star trek:into darkness (WARNING: SPOILERS as of 4/23/13)

Point taken but that's a weakness common to most minor characters on all Trek shows. Only DS9 really fleshed out all of its characters properly.

Not so recent... TNG was looking and feeling dated by the late 90s.

Have you considered it's recent on the basis things take time to age?

TNG had some real stand-out stories, but the utopianism rarely went anywhere - where was the questioning of Federation society? Sure, Starfleet got questioned as did the questions of life itself in a few episodes.

The TNG society is one in stasis, going nowhere much beyond its own navel. Q was a relief.

TNG was one of the worst example of human hubris, but it set up a much wider universe than TOS and some fantastic characters and laid the groundwork for DS9.

It's still a fun show to watch, but all to often it paints humanity as the pinnacle of social evolution, and frequently treats other societies that differ from it as being wrong.

After watching TVH, it's easy to see the two main differences in the branches of Trek. One fixable, one not.

Firstly, the old movies made a lot more references to literature giving them a more cerebral varnishing in-between sticking Russians on US 'wessels' and sticking woman from 3 centuries in the past onto Federation starships with, presumably, the Dummies Guide to Starship Living.

It would be nice to see that reflected in the new movies, maybe Spock gifting Kirk Paradise Lost or referencing Shakespeare.

The second is the sheer chemistry between the cast, and we're just not going to get that again. They spent decades working/loving/hating/fighting with each other whilst a cult formed around them.

What people think is the whole point of movies.

You are just still pissed it isn't what you want and you are still attempting the marginalizing of people who disagree with you.

It isn't working.

^ Well, if one dislikes or even hates nuTrek, they can completely ignore it & pretend it NEVER existed, doesn't exist. Or just pretend it's all hallucinations made for Captain Pike by the Talosians for his benefit, & amusement. As well as other options which DON'T exclude it from Greater Trek Canon/Continuity, or canonuity if you want to merge those terms together.

I'm still a disliker of the first flick due to certain things in it I find cringe-worthy & irritating. But that's just IMO. At the same time it has cool & interesting things in it, & raises ALOT of questions, which is good.

I haven't caught STiD yet, but hope to see it one day soon. I like the great diversity of opinions about it here, & on all the other boards.

Ya know, if you take this exact same cast and plot them down in an hourly TV series, i think you just might get something very close.

Movies don't lend themselves as well to that sort of slow build up however.

I think you'll like it. The general consensus so far, save for a few vocal people of course, is that if you had problems with ST09, you'll probably like STiD because J.J. and Co. obviously listened to a number of complaints, and made the necessary rectifications.

Just got back from seeing it. Didn't bother with 3D, though I might see it again in IMAX.

To be brief, I thought it was great. The editing is just bit flabby at times (not sure we really needed 30 seconds of Scotty running) and I had a little bit of an issue with Kirk just outright believing Harrison's story, given everything he'd put Starfleet through. But on the whole, I thought it was entertaining, funny, well-made and made a hell of a lot more sense than Trek 2009.

Sure, devotees of the hardcore minutiae of Trek will hate it. But the rest of us who actually enjoy a good movie as much as we enjoy a good Star Trek movie will love it.

I give it an A-.

How bad were the lines at the theater you saw it?

No lines at all. I bought my tickets online and had assigned seating.

I actually kind of agree.

We've gotten to know the Alternate Timeline characters well enough that I think it's time for them to have their Voyage Home. No big bad guy, no space battles, no convoluted plot. Let's see them get by on their skills and wits.

A few other random thoughts jumping around my head:

1. It seemed like there was less lens flare, but it was still really noticeable at times.
2. The hats on the dress uniforms...yeah, those can go. I get what the look is supposed to be, but it's off. It doesn't work.
3. The look on Chekov's face when told to put on a red shirt is priceless.
4. Whatever the hell Scotty was wearing in the bar in San Francisco is the greatest thing I've ever seen.
5. Okay, I'm willing to go with a lot of bad science, but how the hell does Kirk talk to Scotty on a communicator when one is near the Klingon homeworld and the other on Earth? That was just lazy.
6. The entire scene in the stolen shuttle with Kirk, Spock and Uhura was great. Maybe my favorite sequence in the film.
7. Some serious canon wonkiness with the Klingons. Praxis already exploded? Not only did they have ridges, but even those were different. Huh. And isn't Ketha Provence where Martok is from?
8. Nice shoutout to Enterprise.
9. Section 31!
10. I would love, love, love a series based on what we saw in the first scene of the film. Just explorers off on missions doing stuff like saving primitive civilizations. And with the massive explosion of high-level cable shows, can't you get this cast for a 13 episode season of Star Trek on FX or something?
11. That said - what was the deal with the scroll?
12. And why hide the Enterprise underwater? Why not just keep it in high orbit and beam the cold fusion device in?
13. Whatever. I still loved it.

