Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

14:44

Romulans sensibly retreating a loosing battle without achieving their high-priority mission objective?  Oookay.  Looks like they were close enough to the Horizon to make a self-destruct instead not an empty gesture, -those warp drives ought to pack a lot more power than a nuke- but --- oh, it's total bullcrap.

I don't hate that the captain isn't a handsome leading man -ship captains in water navies are almost always too old for that, and it's a realistic touch- but some of his line readings could be better.  I assume he's going to have to carry this picture...


-Notwithstanding my quibbles, this is quite good, so far.

[Buster's Uncle]

20:34 (Note that the times given tend to be after what I'm directly commenting on - it's where I was when I stopped to comment)

The Romulan continuity problem is just not going to go away - this is simply not compatible with Balance of Terror, where no one knew the Romulans looked like that until they saw Spock's dad on the screen.  I can think of handwaves to cover that, but not any that aren't weak as water, and stupid.

[Buster's Uncle]

27:06

I suspect this whole thing could use a careful tightening edit -a second here, a second there, less at places in dragging dialogue- to really get over the top as professional quality.  It is that close, and I'm still in the exposition part before the plot really gets going, but I keep thinking the timing is a little off all the time, and wondering whether it's bad direction of good actors or good direction getting the best possible performance from rank amateurs.

[Buster's Uncle]

31:25

They've set up such an obvious drama with the Rom spy girl being distrusted by the officers that calls for her to turn out to be righteous and true in the end - I just want to say that I think I'll be disappointed if I'm right, but have trouble seeing it paying off satisfyingly if I'm not...

The writing is pretty good so far, but I feel like the script is telling me the crew is worn out and not ready to go back into combat, and not showing it enough.  Like the previous point, it's all in the payoff, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

40:21

The Romulan admiral looks and sounds WAY too young to be an admiral - and just. doesn't. sound. like a Romulan.  They have a tendency to a certain prevailing reserve, not unlike Vulcans -they mostly act cold, like giving away your reactions openly is dangerous- at best you get the sense that instead of suppressing emotions, they're very fond of their poker faces; Captain Picard once remarked, of Romulans, "It's always a game a chess with them."  -I always thought that was perfect, besides being the only time I think anything TNG and after got Romulans right...  This admiral wouldn't make a credible human one, let alone Romulan.  Too shouty and feelings on his sleeve to have made his way up the dominance hierarchy of a race of chess players.

Ironically, I find the Human characters' performances often too flat...

[Buster's Uncle]

42:14

Captain Hawke sure acts in command of the fleet for someone I didn't catch being put in charge...

[Valka]

4:23

Iconians?  Whazzat?

(I'm asking if they were made up for this, or I'm missing a TNG or something reference...)

It's a TNG reference. Picard used an Iconian gateway to escape a dicey situation in one episode.

[Buster's Uncle]

I thought that was T'konn...


I gotta buckle down and finish this thing, but every time I go into the kitchen for something, I end up talking to Momma for a while...

[Valka]

TNG got lazy with naming stuff.

[Buster's Uncle]

YA THINK?

(There's actually a thing I'd thought about there directly at the beginning of the movie, that if I was doing a story involving the last generation of starfaring civilizations in this part of the galaxy -First Federation, the Orions at their height, etc. [Mylochka and I have discussed the very thing as background/story fodder]- I wouldn't want to contradict TNG and leave out the T'Konn -not least because of the [wrong] fans who would object- but I'd call them something else to avoid directly referencing continuity I don't believe in [I HATE it when real Trek fanfilms do that] except once, quickly in passing, and put it down to translation differences.)


58:09

Lots of Momma breaks not withstanding, I find this to be picking up the pace/interest as it gets into the actual plot - which comes as no surprise.  Making the setup parts interesting is not easily done, and I could tell it for what it was as I waited through it.

[Buster's Uncle]

1:01:01

Now THIS fellow sounds like a ROMULAN.

[Buster's Uncle]

9:34

It's not rational to expect anyone to hold to the Blish version of the Romulan war, not least a fanfic of Enterprise, which contradicted Blish -and actual continuity- on the Romulans, but I'm bothered anyway.  grumble grumble grumble

To be fair, and expand on this point, they made the right choice; they could do the Romulans right, and contradict absolutely everything made since 1986 -which got the Romulans wrong- or piss off a MUCH smaller number of 'Star Track' fans by agreeing with the show they were making a fanfilm in.

I'm still going to grouse about these Roms at will, mind you.  Post your own review and be wrong out loud, if you disagree.

[Buster's Uncle]

1:03:16

He's getting less flat of affect. ;disappointed;

[Buster's Uncle]

1:04:39

Beaming down just the communicators would be A LOT safer -phase pistols have to have heavy powerpacks (that we know can be made to explode impressively)- and should tend to help make a transporter lock.  I would venture that if conditions are too dicey to beam people up, they may be very bad for beaming down anything with considerable explosive potential.  -Also, why the heck put down to 'metal deposits' in the cave walls of a massive alien underground complex that you could have blamed on machinery and bulkheads and energy fields and shielding?

[Buster's Uncle]

1:10:21

I've seen a lot of comments on TrekBBS that this wraps up dangling plotlines from Enterprise.  Okay, I don't quite see how the time travel element here is going to lead to that, but they've got another half hour - and if they can make sense of the Temporal Cold War, or at LEAST do something interesting with it, good on 'em, and forgiveness for doing much time travel stuff in Star Track being lame.  It WAS lame on Enterprise.