I think the reason I bear such unremitting hatred for Nemesucks is because I like the Romulans. They've always had great potential that has been woefully underused. When I first heard that the Romulans were going to be the "enemy" in Trek X, I was excited. Maybe we would get Sela back in a big muthafuckin' Khan-esque way. Which would have made me happy. Maybe the Romulans would instigate a war that would lead to a movie arc. But no. What we got was so crayola-by-numbers that it was irritating. And possibly more dissapointing than Attack of the Clones. And don't get me started on the uselessness of Data's "death."

So, I have to say I think TUC may have grown into my favorite Trek, ever.

I just sat through it 3 times in a row. Once movie only, then the Meyer/Flynn commentrak, and then Okudatext. Then I watched the entire 2nd disc (and cried at the tribute to Kelley).

I think the greatest thing that happened to Trek was Nicholas Meyer; I cannot conceive of the film franchise surviving long enough for Paramount to decide TNG would be viable without Khan. While he's not the best film commentator of all time (he and Flynn both had a tendency to repeat themselves just minutes apart), and his personal take on Trek grated Roddenberry to no end (I love the fact that Roddenberry hated the script... largely because I hate most of Roddenberry's scripts), he's responsible for the 4 best non-DS9 hours of Trek ever, IMO.

Maybe it's just that the DVD is fresher, but I've decided that on a whole, I think TUC works better than Khan. I don't have the whole "how could they not notice a whole planet was missing?" phenomenon ruining the basic set-up.

One question that I have never found a suitable answer to, and was disappointed to not find an explanation on the DVD... why did they have Colonel West made-up as a Klingon to assassinate the President? Why not just have one of the Klingon conspirators do it?

For the longest time I always assumed that the line about, "An ancestor of mine maintained that once you have eliminated the impossible..." was meant to imply that Holmes was Vulcan (which makes a kind of sense given his prodigious intellect). It wasn't until Meyer mentioned it that it occured to me that maybe Holmes was a great-grandpere of Amanda, and then I felt incredibly dense.

Plus, he was one of the writers of TVH.

I'm not sure the movie wouldn't work better without the West portions altogether (as it was originally).

Regarding Holmes: Remember that that's how Meyer gained fame in the first place- three books and one movie.

TFF had a lot of nice moments between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. In fact, the scene where McCoy has to deal with his father's death was really powerful. The plot wasn't fundatmentally flawed, i.e. the idea of going to find God was a good setup, it just wasn't carried out particularly well. I know Shatner had a completely different ending and the studio slashed his budget. As to editing problems (passing the same floor twice, etc), Paramount pushed up the release date and it didn't leave enough time for post-production. At a convention years ago, one of the speakers (It's been more than a decade, I can't remember who) made mention that Paramount was in the process of trying to buy another studio at the time TFF was being made. They needed quick cash, they knew Star Trek always makes money first weekend regardless of how good the movie is (those were the days), so they slashed the budget and forced Shatner to send it out early to generate some quick cash. Yes, it was a pretty bad movie, but it didn't HAVE to be.

Nemesis just didn't deliver on what could have been some great moments. Why wasn't Shinzon doing a more over-the-top version of Picard. And shouldn't they have had more in common? They were clones. In fact, Shinzon should have been inserting himself into Picard's dreams rather than Troi's, since they shared DNA. The Romulans turned into wusses and the Remans just didn't cut it as villians. The other question I had, is if the Remans were capable of building such fantastic ships and they were so much more powerful, how did the Federation survive all this time? Oh yeah, and New Data was a dork. Bring back Classic Data.

I thought Insurrection was pretty good, mainly because it was like watching an extended episode of Next Gen. The Next Generation cast never really made the big screen transition. They hadn't really finished telling all the stories they could have on television, so there wasn't any real need to go to the big screen. Insurrection just felt like a pretty good episode of the show and I liked that. I never went to a Next Gen film expecting the sort of spectacle that the original cast put on. But it was a different time.

If I were voting, I'd give the nod to Nemesis. I can find some redeeming qualities in both TFF and Insurrection, but I can't think of anything nice to say about Nemesis

That depends on what part of the nature-nurture debate you subscribe to. I figure they'd have similar aptitudes, but their personalities would most likely be shaped by their environments: Picard was raised in France, while Shinzon was raised in a hole in the ground. As for the dream thing, I think he went to Troi simply because she was the local psychic.

