TREK FEST 2012 - post your star trek viewings here!

Now that we are in a new month, time to start watching sci-fi and fantasy stuff! With the exception of November the 23rd which is officially 'Doctor Who Only Day'

First up - The Green Slime

Seriously, it was made with MGM and a Japanese studio in '68

Just the trailer for The Green Slime is more entertaining than most movies.

It's about that time of year to watch District 9 again. I watch it at least once a year. It's one of my favorite films of the last decade. I don't know why it affected me so much. I think it is the journey of persosnal redemption that Wikkus goes through. Also, the aliens manage to be so good and emotional that it is beyond belief. The story manages to be a great metaphor and an original sci fi story without being preachy.

I remember Green Slime from when I was real young, lol. For some reason, when I saw Ark in Space, it reminded me of it, but the memories were hazy.

ST First Contact

With TNG still on the brain... wanted to watch the 1701E again

ST Insurrection

My favorite

Oh heck, why not. Not overly fond of it, but...

ST Nemesis

CA, what are your thoughts on Generations?

mattmanw54301 wrote:

CA, what are your thoughts on Generations?

Guess I'm watching Generations next

Cruel Angel wrote:

Oh heck, why not. Not overly fond of it, but...

ST Nemesis

Every time someone watches Nemesis, all I can imagine is my own shattered inner fanboy quietly weeping in a corner.

I've watched it several times since that initial, horrific viewing and while it gets easier to sit through each time, it also gets progressively worse each time.

I honestly want to know what happened with that movie. Now there have been other "Bad" Trek Films, but in all honesty while III, V, the other TNG films, and XI in some circles carry that distinction, I don't think any of them - V included - have been as fundamentally flawed as Nemesis was.

There's nothing about the movie that works and everything in the movie is derivative of the other - better - Trek films. Worse is the fact that like every other film post-Generations, no effort is made to address TNG's impressive rogue's gallery. You can't tell me Denise Crosby was doing anything of critical importance she couldn't have reprised her role as Sela...you know. The Romulan adversary with deep emotional and historical ties with Picard and his crew? The one who has personal justification for her hatred of Earth and Federation?

But I digress, I think the moment Nemesis just went completely belly up for me isn't when they ignore continuity or dredge up yet another Soong android (Because Lord knows it can't be Lore - you know, the one we last saw in pieces jettisoned into space.)...it's when they decided to rip off Violations, an episode that was extremely uncomfortable to sit through because it was a very serious, mature discussion of the nature of Rape on a family program - something that TV Censors still are skittish about.

So naturally, let's chuck out everything that made Violations thought provoking and powerful and let's just keep the uncomfortable nature of a attempted rape. More then that, a pointless attempted rape. Now of course all rape is horrible and by that nature "pointless", but if you're going to use powerful imagery like rape...it needs to serve the story.

This didn't. Heck, more damning then just doing it to begin with is how it happens and is never dwelled upon or matters afterwards. Oh sure there's a bit where Troi uses the experience to do something to the criminally misused Ron Perlman, but that's a whole different rant (Empathic sense does not equal telepathic ability!)

Well that and the giant gaping chasm in the bowels of the Enterprise. I guess that's where Decks 25 and 26 go when the script calls for only 24 decks.

Agreed. Much love for Sela. Seems like post TWOK when they try and go with a single identifiable big bad, what they come up with doesn't work. Neither Shinzon or Nero impressed me at all. The Romulans are my fav baddie race, so much disappointment for me.

Yes, ST just couldn't resist going back to the Soong boys well time and time again. I was glad I stopped watching Enterprise by the time that series went Soong too.

I think the Shinzon Troi thing was just an 'easy' way out by the writers to get the viewers to see Shinzon as a vile baddie, instead of the build at the time in seeing him as the sympathetic guy who was just a helpless victim of his childhood and trying to help the Remans. Like in wrestling when you want the baddie to draw cheap heat from the fans... do something easy like insult the town or state, instead of really trying to do it through plot development.

It would have been more effective if they showed more followup on how much it impacted Troi , but as you say... they just dropped it afterwards.

Overall, I felt it was just a bit uneven. Not a lot really happens until they finally run into Shinzon. I think if they tightened it up a bit and didn't spend so long on the finding of B4 it could have flowed a bit better. Get to the planet, find an arm, get out. Seemed like the getting there and out (with the attack) was just a 'we need some more action somewhere, lets give them a buggy, so we can have a car chase '.

