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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.
when you have such great acting?
Ahhh yess, the obligatory sigh oh, did you say sig?
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...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Not trying to flame. I used to be a big fan of the original as well as TNG. :-)
However, the plotlines in B5 were far superior to anything on StarTrek, IMHO of course.
Also, no Wesley Crusher type characters
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
If it wasn't for the predictable plots you couldn't play The Star Trek the Drinking Game.
The writers of Star Trek aren't held back by anything other than their own incompetence. There are a million potential plots out there. For that matter, well-written characters and dialog can make a trite plot into a fine film.
Granted, many plots were used by Wells or Bradbury or Burroughs long ago, but if you simplify things down to that level everything starts to look the same. If you wrote a 1-paragraph summary of all of the romantic comedy films ever made, for example, it would look like this:
"Two characters who at first seem to have insurmountable differences meet and, through a series of comic moments, fall in love. A complication threatens to dash their hopes, but at the last moment everything works out."
That doesn't mean all of these films are without value. Just most of them.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
Don't all the Bond movies essentially have about three or four plots? What about Police Academy? Indeed, is there any series of movies that *doesn't* have the same few plots repeated again and again?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Why O Why do they not ask fans for help. Perhaps they have, but I do not remember it. Many ST fans know *everything* about the ST universe. They are usually geeks with quite informed and educated ideas about sci fi. Why not have a web page where fans can submit intelligent plots for new shows and films?
I would bet the quality would be better and the originality would increase. Of course, I would think that Rick Berman and his writers would go through and professionalize the plots from the hollywood sense. But at least the ideas and general plot would come from those who live and die by the ST world: the fans!
Perhaps I am placing too much confidence in those I've seen going to ST conventions and clubs. But then again, perhaps not. I'd personally pit them any day against a hollywood writer in coming up with original, science-based ideas.
"The crew of the Enterprise goes back to an earlier century on Earth, to make sure that history happens as it should ("S.T. IV: The Voyage Home"; "S.T. VIII: First Contact")."
This is an interesting interpretation of the Episode IV story-line. The crew did not go back in time to prevent someone from changing history as they did in VIII. Rather the crew went back in time to change history. The Borg didn't go back and kill the Whales, the humans did it all by themselves!
Anyway, I'm not sure this guy watched either movie, and some of the Star Trek movies do suck, but the plots don't over lap that much...
My other sig is extremely clever...
... it's about character. A good deal of both DS9 and TNG (arguably both really good shows, whether you like Trek or not) was about character interaction. I'll give you an example:
There's an ep of DS9 where Will Riker's duplicate (transporter accident in an ep of TNG) stole the Defiant and went off to give the Cardassians hell.
One could very easily dismiss that ep as "Oh geez, dude steals a ship, fires the guns a few times, and gives up when he's outnumbered. What an original plot. *sarcasm*"
However, that wasn't the interesting part of the episode. The interesting part was WHY Riker's duplicate did this. He was stranded alone on a planet for 8 years. When he was recovered, he couldn't live up to success that the Riker that made it off the planet enjoyed.
When you watch this ep, you're lead to believe that the Riker duplicate was going for the 'greater good' trying to uncover some Cardassian plot. What was really going on was he was hoping to quickly turn himself into a hero, even if it meant death for him.
There were other interesting details of the episode, but I just wanted to make that little point: Plot isn't everything. Here's a case where scifi gave birth to a situation not likely to happen in reality, and gave the audience an interesting glimpse into a fictional world.
Frankly, I think Enterprise would be a lot more popular if people understood this concept. The 'plot' of the episodes isn't the strong point, the development of the characters is. That's what it's all about.
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?
Umberto Eco points this out in his article The Myth of Superman (I'm afraid a quick google only turned up this synopsis, not the whole text). Here are some key quotes from that link, and, I assume, the article (come on, it's been nearly six years since I've read it! :^D Maybe I did earn that B.A. degree after all...). I try to recall a few more important bits below.
...
.construct on a small scale 'analogous' models which mirror the larger one."
