My main struggle with that read is that the cure is the same. The cost for it is the sacrifice of a crewmember. It feels like Kirk doesn't really learn.
Dumb things in TMP
- Thread starter Maurice
- Start date
Again, I disagree with you. In TMP Kirk lets Decker make the big sacrifice of inputting the code, largely because he realizes that it's what Decker wants. In TWOK, Kirk has no idea that Spock's even left the bridge to make his sacrifice until he looks over and sees that Spock's chair is empty. Kirk had absolutely no say in the matter, and you know that if he could've prevented Spock's death somehow, he would have. It's the difference between making a choice and having no choice.
Beeeeeelaaaayyyy that phaaaaseeeeerrrr orrrrrrrrrddddeeeeeerrrrrrr!!!!!!
Good read. Most of them I agreed with. Especially Decker's response to Illia getting vaporized. That was some horrific shit, and yet...Decker just uses that as excuse to get in a light-hearted dig at Kirk. "That's what I call unwarranted." What the hell? Your love just got disintegrated by some god-like alien entity!
And while I initially liked the transporter accident for the body-horror aspect and making space exploration feel more serious, in hindsight it's cheap shock value the way it's treated. Transport technology already leads to too many questions when you really think about it. Are people getting killed, and just recreated as copies? But forget about that, it's just an easy way to get the crew to an alien planet. And McCoy's scared to get beamed up. lulz.
But after introducing some horrific accident like this, you can't have Kirk smirking at McCoy's phobia RIGHT AFTER. And it's not till Barclay that people were scared of these things again!?
And while I initially liked the transporter accident for the body-horror aspect and making space exploration feel more serious, in hindsight it's cheap shock value the way it's treated. Transport technology already leads to too many questions when you really think about it. Are people getting killed, and just recreated as copies? But forget about that, it's just an easy way to get the crew to an alien planet. And McCoy's scared to get beamed up. lulz.
But after introducing some horrific accident like this, you can't have Kirk smirking at McCoy's phobia RIGHT AFTER. And it's not till Barclay that people were scared of these things again!?
To be fair, I imagine most people with a fear of being transported don't join Starfleet to begin with, since it would be unrealistic to think you could join Starfleet without a regular need to use transporters.
Indeed, how Barclay made it as long as he did is somewhat of a mystery.
Indeed, how Barclay made it as long as he did is somewhat of a mystery.
Decker's reaction to the death of Ilia is a bit meh, although at that point, they didn't know she was dead (and in the original script, she wasn't).
The McCoy scene is frustratingly flippant. As part of my fan edit I've added a line from Rand before McCoy beams up, cribbed from World Enough and Time. The yeoman explains why McCoy refused to beam up and Rand says to Kirk, "Don't look so worried." I thought this serves both as a reassurance that the transporter is fixed plus an acknowledgement that Kirk is nervous about meeting McCoy again. Then their smiles have a bit more context as he reminisces. I'd still prefer him to look grimmer and her smile to look a bit more rueful but there is a limit to what I can achieve with Deepfake without a huge amount of investment.
Given the themes surrounding digitization, and the rekindling of the real Ilia consciousness inside the Ilia probe, IMO there was a missed opportunity to explore these types of topics in connection with the transporter accident.
Again, I think Kirk handles it oddly. "I feel...young" (speaking of drawn out). Kirk still is mopey the next movie when he doesn't have command, similar to TMP. That's more what I mean about Kirk not learning anything.
I think modern storytelling could have had some fun with the resurrection of Decker and Ilia: are they real or some kind extension of V'Ger, like the duplicates in Solaris, echoes of the real people. I know it's just a variation of Data's journey but this would have been pre-Data.
Exactly.
Probably just by staying under the radar and not excelling at any of his duties. No one seemed particularly impressed by Barclay until he saved the day in "Hollow Pursuits", so I don't see him getting picked for a lot of away teams.
You've never been mopey ten years after another time you were mopey?
I'm mopey all the time. My point is is that it feels like Kirk has to repeat the same lesson.
Starfleet is a military organization. Not everybody gets the assignment that they want. Kirk was pretty damn lucky to get the Enterprise back not just once, but twice.
...Also, TWoK is all about Kirk being incapable of learning lessons. He's been pulling the same stunt since he was a teen, cheating death and refusing to believe in defeat. But the deaths and defeats would eventually start to mount, no matter how deep in denial Kirk wades.
Getting McCoy beamed aboard after the previous one turned to lasagna is callous of Kirk, and as such fully in character for his new and un- or disimproved person. Doing it the other way around, having McCoy first beamed up spitting, swearing and and complaining, Kirk dismissing all this, and the next transportee then horribly perishing, might have worked better. But I rather like the scene where Kirk plays vanity politics while key components explode in the background and people die as a result...
Timo Saloniemi
Getting McCoy beamed aboard after the previous one turned to lasagna is callous of Kirk, and as such fully in character for his new and un- or disimproved person. Doing it the other way around, having McCoy first beamed up spitting, swearing and and complaining, Kirk dismissing all this, and the next transportee then horribly perishing, might have worked better. But I rather like the scene where Kirk plays vanity politics while key components explode in the background and people die as a result...
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, I agree that that would've worked better. And then McCoy could've gotten in a snappy comeback like "THIS is how I define unwarranted!" too. "THIS is how I define scrambled molecules, Captain, sir!"
Same here, with the exception of TWOK, which while not necessarily better than TMP and full of its own kind of problems is at least exciting and treats interesting themes that are a good fit for the characters at the time in their lives when the film is set.
A good deal of my high regard for TMP comes from the fact that, even though it isn't hard sci-fi, TMP is still the closest that Star Trek has come to hard sci-fi. Consequently, IMO TMP was the episode or film that was the most successful in terms of getting us to believe that Star Trek is set in our foreseeable future. Giving us a much better look at Earth than the relatively brief glimpse we had in "The Cage" helped pull that off too; the later films also set on Earth took themselves less seriously, which while not a bad thing necessarily nevertheless detracted from any aura of plausibility.
Absolutely this.
I mentioned this is a thread in General Trek, but it seems best suited here. I did an bit for Whatculture titled "14 Dumbest Things in Star Trek—The Motion Picture", which is here (link). I already heard a few people suggest other candidates to take the total higher.
Any further suggestions/amendments?
I like bits of the movie for sure but nitpicks being inevitably good clean fun...
The old cliche of "the only ship in range" - yes, Star Trek is about exploring other planets in starships but there's no reason there wouldn't be a bog standard complement of ships by Earth. We're really grateful Kirk was in the neighborhood for this. (the dropped idea of a small ship heading to VGER with battle cruiser Enterprise being 1.6 hours behind is ludicrous.)
Decker's situation is part of Kirk's rabid obsession, which is one of the movie's central themes.
Can't argue too much with the transporter - it's a grizzly scene and they surely would have done testing on inanimate objects first. Never mind a product can pass testing then you bring it home and a malfunction happens. Stuff happens. That said, VGER still made ity to Earth first and sent out its big zappy balls so it's safe to say time WAS of the essence (which then reduces the issue of Kirk's obsession, but he's also worried about the entire home planet and all). The movie could have been a bit tighter.
The movie, to keep from being rated R, had dialogue about Delta being a planet of sexually advanced people where they all did it constantly. For more on this, please don't bother with the TNG episode "Justice". The Deltans were also empathic and telepathic, which isn't fully fleshed out*, so Ilia was actually reading Kirk's mind and preemptively told him in her own way they weren't going to boink like bunnies. Never mind COVID and other cooties can hopscotch between species. There are reasons why Deltans may not be so welcoming of other species and that's their issue. That and "Non sequitur" - this is a sci-fi movie, not "Days of Our Lives in Space". Sci-fi is going to include verbiage and language that isn't slang contemporary to the time in which it's made. Unless it's Buck Rogers from 1979 or The Orville from 2017...
* sorry for the pun
Yeah, back then the notion of a black hole was a bit woolly. "Blake's 7" got it right (a collapsed star with immense gravity) and it was made during the same time period. For sci-fi, TMP should have known better and use "wormhole". Oh wait, they did... sorta...
Kirk's line "Right, now that we’ve got them exactly where they want us." is the sort of British dark humor that Kerr Avon might say. It does seem out of place for Kirk.
A later scene with Spock discussing what the message was about might have been nice. Was it needed? Spock being unemotional is the antithesis of a human in hysterics (or any 24th century human on the 1701-D.) Uhura should have done this task, I agree. Still, it's nice to see binary on screen. Almost nobody uses binary anymore and most 21st century smartphone users have no clue what it is, unless it resolves around sexual activity.
There's a fun parallel.Agreed, the probe should and would have copied her uniform too. Roddenberry, sci-fi cliches, and other reasons revealed the revealing scene in the way it had. But Maurice has never seen Deltan males so why would both sexes be the same just because? Or only two sexes? Nature rarely gets complex and convoluted so it's not impossible, but that doesn't make for entertaining or interesting material for a whole episode, much less movie. Never mind humans shave. Why might not Deltans? But I agree, the pumps need to be the same hue as the bathrobe, which is keeping in line with 23rd century (if not 1970s) fashion of miniskirts'n'such of the time.
No argument from me about the serendipity over VGER spitting Spock out... the movie was more about the sheer scale of outer space in a way that Star Wars didn't.
Far be it from me to whine about small universe syndrome...
Oh wow. The rec room set is just a bit 3 story arch, with what could be a rear screen projection of a corridor whose ceiling rises above the arch - which looks like the one they used for the Borg in "Q WHO". He's got a point about the story being too introspective and it's why doing stories in "real time" instead of "elapsed" are more difficult.
The previous page complained about lack of drama and action. Now we get it and VGER is just a dirty little probe from all the soot caused by some electrical short. Not sure what Maury means by the probe being incapable of removing the soot... or, perhaps the species the probe crashed into and why they didn't clean it up before reprogramming it.
The best was saved for the penultimate slide.
And lastly, the Klingons firing indiscriminately was desperately needed drama. If not really bad drama. He makes a good point.
