Amph [NERRRD] Observations, rhetorical questions, comments & 55 Years of Star Trek (General Thread)

You're not missing much. But keep a bucket close by just in case.

 

I feel a bit old here, since I was born just a couple of months after TOS premiered. I'm not exactly a first generation fan, but I'm pretty close. And, for me, all the later shows had a pretty tough act to follow. While there were some TOS shows that didn't measure up ("The Way to Eden" is basically riff-fodder), most of them remain quite good, particularly "The Doomsday Machine", "Amok Time", "Journey to Babel", "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "Arena". And "City on the Edge of Forever" still has a pretty solid claim to being the best Trek story of all.

As for the spin-offs, I've seen several episodes of TNG, some good and some not-so-good. I haven't seen enough episodes of the others to make an informed judgement. As for the movies, the only non-TOS movie I've seen in full is "Generations", which was OK, but not outstanding. I've only seen bits and pieces of the other TNG movies, and I haven't seen either of the Abrams movies.

And regarding "Star Trek V", the problem among many fans is that the story was interesting, but it was undercut by too much low-grade humor and poor VFX, along with a major continuity snarl. Still, I don't believe it was a total loss, as a few fans have commented.

 

I've been making my way through DS9 on Hulu. As of the "Cardassians" episode, I can't decide if Garak is a triple agent, a rogue agent, or a lonely tailor trying to seduce Dr Bashir. Actually, I'm pretty sure the last is true regardless of what other three dimensional chess games he's playing.

 

That is deliberate on Andy Robinson's part. He said that he played Garak as bi and that his interactions with Bashir had some undertones to them which were played up to be a little bit more than just friendly.

And just you wait, Garak's character takes some rather interesting turns. "The Wire" is a really good Garak/Bashir ep, and season 3 has some good Garak eps too.

 

^^^^ I look forward to it!

 

Well there are several reasons why ST5 is so disliked.

1) It almost killed the franchise.
2) The plot is silly, full of holes and makes very little sense.
3) It treats several of the franchise regulars in a rather insulting way.
Take Chekov and Sulu. Firstly they are often made to look like idiots. Second, in ST3 they risked their careers and a general court material out of loyalty to Kirk. But here they betray him at the drop of a hat.
Scotty, who knows the ship inside and out, walks slowly down a corridor and knocks himself out.
4) The effects are rather poor.
5) Lastly and I think mort importantly, the arrogance and ego of Shatner.
He was so fixated on the awesomeness of his own character that the film suffered for it and he downgraded many of the other characters just to make himself look better. ST5 in many ways was a star vanity project for Shatner and a big ego can rib people the wrong way and when ST5 failed spectacularly people took great pleasure in that.

Personally I am not happy that the film is as bad as I find it to be but I think most of the blame lies squarely on Shatner's shoulders.
His original ideas are even worse than the finished film. Spock and Bones were also supposed to betray Kirk and the only reason that didn't happen was that Nimoy and DeKelley flat out refused to do it. The original idea was also to find the actual, factual Satan, not this alien pretending to be God who is instead evil. Even Gene himself argued against this idea.

About Sybok, the actor does his job well and there are some interesting things about him. But far too much makes little to no sense.
If he wants a space ship, why is he on Nimbus III? He isn't from there so he must have flown there on a space ship and with his powers, he could have done this "share your pain" shtick with the crew on that ship and saved himself lots of time. And speaking of his powers, why is he doing this very convoluted plot? All he needs to do is to some clerk in Starfleet, who gets him to see someone important, who gets him to see some higher up, who gets him to see some admiral who can then GIVE him a ship.
And Sybok/Spock. First I find it totally silly that Spock NEVER mentioned that he had a half brother in all the years he knew Kirk.
Second, when Sybok meets Spock, a religious zealot now finds himself in the presence of a man who has died and then come back to life. And yet that seemingly doesn't matter to Sybok.
Third, Sybok's "power". Even the films director calls BS on this power IN the film.

