Brace for impact.

[kyburg]

I'm really glad nobody has been asking me about the new Trek movie lately - well, sort of.

Every time it crosses my field of vision, a number of thing come to mind - not the least of which is that I can remember a time where there was NO new Trek, there were NO movies, NO new series...no nothing. I had the novelizations of the animated series that was no longer on the air, carried around in my bag...for years. Not seasons. *thinks* Nearly a decade. A looong time. And Star Trek was not something Good. It was something no reasonable person really thought was worth watching. It was old and not terribly interesting anymore. Star Wars was interesting. Logan's Run was what you went to go see. Star Trek was old and silly. And you were a dope.

You wanted something new, you had to wait for someone to finish publishing their zine and mail it to you. And hope it didn't offend what few sensibilities you had left at that point.

(While you're taking a bath in the testosterone viewing this flick, try to remember that this franchise was kept on life support for decades largely by women...writing everything in the book as far as what could have happened as a prequel to the original series. And what came after. And inbetween. 'Sewing coats onto buttons' was the term used. And oh baby, were they.)

And when talk of a MOVIE first started making the rounds in the late seventies...oh, the hue and cry when there was talk that Nimoy wouldn't even be IN it! (Bogus. He was.) And even louder was the cry of them 'recasting the show with younger, newer faces and remaking the show over again.' HOW COULD THEY. THEY WOULDN'T DARE.

(Hey, this persisted even into Next Generation territory - I'll say it now. Had Next Gen not been so successful at doing just what it did - a new Trek, with new characters in the same framework - you'd never be seeing a recast prequel as a movie. No way.)

So if I'm hearing some of those voices from my past, give me a little room.

I can't believe anyone would think you could spoil this movie for anyone. I MEAN. WHAT?

YOU KNOW HOW THIS ENDS, RIGHT?

Anyone hear word one about Kirk's older brother? NO?

Okay, fuck it. IT NEVER HAPPENED THEN.

(Hey, I can pick a petty piece of crap to toss that out on. Tons of other folks have, with less to work with.)

As far as I'm concerned, this is just another piece of fan fiction to me.

Very expensive, will make a lot of money in the theaters, YEEEEHAAAAAW - fan fic.

(Where's Nicholas Meyer when you need him?)

Kirk also had a nephew - this is a personal point, I'll admit it. I wrote an entire trilogy of stories about him once (his name was Peter, BTW). Oh, after I completely rewrote Speed Racer.

*snaps fingers* Hey, they remade that into a movie too!

I sense a pattern. And probably, a reason this stuff doesn't impress me all that much.

It's nice to see this, don't think I'm tossing the entire matter out wholesale. But at the same time - I'm growing weary of it.

I still have my zines on the shelf.

People are talking about the Uhura/Spock things in the movie. I wonder what people would think of the huge number of fan fics I can recall that got some of their authors in deep sauce because of the whole mixed race (and I don't mean human/alien) issue when they were written. First time I saw some people go underground to write their stories - and it was over Uhura and Kirk having some kids, and I shit you not. And then in the Kraith Universe, the ooohs and ahhhs over the 'incredibly exotic afro-Vulcans' - other half-human hybrids, of course. First time I saw Tuvok, I was happy for weeks. For reasons nobody could have ever guessed.)

The few trailers I've seen make me smirk when I see Sulu duking it out with a sword...because I can remember what a big deal letting Takei fence with a foil had been. Big deal, justification and OMG WHAT AN IDEA letting an Asian fence with something other than a samurai sword! (...no, I'm not kidding....) And guess what. Yeah. Weapon of choice. Long way, baby. Not so much.

And oh, as much as I've missed McCoy - I miss Dee Kelly, who I'm told used to live on vodka, lemons, limes and salt at conventions...and kept a pet tortoise around to have 'something older than we are.' Years and years of Not Talking About the fact George Takei was gay...or had spent time as a child in a concentration camp during WWII - in Arkansas. Shatner doing bad theater, bad movies and just being a real PIA, living on ego and momentum for decades. (Oh, how we waited for him to grow up. Thank God he did.) Nimoy just doing anything and everything, including writing poetry for greeting cards.

You know I really wish BSG had just been its own show, right? Own name, own character NAMES...the works? (But anything that puts Edward James Olmos to work is OKEY DOKEY ANYTIME. Remember that.) It had plenty of everything any story ever needed to stand on its own and be its own person...so to speak.

