The Star Trek Thread

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Bal
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Bal » Sun Jul 10, 2016 3:50 pm

I feel like if George Takei feels like he was playing a straight man, that's good enough for me. Not that NuSulu can't be whatever they want, of course he can, but I see where he's coming from. I also have to question pretty seriously whether they would have done this had Takei not come out himself.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Jul 10, 2016 4:36 pm

Plinkett's review of the first movie spent a good amount of time not really criticizing, but lightly poking at the fact that it seems to spend a lot of time establishing how not-gay the primary male characters are. You normally wouldn't notice it but Star Trek is so much about close male relationships that it's fair to say that it may be why they linger so much over their romantic interests, even though really honestly it's just because the new series is just that kind of show.

I don't think it's wrong to make Sulu gay but it feels like a missed opportunity. They made Sulu gay because people expect Sulu to be gay, case closed. If they wanted to do something daring and meaningful it would have been somebody else - though effectively, it probably would have been Chekhov in this case, and that just would have made things even more tragic.

Though of course we don't know - Sulu and any number of other characters could be gay too. And in the very long run, the whole point of the thing is that it really should not be a huge fucking deal, so you have to walk that fine line where you honestly care but also don't make a huge fuss over it.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Sun Jul 10, 2016 4:52 pm

I actually kind of agree with George, but mostly because of the implication that Sulu has to be gay because the guy who played him is. That seems kind of tone deaf. On the other hand, I don't really give half a shit what Roddenberry thought. If it was down to that guy, gay people just plain wouldn't exist in that universe. He was really socially progressive for his time, but not so much in that area. Also, I think we can agree that most of the best aspects of Star Trek came about despite Gene's input, and often in direct contradiction to his wishes. Unless the first season of TNG was your favorite.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jul 10, 2016 5:00 pm

Sharkey wrote:I actually kind of agree with George, but mostly because of the implication that Sulu has to be gay because the guy who played him is.


I think that's what rubs me the wrong way about this.

Also in some theoretically super-progressive future, such as the the kind Star Trek purports to display, a character being gay should be of no more consequence than their being black, or Klingon, or whatever. Which is to say, sure, this movie is for us and not for some future audience living in such a theoretical universe, so I get that they have to actually show or allude to the character being gay somehow, but you would hope it wouldn't be in any more relevant a way than any other characters' romantic leanings.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Jul 10, 2016 5:30 pm

For all we know the only effect it will have in the film will be Sulu showing up with a boyfriend at some point and nobody mentioning it.

Hell, that's how Doctor Who does it, and Lord knows they'd love to grab a bit of that Whovian magic. I just hope they don't do what Doctor Who* does wrong and make it seem like the entire god damn universe is queer.

* Really just Torchwood.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Friday » Sun Jul 10, 2016 5:41 pm

Whovian magic


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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Grath » Sun Jul 10, 2016 5:43 pm

Brentai wrote:I just hope they don't do what Doctor Who* does wrong and make it seem like the entire god damn universe is queer.

* Really just Torchwood.

I thought that was just "John Barrowman wants to have sex with anything that has a pulse"?

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Blossom » Sun Jul 10, 2016 8:44 pm

Brentai wrote:For all we know the only effect it will have in the film will be Sulu showing up with a boyfriend at some point and nobody mentioning it.


From what I've read, that's exactly it. Except also with their daughter, as mentioned above.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Büge » Sun Jul 10, 2016 9:02 pm

Sharkey wrote:He was really socially progressive for his time, but not so much in that area.


Or when it came to women.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Mon Jul 11, 2016 4:46 pm

Yeah. "Progressive for their time" is a special sort of curse. It throws every other shortcoming into stark relief where otherwise it would have just been baseline. But apologetics aside, Gene was a bit of a cunt and probably more than a little bit rapey. He had some good ideas and put black people on TV. Yay. He was also a fucking neaderthal by modern standards. I don't really care what he thought about most things, and when it comes to women and homosexuals we absolutely shouldn't be consulting with his ghost.

He was basically a one man goofus and gallant, and it's almost pathetic that if his utopian ideal society ever existed they'd fucking maroon him. Hell, if he were alive and talking right now we'd barely tolerate him as a slightly less racist Pierce Hawthorne. At best.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:37 pm

I agree with the whole "Roddenberry's vision isn't everything" sentiment but keep in mind that George Hosato Takei probably has his own personal reasons for giving the man plenty of respect.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:58 pm

Absolutely, totally understandable. It's just that the sentiment is at the absolute bottom of the list when it comes to why gay Sulu is kind of dumb. Considering the wishes of a dead homophobic misogynist is the least compelling argument among a lot of good ones. Especially when the best thing that happened to the show was escaping his oversight.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Jul 11, 2016 6:09 pm

I'm guessing you watched the same documentary I did where the entire TNG writing staff spends 90 minutes dancing uncomfortably around the fact that they were all relieved that he died when he did.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Mon Jul 11, 2016 6:17 pm

I didn't, but that sounds delightfully awkward.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Büge » Mon Jul 11, 2016 6:45 pm

Brentai wrote:I'm guessing you watched the same documentary I did where the entire TNG writing staff spends 90 minutes dancing uncomfortably around the fact that they were all relieved that he died when he did.


It's a bit of an ironic twist, though, in that Gene's Vision Of The Future™ dictated that people in the 24th Century don't mourn the dead, a problem Michael Piller wrestled with when he was working on "The Bonding".
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 12, 2016 5:04 pm

I did not know this was a thing: http://starchertrek.com/

(yes, it's old, but apparently more episodes are coming soon)
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby MarsDragon » Fri Jul 22, 2016 1:16 pm

Saw the new Star Trek.

I wasn't too impressed. I hadn't seen the previous two movies, but it did a good job of standing on its own. Problem was that it was dumb. Decent action flick, lots of explosions, but the way they choreographed and shot the action was confusing and the villain wasn't very good. His motivations don't seem to match up with his actions, he does a "Your unity makes you weak! Struggling alone made me strong!" thing and has a literal army thousands strong to do his evil with and then the shocking twist (which I liked) makes all that sound even weirder in retrospect. And don't play the 'it doesn't make sense because he's crazy' card, that's never a good excuse. Honestly, if they'd just made him Big Boss like I called from when he first showed up on-screen it would've worked so much better.

The dialog was mostly serviceable, with some big clunkers dropped around. Most of these were from the villain, who has the most cheesy, ham-fisted dialog I've seen outside of OH.

The effects were really nice, especially the sets. I liked the neat space city they had, and while the alien planet just looked like a national park, that's pretty classic Trek so eh. It's a summer action movie, can't complain about the effects.

Minor nerd nitpicks: The universal translator, as always, doesn't make sense, but then they have one character where the implementation makes even less sense than usual. So you have alien woman, who speaks in alien, pauses, the UT says a part of a sentence, then she speaks more alien and the UT provides the rest. So....her alien language just happens to have the exact same word order (among other things) as English? At least if they'd just had her speaking English like the UT usually works it's ignorable. And why is all the footage from the old starship taken with a Gameboy Camera? Couldn't afford a cell phone in the 22nd century?

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:33 pm



Uh oh.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jul 25, 2016 12:44 am

Video not available

What looked bad?
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Mon Jul 25, 2016 12:46 pm

DailyMotion link

Mostly just the CG and ship design is not doing much for me. Looks like they based it off those old, unused concepts for Planet of the Titans, back in the 70's.

I am almost certain this series is gonna be great, though, with confirmed season arcs and Bryan Fuller at the helm.

Still, geah.

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