But if you want a more thorough analysis of the film and all it's flaws, I recommend SF Debris's reviews. He is often funny and yet insightful.
http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/film5.asp

And yes I have borrowed some his arguments and no he is no Red Letter Media.

In closing. I like Shatner and admire most of his work, in and out of ST, but here, he got carried away with being both writer, director and main character. I did like the recent documentary "The Captains" about the various Captains of Star Trek.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Does anyone know if that huge black starship that in Into Darkness eventually became Khan's starship do you know if they will make a model kit for it?

 

No idea. The more popular ships tend to be made into models by AMT after a while. Some of the lesser known or one off ships tend to be made by some of the smaller companies who may not have a license from Paramount. I have seen a few of them over the years, but you have to keep your eyes peeled as they can come and go really quickly. Online model kit shops would likely be the best place to look.

 

I was curious because well its an interesting looking starship and so far the only one in Starfleet that isn't a gray metal color I do know in the limited collectors edition you do get a little version of it with the movie but I really want a model kit of it because I am one of those people that is really into doing model kits more specifically of starships from my fav. sci-fi franchises.

 

I grew up on Trek. More specifically, TNG. Such memories. All will be lost like tears in the rain.

 

Keep an eye out. If none of the big model companies crank one out then I'd look around for some of the smaller indie companies. I did some digging around online just now and found that one of the companies I was thinking of is still around, name is Starcraft Models. Didn't see anything from Into Darkness, but they did have the Kelvin from the last movie, so there may be some hope for you.

 

That seems a bit of an odd reason to me, though. I mean, most people don't base their like/dislike of a movie on how financially successful it was.

I don't deny that it has major problems -- but no more so than 2009's Star Trek which was very well received by critics and a lot of Trek fans, though not all admittedly. To be perfectly honest, nothing grated on me as badly as Kirk basically being promoted from suspended cadet to captain of Starfleet's newest vessel in a few days.

Plus some of older Spock's actions made no sense. He's going to risk the lives of everyone on Earth (by not going with Jim to explain the situation to his counterpart) because it's apparently so important that new Kirk and new Spock have the same friendship? Really?

I don't really understand how they betrayed Kirk, really. What Sybok did to people was explicitly compared to brainwashing. I never got the sense that any of the crewmembers' loyalty was meant to be called into question.

As for the humor, I didn't feel it was insulting to the characters. It poked fun, sure, but it didn't seem malicious. I never felt any of the characters were portrayed as incompetent. Though I do see how people could come away feeling that way -- so that is a legitimate point.

I liked, for example, how Chekov was left as Captain of the Enterprise and how Sulu piloted the shuttle into the Enterprise manually although he had never attempted it before. Scotty hitting his head wasn't a funny gag admittedly, but I always thought it was the result of being on a newly refurbished Enterprise.

Yep. That seems like kind of a shallow reason though. I mean, Wrath of Khan has pretty poor effects by today's standards, but that doesn't make it less good. Granted, it had good effects for its time (unlike The Final Frontier), but bad effects just don't seem to explain the hate.

See, here's the thing. I found this aspect wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. In fact, at the end of the day, I thought Spock was the one who came out looking the best -- he basically ended up saving the day again and again. Such as when Kirk was climbing the cliff and Spock has to save him, or when Kirk and McCoy are going up the ladder and Spock is the one to realize that they would go faster if he used his hover boots, or how Spock was really the only one to fully resist Sybok (since Kirk never really got to experience Sybok's power), or how, in the end, it was Spock and the Klingons who saved Kirk's butt.

Now, you can definitely see where Shatner's ego shines through -- the reference to Kirk being the greatest warrior in the galaxy definitely made me roll my eyes, along with Kirk climbing the mountain -- but I didn't find it to be overwhelmingly pro-Kirk (at least, no more than some of the other films).

Both Spock and McCoy got some really nice character moments. And I liked that Uhura's character was featured more prominently than she had been previously.

Yeah, no getting around the fact that those ideas are terrible. But they're not in the final film, so I guess I don't see the problem here.

No disagreement about Sybok's situation (maybe he went to the planet a while ago, had his vision, and no longer had a way to get off???), but again, movies with plot holes as big or bigger have been well-recieved, so I'm not sure why this would cause people to despise the film.

In regards to Spock, I actually didn't mind that he hadn't told anyone. Considering that Sybok was banished, it seemed strangely appropriate that Spock wouldn't mention him. Also, I'm not quite sure why Spock's resurrection should influence Sybok.

I guess I just really liked the film because I thought it had endearing character interactions -- particularly between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. And I thought it had a good message: that no "god" that hurts people for pleasure or demands worship/belief is worth subjugating oneself to, and that "God" (if he exists) is more likely to be found in our love for one another than as some supremely-powerful father figure/dictator.

 

If a film flops to the point that it prevents other films from being made, that could increase peoples anger towards that film. Star Trek Nemesis and Batman and Robin put both their series on hold for several years. And I've seen quite a few people be extra angry at them for that.

Imagine that TPM had flopped horribly at BO and it flopped so badly that ep II and III were never made because of it.

And I think it has far more problems than ST09. Most if not all ST films has some holes, but with ST5 the holes are bigger and far more of them.
I've already brought up Sybok and how his plan doesn't make sense.
But Star Fleet? They hear about a hostage situation on some decades old flopped publicity stunt of a planet. It didn't seem that anybody gave two ***** about the place so why was this suddenly such a priority? Why send Kirk on such a minor mission? But Kirk needs to go but his ship is broken and his crew is untrained. So why not have him, Spock and Bones transfered to another ship, like the Excelsior that is next to them in space dock? Further, they mention that the Klingons will probably send their own ship as well. But they also bring up how hated Kirk and that they would take this chance to kill him, and they still send him in a broken ship?
And Claw? He hears about the hostage situation and decides to go and attack the federation ship, and this was before he knew it was Kirk. So he decides to start shooting at ships, and probably starting a war and for what? Boredom seems the only answer.
So basically the whole plot of the film makes little to no sense.

Except that the film shows that it is no mindcontroll or brainwashing taking place. Sybok takes a persons pain away and this release is so significant, that each and every person he does this to instantly becomes his loyal servant. We see this with Spock and McCoy, he offers to take their pain away, no mindcontrol, no brainwashing. So the film pretty much says that Sulu, Chekov and all of Kirks crew all betrayed him after one little therapy session from Sybok. So yes, I do think the film does show that Kirk is betrayed by his crew and that was meant to be a theme of the film. That Kirk stands alone, betrayed by all those around him and yet he comes out triumphant. That was mostly why Sybok was made into Spocks brother, that Spock needed a really strong reason to betray Kirk.

The effects is something that Shatner himself have talked about and his budget did get reduced.
But then you should spend your money where it matters and cut things that don't matter, like tripple breasted cat lady. This impacted the overall story. After "God" had gotten shot, he was supposed to be replaced by other effects they could not afford, like angels becoming harpies. Then they decided on a rockman/blob but that looked horribly unconvincing so they instead recycled earlier bits of "God" and added a very silly sound effect. Also the effects were considered poor even back then.
And even with his reduced budget, the films cost as much as ST 3 and 4 put togther.

Kirk would probably not have fallen from the cliff had Spock not flown up and distracted him. Not very smart on his part. He points out how a climber must be focused and then proceeds to distract Krik by having a conversation with him. Kirk is even dumber by using his hands to make gestures.
As for Sybok, as I've said, I don't see any mindcontrol or such things. When Kirk refuses to play along, Spock and Bones follow. So Kirk is the only one strong enough to listen to Sybok's BS.

Since the film goes out of his way to show Kirk as the only competent captain in all of Star Fleet, I think it does. Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and the others are shown as incompetent and in some cases, as traitors.
Another subtle little thing, early in the film, Claw blasts the Voyager ten probe, which screams as if alive. It seems that Shatner makes a dig at the first film, by having the big bad of that film get taken out by his bad guys. Also both Sybok and Claw take time by saying how much they respect Kirk and all that.

Sybok is looking for ultimate knowledge and here he meets Spock who has died and come back to life. Most such people would ask Spock some questions.

[/QUOTE]

Well the "God" they find is infact evil and no God at all, so I don't see that part of the lesson.
Some Star Trek book explaied who this creature was and apparently he was one of a group of powerful and malevolent beings that were defeated by the Q. This one was stripped of his body and imprisoned in the galatic core.

Also, since the orginal plan was for Spock and Bones to betray Kirk along with all the others, the film was bookended by the camping scenes. To show that they started as a family, got divided and then came back together and ended as one again. But since Spock/Bones betrayal was scrapped, that symmetry is now gone. The threesome is never really divided.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Don't you think you're undercutting your argument a bit by bringing TPM up, though? That film was hugely successful. Adjusted for inflation, it made about as much as Return of the Jedi. And yet there's still droves of people that despise it.

Plus, as far as I can see The Final Frontier in no way slowed production on new Star Trek films. Since The Motion Picture came out, they were released every two or three years. The Undiscovered Country was released not long after, so it doesn't seem to have significantly delayed the production of new material.

Again, there's problems to be sure. But one of the reasons I can buy into The Final Frontier's plot a bit more is that the initial premise -- with the hostages -- is not nearly as high stakes as the situation in Star Trek 2009, where Vulcan is destroyed and the Earth is threatened. The Enterprise and Federation are essentially responding to the threat to one hostage. So they sent an experienced commander in a ship not really up to par. Are their flaws in their logic? Yep.

But it still makes more sense to me than 2009's leadership -- with Pike making Kirk first officer, with older Spock choosing not to go with Kirk, with Starfleet command giving 25-year-old Kirk the Enterprise. Here, the situation is much more dire -- with billions of lives as stake. So I find their actions more difficult to comprehend (especially Spock's because the presumed benefit -- Kirk and new Spock becoming friends -- does not in any way outweigh the risks).

As to Claw -- he seems like a young hotshot out to prove his mettle as a warrior. Taking out Kirk just seems to be a way he thinks will improve his reputation and it's clear it's not authorized by his government.

I don't agree. It seems to me that the theme of the film was Kirk realizing that the crew is his family. I don't see how betrayal is really the theme at all. Maybe it was in an earlier draft, but not the way it plays out onscreen. We explicitly hear Kirk mention how they have no family early in the film, and by the end he notes that they are his family when talking to Bones and Spock.

This is the message (to me at least):

KIRK I lost a brother once. But I was lucky; I got him back. McCOY I thought you said men like us don't have families. KIRK I was wrong.

The thing is since Vulcans have telepathic abilities, I don't think it's unjust to say that (as Dr. McCoy points out), Sybok's abilities are at the very least mind-altering, if not brainwashing. Because even the release of pain, especially significant emotional trauma, is going to have a profound psychological effect.

I'll be honest, it didn't bother me overmuch. Perhaps that's because I've been watching The Original Series and then all the movies back to back, but it wasn't hugely noticeable to me. Though for those who saw it when it was released, I imagine it was a significant issue.

It seemed to me that Kirk got out of it because of Uhura's interruption. Then, of course, there's the fact that even after the experience with Sybok, Spock still refused to follow him.

How is Kirk shown to be the only competent captain? He was the only one with experience in the area and the man who ordered him was clearly flattering his ego, but I don't see how that translates to him being the only competent captain. Experience is a separate factor from competency.

Plus, I don't really see how Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty are shown as incompetent. Chekov successfully pools the wool over Sybok's eyes as the rescue party infiltrates the city. Sulu not only participates in the battle, but manually guides the shuttle into the ship, saving everyone on board. And Scotty (despite the occasional lapses into humor) still manages to get the Enterprise working, notably by fixing the transporter enough to beam Spock and McCoy on board.

There's comedic moments, but they all have them.

Sybok's also more emotional than rational, though. Not only that, but Spock's resurrection has a logical explanation in terms of the Genesis device. Plus, he would hardly be the first person to disregard pertinent information that conflicted with his views or faith.

Sure it is. As McCoy says, "I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure." That's a pretty powerful statement to make. And it is this fact that convinces Sybok that the "god" he's pursuing is no god at all -- he says the God of Sha Ka Ree wouldn't do this. That, too, is an important theme -- that those who cause suffering (despite their power) aren't worth giving our allegiance to.

I disagree. The point of the film was to show their love for one another as a family and realizing that they would always stand by one another and support each other -- hence Spock saving Kirk at the end.

Either way, I see why people don't like it. But I don't believe it's outrageously subpar which is why the ferocity of the dislike surprises me. I enjoyed a lot of the scenes and felt it was a worthwhile addition to the mythos, although certainly not the best by any means.

 

Merged both Trek threads.

 

Treksecution!

 

You said that you don't see if a film turns a profit or not would have any impact on if it liked or not.
TPM certainly didn't bomb but I was just making an example. But perhaps it was a poor one.
But lets take the as yet unreleased ep VII. Lets say that bombs horrible and it bombs so badly that the other two films are scrapped. Do you think that will affect how people view the film?
I certainly think so, people would be saying things like "JJ killed Star Wars!!!"

Also, even the producers of the film said the film nearly killed the franchise.
And had it not been for the 25th anniversary a year or two later, it might have done so.
From producer Ralph Winter;

Winter: We had fun and felt good about IV, that wasn’t the case on V. I think on V we were smoking our own press releases. We made the mistake of searching for god. That is what the first movie did. What did we think we were going to find? What did we expect? We were focused and we wrote a good script. Larry Luckinbill (Sybok) was terrific. There were a lot of good things about it. I think we were, not delusional, but we almost killed the franchise.
And, unfortunately I almost killed the franchise in terms of the visual effects. We felt like we got taken advantage of by ILM and so we shopped to go to other places. We found a guy in New York, Bran Ferren, who had a pretty good approach to doing the effects, but ultimately they were horrible. And the combination of a story that was not working, it just wasn’t commercial, the effects were terrible – we almost killed the franchise, it almost died. ​

The other flaw you forgot is that they think the Klingons will send ships as well and they are aware that Kirk is hated by the Klingons so they should figure that the Klingons would attack him.
Any other captain would be better in this case as he or she doesn't inspire the same hatred with the Klingons. So by sending Kirk in a broken ship they not only make the job harder, the also makes it easier for the Klingons to kill Kirk. This logic only works if Star Fleet is actually looking to get rid of Kirk.

Excpet that he decides to go to Nimbus III and attack the federation ship that would come to the aid of the hostages BEFORE he found out it was Kirk. So that choice had nothing to do with Kirk. He just wanted to go and blow up a federation ship for no reason.

But Kirks resistance to what Sybok offers has nothing to do with family. Spock is loyal to his captain and Bones, while taken in at first, stays when the others do. So Bones and Spock are loyal to Kirk, while the rest of the crew is not.

But again the film does not show this. At the start Sybok does his pain thing with the guy in the desert and this guy first asks what he can do to repay him and Sybok suggest he joins his quest.
So it was all volontary from what we see. So Chekov, Sulu and all of them argeed to join Sybok after he took their pain away. So this makes them choosing to betray Kirk.

The film has the Enterprise flying to the centre of the galaxy in hours. This is a pretty glairing continutiy error with pretty much everything else in Star Trek. Unlike Star Wars, going half way across the galaxy takes years with their speeds. But here the ships are suddenly much faster and with those speeds, any ship in the galaxy could have gotten to Nimbus III in the same amount of time as the Entreprise did.
So that means that either all of Star Fleets ships were off in the Andromeda galaxy or there were no experienced captains at all.

But Sybok seeks ultimate knowledge and he also searches for God. A person that has been raised from the dead would not be something trivial to such a person.

Since this is no God nor are there any one there that is worshiping it, this lesson is not very significant. TOS had a couple of such stories where there were powerfull beings that were worshiped and yet they also used ther power to cause pain. "Who mourns for Adonais" is one example.
So TOS has already done this and much better in my view.

Had this creature actually been God and still used it's power to cause pain then the statement is more powerfull. But all we have is a being who tries to pretend he is God but fails at that.

[/QUOTE]

Kirk resists Sybok, not out of any strong feelings of family but because he is strong by himself.

Their untiy isn't really tested as they are never really divided. Had Bones and Spock betrayed Kirk and later come together then this theme would have been more prominent.

This film along with ST 7 and ST 10 are probably the most disliked of all trek films, before the new ones. Some do like them of course. Why ST 7 is so dislked is probably in large part to Krik dying or rather the way he died. The writer of that film got actual death threats for that. ST 10 is dsilked because that did kill the series for several years.


Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

It was probably a simple transport and not nearly as suited for the trip as a Starfleet ship, like the Enterprise and the Excelsior.

He was making a symbolic statement by starting his quest from Nimbus III, the site of intergalactic peace and where three ambassadors of the three major factions were. His effort to unite all the races together through his quest.

To be fair, Spock never disclosed that he and his father were on the outs until Sarek came aboard the Enterprise in "Journey To Babel".

[quotee=Samuel Vines]Second, when Sybok meets Spock, a religious zealot now finds himself in the presence of a man who has died and then come back to life. And yet that seemingly doesn't matter to Sybok.[/quote]

The result of the Genesis wave, which was public knowledge by that point. Besides, Sybok would have heard about McCoy and Chekov dying and coming back to life, what it happened.

The power was supposed to be the Vulcan mind meld without the restraint that the Vulcans normally take. Remember, Sarek's emotions began affecting the crew of the Enterprise D.

That is brought up in the film. It was no big secret. Hell, Spock volunteered the Enterprise A to escort Chancellor Gorkon and dine with him, knowing full well that the Klingons didn't like Kirk and that Kirk's own son was killed by them.

It works because Kirk is a senior officer who has had experience in these situations. Starfleet has had a reputation of sending Captains who have had grudges with other races into situations that were just as tense.

That was the implication then and in the sixth film.

But there was a difference. Spock's katra was in McCoy. His physical body was dead, but his very essence was still alive inside McCoy. That's not the same as Chekov being shot and McCoy himself being impaled.

Eh, considering how often Kirk came close to death in the show and the films, I wouldn't call it a lousy death. People saying he should have went down with the ship totally miss the point of all the other near death experiences from before then.

 

So? Go to any other planet other than Nimbus III, which has no star ships. With his power he could get the crew to go anywhere.

Except this is never his stated goal, he wants a ship and a federation ship at that, so why he kidnapped Klingons and Romulans I don't know. What he wants is ultimate knowledge and he thinks that lies beyond the great barrier. And for that he just needs a ship.
And even if he wanted to send some sort of statement, why the use of force? He could simply go into Paradise City" do his "pain" shtick and then all three ambassadors would be doing everything they can to GIVE him a ship.

And Spock saw Sybok on the screen and yet didn't say anything about him being his brother until much later. Withholding crucial evidence in a tense situation isn't very logical.
Not to mention that we get a very bad scene between Kirk and Spock after the Sybok reveal.
Kirk yells at Spock and accuses him of making it up that Sybok is his brother. Really? Kirk just told Spock to shoot his brother and Kirk thinks Spock is just lying about a thing like that?
Also, I can understand that Spock can't kills his own brother, but what is wrong with shooting him in the leg? That won't kill him but will take him out.

As an aside, it seems that even the franchise itself seems to want to pretend that ST V has never happened. In TNG, in the ep "Sarek", Spock's mother is said to have been Sarek's FIRST wife.
No mention of a Vulcan princess. And do Vulcans have royalty, I don't remember any other references to that?
As a further aside, having the Vulcans give birth squatting in a cave seems both very primitive and rather illogical.

Sybok still hasn't talked to Spock in all that time and Bones was curious enough about death to ask Spock but not "the seeker of knowledge" Sybok.

What it was supposed to be is irrelevant. What we see and hear is simple, Sybok takes a persons pain away and in gratitude he or she will do anything Sybok asks. So Sulu, Chekov and the rest of the crew all choose to betray Kirk. No mind control, no brainwashing.

Knowing a plan is stupid and doing it anyway doesn't make it less stupid.
By sending a ship that actually works, they can beam the hostages off the planet and resolve the matter in minutes. But instead they send Kirk in a broken ship. The transporters don't work and the Klingons, whom they know are coming, now have an easy target.
As for ST VI, there the Klingons were on a peace mission, here Star Fleet knew that the Klingons would be looking to kill Kirk.

What experience? All it takes it to beam the hostages out, problem solved. And sending in Kirk, that would most likely cause the situation to escalate into a shooting war, is very stupid.

Not really as there we at least see the Excelsior and it has a competent captain in Sulu.

[/QUOTE]

I find the death to be rather empty, the film is basically "Oh, by the way Kirk dies."
But that film has got lots of other flaws aside from this, but it seems to be one the most disliked aspects of the film.

Back to ST V, one other thing that occurred to me, at the start of the film, the desert guy says "You're a Vulcan" when Sybok lowers his hood. Why? We know that there are Romulans on the planet and Vulcans and Romulans look quite alike so desert guy has no real reason to think Sybok is Vulcan.
But the line has to be there as Sybok laughs and while this would be nothing special from a Romulan but is special from a Vulcan.

Other oddities, the shuttle crashes into the Enterprise but apparently no one on the bridge sends any people down there incase someone might be wounded. Even stranger, Scotty sees some of Syboks men and realizes something is up but does he warn Chekov on the bridge? Nope.

Lastly, the poor editing in the scene in the turbo lift shaft is laughable. Not only is the numbering wrong but they pass the same deck twice on more than one occasion. And how come Spock came DOWN with his boots? If he found them nearby, he would have come up. If he managed to get several floors up, how did he avoid the guards?

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I'd say the former: it's just that Kirk died, period. I have a small amount of difficulty with the way he died myself, but only because he gets himself right back into the precarious position which he had just gotten out of. But the positive thing about it is that he dies helping to save the lives of some 230 million sapient beings. ( Which, in an after-the-fact kind of way, ties into Pike's dare in the alt-verse to do better than his father, who saved 800. )

 

Beings we never see. At all. I agree that a significant part of the fanbase would've whined about Kirk's death no matter what-- though, to be fair, the end of TUC was a perfect sendoff for the character and should've been the last time we saw him. I have some nostalgia for it and I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as V, Insurrection, Nemesis, and STID, but Generations was a mess even ignoring everything to do with Kirk's death. I dare anyone to make sense of the Nexus.

 

I don't care.

A significant part of fandom, generally speaking, wants their protagonists to remain in a kind of stasis; they never die, they never retire, they end up pretty much in the same narrowly-defined little box they were found in.

What's the problem with it, aside from the fact that Picard and Kirk don't pick the most intelligent point in time to go back to? I see that as an unfortunate element only explained by the out-of-universe "requirement" to have a decent ending, as opposed to just going back and arresting Soran in Ten-Forward.

 

The ending to Generations was hilarious as they could just re enter the nexus if they kept failing time and time again.

 

Reminds me of...