Friday, December 31, 2010

I'm still writing, and Star Trek (the 2009) still sucks

Yup. So why can't I get over it? It's been over a year!

Because my oh so thoughtful GF bought the DVD for me. And instead of destroying it in a Satanic ritual that would send it back to the bowels of hell from whence it was so clearly first thought up... I opened it up and popped it into my DVD player and started to watch it.

I'm a trekkie.
I was given a Star Trek DVD. Old habits die hard.

Surely it can't have been just that? Well yes, actually. It's primarily because I AM a trekkie. I'm open minded, accepting of new ideas, new cultures, new concepts. I thought mayhaps I was only imagining and misremembering how terrible it was because when I saw it in the theatres I was honestly expecting something that wasn't, you know, Star Wars.

I thought, maybe I only hated this movie because it decided to take place in an alternate timeline that truly doesn't matter, that it replaces my beloved 1960s cast with a buncha young punks who probably think Voyager is old trek. Also, because of its retarded backstory, which is canon despite appearing only in a comic book. I thought maybe I simply misremembered the movie as being terrible due to it simply being different.

I was wrong.

Not about how terrible it was, I was wrong about having imagined how atrocious it was. I was wrong to be an open minded accepting trekkie. I'm like a hamfisted lesson in TOS about being TOO accepting of the different and the ugly and the alien; a red shirted graduate who can't wait to go shake hands with a Klingon during the height of the Federation/Klingon cold war.

Turns out the movie is actually worse than I remembered it. My first viewing was so traumatizing that I actually suppressed about 90% of it's sheer crapulence from my conscious memory.

I'm not kidding.
I think this movie has given me a mild case of post traumatic stress disorder. If you can call any case of PTSD mild.

From the first few minutes, I was actually yelling at my tv set. As if it had done something wrong. As if it were Orci. Every stupid little thing made me pause it to yell something out about that stupid little thing.

It was so prevalent, and there were so many things, from minor details to major fucking ones, that I paused so much, it took me 30 minutes to get through the first 15 minutes of the movie to the opening title screen.

It's not as if I spent a lot of time on each thing that bothered me either. A few seconds for each pause, AT MOST. And still I doubled the time of this opening scene just through all the problems I saw.

Problems that, if you remember, shouldn't possibly be there this early since it's the arrival of the Narada that apparently changes everything.

It's not like 'yesterdays enterprise' either. Where the 1701-C shows up 50 years into the future and thus changed the 50 years that had transpired for the worse, which resulted in the vastly different bridge of the 1701-D and totally different uniforms.

Nope. The Narada is from the future. It's arrival into the past couldn't possibly change things as they exist in the past just by virtue of it's having arrived there. Not until it at least opens fire. And then, only to things that happen from that point on.

And I know; it's arrival creates a divergent timeline.
Not a universe exactly, a timeline. Things are different in this timeline.

Fine. I'm okay with that. I don't mind change. I don't even mind that they destroyed Vulcan. They did it stupidly in a terrible movie. But I'm fine with it.

But why would I give a fuck about THIS timeline? Clearly it can't affect the real timeline. Seriously. It can't. If it can, then none of the events IN the timeline itself can possibly happen.

Wipe that paradox drool off your chin.
It's not that complicated.
Honestly.

Vulcan is destroyed. Red matter was created at the Vulcan science academy 100 years from the movies main time-frame to save Romulus. Done by Ambassador Spock.

There's no more Vulcan Science academy. Spock is no longer likely to become an ambassador for a mission his older self already assured him WILL FAIL.

So no red matter will be created. No black hole. No Narada coming back to create this sequence of events which prevents the Narada from going back to begin with. Paradox!

Nope. Because as we've established, it's an alternate timeline.

So clearly, the Narada entered what was ALREADY an alternate timeline, one that already didn't fucking matter in terms of the real timeline.

Why is it clearly already an alternate timeline? Because the Kelvin and its crew and this starfleet clearly doesn't operate by the same rules as our starfleet. In fact, in this timeline, the fictional laws of subspace physics don't even function in the same ways as the fictional laws of subspace physics do in the main timeline.

Because a ship requires nacelles in PAIRS in order to achieve warp. That's in the star trek bible written by Roddenberry. It's also true that not one single canon ship has nacelles that aren't in pairs.

