Wasn’t that supposed to be Xon’s angle?
TMP continued…
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Wasn’t that supposed to be Xon’s angle?
True. But I find "Ilia" as a more interesting prospect.
Then Vulcans need to be left out entirely. Just end up duplicating Spock.
De facto like Data.
De facto like Data.
I was thinking more of the official position. The game they played with Data wore thin quickly.
Yeah, she could be Science Officer. Which is usually a better part than navigator or helm.
Age-wise, yeah, Wesley and Peck would work better as Kirk and Spock in the 2270s than the 2260s. I'm down with that.
Anyway, does anyone else wonder about what we might have had if they had continued in the TMP era?
I feel like whatever sequel we got to a more successful TMP (no matter what the story) would've had to have a large internal time-jump regardless, skipping a second FYM altogether, just to catch up to the actor's ages. They just barely got away with a ten-year-older cast playing only three years older when TMP was supposed to be a one-and-done.
God, that is a beautiful ship.While I had quibbles with TMP when it was released in 1979 I still liked it overall, particularly after a decade of TOS reruns no matter how much I loved the series. Quibbles aside it juiced me sufficiently to hope for new adventures in this new era, new adventures set within a new 5-year mission.
But thats not what we got.
There was a lot of excitement when TWOK premiered. It promised more action and drama of a different kind from TMP. I was there on opening night in my area. I was juiced by the opening fanfare when the screen lit up…
But TWOK wasn’t what I had been really hoping for. Make no mistake, TWOK was a roller coaster action/adventure with good lines and decent character moments. It is arguably Star Trek’s most popular film throughout the franchise. But it also feels like something of a reboot. Instead of our heroes aboard a newly refit Enterprise embarked on a new 5-year mission we get the beginning of our heroes being put out to pasture over the course of the next five films. Even the Enterprise was turned into an outdated vessel ready to be decommissioned and eventually destroyed.
I saw each of the successive films when they came out and enjoyed them all in varying degrees, but they weren’t the movies I had hoped for. And over time I’ve found I have no real desire to revisit those films—there just a part of me left disappointed with how the film era evolved.
Flash forward forty years and we finally got the completed version of TMP—the version we should have gotten back in ‘79. No, it’s not perfect, but it is so much better than what was originally released. And it has reaffirmed my feelings about what I had hoped to see following TMP.
There is no way to know how much better TMP would have been received if it had been properly completed in 1979. And there is no way to know if what we had gotten afterward would have indeed been better than what we got. Nonetheless what we actually got still leaves me wanting and wondering…
Several years ago I even sat down and worked out treatments for TWOK-TUC, but set within the TMP era and within context of a second 5-year mission. I really should try to dig those out for curiosity’s sake…
Anyway, does anyone else wonder about what we might have had if they had continued in the TMP era?
The biggest loss with the fanfilm situation, to me, was never getting to see episodes from the 2nd 5YM post TMP.
The second biggest loss was killing the possibility of pre-Where No Man crew stories in a Year Zero.
Not sure about in TMP, but on the Enterprise-D 6 foot filming miniature the glowing blue strips on the nacelles were in fact kinda copper colored when powered down. The early Galoob diecast Enterprise-D toys had copper nacelle strips which likely were based on the powered down model.
I bought every Pocket Trek novel at Waldenbooks as a first printing starting with the TMP novelization until about #53 or so, then I was accepted to grad school. The only time I had for Trek then was when TNG was showing on Saturday nights after the news ended at 10:35pm and absolutely no time for reading anything other than textbooks. That's when I stopped buying them unless it was an autographed one from a Con I attended in the '90s (looks over at autographed 'Imzadi').
I do so wish My Enemy, My Ally, The Wounded Sky or How Much For Just The Planet had been adapted into a movie. Diane Duane and Peter David are my fave Trek fiction authors.
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Don't forget, TMP was very successful. People often look at it today as if it were a failure, but it wasn't. Adjusted for inflation, it either still holds the record for most financially successful Trek film or comes in just behind the JJ Abrams 2009 film, I believe.
The problem was that it was a nightmare production with a constantly changing script, never ending delays, and a runaway budget, all of which Paramount blamed on Roddenberry. So for the next film, they shifted gears by slashing the budget and hiring a new producer, who took things in an entirely different direction. And did exactly what you said by jumping forward in time to match the actors' ages.
That's very true, all of which at that time, made TMP the most expensive movie ever made (if memory serves, it was like around 44-45 million, with the added-on costs of Phase II). It appears from the Wiki article on most expensive films that Superman was the next film to become most expensive, with a budget of $55 million.
en.wikipedia.org
List of most expensive films - Wikipedia
Superman came out before TMP.
And with the Salkinds famous wheeling and dealing, and the fact that they shot Superman I and II simultaneously, it's difficult to know exactly what Superman did actually cost.
Shit! I knew that, LOL! Misplaced memory, I reckon.
Happens to us all.
As I recall, director Richard Donner said he was never actually given a budget for Superman, despite constantly being told he was over budget while he was shooting the movie.
