Canon-Strike IX: Star Trek

[prinnysquad]

It’s a great little entry. The humour still works. I can’t remember not enjoying this, no matter what age I watched it.

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's written and directed by Nimoy. I seem to remember everyone fell out during filming.
I like it. Its pretty cheesy.

[prinnysquad]

That director sounds fishy.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Despite the aging cast the USS Enterprise-A finally sets out on her first big screen adventure. Kirk stopped Khan, rescued Spock and saved the planet Earth but he stole the Enterprise so has been demoted back down to Captain, which is kind of a reward for Jim, and he finds his ship once again in trouble as Spock's previously and ever since unmentioned half-brother kidnaps the ship in search for God. The film is well known for its ambition which was heavily reigned in following negative opinions from cast members, the studio and test audiences that reigned the feature back into being more in line with the other entries.




Does Final Frontier live up to its 'almost' franchise killing reputation or is there a diamond in the rough?

[Asura]

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Despite my criticism of this movie earlier in the thread, I have to agree that @Dogg Thang on one thing.

I believe the movie's "A-plot" might be poorly executed and a bit pap but the movie's "B-plot", about Kirk etc. coming to terms with growing older and the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy is superb.

Highlights include McCoy's line of "I liked him better when he was dead!" and, surprisingly, one of Trek's best sequences - when McCoy is forced to confront his emotions over the death of his father, while Kirk refuses to do the same because he accepts that the mistakes he's made are what he carries with him that make him who he is... Those are top-tier Trek.

It's a shame they're in an otherwise terrible movie!

[prinnysquad]

The camping scenes that bookend the film are great.

Hated this as a kid, rather enjoy it now, despite its absurdity.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Five years in-canon have passed since their last adventure and the this sixth film served as a send off for the original crew following a failed attempt to make it a prequel with a younger cast taking over the roles. The Federation and the Klingons find themselves on the verge of open war after Kirk finds himself framed for the assassination of a Klingon Chancellor. Despite how long it has been at this point the film contains some callbacks to Search for Spock with Kirk untrusting of the Klingons from the outset due to the death of his son, making him the perfect fall guy. Overall the films key place in the canon is that it follows the canonical final mission of the crew and of the USS Enterprise-A before it is decommissioned.




Is the sixth film a fitting farewell for the original cast and is it an important film in the canon?

[Dogg Thang]

On Trek V, yeah, what Asura said. I really like the film. Yes, it's goofy and I can see why that doesn't work for some people. It's silly in places and the main story is very obvious, albeit very true to classic Trek in my opinion (Kirk outwitting God with words - people don't always give Kirk enough credit for his ability to reason and talk his way into a win). And the character stuff is wonderful. There is a real sense of friendship. So the movie lands low down in my original series ranking but it's not the worst for me and I enjoy it.

Star Trek VI is great. It's a really good watch with loads going on. It pits Kirk versus the Federation when it comes to the Klingons and shows a really interesting side to him. It's political but never gets dragged down by that, although it skirts the edge a few times. It does have some goofy stuff too (mostly in the prison planet) but gets away with it. And the soundtrack is incredible. It's one of those movie soundtracks I'm surprised people don't talk about more often. I think it's a really strong finish to the original series movies.

A shame the blu ray is DNRd to death, with everything looking horribly waxy.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Trek: The Next Generation
After a long journey through film we travel back in time in the real world to arrive at the next destination in the Star Trek canon, Next-Gen. With a new crew aboard the Federations flagship Galaxy class USS Enterprise-D, Picard and his crew travel through space meeting new races and dealing with political threats. Next Generation wasn't particularly high on action and so often is seen as the spin-off that is closest in sensibilities to the original series but it was a key moment in bringing Star Trek back to television in a way that brought in a whole new generation of viewers to the franchise. The show would go on to contain many pivotal and well remembered moments such as the introduction of Q and the Borg, the death of Tasha Yar, the tale of the USS Enterprise-C and the assimilation of Picard. It's almost impossible to ask if Next Generation is important to the canon of Star Trek given how far reaching its characters, stories and influence has been.




Has Next Generation aged well since it's 1980's heyday and what are your thoughts and memories taken from the show?

[Dogg Thang]

Next Gen is superb and, in many ways, was the perfect way to continue Star Trek. I'll always be a TOS guy but there is no denying just how much Next Gen got right on its own merits. Personally, I feel it's very different to TOS and I definitely felt that a lot when it started. It plays everything kind of straight, for one thing, and so lost a sense of fun even though it does have humour. But the other really big difference is that TOS really was Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Everyone else was way below in terms of story priority. Whereas in Next Gen, it felt like a large ensemble cast where everyone was a bit more equal. And that really changed the feel of the show.

The first couple of seasons were notoriously difficult, especially when it came to the writing, and it seems like a lot of that was down to dealing with Roddenberry. After being booted off the movies, I feel Roddenberry brought a lot of the sensibilities of The Motion Picture to the Next Gen show (leaving the movies to recapture the fun of the original series) but he made them work in the show. Or maybe they were just better suited to television rather than a movie. And it's interesting how many parts of Next Gen came from either the dropped Phase 2 show or The Motion Picture. For example, Nimoy wasn't going to come back for the Phase 2 show so they wrote in a new Vulcan called Xon who was a full Vulcan who wanted to become human. The character was dropped for The Motion Picture when Nimoy agreed to come back but change the word 'Vulcan' to 'Android' and you have Data. Will Decker was the younger, more actiony first officer who had a previous relationship with beautiful empath Ilia. That's Riker and Troi. Riker even took the same first name. And if I remember correctly, several of the first season stories were repurposed from Phase 2.

