New Testingstan

Corporate greed, how else? Men in blue ties carve the world up.

but that's not Gene's vision

Veef wrote:but that's not Gene's vision

"Gene's vision" gave us Seasons 1-3 of TNG.

money doesn't exist in the future

we've evolved beyond the need to grieve or create a confusing series of intellectual property splits

season 3 of tng is one of the best things ever to grace television history

adr wrote:season 3 of tng is one of the best things ever to grace television history

That was the one with "The Ensigns of Command"

Except there were no ensigns commanding anything.

seasons 1-2 of trek (wtf season 3 was solid) were way less poisonous to the property than the "roddenberry box" which michael piller mistakenly saw as valuable artistic constraint and applied lessons from for years after roddenberry's death


i mean, roddenberry told piller that they couldn't do "The Bonding" because "we don't grieve in the future". despite overseeing "Skin of Evil" where the main characters were crying b/c denise crosby got bored at having nothing to do ever tasha yar just got slimed.

and piller's lesson isn't "roddenberry is a senile, decrepit old man who needs to be mollified so we can make the episodes we want to", but "roddenberry is actually a secret genius who i should learn from"


people reflexively shit on berman and braga but i've honestly gravitated towards "you know as much as he might have restored order in the writers' room, michael piller might have been a negative influence on balance"

when technobabble picks up the nickname "piller filler" that ought to be a big red flag that you're doing something wrong

piller's early draft of insurrection had the whole plot hinging on literally all future medical technology depending on a single, non-replaceable/non-renewable/non-manufacturable element called "sarium krellide" (yes the same term used for their battery technology) and the federation and romulans battling over control of the planet

also i watched star trek into darkness recently and it was a dumb, dumb, dumb fucking movie

uraniun235 wrote:also i watched star trek into darkness recently and it was a dumb, dumb, dumb fucking movie

but don't tell roberto orci b/c it might hurt his feelings

uraniun235 wrote:piller's early draft of insurrection had the whole plot hinging on literally all future medical technology depending on a single, non-replaceable/non-renewable/non-manufacturable element called "sarium krellide" (yes the same term used for their battery technology) and the federation and romulans battling over control of the planet

uraniun235 wrote:also i watched star trek into darkness recently and it was a dumb, dumb, dumb fucking movie

both the reboot films are fucking stupid
I mean the films have always been the weakest part of Trek by a loong way, but for all their idiocy I found they had a sort of charm to them
nuKirk is just such an idiot and an asshole that I can't bring myself to care about him

uraniun235 wrote: but don't tell roberto orci b/c it might hurt his feelings

http://trekweb.com/articles/2013/09/08/ ... cism.shtml

it's ok he said he was sorry

he's more than half human

ha

haaaaaaaaaaaa

uraniun235 wrote:seasons 1-2 of trek (wtf season 3 was solid) were way less poisonous to the property than the "roddenberry box" which michael piller mistakenly saw as valuable artistic constraint and applied lessons from for years after roddenberry's death


i mean, roddenberry told piller that they couldn't do "The Bonding" because "we don't grieve in the future". despite overseeing "Skin of Evil" where the main characters were crying b/c denise crosby got bored at having nothing to do ever tasha yar just got slimed.

and piller's lesson isn't "roddenberry is a senile, decrepit old man who needs to be mollified so we can make the episodes we want to", but "roddenberry is actually a secret genius who i should learn from"

Piller made some excellent calls throughout his involvement with the franchise, and IIRC he and Berman talked to Gene behind closed doors after he shit all over RDM's script, and before they did so they told Moore to go write his script. I don't think you're being fair to Piller.

people reflexively shit on berman and braga but i've honestly gravitated towards "you know as much as he might have restored order in the writers' room, michael piller might have been a negative influence on balance"

Maybe he wasn't the greatest influence that could have happened, but TNG s3 was a diamond formed from the pressure every writer was under. And Piller was a big part of the reason that season turned out so strongly. I think he made some missteps, don't get me wrong, and so did Berman and Braga, but in a way I think they all tried to do the best they could under the circumstances. For example, things like Voyager's 'Year of Hell' was originally intended to last the whole season, but it was the network that nixed that idea. Everyone blames Braga though, when it was his idea in the first place.

uraniun235 wrote:

uraniun235 wrote:also i watched star trek into darkness recently and it was a dumb, dumb, dumb fucking movie

but don't tell roberto orci b/c it might hurt his feelings

That was the moment when JJTrek lost me completely. Doug Drexler made the observation that no matter how cranky the fans were at him, Berman never cracked the shits like Orci did.

You know what I like about the nuTrek movies? That they were finally able to put action scenes in trek that weren't completely ridiculous. Yeah, it's a "big dumb action movie," but at least it does action well. That's something Trek has never even approached doing in the past. I challenge you to find one scene from old trek where people are fighting or have to do a stunt and it doesn't make you laugh your ass off.

In TOS it was charming because you could laugh and go "lol 60s," but the later trek stuff? Hire a goddamn stunt coordinator who actually knows what he's doing.