I would have liked to see more of the Romulan politics. What was the reaction to the Senate assassination... more of the 'resistance'... a nice name drop or reference as to how unification was going, what is Sela up to... and of course more of Donatra (who in her short screen time was to me way better than the other characters).

And then we kill off Data, with more pointless impact, because we already have his replacement. Even what reactions we saw didn't seem right. Troi looked to be hit the most, when I would think Geordi was really the closest to him.

Shame that we didn't get one more film to try and send the TNG crew off on a good note, like we got with ST 6.

Cruel Angel wrote:

Agreed. Much love for Sela. Seems like post TWOK when they try and go with a single identifiable big bad, what they come up with doesn't work.

It really doesn't. Khan's appeal came not from any supposed menace, but because he and Shatner played so well off one another despite never being in the same room together. They were so busy trying to out-do the other in chewing the scenery they reached a Ham Acting Nirvana where everything was in a state of balance and harmony.

I mean, taken all together Khan was a extremely ineffective bad guy that just implies that Humanity of the 90s in the Trek verse couldn't find their way out of a wet paper bag if he managed to conquer a entire third of the world. He and his followers manage to overpower the Reliant's crew and maroon then on Ceti Alpha 5, learn all the vital and necessary functions of the ship in a matter of days and don't immediately go hunting for revenge, but go hunting for Genesis - something that could restore Khan to his throne on Earth or anywhere else in the Galaxy.

So he throws that and all his followers lives away in a petty revenge scheme, when the power of God Himself was within his grasp when he beamed up Genesis. Seriously, all Mirror Universe Hoshi had was the Defiant - a Constitution Class starship - and she managed to make herself Empress of the 22nd Century. Khan could have been a living God - especially if his super smart followers could have figured out how to reverse engineer the thing.

So yeah, the post-movie idea that somehow a major big bad is all the movies needed was a fallacy. It works in Star Trek VI because Chang's just one player in a larger conspiracy, and I'd say it works in III because the Klingon Commander there (Forgot his name) was actually doing what he was doing in preservation of his people from what he saw (rightfully) as a devastating super-weapon and IV gets a pass because there was no villain.

Everywhere else it just falls flat. The Klingon in V was doing it because he was bored. Soren's motivations are as flimsy as the excuses made for his actions, Ru'afo's got the most believable motivation and heck, for all the "Son'a are BAD!" stuff we're fed throughout the film, the overall goal to share the rejuvenation technology with the galaxy at large is not "evil" and nothing in the film suggests the Son'a were acting in less than good faith. Ru'afo didn't even become "evil" until Picard stirred up the Ba'ku. The Borg Queen...No. Just No. Nero's backstory was left on the editing room floor, so he just comes across as another emotionally crippled whiner like Soren. Heck, I like 2009 Trek and even I don't defend Nero. He was a weak villain.

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Neither Shinzon or Nero impressed me at all. The Romulans are my fav baddie race, so much disappointment for me.

The Romulans just get the short end of the stick in the Trek films. First, they're involvement gets completely cut from Star Trek III so their iconic ship - the Bird of Prey - forever more becomes a Klingon staple (Seriously. The Klingons in the original draft hijack the Bird of Prey from the Romulans because in order to get around the blockade surrounding Genesis, they need the cloaking device. Thus explaining why an "Honorable" race of warriors would use a Cloaking Device in the first place. And why the thing was firing Plasma Torpedoes). Then, we get an idealistic goofball in V who I'm pretty sure was sent to Nimbus III with the Senate laughing at her behind her back the whole while. They get killed off screen in Generations, and the next time we see them? Their homeworld got blown up by a Super Nova that wasn't even their own star! (Distance in Space? What's that?)

The only time the Romulans look good in the films is Star Trek VI - and the Romulan Ambassador of that film is so wooden you end up mistaking him for a potted plant for most of the film. The characters sure do - why else would Starfleet just start up their little "Illegal extraction into another galactic power" presentation to the President with the Romulan Ambassador still in the room?

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Yes, ST just couldn't resist going back to the Soong boys well time and time again. I was glad I stopped watching Enterprise by the time that series went Soong too.

Oddly enough, I found that episode to be rather good. I liked the fact Soong in Enterprise was cooking with Eugenics rather then Cybernetics...and then they go and ruin it with the final line of the episode being how he'll look into cybernetics. Subtlety, thy name is not Enterprise.

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I think the Shinzon Troi thing was just an 'easy' way out by the writers to get the viewers to see Shinzon as a vile baddie, instead of the build at the time in seeing him as the sympathetic guy who was just a helpless victim of his childhood and trying to help the Remans. Like in wrestling when you want the baddie to draw cheap heat from the fans... do something easy like insult the town or state, instead of really trying to do it through plot development.

See, this is another reason Nemesis fails. It tries so hard to establish Shinzon as the "Dark Picard" by trying to do right by his people...so he obviously abuses them, murders them out of hand, and his idea of "saving" the Remans is plunging them into a galactic conflict through global genocide.

Not to mention, even if the attack had gone off without a hitch...it wouldn't have accomplished anything. Even assuming Spacedock got hit in the blast, Starfleet has enough in place - especially in light of the Dominion War - to restructure quickly and civilian control would be a matter of holding emergency elections while another planet - probably Vulcan or Andoria - became the new "official" home of the Federation.

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And then we kill off Data, with more pointless impact, because we already have his replacement. Even what reactions we saw didn't seem right. Troi looked to be hit the most, when I would think Geordi was really the closest to him.

Yeah. If you're going to shamelessly rip off Spock's sacrifice in the most idiotic way possible, they could have at least gotten the character relationships right. But that would have required giving Levar Burton screen time outside Engineering or screwing something up, and the TNG films seemed to have an aversion to that.

Generations is very uneven for me. I love the pure TNG parts, except when it gets to Soran and the Nexus on Viridian 3. I tend to zone out at that point, and at the classic Trek parts.

It doesn't help that I was already biased against the movie before it came out. I just didn't see the need to have the classic people involved just because the execs didn't think the TNG crew were a strong enough draw on their own and wanted a transitional movie.

So we get stuck with the trio and the B. I couldn't buy that Starfleet would hand over captaincy of the Enterprise to someone that seemed so clueless. The fact that it was Cameron didn't help either It all seemed so contrived to put some of the classic crew into the movie, and of course having Kirk be able to take charge again. Kinda takes away from the great sendoff in 6.

Then great TNG stuff until Veridian 3, then it slowed down again. Too much Soran and Picard talking... then all that time in the Nexus just to get Kirk to come back. Didn't like the final 'fight' between Kirk Picard and Soran either, and again contrived so they could give Kirk a heroic death instead of Soran just blasting him. And what happens after that? Picard only piles a bunch of stones on top of him. Just to remain on a no name planet?

Uh, this is the legendary Kirk here. You couldn't have the SF rescue crews transport the body back to Earth, where he could be buried in their equivalent of Arlington, have a memorial, etc?

I wish i had found a good quality photo of the TNG crew on the sailing Enterprise. If I had that, I would have gotten that one signed by the cast at the con.

Spoiler:

Watched ST Motion Picture earlier...

Now gonna watch SW A New Hope

The humor in those two movie selections is that V'ger would have accepted hands down that Darth Vader was its creator.

"He's more machine now then man..."

EDIT: As for my Trekfest...I've been watching SF Debris' Opinionated Voyager Reviews if that counts. Despite him ripping on them insistently and utterly destroying the paper thin plots...it's kind of making me want to track down Voyager and watch the whole thing (I wandered away mid-second season).

I am working my way through Voyager on Netflix instant. I have made it to the end of Season 6. This one has taken by far the longest of any of the Trek series for me to watch. Lots of eps I just find to be, well, dull as frigging dishwater.

I do enjoy the basic premise, I just wish they had done more with it. Some of the post-series books are pretty good, but I get bored pretty easily with Voyager.

Me too. My Netflix watching stalled in season 6 . Seven really surprised me. She's like the only interesting character to me. Everyone else is just kind of there.

When the series was coming out, I watched the first two seasons, then got bored. Only tuned back in to see the debut of Species 8742, then got bored again soon after. Tuned in and caught the last 15 min of the finale, just to see how they would end it. Terrible pay off.