PT Is it just me or does the PT feel a little... Trek-like?

Never watched Star Trek, like ever! But I do want to check out the newer ones, and I think most people could guess why!

 

I think its a shame that so many modern audiences can't enjoy some of the old classics because of their pacing. Sure SOMETIMES there are overly drawn out scenes (2001, Lawrence of Arabia, Solaris, Star Trek: TMP and others fall prey to that) but many of them are just deliberate because they NEED to be. (Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, Jaws etc). I dread the day when a future generation will say LOTR is slow paced *shudders*

 

2001 is really a masterpiece. I find it more of a meditation than a movie in the traditional sense.

 

Yeah, but in Star Wars androids are enslaved and no one seems to have any problem with it.

 

In Star Wars they barely have a problem with the human slaves...

 

Least of all the androids.

'If you'll not be needing me, I'll close down for a while.'

 

Same here. Ask Siri about where she was born.

 

Does the PT feel like Star Trek to me?

Um...

 

I like humor threads.

 

if only i could like a million times...

 

I know it's obvious but the Star Trek re:boot doesn't seem like Star Trek since a lot of their technology appears or is possible nowadays, like cell phones and I'm sure many other things! Because it's set on a Starship based on Earth we're always going to relate to it.

In Star Wars us mere Earthlings don't have that problem of comparing everything to reality.

 

And people say there's bad acting in Star Wars? Luxuriate in that wonderful range of "no's"!


Anyway, I had a response to this thread mentally drafted up a week or two ago, but now I can't find it. I propose that it lies somewhere between my left ear and my right ear, however.

I'll just have to be incredibly brief (and then vomit because I went against my nature). Hmm, ya. The PT -- TPM, especially -- feels rather "Trek-like". TPM and AOTC definitely put me in mind of TNG; not so much ROTS, though. I think the political element plays a strong part, as well as all that carpet. Haven't you noticed all the carpet? "Would someone get this walking carpet out of my way?"

I suppose, when juxtaposed against the original trilogy, one's first foray into the prequel trilogy -- the shell shock of watching TPM for the first time, say -- kind of puts one in mind of the huge leap between TOS and TNG. The lively, bloke-y, western elements of the progenitors are kind of dialed down in favour of that sleek "bar room jazz" feel: clean, comfy interiors (e.g., Ten Forward, Palpatine's quarters); wonderfully hummy ship sounds (the Enterprise-D and the Trade Fed cruiser look and sound more organic and futuristic); a pronounced emphasis on trade and diploma and political etiquette; an expanded "support group" feel (Counselor Troi, Jedi going round in pairs), and I guess Naboo is like Risa: the ultimate "Class M" planet, am-I-right? (Wouldn't you just love a harem of handmaidens?). Overall, there's a more sullen, reproachful atmosphere to the interpersonal dynamics as compared to the originals, and both earned their share of criticism to begin with, but this tonal shift adds depth and complexity to these fabricated worlds; brings them a little bit closer to the present day (but also, paradoxically, makes them slightly less tangible and knowable).

Technobabble, too. People were pretty happy with the basic explanation for things in TOS and the OT, but suddenly, TNG and the PT intensified the mix. The transporters got "Heisenberg compensators", the Force got midi-chlorians. (Question: what would happen to a Star Wars characters' midi-chlorians in the transporter?). You also have a slightly larger sense of a teeming galaxy with interlocking interests in TNG and the PT, as embodied in TNG, say, with Worf serving aboard a Starfleet vessel, just as Jar Jar joins the Jedi on a grand adventure, precipitating a union between the Naboo and the Gungans, so does Worf get involved in some stories that not only test his loyalty but change the fate of the Klingon Empire and its relationship with the Federation farther down the line. TNG also gave us the trickster character of Q, kind of a more benign incarnation of the Emperor, who is at his most devious in the prequel era, executing a complex Machiavellian scheme, just as Q is there at the beginning and end of TNG to put humanity through its paces. In a way, Q is much more like Jar Jar: someone who creates a nuisance and disrupts normal functioning, but brings boons to the Enterprise crew (especially Picard), and whose value can be appreciated as time accretes and entropy rises. Hell, there are even some jelly fish creatures that rise up from enslavement at the end of "Encounter At Farpoint", just as Boss Nass hoists that Globe of Peace up at the end of TPM. Oh, and "All Good Things" kinda has a Mustafar setting at one point, when Picard touches a primordial Earth, and it ends with the line, "The sky's the limit", just as ROTS ends on a shot of figures looking out to a beautiful horizon.

In other words, welcome to the next millennium.

Just a few thoughts.

 

YES! The carpet, of course!

This guy, he gets it.