:^) (Last season was a dream!)
:^) Anyhow, it's no surprise Star Trek is often similar. It's part of the myth that "resonates with our archetypes". Hey, someone much smarter than me said that. Stop making fun. :^)
Traditional mythic heroes were governed by a law, therefore these heroes were predictable and held no suprises for the audience.
... and
Authors preferences are not considered when writing a novel. They are forced to write along the guidelines of a cultural model. In this case, "authors. .
Basically the deal was that if you started at A and went to B, you might pass through C or D or E but your story must end up at A again or you'll have spoiled the myth.
There's only so much a mythical figure can do (or mythos o' figures). Here are some of the more horrendous deviations from the "A leads to B leads to A again" that I can think of off-hand (a little Spidey-centric, I'm afraid):
* The brilliant folk at Marvel kill off Aunt May. (She's back now)
* The brilliant folk at Marvel decide Spider-Man is really a clone. (The clones have all disappeared now)
* The brilliant folk at DC kill off Superman and then have several return. (I think we're back to one, but I don't read Superman)
* Patrick Duffy leaves Dallas.
* Felix Lieter (sp) has his leg eaten by a shark in Licensed To Kill. (Haven't fixed that yet, but they did ditch Dalton, even if it isn't his fault that movie stunk to high heaven)
This is why, I believe, these fictional stories rarely do things that are irreversable, like have Peter Parker age [much] or main characters get married (last I looked, Marvel was still struggling with that one, even having MJ disappear). It's also why shows tend to die after the leading man & woman get romanticly involved -- see Moonlighting. Or why they die when they switch tone -- see all those Carol Burnett[-esque] episodes later on in Magnum, P.I.
So, in one sense, the reason Star Trek is always the same is the same reason everyone was on pins and needles when Diane left Cheers.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
As consumers of entertainment, we're like so many other people who have had macaroni-and-cheese. Sure, it's almost always the same, but then we could add meat, or maybe some veggie, or change the shape of the pasta...it's still Mac-and-cheese, and it's a staple.
If a writer develops something so completely new, it would be out of wack with established mythologies, motivations and have complex characters which require the viewer to be intimate with details that can only exist outside the plot and we shouldn't be surprised if 90% of the audience is going to be unmoved. Even the greek playwrights wrestled with the problem of innovation/alienation and resigning themselves to telling the same tired story again and again...because it's what the people want. If anybody wants to point a finger, the need to go to the mirror. We have a problem, and like most of them, it's us. :-)
It's not a problem with writers, or producers. They're successful if they make a good show of any genre. It's the audience that's lacking here, and like death, taxes, and teens having babies the problem is human nature...and it's just one of the salient points on which the species sucks. If we were smart, we'd be trying to have AI's invent entire fantasy worlds and giving them only the more basic rules have them create media. Of course, that's a bit too much like next-century and if it did work, the complainers in meat-space would probably kill it.
If the person who somehow got this whining on the front of slashdot would just sit down and try writing/publishing something that doesn't fit into the same tired categories, I'm sure they would have a much better understanding of the problem--rather than just come off as a complainer.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
...that there are only five basic plots worth writing about in existence. They boil down to Romance (good person meets true love), Redemption (bad man turns good), Justice (good person is elevated), Tragedy (good person is fallen), and Quest (good person saves everything). Whether the person in question is in conflict with one other, many others, nature, or himself, they all come down to that.
So "Star Trek" tends to be formulaic. So what? So's everything else that's ever been written; it's a matter of how well it's written that draws or repels us, which is why "The Wrath of Khan" is so popular and "Generations" is less so.
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?
"We are working on a great villian for this one. A villian that is as great as Khan."
