Star Trek: The Next Threaderation

[BlobVanDam]

Man, is there anything in the ST world as anti-climactic as the end of Enterprise season 3, when they destroy the Xindi weapon and wind up in some silly-ass Nazi thing instead of returning home? Christ, not every season has to end with a cliffhanger.

It was a bit of a downer to me that such a strong season didn't end conclusively, and had to throw that curveball at us. Star Trek and nazi's, right?
TOS used them, Voyager used them, Enterprise used them.....

Still waiting for Blob to tell us all what he *did* like about Into Darkness...

I haven't forgotten, I've just been busy! I think my very first post when the movie came out covered most of it though, but I'll come up with something.

[El Barto]

Something that's always bugged me. Phlox's buddy Dr. Lucas might be the biggest asshole in the ST universe. He watches one of his colleagues die a horrible, painful death to withhold information he possess (which was the right thing to do). Then as soon as they line up somebody he actually gives a damn about, he folds almost immediately. If there's ever a time for "in for a dime/in for a dollar," that was it. What do you say to the dead guy's family? "He gave up his life to prevent unmitigated evil from falling into the wrong hands." Oh, so they didn't get the evil and we're all safe then. "Well, no, I gave it to them as soon as he stopped his writhing." WTF? It's bad enough that you give up the info, but to do it after you let someone die for it (to save the guy that would have been the first to sacrifice himself for the greater good, no less), you're really just shitting on pretty much everybody and everything.

What other despicable and reprehensible characters have there been?

[rumborak]

Well, I guess there was the Cardassian Dr. Mengele equivalent that The Doctor had to work with.

[El Barto]

Eh, he didn't really bother me too much, except that his excessively cheerful demeanor was a little creepy. I found the crappiness of the episode more offensive than the character.

[rumborak]

Yeah, with you on that on all counts. Nice idea for an  episode, but the execution and character development just didn't live up to it.

[El Barto]

I don't think Kai Winn had a single redeeming quality. I think I'd have to put her into a top 10 list of reprehensible ST characters.

[PowerSlave]

I don't think Kai Winn had a single redeeming quality. I think I'd have to put her into a top 10 list of reprehensible ST characters.

I'd go further and put her atop that list. Nobody else comes to mind that I despised more in any of the series.

[rumborak]

Yeah, I agree. What was great about her though was that she wasn't just a one-dimensional evil person. She did what she did because she felt she was being denied what she rightfully deserved.

[El Barto]

True enough. While being thoroughly dislikable, she was still one of ST's most interesting characters. There was a depth to here that even most of the main cast didn't seem to have. And the jealously, while present the entire time, was only a fraction of her flaw. For most of the series she still tried to do what was right for Bajor; just all the while completely misguided.

[rumborak]

Yeah. It was remarkable how they managed to make her absolutely despicable, and yet understandable. Dukat then smartly manipulating her was the nexus of awesome.

[Orbert]

The best "bad guys" are always the ones who are intelligent and have their own goals, which sometimes even align with our own.  That's so much better than one-dimensional "evil just because muah-ha-ha!" type villains.

[King Postwhore]

Caught my wife watching reruns of TNG on BBC America.  My work here is done.

[El Barto]

The best "bad guys" are always the ones who are intelligent and have their own goals, which sometimes even align with our own.  That's so much better than one-dimensional "evil just because muah-ha-ha!" type villains.

Which makes it ambiguous as to whether or not they're even a bad guy at all. Shran comes to mind.

[King Postwhore]

Every character Jeffrey Combs  does is gold.  I can never get enough of him in TV or film.

[Kotowboy]

I liked him in the Frighteners.

[BlobVanDam]

Every character Jeffrey Combs  does is gold.  I can never get enough of him in TV or film.

He was such a standout. Apparently he was going to be made a regular in S5 of Enterprise, which would have been a huge boost to a pretty dull cast.
I saw him in that first, then saw him in DS9 as Brunt and Weyoun. He was great as Weyoun, apparently great enough to bring him back from the dead.

And he was great in Transformers Prime as Ratchet too. He's the reason I started watching it.

[El Barto]

Yeah, Shran and the doctor were definitely the two best characters on Ent. I know that somewhere in season 4, probably related to that thing with the blind romulans, he loses his ship and remarks that once an Andorian loses a ship he commands it's pretty much game over for his career. That would have been the writers setting him up to become a regular the next season (although I'm not real sure how they would have played that).

