Original Sins (or, My Grypes with TWOK!!)

[BillJ]

It wasn't part of Khan's character (the "genocidal madman" thing was an innovation of STID)...

Actually, I'd say the potential to be a genocidal madman goes to Greg Cox in his Eugenics Wars duology. Where Khan has the "Morningstar" weapon that was capable of wiping out life on Earth, IIRC.

Orci and Kurtzman have pointed to the novels as inspiration for the work they've done. Mr. Cox novel may have been part of the reason they developed Khan the way they did.

 

[Christopher]

I group that with another thing that bugs me in TUC: The "tailpipe" epiphany. No one in the entire Federation, in all the years of Romulan and Klingon cloaked threats, had thought of something that was apprently easily done and highly effective?

Heh, yeah, that was clunky for certain.

Although not as clunky as Spock asking Dr. McCoy to work on the torpedo with him, rather than Scotty or Chekov or any one of the dozens of crewpersons aboard who would surely have been better qualified to work on a torpedo. Which offended me deeply, because it betrayed a key aspect of McCoy's character -- as he said in "The Empath," "I will not take a life. Not even to save my own." And yet here, they had him working on a weapon that was used to kill dozens. And there was no damn reason why he should've been the one to do it.

 

[BigJake]

It wasn't part of Khan's character (the "genocidal madman" thing was an innovation of STID)...

Actually, I'd say the potential to be a genocidal madman goes to Greg Cox in his Eugenics Wars duology.

Much love to Greg but if you have to dig a justification out of the novels I'd say the point stands. (Granted the meme itself isn't an innovation of STID but working it into the screen material certainly was.)

Although not as clunky as Spock asking Dr. McCoy to work on the torpedo with him, rather than Scotty or Chekov or any one of the dozens of crewpersons aboard who would surely have been better qualified to work on a torpedo. Which offended me deeply, because it betrayed a key aspect of McCoy's character -- as he said in "The Empath," "I will not take a life. Not even to save my own." And yet here, they had him working on a weapon that was used to kill dozens. And there was no damn reason why he should've been the one to do it.

Quite agreed, that was just cutesy for no good reason.

 

[BillJ]

It wasn't part of Khan's character (the "genocidal madman" thing was an innovation of STID)...

Actually, I'd say the potential to be a genocidal madman goes to Greg Cox in his Eugenics Wars duology.

Much love to Greg but if you have to dig a justification out of the novels I'd say the point stands. (Granted the meme itself isn't an innovation of STID but working it into the screen material certainly was.)

I think my point being that STID wasn't the first one to interpret the character in such a manner.

 

[BigJake]

COOOOOOOOXXX! *shakes fist*

 

[BillJ]

COOOOOOOOXXX! *shakes fist*

Besides, I never bought that Khan took over a quarter of the planet without some major bloodshed along the way. I think the "fragmentary records of the time" give creative people a lot of leeway in how they interpret the character.

 

[BigJake]

Be that is it may I'm perfectly pleased that particular interpretation wasn't operating in 1982, as IMO the results would have been less interesting. (At any rate "conqueror" and "genocidal maniac" aren't automatically the same thing, though both involve bloodshed.)

 

[WarpFactorZ]

COOOOOOOOXXX! *shakes fist*

Besides, I never bought that Khan took over a quarter of the planet without some major bloodshed along the way. I think the "fragmentary records of the time" give creative people a lot of leeway in how they interpret the character.

Maybe he was actually CEO of Microsoft at the time. The hyperbole in his business ventures was lost over the centuries.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Be that is it may I'm perfectly pleased that particular interpretation wasn't operating in 1982,

No he just went around silting the throats of scientists and lusting after a potential doomsday weapon 15 years after threatening to kill the Enterprise crew in a decompression chamber one by one and trying to use Kirk to prove he meant it.

 

[BillJ]

Be that is it may I'm perfectly pleased that particular interpretation wasn't operating in 1982,

No he just went around silting the throats of scientists and lusting after a potential doomsday weapon 15 years after threatening to kill the Enterprise crew in a decompression chamber one by one and trying to use Kirk to prove he meant it.

This. No version of Khan has been particularly subtle when it came to getting what he wants.

