Star Trek

[Trenacker]

I've seen both the "Axanar" prequel, which is gorgeous and well-acted, and the new "Renegades" short film by the same director, which is anything but.

Both use the Star Trek universe as the backdrop for stories about war, although Axanar most succeeds at capturing the contemplative side of 'Trek.

"Axanar" is shot in the style of a documentary, and includes a handful of well-known actors. Screen time is divided between gorgeous space battles in high definition and close-ups of interviewees, both Federation and Klingon. The film benefits immensely from this format, which spares it the need for an expensive set or high-complexity green screen work. The actors are also highly believable and the script is well done.

"Renegades" is a self-described "Dirty Dozen meets Star Trek." The cast is full of actors who would be instantly recognizable even to an audience that had never before seen an episode of Star Trek, but none of them do more than phone it in. (Robert Picardo, in the film for all of five minutes, manages to deliver the strongest performance.) Among the worst acting is delivered by Koenig himself, although Russ is not far behind. The director of Axanar takes the cake, though, which is sad because his talent is so obviously on display in that project. The writing is poor to the point that major plot developments are spoken rather than seen. A majority of the characters are inexplicably angry, and more than a few behave stupidly for that reason -- so stupidly, in fact, that it stretches the bounds of plausibility. The villain, while visually impressive, is entirely one-dimensional. My advice is to skip this one even though it's now apparently going to appear as a YouTube serial.

[Valka]

The Axanar thread over at TrekBBS got so heated and vitriolic, the mods shut it down. As far as I'm concerned, if they finish it some day I'll watch it. If not, there will be much fury from the people who contributed money, but since I'm not one of those, I won't get too worked up about it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Star Trek Renegades is finally out:

Star Trek: Renegades (Official Complete Film)

[Valka]

Wow. That was...

Um...

The music wasn't too bad.

 

[Trenacker]

I tried to warn you.

[Dio]

I tried to warn you.

This movie resulted in a net loss that approximately equals one and a half hours of my life .

[Buster's Uncle]

I still haven't seen it, but what does one expect of that many 'professional' actors doing a fan film?

-Not exactly something Brad Pitt has time for.

[Valka]

There's no need to put quotation marks. These people to whom you refer are professionals; at least they've got legitimate acting credentials.

The problem isn't so much the acting, it's the script and the directing. Mind you, Walter Koenig... well he just couldn't keep his Chekov accent consistent.

The only problem I had with Adrienne Wilkinson is that I identify her so strongly with her role in Xena as Livia/Eve and she had a lot of Livia-type fight scenes, that I kept expecting Lucy Lawless/Xena to show up, make mincemeat of the aliens, and get everything over with. As for her character, I have absolutely no idea in hell what that was all about. I get that she's apparently so special that Evil Bad Men wanted her as a child and her mother tried to protect her and (apparently) died, but why is something I don't remember being mentioned.

This is the first time I ever saw Sean Young in anything other than the 1984 Dune movie. I wouldn't have known it was her if someone else hadn't mentioned she was in it.

Edward Furlong? Well, obviously he's no longer the smartalecky kid from the second Terminator movie. He did an adequate job.

Icheb's character background makes sense in the context; he states that after Voyager got back, he was recruited by Section 31. This Icheb is much darker than his Voyager character, though, and the script plays fast and loose with some of his established character traits.

It was nice to see Robert Picardo again. And Tim Russ, while not on my list of "favorite Voyager actors", did an adequate job as Tuvok.

A surprise was Admiral Paris... and talk about character assassination. This version of Paris was not like the one we knew on Voyager. Talk about screwing up a thousand times worse than Tom ever did...

There were some other characters running around... a Betazoid with dysfunctional telepathy, an Andorian computer hacker, and another character who I can't tell what she's supposed to be - a Klingon/Vulcan hybrid, judging by the abysmal makeup job.

The girls playing Chekov's granddaughter and her fellow cadet were cute.

And the story added up to a huge WTF? because none of it made any sense at all. This is an example of a "Bad Fanfic Script" that doesn't have sufficient respect for its source material (in that respect it's just like the nuTrek movies).

If they ever make another, I guess I might watch it... maybe. Depends on who is in it, since I do like Robert Picardo.

[Buster's Uncle]

I thought I laid this out pretty well today, probably better than I put it here months ago, so just as well share here.

I'm thinking of the multiple parallel Earths they found, including Miri's world.  I'm thinking of the generic Native Americans in Paradise Syndrome who were transplanted so recently by the Preservers that Spock thought he recognized the tribes from across the lake. -Probably circa only 500 years ago, when Europeans introduced smallpox and were about to ruin everything for the natives.  -It couldn't have been much longer back, and that supplies a motivation for a rescue transplant.

-The Preservers -who may or may not have any connection to Sargon's progenitor race, but it's a neater story if they do- were around, alive and active, THAT recently.

I'm thinking about humanoids, often indistinguishable from European-descended earthlings, everywhere.  (It must annoy the living crap out of the Klingons and Romulans if the same holds in their territories.)

I'm thinking about Miri, from a world that not only looks like Earth -without clouds for some reason- who is running around, an immortal little girl already 100 years old right. now. in a city that looks like 50's US gone to seed.

I'm thinking about the Comm's father in Omega Glory -Captain Tracy certainly believed it hard enough to turn traitor and mass murderer- who is already 800 right. now. on a world that must have even had its own Thomas Jefferson to write that US Constitution somewhere in the neighborhood of over 1,000 years before we did.

We don't know what year it was on the Roman world -though it looked like 60's US, AD. 1,000 is possible, but it could be anytime a few hundred years after the western Empire fell on our world, to give them time to develop the tech- but it had a Jesus (or close enough) in its far past.

Some parallel world's histories were based on a model we hadn't gotten to yet.


Earth is not the original Earth, QED.


-And SOMEbody(s) very powerful, old and patient is clearly active out there -for more than a thousand years, at least, and until very recently, if not currently- with a deep interest in humans and (massive long-running) historical -or something- experiments.

...That's a good novel's worth of story premise -or more- right there.

If only we knew some accomplished fanfic writers...

[Buster's Uncle]

Say - how much have I talked about my connected-to-the-above ideas on ST galactic history, human evolution and the Galactic Barrier?

[Geo]

.

[Buster's Uncle]

Try making it white, if you're going for invisible.  That'll work half the time...

Buncle's pastime:

[Geo]

Κραπ, θε πηκτυρη χεαντηρ χοβς.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh please, not that crap again.

[Geo]

Γρηκποβερ!