As for Jeffrey Combs, I always found it difficult to separate ST characters from ST actors. Put another way, is it JC that made Shran a great character, or was it the writing? I suspect he has a great deal to do with the characterization, but at the same time Brunt never really amused me much. Anybody actually remember him as Tiron, Plenk or Krem? I guess I just never really think of it as "man, that Jeffrey Combs is awesome!", in as much as I think that Shran and Weyoun are awesome. I certainly give him credit for being a huge part of the reason for that, but it's still how I tend to see things.

[King Postwhore]

I suggest "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond".  These were the first 2 movies I saw him in.  My friend made a D&D game off of the movie From Beyond that we played. 

EB, it was his delivery of those lines that made him stand out in any Trek show.  Both my wife and I would always perk up when we knew he was involved in an episode.

[BlobVanDam]

Yeah, Shran and the doctor were definitely the two best characters on Ent. I know that somewhere in season 4, probably related to that thing with the blind romulans, he loses his ship and remarks that once an Andorian loses a ship he commands it's pretty much game over for his career. That would have been the writers setting him up to become a regular the next season (although I'm not real sure how they would have played that).

As for Jeffrey Combs, I always found it difficult to separate ST characters from ST actors. Put another way, is it JC that made Shran a great character, or was it the writing? I suspect he has a great deal to do with the characterization, but at the same time Brunt never really amused me much. Anybody actually remember him as Tiron, Plenk or Krem? I guess I just never really think of it as "man, that Jeffrey Combs is awesome!", in as much as I think that Shran and Weyoun are awesome. I certainly give him credit for being a huge part of the reason for that, but it's still how I tend to see things.

It's a combination, but it also comes down to what character plays to the actor's strengths. Jeffrey Combs seems to play that kind of ambiguous bad guy role well, but Brunt (along with most Ferengi) was more of a gag bad guy character, and it's probably hard to act through those silly teeth anyway. And his other characters were mostly one offs that I remember, so I don't count those.
They kept giving him roles, so I think they saw the potential in him as an actor, rather than just an actor who got lucky with good characters.

[rumborak]

Watching "Qpid" right now. Man, Riker is big at that point. Him hitting on Vash doesn't really work that well because of it.

[Orbert]

Finally watched Star Trek: Into Darkness.  I liked it.

I grew up with original Star Trek, and in general didn't like the 2009 one because it was hard to accept the reworking of all the characters, and let's face it, the story itself was pretty bad.  But this is what Star Trek is now, so I guess I should get used to it.

Except that that didn't even occur to me until after I'd watched it.  I am used to it, already, and didn't even realize it.  I've always liked Karl Urban's McCoy; I think he does the best out of all of them at nailing the original character.  But this time around, Spock and even Kirk seemed much more like the original characters.  Either that, or I'm just getting used to them as the new characters.  Probably a bit of both.  But when Kirk was on the other side of the glass at the end, he really looked a lot like a young William Shatner.  A lot.

And before you say anything, I realize that that's not even required.  They don't have to be just like the originals; it just helps us old fogies adapt a little better.  So the Big Three were fine, and I guess I'm getting used to New Uhura, but I still think Chekov and Scotty are pretty bad.  I usually like Simon Pegg, but man, he's just not Scotty.  Sulu was pretty cool.  I still can't watch John Cho and not see Harold Lee, but Harold Lee as Sulu is still pretty good.

Were we not to supposed to know exactly what was happening when there was an Admiral Marcus and then a cute blond named Carol Notmarcus shows up?  Come on, give your audience a little credit.  Wait, she strips to her underwear for no apparent reason?  Okay, I guess I'll allow it.

So this is the "rebooted" Star Trek universe, and it just happens to have the same characters, even Khan (even though he's Notkhan) and a bunch of scenes where we have the same exact lines from the original movie, except spoken by someone else.  Interesting who ended up fixing the warp core and how it...

You know what?  I'm like the last person in the world to see this movie so I'm not saying anything new.  I just wanted to say that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

[Kotowboy]

At first I thought 2009 was a lot better but the more I watch Into Darkness - the more I prefer it and can easily watch it from start to end over and over whereas scenes from 2009 bore me now.

[rumborak]

I actually bought ST:ID from Google Movies, just to try it out. What's funny is, the "representative" picture they chose of the movie is the half-naked Carol Marcus

[Orbert]

Also, from what people were saying online, I expected literally no character development and all explosions and action.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much character development took place, how often they slowed things down and actually talked.