But, no. It's a remake.

Tired of it. I'd like to hear about some new places. And not because I'm tired of this - it's because someone will do this, mention a thing - and you can see where my mind goes. You can only take so much of 'I know that, move on!' before - well, you do.

Blam, blam. Jim wants to see it. I can wait for a video rental.

I know how this ends, after all.

Nice people casted - hope I get to see them do other things. Soon.

Comments

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

I can respect that. I spent time lurking around in fanfic, myself.

That said, I'm still totally going to see the "new" Trek today.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Fanfic was interesting- before the internet. Today, not so much.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

It was a different animal - the experience today is COMPLETELY on its head from what it was before the internet.

Today, you can search databases to find your fix. Back then? Not so much.

[ms-hecubus.livejournal.com]

As the Bible says, there's nothing new under the sun.

[sekl.livejournal.com]

BSG is the only argument in favor of remakes. There are thousand other sappy shows I'd like to twist into darkly compelling dramas (I'll just pretend BSG2 never waned in quality, thanks).

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

I have a few friends who are published writers, and from what I've heard, you can blame the writers strike for the recent recycling of scripts. I know it's been going on for years longer, but to get an original script into H-wood is really difficult. There are thousands of books worthy of movie time, and one friend of mine actually had her Hugo award winning book get considered for the big screen. Problem is, that it can take years, and by the time the screenplay is hashed out, the original plot is long gone, and it costs a ridiculous sum. I believe it was in the hundreds of thousands, or more.

From there, you have the directors doing the "Yay/nay" dance to hundreds of screenplays a year, and many potentially great scripts fall by the wayside. In H-wood's eye, it's easier to recycle old hashed out plots, than it is to get something new in.

Sad, but true.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Which one? The one in '88 that knocked me out of the business or the more recent one?

Either way - a whole lotta money for a whole lotta yawn. Good yawn, but yawn all the same.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Just happened to see this on the f-list of the fannish5 community. Had to fangirl over two comments:

(Where's Nicholas Meyer when you need him?) *LOVES* (Did you read his Holmes pastiches?)

and Had Next Gen not been so successful at doing just what it did - a new Trek, with new characters in the same framework - you'd never be seeing a recast prequel as a movie. - comment FTW

Sorry to invade your comments - I've been a Trekkie for going on 20 years and while I look forward to seeing the new movie (hey, I like to watch shit blow up, too), I love the past as well.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* Trekkie for over forty years. Accept no substitutes.

(And yes, read them all. Loved them lots.)

We may need to be friends. *checks* Yup, I'm sure of it. *adds*

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Finally saw it today. OMG SWORD I WANT. SULU. DUDE.

Ahem. Friended back, BTW.

[zoethe.livejournal.com]

I'm of the same age group, and deeply love TOS, but do not share your anger. I thought it was fun.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it was! And I don't know if I'm angry, or just plain tired of the same old thing. Again. One more time. Oh, and here. Have it again.

*sigh*

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I can't blame as much age, but I'm tired of it myself. New shiny please.

[zoethe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do get that sometimes.

But... The Enterprise!!!

I'm a complete sucker.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I still prefer the original - accept no substitutes (and no, I really don't know why). Round nacelles, baby!

And I just giggled like a mad mad thing first episode of TNG when they separated the sections - anyone who'd had an AMT model knew those two things split at a saucer, I mean - come on!

[zoethe.livejournal.com]

It was quite radical, that separation. I remember.

What I really want? The starship salt and pepper shakers from the bar scene!!!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I've been kind of ignoring it and wondering if I could pretend to myself that it was different people and still enjoy the movie, and suspecting not.

But if there is a Sulu with a sword scene, I may rent it just for that, because yeah. I wish to heck I'd remembered to bring a rainbow flag to Cherry Blossom this year so I could wave it screamingly at him and the adorable gorgeous queer APA group that got to march right behind him.

(Arkansas? -oh right. I have him mentally filed under Tule mostly.)

Then again, Cho just isn't as cute to me. Sigh.)

With you on the "something new please". And the "wtf just rename it already BSG".

Although I think you malign some of my generation. Sure, we grew up in the shadow of Star Wars, and a mighty long shadow it was - but that didn't mean we didn't watch every single episode of Star Trek in reruns, write fanfic about it, and love it to death, as much or more than our big-screen Star Wars with its fancy effects. Especially when Star Wars failed us on some fronts. If we needed a moral parallel, Star Trek probably had an episode.

