General Star Trek thread

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122248145#Comment_122248145

I've also heard Tawny Newsome is on the writing team.

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122247913#Comment_122247913

I haven't seen the Magicians series but heard mixed reviews. I'm willing to give them a pass on that because the main criticism of the series was the unlikeable characters. I read the books and the characters are actually hateful. Not one single likeable character with ANY redeeming characteristics. I finished the books out of pure hate and would not recommend them to ANYONE.

pixelburp

Right, onwards to Search for Spock this time: definitely a distinct drop in quality compared with Wrath of Khan, but also not as egregiously terrible as I might have feared. Still dreading V but of the "bad ones" this was surprisingly better in places and hate to say it but didn't feel as slapdash and scruffy as WoK; clearly a few more shekels were allowed.

A very mixed bag: like WoK the strongest parts were the emotional wringers the crew (well, Kirk and McCoy really) went through; all the immediate post WoK stuff on Enterprise had a strong pulse of grief through the whole thing; while the actual heist and escape from Space dock tonnes of fun that offset the palpable gloom before then. Wish the movie also ended with Kirk coming to terms with the price paid for Spock's return: the death of his son and his beloved ship a huge price yet his last line on the topic rang false and glib. Kirk had been trying to reconnect with his son, and seemed genuinely anxious about roads not taken, and to make up time. The script was too eager to get through gang back together and kinda steamrolled the one-two punch.

But ye gods this was also Trek at its most magical. And that's not meant as a compliment. Vulcans turned into this race of wizards and mystics didn't work for me - and it's funny that was the path taken to cobble together an excuse to resurrect Spock. The Genesis planet causing the corpse to restart was a cute, and weirdly plausible idea - but using McCoy's brain as a USB key was just silly.

Oh and Christopher Lloyd was a lot of fun for what amounted to a token villain role.

Search for Spock has for too long been maligned. It was not as strong as 2 or 4 but it is a very good Trek story in and of itself. Has a few missteps, yeah, but all Trek films do.

It was just cursed with an odd number

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265516#Comment_122265516

Agreed, it's a welcome staple in that 2/3/4 trilogy for me.

AMKC

On my way to see it in the Cinema today. First time seeing it in the Cinema. Can not wait. Its one of my favorites after "The Undiscovered Country"which is my favourite and well I prefer it over TWOK but without TWOK we would never have had it.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122264312#Comment_122264312

Despite it’s failings, I feel we owe Search for Spock an awful lot when it comes to subsquent development of Trek.

Not least of which, they had the balls to kill the original Enterprise, years before TNG was even in development. So the whole idea of having lettered replacement Enterprises wasn’t there yet. The Enterprise was gone and for all we knew, gone forever.

We also got a major expansion of the Trek universe with both the Oberth Class USS Grissom and Kruge’s Klingon Bird of Prey. For the first time we didn’t just get modifications of TOS designs, the Trek universe now had examples of ships designed for other functions.

Finally, Christopher Llyod’s Kruge feels like an excellent prototype for the Klingons we would see throughout the TNG era. Through him we see all of the different tropes they’d use later.

ST:III seems to be by far the least cursed of the uneven numbered Trek films. If anything it is an excellent middle act to the «Spock Trilogy» that sits in the TOS movie catalogue.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265821#Comment_122265821

Probably because I saw so much of the shows out of order I never copped that was our first look at a Bird of Prey (which was famously supposed to be Romulan)

AMKC

Well that was good but I think I enjoyed TWOK more in the Cinema and then TMP more than that. Weird.

Most rows had someone in them. I would say the small cinema was nearly full.

Much more in this showing then TWOK one I went too. Now just need ST:TVH in the Cinema and "The Undiscovered Country"

AMKC

Who here thinks if the USS Grissom had of had a confident Captain and if he had beemed Saavik and Marcus onboard before the klingon attack that the Grissom might have survived?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266436#Comment_122266436

Search for Spock isn't as much of a cinema movie as the others.

eadrom

@Rawr –

We also got a major expansion of the Trek universe with both the Oberth Class USS Grissom and Kruge’s Klingon Bird of Prey.

and the bucket of bolts Excelsior and space dock! Search for Spock invented a lot of Star Trek.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266605#Comment_122266605

Those movies were the real bedding in of Star Trek "canon". TOS was all over the place and doesn't really match up to the other shows a lot of the time.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265821#Comment_122265821

