Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[SteelPlatedHeart]

So Discovery has gone from being a prequel to a dystopian far future then. Good job fucking up the past and future of the series, I guess.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

As far as I'm concerned the only bad TOS movie is 5 and mainly just because I get really bored while watching it. Search For Spock is legit great, it just doesn't compare to the heights that 1, 2, and 4 reached. I got the chance to see that on the big screen when it aired in a local theater and James Horner's score combined with the visuals totally knocks it out of the park. Its a genuinely enjoyable movie and its main sins are David's incredibly pointless death and undoing the ending of Wrath of Khan.

I really challenge anyone who says "the odd numbered films suck" to tell me Kirk's one liners, Stealing the Enterprise or the final escape from Genesis aren't great.

I can't make the claim that V is a great movie, as it suffers from some boring stretches and a bit of an anticlimax. Plus Uhura's fandance.

It's actually got very similar beats to "The Way to Eden" ToS episode.

But it does have a very strong Kirk-Spock-McCoy bond throughout. Considering the dark places the series has gone lately, the hokey but charming "row-row-row your boat" scene always makes me smile. Sybock is an interesting and sympathetic character. It rings to me as the most like an original episode of all of the movies.

Plus this is supposedly the movie where Wil Wheaton visited the set and William Shatner put the proverbial Heisman on him. Apparently Wheaton was in tears over the snub. That's worth a full star on its own.

 

[White Devil]

V is a bad movie but I can watch it infinitely more than I can TMP. Or anything with Wheaton in it. It's good bad in some ways but it really is one of the worst of the TOS movies.

 

[L50LasPak]

If you're going to watch it, be sure to watch this version:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture The Director's Edition is a special two-disc widescreen Director's Edition DVD of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, featuring new scenes, enhanced visual effects, a new sound mix as well as a selection of especially produced special features, which constituted a first...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

Sadly, it was only released on DVD and likely will never get a Blu-ray release due to technical issues.

I'm partial to the extended VHS edition. There was some added dialogue I liked that isn't in any other version. I haven't seen the movie or read any of the cast's books in many years, but I think it was an exchange Shatner and Nimoy came up with and convinced Wise to shoot.

All I remember about the DC is a clearer view of Vejur and they shrunk the energy cloud for some reason. I guess someone did the math and decided the Enterprise wasn't traveling through the cloud fast enough to traverse 41 AU in two days.

I really dislike the Directors Cut. The CGI used to replace the effects has aged terribly, and a lot of the really long effects sequences that are cut down are done so very badly. And on top of that, the scene everyone (except me) complains about, the Enterprise reveal scene, isn't even cut down at all! So what's the point? Just watch the original and maybe have some soda or coffee on hand if you want to give it a shot.

How do you guys stay awake through TMP long enough to appreciate these things?

I think the big issue with TMP is that if you're a really, unreasonably hardcore Sci-Fi nerd, then that movie is absolutely going to speak your language. But if you're just there to see a movie, you're not going to notice a lot of the little details that make SF nerds extremely happy. For instance I still have to explain what's happening in the wormhole sequence to people to this day even though that scene mostly uses real concepts, and its not because I'm smarter than any of them, its just because its totally out of their frame of reference.

I've known people who even outright dislike SF but who still told me they enjoyed Wrath of Khan or Voyage Home. TMP doesn't have that appeal, and you're actually right when you compare it to Final Frontier, the fifth movie is defintely more of a "movie" movie.

 

[Miller]

Star Trek V is a great TOS movie.
3 is the weakest despite being a direct sequel to Wrath of Khan.

So Discovery has gone from being a prequel to a dystopian far future then. Good job fucking up the past and future of the series, I guess.

and the Picard spin-off is there to fuck up the present part of Trek. They've indeed done a great job destroying the entire timeline.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

So Discovery has gone from being a prequel to a dystopian far future then. Good job fucking up the past and future of the series, I guess.

wait what?

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

wait what?

Apparently in the season two finale both the ship and what’s-her-face in the iron man suit flew through a wormhole or something and ended up in the future. The Federation doesn’t exist anymore and everything sucks or something.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Apparently in the season two finale both the ship and what’s-her-face in the iron man suit flew through a wormhole or something and ended up in the future. The Federation doesn’t exist anymore and everything sucks or something.

How does this show get worse every time I hear about it?

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

How does this show get worse every time I hear about it?

