Star Trek: The Next Threaderation

[Kotowboy]

*Posts news that Bob Orci is directing Trek 3*

* Waits for El Barto & Blob to Explode in rage*

* Gets popcorn *

[BlobVanDam]

Saw it earlier, and was going to post it.
https://badassdigest.com/2014/05/13/paramount-hires-guy-with-no-directing-experience-for-star-trek-3

And come on, to be fair, that is a completely shitty choice. He has no directing experience that I know of, and he's not even good at his regular job to begin with. I predict this will continue the steep downhill trend of the new movies.

JJ and co need to stay far away from Trek. They need to put someone in charge who understands the franchise while he gets his thrills with Star Wars.

[hefdaddy42]

I agree with Blob.

[Kotowboy]

If it was a notoriously shitty director id be more worried but he may yet surprise everyone.

As usual I'm gonna wait til the film is out. Unless other more worrying news surfaces.

[El Barto]

No explosion from me. I naturally think it's a silly choice, but since I don't really consider this Star Trek anyway I have no personal interest in it. Maybe it'll be a good movie; probably won't be. Don't honestly care either way.

[Kotowboy]

.

[rumborak]

[BlobVanDam]

That's great. Uhura is the funniest. I wonder if they've tracked others, since they did this throughout a lot of Trek.

[El Barto]

That is cool. It's great how they all go different directions.

[BlobVanDam]

The different directions look hilarious once you cancel out the camera movement. But I thought they usually coordinated their directions. Was this just an earlier TOS episode, or did TOS not direct their movements as they did in later series?

[El Barto]

Dunno, but like you, I really hope somebody does more of those. One problem though is that most of the time the camera shook, rather than fell to one side. In fact, I'd bet a fiver that's Balance of Terror, because it's so rare for the ship to just fall over like that. They were probably all used to the bumping around thing, where different directions would work much better. This might have been new to them.

[rumborak]

As a Trekkie I would say the inertial dampeners as well as artificial gravity were probably compromised. So, it shouldn't be too surprising if they all get pulled into different directions.

As a non-Trekkie I would say, yeah, they probably didn't think a guy 50 years later would create an animated gif that exposes this

[BlobVanDam]

I just checked Balance of Terror, and you'd be keeping your money, Barto. There's another ship hit earlier in the episode with the same camera move, but without a big crew reaction.
Any earlier episodes where they do it? I don't want to go and check a dozen episodes for them, but I'd give them a good skim if I knew I was searching the right episode.

As a Trekkie I would say the inertial dampeners as well as artificial gravity were probably compromised. So, it shouldn't be too surprising if they all get pulled into different directions.

As a non-Trekkie I would say, yeah, they probably didn't think a guy 50 years later would create an animated gif that exposes this

I believe the official explanation (or at least from people who worked on the show) is that the inertial dampeners compensate for known movements, such as ship acceleration and turning, but not so much for a sudden unexpected impact like the ship getting hit, which is why there's some movement.
Kind of like how noise canceling headphones cancel out repetitive noises like engines, but not other sudden noises, I would say.

[El Barto]

I just checked Balance of Terror, and you'd be keeping your money, Barto. There's another ship hit earlier in the episode with the same camera move, but without a big crew reaction.
Any earlier episodes where they do it? I don't want to go and check a dozen episodes for them, but I'd give them a good skim if I knew I was searching the right episode.

No dice, mate. I'd be taking your Kangaroo money. Balance of Terror after the atomic mine hits them 41 minutes in.

[BlobVanDam]

I just checked Balance of Terror, and you'd be keeping your money, Barto. There's another ship hit earlier in the episode with the same camera move, but without a big crew reaction.
Any earlier episodes where they do it? I don't want to go and check a dozen episodes for them, but I'd give them a good skim if I knew I was searching the right episode.

No dice, mate. I'd be taking your Kangaroo money. Balance of Terror after the atomic mine hits them 41 minutes in.

That's what I meant when I said you'd be keeping your money, ie. you were right. I never said I'd bet against you on it! Bad wording on my part I suppose.

My kangaroo money is probably worthless anyway.

[ReaPsTA]

A bit late, but I also don't understand why Orci's directing the new Trek film.

I have no idea if he'll be a good director or not.  But, giving him such an important film for his first project is a bad idea.  On one hand, it's almost impossible for him to fail.  But if he does, it will be a disaster. 

Because the film's so big, it's not like he's going to have a lot of power or opportunities to learn.  You know that the cinematographer, editor, art director, composer, etc. will be expected to pull a lot of weight to make sure Orci's inexperience doesn't damage the film.  A first time director needs to be able to make decisions about how a scene is shot, look at the dailies, realize he fucked up, and use that experience to do better in the future.  Star Trek can't fail, so Orci won't be allowed to fail, which means he won't be able to learn, which means he won't be able to become a better director.

Maybe Orci's a directing savant, but you can't make that assumption.  Huge mistake by everyone.

[El Barto]

I'd actually put my money on failure, and it has nothing to do with Orci. Though profitable, the last one didn't really make enough ROI to keep the studio happy, and it even had fake Khan in it. Either this will be another ST themed transformers or they'll actually decide to make a sci-fi movie. In either case it'll fail. Either by not making enough to justify the 200,000,000 they spend on it or by alienating the masses for a much smaller number of people who want to see real ST. Either way it'll finally be the end of this particular franchise.

[ReaPsTA]

So what you're saying is, they aren't going to get writers who could, you know, come up with a good story to engage people.

[El Barto]

They haven't yet.

