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.
Who need a plot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who need a plot... (Score:3, Funny)
Gene coughed and said they were working on it.
What you really mean (Score:3, Funny)
When... You... Have... Such... Great... Acting...
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.
Re:This is OLD (Score:2)
$20 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$20 (Score:2)
-C
Re:$20 (Score:3, Funny)
I thought they fucked up by not including the normal cut of the film on one of the discs [...] I really prefer the non-Director's-edition.
MPAA to blincoln: Our hearts go out to you in your time of need. Now go out and buy both releases. Links have been supplied to ease your pain.
Original Cut [amazon.com]
Director's Cut [amazon.com]
End transmission.
Re:$20 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:$20 (Score:3, Funny)
No takers here.
My all-time favorite Star Trek villian is still Reverend Jim [imdb.com] the Klingon. I kept expecting him to say "You want the, uhhh, Genesis Device, Captain, uhhh, Kirk? Uhhhh, okee dokee!"
Re:$20 (Score:2, Interesting)
The NextGen movies weren't much better. And it's sad, because there are some pretty cool story lines they could have come up with. Just as in Voyager, they would come up with an interesting idea, but never play it out. The shows writers and producers always wanted to create a problem and solve it in one episode.
But oh well... we have Star Wars... oh no, never mind George didn't dive too deep into his creative pool for the new films.
I guess we just have to wait for the new Spidey film(s) and the next 2 LoTR movies. Maybe someone can convince Tim Burton and Michael Keaton to team again and do another Batman? Or maybe John Woo can step up and do a Justice League movie...
Re:$20 (Score:3, Informative)
They might not suck, even if I can think of 10 much better books-that-should-be-films off the top of my head.
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.
Holodecks and time travel (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Holodecks and time travel (Score:2)
Re:Holodecks and time travel (Score:2)
I don't know.... <font class="sarcasm"> what about an episode where they travel back in time to make sure that holodecks are invented, thus supplying crew members with much needed futuristic pr0n on those five-year / ongoing / accidental missions...? </font>
Truth about plots . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if you really want to admit it, there are only about three plots. You have Man against Nature, Man against Man and Man against Himself.
I would suppost that Man against computer (or Superman against computer) could be any of the above.
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:2)
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:2)
A) The King dies, then the queen dies.
B) The King dies *because* the queen dies.
(A) is a story, (B) is a plot.
Of course, there's no conflict in (B), but you can certainly add most any type of conflict and still preserve the plot.
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:5, Funny)
"In film you will find four basic story lines. Man versus man, man versus nature, nature versus nature, and dog versus vampire."
- Steven Spielberg
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Truth about plots . . . (Score:2)
Man -vs- Man, Man -vs- Nature, and Man -vs- The Empire Brain Building.
(no one will get this...)
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:Truth about plots . . . (Score:2)
As an example of one of the dramatic situations: stranger comes from the heavens, has the power to heal people (and does so), is misunderstood and hunted by authorities. Dies, is resurcted, and ascends to the heavens ... jesus or ET? :)
Plot vs. Motif (Score:5, Interesting)
Cambellian science fiction was all about asking "What if?" Where has that gone with this franchise? Technobabble, non-sense and special effects usually. The problem Trek has been accused of often is not thinking about the consequences of certain technologies. Great examples are missed opportunities with cloaking and teleportation or explaining how the toilets on the Enterprise work (if in fact they are connected in some obscure way with the food replicator).
In stead of asking a What If question about technology we are usually instead given a song and dance routine by Data, a sexual episode between data and a real woman, a lame space battle (sit down B5 folks already) or some dumb ass plot where they come across a planet populated ONLY by Gangsters/Sou Chefs/Half Naked Californians.
Oh, and one more plot about dystopia and I will scream.
I'm not asking that they make their movies as stunningly boring as, say anything written by Robert L. Forward (*great* scientist - lousy story teller in my humble opinion). But get some real writters: David Brin, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge even! These guys could take that Franchise where No Science Fiction Franchise has ever gone before!
Well, that's my piece. Thanks for listening.
--Peter
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:Why 'Kahn is so great (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the technobabble aspect really bugged me too. "Assume a synchronous orbit above the South Pole." Sheesh.
Now I am going to repeat some stuff I pointed out in an earlier Star Trek thread.
Nicholas Meyer [imdb.com] saved Star Trek. The original star trek series was cancelled -- early -- with only 79 episodes in the can. Roddenbery had blown his wad producing Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, which, at $35,000,000 in 1979 dollars [imdb.com] was a very expensive bomb. Meyer directed ST:twok for just $11,000,000 [imdb.com]. Not only was it the best ST movie. But it was the cheapest, and the most lucrative.