Ironically though, the mere existence of the move kinda already undercut the impact of the Enterprise getting destroyed to an extent? Spock was coming back, a definitively dead character resurrected and kinda lessened the impact of the ship blowing up as if Sock could return, surely we'd see the Enterprise again (despite the Bigwigs saying otherwise). Again I think the end should have run with that sense of At What Cost? rather than breezily handwaving it away with fúcking group hug on Vulcan. Really sell the idea that Kirk gave up everything for his soulmate; obviously it would have ended on more of a downer - but the events were there on screen all the same.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266605#Comment_122266605

The space dock looked so good, and like you both said this single movie was responsible for an insane amount of the series' iconography.

corkie

Armus in action!? 😀

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1802597257365033376

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122270144#Comment_122270144

You need a submanifold casting stone for that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eqm7vH8heE0&pp=ygUSbG93ZXIgZGVja3MgYXJtdXMg

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266535#Comment_122266535

No its certainly not but still great at home di and I am still glad it was made and that I got to see it on the big screen :)

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122270144#Comment_122270144

What is that actually and is that definitely earth, cos I may need to change planets if that shít lives here.

corkie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122271252#Comment_122271252

I forget people are averse to and don't like using 'X'. Reply from thread below.

That is a marine flatworm (Polycladida) engulfs a crab at low tide.

Flatworms get their name because they are just that – flat worms. They have very primitive bodies, no internal body cavity, very few organs, they breathe by simple diffusion of gases and digest their food through direct contact, having first excreted digestive juices onto their food.

They inhabit deep seas, tidepools, coral reefs, mudflats, and other marine habitats. You are most likely to stumble upon a marine flatworm during an intertidal walk or while snorkelling or diving in a coral reef.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122271289#Comment_122271289

Twitter doesn't show the thread anymore for anonymous users so couldn't see the detail... and ain't gonna sign up to the service now after Musk turned it into an even bigger shítshow.

But yup, gonna move planet now. What's Riza like this time of year?

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122271350#Comment_122271350

If Riza is fully booked, have a look at Vagra II...

breezy1985

Fuk the Green party. We need to destroy the environment to keep these feckers down.

Can't be have carnivorous blobs going around evolving all over the place.

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122271497#Comment_122271497

Hysperia could be a runner.

Evade

Isn't it Risa?

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122273855#Comment_122273855

...

corkie

@pixelburp But yup, gonna move planet now. What's Risa like this time of year?

Federation News Network (FNN) reports that there is civil unrest there and fears the Risa's technologically sophisticated weather control system could be hacked again! 😀

pixelburp

Voyage Home next: wow, but that was silly with a capital S. Like, deeply and unashamedly as silly as I remembered it; certainly a gigantic whiplash of tone after what had been pretty straight-laced and often introspective first three films. Nope not here, it was Saves The Whales turned into a gigantic time-travel comedy adventure.

Kinda weird watching an early-doors environmentalist piece of media, given where things have gone in the interim 40 years. It all came off so goofily earnest, so naive that with a little awareness we'd suddenly change our ways. Christ that didn't work out, did it?

Still, by all accounts this has to rank high as the Trek movie series at its most indulgently fun; pure entertainment with absolutely zero attempts at profundity or characterisation. It knew its assignment and got the héll outta dodge, no fat no distractions. I'd put it beside First Contact for Trek just being in full-on space adventure mode, and to hell with the ethics.

If I had a Trek based quibble it'd be how Chekov's communicator and phaser were left behind, and in the hands of the US Government of the 1980s no less. Obviously it was of no concern to the writers & had no effect on the future - but still. I know of agents in Starfleet who'd have been unimpressed with that.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122283714#Comment_122283714

Drop some LDS and it will be a riot of a film

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122283714#Comment_122283714

Well the same paradoxical argument applies to the Scotty/Transparent Aluminum scene...perhaps it's how the tech was eventually "invented".

Great film, unashamedly lighthearted, but perhaps a welcome respite after three deeper dives for some? It rounds off the Spock trilogy very nicely for me, before the biggest misstep of the TMP era happens...

pixelburp

Oh and I'm also fairly sure the marine biologist hugging Kirk as he transported would / should have caused a terrible accident if the Tuvix variety 🤣 but the tone of the film was so playable it absolutely snuffed out the part of my brain that might quibble at all.

But yes, next stop Final Frontier: I might take a break cos I think I'm gonna need all my energies to watch it. I've heard so much about that film, and to be fair some of it wasn't Shatner's fault at all. But oof, yeah gonna need to stir myself into watching it.