Captain April's Briefing Room

Once More Into the Breach....

2010-03-10T16:35:00.001-07:00

I keep going back to a complaint Harlan Ellison had about TOS, that fits like a freakin' glove to this movie.

Not only was it mediocre, it was deliberately intended to be mediocre.

They didn't strive to make something great and fail (that's the saving grace of some of the worst episodes, at least they tried something different and it didn't work). They targeted this film to hit that lowest common denominator and get the biggest bang for the buck. From the ubiquitous lens flares to the shaky cam to the MTV rapid edits to the pandering to every Star Trek stereotype in the book, both real and imagined, this film was plotted and made solely to suck in as many people as possible and separate them from their money (nothing wrong with that, in and of itself), and (here's the real crime) BE AS UTTERLY NONCHALLENGING AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

And for Star Trek, any incarnation of Star Trek, that is completely unforgivable. Star Trek is supposed to make you think. That this film not only doesn't make you think, but actually requires you to not think, lest the whole house of cards falls apart, is far worse than just another bad installment in the franchise, but a fundamental betrayal of the very idea behind Star Trek that Roddenberry tried to instill in the production and the writing, summed up by his favorite saying on the subject, "There is an intelligent life form on the other side of that television tube!" Eye candy is not enough, you have to appeal to the mind, to the intelligence of the viewer. Short change that, and you sell out the whole thing and reduce Star Trek to "just a movie."

Understand why I'm so angry over this thing now?

The Pardonable Sin

2010-01-24T20:58:00.002-07:00

Once again, a rant started elsewhere has become fodder for a more detailed rant here.

To wit, the core reason why JJ Abram's attempted Star Trek movie is so intolerable.

To boil it down to brass tacks, though, the unforgivable sin of JJ's movie is it was, not just stupid, but deliberately stupid.

Remember, the whole reason for Star Trek's existence was to elevate filmed science fiction out of the kidvid ghetto it had been relegated to for so many years and above such slop as "Lost in Space" and "Land of the Giants" and do real, grown up stories, address the big issues of the day that other television shows couldn't come within ten miles of, and, above all, make people think...

STAR TREK IS NOT ALLOWED TO BE DELIBERATELY STUPID!

Fun, exciting, thrilling, humorous, absolutely, but never at the cost of intelligent, thoughtful storytelling. To do so risks undermining the whole thing.

And it is for that one basic reason that I am convinced that Gene Roddenberry would not only have hated this film, but done everything in his power to keep it from being made.

I can just picture him in his office, leafing through the script, scratching through the scene where young Jim Kirk comes riding up on his motorbike to look at the Enterprise under construction, with the margin note "Starships are built in orbit", scribbling through that first scene with Spock and Uhura ("Uhura didn't sleep her way to the top & Spock wouldn't be a part of it"), then hitting on the destruction of Vulcan, at which point he'd call studio security and have JJ and his staff removed from the lot while GR sets fire to the script in the wastebasket and calls up the studio front office to see if they have any other bright ideas for who should write the new movie.

"Yeah, and can you send someone over this time who isn't hellbent on destroying everything I've spent the last forty-five years building up?"

Why I Hate JJ Abrams And His Stupid Star Trek Movie

2010-01-13T21:00:00.002-07:00

Don't worry, this is not a rehash of the movie. The review is still here, just scroll down a ways.

No, this has to do with the aftereffects of that misbegotten film, and the carnage that's been left in its wake. The battle lines that have been drawn over it, how open warfare breaks out whenever it gets brought up, not just when I'm around, but any time; I've come across many a scorched patch of Earth where previously a thriving discussion was going on...until someone brought up that fucking movie, and all hell broke loose.

A lot of it has to do with how the audience breaks down. I'll concentrate more on the Star Trek fan reaction rather than the general audience, because that's outside my purview. Besides, the average non-Star Trek fan generally doesn't go onto Star Trek message boards, so how they feel about the whole thing is pretty irrelevant, at least to this perspective.

Most fans saw the film, recognized it was six kinds of stupid, but had fun anyway being able to go to a Star Trek movie in God knows how long and enjoy the flashy lights, loud noises, etc., and generally have a grand old time. Many of my friends fall into this category. I happen to live with one who managed to enjoy it. Suffice it to say, though, I do not fall into this category. However, I have no problem with these folks. They're just not at as picky as I am when it comes to Star Trek. Different strokes, etc.

Then we have the group, a minority in my opinion, who think that this movie is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that it is better than anything ever put out by the original series or any of the movies. These are the kinds of folks who seem to be generally embarrassed to be seen as Star Trek fans, lest they be lumped in with those icky Trekkies, and with the box office success of JJ's little film, they finally have a chance to be a part of the cool crowd. Since the vast majority of the audience enjoyed the movie as well (although generally in spite of the actual film, not because of anything actually in it), this group feels quite comfortable crowing about how "Star Trek is finally COOL!" These people can only be described as delusional or disingenuous, as they ascribe some sort of technical or writing genius that no objective viewing of this film can possibly substantiate. Even the positive reviews of the film, which the Paramount marketing machine delights in citing, talk about how stupid the film is. For these fans, it's just an excuse to jump down the throats of that part of the fanbase they've always been embarrassed to be associated with.

Which brings us to the other segment of the fan audience.

The segment that sees this movie as a total betrayal of Star Trek, a two-hour pandering session where all of the stereotypes of Star Trek were celebrated and exaggerated beyond recognition, and find it rather insulting that this is presented to us as "capturing the essence of the original series." The assorted Saturday Night Live skits captured more of the "essence of the original series" than that misbegotten movie even came close to.

Three guesses which audience segment I belong to.

So, we have the one side, we'll call them "gushers", who delight in rubbing the noses of those of us in my group, I suppose "bashers" is as good a name as any, and since those on my end of the spectrum have had to fight tooth-and-nail to defend Star Trek from the get-go, it's only natural to take up arms and charge into battle over this issue as well. And, since we're talking internecine warfare, things have an unfortunate tendency to get personal, really really fast.