Meyer wrote ST: The Voyage Home and ST: The Undiscovered Country, and directed ST:tuc.
Like Michael Crighton Meyer didn't go to film school, he went to Medical school.
Oh yeah, ST:twok is my favourite ST movie. And Galaxy Quest [imdb.com] is my second favourite.
Ship fights (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ship fights (Score:2)
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.
Technobabble... (Score:5, Interesting)
Scripts would look as so:
GEORDI: Let's [technobabble] the main thrusters so that we can [technobabble] the Borg.
Etc...
Re:Technobabble... (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard a while back that Levar Burton was so used to technobabble that he would generally just ignore whatever's in the script and ad lib something, and his ad libs usually sounded better. Which makes sense -- he'd been spouting technobabble every working day for years.
Re:Technobabble... (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: Well, usually on the show somebody would come up with a complicated plan then explain it with a simple analogy
Leela: If we can reroute engine power through the primary weapons and reconfigure them to Mellvar's frequency, that should overload his electro-quantum structure!
Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon!
Fry: Of course! It's so SIMPLE!
Re:Technobabble... (Score:5, Funny)
INT. ENTERPRISE-BRIDGE --LATER.
PICARD
Ensign Crusher, report.
WESLEY
Aye, Sir. The TECH is a result of TECH TECH TECH with a TECH pulse. I've remodified the sensor array to TECH the TECH TECH. I've also seen TECH and TECH --
PICARD
Thank you, Ensign.
WESLEY
There's more sir, TECH TECH TECH TECH...
DATA
TECH!
PICARD
Thank you, Mister Data. Ensign Crusher, that's all I need to know.
WESLEY
But sir, I TECH--
PICARD
That's enough, Ensign!
There is a tense beat.
WESLEY
(quietly)
TECH.
The Enterprise is ROCKED by an explosion
Re:Technobabble... (Score:3, Interesting)
On a quasi-related note, I was watching TNG last night on the Star Trek & White Trash network, and I happened upon an episode from the first season, called "Justice". In this episode, Wesley is condemned to death for falling into some flowers on a planet ruled by half-naked nymphomaniac hippie love-children. It made me realize just how much the show managed to improve over the years.
As for you, Wil, I really gotta hand it to you. I remember in your interview, you said that you had little to no say over the lines you were given. Watching that episode, it became clear to me that whoever wrote the script either didn't realize you were over the age of ten, or rather was himself somehow spawned on a rockbed, skipping adolescence entirely. I've done some improv and other acting through college myself, and one of the most difficult things for a young actor to do is to swallow his pride and follow his director, however inane that direction might be. Personally, I think you did a terrific job with what you were given. I've been in that position on stage plays, with all my friends and family sitting in the audience, waiting for them to pounce on me later for something that was the product of poor writing/direction.
I'll admit, when I first watched TNG as a relatively wee lad, I didn't much like Wesley's character. Still, I did know the difference between actor and character, and I was secretly jealous as hell, watching someone who was only a few years older than me and got to work on Star Trek!! I was also pleased to see the writers wise up and let Wesley start kicking some ass in later episodes, culminating with his eventual transubstantiation to deity-hood with an intergalactic "elder on the hill". I was kinda scratching my head at that one for a while, but concluded that it was a better way to go than being killed by a an greasy sentient Hefty bag in the middle of a living puddle of muck, as was the case with Denise Crosby. Best, I can figure from the special effects, the cause of death was "fatal birthmark on face".
Anyway, it's always interesting to see how it was for you on the show, especially since you're the member of the cast to which most
Re:Technobabble... (Score:3, Funny)
PICARD
I am sick and tired of all this horse TECH.
WESLEY
Well if you don't like it, then stuff the TECH up your TECH until it TECH!
DATA
Please stop it, both of you, or I will disassemble your molecules and put them into the TECH.
PICARD
Shut up Data, or I will wire your ass to your TECH!
DATA
Well, sir, as a matter of fact, I have actually already completed that very alteration after Riker suggested it to me earlier today. I assumed it was a literal command, but perhaps that was not a correct interpretation on my part.
Memories (Score:3, Interesting)
Brent was going through his lines, playing both Data and Lore, and he noticed that Data was given a line where he was using a contraction.
Brent called the director, first AD, and script supervisor over, and asked them to clarify Brent's understanding that Data did not use contractions.
The phone calls began, and went all the way to Gene's office, before the answer came back, "Data should not use contractions, ever."
