1. Sometimes A Feeling Is All We Humans Have To Go On
That title isn't just any old quote, it's a quote from the original series. Watch any episode of the original 60's show and quite apart from the poor effects, something recently remedied with the excellent BluRay releases, what strikes one most is the quality of the writing. Yes, there are some poorer quality episodes but throughout the series and the films we have poetry, examination of consciousness and humanity, quotes from Milton and Shakespeare, and a general sense of intelligence as well as an expectation of an intelligent audience. This has been completely lost in the most recent films. Kirk says of the Federation "They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream-- a dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars. A dream that made Mr. Spock and I brothers" William Shatner said "those ideas came to us, I believe from great science fiction writers" and went on to speak about how the concept could carry the show. "if the viewer grabs a hold of that concept you're carried on that wave" Gene himself said he wanted to make a show that would enable you to say to children "be like Mr Spock, be like Captain Kirk, they never lie, they never cheat, they show you that perhaps there are things worth giving your life for if necessary" Star Trek was a science fiction series. They brought in science fiction writers to make stories that made people think, that explored concepts of philosophical importance. John D.F. Black, writer and associate producer, said "the primary thing as a science fiction writer, never ask your audience to believe more than one extraordinary thing." It was important to the writers and producers to write stories that were consistent internally and had something to say. The new films are overly 'complex' and ask the audience to believe far more than one extraordinary thing at a time. By doing so they don't stand up to scrutiny and as science fiction stories they fail as a result. Damon Lindelof shouldn't be allowed near a pack of crayons never mind a film script, look at the mess he made of John Spaihts' original Prometheus script. He tends to have a decent core idea that he throws a whole bunch of other ideas at hence hiding the core story. He might think that's complexity but in fact it just makes a mockery of the Star Trek franchise. These are not the same types of stories or the same type of science fiction as the idea from which they came. They are fiction fantasy films with the same character names as the Star Trek series, they have appeal to wider audience and are accessible to people who never watched an episode in their lives. They are many things to many people, but they are not Star Trek.
I.T. Consultant, technophile and Doctor Who fan. I like to talk about tech, take films apart and make excuses for Doctor Who's continuity errors. No other show has the power to make me feel like a big kid.
