Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

Starship Farragut: The Crossing

[Valka]

I see Warped9 called 09 "a piece of [poop]" yesterday, and hasn't been trolled for it yet...

Are you talking about another person or the 2009 movie?

[Buster's Uncle]

The movie.  I know you've taken a lot of crap over there for not liking crap...

[Valka]

Warped9 has taken a lot of abuse for it, too. Has BillJ chimed in yet? He's one of the obnoxious ones that made my ignore list years ago.

[Buster's Uncle]

I didn't memorize the names, but I don't think so...

[Elok]

Huh.  People on an actual Star Trek forum like the Abrams abomination(s)?  I didn't know that was even allowed.  Like people on a chocolate forum playing apologists for carob.

The (s) is because I didn't bother seeing the second one after the first desecration, and knowing Valka's strong feelings on the matter I am merely allowing for the possibility that it was as atrocious as commonly claimed.   

[Valka]

Huh.  People on an actual Star Trek forum like the Abrams abomination(s)?  I didn't know that was even allowed.  Like people on a chocolate forum playing apologists for carob.

The (s) is because I didn't bother seeing the second one after the first desecration, and knowing Valka's strong feelings on the matter I am merely allowing for the possibility that it was as atrocious as commonly claimed.   

Some people on that site insist on accusing me of being a "Berman Trek" fan - in other words, if it's TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc., I must love it while hating TOS or that crap that is nothing but a TOS caricature (I'm referring to the Abramsverse movies, not the fan films, some of which are excellent).

They come back with "well, TOS wasn't perfect, so why expect Abrams Trek to be perfect?"

The fact is that I can't stand the lead actors, and only barely tolerate the one who plays nuSulu - he's at least age-appropriate and tries to do a credible portrayal. He doesn't act like a goofy frat boy like the nuKirk actor, he doesn't scream and rant like nuSpock (whose most prevalent facial expression makes me keep wanting to offer him a mixture of bran and prune juice), he's not plain ridiculous like nuChekov, totally unprofessional like nuUhura (with her constant on-duty whining about how nuSpock doesn't pay enough attention to her feelings), he doesn't have a silly sidekick like nuScotty, and he's not a cipher with a few one-liners like nuMcCoy.

You'll notice I use the prefix "nu" in front of these characters because I don't consider them to be anything but cartoon caricatures, unworthy of respect.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'll say one thing about the abomination - it underlines how much worse TNG could have been, and teaches me sympathy for TNG fans.  For years now, it's like all the other knockoffs were never there - and maybe those fans will come to understand how I always felt...

[Elok]

That actually really surprises me, Valka.  I'd have expected you to despise AbramsTrek for the same reasons I did, only more so.

Star Trek, originally, was driven by a kind of bright scientific humanism: a showcase of where reason and good will could ostensibly lead us in the future.  Now, I don't believe in any such thing; I believe we're largely perverse and self-centered, always have been, and will remain so no matter how many things we invent.  But it's fun to vacation in that worldview for a while, the same way I enjoy reading the Iliad despite disbelief in Zeus, or Tom Clancy despite disbelief in red-blooded meatheaded 'Muricanism.

Along comes Abrams.  Kirk, originally an idealistic maverick who took risks and bent rules to serve the higher good, is a smirking, self-aggrandizing creep who thinks only of himself.  The plot is utter nonsense apparently thrown together in five minutes and not looked at again until it was time to shoot.  Sulu, the first (and possibly last) Asian character famous for something other than chop-socky, spends most of his screen time swinging a magic space katana.  And then there's the ending, where Kirk and Spock hang around shooting at an already doomed ship for reasons of pure emotional catharsis, in the process endangering their own vessel and everyone aboard.  For this, they (okay, mostly Kirk) are given a commendation.  This is not Star Trek.

Being aspie, I hardly know good acting from bad, so that bothers me less.

[Buster's Uncle]

Absolutely - it seems like the bulk of fans of even the real thing fail to put their finger on what's special about Star Trek - largely alone in the space opera genre, it's something in the traditon ol' dumb Flash Gordon stuff, being the optimistic future you don't see any more, but smarter, idealistic and political in a swiftian way, but not in your face, adventure, but not about the violence like Star Wars (the difference being right there in the names).

09 is Star Track for people who don't like Star Trek, and poop on 'em for pooping on us.

Valka's perspective is pretty much a woman's take - lady fans almost 100% gravitate in their interests towards the people and the soap opera - as opposed to the guy's interest in the ships and the battles and the science fiction stuff.  There's nearly 50 years' worth of fanfic bearing me out on that general trend...

[Buster's Uncle]

Starship Farragut: The Crossing

Viewing about to commence - will review, but I don't have a great feeling about this one...

Nemesis later, if the timing works out...

[Buster's Uncle]

2:16

I gotta say un front that the interior ship sets are exquisite, but the CGI looks very CG - and the cast has that lame Fans in Home Made Uniforms look.  It's a fanfilm thing, that you can't be that down on a fanfilm for, but just sayin'.

[Buster's Uncle]

4:16

It REALLY bugs me when real Star Trek fanfilms underline a major point of the -ahem- enterprise by doing things like using a movie-ish warp effect instead of showing it the way they did on the show.  Obviously, all fanfilms are going to pull that sort of crap forever, so I'll be complaining that long.  It just takes me out of the film and reminds me it's not real when they put in any element from any other (per)version...

[Buster's Uncle]

9:19

They really blew giving us a good enough look at the Potemkin for the next several minutes to make sense - if you hadn't had the reveal spoiled by the trailer.  It took me three minutes to realize that the reveal wasn't still upcoming.  And I was bent forward LOOKING for exactly what I missed.  That there's a phail..

[Buster's Uncle]

9:24  Got a good look at the brass plate by the turbolift, and they have the Farragut wrongly "Starship Class", not "Constitution Class".  So much work and money and high-octane pedantry had to have gone into that set, then such a bonehead error...