DATA RESURRECTION FILES

location: Earth

mood: cynical

music: Depeche Mode

Let me add my own thoughts about the new film I had posted already weeks ago on various other blog sites not my own as re-edit. But be warned, it’s gonna be very long and highly educational.

And to pick up on the word 'suck' others have used to describe the new outing, I'd say it does just that, for the true Trekkie, that is. Here's why from MY own POV.

They simply made this more contemporary and stylish looking, action-packed ‘SF’ film, giving it the plain title of ‘Star Trek’, and therefore obliterated the other ten movies’ existence outright purely to attract newbies, by bluntly saying, ‘you don’t even need to watch any of the other series or films to like it’, or rather not. True, and thanks for that, Paramount.

 
Because it’s an entity of it’s own now, it therefore has no place in the real Star Trek universe, and is in fact a kick in the face of the entire Star Trek franchise and true fanbase, since re/awoken interests in watching the old reruns would have no direct cultural meanings to the much younger audience in any form not having grown up with any of it. All they say is ‘awesome’ to anything new and shiny anyway without any concept or reference to the superior mothership to compare it. That not being an insult, but simple fact. So don’t bother attacking me over it, I disabled all comments anyway. 

Could it ‘revive’ interest in Star Trek per se? No real need, since the ‘real’ fans of either shows never left space, but are still being ignored by the studios as the new film proves now even openly, who simply don’t want another hyped up prequel. As I had expected, a shiny new cast and youthful crew cannot simply win the real fans over that easily. The possible new fans now however will no doubt go and buy and watch all of these old shows again or for the first time ever, love or loath them, again, become fans of them, or not. But now they finally can see how the famous franchise actually had evolved their parents or even grandparents have talked about, and will notice how out/dated TOS really is as a prototype by now. In contrast to the later shows simply for the times it was created in with TOS more than dead now. Which is a simple fact and inevitable to occur to all of them at one point.

 

But instead of letting the old Star Trek space pioneer rest, they created this hypermodern SF prequel flick (with another stereotype Khan/Shinzon style villain) looking posher and brighter than even TNG or Voyager, deliberately made to appeal to the general audience ONLY and NOT true Star Trek fans at all. Which in fact makes TOS look even more cardboard and dated now, just so to make some money and sell more action figures to the ‘next generation’. Thanks Paramount, after we have fed your greedy gob with our support and buying powers for decades already. 

All the new audience sees are these ‘sexy’ young actors they can better relate to suddenly, and NOT the great Star Trek legacy in any form or shape it supposedly is based on utterly ‘alien’ to them. It’s not a crime, (to be young OR OLD!) don’t get me wrong, but is it a ‘bad thing’ for Trek? Greed to feed only the youth-oriented celebrity fashionistas again? Renewed ignorance shown to the true fanbase? You bet. So much for the hailed Star Trek reboot from Mr Abrams, who would exaggerate his preference for any show BUT Star Trek with statements like, "I'm not a Star Trek fan" (!) and "this movie is not (!!) made for Star Trek fans". (As we ‘saw’.) Or, “‘Star Trek’ is pretty low on my ‘to-do’ list”.

Thanks a lot J J for being another Paramount style ignoramus to a t, and that's why they chose him anyway. I, for one, won't even regard this hyped up product as a 'Star Trek' film at all, made by someone who was born just about when Kirk appeared on our screens and keeps recycling his own fave actors, only trying to cash in on the now apparently 'mainstream' directed franchise big time, he doesn't even like. Or know. Fact. Fact. Fact.

Just like Baird was a total non-Star Trekkie choice mistake to direct Nemesis with ‘fan’ script/writer Logan thinking it’s fun to kill off the main character, which exactly failed for Data’s (spoilers!!!) shock demise the real fans simply rejected outright and the film flopped big time, I wonder why, and NOT because they were tired of TNG or Trek per se. I consider Nemesis or any other TNG film way superior to ‘XI’ in the serious Star Trek storytelling and better acting departments and XI is simply cashing in on that ‘mega villain’ concept again, since TOS films nowadays look rather dated too simply because they’re ‘older films’. But at least they have the ‘original’ crew. One could say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t bother. But why should I swim with the currently ‘amazed’ audience having seen it ages ago?