This ended up being a plot point later in the show, as Lore's use of something like "Isn't" or "Wouldn't" or "Bitch Ass Monkey Mouth" revealed his true identity.
Funny..I just thought it was cool that you didn't use any contractions in your Data lines...and that sparked this memory that is 14 years old.
Re:Memories (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it means that all the time we *think* it's Data, but it's *really* Lore!
Wait, so *that* means that when we think it's Lore being rivy, it's really Data being rivy...but Data is good, right?
Great. Now you've got me playing tic-tac-toe against myself, when I'd really like to get back to a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War.
Shut up, Wesley! I'm walking through a door! (Score:5, Informative)
This is true. I hope I don't ruin anyone's good time, but those doors were opened by a SFX guy, who sat on an upturned bucket behind the set wall, pulling on a cable. (In the second season, the advanced technology of a wooden handle was added!)
Imagine the sound a sliding glass door makes when the track is rusty, and you know what those doors sounded like...a far cry from the pleasant "woosh!" we hear on TV.
Watch TNG, and you'll see that actors RARELY speak while doors are closing behind them. Sometimes you'll see an actor walk into a room (usually the transporter room) and you'll hear the doors close while they're speaking, but you won't see them. This happened because that rusty door noise was replaced with the happy "woosh!" sound in post production.
Interesting side-effect of this for me is that even in real life, I rarely talk while a door is closing behind me. It just became a habit to wait.
Re:Shut up, Wesley! I'm walking through a door! (Score:3, Funny)
What, like you were THERE or something?
Honestly, that Wesley was a real hacker... anyone who could program a tricorder to isolate the TECH frequencies of the mid-band TECH spectrum, and do it using only 3 buttons! That was awesome! (I always figured the buttons must have been "1", "0", and "Backspace", so you would have to program it in binary machine code.)
Re:Technobabble... (Score:3, Informative)
Ray Bradbury's 1950 short story "The Veldt" significantly predated TNG. Yes, Virginia, the malfunctioning holodeck story is at least 52 years old.
Re:Blade Runner (was Re:Technobabble...) (Score:3, Interesting)
I noticed during a few years when everything was "fractal" on Trek. Fractal this and fractal that. It was as if fractals were a central technology to them.
Then again, who knows what the future will use. Edison ignored some semiconductor properties that turned out to be key to modern computers.
I am sure no matter how hard they try, today's technobabble will sound dated many decades from now.
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
Re:There's always B5... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
I like the predictable plots (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Holodeck (Score:2, Insightful)
Holodeck plots (Score:3, Interesting)
Time travel plots exposed! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, think about it. "Voyage Home", good. "Time's Arrow" (TNG, Mark Twain), ok. "Past Tense" (DS9, American ghetos in the 21st centry), good. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS, airforce thinks Enterprise is UFO), ok.
Compare those to the Voyager finale, crap. The episode where Worf's son comes back from the future to kill himself, dumb. Anything in Voyager involving the Starfleet Time Cops from the future, ugh.
The weird one is the Voyager episode where the crew is attacked by someone from the 29th century and is thrown back to 1996. It has a little of each, but in the end they kill Bill Gates, so that episode officially rocks.
Think about it, it really is true. Of course, that does not bode well for "Enterprise", as their big plot arc is all about being visited by the Voyager Time Cops over and over again. *groan*
Re:Time travel plots exposed! (Score:2)
Braga can't resist going for the cookie jar. Expect the temporal cold war premise of the first season to get chucked out over night once he gets the go ahead to throw the romulan war into the series. (i.e. when the ratings continue their downward trend)
"Q" --- Re:Holodeck plots (Score:2)
However, a Romulan-based plot could be postponed in order to use John Delancy (sp?) before he gets too old. I mean, how much should an immortal, omnipotent being age? I would say not too much.
Additionally, once upon a time, I heard a vague and unreliable rumor that they were going to kill Data because Spiner decided that he was type-cast. (And I suppose being typecast as a single character that is impossible to duplicate elsewhere would be somewhat limiting ;-)
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.
Re:Plot, splot (Score:2)
Look at Home Improvement. Same goddamn show every week. The sequence of events was almost always the same.
1) Someone has a problem.
2) Tim gives shitty advice.
3) Tim goes to his neighbor.
4) Tim get's the gist (jist? sp?) of that advice, but misrepeats it for a cheap laugh
5) Problem solved
6) Tim blows something up
Star Trek generally follows a formula but it's not nearly as bad as home improvement.
Saying that ST lacks originality because all of the good ideas have been taken is a cop-out - yes, the bar has been raised, and it's hard to be completely original every week, but ST is just plain formulaic.
Gibson, for example, never ceases to surprise me.