Lens flares everywhere, though.  I honestly wasn't looking for them, but holy shit they were everywhere.  There were scenes where I thought maybe something was wrong with my Blu-ray player or the disc, then I remembered J. J. Abrams.

[Kotowboy]

Also, from what people were saying online, I expected literally no character development and all explosions and action.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much character development took place, how often they slowed things down and actually talked.

Well there's your problem

[El Barto]

Also, from what people were saying online, I expected literally no character development and all explosions and action.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much character development took place, how often they slowed things down and actually talked.

It was certainly an improvement over 2009. Still, there was a helluva lot of time spent on chase scenes, fight scenes, people blasting across space scenes. There were also plenty of plot and character elements they glossed over. I think this was a much better effort, but it still would have benefited greatly from knocking 10 minutes of gee-whiz special effects and devoting it the story. The other thing is that it's paced for all of that action. Yes, there was more dialog and story happening, but part of that was because it was all moving by so quickly.

Do modern movies always have to blast along so quickly?

[BlobVanDam]

They definitely put more effort into character development in this one. They made it transparent from the opening scene that it was going to be a major plot point of the movie, and they did a pretty good job of it, although they couldn't develop it far enough for the TWOK rehash scenes to have any resonance for me. It worked much better the first time.

I never really had any problems with the casting, and I think they did a great job there. I fully accept the main guys as these characters. Chekov, Sulu and Uhura don't work for me, although Uhura is at least a developed character. Kirk, Spock and Bones pretty much nail it though, and I actually really liked Scotty in Into Darkness too (whoa Kotowboy, do I actually like something about the new ST that you don't?? )

The movie had a lot of the groundwork there to far exceed ST:2009, but between the poor rehash, the ridiculous plot, and the miscast villian, it didn't come close imo.


There's also word that a new Trek series is possibly going ahead with Orci in charge, set in the new universe. If you got me to describe the absolute worst case scenario for Star Trek, that would be it. Lets get the guy who can't even write a coherent 2 hour scifi movie to be in charge of one of the longest running scifi franchises!

[jammindude]

Can I fart glitter too???

[El Barto]

There's also word that a new Trek series is possibly going ahead with Orci in charge, set in the new universe. If you got me to describe the absolute worst case scenario for Star Trek, that would be it. Lets get the guy who can't even write a coherent 2 hour scifi movie to be in charge of one of the longest running scifi franchises!

I said right after 2009 that this cast would be excellent in a TV series. I'd love to see it. However, I was of the impression that none of them would go for it. Add to that, I agree that Orci being in charge would likely be a disaster.

[BlobVanDam]

There's also word that a new Trek series is possibly going ahead with Orci in charge, set in the new universe. If you got me to describe the absolute worst case scenario for Star Trek, that would be it. Lets get the guy who can't even write a coherent 2 hour scifi movie to be in charge of one of the longest running scifi franchises!

I said right after 2009 that this cast would be excellent in a TV series. I'd love to see it. However, I was of the impression that none of them would go for it. Add to that, I agree that Orci being in charge would likely be a disaster.

I'd have no problem with this cast in a series either, although I'm not sure that would be the plan. I haven't seen any details on exactly what Orci was pitching.
But having him attached to this at all fill me with fear. The fact he continues to get employment is a testament to the stupidity of the average viewer.

Given how many potential new Trek series that CBS has shot down over the past few years, I'm praying this one doesn't go ahead either. I would honestly rather have no Trek on TV than have him run it further into the ground.

[Kotowboy]

I really don't want another Trek show. Plus whilst I thought that Scotty was *better* in Into Darkness - he was still nothing like Doohan's scotty at all.

[BlobVanDam]

I would love another Trek show, but only if done right. I think they should at least wait until the new movies are done with (probably one or two more), and then they can focus on putting together a good series from scratch, and not just something to cash in on the new movies and that audience. I don't want JJ and co anywhere near a new series. Their concept of scifi is not what my concept of scifi is.

But it has been proven that Trek works a lot better on TV than on the big screen, as is the case with most scifi imo, so I really want a new series at some point.

[King Postwhore]

I really don't want another Trek show. Plus whilst I thought that Scotty was *better* in Into Darkness - he was still nothing like Doohan's scotty at all.

Really?  Best part of a TV series is an arch storyline.  Your nuts man!   Bring a new series.  I'm all for it.

[Kotowboy]

Leave my nuts out of this! 

[Kotowboy]

Call me crazy but I prefer waiting 3-4 years for a new movie than waiting 6 -12 months for a cliffhanger to be resolved...