It ended. Does that count?

I thought the climatic battle between the Enterprise and Schimitar was pretty cool. Although the Data stuff was just too damned much.

I was just thinking- the movie would've been pretty good without the Data story at all (besides, it was a bit of a ripoff from the Geordi story in Generations, with the "inside man" and all). They could have replaced it with something...well, I'm not sure what, but that's what writers are paid to think of.

I never thought of that. I always took it as a sort of meta-statement about Spock being a literary descendent of Holmes.

I liked Nemesis well enough, perhaps because I went in with very low expectations. For me, Insurrection will always be the worst. Partly because of the stupid "humour" and partly because I fundamentally disagreed with the rebellion - I can't see why those people (who were, remember, not native but colonists) particularly had the right to stay there just because it happened to have made them immortal. Boo hoo, you already got several extra free lifetimes, don't be greedy. Plus, I'd like the idea of a movie-sized TV episode more if the actors didn't all look ... strange ... blown up to that size. For me, an over-the-top, blockbuster plot is needed to make them look right.

Just watched TUC on DVD, and remembered again why I love it so. Although they made a change to the movie: now when Valeris names the conspirators, they cut to an image of them. That might have been useful the first time I saw the movie, when I wasn't quite sure who Admiral Cartwright was, but now it'll distract me every time with the thought, "That wasn't there before."

I know why I like it better than WoK. It's the politics. I've always eaten up the interstellar politics portion of Trek. They were my favorite TNG episodes, and it's why DS9 is my favorite series.

I love the trial scene, which is why I was so hard on ENT's "Judgment". Because if they're going to recreate possibly my favorite scene in my favorite Trek movie, they better treat it well. And maybe they did, but I was hyper-critical.

I always took it to mean that Amanda was a descendant of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...?

dc3, there's something called "The Game" in which it is assumed that Holmes really did live. That's why Meyer published his Holmes novels as "edited from Dr. Watson's manuscripts." It's fairly widespread- look in the index of a book that mentions Holmes, and you'll likely see him indexed as a real person.

And the ensemble is so much stronger. Christopher Plummer is great, as is David Warner, and I even didn't hate the Federation President, which between TVH and DS9, is a first.

I also love the brief appearance from the slimy Romulan ambassador. Although one wonders why they're invited to peace talks between the Federation and the Klingons, since A) they're not involved, and B) neither the Federation nor the Empire trusts or likes them all that much.

Politics. The Feds didn't wants the Romulans thinking there was some super-secret alliance in the works, which could have (from the Romulans' P.O.V.) been a prelude to war. So, the Romulans get included with complete access, and nobody gets an itchy trigger finger. Well, almost nobody, but you get the idea.

I tried to get TUC:the Director's Cut at Tower this weekend. They didn't have any, nor did Media Play. Did these idiots not even bother to get more than five copies??

Grr. I really wanted to see TUC again.

I think calling it a Director's Cut would be generous in the extreme, though. :)

Really, the only noticeable change is the inclusion of quick cuts to images of the conspirators during Spock's mind-meld with Valeris. I think it amps up the tension considerably. I've always felt Spock was dancing on a line in that scene before... for some reason, during my four viewings this weekend I felt that he didn't just dance on it, he crossed it full speed. That scene was dark, and makes all of the various Deanna mind-rapes (I'm looking at you Nemesis) seem... ridiculous.

Other changes include some minor editorial quirks (most of them in that same scene... changing a wide shot for a closeup and vice versa), but nothing that really changes the scene much.

As for the Doyle/Holmes thing... I could see the argument for Doyle, but given Meyer's history, and his own words in the Commentrak, he was aiming to imply that Holmes was the human ancestor, not Doyle.

I love the extras on Disc 2. I've never been a gung-ho Klingon fan... I find them to usually be rather stock characters. But the history of Klingons, both as Trek lore and the actors who played them, was a really well put together documentary.

