TheKidFromDeliverance,

VERY good point.

Mr. Clarence Butterworth
One "eye candy" character who was useless as a crewmate was Troi. An emotional empath? What use is that?

Absolutely. Troi didn't become a remotely useful character until 7th season. Which, not coincidentally, was when they took her out of the bunny suit and put her into a uniform like the rest of the bridge crew.

Can't be any worse than the Star Wars prequels.

Or can it..?

ferfer72, Insurrection was a bomb because it cost $83 MILLION to make and market. So in the US market alone it didn't even make back its production costs. Worldwide it only made $67 million, so in in initital release it was still in the hole.

Nemesis, for example, grossed $117 million. First contact made $150 million!

Even Star Trek V: The Worst Star Trek Movie Ever, made $70 million, and those are not adjusted to inflation, so Insrrection really, really bombed.
Of course, releasing it the 5 days before Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers came out was probably not the best idea....

mkfreeberg:

Yes. They should ALL have evil Spock style beards. Every last character in the movie.

That would rock. Throw in some tribbles with little beards, too. They could be carnivorous or something.

mkfreeburg: You know what would make this work? Someone else stepping into the "brainiac who saves the ship" role, as well as the "annoying sidekick" role. And then Admiral Crusher has to do something to show how far he's come, and if that's "threatening" to the Dawson Creek Fangirl Club, then that's just too bad. Screw six hundred green-skinned four-armed alien girls. Maybe some Evil-Spock type facial hair. And, of cruse, saving the galaxy from certain doom, it goes without saying.

I'm sure Will Wheaton is a much better actor now than he was however long ago. Part of that geekyness and akwardness came from him being so young at the time. And now with Data gone, he can still be somewhat geeky without anybody else to fill that role. You don't have to make him a Kirk-esq ladies man, but giving him some personality as in "I'm mostly confident in what I can do, and by pushing myself I can be the best." But yes, of cousre, he MUST save the day!

If this is going to be Jim Kirk in his Academy days, this movie is going to get an NC-17 rating. That guy's an intergalactic horn dog!

"Well, ensign, you've never lived until you seen *MY* warp nacelle."

"Oh No! You've got Crab Nebula! Beam me up!"

/Nemesis was unadulterated suckage
//It was approaching Star Trek 5 suckage
///Who let Brent Spiner in as a writer? That guy's made of plastic!

2006-04-21 09:49:42 AM Rupert Birkin: I lost all faith in Star Trek films when they farked with the canon to make Zefram Cochrane, an idealistic middle-aged man from from Alpha Cenauri, into some crusty old money-grubbing bastard from Earth in "First Contact". /hardly would have met with Gene's ideals

Here, take this as a possible new perspective on the film. It's a very subtle message, so subtle, that I think there was conflict in the production of First Contact that was left unresolved until the film's release.

One of the ways Rick Berman has really screwed up Star Trek is to introduce this anti-capitalist passion into it. First Contact is noteworthy as the first movie where Picard waxes eloquently about how "money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century" or something like that. We are therefore led to believe that hundreds of starships, each measuring hundreds of meters long, have been keeled and built and fueled and crewed and launched in all directions within the galaxy, by perhaps millions of talented and skilled and dedicated engineers, all laboring for...drum roll, please...The Common Good.

James Cromwell's character was injected into this nice little United Nations common-good story, in my opinion, as some "renegade" writer's subversion of this concept. Picard, now, looks a little bit silly. He drones on about how mankind how pursues the betterment of onesself, instead of the pursuit of money -- but in doing so, it relies on the invention of a crusty old 21st-century hermit who wants to retire on a island somewhere with lots of whiskey and naked women. Without the crusty geezer and his penchant for booze and bimbos, the holier-than-thou socialist utopia of Starfleet would not exist.

That's commentary, I think. Anti-capitalists fancy themselves better than capitalists. But they can't exist without 'em. Whereas, capitalists can exist without their antagonists just fine -- seldom does a wannabe-communist bring anything to the party, except snotty derision for the capitalists who made the technology possible, class warfare, higher taxes, more rules. Until Picard starts saving the world, we can do without him, but we can't do without Cochrane; Picard can't do any galaxy-saving without Cochrane's technology. Picard is supposed to be better, but he's dispensable, and Cochrane is decidedly not. Kind of a subtle "Revenge of the Nerds" theme going on there.