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Plot, splot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Funny)
I want to see fights and green women with three breasts and I want to see a member of the crew get iced just because it's Wednesday. And I want to see dialog that doesn't sound like a freshman ethics class.
Re:Plot, splot (Score:3, Informative)
And? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And? (Score:2)
I think you're right about series being predictable. I can't imagine PBS' Moll Flanders having a sequel. What other taboo could she break? What would it be called?
'Ho strikes back!'
'Return of the Ho!'
Hmm, not gonna bother register for the NYT (Score:2, Interesting)
5 plots? I can sum up 99% of 'em with this:
I stopped being a fan a couple years into TNG.
It just became apparent that anything the 'franchise' does is just drying to squeeze a little more milk out of the cash cow. It's hardly good science fiction anymore.
1) Big problem (alien, wormhole, time-loop, computer malfunction) presents itself.
2) Bunch of yammering and melodrama and crappy dialogue, of the hollywood breed, which they no doubt think is interesting.
3) 5 minutes into the end of the show Geordi (or whoever) goes 'I got it!' and yammers out some nonsense techno-babble which solves the problem.
They could at least throw in a bunch of cool special effects, something.
IMO the franchise has been coasting on nostalgia for years, god only knows how long it will last, though.
Thats not to say that there's much better on TV. I plan on watching Smackdown! tonight, it's as intellectual as anything else on the toob.
Re:Hmm, not gonna bother register for the NYT (Score:2)
I stopped downloading enterprise episodes a few months ago. Still watch stargate sg1, and have all the dvd's, but trek does seem to be slowing down even for a big fan (not nerdy gimp) like myself.
Re:Hmm, not gonna bother register for the NYT (Score:2)
"Space opera," not "science fiction." The latter is something Star Trek never was, nor ever seriously intended on being.
Category Time? (Score:2)
Hmm, and if /. has any more articles on Star Trek, it might be a good idea to have a little 'Star Trek' logo and category instead of 'Movies'....
Just my 2 cents... or 2 strips of Gold Pressed Latinum I suppose.
It's the writer's and reviewers faults.. (Score:2)
Space based Genre has a TON of room to move and segway into billions of plotlines...
Hell look at LEXX... I dont think that rehashed anything and can fit in the ST universe...
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.
Re:Agree: Time Travel, Holodeck, and Q plots suck (Score:2)
you mean, like Giligans Island?
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.
Answer is in the article (Score:2)
Given that the TNG cast are all about ready for the knackers yard, can we presume that film 11 will be Voyager, and thus suck royally on at least two counts?
Actually there were lots of things I liked about Voyager, but they're not the things that would make a good movie. Apart from 7 of 9. And it won't be that kind of movie, I'm sure.
The Self-Made Critic [brunching.com] has a more detailed scoring scheme [brunching.com] for Star Trek movies in his review of Insurrection. We'll see how accurate it is after Nemesis.
Re:Answer is in the article (Score:2)
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.
Re:It's not all about plot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Villains who are out for something besides pride, money or power are difficult to craft but make a plot so much more interesting. I like me a villain who doesn't consider himself one (and who, from a point of view, might not be...i'm talking Castro here, not Hitler), or a hero who wonders if he's working for the right cause.
The trick of course is making all the characters act in ways that aren't typical to their typecast. Han Solo was original when he was written, when it became apparent he was truly in love with Leia and not merely a womanizer. Twenty years later I can't believe Hayden Christiansen, because his affair is almost a crystaline structure of love and war. There is no believable resistance to his affair with Padme. But of course, that may just be my own callousness and lack of disbelief through seven years of literary study.
I wonder how these films look to my brother, who at 13 has yet to be inundated with cliche Sci-Fi?
Anyone Rememebr The Last Few Season of Voyager? (Score:2)
Some time travel episodes are quite good! (Score:2)
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.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Score:2, Informative)
1. Hero is confronted with unbeatable challenge / unsurmountable odds.
2. Hero experiences personal growth/enlightenment
3. Hero overcomes challenge / odds.
The matrix? Star Wars? Lord of the Rings? There is nothing wrong with the recycling of ideas in film or books or anything. Its part of human nature.. there are only so many ideas.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a book that explores this very idea. Its worth checking out.
"The Myth of Superman" (& Star Trek too) (Score:5, Informative)
Traditional mythic heroes were governed by a law, therefore these heroes were predictable and held no suprises for the audience.
... and
Authors preferences are not considered when writing a novel. They are forced to write along the guidelines of a cultural model. In this case, "authors. .
Basically the deal was that if you started at A and went to B, you might pass through C or D or E but your story must end up at A again or you'll have spoiled the myth.
