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Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:03 pm
by RogueIce
Stofsk wrote:Worf didn't outrank her, they held the same rank. And more to the point, he was acting as Martok's starfleet liason and XO.
Ah okay. I thought Jadzia started off as a JG and was promoted to LT. But that may've been Bashir. I thought Worf might've been off but wasn't sure. Makes sense though.

I love it when blueshirts get to sit in the Captain's Chair. I should fire up Netflix and watch those episodes again.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 12:28 pm
by Darth Tedious
Well, I think Into Darkness might be the best Trek film since TUC

I went in with very low expectations (I enjoyed 09 mildly by not taking it seriously, and figured I'd have fun doing the same this time)
Some fan service in there for oldTrek fans, but not too much, and more tastefully done, unlike the Kobiyashi Maru superwank of 09

The Lens Flare Strikes Back lol
Lens flare looks I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP in 3D
But it wasn't as bad as last time, thank Valen

Yep, go see it in cinemas and such and so forth, totally not a waste of money

IT WAS GOOD

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 12:45 pm
by Gands
I liked it, it was a pretty fun few hours.

Some of the techspeak and Klingon has holes, but it's still pretty fun.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:42 pm
by Stofsk
At this stage I'm only hoping it's not actively terrible

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:44 pm
by evilsoup
I love (just judging from the trailers here) that star trek has gone from 'explore strange new worlds & new civilisations' to 'space bin laden crashes a space plane into space new york'

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:59 pm
by Stofsk
Yeah see

That's why I hate it

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:07 pm
by timmy
How many times did you 'explore' Conduit Elite this evening

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:17 pm
by Stofsk
Zero

I haven't played STO for a couple of days now. I'm thinking of logging in just to refine my dilithium on all my characters, but I'm almost certainly going to be shaped soon so I won't be playing a whole lot for the next week.

But more seriously, the trailers have rubbed me the wrong way. The only trailer that made me think 'Hmm this might not suck' was the last one, which had Pike say during a voiceover at the start '...You think you can't make mistakes, but every decision you make runs the risk of getting you and everyone under your command killed.' If that's actually a major theme for this movie then I'm willing to give it a go.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:23 pm
by Gands
Not to spoil much, but it definitely comes up.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:59 pm
by evilsoup
yeah, I don't really approve of rebooting things & making everyone twelve
it doesn't help that new!kirk has all the charm of rock slime

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:41 pm
by Stofsk
In other trek-related news, tonight I played Star Trek Fleet Captains with Ando and a mutual friend of ours. It is really fun, once you learn the rules. And for god's sake, if you buy this game, do photocopy the rulebook or find a copy online and print out a few copies so that multiple people can read the rules - because holy shit, the way some of them were written could have been done better. Once you get past the learning curve the game is both really good and has a bunch of novel shit in it that I can only assume makes subsequent games run better.

A good example of this from tonight's game was the movement rules. We had read them wrong and so played the game with the wrong information. Ando reread a section in the book and realised this and suddenly a lot of options opened up that we previously considered closed.

The core game is a 1v1 or 2v2 competitive game. One side starts as the Federation, the other the Klingons. The galaxy is randomly generated with the almighty power of hex tiles. You have a small fleet of ships and most have special abilities and a number of different stats which you can change to deal with situations as they arise. The game is part exploration, part empire-building, part combat, but it all combines to give a really good Trek flavour. The Romulan expansion opens up the game by adding a third faction, making the game a 1v1v1 or 2v2v2, with rules for espionage. The only real criticism I have of the Romulan expansion is that the titular faction has a heavy advantage when it comes to espionage and sabotage, something which the Feds and Klinks don't get to anywhere near the same degree.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 8:59 pm
by RogueIce
evilsoup wrote:'explore strange new worlds & new civilisations'
That doesn't make for an exciting multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster, sir. :colbert:

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 9:01 pm
by RogueIce
Anyway it's not like even TOS was all Space Love & Happiness. Pretty sure Kirk shot plenty of people in those episodes.

