Star Trek: Pick A Plot 650
Vinnie_333 writes "This article on the New York Times sounds out on the often repetitive plots of the 10 Star Trek films to date (this include ST: Nemesis, coming soon). It refers to the film franchise as '10 films with 5 plots' and lays them all out in front of you. This does have a ring of truth. As a fan of Sci Fi (but not particularly Star Truck), I have to admit that there are only so many unique plots out there, and most of them have been well used by HG Well's time. Star Trek is, after all, a genre franchise and the story lines are held back by certain restrictions of the genre." I personally would pay Berman/Braga et al $20 if they never have a holodeck or time-travel-based plot ever again.
This is OLD (Score:2, Insightful)
How old are you? Munging up the names of something you don't like is something I did when I was 12. Come on, you guess can be a little mature, can't you?
FYI - I'm not standing up for Star Trek. I don't like it much either.
$20 (Score:3, Insightful)
Ship fights (Score:2, Insightful)
There's always B5... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the plotlines in B5 were far superior to anything on StarTrek, IMHO of course.
Also, no Wesley Crusher type characters
Holodeck (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed, though the holodeck episodes in TNG with Moriarty were a pretty good take on AI and the rights of artificial life forms.
Plot, splot (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, many plots were used by Wells or Bradbury or Burroughs long ago, but if you simplify things down to that level everything starts to look the same. If you wrote a 1-paragraph summary of all of the romantic comedy films ever made, for example, it would look like this:
"Two characters who at first seem to have insurmountable differences meet and, through a series of comic moments, fall in love. A complication threatens to dash their hopes, but at the last moment everything works out."
That doesn't mean all of these films are without value. Just most of them.
Agree: Time Travel, Holodeck, and Q plots suck (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of the holodeck subplots were interesting - the notion of 'addiction' by Lieutenant Barclay in ST:TNG. Extending the technology by introducing the Doctor in Voyager seemed okay, but then extending to other "photonic life" in several different ways became strange: apparently there was some photonic life that didn't appear to require actual computers or holo-emitters (the absurd episode in which Janeway must become a B-movie queen), and then later we again see photonic beings who do require computers/holo-emitters.
Of course, the real issue is that so many sci-fi plot points are impossible under the laws of physics as they are generally known (whether we're talking about the 1960's or 2002): faster-than-light travel, time travel, transporters, warp fields, subspace communication. Breaking the rules is what enables the plots to get interesting, and of course we all hope/believe/fantasize that what we imagine might one day be possible, since any sufficiently advanced technology is magic (Clarke).
What I find most troubling are gaping inconsistencies, often made worse by implausible explanations. In one episode, the scanners can identify a single individual among billions on a planet with super-advanced technology, and then in the next they can't scan to find out what's inside a wad of Kleenex (exaggeration).
One of the absurd, and often annoying, plot devices that is also sometimes one of the more amusing, is the notion that this crew of a few hundred (really just a dozen or so people who seem to actually do everything) can invent new technologies in a few hours, with half the ship's systems disabled, while huge teams of dedicated scientists with vast resources could not accomplish such work (apparently the only major technology invented by humans but NOT invented on Enterprise or Voyager, was the non-damaging warp technology that was introduced on Voyager).
No question about it: the last episode of "Enterprise" last year took away just about everything that showed promise in the series: the notion that they were less advanced, less able, less knowledgeable than the later crews.
Why not fans to help? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would bet the quality would be better and the originality would increase. Of course, I would think that Rick Berman and his writers would go through and professionalize the plots from the hollywood sense. But at least the ideas and general plot would come from those who live and die by the ST world: the fans!
Perhaps I am placing too much confidence in those I've seen going to ST conventions and clubs. But then again, perhaps not. I'd personally pit them any day against a hollywood writer in coming up with original, science-based ideas.
5 plots? (Score:2, Insightful)
But what does it matter? It took voyager 7 seasons to come up with only 3 plots. In my estimation we're ahead of the game here.
Supposed to be a movie review? (Score:2, Insightful)
I felt like the article lacked foundation. Sounds like the guy heard about a 30 second trailer that his cousin uncle saw and decided to flamebait every Star Trek fan.
He uses extremely vague suppositions to catogorize the Star Trek series and doesn't even include every movie in his 5 plot categories.
He might as well lump them all into the good versus evil category.
I would have to say that even with redundant plots, each movie was entertaining in its own rights.
Kind of off base (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an interesting interpretation of the Episode IV story-line. The crew did not go back in time to prevent someone from changing history as they did in VIII. Rather the crew went back in time to change history. The Borg didn't go back and kill the Whales, the humans did it all by themselves!
Anyway, I'm not sure this guy watched either movie, and some of the Star Trek movies do suck, but the plots don't over lap that much...
It's not all about plot... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an ep of DS9 where Will Riker's duplicate (transporter accident in an ep of TNG) stole the Defiant and went off to give the Cardassians hell.
