> From: Marvin Long, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Reggie Bautista wrote: > > > Did you read Roddenberry's novelization of ST:TMP? (Some say it was > > ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster.) > > Long ago. I remember the ADF connection, but not many of the plot details > (aside from the ones that made it into the movie).
Shatner talks about it in his biography. > > Overall, I liked the book much better than the movie. I thought the movie > > was good, but it didn't really feel like Star Trek to me (of course, I first > > saw it when I was 10 or 11, so what do I know :-). I feel the same about > > the book, only moreso; it's a great book, but would have brought some pretty > > drastic changes into the Star Trek continuity, and doesn't seem to match the > > character of what came before or after. > > I feel the ST:TMP is most Trekkish, by TOS standards, of the movies. > What happened IMO is that STII:TWoK *changed* the Star Trek formula. > Instead of using the characters as an excuse "to boldy go," STII uses > boldly having gone as an excuse to explore in greater detail the personal > lives and relationships of the characters in the context of the immediate > history and politics of the Federation; and this trend has continued in > the movies unabated (and in the spinoffs). STII is..Moby Dick. > > But Star Trek post-STII:TWoK is about how the crew, by virtue of being > such a cool crew with such cool chemistry, affect the galaxy at large when > they encounter various situations. > > Now, this is a fine line and even TOS crosses it occasionally, but I think > that it holds true as a generalization. The increase of soap-opera-ish > and story-arc-ish elements in all the later series and movies > demonstrates that after STII:TWoK, Star Trek ceased to be about boldly > going where none have gone before. Instead it became about the familiar > themes of serial TV/movie character development in exotic locales. > > [*] I think that the deliberately non-soap-opera-ish quality of ST:TOS is > probably part of what killed it and also part of what made it so What killed it was that it was never edited. The first cut was the cut that played in theaters. Those really long sequences of special effects, and nothing else. Granted TMP had the best special effects of any of the movies up to ST6 ($100m in 1980 dollars worth). > attractive to the geeks in the audience. ST:TOS doesn't present us with > ongoing personal dramas: we don't see the long-term repercussions of Amok > Time or of the kiss in Plato's Stepchildren. Instead it gives us a > pleasant ensemble of characters with little long-term memory who get to > explore a diffrerent idea every week. Character is revealed and explored, > but with respect to the idea of the week, not with respect to the > long-term relationships of the crew, which remain fairly static in their > idiosyncracies. ST:TMP breaks from this mold just insofar as it has to > reassemble the crew from their diverse lives, but then it stops and lets > the big idea of the "week" take over. Starting with STII:TWoK, the crew > relationships take center stage and over time the big ideas increasingly > get pushed into the background. Ongoing human drama has made the > franchise a success, but it ceased to be original Trek-ish in the process. > > Another way of looking at it might be to say that the things which make > ST:TOS distinct from it's spinoffs are the things that a) killed the > original series, b) made ST:TMP sub-par in many viewers eyes, and c) make > ST:TMP the coolest and most Star Trekkish of the movies. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