So I feel like, even with what happened with The Motion Picture, Roddenberry deserves credit for Next Gen as difficult as it was - as difficult as he himself made it. Although for me it was the third season where it really gained strength. There are a lot of poor episodes in those early seasons, in my view. There are poor episodes throughout, to be fair, but I guess that happens when your show is 7 seasons and there are more than 20 episodes a season. But there are many greats among them and lots of fond memories.

And it became a crucial part of Trek. I would say it's as important to Trek as TOS.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Trek: Generations
One year on from the finale of Next-Generation Picard and his crew find a new threat in the form of the Nexus, a mysterious spacial event that Guinan knows about. Sent to look into it they unwittingly find their efforts sabotaged and are thrust into the modern crews first mission as well as the USS Enterprise-D and Admiral Kirk's final one. This passing of the torch film has always enjoyed a mixed response particularly due to the send off Kirk receives but it does contain several key moments within the canon such as the main ships destruction, the final farewell for a couple of the original crew and some fan pleasing in getting to finally see the USS Enterprise-B on screen.




What are your thoughts on the seventh big screen movie and is it an important part of the lore?

[Dogg Thang]

Probably overly dramatic but this film is the Freddy’s Dead of Trek films. In that it should have been a key movie and yet is absolute rubbish. I watched it again not so long ago and I really didn’t enjoy it, which is terrible because I can pretty much enjoy any Trek. To make matters worse, the start is really interesting and presents a crew that I would love to have followed but then the movie takes a dive the second we cut to the Next Gen crew. Instantly the tone changes and we’re seeing things that, really, aren’t movie worthy and that becomes the central problem throughout. I love Next Gen but they really struggled to carry a movie.

One of the main reasons is very simple - they ran seamlessly from TV to movies. With the original crew, they had a gap. They aged. They changed. So when they were brought to movies, they could be different. They could explore different aspects of their characters. They could make a jump from being TV actors to movie actors. The Next Gen crew never got that advantage. They had to have a level of continuity. They had to be the same. And they were the same. I have often felt that, Stewart aside, none of the actors can hold their own on a movie level but that’s probably unfair. It’s probably more just that they had to be the same characters and those characters are TV characters.

So we had terrible holodeck stuff, Data’s awful emotion chip which wore thin pretty much instantly, and what felt like a lot of filler. And in a movie with Kirk and Picard, there should have been no filler. I have no major plot issues, no problem with how Kirk went out or any specific nitpicks. I just think the whole movie, bar the opening, is dull and doesn’t offer a movie experience.

It might be my least favourite Trek film. That’s hard to say for sure though because I have this weird block with Insurrection - no matter how many times I see that movie, I can’t ever remember it. It’s like it vanishes from my mind. Generations stays but for the wrong reasons.

[Neon Ignition]

I don't mind Generations but to be honest a lot of it is due to the various elements contained within it rather than the film as a whole. I liked that Malcom McDowell's character wasn't a traditional villain, more an addict if anything with his desperation to return to his paradise. I liked the Enterprise-B stuff as well. It always kind of bugged me that the film spends too long setting up the pursuit of the Nexus with Picard etc, it would have been nice if they'd have brought Kirk back earlier in the film as it's obvious that is going to happen but it would have allowed more time to explore Kirk himself struggling with having left the Nexus and would have also given us the experience of seeing Kirk witness the Enterprise-D. Instead he's reduced to a +1 in the final sequence to Picard.

[prinnysquad]

All I remember about Generations is that I left it feeling that it satisfied nobody. The TNG crew felt very tv-based, and the big dogs had little to do of any impact. It just felt dull and underwhelming.

[Asura]

I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I absolutely loved Generations.

I was a kid at the time, and I remember going to see it after TNG was over. I think, when I look back at it, I sometimes forget how that felt. TNG's ending was okay, clever, but not one of the show's very best. With it not being like today, where you half-expect a sequel to everything 20 years later, we fully thought we'd seen the last of the crew in All Good Things..., and now Generations was out and that was probably the last time we would spend with them, a feeling heightened by how they destroy the Enterprise-D and kill off the Duras sisters in the movie, two of the show's longest running elements.

I'd grown up watching TNG, so I excuse the movie for its myriad of faults. It was a chance to see my heroes on the big screen, and I was not disappointed. There are some great moments in it. People hate the clipper-ship part, but I love it, because I've always loved the holodeck as a concept and that's exactly the kind of thing I would do with it. I was moved by Picard's news about Rene, which would've been comical with a worse actor. As a kid, I even loved Data's antics throughout. I also love how it feels like a big-budget episode, similar to Insurrection; it's not far-off how a Star Trek TNG episode plot progresses, which might not be great for a movie but it has continuity with the show. Also we got to find out more about Guinan, and I really liked Malcolm McDowell's role.

And I honestly think the crash sequence is fantastic. Plus, I didn't mind the way Kirk goes out; like he said, he died without Spock or McCoy. Part of me wonders if they'd worked any of that out when making Star Trek V, when he says that.

Now of course, as an adult, I totally see the flaws. Most basic of them how the costume budget was in dire straits after the costume department ****ed up the first designs, meaning that the uniforms change between scenes which causes major continuity errors - and Riker is wearing Sisko's uniform from Deep Space Nine, which doesn't fit him:



See how the sleeves are the wrong length and it hangs off his shoulders?

But despite all that, I love it. It's definitely one of those movies I can stick on while on a lazy afternoon, or doing chores. I probably know it back-to-front.