tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5077773.post5377424275253040876..comments2024-03-26T15:22:25.095-06:00Comments on The Earliad: 30 Years Later - Star Trek: The Motion PictureEarl J. Woodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07963936256606285358noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5077773.post-86417843259263565712010-01-01T14:36:52.582-07:002010-01-01T14:36:52.582-07:00I've always liked ST:TMP, so I am in agreement...I've always liked ST:TMP, so I am in agreement with much you are saying, especially about the musical score which is wonderful. <br /><br />I've heard ST:TMP described as a "procedural", like the old cop shows, i.e. Dragnet, Streets of San Francisco, and then Homicide and The Wire. Gene Roddenberry was a big fan of both sci-fi and procedural; you know that before Trek he made a cop show called "The Lieutenant".<br /><br />I also like procedurals. They suggest that for every situation there is a procedure. A lot of cop work is very much routine. However, there are a lot of things that police do and confront that either goes against the rulebook or against human morality. That's where the drama comes in. <br /><br />These days, I think people don't seem to have patience for procedurals. They don't want to learn, for instance, the 10 Rules Of The Homicide Detective as relayed to us one painful example at a time to us in David Simon's "Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets". Much easier to send trace evidence to the CSI Lab and nab the killer before the show's 44 minutes are up. <br /><br />ST:TMP works as a procedural as well. There are a number of things that happen that we see are covered in the Federation rulebook. The Enterprise is powerful but not invulnerable, and so there are many emergencies to deal with. Up until Ilia is zapped by Vejur, the captain and crew follow procedure. <br /><br />Vejur has other plans, though, and things spiral into near-desperation. I find it interesting that stoic Spock is the character who improvises the solution to the crisis, although it can be argued that his choices were logical. <br /><br />It's a lot different now. In Star Trek, you can immediately sense that when a character says, "If we (insert gimmick), then maybe we can (insert gimmick)", then something magical/made-up/deus-ex-machina is going to circumvent procedure and save the crew. The debris left behind are bits of space-opera double talk: flux capacitors, plasma inducers, warp coils, etc. After a lot of repetition, those catchwords become more important than the motivation of the characters. <br /><br />On the other hand, I guess we could watch a film where Nero spends 20+ years assembling the components to build a bomb big enough to blow up a planet, or we could just condense it all down to one very cheesy, guilty-pleasure line: "Prepare the Red Matter!" What we lose in procedure, we gain in pace.When Jeffs Collidenoreply@blogger.com