I think everyone is so enamored of a Trek *movie* doing well, they're forgetting it's the Trek *series* that made the franchise. The movies are fun, two hours of action and FX, but it's the plotting, writing, and drama of the series--enjoyed slowly over years--that made Trek what it is. So while I enjoy the movie as two hours of fun, I also lament an unnecessary destruction of continuity by people who don't get the depth of Trek, who've reduced it to explosions, shiny ships, horny Vulcans, and dead Vulcans. I say again: there is way too much room to manuever in the Trek universe without destroying Vulcan and rewriting history. I think that in time y'all will realize that Abrams simply doesn't like Trek, and swept out the old because he couldn't relate.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Omari Confer" <clockwork...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:00:54 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William Shatner Or Khan (applause) Thats what im talkin about... On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Daryle Lockhart < dar...@darylelockhart.com > wrote: I don't think I need to remind anyone that I love Star Trek. But the old continuity WAS restrictive. That's why the TNG movies fell off after "First Contact", they had to make up species because -- where do you go after The Borg? (Well, you go to DS9, but that's another discussion) The reason everybody loves "Wrath of Khan" is because it stepped outside of continuity. After all, how COULD Chekov have known Khan? And how could a whole planet explode and people survive in a shell of a ship on the next world? If Mars BLEW UP one day, we wouldn't exactly all be here to talk about it years later. But that didn't stop the movie from being the best! Had the movie series gone on the way the first movie dictated, it would have died after 3. That being said, this is JJ Abrams we're talking about, so I think there is ONE direction to go in that would make things right with everyone. Ready? Make nice with Harlan and do "City On the Edge Of Forever" the way he'd originally written it. For $100M you can tell the whole story, update a few things, and end one of the darkest chapters in this franchise's history, by paying Harlan Ellison. You do a 2 hour "City On the Edge Of Forever", with the right Edith Keeler, and I dare say that it could be the first science fiction film to be nominated for an Oscar. Think of it. Romance. Mystery. SCIENCE. I don't think Paramount can go wrong with this. On May 16, 2009, at 11:52 AM, Keith Johnson wrote: I'm sorry, but every time I listen to Abrams make statements like "The old continuity was restrictive", it angers me. That's just lazy film making. The Trek universe spans five series, ten movies, and --including "enterprise"--about two centuries. You're telling me he couldn't find something in *all that* to fuel new, action-driven stories? He couldn't have brought together this crew in the movie in any way other than to reset the timeline? Why not just have told the previously untold story of how Kirk assembled his crew in the original continuity in this movie? It's not exactly as if anyone's ever said there was only one way that could have been done. My point is there is no reason to change history just to use young cast members. Kirk in the movie is about 2 -3 years younger than Kirk was in the original timeline when he became captain, but you can work around that. We don't know the backstories of how Bones, Uhura, and Scotty were brought to the Enterprise, so you can write that story. Just because Chekhov never showed up in season one of the OS doesn't mean you can't finesse things a bit and bring him in for the movie. Only three of the original five years of Kirk's original mission were shown on TV. Nothing there to mine? Like them or not, Brannon and Braga jiggered Trek continuity a bit for "Enterprise": the Xindi attack on Earth...the Borg sphere found on Earth (something blamed on "First Contact).... And while some of that made some of us howl, as the series got better toward its end, we saw it was okay. Indeed, we liked it precisely because it was exploring the themes from the OS that had always been there. So, they changed things a bit, but at least they explored the original universe, and to their credit, when B&B got it right, they did a great job of updating the old, but staying true to it. Thus, we all loved the storyline revealing the secret of the Green Orion "slaves"...the Augment storyline, which continued the story of the Eugenics War, and set the stage for Data's creation someday....the study of how Vulcan pulled itself back from the brink of becoming violently emotional again, to embrace Surak's teachings anew...the dude who was a disciple of Colonel Green's xenophobia and racism-- All good stories, all told in *original* continuity for the most part. I keep struggling to understand why we have to kill Kirk's father--oh, it just makes it easy to create a young punk Kirk for contrast with the later hero he'll become...why we had to destroy Vulcan.