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Star Trek XI: Romulan Wars?
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that the next Star Trek movie will deal with the war between Earth and the Romulans that led to the founding of the Federation. According to Rick Berman, the film will be 'set before the time of Kirk, but will not be connected with Enterprise.' So how will they make this fit with the Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror, in which we learned that no human ever saw the face of a Romulan during the Romulan Wars?"
Nemesis was a steaming pile of crap. Everything Trek since the death of Rodenberry has been crap (last 2 seasons of Next Generation on). Please Please Please stop flogging this dead horse franchise while I still have respect for the vast canon of work created before Berman was hired to milk Paramount's cash cow to death.
They should have let Trek die the graceful death it deserved instead of mutilating it into "Enterprise". I don't think there's any hope for this movie, connected to Enterprise or not.
You forgot the Cloaking device before the Cloaking device was invented. Personally, I'm a bit worried about B&B doing this project. These are the same guys who are PROUD of the fact that they never watched the original series.
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Because the audience can see the Romulans doesn't mean the Earthlings will.
Perhaps they'll tell the story from the Romulan point of view. Now, that would be a change.
More realistically, fighting an enemy you can't see is a pretty good dramatic device.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"So how will they make this fit with the Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror, in which we learned that no human ever saw the face of a Romulan during the Romulan Wars?"
This is easy. Don't show their faces.
"They will just do what they normally do, ignore continuity."
The whole point of the series is that the timeline was changed, thus altering the continuity. Most episodes make a reference to this, but there are still some thick people out there that keep missing that. One of ST's most popular movies touched this off, yet a gaggle of people keep missing it and whining about continuity.
I don't really care if people like Enterprise or not. But to keep running around in circles with a less-than-legitimate complaint is getting rather nauseating. Complain about the show being boring, or that the theme song irritates your stomach, but for the love of you know who, stop complaining about a problem that doesn't exist.
"Derp de derp."
Ignore old Trek on the assumption that only the geekiest fans would remember that episode and the rest wouldn't care.
I think the real assumption is that a geeky fan who pays for a ticket isn't any better than a geeky fan who pays for a ticket and gets pissed off about plot inconsistencies.
paintball
"You forgot the Cloaking device before the Cloaking device was invented."
Yeah, well I'm sorry that I disqualified myself from being a nerd. It doesn't matter, anyway. The Suliban brought cloaking technology into the new timeline. Any number of events could have happened for it to land in Romulan hands. And, gee whiz, they're exactly the type of race that'd fight hard to get it and use it.
"Derp de derp."
Ignore old Trek on the assumption that only the geekiest fans would remember that episode and the rest wouldn't care.
It seems that's the MO for Enterprise. Except they forgot that their core audience IS the geekiest fans. So if the rest don't care, they don't watch, and the geekiest fans are put off by inconsistencies... sounds like a perfect recipe for Enterprise.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Same way they "explained" the physical differences between the classic and new Klingons. By simply blowing it off. Nobody gives a damn about minor (YMMV) inconsistencies.
You're not the only one to complain. I have a few wishes that had better be met if this movie is going to be any good:
1. There better be a reset button hidden in that Temporal Cold War. We need to wipe out that idiot Enterprise episode where the Romulans were able to cloak. Not to mention the "invention" of phase cannons and photon torpedos.
2. NUKES! BIG FRIGGIN' NUKES! There's only one way to fight a space war before phasers and photons, and that's with Gigawatt lasers/masers and BIG ASS NUKES!
3. No hull plating. That stuff is the stupidest invention yet. They can use M2P2 shields for protection against radiation and nuclear explosions. Fine. But "charged" hull plating that "wears away" is just stupid. Ablative armor is the way REAL wars are fought.
Think they'll listen?
NAH. It will all be "photons", "phasers", "Oops, I fell on [bimbo of the series] boobs", and "Oh, yeah. There's like this... war... thing, going on. Guess we better save the day. Let's act REAL angry and tell them they're wrong. That always works."
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Whoa. No offense was intended there. If I came off a bit strong, it's probably my anger at B&B showing through. I was just pointing that out as one of the biggest barriers to doing a decent Star Trek movie. If we just accept B&B's screwed up timeline, then we'll have to accept that Star Trek is finally dead.
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They killed Data the same way they killed Spock. Death is, more or less, an abstract concept when dealing with major characters in the Star Trek universes.
Just give them the Breen suits. Then we don't have to hear them either!
Actually, that's a good idea. Considering that Romulans and Vulcans have blood history that had been kept under wraps for such a long time. I remember something about Romulans being illogical, emotional Vulcans that were exiled from Vulcan. To prevent political strife, the Vulcans and higher up humans could have covered up seeing Romulans.
NO!! Berman must die a horibly painful and strung out death!
Now I know why I absolutely loathe Rick Berman and what he has done to Star Trek. TOS is the root from which the entire Star Trek Universe sprang. Cheesy or not, it is the model for everything that came before it.
Someone yank the ST franchise from Berman's grubbies and put it on hiatus for a while. Voyager and Enterprise suck runny eggs. It's time to put it to bed. Maybe give it to Stracynski (sp?) after a few fallow years.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Whoa. No offense was intended there. If I came off a bit strong, it's probably my anger at B&B showing through."