Best Trek ever IMHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

Just saw it. Now I can actually go into this thread without fear of spoilers--while I was home one of my younger cousins did manage to spoil the Benedict Cumberbatch thing, but such is life. So. Thoughts (in no particular order):

Quite enjoyable. There were still a few painful AbramsTrek bits. Nothing as bad as the Scotty waterpark or Kirk allergic reaction bits but painful nonetheless. The new ship would actually work if the nacelles weren't so ridiculously outsized. The had a lot of nice little nerd porn tidbits throughout the movie and they did a nice job of using the alternative universe to be able to do a kind of mash-up of all the previous movies, stealing bits here and there and twisting them and setting them on their heads. I enjoyed how the dress uniforms were kind of a take on the TMP uniforms. But the Russian bus driver hats didn't work on any level. I half expected Mister Rogers to ask Spock how things were going at Spee-Dee Delivery.

So that's it. A fun popcorn movie. I don't regret seeing it first run but for some reason it won't ever be up with 2,3,4,6,& 8 in my run of Trek films.

Oh, and Deep Roy is the reason nuTrek rules. Any movie with midgets rules.

That said, I wish Scotty wasn't as much comic relief. I mean I guess when you cast Simon Pegg you are going for comedy, but it is just too much.

Very entertaining. Might even see it again before it leaves theatres. Definitely an improvement over the first Abrams Trek.

My new ranking:

1. The Wrath Of Kahn
2. The Search For Spock
3. The Voyage Home
4. The Undiscovered Country
5. First Contact
6. Star Trek Into Darkness
7. Star Trek 2009
8. The Motion Picture
9. Generations
10. The Final Frontier
11. Insurrection
12. Nemesis

Sure, there are plot holes and inconsistencies with the prime Trekverse... but I've long since stopped giving a damn about that.

As far as I am concerned the new Trek films are a full on reboot and they are free to change up the continuity as they wish.

It makes the movies much more enjoyable to watch. I don't want to waste my time wondering why Delta Vega is close to Vulcan, why the Kelvin doesn't fall into the starship design lineage, why Khan is a white dude, why Praxis is already an exploded moon...

It's irrelevant IMO. In fact, I would have been okay if they had left Nimoy/Spock Prime out of this movie. Maybe even the first one. I don't think he was needed (though it was nice to see him again)

People accept hard reboots of other franchises (Bond, Superman, Batman) without the need for convoluted explanations, why not Star Trek?

I saw it today and it was awesome. Lens flares, plot holes and all, it was awesome.

But it shouldn't have been Khan. All they took from the original version was the name and the genetic engineering thing. I say again, they rebooted Trek so that they could escape all the old continuity, and with the choice of Khan as villain they dove right back into it.

But it was still awesome. And holy fuck is Alice Eve a babe and a half or what?

The other night I was just thinking that nuTrek is the Roger Moore era of Bond. (TOS, of course, being the Connery era.)

What was Lazenby?

Enterprise?

Lazenby never played Bond. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the only Fleming book never to be adapted into a movie.

FWIW "Miri" was on tonight. Anyone else see it?

This wouldn't be about that river that runs through Egypt, would it?

I have all of the episodes on Netflix. I watched "The Trouble with Tribbles" last night. Tonight I'm going to watch DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations."

Ye gods, I love Netflix.

Yeah, I didn't think to mention that but apparently communicators can do everything but talk to God now (but then how can you be upset with a scene that has drunk Scotty referring to the Captain as "James Tiberius Perfecthair"?

Agreed.

Kirk and McCoy were supposed to provide a distraction while the shuttle dropped off Spock. Kirk jacked the scroll to piss them off and make them give chase, hanging it where he did was intended to get them off his ass so they could get away. It's apparently some sort of holy object (witness the stop-and-bow reaction.

There was a good bit of dialog about how they couldn't use the transporter reliably there for some technobabble reason. Which is why Spock wasn't beamed in and out. Apparently you needed the very close proximity to accomplish a successful transport.

On a similar tangent, I'm surprised that no one either here or over at TBBS has pitched a fit about Kronos' close proximity. Back when ENT preimered, everyone shit their pants 'cuz it took Archer and Co. four days to get there when even in TOS it was a pretty long distance.

OTOH, Enterprise is the only series unaffected by the timeline shift, so...

Frankly I have stopped wondering about such things (in Trek and elsewhere). It's where the writers need it to be so the story can move along.