--oh, I guess it makes Spock's feeling of being lost and alone more poignant..why we had to make Spock act like he's undergoing ponfar all the time--oh, so we can really get the struggle, as I guess the OS didn't do a good enough job of presenting that. Abrams just didn't like old Trek and he wanted to eliminate it to recreate it. There is no reason at all you can't tell new fresh stories in Trek within the original continuity. I have felt all along that we we've had is a guy who thinks Star Wars is superiour to Trek, who comes from the hit-you-over-the-head school of filmmaking. Thus he all but destroys the Vulcan race and sees it as opening up things, rather than a critical blow to what makes Trek, Trek. I haven't seen or heard yet one thing to make me understand why you have to destroy the past rather than honor it. Why you tear down the old instead of building upon it. How eliminating forty years of great storytelling is liberating. Sorry: just lazy filmmaking from guys who just don't get it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tracey de Morsella" < tdli...@multiculturaladvantage.com > To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com , ggs...@yahoo.com , cinque3...@verizon.net Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 1:55:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William Shatner Or Khan Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William Shatner Or Khan 'I wouldn't rule out anything,' J.J. Abrams says of sequel ideas After last weekend's $76.5 million opening , three phrases keep getting tossed in the direction of "Star Trek" director J.J. Abrams: sequel, Khan, and William Shatner. On Friday, as the filmmaker hoped to maintain momentum heading into his second weekend, Abrams told MTV News that he's open to all three. "The fun of this [new alternate 'Trek' reality] is that the destiny of these characters is in their hands — it's not constrained by the pre-existing films or TV series," the "Lost" mastermind explained. "Believe me, whether it's William Shatner or Khan ... it would be ridiculous to not be open to those ideas." As those who've seen the film know, Abrams' new "Star Trek" establishes an alternate timeline for the series' key characters — one that veers off course when the USS Kelvin is attacked in the film's opening scene, killing James T. Kirk's father and causing the future Enterprise captain to be born in space. Other events in the film also similarly impact the young "Trek" characters, resulting in wholly new story lines. "One of the reasons we wanted to break with the original 'Star Trek' timeline was it felt restrictive," Abrams said of the plot device that could conceivably fuel the venerable series for another five decades. "The idea, now that we are in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the past — or come up with brand-new ones — to make potential stories." One buzzed-about ingredient is Khan Noonien Singh — arguably the most memorable villain ever to inhabit the "Trek" series — whom Kirk banished to a barren world in an old story line. Writer/producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have stated their hope of bringing Khan into the "Star Trek" sequel — and Abrams told us that in his universe, the superhuman tyrant may never have been stuck on Ceti Alpha V. "It'll be fun to hear what Alex and Bob are thinking about Khan," Abrams said of their impending meetings to discuss sequel plotlines. "The fun of this timeline is arguing that different stories, with the same characters, could be equally if not more compelling than what's been told before." "[Khan and Kirk] exist — and while their history may not be exactly as people are familiar with, I would argue that a person's character is what it is," Abrams said of the notion that his Khan could be just as evil, even if Kirk never stranded him on Ceti Alpha V. "Certain people are destined to cross paths and come together, and Khan is out there ... even if he doesn't have the same issues." Another intriguing possibility is that the door is seemingly open once again for a William Shatner appearance, since the writers have said that Chris Pine's Kirk won't die in the same manner as in the original franchise and could live to be older. "I wouldn't rule out anything," Abrams said of a possible flash-forward that could make up for Shatner's near-miss inclusion in the new film. "The point of creating this independent timeline is to not have the restrictions we had coming into this one. And one of those restrictions was that Kirk was dead." "But this all assumes that there's another story that's going to be told," Abrams cautioned, saying that there's a lot of work to be done before such ideas can be sorted out. "We're all still coming down from making this movie." http://www.mtv .com/movies/news/articles/1611523/story.jhtml -- clockworkman blog http://centralheatingblog.blogspot.com STRING THEORY http://www.stringtheory.mypodcast.com Netflix Friends http://www.netflix.com/BeMyFriend/P5Vr384ukvNnY78xUJOT