They see us as overly anal, permanently clamped onto the teat of the original series, and far too nerdy to join them in the Cool Crowd.

We see them as traitors to the cause, and more than a little delusional, not only over the movie, but on how they've not noticed that the Cool Crowd has already moved on to six other things since their glittering jewel of a movie slipped off the scene. So we also take a tiny bit of delight in how after all is said and done, the wannabe Cool Kids are right back in the ghetto with us nerds.

Which, of course, only makes the snobs even angrier, so the flame wars climb higher and higher into the black sky.

Caught in the middle, however, is that first group I mentioned, the big happy bunch in the middle that were able to put their Trekkie hats in the back seat for a while and just enjoy a big loud popcorn flick that happened to have a Star Trek label on it. And since they enjoyed the movie, then any attack from my side aimed at the snobs on the other side....sometimes falls a little short of its target and lands on the lap of someone who wasn't the intended target.

Now we're fighting folks who are normally friends. With the snobs cheering them on.

That, friends and neighbors, is the state of Star Trek fandom, thanks to that fucking movie. There were divisions before, but now they're blown wide open, without much chance of repair at this point.

And that is why I now completely and utterly DESPISE that movie with every fiber of my being. Not for what it is, but for what it's done.

That being said, I would like to apologize to those I have offended with my sometimes overly broad characterizations of those who liked the movie. I can only blame it on the fog of the perpetual flame war that this movie has inspired.

I hope you're happy, JJ. Fans have always had a habit of eating their own on occasion, but you're turned it into a fucking smorgasbord.

Putz.

Just Because You Can't Bash Some Films Enough...

2009-11-02T22:21:00.001-07:00

I think this says it all....

One more dip into Mundaneland...

2009-08-15T10:01:00.003-07:00

Once more, I find myself having to address the fevered dreams and machinations of our esteemed President Nitwit. Specifically, the matter of alleged "health care reform."

I'm looking at this more from the stance of not really considering the idea of universal health care particularly bad or evil (the inclination to want to cover everyone is natural), and not even from the stance that we simply can't afford it (we can't, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's another discussion).

No, I'm looking at this from the view that, as an Air Force veteran and staunch conservative, I DON'T TRUST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO RUN A LEMONADE STAND, NEVER MIND ONE EIGHTH OF THE NATION'S ECONOMY! The Federal government is, on fairly complicated matters like these, fundamentally incompetent, and this is partially by design (to force us to fend for ourselves rather than waiting on some government bureaucrat to give us our daily bread), and partially just the nature of government bureaucracies (if these clowns were any good at running things, they wouldn't be in government).

I'll take it as a given, if only for the sake of argument, that the Canadian system isn't as bad as has been alleged by some folks on my side of the aisle, that the decisions really are made by doctors and not pencil pushing morons a thousand miles away.

Do you really trust Washington to do that? To keep their grubby little fingers out of the pie? Especially since we have TEN TIMES Canada's population, which really throws the economics of this thing into the blender.

I also don't like the idea of trying to ram something this big through the Congress before anyone has a realistic chance to read it. That just smells of a major power grab on somebody's part.

Truth be told, most of the problems in the health care system were cause by government intervention in the first place. You wanna fix the thing, get Washington out of the bloody way and put 'em back in a watchdog capacity to prevent abuses, but for the love of all that's holy, don't actually put them in charge of anything!

Unless you'd like to recreate the joy a trip to the DMV the next time you visit the doctor.

There's also a real fundamental issue here besides how well or badly the government can run anything.

Simply put, we're Americans. This nation was founded following a revolution from what was then the mightiest nation on Earth at the time. Distrust of the government is one of the primal underpinnings of our whole society. And considering some of the horrific abuses that seem to come with strong, centralized governments, that mistrust is pretty well founded.

There are ways to get health insurance rates down to affordable levels that don't involve having the government take direct control, like letting insurance companies cross state lines to broaden the pool of policy holders, which spreads the costs and lowers the rates. There's tort reform, to reduce the ridiculous number of frivolous lawsuits (simply passing a "loser pays court costs" law would go a long ways towards that goal). We could also allow for medical savings accounts, allowing people to control their own medical expenditures, along with introducing some much needed market competition into the process, which would also reduce costs.

However, let the government control the process (which is the dictionary definition of "socialism," direct government control over the means of production), and you effectively cede control over how you live your life to a laundry list of government restrictions and guidelines. With a nation this big, they'll have no choice but to ration care, because everyone and their uncle will be beating down the hospital doors to take advantage of the suddenly free health care. Just take a look at the "cash for clunkers" debacle. A program that was supposed to last three months nearly crashes and burns after a couple of weeks, simply because the government bureaucrats haven't got a clue about the concept of supply and demand.

The ultimate conclusion of this nightmare scenario is some government board somewhere deciding the criteria on who gets priority on certain life saving or life sustaining treatments and procedures.

In other words, Governor Palin's "death panels" aren't so far fetched, although I'm sure they'll be given names far more comforting and family friendly.

Bottom line, if you want to everyone to have affordable health care, you need a system in place that keeps costs in line naturally.

If you want universal health coverage, which is not the same thing, you will wind up condemning this country to nothing less than servitude and slavery. Because, just out of necessity, care will be determined based upon your behavior (do you smoke? take drugs? engage in risky behavior?) and whether or not you're worth saving (under 40? Sure. Over 60 with a heart condition? Don't hold your breath). How you live your life will be controlled by the government, and while it may be relatively warm and fuzzy, it's still slavery.

"But, Bob," the earnest universal health care supporter says, "people are being denied care now, by heartless insurance companies."