That simply doesn’t work in regards to the serious diehard Star Trek fans, freedom of speech and see it for yourself first and all. But why slam the new film, when it’s a good piece of solid SF cinema per se and many people worked on it hard, equipped with fair talents resulting in a refined end product as such with great FX, bar the crappy accents and rehashed plot? Well, then simply don’t call it ‘Star Trek’ at all or use the popular characters and make a simple SF film and call it whatever you like. BUT NOT ‘STAR TREK’! It would have been fine enough as any other SF action flick - NOT Trek.

I compare it to superior Nemesis again many hated for all sorts of ridiculous reasons, because the devastated fans couldn’t face the fact that it was Data’s death that had messed it all up finally and blamed anything and anyone possible, other than Paramount wanting to kill off Star Trek in general by then unlike the fans still hoping for something TNG. Or at least fix us underrated Nemesis and retire Trek per se with a feel-good ending à la, TNG's ‘All Good Things…’ But now we’ve got another split front of haters and lovers of ‘XI’ and a deeply divided fanbase. Suddenly 'Trek' is hip when everyone hated the Trekkies or 'geeks', and now they hate them even more for actually rejecting this new 'thing'. How twisted is that? Make up your minds, people.

Only some years back Paramount suddenly changed their minds and gave us drab ‘Enterprise’ no one asked for, and I for one hate these prequels in general as a pointless bore and most fans rejected Enterprise as best example. Which in fact was a prequel to TOS and not TNG as some think, and DS9 and Voyager were parallel shows that outlived TNG with a growing fanbase, not 'redoes'. So if you wanna tell interesting ‘backstories’, do so in a (cool new) series with flashback episodes, but NOT single prequel flicks. Star Wars is the worst prequels example and Paramount just had to tap into that, because Wars always outdid Trek (as more mainstream oriented films) and they thought let’s just follow that idiotic trend. And it backfired big time, since the fans rejected Enterprise outright and they had to cancel it after four seasons. Good. But big Paramount still didn’t learn from that. Or wanted to.  

So let us recap here for a moment for all those who haven’t got the first idea about Star Trek in general. TOS (Star Trek the Original Series) was colourful fun ‘then’ in the Sixties with not much substance plot-wise as a sign of the given times, but came up with some cool tech toys, (we in fact have today) showing novel spirit otherwise to compensate greatly with very engaged acting, (no matter Shatner (Kirk) didn’t do anything but play himself as this egotistical space hero his fellow ‘crew’ (or actor friends) didn’t like at all) which however was rejected for exactly the series’ daring the small-minded audience with non-white actors and Russian accents during the cold war, at a time when racial segregation was still firmly entrenched in many areas of the US. Unlike in still more open-minded Europe in fact.

Rare visionaries like ST creator Gene Roddenberry envisaged a multi-racial and mixed-gender crew quite rightly so, based on his however very ‘naïve’ assumption that racial prejudice and sexism wouldn’t exist in the future anymore, unlike in his own reality obviously, (or the new film) and The Next Generation (TNG) finally became serious yet compelling and humorous SF storytelling with their own storylines picking up on exactly that great idea making it finally real, with the stupid miniskirts soon dropped for one.

TNG's extra ‘PC’ infusion was perfectly fine and simply another reflection of the given times it was made in, and fans liked it just fine and still rings true today. (And who knows, maybe Data was right and Ireland will really reunite in 2025! And get this; the UK banned that episode (or deleted that scene where he stated that) for that reason while the IRA was still a great political threat, then. But they later showed it again fully restored. So much for Thatcher’s Big Brother!) TOS was simply too bold and therefore had failed initially where TNG slotted better into the given times, finally reviving TOS on the way for the fans’ renewed interest because of TNG gaining literal s/pace. TOS was in fact an utter failure at first for being too progressive, and only thanks to comedienne Lucille Ball the show wasn’t already dumped after the first season, unlike TNG an immediate hit running for seven yrs with improving episodes.

When TNG was unwisely cancelled, TNG and TOS fans died along together, since no one really wanted DS9 or ST Voyager directly replacing TNG, till some finally warmed to these shows more or less later at no other choice and have just as many devotees these days. Paramount stupidly thought, let’s make big TNG films rather than continue the extremely popular series, instead of turning them into future season breaks’ two-parters only. Assuming that if they show the show and films together, no one would want to see the movies. But of course, they’d been dead wrong, since TV at home would have enticed the fans to watch big screen offerings in the cinemas too, NOT made them stay away. All they wanted was to make more money, obviously, which however failed miserably except with First Contact, and only alienated the angered fans even more.