Ok smarty pants I know. What about the future 1701-D from 'all good things' with the 3rd nacelle?!

What about it? That was just like this; another timeline, except instead of seeing a point in that timelines past, we saw a point in the future... from the perspective of the main timeline. So, clearly in that timeline, the fictional subspace laws allowed nacelles in odd numbers.

I just played with therm canon there. Canon is what we see on screen (and occasionally certain novelizations or unfortunately, the R worded countdown comicbook), and if we see a 3 nacelled ship it's canon.

Yes, except the events of that episode clearly indicate that it was a future of an alternate timeline, which the individual consciousness of Picard happened to be jumping into now and again. Through the power of Q.

If you don't know this; Q can alter reality. OR, at least, appear to do so. Therefore, that timeline, and everything about it, may not even be real. It's not exactly clear what Q does. We can't be sure it was even another timeline, or just something that happened all within Picards mind. The Q are still mysterious, even with all the BS about the continuum and kids and war we saw in Voyager. The short of this is; the 3 nacelled 1701-D isn't/wasn't really necessarily a real ship, thus... not exactly canon. Even though we saw it.

Honestly it's not even as complicated as it sounds. But that's not the point here.

The point is far more simple. Why should I give a fuck about this movies timeline?

These are not the crew I know. They are no more like Kirk and Spock than the mirror universe versions of Kirk and Spock.

Their reactions, their behaviors, nothing at all indicates they're at all like the characters from the primary timeline.

So what we need, obviously... is Daniels.

Wait, what? who the fuck is Daniels?!

Jesus. Yes, actually...He's sort of like Jesus. If Jesus was bald, struck you as possibly homosexual, and an agent that worked for what can only be described as 'time police' that was engaged in a temporal cold war during Enterprise. A concept that, unfortunately, it's writers couldn't fully exploit to it's full potential. Nevertheless, it did make for some pretty good episodes.

See, I'm quite comfy with the concept of time travel, alternate timelines and quantum realities. Because I've fucking been watching trek these last 40 years.

The question is, why should a trekkie like me, who's been watching trek these last 40 years, and who is just as well aware as I am about the fact that the new movie takes place in an alternate timeline that has ZERO to do with the main timeline, care at all about any other movie that takes place in this timeline?

Well why did I care about Enterprise? Didn't it take place in an alternate timeline? No. The whole series of events of First Contact was established to take place IN the prime timeline AND also in the Enterprise timeline. The temporal cold war did change some things, but ultimately history unfolded as it was supposed to.

But the new timeline?

Honestly, I won't care at all. Not until stories in this time line start dealing with the fact that Spock prime (senile old Spock) REALIZES what I've already realized without a century of Vulcan logic and direct experience with time travel.

Once he realizes that it's just an alternate timeline, he'll realize he doesn't belong there. That anything he does there is irrelivent to the people he actually knows. That the young Spock here, is NOT him, and can never be him. He'll also realize that, perhaps, if he can get back to the proper main timeline he's from, he can prevent the supernova that destroys Romulus, and thus also erase the events in this timeline which resulted in the needless deaths of billions of Vulcans.

It's the only logical course of events for a character like Spock. The ONLY way to avoid this is to actually kill off Spock Prime. For real this time.

There, see. I only griped a little about the awful movie. I didn't even gripe about how bad the next one will be. Yet.

Live long and prosper.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Space; the final frontier

Enough about how much the new trek movie sucked already.

It was horrible. It was a slap in the face. It was badly written, badly directed, badly filmed, badly executed, and badly everything it could've been better and shoul've been. 'nuff said.

Instead of bitching about trek, today I'm going to bitch about the constellation program having been cancelled by Obama.

This was a teeny little news story; reported and virtually uncommented on by anyone in the real media.

Now, I know a lot of people call the internet the 'new media', but it's not new, and it's only media the same way a painting is a media. Anyone can do it, but not everyone has talent; thus not everyone should. People just haven't figured that out yet.

Yes, people on the net have mentioned it. I'm mentioning it as well.

But so what?

Need I remind you that the last thing this new media introduced to the old media that almost radically changed the world was Sarah friggin' Palin. If that's not enough to get people to understand that they need to be more careful out here, nothing will.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! My point here is that the new media is mostly a place for us to rant and gripe and it shouldn't be taken too seriously... and I was then going to rant and gripe about the constellation program having been cancelled.