There's only so much a mythical figure can do (or mythos o' figures). Here are some of the more horrendous deviations from the "A leads to B leads to A again" that I can think of off-hand (a little Spidey-centric, I'm afraid):
* The brilliant folk at Marvel kill off Aunt May. (She's back now)
* The brilliant folk at Marvel decide Spider-Man is really a clone. (The clones have all disappeared now)
* The brilliant folk at DC kill off Superman and then have several return. (I think we're back to one, but I don't read Superman)
* Patrick Duffy leaves Dallas.
* Felix Lieter (sp) has his leg eaten by a shark in Licensed To Kill. (Haven't fixed that yet, but they did ditch Dalton, even if it isn't his fault that movie stunk to high heaven)
This is why, I believe, these fictional stories rarely do things that are irreversable, like have Peter Parker age [much] or main characters get married (last I looked, Marvel was still struggling with that one, even having MJ disappear). It's also why shows tend to die after the leading man & woman get romanticly involved -- see Moonlighting. Or why they die when they switch tone -- see all those Carol Burnett[-esque] episodes later on in Magnum, P.I.
So, in one sense, the reason Star Trek is always the same is the same reason everyone was on pins and needles when Diane left Cheers.
Old Metallica Joke (Score:2)
Two dudes are listening to a new Metallica album.
Dude 1: Dude, all these songs sound the same!
Dude 2: Yeah, but Dude, it's a good song!
Repetitive plots (Score:2)
The same is true for any branch of literature. Science fiction has a much wider range of possible plots than mainstream fiction. The point is that they don't develop these plots in any interesting way.
Look at Johnny Mnemonic. They took a pretty good short story, and made a pretty boring movie out of it. There is lots of good science fiction to make movies out of. Hollywood does not want to make movies that require people to think, which is the whole point of science fiction, not blowing stuff up.
Only So Many Plots (Score:2, Informative)
All the plots were explored by Shakespeare... by the Bible, I've heard it all... PROVE IT!
limited imagination, if you ask me... which you didn't. For example... Stanislaus Lem's plots... try to map them to HG Wells and find yourself making quite a big stretch.
Holodeck (Score:2)
Au contraire! I was afraid the holodeck would be terribly misused when they introduced it, but some of the most interesting and creative episodes involve the holodeck, albeit in the series, not the movies:
Moriarity makes the crew think they're not in the holodeck, then <spoiler deleted>
Holodeck lounge singer Vic shows Nog a reason for living
Using the holodeck to recreate testimony and look at different viewpoints
Holodeck addiction --- something that would be a real problem
Using the holodeck as a simulator, what would probably be one of its most useful uses
While they aren't always the best episodes otherwise, it's not because of the holodeck, and some are among the best...
Talk about repetitive plots. Slashdot the movie!!! (Score:2)
I think we could develop this into one of great film franchises of history. I hear that a cadre of circus chickens are lined up to direct.
Ideas?
Mirror (Score:2)
One missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Trek mired in it's own "universe" (Score:3, Interesting)
The way I see it, over the years Trek writers have been slowly building a fence around themselves and now they find that they are creativly constricted.
They are trying to break out of the mold with Enterprise, but consider that they have already had a "holodeck" AND a "time travel" episode. I think they (the writers, et al) have forgotten that Trek at it's heart is about discovery, adventure and humanity.
NY Times plots are predictable (Score:5, Funny)
- People are dying or dead
- Some big business is in trouble
- Something on the president
- Sports or weather
Not only is the paper friggin predictable, the story titles usually gives away the ending! No wonder their writers work there, they can't get real jobs like the Star Trek writers.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..
Chris DiBona reminds me of the Comic Book Guy... (Score:3, Funny)
Bart: Hey, I know it was great, but what right do you have to complain?
CBG: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for
free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe
them.
CBG: [pauses] Worst episode ever.
Re:In case NYTs ever gets /.ed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In case NYTs ever gets /.ed (Score:2)
Except that ST:TMP had nothing to do with our tech being more advanced than our ethics. ST:TMP was the fact the V'ger was lost, and came looking for its creator in order to fulfill its programming, and nobody knew what it was or how to make it happy.
Maybe the author of the original article should go back and watch TMP (painful though it might be)...
Re:Damn NYT articles... (Score:2)
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.
Re:get real (Score:2)
The plot is the specific details of the plot. The events, setting, resolution make up the plot.
Anyone who has taken a "hardcore writing course" (btw, thats an oxymoron) would know that.
Re:History-talkers (Score:3, Informative)
"Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra".