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Star Trek: Pick A Plot
Vinnie_333 writes "This article on the New York Times sounds out on the often repetitive plots of the 10 Star Trek films to date (this include ST: Nemesis, coming soon). It refers to the film franchise as '10 films with 5 plots' and lays them all out in front of you. This does have a ring of truth. As a fan of Sci Fi (but not particularly Star Truck), I have to admit that there are only so many unique plots out there, and most of them have been well used by HG Well's time. Star Trek is, after all, a genre franchise and the story lines are held back by certain restrictions of the genre." I personally would pay Berman/Braga et al $20 if they never have a holodeck or time-travel-based plot ever again.
Well, if you really want to admit it, there are only about three plots. You have Man against Nature, Man against Man and Man against Himself.
I would suppost that Man against computer (or Superman against computer) could be any of the above.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
I read an article about TNG production a little while back. Rather than coming up with a exotic particle/lifeform/radition of the week to save the day, TNG scriptwriters would often just write in a placeholder to be replaced with a tech-adviser's technobabble at a later date.
Scripts would look as so:
GEORDI: Let's [technobabble] the main thrusters so that we can [technobabble] the Borg.
Etc...
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I think some of the ST:TNG shows with the holodeck and time-travel plots were fun (e.g., when Mark Twain was a character on the show). I like them for the same reason I like the "Q" episodes. YMMV, I suppose.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
.. not for this drivel, at least.
5 plots? I can sum up 99% of 'em with this:
I stopped being a fan a couple years into TNG.
It just became apparent that anything the 'franchise' does is just drying to squeeze a little more milk out of the cash cow. It's hardly good science fiction anymore.
1) Big problem (alien, wormhole, time-loop, computer malfunction) presents itself.
2) Bunch of yammering and melodrama and crappy dialogue, of the hollywood breed, which they no doubt think is interesting.
3) 5 minutes into the end of the show Geordi (or whoever) goes 'I got it!' and yammers out some nonsense techno-babble which solves the problem.
They could at least throw in a bunch of cool special effects, something.
IMO the franchise has been coasting on nostalgia for years, god only knows how long it will last, though.
Thats not to say that there's much better on TV. I plan on watching Smackdown! tonight, it's as intellectual as anything else on the toob.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Rule #1 about Star Trek time travel plots: If the crew goes back in time, it's good. If the crew is visited by someone from the future, it's bad.
:-)
Seriously, think about it. "Voyage Home", good. "Time's Arrow" (TNG, Mark Twain), ok. "Past Tense" (DS9, American ghetos in the 21st centry), good. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS, airforce thinks Enterprise is UFO), ok.
Compare those to the Voyager finale, crap. The episode where Worf's son comes back from the future to kill himself, dumb. Anything in Voyager involving the Starfleet Time Cops from the future, ugh.
The weird one is the Voyager episode where the crew is attacked by someone from the 29th century and is thrown back to 1996. It has a little of each, but in the end they kill Bill Gates, so that episode officially rocks.
Think about it, it really is true. Of course, that does not bode well for "Enterprise", as their big plot arc is all about being visited by the Voyager Time Cops over and over again. *groan*
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
I would pay Berman/Braga et al $20 if they have teenage daughters who would give me a lapdance.
Star Trek: The Movie and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were great! Then... sadly, they continued on and ended up making drivel. Spock dies, but then comes back in next movie. Kirk dies, but no it was a morph... hmmm... can you say regurgitation?
The NextGen movies weren't much better. And it's sad, because there are some pretty cool story lines they could have come up with. Just as in Voyager, they would come up with an interesting idea, but never play it out. The shows writers and producers always wanted to create a problem and solve it in one episode.
But oh well... we have Star Wars... oh no, never mind George didn't dive too deep into his creative pool for the new films.
I guess we just have to wait for the new Spidey film(s) and the next 2 LoTR movies. Maybe someone can convince Tim Burton and Michael Keaton to team again and do another Batman? Or maybe John Woo can step up and do a Justice League movie...
There are so many places they could go with their plot motifs (Man vs. Himself can be seen in the motif of a stranded person surving the odds and their personal self-doubt until rescued, for example.) Science fictions offers endless variety of these!
Cambellian science fiction was all about asking "What if?" Where has that gone with this franchise? Technobabble, non-sense and special effects usually. The problem Trek has been accused of often is not thinking about the consequences of certain technologies. Great examples are missed opportunities with cloaking and teleportation or explaining how the toilets on the Enterprise work (if in fact they are connected in some obscure way with the food replicator).
In stead of asking a What If question about technology we are usually instead given a song and dance routine by Data, a sexual episode between data and a real woman, a lame space battle (sit down B5 folks already) or some dumb ass plot where they come across a planet populated ONLY by Gangsters/Sou Chefs/Half Naked Californians.
Oh, and one more plot about dystopia and I will scream.
I'm not asking that they make their movies as stunningly boring as, say anything written by Robert L. Forward (*great* scientist - lousy story teller in my humble opinion). But get some real writters: David Brin, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge even! These guys could take that Franchise where No Science Fiction Franchise has ever gone before!
Well, that's my piece. Thanks for listening.
--Peter
If the four plots listed are `an exhaustive summary of what can happen in a "Star Trek" movie', why is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country missing?
The reason why I like ToS more and more is the fact that the writers were only constricted by the Roddenberry "bible" (which at the time was quite loose and open to speculation).
The way I see it, over the years Trek writers have been slowly building a fence around themselves and now they find that they are creativly constricted.
They are trying to break out of the mold with Enterprise, but consider that they have already had a "holodeck" AND a "time travel" episode. I think they (the writers, et al) have forgotten that Trek at it's heart is about discovery, adventure and humanity.
crazy dynamite monkey
Martial arts and ST! Now THERE'S something we haven't seen since Sulu wielded that sword!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
You know, this is an interesting point. A lot of the plots we find refreshing and original in all fiction are, at their heart, boring rehashes. There just aren't that many effective actions anymore; if there's no rape, murder or suicide, it will take a lot more skill to get us callous viewers to care. However, the motivations of the characters are what makes everything seem refreshing. A man killing another man in rage is hackneyed, as is a man killing another for money. But a man killing another man for money, but who must pretend it was rage when caught to protect his employer, is a different plot entirely. And the difference of motivation need not be so complex...a simple juxtaposition of expected roles can make a plot seem refreshing as well -- I'm thinking of the surprise turn in Sixth Sense, which was refreshing even if it was predictable.
Villains who are out for something besides pride, money or power are difficult to craft but make a plot so much more interesting. I like me a villain who doesn't consider himself one (and who, from a point of view, might not be...i'm talking Castro here, not Hitler), or a hero who wonders if he's working for the right cause.
The trick of course is making all the characters act in ways that aren't typical to their typecast. Han Solo was original when he was written, when it became apparent he was truly in love with Leia and not merely a womanizer. Twenty years later I can't believe Hayden Christiansen, because his affair is almost a crystaline structure of love and war. There is no believable resistance to his affair with Padme. But of course, that may just be my own callousness and lack of disbelief through seven years of literary study.
I wonder how these films look to my brother, who at 13 has yet to be inundated with cliche Sci-Fi?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Yes, the technobabble aspect really bugged me too. "Assume a synchronous orbit above the South Pole." Sheesh.
Now I am going to repeat some stuff I pointed out in an earlier Star Trek thread.
Nicholas Meyer saved Star Trek. The original star trek series was cancelled -- early -- with only 79 episodes in the can. Roddenbery had blown his wad producing Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, which, at $35,000,000 in 1979 dollars was a very expensive bomb. Meyer directed ST:twok for just $11,000,000 . Not only was it the best ST movie. But it was the cheapest, and the most lucrative.
Meyer wrote ST: The Voyage Home and ST: The Undiscovered Country, and directed ST:tuc.
Like Michael Crighton Meyer didn't go to film school, he went to Medical school.
Oh yeah, ST:twok is my favourite ST movie. And Galaxy Quest is my second favourite.
I got completely fed up with Voyager when I noticed them using terms from modern science wrong in a way that nobody with a basic undergraduate science education could miss.
I noticed during a few years when everything was "fractal" on Trek. Fractal this and fractal that. It was as if fractals were a central technology to them.
Then again, who knows what the future will use. Edison ignored some semiconductor properties that turned out to be key to modern computers.
I am sure no matter how hard they try, today's technobabble will sound dated many decades from now.
Table-ized A.I.
This reminds me of a time on the set, when we were filming "Datalore."
Brent was going through his lines, playing both Data and Lore, and he noticed that Data was given a line where he was using a contraction.
Brent called the director, first AD, and script supervisor over, and asked them to clarify Brent's understanding that Data did not use contractions.
The phone calls began, and went all the way to Gene's office, before the answer came back, "Data should not use contractions, ever."
This ended up being a plot point later in the show, as Lore's use of something like "Isn't" or "Wouldn't" or "Bitch Ass Monkey Mouth" revealed his true identity.
Funny..I just thought it was cool that you didn't use any contractions in your Data lines...and that sparked this memory that is 14 years old.