And didn't all of the "exploration" TOS movies (TMP, possibly V) all suck anyway? :fukyu:

Clearly nuTrek 3 should split the difference and have time travel hijinks in 2017 Earth. :v

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 9:13 pm
by adr
the one with the whales was pretty good

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 9:22 pm
by Aaron
Certainly they were exploring a culture alien to their own.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 2:50 pm
by Stofsk
Saw Into Darkness. It was ok. Not bad. Not terrible. It was good in parts, great in others, but there were some stupid things in this movie that I wish wasn't.
What I liked: the set up at the start where Kirk violates the Prime Directive to save Spock's life and how this pays off at the end. I liked Kirk a lot more in this movie than in the last. I couldn't help but groan at his womanising but he grew beyond that as the movie went on. I liked some of the little touches, like showing Praxis already blown up in orbit of Qo'noS

And it's fucking spelt Qo'noS you fuckheads. This shit ain't hard.

I liked the Section 31 reference. NO, REALLY. I thought it was a neat bit of continuity and it ties into the whole metaplot I guess might be the word for it, of how in the background to all that's going on there's this undercurrent of fear of the klingons. I liked how the Stupid Chief stereotype was subverted into the Evil Chief stereotype. Admiral Robocop was a bastard but his motives seemed genuine. I liked how Kirk really did face a no-win situation for real, and that was a neat twist on the TWOK revist. I liked how Spock fooled Khan when he beamed over the torpedoes with a delayed fuse on them.

I loved how the roles were reversed. And I love the character dynamic between nuKirk and nuSpock this time around. I loved Pike's death and Spock mind melding with him.

I loved primeSpock's cameo. It was tasteful and I think a decent way to give the characters and the audience a bit of insight into the villain of the story without going into a whole boring exposition scene.

What I didn't like: I didn't like the klingons. I don't know how you can fuck up the klingon makeup after this long. They looked fucking terrible.

I didn't like the militarised uniforms Kirk and Spock wear during the briefing on earth.

I hated the set design for the Enterprise and Vengeance interiors. I am really, really not a fan of the whole 'lol everything is SO BIG' set design philosophy they've got here. They again seemed to go with the 'engine room looks like the inside of a brewery' shit.

I'm not a fan of Simon Pegg's Scotty. I don't know what it is really. Maybe it's the whole 'played for laughs' thing they've got going with this character. Similarly, I'm not all that impressed with Chekov, for much the same reason. I'm also less of a fan of Uhura - she's still incredibly pushy but doesn't demonstrate any kind of professionalism. She keeps interacting with Kirk and Spock like she's not under their command. All her moments in the film were nothing special, her rusty klingon didn't prove useful, she rarely has anything interesting to say when she's not chucking a hissy fit at Spock, and her big moment in the film was a big pile of nothing. Which leads me to...

KHAAAAN!

Khan was a decent villain. But one of the things that really bothered me is how they turned the whole 'superhuman' thing up to 11. Yeah he's a beast at hand-to-hand and a genius intellect. How the fuck does that translate into wasting an entire squad of klingons and taking out their shitty little birds-of-prey single-handed, surviving a vulcan nerve pinch or taking shot after shot of a phaser set to stun? Ok the nerve pinch is fine, we saw in the original series and TNG it was not always fool proof. And Khan at least reacts like he's in a great deal of pain. But Uhura blasts him a dozen times and he doesn't drop. Come the fuck on. That was her moment in the film, and it would have been a neat way to end the fight by having him stunned and dropped by somebody holding a raygun. That final battle with them on those aircraft things was also pretty terrible.

I also didn't like the space dive scene. For that matter, it still bothers me that they don't seem to use their technology properly, and the writers keep putting them into positions where they can't use things like transporters to solve the problem in 5 mins.

Like at the start, why the fuck is the Enterprise submerged on the alien planet? Why isn't it in fucking orbit? Because if it was they could have beamed up Spock from inside the volcano. It comes across as contrived. You telling me they couldn't have thought up a better way to do the same dilemma Kirk had of choosing between his friend or his duty?

They couldn't beam up either Spock or Khan or both from the moving platform, despite the fact that in the previous film they beamed Kirk and Scotty onto the ship when it was at warp? What the fuck?

