ALL SCI-FI

Bud Brewster · Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:12 pm; edited 4 times in total

Director Nicolas Meyer does another fine job of steering the Enterprise back on track after those less worthy movies caused it to be lost in space since The Wrath of Khan.

Kirk really gets to act like Kirk in this one, right down to seducing a female alien . . . who turns out not to be female! Or is she? With shape shifters, you never know.

The presence of Captain Sulu is a genuine delight to Trekkers everywhere. In fact, all TOS hands are on deck and ready for action in a story which, thankfully, is focused on something we all understand -- those "damn Klingon bastards" -- who killed Jim's son and their tricky political maneuvers.

Bones gets to bust out of prison with Jim, Chekov gets to practice pronouncing V's as W's, and Spock gets to mind meld with Kim Cattrall, the secret erotic fantasy of every Trekker.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Pow · Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 7:52 am Post subject:

It was great to see Captain Sulu.

However, I always found it strange that George campaigned for the promotion with the producers.

Had the ST:TOS cast continued with more feature films, Sulu would not be the helmsman on the Enterprise bridge any longer.

And writing Sulu & his own ship into further adventures with the Enterprise in all future ST movies would have seemed highly illogical.

Seems like George kinda talked himself out of a job.

Bud Brewster · Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 10:15 am Post subject:

Hey, that's a great observation! Very Happy

Maybe George was hoping they would expand the stories a bit and let Captain Sulu and his ship work with the Enterprise on some important mission. The writers could put a few of the other regulars (Uhura or Chekov, perhaps) on Sulu's ship so that we would have a wider range of characters in the story (the two bridges, the two crews).

And maybe George figured they might make a few Star Trek movies with him after the other cast members got too old or passed away.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

trekriffic · Starship Navigator Joined: 19 Feb 2015 Posts: 593

One of my favorite of all the Star Trek original cast movies. Loved the opening sequence with the explosion of Praxis and seeing the Excelsior ride out the energy wave it created.

A friend of mine on another forum created this image of that event using my Excelsior model...

One thing that's always bothered me though was the lack of an automated shield activation mechanism on the Excelsior.

Sulu, eyes wide in horror, had to shout an order to activate the shields when he realized the peril facing the ship from the approaching wall of energy.

Shouldn't the ship's long range sensors have recognized the danger long before Captain and crew were aware of it thus triggering the ships shields to deploy automatically?

Surely, at a time like that, every second counts.

I suppose waiting until the last second to deploy them made for more tension and drama cinematically, so I can understand why the scene was written that way, but it still bugs me a little bit.

Bud Brewster · Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 8:56 pm Post subject:

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I hate to say it, trekriffic, but your comment nails a problem with Star Trek in general that has grown worse every year.

Science fiction has always suffered from the danger that science would make the fiction look ridiculous far sooner than the authors anticipated. And today's technological advances are galloping over the predictions of the past like a herd of horny buffaloes! Shocked

This is especially true with Star Trek. Consider these examples:

The nasal voice of Majel Barrett as the computer in TOS sounds ludicrous and annoying compared the sultry Siri from our own smart phones.

Our home security systems detects intruders better than the Enterprise did.

And we can buy toy robots now that walk around delivering more intelligent dialog than Nomad did in the episode that ST: TMP was based on!

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We have passenger jets that can be programmed to take off, fly to their destination, and land while the pilot flirts with the stewardess sitting on his lap. Wink

So, it's downright silly to propose that 23rd Century starships would not have computers that could act in microseconds when an emergency like the one we see in this movie occur.

And even though I fully understand the need for balancing drama and realism in a movie, I think the filmmakers in this case should not be excused from finding a way to make the story both dramatic and intelligent while not dumbing-down 23rd Century technology for 21st Century audiences.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Bud Brewster · Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:57 pm Post subject:

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I love this movie, but while watching my DVD of it tonight I was annoyed by the frequent references to "magnetic boots" and "gravity boots" as if the two concepts were the same.

Clearly, they are not.

This is a prime example of how the screenwriters in Hollywood on the early Star Trek films didn't know enough about science to avoid making embarrassing blunders like this.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)