Hey, if people can say there never was a STV, sequels to The Matrix or Highlander movies, I can say the same about OHMSS.

[spoilers]
A "cold fusion device" that actually makes things cold?

First officer's reports go directly to Starfleet, and not through the captain?

First throw firehose/whatever the fuck that was into shuttle engine impellers, then get the fuck away from the hose, window, and wall behind it immediately. Incidentally, it's not wise to stand right next to the cable when a vehicle is being winched on the ground, either.

Transwarp beaming has got to go. Earth to Kronos in one shot, from a suitcase device? How does that not require enough energy to deplete a whole planet's power grid or something? Maybe they used the same magic antenna for the phone call to Scotty in the bar. C'mon, 30 seconds of dialogue to establish a series of relay stations or a hidden ship somewhere is too much to ask?

Why make a big production of giving Uhura a chance to speak Klingon, when it ultimately served no fucking purpose whatsoever? Damn sexy hearing her speak it, just the same. And if you can't deal with someone who is stoic and outwardly unemotional, don't hook up with a frigging Vulcan, for shit's sake. That little bitch-off in the shuttle did not please me.

I was alright with the Vengeance, but like the Enterprise I don't think enough thought was put into the details. Preference is instead given to making it huger and badasser, then destroying it. The warp combat sequence was really cool (even if those over-the-top, buzzing warp sound effects get old quickly), but I was hoping for more navy style maneuver-and-fire between the two ships. I liked the torpedo trick, but if I were a supergenius like Khan, I hope I'd think to scan anything I was beaming onto my ship during a hostile standoff. I guess there wasn't much room left for warheads around the stasis pods, since 72 of the fuckers didn't obliterate the Vengeance, but those warheads HAD to already be in there. No way they had time to arm them all.

Speaking of the Enterprise, I only picked up a couple of differences in the repaired version after Kirk's speech: bigger impulse engines covering more of the back edge of the saucer, and something about at least one phaser turret on top of the saucer. Either it was changed to something other than ball turrets, or it was removed entirely and that was a cap over the hatch in the hull. If they removed weapons, I do not approve. If anything, Big E should have gotten some goodies designed for the Vengeance. The engines, at a minimum. And don't give me some hippie crap about embarking on a mission of peace. They've had their asses handed to them by Nero, Adm Marcus, and Khan so far, and the Klingons are apparently preparing their own serving of whoopass, with the Enterprise and crew due a big part of the blame for provoking them. Nobody in their right mind is going to suggest disarmament in such a climate.

Khan didn't need to be "Khan". Could've been any "augment," and for all the exposition his backstory got, he might as well have been. Between him and Admiral Marcus, that's a big shakeup at Starfleet, but that whole angle felt unresolved, and even though he was just placed back in stasis and remains as a potential future plot element, I'm not sure this version of Khan is interesting enough to revisit in another movie. Seems like even using that name was a shout out to old Trek fans that was deemed unworthy of further explanation. That's not a criticism of Cumberbatch, as I thought he made excellent use of what he was given to work with.

The twist on the Wrath of Khan scene was less obnoxious than I thought it would be. And some of the rephrasing of the old lines was kind of cute. I think I may be able to live with it. I actually had more of a problem with the Enterprise warp core being a miniature version of the Death Star's main reactor, and that going near it doesn't annihilate you.

The start of the 5 year mission was a nice little nod, but you detract from the "boldness" of that somewhat when you can use magic transporters to hop across the quadrant. Also, we were left with the distinct impression that things are ramping up to war with the Klingons. I don't know that I'd be sending my best ships off out of useful range so they can scan rocks and pick flowers on the frontier.

I see why Pike had to die (No magic blood for you!), but Bruce Greenwood will be missed from any future sequels.
[/spoilers]

That said, I liked it overall, and don't regret the ten bucks it cost me to see it. 8/10, and I will of course be buying the blu ray.

Pine, Quinto, Urban, Pegg, Saldana, Cho, and Yelchin are all doing a fine job. Give them good scripts, and they will rock it.

OHMSS is a pretty solid Bond flick. It's draggy at times, and some of the chase sequences go on too long (especially the bobsled scene) but Lazenby isn't bad as Bond, and he's got great chemistry with Diana Rigg.

I've fallen asleep every time I've tried to watch it.

The longer answer than the one I already gave is that the journey to Kronos was ENT's first wasted opportunity. Because, you know, the premise is great. Should have taken them the whole bloody season to bring back the Klingon, having many adventures on the way while asking for directions ever so politely while being shadowed by certain pointy eared villains all the way. You know, always juuuust out of sensor range.

In the season finale, they could have fucked it up royally. Now that would have been delivering on ENT's promise.