As for the ending, I don't know what to think. It was set up from the start that Khan's superblood had miraculous effects, but they never bothered explaining how or why, and while the original had Spock resurrected more or less by magic anyway they still took time out to explain how. Ok Spock transferred his soul into McCoy, made McCoy crazy in the process. Meanwhile the genesis effect took care of his body. Yeah it's magic more or less but at least there's a reason for it, it follows somewhat organically from the plot. Here we're just told Khan is a superbeing and a blood transfusion from him can cure irradiation. I mean that's pretty fucking incredible, and you'd think it would be mentioned in some way by somebody how fucking incredible this was, and try to explain it somehow. But it seems they felt that all they had to do was put in the scene at the start where Khan promises Ricky he can save his daughter.

So in summary there were things I liked but things that I disliked, and in most cases it was a writing decision (outside of stuff like set design).

Anyway. I hope the next film has some exploration of strange new worlds. Because I think we're overdue for that.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Sat May 11, 2013 4:10 am
by Gands
Stofsk wrote:
And it's fucking spelt Qo'noS you fuckheads. This shit ain't hard.
I railed against that in the cinema. But I realised that the reason it was spelt Kronos may have been a translation (Like Moscow/Moskva) as opposed to a transliteration.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 3:21 pm
by RogueIce
Okay fuck it I don't want to do this the hard way, so this whole thing is about ST: Into Darkness. Spoilers ahoy!
Stofsk wrote:I didn't like the militarised uniforms Kirk and Spock wear during the briefing on earth.
I liked those uniforms, personally. A good follow on from the first movie which showed the differing uniforms between the Academy and the ship.

I also liked the semi-TMP badge Kirk and the senior officers wore. Maybe because that's what I use in STO as my "ship commander" insignia so I could be biased. :v

It is slightly odd why he'd have that on one uniform and not his shipboard uniform. Also I didn't see any obvious sign of the department colors but it seems most uniforms don't bother with that outside of those that'd be worn up in space. Also yay for Enlisted dudes with no department insignia! (aka the suicide bomber guy)
Stofsk wrote:But Uhura blasts him a dozen times and he doesn't drop. Come the fuck on. That was her moment in the film, and it would have been a neat way to end the fight by having him stunned and dropped by somebody holding a raygun. That final battle with them on those aircraft things was also pretty terrible.
I liked the battle itself, but yeah I think Uhura should have put him down, not Spock. I could get nerdrage about how Scotty managed it earlier but I'll just assume he was faking it for whatever reason.
Stofsk wrote:They couldn't beam up either Spock or Khan or both from the moving platform, despite the fact that in the previous film they beamed Kirk and Scotty onto the ship when it was at warp? What the fuck?
Battle damage. :prof:
Stofsk wrote:As for the ending, I don't know what to think. It was set up from the start that Khan's superblood had miraculous effects, but they never bothered explaining how or why, and while the original had Spock resurrected more or less by magic anyway they still took time out to explain how. Ok Spock transferred his soul into McCoy, made McCoy crazy in the process. Meanwhile the genesis effect took care of his body. Yeah it's magic more or less but at least there's a reason for it, it follows somewhat organically from the plot. Here we're just told Khan is a superbeing and a blood transfusion from him can cure irradiation. I mean that's pretty fucking incredible, and you'd think it would be mentioned in some way by somebody how fucking incredible this was, and try to explain it somehow. But it seems they felt that all they had to do was put in the scene at the start where Khan promises Ricky he can save his daughter.
Well there was the experiment with the Tribble and McCoy talked about it some.

And let's be fair, they had the whole ST3 movie to "explain" Spock's resurrection, while they had to put this in with everything else.
Stofsk wrote:Anyway. I hope the next film has some exploration of strange new worlds. Because I think we're overdue for that.
I suppose it would be interesting to see how they can make that viable for a two hour summer blockbuster. Either that or they'll be exploring and oh hai there Klingon battleship!

Also there was some other comment I wanted to make but can't remember it now. Fucknuts. :(

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 9:01 pm
by adr
so im watching star trek 3 again

interesting mccoy has money to buy that ship lol!