I'd love to see a movie with Pike. Or a young Kirk on the Farragut. Or set 50 years before TOS, during the Romulan Wars (would the J-classes just be coming into service around then?).

I'm sure Will Wheaton is a much better actor now than he was however long ago.

The problem wasn't with Wil's acting, I think. It was with the roles that were written for him. Wil could only be as good as the scripts let him be. And the character was badly written for way too long.

He didn't finally get decent material to work with until "The First Duty", IMO.

This stupid idea has been going around for years...I serioulsy hope it never gets made. I'd rather see somebody make Gene's movie idea, where Kirk and Spock go back in time to stop the Kennedy assasination (for some reason), only they end up realizing they can't because it would muck up history, and Spock turns out to be the one on the grassy knoll.

Can we just let Trek die for a while? Like 15-20 years? Just let it go...It had a good run, now leave off!

They should ALL have evil Spock style beards.



/love this album

He didn't finally get decent material to work with until "The First Duty", IMO.

Actually, let me ammend that. I think he got good material to work with in "The Game" too.

mkfreeberg: James Cromwell's character was injected into this nice little United Nations common-good story, in my opinion, as some "renegade" writer's subversion of this concept. Picard, now, looks a little bit silly. He drones on about how mankind how pursues the betterment of onesself, instead of the pursuit of money -- but in doing so, it relies on the invention of a crusty old 21st-century hermit who wants to retire on a island somewhere with lots of whiskey and naked women. Without the crusty geezer and his penchant for booze and bimbos, the holier-than-thou socialist utopia of Starfleet would not exist.

The whole point of First Contact was to underscore how much humanity changed when it realized it was no longer alone. Geordi himself gets all disappointed when his big hero runs away and doesn't want to be part of this history. It goes towards society's ideals that we rewrite history to make it sound better to make us feel better. Cochrin was supposed to be this big visionary, but instead he turned out to be a money grubbing whiner. BUT at the end, we see him have his epiphany and THEN he turns into a visionary. It's like JFK; he was a womanizer, but he's remembered as a visionary becuase his ideals put a man on the moon. Nobody mentions his alleged affairs because that's now how we want to remember him.

Cochrin was supposed to be this big visionary, but instead he turned out to be a money grubbing whiner.

That's not the point. We SEE Cochrane in TOS, not some legendary memory of him, but the man himself. And he's nothing, in age, appearance, or personality, like the character from First Contact.

/and building the first warp drive in a post apacolyptic basement? Please.

2006-04-21 10:16:46 AM Mugato: [mkfreeberg: One of the ways Rick Berman has really screwed up Star Trek is to introduce this anti-capitalist passion into it.] That was Gene Roddenberry, not Berman.

It wasn't anti-capitalist until Berman came on board. First Contact came out years after Roddenberry's demise. Roddenberry was around during Season 2 of TNG, when the first mention of "we're too good for money" was made on the show, but by then Berman was a rising star in the production of the series.

Roddenberry was a 1960's, "I have hope in the new United Natoins to end world conflict" kind of a progressive. He doesn't appear to have had strong opinions about capitalism vs. anti-capitalism. Kirk's generation actually had money.

mkfreeberg:

One of the ways Rick Berman has really screwed up Star Trek is to introduce this anti-capitalist passion into it. First Contact is noteworthy as the first movie where Picard waxes eloquently about how "money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century" or something like that. We are therefore led to believe that hundreds of starships, each measuring hundreds of meters long, have been keeled and built and fueled and crewed and launched in all directions within the galaxy, by perhaps millions of talented and skilled and dedicated engineers, all laboring for...drum roll, please...The Common Good.

DS9, being the greatest Trek show, poked fun at this. In one episode Jake needed money to buy his dad a baseball card, so he asks his ferengi friend, Nog, for some. Nog asks him why he doesn't use his own money. Jake replies that he doesn't need money and then repeats Picard's speech about how the desire to better himself supersedes the need for money, and thus, he doesn't need money. So Nog say, 'then why do you need my money.'

/I'm really not a Star Trek nerd.

2006-04-21 10:18:25 AM Hocopeppa: The whole point of First Contact was to underscore how much humanity changed when it realized it was no longer alone...It goes towards society's ideals that we rewrite history to make it sound better to make us feel better. Cochrin was supposed to be this big visionary, but instead he turned out to be a money grubbing whiner. BUT at the end, we see him have his epiphany and THEN he turns into a visionary...