I prefer TNG since I’m not that interested in the other shows for various reasons, but what I reject outright is this new film per se blatantly tapping into this trivial youth culture of only ‘young and beautiful’ is hip lifestyle oriented kids, leaving those behind who actually created and really love Star Trek. ‘Geek’ or not. Brent Spiner (Data) once famously said: Trekkies aren’t dumb or nerds. Correct. But let’s not forget, only ten yrs prior to TNG the fans had finally warmed to TOS fully and that’s why they came up with the more or less popular TOS films. Again just a sign of the times since Star Wars was still outdoing TOS films, till another again more than youth oriented Harry Potter series and the grandiose LOTR trilogy came along to do it for them.

TNG as a SF series was way superior to TOS simply for the different era and more political oriented ideas and better FX, as naff as they might appear to us today. Makers and fans grew up along TNG to create these new more real life and yet futuristic characters even hardcore TOS fans had embraced eventually seeing its much more realistic merit (and TOS interest renewed) rather than a virile space captain running after skirts all the time, since TOS fans actually preferred cool Spock and hothead Bones to the vane Kirk. TNG won many awards were TOS had failed miserably until much later once fully revived on the unstoppable wave of the great TNG success, and if fans had been ‘sick’ of TNG they’d certainly said so and bad ratings would have killed the show off at once. Just like the fans voiced their intense dislike of brusque Pulaski and gentle Crusher was brought back soon to appease them. Who? Watch the old TNG stuff to find out, kids.

So much for fan power and that Paramount then finally listened to their rising voices, only to ignore them forever soon again later. The ‘swinging feminist’ Sixties had much in common with the ‘New Romantic’ Eighties, and I for one was there to know and what different expectations people demanded from their SF TV shows and what the majority of Trek fans really thought. TOS was SF TV series infancy that finally evolved slowly and spawned devoted followers Paramount in fact had ignore just the same then, cancelling the show after three seasons despite protests, and only following TNG’s appearance they could regain TOS and gain TNG in the go.

But now they suddenly want to exploit and even predate TOS with an even younger Kirk crew, which isn’t going back to the 'roots' at all, but back in time, again, and not even the 'real' timeline. The story is very contrived, with the present-day Spock (right after Nemesis days) being hurled back in time with this stereotype bad guy to end up in the past with a young Spock, and oddly enough still the same age bad guy, to then get stuck in that past to have young Spock fight the bad guy from the future, and then even meets himself in the altered past. Huh? The only thing that was in fact funny, was a very late appearing Scotty and his little 'mate', and that Kirk got beaten up all the time - or banged his head somewhere once. THAT had me in stitches.

Besides, Data is still the most popular character of all Trek time, ahead of good old Spock and Picard fairly even, and then only playboy Kirk on par with constantly ranting Bones, whom I loved in fact much better and still do. The dull looking and dully enacted Enterprise series crew was in fact the worst of the bunch as a typical prequel NO one wanted. So, I for one definitely reject this new ‘prequel’ film for the very same reason, among not only mentioned others. The only thing I found cool was that Spock was the captain first, and NOT lout Kirk cheating his way through tests and getting undeserved kudos. And what's with his 'balloon' hands? Geez.



This film insults my intelligence big time, since it utterly fails to convey what the future should be about: none of the shown, plain and simple. But why not give the target audience – our so ‘glorious’ youth of today – the impression that all that is cool and desirable and should be copied. Kids are known to emulate shit from the screen and think it’s acceptable to behave like their ‘heroes’, especially when they’re young and ‘hip’ and sexy. This thing sets the worst example for actually NOT doing any of that. Trek, or SF, no matter, and is in fact an insult to the ‘real’ Trek legacy, since exactly THAT was deemed wrong in every series.  

Plus, it is too 'modern' looking for its actual time setting now in contrast (to make it appeal to the 'Nokia' generation, obviously) too utopian in context, filled with ridiculous 'aliens' and monsters chasing the hero in dumb contrast to that, too violent for all that needless beating each other up like drunken kids, (as that they are, and a very good example of how to behave in the future days, sure, or is simply a reflection of today, as if we hadn't enough adolescent drunks and violence in real life already) and most of all, it's simply too bright with that glaring white 'Mac' bridge really getting up my nose most of all, when the rest of the Starship looks like a blooming chemical plant! And what's up with all these stupid 'joysticks' and old-fashioned 'mouse microphones'? Oh hey yeah, I forgot, that bizarre non-Trek music and Chinese canon-tune underscore filtered in whenever Spock was in an 'emotional mess'. WTF?