One could very easily dismiss that ep as "Oh geez, dude steals a ship, fires the guns a few times, and gives up when he's outnumbered. What an original plot. *sarcasm*"
However, that wasn't the interesting part of the episode. The interesting part was WHY Riker's duplicate did this. He was stranded alone on a planet for 8 years. When he was recovered, he couldn't live up to success that the Riker that made it off the planet enjoyed.
When you watch this ep, you're lead to believe that the Riker duplicate was going for the 'greater good' trying to uncover some Cardassian plot. What was really going on was he was hoping to quickly turn himself into a hero, even if it meant death for him.
There were other interesting details of the episode, but I just wanted to make that little point: Plot isn't everything. Here's a case where scifi gave birth to a situation not likely to happen in reality, and gave the audience an interesting glimpse into a fictional world.
Frankly, I think Enterprise would be a lot more popular if people understood this concept. The 'plot' of the episodes isn't the strong point, the development of the characters is. That's what it's all about.
Character Development (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of my favorite Star Trek episodes are the ones that take place almost entirely on the bridge - almost Shakesperean in the lack of different sets. The story is character driven, not event driven. The story becomes more about how the characters react to the situation, and how they interact with one another, and less about "Hey the Romulans just shot as us".
An earlier poster is right, plot is defined as a struggle - whether it's man vs. man, man vs. nature, or man vs. himself. While unfortunately the Next Generation did use a lot of technobabble to save the day during the plot's climax, it's mostly forgivable - For the sake of the storyline we're supposed to accept the fact that Geordi LaForge and Data are *extremely smart*... Same goes for Spock on the Original Series. Other stories where the climax was resolved a different way, like through a violent confrontation it was usually Riker and Worf (or Kirk) who kicked ass and took names. When it was a tactical battle, it was Picard (or Kirk) who used his superior strategy to save the day. When it was a medical crisis, you could count on Pulaski or Crusher to handle it. (Or Bones..) There are a finite number of ways to resolve a conflict, and Star Trek seems to use all of them - even running away and asking Q to get them the hell away from the Borg.
Other television shows, in my humble opinion, would be wise to take some cues from Star Trek and become more character driven and less event driven.
Re:Holodeck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ship fights (Score:2, Insightful)
starboard bow,
Personally I find the ship fights the hardest to watch. They have less complexity than your average 1800's cannon battle. And seem to occur at about the same relative ranges between ships.
Some of the old trek had the best stuff. It was at least based on WWII sub fights.
No release of active diffusive substances or "warping of space" to defocus/redirect laser/phaser shots. If you have artificial gravity powerful enough to go from 0-0.9 light in seconds without ending up splattered you can make some pretty good gravity lenses.
No active point defense systems.
No multi-warhead systems.
No sensor confusion technology.
These are just technology effects that are in use now on the battle field.
No use of space time delay (except in the one fantastic occurance). The moon is 1 second away. The sun is 8 minutes away. The sun could blow up now we would not see it for 8 minutes. So any time the say "opps" there goes the star/planet they should have to wait 8 minutes (or other time) to see/feel it.
No use of gravity well orbital mechanics.
No 2D battle concepts (windage and fore/aft shots of cannon ships, lines and wedges.
No 3D battle concepts, cones, globes, wedges, conveyor belts.
Still some of the worst gravity well/ non-Newtonian physics based "space" environments. You can classify it as "fantasy" as it certainly is not based on physics as we know it.
Re:Parallells to comics (Score:4, Insightful)
As consumers of entertainment, we're like so many other people who have had macaroni-and-cheese. Sure, it's almost always the same, but then we could add meat, or maybe some veggie, or change the shape of the pasta...it's still Mac-and-cheese, and it's a staple.
If a writer develops something so completely new, it would be out of wack with established mythologies, motivations and have complex characters which require the viewer to be intimate with details that can only exist outside the plot and we shouldn't be surprised if 90% of the audience is going to be unmoved. Even the greek playwrights wrestled with the problem of innovation/alienation and resigning themselves to telling the same tired story again and again...because it's what the people want. If anybody wants to point a finger, the need to go to the mirror. We have a problem, and like most of them, it's us. :-)
It's not a problem with writers, or producers. They're successful if they make a good show of any genre. It's the audience that's lacking here, and like death, taxes, and teens having babies the problem is human nature...and it's just one of the salient points on which the species sucks. If we were smart, we'd be trying to have AI's invent entire fantasy worlds and giving them only the more basic rules have them create media. Of course, that's a bit too much like next-century and if it did work, the complainers in meat-space would probably kill it.
If the person who somehow got this whining on the front of slashdot would just sit down and try writing/publishing something that doesn't fit into the same tired categories, I'm sure they would have a much better understanding of the problem--rather than just come off as a complainer.
I believe it's been said.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So "Star Trek" tends to be formulaic. So what? So's everything else that's ever been written; it's a matter of how well it's written that draws or repels us, which is why "The Wrath of Khan" is so popular and "Generations" is less so.