I agree, that was a message too. The one you're talking about was above-board and intentional; the message I'm talking about was either subversive -- or, it could have been accidental.

Hey, I'm just paraphrasing what's in the movie (which I own). The future doesn't exist without Cochrane, and Cochrane is a money-grubbing capitalist whether the TNG-ers are thrilled to find this out or not. It's just a fact.

And with that recitation of events, First Contact actually starts to look like a conservative-libertarian's defense of capitalism. Whether it's intentional or not, is another matter.

Mugato
They first mentioned that there is no money in the Whale one

I always took that to only mean that they no longer used cash, which isn't really all that much of a stretch.

If it's going to be Brokeback Starship, maybe it could be in the early days when they were trying to figure out how to make a transporter work.

"I wish I knew how to beam you."

I'm not the biggest Star Trek fan, but I'd be pissed if they did a story like what I read was proposed.

NOBODY should do Kirk and Spock and Scotty but Shatner and Nimoy and Doohan. Do it with new characters if you do it at all.

Two words for guaranteed Trek movie success: Tarantino directs.

Hmm... how about a starship full of horny, attractive, twentysomething lesbians seeking out a new world free of Berman's blatant homophobia?

Zesty Mordant

I want them to do a DS9 movie, but that's because they left it wide open for one. Sisko said he'd be back. After that, I don't care what they do. I still have TOS and TNG.

/Doesn't want prequel movie.
//Didn't they learn prequels don't work for Star Trek with Enterprise?
///Berman and Braga ruined the franchise.

The mistake the Star Trek franchise made, much like the Star Wars fiascos is the Hollywood cockmasters think that any kind of crap they put out with the Trek label will work because of the massive amount of fans creating a built-in audience.

Then they insulted their intelligence with Star Trek V, and then with the Enterprise series. The writing only picked up at the end, but by that time, everyone was sick of it.

A youg Kirk and Spock? See: Dumb and Dumberer, another franchise-killing disaster. Damn Hollywood idiots.

"
This flick better have hawt female crewmembers in minikirts & busty green chicks with antennae

/else I'n not watching

mkfreeberg

"First Contact is noteworthy as the first movie where Picard waxes eloquently about how "money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century" or something like that. We are therefore led to believe that hundreds of starships, each measuring hundreds of meters long, have been keeled and built and fueled and crewed and launched in all directions within the galaxy, by perhaps millions of talented and skilled and dedicated engineers, all laboring for...drum roll, please...The Common Good."

There is a reason for that... it wasn't out of some commie fantasy, but because technology made materialism/greed obsolete.

Who cares what the Joneses have when you can replicate anything they own? If "needs" like electricity, food, shelter, protection and so on are met, people can work where their passion takes them. If i didn't have to work for a living, i'd spend my time writing games, essays, books and whatever else. One of the reasons chimps don't make a lot of art in the jungle is because they spend a good deal of their time trying to survive. We still have that problem today. i can't finish my CCG because i have to get these green peices of fabric to trade them for health, not being hungry and exposed to the elements. Take a look as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Star Trek assumes that technology has made it possible for the lower levels to be fulfilled.

Star Trek(idealistic/hopeful) is not meant to be like BSG (gritty/cynical). It is a fantasy world... that just might be why is it set in the future, instead of the present.

Looking at human history and current events we can see a connection between technology and social progress. Industrialization pretty much created the middle class. In parts of the world that do are not as modernized, the middle class is small to non-existent. People who running from wolves in the forest, or from lions in the savanna don't have much time for taking a role in the community theatre play. Furthermore, people growing up in a forgotten ghetto care more about things like... living to the next day than math, literature and philosophy. Those things are luxuries.

Imagine that we find a source of infinite clean energy (like zero point energy). That would change the world in ways our cynical minds can't fathom. If i could install a ZPE unit in my car, that would free up money i could spend on travel. But wait, now flying costs less so i can go further or more often. The world shrinks, i'm closer to everyone. i could go on for pages about the implications just that one technological leap. Star Trek proposes a world where many such leaps happened.

To me it is not a question of "is it possible to have a world w/o money?", but more of "Will those with money give up their stranglehold on those w/o money?"

Don't look to the real world for examples of communism, there haven't been any. The USSR was a dictatorship with commie trappings.

If that explanations doesn't suit you: it's fiction. Fiction != Reality. That is why it exists. To allow us to escape from a dull and cruel world for an hour a week, and dream that someday things might not suck so badly.