Well, 1) never said it wasn't, 2) it's bad no matter who's doing it, and 3) do you think some government bureaucrat, without even a profit motive to encourage giving the customer, a.k.a, the patient, what he wants or needs, is going to be any more compassionate than the guy at the insurance company? You're basically screwed either way, but at least you can kind of understand the slightly twisted reasoning of the insurance company.

The only thing the current proposal does is take all the problems of our current system and put them on a massive dose of steroids by federalizing the whole mess. And since, as a wise man once said, the closest thing in this world to eternal life is a government program, it'll be next to impossible to get rid of once implemented.

Think about it for a second. If we're right, and this is the equivalent of treating athlete's foot with a shotgun, and we let this plan pass, then we will have done grievous harm to our nation, all under the argument of "well, we need to do SOMETHING!" Not when that "something" is worse than doing nothing.

Let's step back a step and really take a look at where we really are, not where the pundits SAY we are. That's the only way to fix the problems that do exist without destroying a system that, while byzantine in structure and baffling more often that not, does work for the most part.

As it stands now, nobody is being denied treatment in ER's, patients are being treated, even if it takes screaming at administrators and threats of lawsuits, there are programs in place to take care of the truly destitute, and the quality of available care is, for the most part, the envy of the world.

Let's fix what's actually broke, not what works.

Star Trek: Moral Compass Or Dog & Pony Show In Space?

2009-08-07T09:57:00.002-07:00

Recently, the topic came up on TrekBBS, "Star Trek was my moral compass growing up- was it yours?" The responses were rather fascinating. Some agreed wholeheartedly with the statement, others were dismayed at the very concept of a cheesy sci-fi show being anybody's moral compass.

Apparently, a lot of how you answer this question depends on when you first saw TOS and how old you were at the time. If you were an adolescent when the show ran on NBC, you were already well on the road to being the curmudgeons you are now and probably fall into the group that views Star Trek as a better-than-average bit of entertainment, but not much more.

I, on the other hand, was 2 1/2 when the show premiered and not quite 5 when it was cancelled. When my dad watched it on NBC, I was little more than a toddler, and while I do have some memories from those years, watching Star Trek on NBC is not among them. Yet, I knew of the show and knew I liked it. When I watched the animated show in '73, even then I knew it wasn't my first exposure to this stuff. It wasn't until the show hit strip syndication in '74 that I was able to sit down and really watch it and understand it.

Now, think for a moment about what the world was like in 1974. The Vietnam War isn't quite completely over, Watergate is just starting to boil over, the Soviet Union is as big a threat as ever, racial issues are still in the forefront, and since this is now after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, things are even more tense than during Star Trek's original run, there are still protests in the streets and hippies running around (I remember many a fire drill at school because some idiot called in a bomb threat), and the space program is still chugging along, even though the momentum is starting to slow down. In other words, not all that different from 1966-69, better in some ways, worse in others.

Factor in the home situation, Dad's at work, sometimes on a business trip somewhere, Mom's working and won't be back for another hour or so by the time I hit the door just before 4, so guess what the only influence in the house is for little ol' ten year old me? A certain starship captain and his half-Vulcan science officer.

In a time where the world is still making noises about going off the deep end, at an age where you're still trying to figure out just what the hell is going on anyway, Star Trek had a profound influence on those of us in that age group. The quaint morality plays weren't yet considered all that quaint at that point in history, at least not by all the eager ten-year olds watching at the time. The messages of racial and sexual equality, of avoiding violence whenever possible, the commentaries on issues that were still as current in '74 as they were in '67, this was pretty heavy stuff, and a helluva lot more engaging than the typical Sunday School lesson (certainly more fun to memorize).

By the time TNG came along, most of the heavy cultural lifting had already been done, the heavy moral issues of TOS were pretty much taken for granted, so it's not really a surprise that those who grew up with Picard and Co. look back at TOS and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Doesn't make me any less likely to smack 'em with a cane and tell 'em to get the hell off my lawn, but it's not surprising.

Sean Connery's Wife Was Right

2009-05-07T13:53:00.002-07:00

After starring in "Diamonds Are Forever", Sean Connery vowed he would never star in another James Bond film.

Then another production company got the rights to make their own Bond film, following some of the monkey business involving "Thunderball", and Connery was signed to reprise the role of Agent 007.

It was Connery's wife who suggested the title, "Never Say Never Again".

Well, I vowed I would never see the new Star Trek movie, partly because I have no interest in alternate timeline stories, but mostly because of a lot of the misleading buildup to this thing and some of the behind the scenes crap, particularly the firing of Geoffery Mandel from the production staff because he was "too attached to the original ship."

Then, I wound up winning passes to a press screening.

No problem, I have class that night, so I can't go anyway. And we're talking broadcasting school, no way am I ditching training in my beloved chosen career field for this misbegotten flick.

Then I found out the subject that night was going to be sales.

I hate sales.

Guess I was going after all. At least I could rest easy that I can still say that I'll never pay to see this atrocity.

So, I went ahead and saw it at the press screening, and all I can say is that I'm oh, so glad that I didn't have to pay for it.

Suffice it to say that I was massively underwhelmed. Plot contrivances, shaky camera, even in the CGI stuff, cringe inducing dialogue, a "Look at MEEE!" glory shot of the ship every five minutes, all capped off with a closing credit sequence ripped off from the Lost in Space movie....well, let's just say that just about everything I said before I saw it, stands.

Some of the more minor annoyances:

Pink skinned Vulcans: Y'know, JJ, there was a reason they painted Nimoy yellow way back when, and it's because of that green Vulcan blood.

The Kelvin: 800 people made it off, after getting the crap kicked out it, which killed how many? And this is supposed to be a pre-TOS ship? Sorry, but that bucket reeked more of TNG, both in capacity, the instrumentation, and in the crew complement, which apparently included families, another TNG contrivance that didn't make it past "Generations" (the Enterprise-E doesn't have families on board). The interiors also indicated a much more massive ship, on the order of a Galaxy class starship. And what in the hell is with plastic sheeting in the shuttlecraft? Does it double as a meat locker?