Watch the season 3 trailer and see if anything looks remotely like Star Trek.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Watch the season 3 trailer and see if anything looks remotely like Star Trek.

Nope, I am good hearing this shit second hand.

 

[Miller]

How does this show get worse every time I hear about it?

In season 3 the Federation doesn't exist anymore and the crew of the Discovery find out that trannies and non-binary people are still a thing.
I wish I was joking.

 

[King Dead]

I can't make the claim that V is a great movie, as it suffers from some boring stretches and a bit of an anticlimax. Plus Uhura's fandance.

It's actually got very similar beats to "The Way to Eden" ToS episode.

But it does have a very strong Kirk-Spock-McCoy bond throughout. Considering the dark places the series has gone lately, the hokey but charming "row-row-row your boat" scene always makes me smile. Sybock is an interesting and sympathetic character. It rings to me as the most like an original episode of all of the movies.

Plus this is supposedly the movie where Wil Wheaton visited the set and William Shatner put the proverbial Heisman on him. Apparently Wheaton was in tears over the snub. That's worth a full star on its own.

Like I said in my quick reviews, I'd consider V the worst of the TOS movies, but I don't consider it bad on its own. Considering how many goofy episodes there are of TOS (and I hadn't even considered The Way to Eden, thanks for bringing that up), it seems fitting to me that there's at least one TOS movie that also has a somewhat corny plot.

Thinking about it, each of the movies emulates TOS episodes in a different way:

1. Mysterious, possibly dangerous space anomaly that the Enterprise has to investigate (The Doomsday Machine)
2. Classic ship battles (Balance of Terror) and obviously being a continuation of Space Seed
3. "Something's wrong with a member of the crew, we have to figure this out before it kills him" (Where No Man Has Gone Before, Amok Time)
4. The Enterprise crew ends up either in our present day or something that looks similar to save on the costume and set budget (Tomorrow is Yesterday, A Piece of the Action)
5. Wrestling with philosophical questions such as the existence of Paradise (The Way to Eden), or flat-out meeting a higher power (Who Mourns for Adonais?)
6. Federation diplomacy and intrigue (Journey to Babel, The Trouble with Tribbles)

Above all else, the movies feel like Star Trek in a way that nu-Trek never will. I'll gladly watch V over anything that Kurtzman has overseen, and I doubt that's likely to change anytime soon. At least there's plenty of good Trek to fall back on.

 

[Miller]

I'll gladly watch V over anything that Kurtzman has overseen

Star Trek V is also the movie with the TOS cast at its best. I mean that scene with Bones and his father, it's so well done and tough to watch.

 

[Flexo]

wait what?

Did you not see my earlier post of the trailer and mention that it's ripping off Andromeda?

Ok, TL;DR for those who don't know: in Andromeda one of the ships of the Commonwealth (Federation spanning 3 galaxies) gets stuck in a black hole for 300 years. When they come out, the Commonwealth is fallen and the captain of the ship resolves to bring it back.

If you've seen much of the show, the STD3 trailer just looks like a straight rip off.

Never mind that in Enterprise, Daniels takes Archer to show him the far future where the Federation still exists.

Azati Prime (episode)

The crew discovers the Xindi weapon and plans to launch a suicide mission to destroy it, with Archer insisting that he be at the helm. But, when Archer is captured, he must convince Degra and the other Xindi leaders, that Humanity is no threat to the Xindi. Meanwhile, the Xindi launch a heavy...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

Oh wait, Disc 3 is supposed to be 900 years in the future, of 3100.

 

[L50LasPak]

1. Mysterious, possibly dangerous space anomaly that the Enterprise has to investigate (The Doomsday Machine)
2. Classic ship battles (Balance of Terror) and obviously being a continuation of Space Seed
3. "Something's wrong with a member of the crew, we have to figure this out before it kills him" (Where No Man Has Gone Before, Amok Time)
4. The Enterprise crew ends up either in our present day or something that looks similar to save on the costume and set budget (Tomorrow is Yesterday, A Piece of the Action)
5. Wrestling with philosophical questions such as the existence of Paradise (The Way to Eden), or flat-out meeting a higher power (Who Mourns for Adonais?)
6. Federation diplomacy and intrigue (Journey to Babel, The Trouble with Tribbles)

You know, I never thought about it that way, you're totally correct.