The "Stories from Trek VI" were interesting as well; Shatner is such a mystery. Sometimes he can seem like the most genuine guy, then he seems like an outright asshole, and then he has a glint in his eye and you can't tell if he's really being mean or just being really dry on the sarcasm. As much for tweaking Roddenberry's sensibilities as for knowing the best way to direct and edit Shatner (particularly re: "Let them die!"), I just can't say enough good about Meyer.

Wordy McWord. That's exactly what it is about TUC which makes me love it the best. And the same with DS9, the politics thing is different, fresh and credits the audience with a certain degree of intelligence. But also comes complete with ass-kicking action scenes. All that business with Federation conspiracies, corrupt ambassadors, new alliances and political sacrifices was a thousand and one times more interesting than T'Pol's stretchy space catsuit or Voyager's... whatever it was Voyager supposedly had going for it.

I disliked the Baku as much as I disliked the proper bad guys. We're all beautiful people, immortal, living a simple life but capable of amazing technologies if we wanted, this isn't really our planet but we're not sharing because it's our basic right to live forever and ever...

If all they wanted was to live a peaceful simple life I'm sure the Federation could come up with a suitable planet. Stop cheating death.

I don't know why the So'na didn't just set up shop on the other side of the world. Insurrection is a classic example of Trek thinking a planet is just one village.

Well, we find out that the So'na have an axe to grind with those people. But someone else could have thought to ask that.

Does Meyer explicitly mention that he was going against Roddenberry's wishes at points? (I'm still waiting for the DVD to arrive.)

Exactly!

Seems to me the whole Trek philosophy is against the idea of just stultifying forever in a village and not connecting with other cultures.

Oh, but that would make sense.



There's an "it takes a village" joke in there somewhere, but I ain't touchin' it.



Good point, BUT...it's not the Fed's call to make (the Prime Directive, remember?). If these people want to sit around and contemplate their navels all day, that's their right (remember "Miramanee" & co. from TOS?).

I can see Picard's point about forcibly moving the Baku being wrong. Even if they are just the Interstellar Amish and have settled there, rather than being native. And I understand why the Sona want them dead. That all makes sense. I just don't get why the Federation doesn't set up a hospital on the other side of the planet.

That's not the movie's biggest flaw by a mile , but I won't get started on the Insurrection-bashing, because I can never stop.

Oh, okay. The redundant Data character-non-plot is the worst part.

Yeah, even if the Federation is all, "This energy can do a lot of good," there's no need to harvest it and destroy its source, when it's utterly usuable exactly as it is. Despite it being in the "Briar Patch", there's no sense that it's at all challenging to get in there.

We're supposed to believe that the situation with the Dominion War is so dire that the Federation is desperate enough for ANY allies that they're willing to whore out their morals to get in bed with the So'na. It's a rather key point that gets a glossed over treatment, and they made the whole thing too much adventure romp instead.

Especially when the So'na are supposed to be helping the Dominion.

Did the Federation know that the So'na were helping the Dominion in the movie?

Riker mentioned that they'd been making ketracel white, which only has one application--keeping the Jem'Hadar in line.

Yeah, I'd rather have seen an insurrection over the shit-awful allies the Federation made to save their own asses than over some penny-ante Fountain of Youth. Plus, then we wouldn't have had that horrid "Klingon puberty" joke *shudder*.

Edited because I finally found a grammatical error three days after posting.

He does say that Roddenberry hated the script specifically; generally, though, Rodd just didn't like Meyer's militari-fication of Starfleet and his violation of the "No prejudice" cornerstone of his utopia.

I think this is another case of Roddenberry believing his own hype. No one's allowed to hold a grudge against Klingons because they've been at war for so long, and yet it's okay to constantly poke fun at Spock's ears and blood and mannerisms?

Besides which, the ultimate lesson of TUC is that everyone who hates Klingons, up to and including Kirk himself, is wrong. Are we really supposed to believe that people never need to be reminded why prejudice is wrong? They just all know it all the time?

I thought the PD didn't apply in this case because the society was warp drive capable (they chose not to use it, but they had previously reached a stage of discovering it). That's why the importance of them not being native to that planet - they got there using warp drive then, uh, scrapped it when they saw how nice it was, or something. So, to me, it wasn't really their right to 'claim' that planet as their exclusive property. Stultifying on your own planet of origin is one thing, going somewhere else, occupying it and keeping it all to yourself - and if I remember rightly, they weren't going to allow the Federation access? - is something else.