So; no more manned space program. Billions of dollars have been flushed down the drain, once more, by the Obama Administration. This is, of course, nothing even remotely new. But the manned space program also cost lives. There are also people out there unconvinced we even left our planet in the first place.

Of course I'm not arguing we should continue to explore space with manned missions to get insane CTers to shut the eff up. I'm just saying it would be a very nifty side effect. And something we would all directly benefit from.

Obama stated he wants private corporations more involved in the space program. Asinine. A corporation is in the business of making a profit. The only thing space is good for monitarily at this point, is putting up more sats so we can get more cellular coverage so more people can self indulgently twitter from anywhere in the world and shareholders can profit.

That's not me being glib. That's simple truth.

Okay, I'm being a little glib.

But the truth is space is only profitable in the long haul. It's one of the few things I want my government involved in. It's one of the few things I want my tax dollars going to.

A business must show a profit every quarter. Government isn't business. It never has been, as much as those in government want it to be. The welfare of the people and the continuation of it's people are it's primary responsibility, or at least it should be.

Manned space exploration ultimately benefits everyone. Just not right away. Not to be an alarmist here; but someone needed to fund Christopher Columbus. The America's were discovered by the Vikings centuries before; and as profiteers, they couldn't make a profit from it so it went virtually unheard of. Spain couldn't make a profit from it at first either. Nor could England.
But eventually well... 500 years later; the United States of America remains, however tenuously, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Things move so much more quickly now that few people seem to want to think in long term goals. 50 years, 10 years? Please... even 4 year presidential terms seem to take forever for this generation. A week, maybe two, is considered long term these days.

Space is big. Seriously there's not much else that can be said about it. It's big. Huge. In fact, it doesn't friggin end. That's too big to even imagine.

It's also brutal. Many say it's cold. This is half true. Deep space is damn cold. And anywhere near a star is damn hot. Somehow people forget about this thing called radiation. Stars are nuclear fusion reactors. Yeah. Our oil is about to run out. Lets research into 'alternative' energy sources.

We can't get energy from fusion yet, not worthwhile amounts. Nope. For us to get a hot fusion reaction we have to spend more energy than we get out most of the time.

But billions of stars out there do. And each one burns for a few million years.

And our sun is only eight light seconds away.

You seriously don't want to go out into space?

You just want to keep sending probes and sats?

Probes; no problem. But eventually we have to get off this rock.

Seriously. Every day we don't set up a colony elsewhere, on the moon or mars for instance, we take one more step towards extinction.

And, I don't care whether you believe in evolution. Just as I don't care whether you believe in relativity or basic math. Facts are facts. We're not going to evolve much anymore barring great changes.

Physically speaking; we're a lackluster specimen at best. Not if, but when, another ice age hits, we're back to survival of the fittest. Yes; we'll still have basic societies and we'll still do our best to help one another out. But at some point we'll go back to our pragmatic roots and we will no longer care about the sickly and the weak and the deep thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the religious, the philosphers, the entertainers. We'll only care about the hunters and the gatherers and the sexually mature and fertile in order to survive.

If we are to continue in the information age; we have to realize we must protect ourselves. We must do everything we can to protect our species to ensure any environmental changes do not destroy us and reset our clocks; effectively wiping out the last 10,000 years of progress.

We are on the brink. We have been for the last two or three generations. And slowly, but surely, we're speeding towards the precipice, and most of us seem to be rather blind.

But if we can survive on the moon. In an environment that's hostile, alien, has no atmosphere, 1/6th our gravity, and at the extremes of both hot and cold...

Then we can survive here on Earth no matter what mother nature throws at us (well, short of a red giant or Nova, but we have a few million years before we have to worry over that problem). We require technology to survive. We need it. We lack claws and teeth and thick hides. We only have huge brains. Either we show that evolution has not invested badly into our giant brains by continuing our journey into space; or we use those brains to delude ourselves that god has a special place for us and to hell with the rest of humanity.

Your choice. I, personally, would choose the former. Obama has chosen the latter for everyone. And hardly anyone seems to even be upset about it.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Orci is still a moron.

Will someone please put a hit on these guys or something? Orci talks about the new movie and his... ahem... writing process.

http://scifiwire.com/2009/08/remember-a-couple-of-week.php

Seriously, he needs to be shut up. At the very least Orci and Kurtzman obviously need not be involved in Star Trek in ANY way.