That's the problem. You don't set out to make another Khan. You set out to make a great villain. Therein lies the difference. Also, Khan was great for two other reasons:
1. Ricardo Montalban!!!!!!!!
2. We knew the backstory, and had an insight into his motivations.
As an aside, item 2 made the film move faster and better, because we didn't have to waste time exploring "Why is he doing this? Why does he hate Kirk?", giving that much more time for plot development.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
He takes a ship out with a training crew, doesn't follow Mr. Savik (Kirstie Allie's) advice about raising deflectors when the Grissom doesn't respond and gets the guts tore out of the Enterprise. We then find that the Federation has some kind of gadget they shouldn't be messing with, and the designer is the progeny of Kirks chronic "fooling-around" having caught up with him, who is as bloody-minded as the old-man Kirk himself. And to straighten out the whole mess, Kirk ends up sacrificing his best friend Spock.
This thing with Kahn is sort of like Bush and Saddam -- we know that Kahn is crazy, but if you think about it, Kahn has some legitimate grievances that Kirk has on his conscience.
There is no other Star Trek that gives that level of character development to either Kirk or Kirk's nemesis.
On the subject of the decline of Trek, the technobable bugs me the worst -- I saw this promo piece with Levar Burton explaining that they write "technobable" as a line in the script to call on a consultant to fill something in.
Classic Trek didn't have techno-babble. Enterprise would get enveloped with some kind of multi-color thing, Kirk would bark "Spock, what is that?" and Spock would stare into his science station Tektronix terminal hood and say "I don't know, it isn't registering on our sensors." Compared to NG, Classic Trek was high concept -- they wouldn't try to explain it like one shouldn't try to explain the Monolith in 2001.
The last four seasons of DS9 were of the same quality as B5. They both did have one episode stories, but they both had a very thick red line going through it so which took you back to previous episodes and made it possible to see three, four episodes in a row (it happens, okay :-) without getting bored because there is progress in the story instead of restarting it all over each time.
To me, the last four seasons of DS9 were the best series of the whole ST collection.
bash$
...producers had to 'shush' the actors every time they came on stage...
This is true. I hope I don't ruin anyone's good time, but those doors were opened by a SFX guy, who sat on an upturned bucket behind the set wall, pulling on a cable. (In the second season, the advanced technology of a wooden handle was added!)
Imagine the sound a sliding glass door makes when the track is rusty, and you know what those doors sounded like...a far cry from the pleasant "woosh!" we hear on TV.
Watch TNG, and you'll see that actors RARELY speak while doors are closing behind them. Sometimes you'll see an actor walk into a room (usually the transporter room) and you'll hear the doors close while they're speaking, but you won't see them. This happened because that rusty door noise was replaced with the happy "woosh!" sound in post production.
Interesting side-effect of this for me is that even in real life, I rarely talk while a door is closing behind me. It just became a habit to wait.
2. Why do they make the ugliest characters evil? I'd like to see some character interaction and consistent development with some butt-ugly insects or 30 feet giants to be direct allies with the good guys. I keep thinking that real aliens would probably take all shapes and sizes, from massively huge or small and don't necessarily always take a humanoid size.
3. Why is it that Picard always tried to play the high ground on the fact that humans had gotten past many of their deficiencies? One of the things that I liked best about Kirk was that he willing to embrace humanity with its character flaws - he said something in "A Taste of Armageddon" to the effect that "yes, we're killers, but the important thing is that we're not going to kill today". I think it'll take more than a few centuries to evolve past our basic human deficiencies.
4. Why don't they have major characters die on a rotating basis and constantly develop the more ancillary characters? Whenever a conflict in an episode arises that puts a major character at risk, I don't always like the fact that I already know that that character is going to make it out fine. (Tashia Yar and Jadzia Dax not withstanding, but then you always know it before the fact because they announce it in the previews!)
5. Why is it that whenever a crew member falls in love with someone that's not in the main storyline, they never seem to bother to develop it? The person that they're involved with always leaves, gets transferred to another starbase/facility, or dies at the end of the episode. There have been times that I would have really liked to have seen some of the relationships develop further.
I think I'm one of the rare few that thought that Deep Space Nine was great. I _loved_ it when Sisko actually hit Q!
I think B5 had a lot of these qualities too, and is still my favorite SciFi show to date..