So, to round it all up with more mature thoughts from an old Star Trek fan (who actually saw it as a quality pirate already weeks before it came out, and not ever want to see it in the cinema (not even IMAX since this 'blu-ray' overkill is, yeah, killing it) or watch it on inevitable DVD release again) all I could think of was: inflated, infantile and over-chewed pink bubblegum cinema. Nothing for the serious (old) Star Trek fan, no competition at all, TOS universe or not, being the biggest grossing Trek film to date or not. It’s largely for the impressionable (and mainly female) youngsters only who will faint when seeing a newly hailed group of ‘celebrities’ on screen. This film has a barrage of gaping plotholes even as a single standing storyliner I'm not going to repeat at others' endeavours already, and I don't care that it's not supposed to be based on true canon, 'obviously', so they can mess with the future and create more illogical BS like that.  

It’s a very sad ‘ending’ for the glorious Star Trek universe just having collided with the given current and very shallow times obliterating it entirely. Thanks Paramount, for killing off the old franchise to create this new one right on its very grave. And to say it with another blogger's own thoughts, (for me the more Data oriented fan) ‘Trek without Data ain’t Trek’. I wouldn’t encompass the entire Trek universe like that, but say TNG without Data isn’t Star Trek anymore for sure, since that was the last Trek film we had, and the only thing they should have done was fix and return us TNG, and then retire it more satisfactorily. After that they could have come up with whatever they liked, in whatever timeframe, whatever given universe, or with whatever ('old' or new) characters as a completely new series or movies. But not 'that'.

In fact, (spoilers!!!) there was this brand-new comic series out months ago, which is actually a prequel to XI, called St: Countdown, and starts with the end of Nemesis – confused? Hang on – It first resurrects us good Data through B-4's, which of course was heavily hinted on at the end of Nemesis, plus they made him (finally!) captain of the USS Enterprise since he’s Starfleet’s most capable strategist and superior officer (of course!) after successfully imprinting his memories into his simpler bro B-4, and Picard is fed up finally with getting ‘spaced out’. Or rather becomes ambassador to Vulcan – Don’t ask why, but it’s a very good idea. The comic is set eight years after the last film with Spock official Federation ambassador to the Romulans, of course, Geordi has retired to develop his own ships, of course, and Worf is a General in the Klingon Empire, of course.

All very nice in fact. Love it and the 4-part comic looks really well made coming up with a clever new ‘old’ plotline. Now, with that (‘obviously’ needed extra-character-to-become-the-villain ‘again’) Nero, helping Spock to prevent some star going supernova not to destroy the galaxy, again, of course, everything however goes pear-shaped at one point and the man goes bananas à la Shinzon. Of course. Trying to kill our Federation folks again now outfitted with Borg technology beginning a rampage against his ‘enemies’ destroying and assimilating Federation ships left right and centre. Of course. With the supernova expanding, the nutter goes about near killing Worf, damaging Data's Enterprise in the process, and when Spock successfully eliminates the threat by some clever means, Nero seems to attack and the black hole flings him and Spock back in time, leaving Picard and Data’s crew witnessing Spock's ‘sacrifice’. The ‘second’ one, why not – ONLY to end up in that very past where young Kirk & Co now have to fight that very Nero nutter (after his dad had failed already) and XI picks up from there. THAT is not a bad idea at all. I love it in fact, but only in that ‘order’.

WHAT I hate about it is the fact, that they never made that comic into the actual prologue of XI, or epilogue/sequel to Nemesis, but went straight into the (altered) past with the new film, (like they had done it with TNG's ST Generations in reverse, which was fine if distracting) and only Spock explained his part in it in a mind meld with young Kirk. But they obviously only left that out because the actual target audience never saw TNG’s Nemesis or the TNG series and would be left confused. But THAT would have been sooo much cooler. For one, it would have given us back Data, which is all we ever wanted ‘old’ or not, and the chance for a sequel to Nemesis with Capt Data ready for a new mission, (mini series) and then retires, tada! Its very positive acclaim in fact helped to spurn some interest in the new film, but most of the deliberately aimed at audience never read or even know of this very important comic part either. All ‘we’ can hope for now is that they actually make that ‘future bit’ into a film to re/connect it to XI in reverse – and for TNG to go from there.