No no, wasn't offended. Actually I should be the one apologizing with the 'sorry I'm not a nerd' comment.
I'm overreacting a bit. Every time there's a Slashdot story about Enterprise, somebody get's modded up to +5 for complaining about continuity. I get frustrated when I think about how somebody can have Trek's vaguely defined timeline from the original series memorized to the minutist detail, but they don't remember the events of one of Star Trek's most popular movies. They don't even notice when they get beaten over the head with the whole temporal cold war concept that was established in episode 1. I'm surprised that there isn't still an argument about why the NX-01 isn't a statue in the Enterprise-D ready room.
"Derp de derp."
Straczynski of the B5-fame has expressed his interest in getting involved with Star Trek.
Why don't they just give B&B something else to do and give JMS free hands like Warner Bros did with B5.
Because then we wouldn't get something that sucks. And who wants something that doesn't suck?
No no, wasn't offended. Actually I should be the one apologizing with the 'sorry I'm not a nerd' comment.
It's okay. I'm actually not that much of a stickler for continuity, but the way that B&B off handedly destroy everything that's known and cherished about the Star Trek series is truly a disgusting sight to see.
BTW, here's my post about how the movie *should* be done. All they need is one big reset button, or the whole movie premise will be shot.
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Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Episode I: the first meetings and skirmishes, forces set in motion, characters introduced, we briefly see a young Kirk set on a trajectory to join Star Fleet. Earth (Federation?) scientists given a mandate to create technologies that will be needed in what is seen as the looming battle to come (ala the Manhattan Project, with many of the same moral dilemmas)
Episode II: the Romulans posed to take over Earth, only support from Vulcans and other reluctant allies averts disaster.
Episode III: a valiant counterstrike that forces the Romulans to withdraw with plot twists leading the power balance between Romulans, Federation and Klingons in TOS.
Do it like LOTR and have the 3 episodes come out 1 a year as a planned, and make sure the fans know its all one story to be released as such, not a GEE-If-we-make-money-we'll-think-about-another-mov ie-in-3-years.
Don't obsess on continuity, just make it a good story that half way sets up the Star Trek universe we know.
Letter To Iran
How would they make the movie so that nobody saw the face of a Romulan throughout the war? Simple:
- the Romulans don't have a video-based comm.
- the Romulan warriors have decorative/concealing battle armor for their heads
- have a mystique throughout the film that paints the Romulans as a powerful, mysterious race, somewhat along the lines of what was done with the Borg, thus increasing the level of suspense.
All this would be feasable, as we don't know much about pre-Enterprise romulans.
Oh, and as far as timeline continuity is concerned: there was a physicist (I don't remember wich one) that said that the time-space continuity is more like a deck of stacked cards than a linear stream. If you were to move a card in that deck to a place lower in the deck, it would no longer be the same deck, and would change the position of each of the other cards after it.
If that were the case, you could say that the altering of the time-space continuum by reptilians in Enterprise is a direct result of the war with the transdimensional creatures in the future, as they then went back and had those races (can't think of what they called themselves) conspire against Earth. Likewise, that would potentially alter any interactions with the Romulans.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Great. Balance of Terror is, in my opinion, one of the best episodes of TOS, and ranks up there amongst the best in the series- namely for the reaction of Spock to the sight of a Romulan, and especially for the reaction of the entire crew to Spcok after the sighting. That episode dealt strongly with racism, and was damned entertaining.
So now Berman's gonna take a shit all over one of the few uncorrupted Trek elements, and do it with a no-name crew?
Why exactly does this guy still have his job, again?
Oddly enough- I can say the same thing about the first three seasons of TOS- which is probably why there WERE only three seasons of TOS.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In ST:Generations movie, the original series crew learned that Kirk was killed, when Enterprise was caught in the Nexus (actually Kirk got caught in Nexus and died several decades later). However in ST:TNG S06-E130 Enterprise with Picard finds Chief Engineer Mongmery Scott caught in a transporter beam, lost for 75 years. In the episode Scotty asks what happened to Kirk and the crew.......erhm but dear Scotty, in the movie filmed years later than the series you witnessed Kirk's death. You see my point?
Let's burn some karma here.
Okay, I've read all the rants on either side of this issue, and the conclusion I've reached is this.
Continuity is highly overrated.
So, I'll admit I'm not a fanboy. I *am* a fan, however, and while continuity is important to me, it's not gospel, and I don't really get the urge to throw myself over the nearest cliff when it gets disrupted.
Instead, the way I see it, Star Trek in its whole has provided a generalized SciFi framework, into which different authors, directors, writers, artists, etc. can provide a story. Look at the general spread between TOS, TNG, DS9, STV and STE. Aside from the "boldly go" kind of essense, there's a HUGE diversity there. And frankly, as long as any one story is enjoyable, I don't really mind if there's some non-canonical bits therein. I *do* mind if they overuse the particle-of-the-week, just like I thought the midichlorian was a hideously stupid plot trick in Star Wars Ep1. But for run-of-the-mill stories, I'm more interested in how they handle the character development, coupled with the staple of SciFi - which is, in my opinion, how humans handle advanced technology and its effects (including the effect of encountering other species). All the rest is just details. Cool technology, maybe, but still just details.
