First season of TOS is hit or miss. Some are good, some are junk. Season 2 is really when it hit stride, mostly good to great eps. Season 3 of course had tons of issues. But it’s still not incomparable, you can tell because we’re comparing it.
I enjoyed TMP when it first came out. It was great, Trek was back and on the big screen. It was a dream come true. Unfortunately on subsequent viewings I realize it’s mostly fanboy porn, with tons of pregnant pauses so we can (as we did) cheer the first appearance of every main cast member, and the ship, and the first time the ship moves, etc etc. Again given its audience and timing those were probably necessary and good, but without the audience it’s stilted and slow.
I mock the Klingon bastard line because it’s emblematic of the problem with the movie. It lacked proper direction, when faced with trying to decide which reading to go for they said “yes”, once through the line would have sufficed, 3 times with the emphasis on a different word every time, silly. And then there’s the problem with him only having met his son one movie ago, and barely knowing anything about him, but now we get to go through the line 3 times. Blowing up the Enterprise was pretty cool though, I’ll give them props for one (1) unexpected story turn there, which is more than we’d get in the next 7 movies combined.
There was some fun jokes in saving the whales. But Trek time travel plots are always problematic, and it was just a thin stew, felt like an episode that got stretched.
Yeah the DS9 crew was probably over fond of Vic, but he is a cool character, and the writers leveraged him for some good stories. Unlike every other holodeck episode.
Honestly Generations so did not impress me I’d forgotten Malcolm was even in it until last year when one of my co-workers brought in a bunch of trading cards from the movie he was selling. I saw the card with Malcolm and I was stunned, had to go look it up on wiki. I remember next nothing about that movie.
One of hte big problems with Janeway is they decided their first female captain needed to be their smartest captain. So where the others would ask for options and the supporting characters would spew technobabble Janeway did all the spewing. Had to really suck for the actors since all they got to do in those scenes was say they’ll do their part in 4 hours. Really wasted a perfectly good Vulcan too, once the captain is the one that knows all the science your Vulcan gets stuck being security chief.
I don’t see any problem with the casting. Actually I quite like them. Sylar is an excellent Vulcan, and there’s nothing wrong with him having a romance, we know Vulcans do that (else no Spock) and he’s only half Vulcan anyway. Urban is great. Yeah everybody has that hyper youth look, but that’s modern Hollywood, nobody is allowed to look over 30 until the character needs to look over 60.
Trek has a whole galaxy so yes obviously there’s “more stories”. But the problem with the canon is it chokes it off. You gotta make sure you’re not combining races wrong. What you want a betazoid? Remember they got trashed during the Dominion War. That Gorn seems to smart. And that’s not he right button for that. It’s why other franchises scrub constantly. There’s no indication the current Bond had his parents die ever, different set of canon.
It’s not “call it separate” it IS separate. Both internally (as explained by old Spock) and externally (as shown by Paramount talking about doing new stuff in the old canon).
It DOES make sense, that’s part of the problem you have with it. Frankly it makes more sense than most of the Trek.
The problem with Trek fans is there is no difference between worship and respect. The Trek fans that care about canon WORSHIP it, that’s the crowd that has given Takei crap for pushing the “wrong” button for decade, that’s the crowd that whined the ENT communicators were smaller than TOS communicators. If they could actually stop at just respecting canon it wouldn’t be such an albatross. But thanks to the button obsessors Trek canon is a trap, it’s a source of preventing stories where canon should be the fountain of new stories.
Every time you throw out that “faux trek” crap you show you’re just another canon worshiper whining. It’s Trek, it’s REAL Trek, that really is honestly (you can check the reviews) better than at least 60% of the Trek that came before it. Better than 2 entire 7 season SERIES of Trek (TNG and Voy). Maybe it doesn’t align with your favorite parts of Trek, but that doesn’t make it faux, it just makes it not your favorite. I wouldn’t call Voyager faux Trek, because it’s just as Trek as the rest, it’s CRAP Trek but it’s still the genuine article.
No they didn’t toss what made Trek Trek. They brought Trek BACK from the oblivion of debate club hyper-liberalism that had ruined it. It’s back to TOS Trek, fun, adventurous, kind of silly, decent messages, and not bogged down by a need to push a political agenda. It’s the Trek I grew up watching, and that by and large we haven’t had since TMP brought it back.
It is quelle horror, because they’ve had a hard time getting people to want to work in the old canon. If the old canon was so desirable to work in the job never would have been offered to JJ because somebody else would have signed on. Nobody did. Finally they had to accept the fact that most filmmakers with a history of success don’t want to be in that old world, they want to work from scratch, so they gave into the demand. Mock it all you want, the empirical evidence says Trek canon is an albatross that people don’t want to wear.
If you could do such a better job DO IT. Get an agent, get in front of Paramount AND DO IT. They want something in old canon. Go ahead. Meanwhile out here in reality JJ saved Trek whether you will admit it or not. I’m going to see the movie this weekend, with my mom, just like the old days. We’re both excited for new Trek. Sorry you can’t enjoy it, but that’s on you. 88% fresh, you’re the outlier.
Anyway, I’ll spare JimRob’s bandwith any further on long responses to say that we just don’t see eye to eye on this, at least with respect to the “reboot.” I recall we had a similar discussion some time back (I remember your Sulu pushing the wrong buttons comment), and I took issue then.
I put myself in the category of respecting canon, not in the Sulu pushed the wrong buttons nonsense (the latter of which whose adherents would deserve the ire of Shatner’s famous SNL retort of “Get a life !” Then again, he took a lot of heat for that, because those ultrageeks were the ones who spent boatloads of bucks to see him at conventions where he made more than a few dollars doing the circuit on).
I’ve never met Shatner, but have met Takei and never chided him about pushing the wrong buttons. If I did, it would be time for me to step back (of course, I’ve done that more than a few times). I was going to the conventions back to the ‘80s but haven’t been to any in some time. When I was about 12, I joined a popular paramilitary group based on Starfleet and obtained an officer rank. I think how odd it was then, close to 3 decades ago, when I went to one of the super-conventions that had a meeting within the con of Starfleet members and there were grown men in their 20s and 30s who were dressed in military fatigues saluting me as an officer, as they were only enlisted and NCO rank. We even had a banquet and were serenaded by Nichelle Nichols.
Those events seemed bigger and more real in those days. For many of the newer “stars” appearing at such functions, especially the reboot, I wouldn’t go if you gave me free tickets, it’s not the same. They lost people like me when they decided to change it into something unrecognizable. You disagree, of course, but I’m telling you that many feel the same way as I do. I think it’s rotten when they toss off decades-long fans like me for folks that like the cheap, the shallow and the shiny, with a few explosions thrown in.