But more to the point, I don't think Star Trek works nowadays. If you could make ST for a small budget, it'd be fine for getting ST fans into the theaters. You can't, though. The special effects are too expensive, so you have to create a Summer blockbuster to suck in the masses. For one thing, that's not ST. Also, now that people have seen it twice, I doubt they'll be as gung-ho for a third. I also think a lot of the popcorn eaters will skip it since JJA isn't attached anymore.

[King Postwhore]

Bart, I think the star Trek you love is just not made for a 2 hour movie.  I would be fine with these movies now and have a new series on TV where they can flesh out a storyline.  I miss the Trek 24 episode storyline arcs.

[rumborak]

BTW, looking more at Uhura, I actually wouldn't be surprised if she was directed to do that move. What it achieves is that every part of the screen is in motion, something you want in this case.

[BlobVanDam]

They haven't yet.

But more to the point, I don't think Star Trek works nowadays. If you could make ST for a small budget, it'd be fine for getting ST fans into the theaters. You can't, though. The special effects are too expensive, so you have to create a Summer blockbuster to suck in the masses. For one thing, that's not ST. Also, now that people have seen it twice, I doubt they'll be as gung-ho for a third. I also think a lot of the popcorn eaters will skip it since JJA isn't attached anymore.

The problem is that these days the action/scifi movies are mostly only made on huge budgets, so they need to either be dumbed down and formulaic, or an easy reboot/remake/sequel, or both to be a safe profit. I wish they were willing to do some lower budget movies, more like the old Trek movies. With today's tech, they could still do a solid job of it. But I agree it probably wouldn't bring in the masses. Their expectations are much higher.

That's one of many reasons I have always felt that Star Trek (and scifi in general) works best on TV, where you don't have that need to make a billion dollars, and the expectation for effects isn't the be-all of entertainment, and you can do those more cerebral episodes among some more action packed ones.

[Kotowboy]

It doesn't matter who is directing Trek 3 - they'll only be strong armed into making whatever movie the studio wants anyway.

So you can blame the writing and directing if you want but it may ultimately be Paramount calling the shots.

I would love it if the third movie restored the original timeline and basically said " well that's our universe over with ".

That way if you don't like the JJ era films - you can just dismiss them as an alternate universe that never happened.

It would be as smart as creating the alt timeline in the first place.

[Kotowboy]

They haven't yet.

ST09 had a fine story.

[BlobVanDam]

It doesn't matter who is directing Trek 3 - they'll only be strong armed into making whatever movie the studio wants anyway.

So you can blame the writing and directing if you want but it may ultimately be Paramount calling the shots.

I would love it if the third movie restored the original timeline and basically said " well that's our universe over with ".

That way if you don't like the JJ era films - you can just dismiss them as an alternate universe that never happened.

It would be as smart as creating the alt timeline in the first place.

That's never going to happen. The story a little while back was Orci being involved with a new Trek series set in the new universe. Hopefully that disappears into the wind along with all of the other Trek series rumours, but it seems the most likely scenario, unfortunately. That to me would be the absolute worst case scenario.

And the movie about Kirk and friends all being together at Starfleet and Kirk getting handed everything on a silver platter for being a self entitled rebellious dick for 2 hours was not really a fine story. The casting and execution made it a decent movie, but the script was full of wtf moments. And ST:ID's script was kind of a trainwreck.

Paramount aren't really a scapegoat here. If anything, they reined them in from going too far. JJ wanted a lot more freedom than what he got with the Trek franchise, and thankfully they didn't give it. I mostly blame Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman for being incompetent science fiction writers.

[Nefarius]

My Trek apprentice and I just finished TNG on Saturday. She has now seen the 20 TOS episodes I planned, the 6 TOS crew movies, the 40 TNG episodes I planned plus two episodes extra (A Fistful Of Datas, Phantasms) based on her feedback. We then watched Star Trek Generations as a big screen bookend. Overall she liked TNG a lot, though she hates me a little for showing her another movie with the Enterprise getting destroyed.

Looking forward to the DS9 leg starting next weekend.

Greetings...
Nef

[The King in Crimson]

A Fistful of Datas? You just wanted to test her tolerance for pain didn't you?

[rumborak]

IIt's certainly not a particularly high-brow episode, but I could see it being funny to a younger audience.

[El Barto]

Man, you got Worf+Troi, a shit-ton of Alexander, Worf being a wannabe badass when he was still quite the pussy of a Klingon, Spiner overacting, all the makings of a bottom 5% episode.

[rumborak]

Some more stabilized videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nKDQBwpCJg

[El Barto]

Damn, that was awful. On the bright side, I found a site with all of them in gif format.

[BlobVanDam]

That's much better. The video appears to be taken from the gifs, rather than the other way around, and the gifs are at better speed.
I think I find the Riker one the most amusing of that batch. Maybe the better stabilization helps.

[El Barto]

I like the second one. McCoy and one of the redshirts are almost perfectly synchronized, while everybody else just launch to the right.

[BlobVanDam]

I just noticed Sulu's little dance twirl.

[Nefarius]

She responded well to the more "out there" episodes, so A Fistful Of Datas and Phantasms were a good fit. And while I agree that A Fistful Of Datas is far from being great, it's quite entertaining to put those characters in a very unusual, out of place environment just for having fun with it, like Q recreating Sherwood Forest. Those episodes were made just for the fun and the actors seemed to enjoy being stupid and over the top for a change as well. Due to condensing seven full seasons down to 40 episodes covering the background development and character evolution there's a lot of drama and big topics with many of the lighter and funnier episodes omitted. But they are an integral part of Trek and I wouldn't want to miss them.

Greetings...
Nef