So as far as I'm concerned, the "Star Trek" name provides a rather broad, rather permissive framework - with NAME RECOGNITION. And the best thing about it: that name recognition provides a budget for reasonably cool SciFi movies and television. Maybe not the BEST, but at least reasonably entertaining, and definitely more quantity than we'd get otherwise. And it spurs all kinds of spinoffs and competitors (B5, Andromeda, etc.) which are even better.
So, I'm all for chilling out the holy wars and just enjoying whatever is enjoyable, as it gets released.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Frankly, you don't really need to see the face of your enemy in a space battle. They are a blinking set of lights a few kilometers away.
I wish. In Trek, the ships pretty much fly up each others' noses before they shoot.
I must say, that's the best summary of the state of Star Trek I've read in a while.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
We fans have to realize that when the writers generated the orginal stories back in the 1960s, they had to take into mind the current politics in the US, what advertisers wanted, what the network wanted, what budget they had, last seasons ratings, etc.
Every subsequent installment of StarTrek has to deal with this. For example, some fans complain about the Klingon's faces changing. Back in the 60s, it was either impossible or would have cost way too much to have full face costumes that wouldn't face looked fake or stupid. Or what about that really stupid episode where Kirk and et. al. find some planet full of American Indians who worship the US flag or something? I think we'd all agree that one ought to be dropped out of the story arc.
Another thing is StarFleet itself. The 60s show had a mostly all white, crew-cut, "Right Stuff", NASA with bigger ships ethic. Women went around in mini-skirts bringing coffee. No problem with the miniskirts for me ... However, a show or movie with that kind of environment just wouldn't make it in these PC times. Half of the potential audience would be offended by it and advertisers would definitely keep well away.
I'm not sure why people hate Enterprise so much. To me, it seems reasonably "realistic" as to how things would be on a small ship like that in close quarters months at a time. People argue, have fights, boink a lot, things don't work right, things stink, people make bad decisions, etc. It isn't a perfect show, of course, because, again, it has to conform to ratings, what is "PC" at the time, etc. (There's still the problem of how everyone in the entire universe happens to speak perfect English all the time ... but all SF shows have that problem, especially StarGate. But that's a different rant ... and an unavoidable problem without out making actors playing aliens have to emit nonsense phrases with sub-titles, which would be like watching some obscure East European art film or something.)
I view StarTrek as less of set series of stories than a generally close, but not always connected series of tales. In the future, with better, cheaper effects it might be possible to take the old StarTrek episodes, run them though a PC and make them look like they have whatever the latest in effects can do and maybe even adjust the plots to create a more unified set of stories.
Light propogates. Sound does not.
Sound requires some form of vibrational medium to travel. Air or water, for example. In space, sound cannot travel since there's no medium to travel through. It's always bothered me that the ships in most SciFi make whooshing noises.
Light only requires "not stuff in the way". Since there's nothing in the vacuum that gets in the way, light can travel perfectly. (c is the speed of light in a vacuum!) There would be a shadow produced, but it would be an incredibly stark shadow.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
They kept the body on life support for Voyager...
But, oh, what a body!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Just because no human in the Star Trek world saw the face of a Romulan during the whole length of the war, does not mean that we in the audience can't see the face of a Romulan during the whole length of the movie. I think they call that "Dramatic Irony".
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
But if you listen to the dialog, they're still tens of thousands of kilometers away.
:)
Either the visual effects guys are metric-challenged, or the kilometer gets a whole lot shorter in the future.
Cowboy Bebop is a show that has a solar system populated by humans, and it's probably the most believable one I have seen yet. There's a show that recognises that technologies that we have today (like wheels, for example) aren't necessarily going to be obsolete a few hundred years into the future. Again, there are no language problems there, at least none as complex as those that exist today on Earth. In that show, everyone speaks perfect Japanese!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Think about it!
The concept is, "War in Space." --Humans versus the Romulans. That's it!
No, "And every cast member of the popular television series except Wil has to have at least X minutes of screen time regardless of how irrelevant to the plot it may be."
If the writer is a good one, if the director is a good one. . , why this could be the best thing since 'Kahn'. --Because we need something. Everything since Kirk left us has been idiotic garbage.
In general. . . Star Trek movies suck when: Huge ensemble casts are scripted by Ricky-"Let's kill Picard's nephew, blow up those two Klingon sisters, make Data say, "Shit", and then crash the enterprise regardless of how little any of this has to do with anything even remotely story-related, cuz we can and it's cool in a college Jar-Head Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! sort of way,"-THE ASS-HAT Berman.
Berman is one of the hugest wannabes in show-biz today. He should stay firmly socketed in the producer's chair and stop pretending that he can write.
So barring his creative involvement, a new Trek film with some new blood and some real talent might just be the best thing to happen to Star Trek movies in over a decade.
-FL
If you don't want such constraints as following an already-established history, then DON'T WRITE A PREQUEL!