These two just keep talking about nothing but bad ideas. Here's the highlights.

The discussions include brainstorming classic Trek missions, which could be revisited with a new timeline established thanks to Spock and Nero's time travel. Even generating new ideas brings up past Trek episodes, Orci said.

New Timeline. That's right kiddies. It's a different timeline. So, why should trekkies care at all about it? We shouldn't. It's like 1985a in Back to the Future II, it needs to be undone. The paradox stands; all 40 years of trek need to have taken place in order for the new movies timeline to be stable. But, it's already unfolded so radically different that it can't. So, either all future trek projects have to boldly go where we've been (the antithesis of trek) or this new universe can't even logically exist and they just need to stop.

Orci is at least smart enough to see this, thus his 'new ideas' all involve old episodes.

At the same time, the writers want to make sure any follow-up is not too Trek-heavy, so as not to confuse the new fans who were brought into the fold by director J.J. Abrams' movie. "A lot of what makes die-hard Trekkers really focused on Trek are those details that can sometimes be alienating to people who are not on the inside," Kurtzman said. "That leads us back to what are the big themes, the emotional ideas? That's a language everybody speaks."

First of all; stop calling them writers.

They want a trek that isn't too trek heavy. Read that line again. Now, if you haven't choked on your drool, or you managed not to have an aneurysm, you should be as ticked off as I am.

How the hell can anyone read that and think that's a good thing? That's just saying "we have to keep it dumb, because the new fans are not so much fans of trek as wallets that enjoyed a big dumb blockbuster with a star trek name slapped on it."

Then there's "A lot of die-hard trekkers..." It's trekkies numb-nuts. You'd think Roddenberry's confirmation of this fact, a brief study of the history of our fandom, the word being in dictionaries, and two movies with that title would be a clue; it's trekkies, not trekkers. I'm seriously thinking that these three are really nothing but major real life trolls, purposely fucking with us. What ticks me off is, I'm one of about three people that's even rising to the bait to feed the trolls. Well, that's how you troll a troll afterall. You feed them until they expose themselves.

After these two troll baits, they then troll us more; all in the same paragraph. Basically they say that it's the details, the technobabble and canon that we real trekkies are focused on all the time, and we miss the big themes and emotional ideas of trek.

Now, have I, or have I not, pointed out several times that the new movie totally misses not only the 'nerdy' aspects like technobabble and canon, but that they also miss the big themes, the morality and emotional content of trek itself? I believe I have. Indeed, the fact that the new movie was bereft of such things entirely is why I hate it more than anything else.

In fact the lack of accurate technobabble and total violation of canon that the new movie represents is the RESULT of them not paying attention to the bigger picture of what trek is really about in the first place. And I do believe I've mentioned that, but in case I haven't, here it is for sure.

One thing Orci does want to do is get more classic catchphrases into the sequel...

Oh for fucks sake. How can this A-hole say WE focus on inconsequentials, and then the very next thing out of his mouth is that he wants more catchphrases? Catchphrases! IF there's anything Trek ISN'T about, it's catchphrases. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and even baby Jesus!

Here's Orci, master of the trek universe now, daring to critique trekkies (while calling us trekkers) about missing the big pictures, while offering us something as inconsequential and retarded as catchphrases.

Oh yes, catchphrases. I'd have fucking loved star trek XI if only it had had catchphrases!

Abrams' childhood friend, Heroes star Greg Grunberg, has appeared in some form or other in most of Abrams' projects: In Trek, he was the voice of Kirk's stepfather on the car phone. Grunberg has begun telling reporters that he wants to play Harry Mudd in a future Star Trek and most recently said it on Wednesday at the TCA summer press tour. Orci agreed to consider Grunberg's proposal. "It's a good idea," Orci said.

Yeah, it's a brilliant idea. Mudds episodes were amongst the silliest. What real trekkie cares? Seriously. And nepotism, yes this is how I want people getting into the new trek. Not because they're themselves interested, or because they auditioned and were the best at the role. No. Just no. Remember Lwaxanna? She's the result of neoptism. Exactly.

Orci went on to detail the collaboration between himself and Kurtzman, director Abrams and producers Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk. "We're going to come up with the story together, obviously, in consultation with J.J. and Bryan," Orci said. "Then we're going to write it up together, the story. Also Damon, and then Alex and I will go write the script."