THEN I’d said, yeah, bring on XI and then some, no matter it’s still intended more for Star Trek novices and messes with all sorts of ‘facts’ and logic, who then however would be more directly become introduced into the entire Star Trek universe and finally get the gist of it all. But now it’s just sitting there as this, ‘not a Star Trek (but only ‘SF’) film’ entity in space and we still ain’t got Data back. Only in this (mainstream-) unknown comic which was even officially requested by Paramount. Ergo, they DO have renewed interest in TNG, or Star Trek per se, but just copped out again on the real issues of returning us Data first and then go from there (with whichever series). Into the FUTURE! – NOT past, with these baby-faced newbies and fast paced hightech and totally overdone action outdoing the actual (acting and) characters again.

But what do I know. I’m just an old diehard Trek fan who’s been there from the glorious start who grew up with TOS, which was great and visionary fun ‘then’, they now suddenly want to exploit and even predate TOS with an even younger Kirk crew. This isn’t going back to the ‘roots’ at all, but back in time, again. As usual. And it’s not a ‘reboot’ either, but simply boot in the face of proper future Trek storytelling. With half the original cast passed on in real life making it obviously very difficult to do a complete future set TOS, they simply shelved the few old veterans left for these uninteresting newcomers literally replacing the popular characters.

Bar good old Takei or Nimoy, fine, (but only to pull in the older fans after they ‘couldn’t’ slot in massively pissed off Shatner. Poor old Bill, he might have been able to tell them (‘J J’) what to do better.) Give me the good old camp and pompous skirt-hunting Kirk any day, (or much classier Picard and Janeway, or even Sisko, in fact) but not that green stuff making him look like an arrogant juvenile delinquent, no matter he’s obviously still much younger and on a very sharp learning curve. It's a joke! And don't even remind me of the annoying 'lens flares' every few seconds coming at you from the most bizarre directions - they seriously seem to have blinded the 'fans' to see how ridiculous this new outing is as a whole in the name of 'Trek'.

I resent this entire backstory turning Kirk into this glorified space hero for one, getting his captain’s chair against all rules and regulations, and is an absolute disgrace to begin with. Kirk was very shallow as character in contrast to the others, and the new film is very low on deeper character developments the same. This thing is purely aimed at the just as shallow current generation who never even saw any Star Trek film or episodes and have no clues about these famous characters and/or their (cultural) importance and very extensive following, brought up on brain-numbing violent video games and silly big-eyed Anime, and not any hardcore Star Trek fans at all who actually grew up with any of these great series.

No insult intended, guys, but it’s a fact, let's face it. This film in fact stole massively from Nemesis, in the single-minded bad guy and general plot idea departments, certain looks and then turned it all into a mega banter for kids IMAX style. But Trek gave us more than colourful multi-racial and strong women characters for one and cool bad guys than that, lovely Tribbles and ‘good’ androids like Data for a change, who was superior to the lot anyway. (Or even B-4. And I simply assume ‘evil’ Lore was ‘malfunctioning’ as per very popular and cleverer fanon (or fan fiction) poor daddy couldn’t fix. My idea too. Why always keep to the ‘bad guy’ scenario, only to have that typical one-track minded, kill-him-off counterpoint to contrast the 'good guy' - Data in this case.)

So yeah, to conclude this finally, this shiny-new bubblegum film is definitely NOT for me in any form or shape either, no matter how I tried to stay objective and watched it set to neutral mode. I truly did. But still, I failed and I will reject it to the day I die. (And I’m not even a ‘Trekkie’ in the classic term, but mainly a big Trek fan per se and mostly Data devotee.) Unless they come up with the actual prequel to the ‘thing’ and re/connect it to Nemesis to open the gates for more TNG, MY fave, this entire Trek universe has died for me for good now. After they have dared to kill off Data already anyway.

Until Paramount might wise up finally, which I highly doubt, live long and prosper ALL Star Trek fans of all species everywhere, OLD and NEW! Welcome aboard. No pun intended. But now go and watch some ‘real’ cool old Star Trek stuff, and find out what I was talking about in the first place.