took the wrong lessons from it.”

No joke. And Star Trek writers and directors take the wrong lessons from that movie in more ways than just using a villain. Remember how Kirk’s cheating the ‘no-win’ scenario was played out as a character flaw for Kirk? In Trek09, it’s played out as a strength. That kind of baffles me a bit because in the movie, Kirk obviously fails to save Vulcan from the Romulans, but not once in the whole movie does the ‘I don’t like to lose’ or ‘I don’t believe in the no-win scenario’ trait come up because of it. It’s like Kirk didn’t even care that Vulcan was lost and he failed to rescue it.

So really, when you build a character like Kirk who cheats in order to win, and on his first assignment he fails and six billion lives are lost, then story wise, what was the point of him cheating if he thinks nothing of losing? Was it because you wanted something to connect to Spock’s line “A trick I learned from a friend.”? No, because that line doesn’t make any sense. Spock has only been in this timeline for at least a couple of days compared to Nero’s 25 years, and everything that changed because of his arrival was out of his control. Everything involving Kirk’s line about Spock traveling back in time and changing things is probably the worst exchange in the movie because it’s so obviously incorrect.. Spock didn’t know he created a time traveling anomaly, he didn’t know what Nero had done, and everything that has been changed had occurred long before Spock had even arrived.