Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

Encouraged!

I mean, they could pull off very tasteful and convincing new VFX for the original Director's Edition release on DVD, so there's no reason to worry, right?

Dear Paramount Plus - remaster DS9 and I promise to subscribe instead of just using my brother's account

lol

yessssssssss

Big ol' interview with the main mover behind the restoration, who worked closely with Wise on the 2001 version. Lots of great detail.

https://trekmovie.com/2022/04/03/interview-producer-david-fein-on-bringing-star-trek-the-motion-picture-the-directors-edition-to-4k/

And another extensive interview. Tomorrow will rule:

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-the-motion-picture-4k-interview-david-c-fein-1848747926

Oh and looks like we're getting a crowdfunded Voyager documentary now. (Same team that did the DS9 one.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCeqPGDp6D4

Big Picard news.

which is good news. face it, this cast never got a movie they deserved, and really, this cast seems better suited to television. Good to give them a swan song on a medium that plays to their strengths.

For reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGl8ypcjWeI

this cast never got a movie they deserved

I'll always ride for First Contact but correct that the movies flattened out the cast dynamics since you couldn't really rotate main character focus as before.

insurrection is all right

Okay, just watch the Motion Picture redo -- obv. if you don't like the story, pacing, etc. to start with this won't reconvince you or anything, but for me as a fan of it, it's a really lovely presentation for sure. The fixed color grading can't suddenly upgrade the still too bland uniform colors or anything but things do generally pop more, the new sound mix is excellent with some interesting extra touches, and while the new upgrade to the 2000 upgrades renders some of it perhaps a touch too crisp in comparison with the original elements, those new results are still something to behold, some really elaborate work created at points that's great to see. Plus, in one of those minor but good things to see (don't think they did this in 2000), we finally see the Enterprise actually turning around to face V'ger after doing the flyby. Hey, I'm nerdy that way. But really the fact that I knew it would be a treat was ultimately in the opening overture, where the restored 2000 spacescape was given a new, slower pace that suited Goldsmith's music and made everything feel just a touch richer. And in a good classy move, the end credits listed both the 2022 and the 2000 restoration credits, plus one last little touch right at the end. Loved it.

(Just watched, I should have initially said. Although yeah, just watch.)

love the Ned longpost, watching it soon

cant wait

I am not allowed to see whatever that video is that Ned posted above, because Paramount has geoblocked everything Star Trek in my region, which, as you can imagine, is really making me want to subscribe to their new channel whenever it shows up and not just steal their content.

I made a sorta but not really arbitrary decision a while back that I'm only springing for 4K upgrades of movies Douglas Trumbull worked on. And as TMP is probably my favorite Trek movie (yes, I'm that weirdo) this is great news to hear!

If you're a weirdo you're not alone. I perfectly enjoy 2, 4 and 6 from the original cast movie run, don't totally mind 3, and 5, well, that's its own thing, but all of them except, sorta, 5 are based around lots of action, battle and knotted plot and the like as opposed to a sense of curiosity, analysis, wonder and awe about what the universe might have; 4 at least comes close by not having any kind of starship shootout but it's very much a different vibe regardless, while 5 botches said sense of wonder hilariously, leaving the original as the one that, in its own clunky way granted, kinda shoots for the moon and scores on that front. Really am strongly considering going to one of the one-off theatrical showings of this new cut in late May; I saw it on original release when I was living here in the Bay Area in Mare Island/Vallejo and really loved it even then as a kid, so this'll close a circle in a strange way.

Anyway, these truths

I like how Paramount+ did market research and discovered that all of its subscribers are only there for Star Trek and instead of trying to diversify they were like "can we make enough Star Trek that there's one new episode every week forever?"

— Laurie Voss (@seldo) April 6, 2022

oh man I cannot *wait* for the Star Trek spinoff that spans the years when Starfleet goes to war with Marin and the Presidio neighborhoods organizations over zoning to build HQ and the Academy

— Burrito Justice (@burritojustice) April 6, 2022

Starfleets's ability to get that land is the least believable thing about ST (and I would watch the hell out of that show). I guess the eugenics wars must have had a major impact on real estate.

tmp is the best star trek movie i'm so stoked

o/g star trek is showing on the freeview horror channel so im rewatching now and then

this is the ep w/kirk's brother sam and the parasitic flying pancakes

my main conclusion is that the best thing abt the federation future is that when bones gives you an injection it's not a nasty stabby needle into yr veins (bad) but a nice soothing hiss of gas pressure into somewhere that doesn't hurt at all (good)

he has an inner eyelid!

Believe I have tried work an analogy about the extra eyelid ex machina#onethread into conversation more than once.