Re:$20 (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem. You don't set out to make another Khan. You set out to make a great villain. Therein lies the difference. Also, Khan was great for two other reasons:
1. Ricardo Montalban!!!!!!!!
2. We knew the backstory, and had an insight into his motivations.
As an aside, item 2 made the film move faster and better, because we didn't have to waste time exploring "Why is he doing this? Why does he hate Kirk?", giving that much more time for plot development.
Re:It's not all about plot... (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem I had with most of the new Star Trek characters is that they are still very shallow. They all tended to be stiff like-butlers and rarely every show true emotion. It is like everyone is a vulcan want-to-be. I cannot even count the times that crew members sit(in TNG) and talk like civilized people about some emotional dilemma that is confronting them, but regardless of which two or three characters they use they are all speaking in the same manner, same tone with very little heart.
Why 'Kahn is so great (Score:5, Insightful)
He takes a ship out with a training crew, doesn't follow Mr. Savik (Kirstie Allie's) advice about raising deflectors when the Grissom doesn't respond and gets the guts tore out of the Enterprise. We then find that the Federation has some kind of gadget they shouldn't be messing with, and the designer is the progeny of Kirks chronic "fooling-around" having caught up with him, who is as bloody-minded as the old-man Kirk himself. And to straighten out the whole mess, Kirk ends up sacrificing his best friend Spock.
This thing with Kahn is sort of like Bush and Saddam -- we know that Kahn is crazy, but if you think about it, Kahn has some legitimate grievances that Kirk has on his conscience.
There is no other Star Trek that gives that level of character development to either Kirk or Kirk's nemesis.
On the subject of the decline of Trek, the technobable bugs me the worst -- I saw this promo piece with Levar Burton explaining that they write "technobable" as a line in the script to call on a consultant to fill something in.
Classic Trek didn't have techno-babble. Enterprise would get enveloped with some kind of multi-color thing, Kirk would bark "Spock, what is that?" and Spock would stare into his science station Tektronix terminal hood and say "I don't know, it isn't registering on our sensors." Compared to NG, Classic Trek was high concept -- they wouldn't try to explain it like one shouldn't try to explain the Monolith in 2001.
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, it could have been the Trek that fans write about, that the pro authors write about, that is faintly visible at the edges of Starfleet (Picard getting stabbed through his heart in a bar fight with Naussicans in his youth, the Caith dancer in STV:TUC (the catgirl), Rura Penthe, and so on...). It is shifted a bit towards that, but damn - the premere was so tantalizing, and they wound up going to the familiar gloss. If you're gonna do sex, do sex - not camera pans over a decontamination process. If you're gonna do violence, kickass and screw the bubble gum, *do* it - torture, barfights, and slavery.
This is the prefederation universe - before Star Fleet was formed to patrol and help the member worlds. I see no real reason why there's any reason for the Federation - things aren't that bad. Show us the grit, the dirt, the machine oil encrusted ships that are patched together with sweat and duct tape and run by aliens who don't give a damn about humanity.
Enterprise isn't about a group of races working together - it's about humans going out and tearing and clawing a place in the local galaxy. Only it's too much like TNG, where things are polished and peaceful.
Bah.
--
Evan (who wants a chick painted green to pop out of his next birthday cake)
DS9 (Re:There's always B5...) (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, the last four seasons of DS9 were the best series of the whole ST collection.
Why does Star Trek... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Why do they make the ugliest characters evil? I'd like to see some character interaction and consistent development with some butt-ugly insects or 30 feet giants to be direct allies with the good guys. I keep thinking that real aliens would probably take all shapes and sizes, from massively huge or small and don't necessarily always take a humanoid size.
3. Why is it that Picard always tried to play the high ground on the fact that humans had gotten past many of their deficiencies? One of the things that I liked best about Kirk was that he willing to embrace humanity with its character flaws - he said something in "A Taste of Armageddon" to the effect that "yes, we're killers, but the important thing is that we're not going to kill today". I think it'll take more than a few centuries to evolve past our basic human deficiencies.
4. Why don't they have major characters die on a rotating basis and constantly develop the more ancillary characters? Whenever a conflict in an episode arises that puts a major character at risk, I don't always like the fact that I already know that that character is going to make it out fine. (Tashia Yar and Jadzia Dax not withstanding, but then you always know it before the fact because they announce it in the previews!)
5. Why is it that whenever a crew member falls in love with someone that's not in the main storyline, they never seem to bother to develop it? The person that they're involved with always leaves, gets transferred to another starbase/facility, or dies at the end of the episode. There have been times that I would have really liked to have seen some of the relationships develop further.
I think I'm one of the rare few that thought that Deep Space Nine was great. I _loved_ it when Sisko actually hit Q!
I think B5 had a lot of these qualities too, and is still my favorite SciFi show to date..
Science Fiction restricted? (Score:2, Insightful)
I find this to be pure non-sense. Why should a genre be held back by strict rules? Of course, fantasy and science fiction and the likes are inspired by a certain train of thoughts, but that does not mean the imagination should stop at certain bounds; on the contrary, one should always explore new shores and invade them. Complete originality nowadays is hard to come by, but we can always try-- without betraying the genre.
Re:$20 (Score:2, Insightful)