They're doing this way too soon. What needs to happen is a period of NoTrek like the one that preceeded the show's popularity in the first place.

Trust the fans - they'll take you where you need to go...


/still haven't caught 2.0

Heard about this possibility on AICN not too long ago. The premise sounds stupid initially, but from the description of the script by the guy who read it, it could work.

I, for one, welcome our new media overlords and will consent to deep, pentrating Trekification at the predetermined time.

TheGrayCat: Spock: "Captain, logic dictates that I should know how to quit you. Yet, I do not. Fascinating!"

You owe me a new keyboard and monitor. Funny, yet so incredibly wrong.

Unless it's got Wil in the Captain's chair, I ain't watching it.

I still want my enterprise C movie....


Or how about a movie about an average crew, on an il maintained ship. Then they all get really drunk and decide to violate orders and go to vegas.
Then we had some mescallin and went swimming

Wow. There were a lot of good ideas in this thread. Too bad the bastards at Trek stopped taking fan submissions right around Voyager's time. Would have stopped some of the suckage and plot attrition IMO.

Anyway to summarize, I'd go see a movie about:
1. Pike on the original Enterprise. (Pike being a character you could get away with recasting. But DO NOT WANT them to "modernize" the Enterprise. None of this damn, oh, it's a movie, we can spend more money and make it look totally different. Bastards)
2. Wesley and an unnamed Neil Patrick Harris character go on a buddy mission to get drunk and screw Orion slave girls (my love for NPH knows no bounds which I why I would see this one)
3. A show that continues the current plotlines of Dominion, Borg, etc. With Riker as the captain, Picard finally as a damn admiral and none of that crappy new Data.
4. The crew learns that the regular Data is alive and goes to find him ala "Search for Spock". B-9(?) or whatever the hell his dumbass name was gets less annoying or destroyed. Either.
5. Any movie wherein Counselor "What's a warp core breach?" Troi has very little to say/do and Dr. Crusher gets all her lines (and if someone could please tell Marina Sirtis that if she can't remember how to do her Troi "accent" she should just not attempt it at all? Thankies)
6. Any movie that could combine the best of DS9, the good of Voyager (by that I mean the Borg or Species 89whatever), and the awesome of TNG (Riker and Worf), along with some Klingon or Cardassian action, I'd probably go see. As long as no one has a clone that looks NOT A DAMN THING LIKE THEM, I'll be happy.
7. Plot is the key thing here. Berman seemed to cream himself on the special effects, but it was plot (as written by Michael Piller may he rest in peace and Jeri Taylor. And maybe Ira Behr had some good ones, but it was mostly Piller) that makes the movie. 5 sucked because the plot sucked. 10 sucked because the plot sucked. 2 was awesome because the plot was awesome. 6, ditto. So if someone could just exert themselves to come up with a good story, the movie will be watched.

/showging my nerdiness, but I loved 2,4,6,8, was okay with 9 and 3, disliked 7 and 1, and hated 10 and 5

I would honestly watch a movie where they chronical Wesley Crusher as he finishes up the acadamy and moves into his first roll as ensign. Last I remember, they were fighting the Dominion ("ugh!" factor 9.2, but it was mentioned in Insurrection) so you could have him pilot whatever starship in a huge space battle (with cameos abounding from TNG, DS9, and Voyager), act all heroic, and end the movie with him getting a promotion or something for the feel good moment. Simplistic and it gives them a new character to follow behind. Throw in some behind the scenes political tension to further the overall storyline of the Star Trek universe, and you have yourself a movie.

He never actually graduated from the Academy. He dropped out to live with a settlement of Native Americans on some planet so he could learn from The Traveler.

What would be funny would be to show how Crusher transforms into some wierd-ass equivalent of Darth Vader. His teachings with the Traveler show him the ways of the force and then he goes from a whiny-ass pussy to an Evil whiny-ass pussy bent on Galactic Domination. Maybe add Q in somewhere...

//At least my Idea is not as bad as the proposed one...or SW Episode I

braedan: mciann

Leeta (Quarks Dabo girl from DS9)
Seven of Nine
T'Pol (and to a lesser extent Hoshi & Trip)

you're a bit late.


Yoeman Rand
The Green Alien Chick
Every woman Kirk met EVER

It's been like that since Day One (not that I don't watch)