OK. So I've watched the full Meyer/Flinn commentary for TUC now, and frankly? I'm pissed.

Not one word on why Uhura wouldn't be fluent in Klingon, which to my mind, is like a communications officer on a U.S. vessel patrolling the Soviet border at the height of the Cold War not knowing Russian. I mean, this woman teaches in her field at Starfleet Academy and she needs books and a backup crew to stumble through a basic greeting?!? (I believe that's my first use of the interrobang [tm James Thurber], so bear with me if it's inappropriate here.)

It's certainly not Worst. Trek Movie. Ever. since TFF gives the rest of the films soooo much room to maneuver, but I've been hoping for over a year that Meyer might explain that choice better than [paraphrase]Nichelle is so good at comic material.[/paraphrase], and now those hopes have been dashed. Dammit. Ok, I'm done. Nothing more to see here.

Can I assume that Meyer doesn't explain the gaping plot holes in WOK either? Dramatic license is best ignored, I suppose.

What plot holes? WOK is the Best. Trek Movie. Ever. There are no plot holes!
[sticks banana in ear] Lalalalalala....sorry, it sounded like you said Khan's crew looks 40 years younger than he is, but I can't hear you, because I have a banana in my ear...

Well, the missing planet, of course...

Here are a couple more from TUC:

Excelsior's sensors don't pick up an energy wave (I assume matter can't go that far) until after Sulu's cup smashes? Come to think, it takes forever for the cup to fall, everyone's staring at it, and no one stops it? And where, for the millionth time, are the seatbelts? OK, you didn't see the wave coming. But when heading into battle?

Speaking of the wave- it's flat. What are chances of its edge just happening to meet Excelsior?

Here's another: During the battle, Scotty is wearing his vest. Somehow he manages to get to the transporter room and beam down to Khitomer in a few seconds- and still find time to change into his uniform! And no offense to my man Jimmy Doohan, but Captain? You need to get someone upstairs in a hurry, and you send...Scotty? You need split-second moves, you have a crew of 250 twenty-somethings, and you beam down with only the five oldest people in your crew, all in their late fifties at least? Even Sulu beamed down with some others.

Dramatic license all. I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of these discs, upside-down Excelsior or no.

Yeah, alright, Kirk should definitely have taken a security team instead. But it would have gone against all Trek tradition! There's a dangerous unknown planet? Who should we send down to this dangerous unknown planet? A security team and science crew trained to deal with dangerous unknown planets? Hell no! Lets send the captain, half the senior officers and a couple of crewmen #6s to get dramatically killed.

I agree with all the stuff about the Baku not being native and capable of warp drive and so not falling under the prime directive. But really, the entire concept of a group of people demanding their right to live forever and to deny the rest of the galaxy the healing powers of their planet it stupid. How were they the good guys in that movie? They should have been packed off to some ordinary planet to live out their natural lives like everyone else while the billions of Federation members benefitted from the life saving capabilities of the planet.

They didn't know the Baku weren't native for a while, though, right? And what was the principle- come to the planet, be cured, and then leave?

The So'na could've just moved to the other side, I'd think.

ETA: The TUC disc states that Whitney was on because of a contest. Anyone know about this?

I got my TUC today, finally. Happy, happy, happy.

What a terrific flick. It, like TWoK and FC are the only ST movies that I think succeed as movies, instead of ST Movies.

My copy of TUC finally arrived Friday. I only had time to watch it once this weekend (I’m looking forward to the text commentary tonight) but I had some comments:

• I thought it was interesting that the Enterprise crew came off as much more racist than the Klingons. Part of this was due to which characters had lines (most of the Klingon guests at dinner didn’t get to speak), the Federation president had less screentime related to the peace talks than the Klingon Chancellors.
• Why was anyone considering mothballing Starfleet just because the Klingons wanted to make peace? I kept expecting someone to at least point out the Romulans. Did they really think there were no more dangers in the universe?
• Did we ever hear anything more about the shapeshifter who helped Kirk and McCoy escape from Rura Penthe? Could she have been one of the 100 like Odo?
• I can’t believe Valeris fell for the announcement for the court reporter. I’m not a Vulcan but, logically, it was obviously a trap.
• I didn’t really understand the questioning of McCoy at the trial (not that it was supposed to make a lot of sense). McCoy did his best to save Gorkon. Would it have been better if he had done nothing? I understand why the prosecutor wouldn’t have cared but why didn’t Worf object?
• I enjoyed seeing some DS9 representation even if no one was in character and most were in on the conspiracy (Odo and Joseph Sisko).