デウス・エクス・マキナ

a mysterious alien device on a planet with a predominantly american indian culture erases captain kirk's memory, and he begins a life with them as a member of their tribe

they think he's a god and call him kirrok

he says: "my dreams about the strange lodge that passes through the sky have returned"

Star Blecch:

https://imgur.com/gallery/QNfDT?fbclid=IwAR3zYQgPqiz3nGNyAcFAIO6l7fun_Hz2ajWzc7jx4_PYU6qwu3Bun78po4g

RIP to a legend pic.twitter.com/w676sHiBM0

— Star Trek Minus Context (@NoContextTrek) July 25, 2022

Flying pancake ep of TOS was the 1st sci-fi I ever saw on TV! I was a bit too young to know wtf was going on, but the image of those things falling from the ceiling stuck with me.

rip x 2

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PGMAAOSwwE5WZOwC/s-l500.jpg

To me Warner will always be the Bab5 character in "Grail".

HOW MANY LIGHTS, TRAYCE?

I'm intrigued as to whether there is an agreed shark jumping point for Discovery or if one should just pooh pooh it from the get go. Like

Ups and downs in the first two seasons; second season is better but won't make much sense without watching the first. Third seasons starts well but then I gave up. Suggest watching the Pike/Spock/Number 1 episodes and pooh-poohing the rest.

The first season is like a season-long "Naked Now" -- everyone acts weirdly out-of-character before you get a chance to know what they're actually like (although what they're actually like isn't much of an improvement). Not sure it was a good idea to launch the first new series in a fifteen years totally in media res.

I think I'll give up on Discovery, I haven't grown to like any of the characters too much, in fact I'm getting increasingly sick of some of them. I don't want to be one of those negative fan people but this and Picard have been hugely disappointing - the latter quite depressingly so. Stewart should have said no, as it turns out.

On a brighter note, Lower Decks is back soon!

Strange New Worlds is great if you've not seen that

I watched the first two episodes and liked them - I think ST still works better as an episodic series, really

Agree about Picard and Disco, and I'm indifferent to the cartoons, but Strange New Worlds is a total gem.

Discovery jumped the shark immediately but there were occasional signs of life in the first couple of seasons - the doctor (sometimes), Jason Isaacs and Michelle Yeoh are fun to watch and stand out because everyone else sucks all the energy and joy out when they're on screen.

DISCO kind of is two different series, the first two seasons, and the last two. The first two seasons are overly grimdark, with a lot of gore that felt gratuitous and meant simply to shock. As for the last two season, I've been struggling to articulate why I find it to be so bad. I think it's wildly inconsistent main characters, complete indifference to secondary characters, and bad long-term storytelling where characters suddenly have some interest/ability/backstory meant to only serve the immediate story beat (Saru and Michael start out as rivals with a bunch of resentment and then suddenly become BFFs, as just one example), and just really shabby sci fi writing (admittedly that's kind of Trek tradition, but it's not always been so sustained).

PIC just gets into some aimless plots and is too caught up in allegory and then "DO YOU SEE?" of it all.

Sometimes I kind of feel that DISCO and PIC both took all the wrong lessons from DS9.

I did find the first two seasons of Discovery invigoratingly ambitious with its bug-eyed determination to show it wasn’t your grandpa’s Star Trek anymore. It totally failed to land this ambition and ended up pleasing nobody, but the attempt was a wild ride. Agree the Pike/Spock stuff was good fun.

Season 3 set-up was kind of interesting? But then you could feel the energy fading as the season went on. Season 4 felt like one of those later seasons of Voyager where the franchise only existed because there kind of had to be a Star Trek show and everything felt tired and defeated.

have never felt the slightest urge to watch Picard! nothing i have seen on here or elsewhere is making me reconsider.

Yeah I'm more of a DISCO fan than many but it was really up and down.

- Klingon war plot: bad and confusing (and that FONT)
- Michelle Yeoh and Jason Isaacs: good
- mirror universe baddies: awesome
- Stamets and the spore drive plot: started off annoying, got really iteresting esp when Culver "died"
- red star/Spock/Pike section: engaging and interesting story
- Section 31/Control plot: this needed a lot more expanding. Needs a spin off! What the hell was all this about, it seemed important then just went pffft
- initial jump to future: some fun bits with the nasty courier dude and Books story
- the rest: it just... sort of went all over the place. The Burn's cause was stupid, the planet destroying black hole or whatever was stupid, the constant feelings an crying and whispering was stupid. Tarka had potential but ended up annoying. Gah!

Oh I forgot all about the Ash plot! I liked him.

klingons themselves were also pretty wtf for a while in Disco too

but yeah i think i was
s1 first half: uhh no?
s1 2nd half: wait, ok YES
s2: Hell Yes!
s3: wait. this? no.
s4: please stop with this.

like they just kept doubling down on everything that annoyed me or so it seemed lmao

i do still like the characters tho?
i just want them to get to do more like, missiony story stuff and less therapy. or how about NO therapy

I have completely blanked out on how the planet destroyer super alien edge of the galaxy plotline shook out

The future jump would have been a perfect moment for them to switch gears into episodic adventures - what better situation for a lot of non-universe-in-the-balance problems and how the only spore drive ship in existence can help solve them!

Tie for worst scene: weepy eulogies for Space Hitler vs. "I feel seen"