The technology: Compared to TOS, most it, quite frankly, sucked. The numbskull front window/viewscreen was blurry and distorted, the transporter didn't work half as well as even the NX-01's, and the phasers, both shipboard and handheld, all behaved more like Star Wars blasters and turbolasers than their TOS predecessors. And need I mention Sulu's automatically unfolding katana, which helped him in his dashing impression of Luke Skywalker in the barge scene in "Return of the Jedi"? Or how the ships going to warp bore an uncanny resemblence to SW ships going to hyperspace? Should George Lucas be flattered or should he be calling his lawyers?

Delta Vega: As an astute poster over on trekmovie.com pointed out, the name of the neighboring planet that Spock was stranded on really didn't have any bearing on the story, but by invoking the name of Delta Vega, the writers shined a big bright spotlight on this bit, making it quite clear that, deep down, they don't know what they're doing. A big part of "honoring canon" is getting the details right; otherwise, it's just meaningless name dropping and pandering.

Chekov: Excuse me, but exactly when did Chekov turn into Wesley Crusher? He was never any kind of wunderkind in TOS, just an eager young ensign trying to impress his superior officers. Also, at age seventeen, he should be starting his first year at the Academy, not already be a commissioned officer. But then, these clowns clearly don't know a thing about military protocol, since they also take a guy who was an undisciplined cadet facing some serious charges a couple of days earlier and give him command of their biggest and most advanced ship. Never mind the hundreds of seasoned officers who've been waiting God knows how long for a command of their own, let's give it to the hotshot kid with the rap sheet, because he's just so gosh darned dreamy. At the very least, it's clear they wouldn't know the chain of command if someone came up and beat 'em about the head and shoulders with it.

And my complaint about Spock still remains: He knows how to achieve a time warp, and he knows precisely what happened when, why it happened, what went wrong the first time, and how to circumvent those events. So why doesn't he get a ship, do a few time jumps, and fix everything that got screwed up? He could not only restore the timeline, but finally cement a lasting peace between the Romulan Empire and the Federation. So why doesn't he do this?

Because Spock has to have a sudden attack of the stupids in order for JJ to get his own Star Trek universe to run amok in.

Urban was good as McCoy, Pine was okay as Kirk, can't really grade Greenwood as Pike since we never got that much from Jeffery Hunter to form a basis of comparison, but taken on it's own, he gives a good performance, Yelchin was downright embarrassing as Chekov, Quinto just seemed to be PMSing all the time, and the rest of the cast was just sort of there.

The ship still looks stupid, and the decision to build it on the surface is the singlemost idiotic move in the entire history of the franchise.

It didn't help that the "Riverside shipyards" were clearly a present day industrial facility, either an oil refinery or electrical substation. Engineering looking alternately like a water treatment plant and, like it is in real life, a brewery, only adds insult to injury.

If this an example of just how dumbed down Star Trek has to be in order to appeal to that elusive mass general audience, then I am very content for Star Trek to remain a small niche market.

A Short Stop In Mundaneland

2009-01-20T11:04:00.002-07:00

As I sit here, watching "Trekkies 2" for the umpteenth time, studiously avoiding the insane overhyping of the Obama coronation, I feel I would be amiss if I didn't offer up at least a few comments on this allegedly historic date.

Actually, that's a bit unfair. It is a historic event.

We have responded to an unfairly criticized administration by electing a man who isn't qualified to be dog catcher, all so we can pat ourselves on our collective backs for electing a black man to the highest office in the land.

Well, now that we've gotten that out of our systems, the day is now fast approaching where those same self-congratulatory cheers will turn into a collective groan of, "Oh my God, what have we done?" and Bush's Trumanesque rehabilitation will be upon us before we know it.

A part of me is going get a big kick when Obambi's incompetence becomes glaringly clear to everyone. Unfortunately, that will be tempered by outrage over the level of damage President Nitwit will be doing in his futile quest to be the next Lincoln. Or FDR. Or Kennedy. Or whatever quasi-messianic figure he's trying to channel that week.

I only hope the stupidity becomes glaringly clear within the next couple years. So that the GOP can get its act together and begin the process of dragging the country back from the edge of the cliff by retaking Congress.

Then in 2012, we can set another historic precedent by electing the first woman president.

You betcha.

The Mess Thus Far...

2008-11-24T09:44:00.002-07:00

While I sit out my one day ban at TrekBBS (I could say something about trigger happy moderators handing out warnings while I'm editing the post in question, but I'll skip that), I figured it was time to update this puppy.

We know more now about JJ Abrams' alleged Star Trek flick.

Unfortunately.

If this is JJ's idea of "respecting and honoring canon", I'd hate to see what he'd churn out if he really hated Star Trek. Canon is not being honored or respected in this thing, it's being stripmined for a hamfisted reboot. Symbolic of this whole endeavor is the redesign of the Enterprise herself.

Somehow, we're supposed to buy that this...

Really looked like this...

And was actually a helluva lot bigger than we were led to believe...

But wait! There's more!

We're going to be presented with a plot that conveniently assembles all the familiar characters on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise (yes, maiden voyage!).

Anybody else see a problem with this? The scary thing is that a lot of professed fans don't.

We're just supposed to forget about the ship we've been watching for over forty years? That Kirk served on the Republic and the Farragut long before he assumed command of the Enterprise? That he didn't meet Pike until he took over command? That at the time the Enterprise launched, Chekov would've been about a year old?

Kevin Smith's initial instincts were correct, before he was shown a rough cut of this thing and seduced by the dark side. This isn't Star Trek, it's Muppet Babies in Space.

And, as mentioned above, far too many fans are not only happy, but eager, to lap up this slop and accept it.

Didn't we used to be a little more discerning? A little less tolerant of utter bilge being foisted on us under the Star Trek label? Or do I just run with a crowd with better taste?

I'll go into why this tack is such a bad idea later. For now, suffice it to say that we are in really deep trouble if this is the future of the franchise.

We're So Screwed...

2008-10-16T22:08:00.002-07:00

Well, the Paramount publicity machine, on the behalf of the new Star Trek movie, is starting to sputter to life, starting off with a cover story in Entertainment Weekly.

Here's what one attentive poster on trekmovie.com has managed to piece together on the plot of this thing.

"After seeing the pictures and reading the EW article, I think I can glean a few things about the plot of the film.

1) James Kirk has been shamed somehow. He’s a lone wolf on the Enterprise, and he is not trusted. A black uniform is a (rather obvious) physical symbol of being a “black sheep.” We know Kirk is rebel of sorts as a basic character trait. We also see Spock attacking Kirk for some unknown reason. We ALSO have been led to believe (by the MTV blog and photo on the bridge) that Kirk and Sulu have gotten into a fight of some kind. Kirk is not the regular captain of the Enterprise. He has somehow taken command against the will of the crew or has been given command in a crisis. My best guess is that Kirk is on the Enterprise as either a prisoner or as a ward of the Enterprise. Kirk could have been kicked out of Starfleet for some indiscretion, but is being protected by the Enterprise because they believe his life is in danger (from Nero, obviously). Captain Pike’s injury takes place during the film, putting him out of action, giving Kirk a chance to step up and be in charge.

2) Kirk will be Captain Kirk in the gold tunic by the last shot of the film. Remember, this is an *origin* story. That means one of the grand climaxes to the film will be when all of our heroes are together, in the right places, ready to start their proper adventures. Casino Royale and Batman Begins are examples of this principle. It is not until the end of those 2 movies that we get all the dogmatic trappings of the characters that have been held back for the end. Bond finally gets his theme and says his catchphrase. Batman gets the Bat-Signal and a supervillain (The Joker’s card). The evasive, cryptic nature of Orci and Kurtzman’s responses on the topic bear out what the end result will be. By the film’s end, anything that isn’t in line with the basic mythos of Star Trek will be put into place. That includes Kirk in Command Gold, as Captain.

3) Nero’s time-travel scheme is definitely what we all expect: he seeks to kill James T. Kirk. I also assume there is something to the notion of Nero’s group being against Reunification. Damon makes it pretty clear in his interview that Nero’s aims are not “about money.” That means, it must be ideological. What else is there? Unless Jim Kirk stole his girlfriend in the 20 minutes he was in the 24th century, it must be ideological. It also makes more sense that they are rejecting traditional Romulan aesthetics."

Have these morons even seen Star Trek? Starfleet doesn't work like this, or any self-respecting military for that matter. If Kirk was that much of a pain in the ass, they wouldn't do some sort of frat house "shaming", they'd courtmartial his insubordinate ass and be done with him!

Add to this the nonsensical production design that has as much resemblance to anything in Star Trek as a day old bagel has to a Mongolian barbecue, and it's becoming painfully clear that these joker haven't got a fucking clue what they're doing. They're making Brannon Braga look like Gene Coon, fer chrissakes!

I'm beginning to wonder if I even want to bother with the upcoming season of "Lost".

Being Pushed From The AOL Nest

2008-10-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

America Online has announced that they will be soon be pulling the plug on their free webpages, which kinda puts a major kink in my situation, since just about all of my online presence, outside of this blog and my regular irritation on a few message boards, is via those freebie webpages.

The result is that my poor, decrepid, and underpowered Dell laptop is forced to store up all the graphics of all the webpages I've put together until I can set up some new webpages (not to mention doing a lot of uploading to photobucket.com...which I should have been doing for a while now anyway, but that's another subject).

Why is my poor, underpowered Dell laptop forced to bear this burden? Well, because my main desktop computer fried, by backup was lost in the eviction back in January, and my second backup is even sorrier than this laptop.

Yes, life has been a little too interesting these past several months. And it doesn't seem to be getting any less so.

Oh, well. I've been needing to do more here anyway.

So, prepare for a lot more stuff to start showing up in the near future, simply because I have no place else to put it.

Light at the end of the tunnel...sunlight or oncoming train?

2007-03-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Things seem to be solidifying a tad regarding the premise of the upcoming film, apparently to be titled simply "Star Trek". This particular detail, along with the intent to have both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy intimately involved in the story, might beg the question of when is a reboot not a reboot, but that'll have to wait for another time. Or at least later in this entry.

For the moment, however, we'll have to content ourselves with the apparent knowledge that this willl not, I repeat, NOT be a Starfleet Academy story. What we don't know is if this was prompted by the not-so-veiled threat of a lawsuit by former Trek helmer Harve Bennett (whose own ill-advised Starfleet Academy proposal was purchased, then shelved, by Paramount lo, these many years ago), or someone finally pointed out that Spock is a couple of years older than Kirk, so that even though there's some overlap of their respective times at the Academy, their chances of interaction to any significant degree would be minimal at best, or even maybe the starndard response of serious disdain that this idea always produces. With a fanbase as fractured as this one is, that last thing they need to do is trot out an idea guaranteed to cheese off a sizable portion of that fanbase before the first frame of film is exposed.

No, this magum opus will apparently deal with Kirk and Spock's first adventure on the Enterprise, with Kirk assuming command from Captain Pike. Since it's already been well established that Spock had been on the ship eleven years before Kirk showed up, this is not a problem. Apparently, McCoy and Scotty will be along for the ride as well. It makes sense that Scott would've been there before Kirk as well as Spock, so again, no problem on that front. McCoy's presence will need some explanation, thanks to Dr. Piper's presence in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", but all that's needed on that front is for McCoy to go on an extended leave, maybe to deal with that nasty divorce that's supposed to have driven him in to Starfleet in the first place.

Which brings us to the casting rumors.

Kirk: Despite denials of varying degrees, the most frequent name is Matt Damon. The main ray of light on this front is Richard Arnold reporting that while Paramount is chasing a big name, Damon isn't it. As for who I'd like to see as Kirk, I'm at a loss.

Spock: Some delusional genius has inserted the name of Adrian Brody into the mix. Sorry, I like Brody, but he ain't Spock. Personally, I'd like to see Josh Hartnett get a crack at it. Maybe Tommy Lee Jones as Sarek (he's a hardcore Trekkie, he'd do good by the Ambassador).

McCoy: With the exception of the odd naysayer, just about everyone's shortlist consists of the name Gary Sinise. Some wags make a point of how Sinise is in his mid 50s, while DeForest Kelley was in his mid 40s at the time of the original series. So what? Sinise looks like he's in his late 30s, and he's a dead ringer for Kelley in his younger days, so the only issue is how well they can shoot around his CSI:NY schedule.

Scotty: Thankfully, James McAvoy has publicly stated that he is NOT up for this part. Great guy, fine actor, but about twenty years too young. There are a few Scottish actors who can do justice to our beloved miracle worker, so I'm not terribly worried. Personally, I'd like to see Craig Ferguson take a whack at it. He's a big fan, and I suspect he'd take it as a personal honor to redeem the Scottish people by playing Scotty as a Scotsman with a proper Scottish accent and not what Ferguson has described as a Pakistani accent (even though Billy Connelly has said that Jimmy Doohan's accent wasn't that bad).

Pike: Can't go wrong with Ray Liotta. And before anyone points out that Liotta's several years and more than a few pounds past the time when he looked a lot more like Jeffery Hunter than he does now, I'd like to remind folks that he wouldn't be playing the Chris Pike we saw in "The Cage", he'd be playing a Pike about ten years older and a lot more world weary. On that scale, Liotta would be perfect.

And, as always, we have the aspect of Shatner and Nimoy being a part of the proceedings, which kinda blunts the edge of the position that this is a reboot. The fact that they're trying to work around Kirk's death in Generations, i.e., effectively undo the most idiotic creative decision in the entire history of the franchise, that alone is reason for hope that maybe, just maybe, the folks in charge actually know what they're doing this time.

The Death of Kings and Starship Captains

2006-06-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

It is now reported that as part of JJ Abrams misguided notion of actually following through with Harve Bennett's "Kirk and Spock at the Academy" idea, he's entertaining the idea of Matt Damon playing the young Jim Kirk. Supposedly, this idea has Shatner's blessing.

Somebody shoot me now.

And while they're at it, slap Harve Bennett for coming up with the idiotic Academy idea in the first frelling place.

Let's face reality, kids. A story about Kirk and Spock at the Academy is, at best, a story best left to the novels (where it's already been tackled numerous times; how well is up to the individual reader) and at worst, an idea best left to fanfic writers who can't properly read the Chronology (Spock was two to three years ahead of Kirk at the Academy, and not on the Command track, so in all likelihood would have next to no contact with the brash human; by the time Kirk was reprogramming the computer so he could win the Kobayashi Maru scenario, Spock was already assigned to the Enterprise).

Casting Matt Damon, an actor who, at 35, is waaaaaaaaaay too old to be playing an 18 year old Kirk (hell, he's a year older than Shatner was when he first played Kirk in Star Trek's second pilot), he bears no resemblence whatsofreakinever to Bill Shatner, which is kind of a prerequisite to being taken even halfway seriously as someone who can portray Kirk.

"But lots of folks have played James Bond, Batman, and Sherlock Holmes" comes the whine from certain corners.

The key difference is that characters of Bond, Batman, and Holmes did not originate with Sean Connery, Adam West, or Basil Rathbone, or any of the other actors who've played those respective characters. They all originated in other media, in these cases novels and comic books. The actors in these cases were putting their interpretation on an already existing character.

The character of James T. Kirk did not exist in the public consciousness until William Shatner appeared on our television screens in that velour shirt. Likewise with Leonard Nimoy and Spock. Shatner might be okay with Matt Damon playing Kirk, but do you honestly think Nimoy is gonna go along quietly with, say, Ben Affleck playing Spock? A lot of the behind the scenes action during Star Trek's third season consisted of Nimoy having a running battle with Fred Freiberger, et al, just to maintain a certain amount of integrity in the character of Spock, going so far in one instance to taking the writers and producers down to the set to demonstrate why their idea of Spock getting knocked out during a fight was stupid (the scene in question was in "Whom Gods Destroy", with the fight between Kirk and Garth posing as Kirk; Nimoy essentially rewrote that scene, or at least forced the rewriting of that scene, not only making Spock come off much more intelligently, but doing pretty well by Kirk as well).

It doesn't take a degree in marketing to find out that the reaction by the fanbase has been, to be generous, mixed. A small portion are genuinely excited by the idea (pretty much the same segment that woudl line up to see cast members sit on stage and read from the Santa Monica phone book), a somewhat larger portion that are actively hostile to the idea, with the vast majority not terribly enthusiastic one way or the other.

Shakespeare and Roddenberry could come back from the dead themsevles to write the thing and it'd still tank, simply because not enough of the target audience really gives a rip about the premise.

And if Trekkies are a mixed bag on this one, whaddya think the nonfan thinks?

Add it all up, with the addition of Matt Damon, an actor who is both loved and reviled by pretty much equal numbers of people, and we're looking at a flop that'll make Nemesis look like box office gold.

Abrams and his merry band of Alias veterans need to dump this Academy idea like a bad habit, because the path their taking leads to just one place: oblivion for the franchise.

Babylon Trek: The Next Incarnation?

2005-07-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Lately, a lot of angst is starting to build over the concept that the creator of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski, hereafter referred to as JMS, wants to take over the Star Trek franchise.

Fine so far. He's fairly fan-friendly and can spin a good yarn. The fact that he's a Star Trek fan himself only helps, right?

Not so fast.

The key to his plan is that he wants to do a complete reboot. Start over, back on the old Enterprise with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc., etc., except "updated" or "reimagined" for a whole new generation of newbies.

That means someone else playing the parts of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and so forth, and a "kewler" looking Enterprise, 'cause, y'know, that old 60's stuff was fine in its day, but it's just sooooooooooooo cheesy now, isn't it?

The short answer is to go back and take a look at the Enterprise offering "In a Mirror, Darkly" and notice how good those designs actually look.

The more thoughtful answer is that it's not worth worrying over because it ain't gonna happen.

And I'm not even gonna mention how the Roddenberry estate or Star Trek minority owner William Shatner would never allow it.

No, it has to do with the enlightened self interest of that studio we all love to hate, Paramount.

Y'see, not even Paramount, that stuck with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga as they personally drove the studio's golden goose franchise right into the dirt with great enthusiasm, would be stupid enough for the full reboot that JMS is proposing. They've got too much financial interest in maintaining the established continuity.

But it worked for Ron Moore and Battlestar Galactica, some folks counter.

The reason it worked for Galactica is that there was only one and a half or two seasons of, frankly, very forgettable crap. Everyone's got very fond, warm-fuzzy feelings for the old show, but it's really for the characters and the general concepts, and most of us who actually remember the show were kids at the time, so there's a whole lot of childhood nostalgia involved, but let's face it, the vast majority of the individual episodes were crap. Fairly well acted, but crap nonetheless, especially when you throw "Galactica 1980" into the mix (here's where that "one and a half" thing comes in; I don't recall if "1980" ran a full season or was cut off at 13 episodes). What'd they have, ONE good episode (the one with Starbuck), and even that came with a heavy layer of cheese.

Let's compare that record with Star Trek's and count up all of Star Trek's onscreen incarnations:

TOS (3 seasons)

TAS (technically 2 seasons, but only 22 episodes, so I'm counting it as one)

TNG, DS9, & Voyager (7 seasons each)

Enterprise (4 seasons)

That's 29 SEASONS TOTAL.

And tha's just the television product. Add in the ten movies and all the ancilliary material that's been based on all that background, and it starts to dawn on even the dimmest bulb that that's a lot of material, aka merchandising opportunities, to chuck overboards for the sake of "a fresh start".

If JMS is signed, and that's still a mighty big IF, seeing as they've already got a list of names that have already dealt with this beast and done okay, it'll be with the condition that he play in the official sandbox with the official toys, not build his own and call them "official".

Otherwise, they might as well bring over Babylon 5 and let him have fun with his own sandbox and his own toys. It'd be a lot cheaper to but out WB for the rights than take the hit when everything they've produced under the Star Trek name for the past 30+ years suddenly "doesn't count".

Yes, at long last, an update...

2005-07-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I've been neglecting my duties. So sue me, everyone else seems to be.

The following is the result of a bit of a dust-up I had with Shane Johnson, well regarded Star Trek fan artist and author of, among other works, "Mr. Scott's Guide To The Enterprise". He took a mild swipe at my attempts to lay out the internal arrangement of the original Enterprise after I questioned the veracity of the technical details of "The Making of Star Trek" and Franz Joseph's Constitution class blueprints.

The resulting rant was just too good not to share here...

* * * * *

At times like this, I hate AOL.

I had an absolutely beautiful mega-rant, reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw, just about ready to go when the thing crapped out, and lost the entire thing.

Oh well, I'll recap the basic gripes. I may not be as enraged as I was earlier, but I still need to vent a bit. Besides, there are some folks who still haven't gotten some key points.

Before anyone takes any swipes at certain aspects of these plans **coughcoughShaneJohnsoncoughcough**, I'd suggest taking a good long look the process that was gone through to get to that apparently screwy solution. How long did the bridge take? Two, three months? With all sides screaming and throwing things at each other until an overlooked bit of implied history proved useful and the sucker fell into place. It's not the solution I was looking for, but at least it's one case where clear creators' intent that the bridge faced straight forward, was adhereed to.

As far as creators' intent regarding the engine setup, the only thing that's clear is that there was no clear creators' intent for the most part, beyond the general details of the ship using warp drive to go from star to star, and that the system used matter/antimatter annihilation for power. Otherwise, the technical references wouldn't be all over the map. They got things nailed down well enough for what they needed, which was light years beyond what was done on other shows and their hero ships, and they set a level of development that set the standard for years to come, but let's not ascribe a level of development that wasn't there. They got things nailed down to the point that they could produce the stories and make it on air, and if some technical detail was essential to the plot resolution it got attention, but I guarantee you that if you were to chime in during a writer meeting during that period and ask where the main power was generated, you'd get three or four different opinions, a couple of arguments, then someone reminding everyone that they didn't have time for this nonssense and that the story wasn't about the engines anyway, it was about Kirk stopping the evil computer and freeing the planet's population so they could become a more normal society, and they needed to crank out a draft before Monday or they're all dead.

It's also worth noting that at no time did anyone appear to use "The Making of Star Trek" as a reference during the production, even during the third season when the book was actually available.

Remember, they weren't even all that certain what century the show was set in. Why? Same reason, it usually wasn't important to the story at hand. With the time and budget constraints the show was under from Day One, there simply wasn't time or inclination to putting together a detailed technical manual for the ship and equipment. Phasers were slightly cooler looking zap guns with a fairly established list of capabilities; nobody gave a rat's patootie how it worked, just accept that they work and move on to the next problem.

It wasn't important what Yarnek was doing to the Enterprise to put it in danger of blowing up, it was important that if Kirk didn't do as Yarnek said, the ship was gonna blow up. It wasn't important what Scotty and Spock cooked up to blow up the ship in the energy barrier, it was important that they'd cooked up something to blow up the ship and stop the Kelvans from taking the Enterprise back to Andromeda. The result is there isn't a lot of consistency in technical references. Some point to the most obvious aspect of the ship's power, the nacelles, some point in the general direction of the secondary hull, some don't point one way or the other.

Other, less frequent, times, there were other plot points that were decided to be more important than technical consistency with previous episodes. To service the plot of "Day of the Dove", it was deemed important that Kang and his forty fellow Klingons controlled Engineering, Kirk and the others held the bridge, and that the vast bulk of the Enterprise crew was locked away from the action, so that the forces would be equal. I doubt they even considered the likely location of Engineering based on previous episodes, the important thing was the episode they were doing right then and there. The fact that this situation cropped up pretty rarely is testament to the effort to at least try and stay fairly consistent from week to week.

Contrast that with the instances where the engine problems were critical to the resolution of the plot.

"That Which Survives" The Enterprise needs to get back to that artificial planet to retrieve the landing party, but it's got a problem. The engines have been sabotaged, resulting in the ship accelerating out of control. Clearly, the ship is on its own, Scotty can't just wave a magic wand and stop some outside force from causing the problems, he's gotta go in there and fix the problem himself, so it now becomes important just what it is he's doing, which means some details of how the ship works actually have to be settled; before you can concoct a realistic reason for why the ship is going nuts, you have to figure out how it works normally, so you can then decide which piece of the works to take a sledgehammer to and cause the problem. Here's where we get the "matter/antimatter reaction chamber." That's right, Rick Sternbach did not create the term for the TNG Tech Manual, it came from that creaky old TOS episode. A clear and unambigous reference to how the ship actually works, to wit: Matter and antimatter enter the chamber, go boom, and feed that energy to the warp engines, and in this case, the throttle has been jammed wide open. Now you go about devising what has to be done to fix the problem; in this case, shut down the runaway reaction, thus choking off the power flow to the warp engines and bringing the ship back under control.

"Elaan of Troyius" The Enterprise is being attacked by a Klingon ship, but can't respond properly because the warp drive has been sabotaged, and Scotty has to fix it. To do this right, you need to figure out just what was sabotaged, why it's important, and what's needed to fix the problem. It had already been determined waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in "Mudd's Women" that the ship's power goes through the (di)lithium crystals, and if that gets knocked out, the ship don't run so good. In order for Kryton to sabotage the things, they have to be accessible, and we have that big contraption in the middle of Engineering (someone better versed with the behind the scenes history needs to find out if it was decided that the big whatsit was the where the crystals were kept at the time the thing was put in at the beginning of the second season, or if it was just a big whatsit until a script required it to have an explicit purpose). And again, we get a reference to one single antimatter reactor. In order to restore full power, the burned out crystal needs to be replaced with a fresh one, which they don't have. Enter Elaan's necklace of crude dilithium crystals, which she describes as "common stones" (thus showing us why the ship was being attacked in the first place). Spock and Scotty carefully fit the rocks into the framework, amid concerns over what the shape of the crystals would do the energy flow, concerns which are confirmed when we see the lights on Scotty's bridge station waver very noticeably and Scotty complains about the shape of the crystals effecting the energy flow.

So, again, in very clear, definitive references (which, due to their specificity carry far more weight than vague references to "antimatter pods" and unidentified "reactors"), we get the flow of energy starting at a central reactor, running through the dilithium crystals, and feeding the warp engines.

Would these episodes have even been produced if it was the "clear creators' intent" that all the matter and antimatter was all up in the nacelles? The only way Scotty's feats work is if there is one central M/AM reactor feeding the engines, whereas all the other technobabble references that appear to (and to be honest, probably did) point to the nacelles can all be finessed to fit with what has become accepted as the standard warp drive setup, matter & antimatter in one reactor, plasma fed through dilithium crystals to nacelles.

So, as far as "creators' intent" goes, the only thing I can conclude is that, if it wasn't critical to the story, they weren't all that concerned, but when it was critical to the plot, things pointed towards one central reactor feeding the nacelles.

And not once have I invoked TMP, TNG, or ENT. Nor have I relied upon outside works to explain what was shown on screen or to provide background information.

So you tell me who's being revisionist.

Let's try this again....

2005-05-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

Obviously, this blog has not been a hotbed of activity.

I had a feeling this sort of thing would happen, which is precisely why I held off for so long on even starting one. It turns out that despite my deep and abiding interest in political and cultural matters, it's another matter to work up the required passion to actually write up something that someone else would find worth reading. Besides, political blogs are a dime a dozen, and while I do think I can cook up some damn tasty political diatribes more often than not, in all likelihood I'd just be regurgitating whatever I'd just read from Ann Coulter or some other highly regarded pundit. Making the whole exercise rather pointless in the end.

So, what to do with this puppy then?

Well, when in doubt, go with your strengths.

In this case, that means being a curmudgeonly old Trekkie. Even with the demise of "Enterprise", there'll always be something to cheese off the fanboys, be it rumored movie plans, half-baked novels, or woefully inaccurate model kits.

And, of course, since we're not dealing with life and death issues, I'll be able to get far more shrill without resulting in either being called a Nazi, or my calling others Nazis. Can't say that about politics.

And so, this blog enters a new phase, and hopefully one in which I'll be more motivated to post something more frequently than every six weeks or so.

Thrusters ahead, helmsman....

And so it begins....

2005-03-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was inevitable.

After all, I'd been shooting my virtual mouth off within the usually friendly confines of the AOL message boards for around ten years. It only makes sense that I'd have to branch out into blogging.

Of course, on the AOL boards, I usually didn't spout off on my own. Usually I was responding to some unsuspecting fool who'd stumbled into my crosshairs. It helps a lot when the usual suspects feed you such good material, like standard DNC talking points.

Now I have to come up with my own starting points.

Okay, then.

Here's a few tidbits to start things off.

Ward Churchill is an idiot, Robert Byrd went senile sometime in the mid 80's, and I strongly suspect that Michael Schiavo is using the Florida court system to cover up a botched murder attempt.

Discuss.