Now what am I going to complain about here? He's not even talking about trek! No, he's talking about the amount of people writing the script.

He's talking about five writers. Two are producers, one is the director, IE the suits. It's a general rule that the more writers you have for a movie, the more that particular movie is a piece of shit. It's also a general rule that when the suits are involved, they fucking ruin everything. And here, Orci is freely just going to write with them all.

NO.

This is yet another reason this guy isn't a writer. If he was, he'd write with maybe one other person. They'd finish up the script. They'd agree to take some crap out because perhaps it's too expensive to show, or seems superfluous to the story at hand. But for the most part the job of the writer is twofold:

1. write a fucking script you care about.
2. defend the hell out of that script and attempt to stop all directorial, and production edits and changes to your story as possible. Because it's inevitable they will all want to change it because they do not comprehend your story at all and just want to make money.

Exceptions to this:

1. if you're the director and you wrote your own script.
2. if you're the director and you've picked up someone elses script, like the concept, but not how they wrote it, so you rewrite it massively or hire someone else to so that it completely fits your vision. The writer you hire knows they aren't writing, they're just putting your ideas on paper.

Which aren't really exceptions. That's just the director also playing the part of the writer.

What's going on in this movie doesn't resemble any of these things. Abrams isn't at the helm saying: This is what I want to do, write it down. Orci and Kurtzman aren't the ultimate fans writing an awesome trek script, insisting that non-trek fans have no part in writing it because non-trekkies can't possibly understand trek.

Nope. They're bending over and opening wide. And they're asking fans to do the same.

So will you?
Are you fanboys? Or are you trekkies?

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Ok, it's official. The world will end in 2012.

Or at least I hope it does, before I have to watch another shitfest trek movie brought to you by Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman
.

And then there's this asshole. Who said trek was dying? I mean yeah, now and again I ran into people who said that, despite there still being a star trek on TV

...

but since there was still a Star Trek on TV, still reruns running somewhere in the world, and 10 movies, four of which were awesome, and a lot of new books published; those who said such things were clearly imbeciles.

I mean, no one said Star Wars was dead when the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, 8 billion plastic toys, and cartoons were being released. They may have said star wars sucked now, and was retarded, but they didn't say it was dead.

And I now truly feel the pain of the fanboys. Truly. I comprehend your horror that people loved new pieces of shit films with the star wars name on it, and that said films just tore the shit out of what was, at one point, actually enjoyable.

I didn't empathize before. I was ok with just loving the trilogy, the real trilogy. The unremastered rereleased reremastered super-deluxe trilogy. I wasn't a true fan. I hated what the new movies did, but I was content with ignoring them and their fans... occasionally making fun of them for being unable to comprehend the new movies sucked.

I was clearly a monster. The new star trek movie was my Karmic reward; for now it was my beloved franchise that was being destroyed by a new movie, that legions of mindless fans love, and are unable to comprehend that the new movie sucks.

I call a truce fanboys. And I apologize. I am so very sorry, this is truly a fate worse than death. Of course, I'm not sure which is worse. Your franchise has been raped by it's own creator. Our franchise has been raped by untalented overly hyped hacks who've apparently never actually heard of Star Trek before, and seem to think they're making a Star Wars movie.

What's worse is, fanboys... fanboys actually realized the new movies sucked. Some insisted they didn't, but it was about equal. It was amazing compared to trekkie reactions.

And appalling.

Far less than half of the fanbase realizes what a fucking horror-show the new movie was. They enjoyed it. Such is the depths of our nerdiness.. You'll never quite comprehend fanboys, because though you've always been just as nerdy as we, the media itself never ridiculed you as they have us. Nor for nearly half as long. Star Wars was acceptably nerdy. Trek never was. Trek was what all scary lonely losers had in common. Trek was the refuge of the truly socially inept. Trekkies were acceptable targets.

Now is the chance for far too many trekkies to have something they never dared dream of one day contemplating imagining wondering about accidentally thinking they'd ever have a hope of a prayer of having; acceptance.

Until the new movie. And worse; now it's not even nerdy! It's cool!

Star Trek XI is like Barack Obama.

It gives trekkies hope it'll never deliver.

This is madness.



THIS. IS. STAR. TREK!