Talking about Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture (sorry for the cheap shot, I'll get back to it near the end of the email), I wrote:
>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 :-).
Marvin replied:
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.
[snip]
In other words, ST:TOS is about the things the crew find out in space and, to a lesser degree, how these things effect the crew (or convey some mind-bogglingly transparent Message). 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.
[snip again]
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. YMMV of course.
It's interesting to see how two different people can like the same things for different and sometimes contradictory reasons. I think your analysis is really very good, but you obviously look at ST:TOS and ST:TNG differently than I, and that's because we seem to like the show for different reasons. You seem to like ST:TOS primarily for the "what-if," the pure science fiction anthology element of it. I liked that element, but one of the main reasons I like TOS is the relationship between Kirk, McCoy, and Spock, and the tension and conflict that arise from their relationship. Spock suggests the logical course of action, McCoy gives the humanitarian or emotional way of doing things, and Kirk has to find the balance between those. Spock and McCoy are almost the angel and devil on Kirk's shoulders, except that leaning too far in *either* direction is a bad thing. For all of Kirk's brashness, in many ways he is the Platonic ideal of taking the middle road. He is the Golden Mean, leaning more toward emotion than logic, but using both to best effect. The tension involved in staying on that middle path is the main thing that drew me to TOS even as a kid, and still draws me to it today. It's something my dad used to talk about to me all the time. Use you emotions, and use your brain, but when you have to choose between the two, trust your emotions more. Logic can be *much* more misleading, and in more insidious ways. (I know I'm probably gonna get hit hard on this one on-list, depending on who reads this...) One of the main weaknesses I see in TNG is that the relationships between the major characters are too bland. The characters are each interesting in themselves, but there is no tension in their interactions, with the exception of Dr. Pulaski in the second season, and I didn't much like her anyway; she functioned more as a two-dimensional... hmm, maybe one-dimensional foil to highlight the "humanity" of Data. TNG has no dance between being letting the heart rule or letting the head rule, no finding that magical middle ground. In TNG, all those decisions are foregone conclusions (well, for the most part, anyway, as all of this is generalizing to lesser or greater extents). For me, both shows have equal amounts of "what-if." It's just that in TOS, almost all of the "what-if's" are external, whereas in TNG more of the "what-if's" arise organically out of who the characters are, how they have grown, and how they *haven't* grown. That organic quality is one of the strengths of TNG as I see it. And that brings me back to the reasons ST:TMP feels the least Trek-ish to me of the movies (except for the fifth one, which never happened :-). TMP is all what-if. Sure, all the regular characters are there, but you can pretty easily replace them with other characters without changing the movie much. You can't really do that with any of the other movies, not even the fifth one, nor can you do that with the best of TOS. Try imagining "City on the Edge of Forever" with anyone besides the Enterprise crew. Or try "Amok Time." Or "Balance of Terror." Or in TNG, try imagining "Yesterday's Enterprise" or "Best of Both Worlds" or "I, Borg." None of these episodes would have the same resonance, the same power, with different characters. ST:TMP, IMO at least, would be the same movie if you replaced the Enterprise crew with the crew of, say, the Palamino from Disney's _The Black Hole_. There is a great sense of wonder in TMP, a cool what-if, but it doesn't feel strongly tied to the characters, IMO. Sure, there are some episodes of TOS and TNG where the characters are more or less irrelevant to the plot. But there aren't many (especially in TNG). And they aren't the really good ones. Science fiction is the exception to a general rule about writing; good stories come from good characters. In science fiction, it is possible to have a very good story with throw-away characters. One example (and a good counter-example to my next point) is the Asimov story "The Final Question." But when you think about the *best* science fiction, what do you think of? I start thinking of character names. Hari Seldon. Gillian Baskin. Creideiki. Spock. Captain Nemo. Beowulf Schaeffer. Again, there are exceptions, and more exceptions in science fiction than you would find elsewhere, but it is a truism among most writers that the best way to make a great story is to start with a great character. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that ST:TMP is *not* the most Trekkish of the movies. Clearly it is, based on your definition of Trekkish. But also, clearly it isn't, based on my definition of Trekkish. Perspective is everything :-) Above, I mentioned the "reasons," plural, that TMP feels least Trekkish. The other one, besides the interchangableness of the characters, is the pacing. The original series rarely had a slow or dull moment. TNG, while paced quite a bit more slowly in many episodes, still rarely got boring. But there were long stretches of TMP where I found myself, even as a 10-year-old, thinking "Get on with it already!" The only other Star Trek movie where that happened for me was the fifth one, which as I said above never really happened anyway -- it was just a bad dream of our collective unconscious ;-) Normally I don't get bored easily, but those two both did it to me. Maybe I'll feel differently once I get around to watching the re-edited version.
Agreed!And I refuse to buy the DVDs until they come out with a real ST:TOS boxed set.
Reggie Bautista
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