DS9 wasn't a glimmer in their eye yet, I don't think. Also, there are shapeshifters besides the Founders, as we saw on TNG.

I'd assume that Valeris checked for a pulse after she shot them, especially considering that her phaser wasn't set for kill. A question: How do you take two people by surprise by placing a phaser against their foreheads? One, mayyyybe. But two?

One odd point is the escape plans. When Azetbur contacts the Federation, the easel with the plans for Rura Penthe is still open. Hello? And the Romulan ambassador is there. Double hello?

Come to think- what purpose would a Romulan serve in being part of the conspiracy? Could it be that the Romulans developed the new cloaking device? Wouldn't they have noticed that it was missing?

Meyer mentioned that two scenes were changed. Besides the one with the faces of the conspirators, what was the other?

They live for that sort of thing. If there's a conspiracy out there, the Romulans want in. It's what they do.

I liked the addition of the faces to Spock's mindmeld but I thought they should have flashed before he announced their names. It would have seemed more like we were experiencing what he was seeing.

I could see the Romulan manipulating the other conspirators into action. They would have seen the peace between the Federation and the Klingons as a huge threat.

Something else I forgot, if I understood correctly, when Praxis exploded, it made the Klingon homeworld uninhabitable in the next 50 years. I heard them discussing evacuation plans. What happened between then and now? I don't remember any mention of people leaving Kronos while they cleaned it up (which must have happened if people are living there) in later Treks.

They didn't have to be conscious when she shot them. Maybe she used a hypospray or the nerve pinch to knock them out they killed them. Or perhaps she arranged to meet them within five minutes of each other.

Wow, my first ever fanwank!

Very nice, Melk.

Did they explain why a phaser at close range wouldn't set off the internal alarms?

Valeris' demonstration in the mess annoys me. It would have been much more logical to just remind Chekhov about the alarms instead of disrupting the entire ship. And why didn't she call off the security guards?

akg, when they found the dead crewmen, they asked, "Why were they killed on stun?" and answered, "So it wouldn't set off alarms." They were killed at close range because, apparently, a phaser at (extremely? we've never seen this elsewhere) close range can kill on stun. And that's one reason why they thought of Valeris, because she'd demonstrated that before.

That makes sense, nelamm, I was thinking the alarms were set to go off for any kind of phaser fire.

The way I heard it, the world was going to be uninhabitable after50 years. Presumably because of the loss of Praxis, not so much because of pollution from Praxis. I expect that with peace, they were able to use their resoruces to find a solution to save the planet, or perhaps the peace allowed them to even ask the Federation for help. I'm not sure why no one ever mentioned it, though.


I think the word they left out of their explanation is "heavy" stun. It makes sense to me that at the maximum stun setting, at extremely close range, there could be a terrible risk. Presumably, though, it's merely extremely risky, and not certain, which is also why Valeris showed up in sickbay to try to silence the crewmen.


Basic disarmament. Would the Klingons really be able to make peace without some guarantee that the Federation wouldn't just attack? "Mothballing" might be an overly strong word, but certainly a reduction would be in order.

They didn't suspect Valeris until Kirk mentionned it, because a portion of his personal logs, that Valeris overheard, was used against him in his trial.

But when Chekov mentioned the bit about phasers to Scotty, they got a suspicious look on their faces.

As I understood it the problem was that the Klingons did have the resources to combat this, they were just spending it on getting scrappy with Starfleet. With the peace treaty and the Federation promising not to attack they could spend their huge military budget on repairing the damage.

Exactly. I think it's Spock who has a line like "a conflict they can no longer afford" (emphasis mine). That implies that it's all about resources.