 

[BigJake]

Be that is it may I'm perfectly pleased that particular interpretation wasn't operating in 1982,

No he just went around silting the throats of scientists and lusting after a potential doomsday weapon 15 years after threatening to kill the Enterprise crew in a decompression chamber one by one and trying to use Kirk to prove he meant it.

Uh sorry, did you think I actually hadn't noticed that he Did Villainous Things? Do you think I'm saying he wasn't a villain? Are all villains the notional equivalent of Hitler to you or can you understand distinctions among different types?

 

[Iamnotspock]

You could also put the Praxis explosion under the "2-D thinking" category, since it introduced a really annoying cinematic trope that's since been copied by other movies like Stargate and the A New Hope Special Edition: giving an explosion in space a circular "shock wave" that expands along a flat plane.

Stargate even reused the very shot from TUC didn't it?

 

[Christopher]

Stargate even reused the very shot from TUC didn't it?

I think it was just a similar-looking shot. Wikipedia calls it "similar" (they actually have an article on this trope, and they call it the "Praxis effect," even though it was apparently first used in Alien). After all, Stargate was an MGM film, and ILM didn't work on it, so they wouldn't have had easy access to ILM-created effects elements from a Paramount film.

 

[Ithekro]

They'd have as much access as they are willing to pay for.

 

[eyeresist]

I think it's obvious there's a difference between having an intellectual awareness of three dimensions, and actual experience in 3D space combat.

True, I just think the presentation of this and the nautical metaphor of space combat is heavily literal -- in a way that was understandable for the time, maybe, but that eventually became entrenched as a habit in a bad way.

I'm not sure space combat has ever been presented on screen in a "realistic" way. The most common device is the dogfight, followed by ships of the line blasting at each other from close quarters. In "reality", opponents in space combat would probably never be close enough to see each other, but be more like modern battleship combat (firing missiles at a theoretical point over the horizon). Hence the popular "submarine warfare" metaphor, as seen in Balance of Terror, which was possibly an inspiration for TWOK. So, for all the problems of TWOK, it's still probably the most realistic space battle seen on the big screen - given the alternatives.

If Khan is indeed so inexperienced, past master of space fighting tactics Kirk should be efficiently giving orders that will have him rolled up quickly and without much fuss. Instead, Spock has to point it out to him! If the idea had to be conveyed to the audience, how about Kirk giving a helm order, someone questioning the intention, and Kirk saying something like "Just taking advantage of his inexperience. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking."

I think one of the dramatic virtues of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity is that it externalises the command thought process. It's not very interesting if the captain just says "I have an idea", and does it. It's more interesting if we see the formation of that idea enacted.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure space combat has ever been presented on screen in a "realistic" way.

Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda tried to, at least as far as the writing went, although the visual effects were more unrealistic. And Babylon 5 did pretty well with the physics of ships in space, but tended to have them unrealistically close together and slow-moving.

 

[eyeresist]

I did try to cover myself by specifying "on the big screen", as I can't account for all the episodes of all the TV shows.

 

[Christopher]

I missed this part before:

So, for all the problems of TWOK, it's still probably the most realistic space battle seen on the big screen - given the alternatives.

If so, that's just sad, since it's incredibly unrealistic. The nebula is absurdly dense (although they did get the color right, if we assume it's a hydrogen emission nebula), the ships move ridiculously slowly and are ridiculously close together, the explosions are your standard liquid-fuel-combusting-in-atmosphere explosions that are the only kind you ever seen onscreen... really, the "2-dimensional thinking" sequence was the only thing about it that gave any kind of lip service to reality.

 

[BigJake]

I'm with Christopher on this one. I mean, I get why so many skiffy visuals tend to compress everything for added drama and tie their spaceship scenes metaphorically to easily-understood parallels like cruisers or fighters or aircraft carriers; I don't hold it against Wrath in any huge way that its Mutara Nebula is presented like a fog bank, any more than I hold it against The Empire Strikes Back that its idea of an asteroid field is so ridiculous. They were of a certain era. But one doesn't want to be stuck there.

 

[eyeresist]

But what's the alternative, that works in dramatic terms? Enter an asteroid field, and have a crewman say in ominous tones, "Our chances of being struck by an asteroid just increased to ... a billion to one."

I guess we need some new, more realistic space perils, like pulsars and black holes.