(And no, we didn't have resources, so we made them up. Ask me about the nerds I went to school with who built a Star Trek plug-in for second edition D&D.)

And oh boy were we dubious and anxious about that new series with the bald Shakespearean guy and the Klingon and stuff. Heck, I went to the UK abound when season three was about to happen, and since the UK was a couple years behind, I had to sit through the first few seasons of kind of lame crap over again - or watch cricket matches.

I was darn grateful to have something SF on TV though. Hate the Syffy channel all I want to, at least there *is* one now. I am not too old to remember when we didn't have cable or VCRs to get our fix from. Today I could buy a thousand hours of SF video from Amazon without a blink of anything but the budget.

But yeah, what happened to his brother? And... oh whatever. Maybe I'll go read "How much for just the planet", then go have a few beers before seeing the movie and see if they have any good explosions.

[dame-of-dames.livejournal.com]

My Mom was p.o.'d about something I won't mention, because she was all like how it would change the plotline of this episode or that...

To me, it was basically character death for the sake of killing off someone "important". When you realize that it was an alternate universe from the beginning, the rest of it should be easier to take.

And Karl Urban as "Bones". Forgive me, but I still remember him as that crazy haired dude in "Chronicles of Riddick", so I was giggling.

[coldjones.livejournal.com]

You know I really wish BSG had just been its own show, right? Own name, own character NAMES...the works?

I think we've been over this before, but I do have one somewhat related question - by this kind of logic, should Burton or Nolan ever have made a Batman film, given the existence of the 1966 Batman movie?

I mean, aside from the names, there's virtually nothing in common between the films - Bruce Wayne still dresses up like Batman, but why he does so, what he does when he's Batman, what it means thematically - these are all vastly different between the Adam West versions and the modern incarnations. (Not to mention the day and night differences between Caesar Romero and Heath Ledger...)

And if I'm following you correctly, Burton and Nolan (and Frank Miller and Neal Adams and Neil Gaiman...) could have done their own new character, with their own ideas (somewhat like Busiek's Astro City, I guess), rather than repurposing what was a perfectly good and popular entertainment in the past.

In comparison, the differences between the 1979 and 2003 BSGs - or the 1966 and 2009 Treks - are trivial, right? So does it ever make sense to redo an existing character or story, or is it just completely verboten, from your perspective?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

That's really not a fair comparison, you know that - right? Batman started out life in another format entirely...let alone what I happen to think of anything done after that. (To its credit, Batman as a genre has proven to be exceptionally robust, whatever like or dislike I may have for it. One only has to look at Tim Burton's movie, and then the recent animated series Brave and the Bold for proof of that.)

But for all that, Batman is designed to be episodic - and in most permutations, you get that - not the same thing, redone, reheated and served up like who-hash. HAY LOOK I ONLY USED THREE COLORS - BLACK, WHITE AND RED!

I'd prefer to see talented people doing their own thing. Good grief - taking a crack at something someone has already done is all well and good, but who would want to see that as a career? It's nice - for a while.

And then, it gets boring. Then, worse.

James Blish had it right the first time - write your own stories. That's always best.

[coldjones.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, I think it's a perfectly fine comparison - Batman has taken on the status of myth, of being a franchise that transcends the creative vision of any one writer. (And as for being episodic, so was the original Trek series.)

As for being redone, of course he has - how many times has the Batman origin story been retold? In canon, no less? How many times has Batman been reimagined as Future Batman, Gothic Batman, alt-history Batman, freaky Dave McKean artwork Batman?

And speaking of black, white, and red...er yellow, would Miller have been able to do Sin City - which is an original work, whatever its final quality - without first experimenting with similar styles reworking Daredevil and Batman? What about Alan Moore's Miracleman, which is, without question, his own work, but couldn't have existed without (and might have been better if he'd been able to write it using) Captain Marvel?

Talented people do do their own thing. Christopher Nolan has made Memento and The Prestige in addition to working on Batman. JJ Abrams has done Alias, Lost, and Fringe, all good shows. If he wants to take some time to revamp Star Trek and move it from being just a show from the 60's (or 90's) to being an ongoing institution that redefines itself with the times (as Batman does), then I say more power to the man.

"Amateurs borrow. Professionals steal." What's important isn't that these guys are writing characters that somebody else created, but that they're writing. Period.