Star Trek V is also the movie with the TOS cast at its best. I mean that fucking scene with Bones and his father, it's so well done and tough to watch.

That's an interesting point since for whatever reason Shatner let the minor TOS cast have actually fairly prominent roles. Ignoring the insanely stupid fandance scene, we have Chekov getting to play Captain for a bit, Uhura and Scotty are implied to have a relationship, and Scotty is a total badass who busts the main trio out of the joint. Though he also does get wiped out by walking into a literal bar, which I'm wondering if that was supposed to be an actual joke or if they just didn't know what the hell to do with him. I forget what Sulu gets to do, I probably need to rewatch it again.

 

[Flexo]

That's an interesting point since for whatever reason Shatner let the minor TOS cast have actually fairly prominent roles. Ignoring the insanely stupid fandance scene, we have Chekov getting to play Captain for a bit, Uhura and Scotty are implied to have a relationship, and Scotty is a total badass who busts the main trio out of the joint. Though he also does get wiped out by walking into a literal bar, which I'm wondering if that was supposed to be an actual joke or if they just didn't know what the hell to do with him. I forget what Sulu gets to do, I probably need to rewatch it again.

Sulu pulls off flying the shuttle into the ship's bay manually so they can evade the Klingons.

 

[Prompt Critical]

Ok, TL;DR for those who don't know: in Andromeda one of the ships of the Commonwealth (Federation spanning 3 galaxies) gets stuck in a black hole for 300 years. When they come out, the Commonwealth is fallen and the captain of the ship resolves to bring it back.

If you've seen much of the show, the STD3 trailer just looks like a straight rip off.

Unfortunately instead of Kevin Sorbo chewing the scenery and Lexa Doig in a catsuit we're getting... well, you know.

I genuinely liked the first two seasons of Andromeda a lot. It's unfortunate that subsequent seasons were wrecked by an ego clash between Robert Hewitt Wolfe (developer/producer/writer) and Sorbo (who was a fairly big name in television at the time thanks to his run on Hercules, and nominally an executive producer in addition to being the show lead). Wolfe, who had come to Andromeda from a writing job on Deep Space 9, wanted to keep moving the series towards a longer story arc format with episodes that would highlight and develop each of the main cast members (more or less like Deep Space 9 had done successfully). Sorbo wanted to be the star of every episode, and to push a more episodic one-off TOS-like format with "more aliens, more space battles, and less internal conflict". The studio sided with Sorbo and Wolfe left the show, after which Sorbo was given increased editorial control and the overall writing and production quality massively declined.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

A ship going to the future where the Federation doesn't exist any more sounds like a good plot and reminds me of that TNG episode when one of the many alternative realities was the Federation being destroyed by the borg. The scene only last like ten seconds and it's very haunting to hear "we're one of the last ships left, the borg are everywhere" before the comm. is cut.

If you think about it, it's also the plot for First Contact if the Enterprise crew wasn't successful. Assimilating earth in the past means no Federation in the future. Even "Voyage Home" has that plot in a more comedic way: "future's in trouble, we're going back to fix it...whales!!".

So, such plot sounds interesting on paper, but if the intention is "we're gonna fix this!", then it's just a rehash and there is no way they can do it in the way FC or VH did it before.

if the intention is just going to the future and blame whatever is their version of Trump and Nazis for it and just leave it there, then what's the payback? Everything Kirk, Picard, Sisko, or every other single characters we've loved for more than 50 years did before was only a waste of time because we want to say "fuck nazis, diversity is good".

 

[Jones McCann]

Just finished the original series. Sad to think it's already over, I wish they made more seasons. Definitely was a fantastic show. In hindsight The City On The Edge of Forever was the best episode, as I thought it would be at the time. I guess now I'll have to watch DS9 and the original movies, before going back to rewatch everything of course.

 

[Zemporer]

Just finished the original series. Sad to think it's already over, I wish they made more seasons. Definitely was a fantastic show. In hindsight The City On The Edge of Forever was the best episode, as I thought it would be at the time. I guess now I'll have to watch DS9 and the original movies, before going back to rewatch everything of course.

You can go to the Animated Series next. And if you want more TOS, you can always dig into Star Trek Continues (https://www.startrekcontinues.com). That's my plan after finishing off the Original Series. I figure might as well go all in. I'm intrigued by Star Trek Continues because it looks like they put some time and effort into it (fingers crossed).