Star Trek: Into Darkness

David Jimerson

David Jimerson

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Staff member
There was a time when Star Trek was about thoughtful sci-fi, adventure, discovery, the triumph of optimism and the human spirit, rather than a shoot-em-up to kill the baddie every couple of years.

I guess that's just not the contemporary way of things.

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The page this is from has a spoiler about the plot. Ugh, with yuck sauce. "Star Trek: Into the Dark Knight," they nickname it.
 
The Starfleet Knight

The Dark Kirk Rises

The Enterprise: Reloaded :cool:

Trekinator: Salvation


I do have to admit that the idea of using a piece of architecture as the Starfleet symbol and having a figure standing in the open space is a cool design. I would have loved to have seen this basic layout done in a more optimistic and colorful mode, like what Star Trek normally embodies.
 
But the spirit of optimism continued in Star Trek throughout all of the series, even if the series were not all particularly good. They tried, anyway.

It certainly was about more than just blowing things up.
 
David Jimerson said:
It certainly was about more than just blowing things up.
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It would work best in a modern context as an indie movie series or TV show again in capable hands. As a franchise owned by a studio, this is what we're going to get for the foreseeable future.

If the villain allows himself to be caught as part of the plot, I'm throwing popcorn at the screen.
 
Captain Pierce said:
And that time ended when Gene Roddenberry died.
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Perhaps I haven't been around long enough to know what the franchise was like when he was alive, but I personally enjoyed most of the iterations of Star Trek after his death, particularly DS9. I actually think some of the early seasons of The Next Generation were awful. I didn't really enjoy the 2009 Star Trek film but I can appreciate that the franchise certainly needed a reboot and a different direction after the poor box office performance of Nemesis and the cancelation of Enterprise.
 
Gary Huff said:
If the villain allows himself to be caught as part of the plot, I'm throwing popcorn at the screen.
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Definitely a total cliche at this point. The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall...I'd like to see a scene where the villain allows himself to be caught as part of a dastardly plan and then they shoot him in the head straight off, because duh. Then of course it would have to turn out that guy was just a puppet of a supposed henchman.

That said I loved the reboot and I'm looking forward to this somewhat.
 
Even beyond the bleakness, there's just nothing really Star Trek at all about this poster. The wreckage theme definitely seems more Dark Knight than Star Trek and the character seems like he belongs in the Matrix.
 
Yeah, I'll be watching this. Wrath of Khan pretty much ruined the film franchise from ever being genuine science fiction again. And I love me some Wrath of Khan. But it's militaristic space opera, not true science fiction, and JJ & company are taking that same action-centric approach. As long as they do it well, I won't be up in arms. There will always be 70 some hours of the original series I can watch if I ever pine for the old Star Trek.
 
Batutta said:
Yeah, I'll be watching this. Wrath of Khan pretty much ruined the film franchise from ever being genuine science fiction again. And I love me some Wrath of Khan. But it's militaristic space opera, not true science fiction, and JJ & company are taking that same action-centric approach. As long as they do it well, I won't be up in arms. There will always be 70 some hours of the original series I can watch if I ever pine for the old Star Trek.
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Actually, other than "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979), "Wrath of Khan"(1980) is the only other of the series I really like...

As for 'science fiction', my threshold is very low for the amount of technology/science required to put it into 'science fiction'. Anything with a 'warp drive' is definitely 'science fiction'.

As for the Original Series... the third year was a 'throwaway', it had reduced to a monster-a-week, as it was I had pretty much stopped regular TV viewing by the end of the final Star Trek season in 1969, so there are some episodes that I haven't seen...
 
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There was a lot more to The Wrath of Khan than just blowing things up. Nothing got "blowed up" just 'cuz; it was all incidental to what the characters wanted. There was a great deal of sci-fi in it -- genetically-enhanced super-people (who were from the 20th century!), a device which could create life from lifelessness-- and the story was both complex and timeless.

In that sense, it was among the best of what Star Trek -- and good science fiction -- was supposed to be -- real, human stories (often a parable or morality play) set against a world with things that don't exist in our own. It was even optimistic in the face of death. If it made you forget all the sci-fi IN it, then in many ways, it succeeded extremely well, because it built a REAL, BELIEVABLE world around fantastic concepts.

Was it more militaristic? Sure, but no more so than some of the episodes (you can't have a "court-martial" if you're not a military, nor can you have war games), and the concept allowed for delving into that kind of thing. It just shouldn't be the norm. And even wasn't for the rest of the original crew movie series, save for the last one. It wasn't for the subsequent series, either.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Actually, other than "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979), "Wrath of Khan"(1980) is the only other of the series I really like...

As for 'science fiction', my threshold is very low for the amount of technology/science required to put it into 'science fiction'. Anything with a 'warp drive' is definitely 'science fiction'.

As for the Original Series... the third year was a 'throwaway', it had reduced to a monster-a-week, as it was I had pretty much stopped regular TV viewing by the end of the final Star Trek season in 1969, so there are some episodes that I haven't seen...
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I define true science fiction as a story where the main problem is scientific in nature, and is solved primarily through scientific reasoning. Star Trek I was true science fiction in that sense. Much of the original series was as well. If it merely uses the tropes of science fiction as glitzy window dressing, it's something else. Again, done well, I can throughly enjoy that approach as well. But on the whole the Star Trek film series never was that true to the science fiction ambitions of the original series, or even a lot of the subsequent TV series. They were mostly shoot'em ups. And I understand why. For the budgets that is required to make these films, they need to appeal to a younger audience that isn't as interested in science, or socio-political allegory.
 
Batutta said:
I define true science fiction as a story where the main problem is scientific in nature, and is solved primarily through scientific reasoning. Star Trek I was true science fiction in that sense. Much of the original series was as well.
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Consider: Khan's genetic engineering was the source of the problem and the solution. His superior intellect which is what made him extremely powerful on 20th-century Earth, and what got his people into space in the first place. And it also allows him to understand all of the 23rd century technology quickly and effectively -- not to mention his charisma allowing him to recruit allies.

It's the side-effect of his superior ability which allows his downfall -- and Kirk reasons this out. It's his commensurately-superior EGO which is his downfall.

What more could you want from sci-fi? It's a fantastical concept and the real-world implications are explored, and exploited, and in this case, in a very believable manner.
 
David Jimerson said:
Consider: Khan's genetic engineering was the source of the problem and the solution. His superior intellect which is what made him extremely powerful on 20th-century Earth, and what got his people into space in the first place. And it also allows him to understand all of the 23rd century technology quickly and effectively -- not to mention his charisma allowing him to recruit allies.

It's the side-effect of his superior ability which allows his downfall -- and Kirk reasons this out. It's his commensurately-superior EGO which is his downfall.

What more could you want from sci-fi? It's a fantastical concept and the real-world implications are explored, and exploited, and in this case, in a very believable manner.
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That's the story of Space Seed. Wrath of Khan is primarily concerned with Khan's revenge. I love Wrath of Khan, and definitely the balance of the space opera and the science fiction elements, which comes more from the Genesis device, is handled much better than in JJ Abrams Star Trek. But the sci-fi elements are more like McGuffins and subplots in both films. They aren't the primary concern.
 
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