Brannon braga I think actually did a pretty good job

he wrote or contributed to a lot of good tng and voyager episodes, and even among those that failed I can find some appreciation in what he was trying to do, you know like high concept stuff that rox

Stofsk wrote:

uraniun235 wrote:but don't tell roberto orci b/c it might hurt his feelings

That was the moment when JJTrek lost me completely. Doug Drexler made the observation that no matter how cranky the fans were at him, Berman never cracked the shits like Orci did.

I've never let BtS stuff like that bug me. I mean from what I hear Sean Connery is an asshole in real life, but his movies are awesome so whatever. Same with Tom Cruise and his Scientology bullshit; yeah he's fucking nuts with that but Valkyrie was a great movie so whatevs.

Also I've never heard of this Roberto Orci going off on the fans thing, so that probably helps.

RogueIce wrote:Also I've never heard of this Roberto Orci going off on the fans thing, so that probably helps.

Some website posted a critique of the new Trek movies, and Roberto Orci slogged into the comments and cussed out a couple of people, and basically said "fuck you, pitch a better movie if you can".

Oh yeah and he also got super-offended somehow by someone comparing his films to the Indiana Jones movies.


I think it's more funny than anything else that, after making two financially successful and popular Star Trek films, Orci let some internet posts get the better of his temper. I mean, Orci could have easily just thrown up a tweet or even posted a comment linking to that Onion article about Star Trek fans hating fun and accessible movies, and it would have been over instantly.

Stofsk wrote: Piller made some excellent calls throughout his involvement with the franchise, and IIRC he and Berman talked to Gene behind closed doors after he shit all over RDM's script, and before they did so they told Moore to go write his script. I don't think you're being fair to Piller.

You might be right, I might be giving Piller a bad shake. But I'm not saying he was a horrible writer or that he didn't contribute very positive things to Star Trek; what I'm getting at is that he may have set up the series for some bad habits that would damage the show's quality later. Maybe it would have been optimal if he'd left the show around TNG season 7.

I think Into Darkness didn't make OH EM GEE level of boxoffice return, and in a somewhat informal poll it was voted the worst Trek film ever made. These two facts probably put some pressure on the writers.

I'd like to think that that caused some level of frank introspection among the people who made it, but instead it lead to Orci shooting his mouth off at the fans.

On another matter that's ID related, apparently the blu-ray release has been fubared because certain retail versions get different extra content. A lot of it seems to be Bad Robot getting greedy.

uraniun235 wrote:

Stofsk wrote:Piller made some excellent calls throughout his involvement with the franchise, and IIRC he and Berman talked to Gene behind closed doors after he shit all over RDM's script, and before they did so they told Moore to go write his script. I don't think you're being fair to Piller.

You might be right, I might be giving Piller a bad shake. But I'm not saying he was a horrible writer or that he didn't contribute very positive things to Star Trek; what I'm getting at is that he may have set up the series for some bad habits that would damage the show's quality later. Maybe it would have been optimal if he'd left the show around TNG season 7.

I forget, when did he actually leave the franchise? I know he was involved in creating DS9 and Voyager but at some point he departed.

Stofsk wrote:I think Into Darkness didn't make OH EM GEE level of boxoffice return, and in a somewhat informal poll it was voted the worst Trek film ever made. These two facts probably put some pressure on the writers.

How is this possible in a universe where Nemesis exists?

Nemesis was near the bottom. Both Final Frontier and Insurrection beat it though.

Hey, I love The Motion Picture but most Trek fans can't stand it. I don't know what the point is in arguing which film was the worst though.

EDIT TWoK, FC, TUC, and TVH were all top four. Which I pretty much agree with.

I suppose what people get pissed off about the most is that the film isn't that great in terms of writing, but it gets a soft reception from critics and so on. If you want my honest opinion, I don't think the qualities of the film even matter. JJ Abrams seems like he has a good PR staff and hype machine. He knows how to make good spectacle and that's what counts; plot holes plot shmoles. Every fucking blockbuster film released in the last five years has had shitty writing, so it's not like Into Darkness is alone in that. What's baffling is a film like Nemesis sucked and had terrible writing and direction, and it gets rightly panned as a result. It bombed so hard that Paramount fucking rebooted the franchise as a result. Films like Into Darkness get lapped up by critics and everyone involved in the marketing buzz-hype crowd (the kind of people who write for Hollywood publications), and they go 'What? Trek fans hate this film? Well, obviously the problem is with them.' You don't find the same kind of reaction to say, the SW prequels. Possibly because Lucas was never a Hollywood friendly film maker, I dunno.

TMP at least had ambition, even if it was executed poorly. In my opinion.

evilsoup wrote:TMP at least had ambition, even if it was executed poorly. In my opinion.

That's fine, I only bring it up because I had never seen it and for years it was because I heard the 'even number rule' and simply passed it over. One day I was bored and had nothing to do so I started watching it and it engaged me in a way I wasn't expecting it to. It actually makes me wonder how many people hate the film when they haven't seen it, or have dismissed it because 'everyone knows' it sucks.

I think it was trying to be like 2001, but in Star Trek, and I appreciate that... but it was so slow, and unlike 2001 it didn't quite have the imagination or characterisation to justify that slowness
it's hard to do the 'humanity as a tiny speck gazing in awe at the majesty of the universe' thing when the crew have previously defeated literal gods.

Now compare that to the reboots, where they blow up a black hole by shooting it a lot.