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 10:29 pm
by adr
another interesting point: sarek was liek "i talked to YOUR government". the federation is kinda interesting politically. and the exile on vulcan from federation justice is strange too now that i think about it.

and the excelsior bridge is actually kinda cool, it reminds me a lil of tos bridge, the sounds and all too

i really like the props as well, better than st2. more like the classic show. good looking communicators and phasers

and kruge has all the best lines: "then i hope pain is something you enjoy". "i give two minutes for you and your gallant crew", "no ... because you wish it"

though kirk has some good shit too. "wait oyu said oyu would kil me" "i lied" lol. and bones has "it must be payback for all those arguments he lost" LOL and "i choose the danger. hell of a time to ask" hehe

it amuses me that they go to red alert when the entire crew is on the bridge. and "commander montgomery scott" you got promoted dude!

and kirk wins the fight at the end more or less by accident. sheer bad luck made kruge lose his footing.



and is it just me or did the klingon bridge look totally different after the good guys boarded it. must be lighting but why. and hten it changes again in st4!

and uhura assaulted mr adventure, i wonder how she got to vulcan without getting arrested

"at what cost, your ship, your son" realistically david would have been dead anyway since kruge would have been there regardless of kirk and spock. but oh well

"the ship, out of danger" "you saved the ship" LOL THX FOR UNDOING THAT JIM



anyway yeah st3 is no st2 but this is a decent film too

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 5:42 pm
by Big Orangutan
I compare Search for Spock with Iron Man 2 or X-Men: The Last Stand - solid, technically well made sequels that do OK in the box office, but get mixed reviews then kinda forgotten about after a couple of years.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 9:07 am
by Big Orangutan
OK, I've seen Into Darkness last afternoon with my mate and while it's still a bit too fanfictiony for my taste its plot holes this time around are large ponds in comparison to the last film's lakes; the comparatively new JJAbrams Trek-verse seems more developed and functional as well.
Admiral Robocop continues the grand tradition of Starfleet Admirals at best being well intentioned incompetents and plot irrelevant or at worst dangerously incompetent if not actively malignant.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 2:19 pm
by RyanThunder
Yeah I saw it yesterday. I think the first movie had better pacing. This one felt... rushed almost, early on. I'm not sure what would've fixed that.

Uhura was entirely wasted.

Khan Noonien Singh is a posh-looking white guy. Suuuuure.

Somehow they made the alien spears and arrows from the beginning move like they were cheap props, yet still managed to make them look dangerous. xD

U.S.S. Vengeance was one scary black battleship.

Oh, and Federation Earth really needs to shore up those orbital/air defenses. I mean, really, if a giant Romulan planet destroyer doesn't get them the political capital for that, though, they're pretty much hopeless.

Overall a fun watch, but I think the first one had a better feel to it.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:09 am
by Big Orangutan
RyanThunder wrote:Yeah I saw it yesterday. I think the first movie had better pacing. This one felt... rushed almost, early on. I'm not sure what would've fixed that.

Uhura was entirely wasted.

Khan Noonien Singh is a posh-looking white guy. Suuuuure.
Yeah, I don't know why they had to cast a very Northern European looking and very over-exposed Cumberbatch in this, when the guy who played the USS Kelvin captain (Faran Tahir, who also played the secondary villain in Iron Man) would've been a better choice (the correct ethnicity and a strong presence). Though I still essentially like Cumberbatch.

Did anybody spot Mickey the Idiot from the old seasons of NuWho?

Who's next for JJAbrams bad guys? Matt Smith as another Augment working alongside Jeri Ryan as an earlier evil Dr. Hansen? :picard:
U.S.S. Vengeance was one scary black battleship.

Oh, and Federation Earth really needs to shore up those orbital/air defenses. I mean, really, if a giant Romulan planet destroyer doesn't get them the political capital for that, though, they're pretty much hopeless.
The Dreadnought-class USS Vengeance was part of the Federation's major push to counter the Wolf-359 scale Starfleet losses and destruction of Vulcan in the first reboot movie.

Re: Trek Thread

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:20 am
by RyanThunder
I mean planetside missile silos and emergency shields for buildings and what not. I'm not asking for impregnability here.

Whatever the case, the Enterprise and Vengeance were both able to make dangerously close to a major population centre unchallenged. That's just not acceptable. Even if we accept that they can't stop something that big from hitting the ground (which isn't unreasonable), there wasn't even anything trying to stop them. Suppose one of their space docks falls out of orbit. What then?

Furthermore, airspace control. Khan zoomed right up to Starfleet Command with that gunship, completely unchallenged. The admirals had to request air defense teams to try to shoot it down.