Basic Star Trek Question...

[Howard Hail]

I finally watched the Star Trek movie that came out a couple of years ago
with young versions of all of the old TV characters, except for one of the
old characters who showed up alongside the young version. Also, for some
reason they never ended up taking a long side trip to White Castle,
although one of the actors really, really makes me think they should have
gone.

Anyway, my question is based on having almost no knowledge of the Star Trek
Universe. Chekov and Scotty speak with very strong accents, to the point
that Chekov is barely intelligible at times. Does that mean on Earth of
500 years in the future, or whenever it's set, that there are still
multiple countries on Earth with multiple languages? If so, who runs the
Earth's space fleet? Is it some kind of UN?

Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages? If
so, how come everyone seems to speak English? Or does the Earth just speak
English with regional accents, similar to the way we have different accents
in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?

[Bob]

"Star Trek" is not about the far future, it's about the 1960s.

[Gus]

"Howard Hail" <howar...@notmail.com> wrote in message
news:XnsA1C6C6543516Bho...@94.75.214.39...

And where are the WCs? Do people not have to use restrooms in the future?
And there are also no laundry facilities. How do people clean their clothes
in the future?

[D.F. Manno]

I don't think it's ever flatly stated that there's one world government,
but it's implied.

As for why everyone speaks English, I would expect that Earth has an
official language or at least a lingua franca, so that would account for
the Earthlings. As for everybody else, the Federation has this nifty gadget
called a universal translator...
--
D.F. Manno

[Captain Infinity]

Once Upon A Time,

And what's the deal with Starship food? Why is the little bag of salted
tribble bits so hard to get open? And the gagh, why is it always stewed and
never served live? I wouldn't feed it to my pet targ!



**
Captain Infinity

[Greg Goss]

Howard Hail <howar...@notmail.com> wrote:

>Anyway, my question is based on having almost no knowledge of the Star Trek
>Universe. Chekov and Scotty speak with very strong accents, to the point
>that Chekov is barely intelligible at times. Does that mean on Earth of
>500 years in the future, or whenever it's set, that there are still
>multiple countries on Earth with multiple languages? If so, who runs the
>Earth's space fleet? Is it some kind of UN?
>
>Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages? If
>so, how come everyone seems to speak English? Or does the Earth just speak
>English with regional accents, similar to the way we have different accents
>in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?

They're stuck with the accents to hold true to their roots in a
sixties TV show.

Scotty: the Scots will nurture their accent as a mark of regional
individuality.

Picard: by seventy years in the future, a guy from a wine-growing
region of southern France will speak English with a British accent.

Chekov: He was added as a symbol of hope for future unity in the
depths of the Cold War. In-story, I'm not sure of his background. I
expect that corners of Russia will have pockets of their own language
for a very long time into the future.

Star Fleet: This was visualized by Roddenberry as a kind of UN, but
the concept has drifted over time.

Spoiler for the new movie: Va gur bevtvany GI fubj, gur trargvp
fhcrezra gung nyfb fubjrq hc va obgu Fgne Gerx 2 zbivrf jrer ng gur
urneg bs n ivpvbhf Jbeyq Jne va gur 1990f. Guvf vf n ceboyrz jvgu
ybat-ehaavat FS. Gur fhcrezra ner fgvyy gurer (rkvyrq gb n pbyq-fyrrc
fuvc) ohg gur jne arire unccrarq.


--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Bob]

On May 21, 12:03 am, Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:

> They're stuck with the accents to hold true to their roots in a
> sixties TV show.
>
> Scotty: the Scots will nurture their accent as a mark of regional
> individuality.
>
> Picard: by seventy years in the future, a guy from a wine-growing
> region of southern France will speak English with a British accent.
>
> Chekov: He was added as a symbol of hope for future unity in the
> depths of the Cold War. In-story, I'm not sure of his background. I
> expect that corners of Russia will have pockets of their own language
> for a very long time into the future.

But O'Hura never had an Irish accent I could hear.

[Pastime]

Greg Goss wrote:

> Picard: by seventy years in the future, a guy from a wine-growing
> region of southern France will speak English with a British accent.

And he's played by a Yorkshireman with a plummy southern accent.
--
John

[rroger]

On May 21, 12:03 am, Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>

> Spoiler for the new movie:  Va gur bevtvany GI fubj, gur trargvp
> fhcrezra gung nyfb fubjrq hc va obgu Fgne Gerx 2 zbivrf jrer ng gur
> urneg bs n ivpvbhf Jbeyq Jne va gur 1990f.  Guvf vf n ceboyrz jvgu
> ybat-ehaavat FS.  Gur fhcrezra ner fgvyy gurer (rkvyrq gb n pbyq-fyrrc
> fuvc) ohg gur jne arire unccrarq.
>

Huh?

[Gus]

"rroger" <raus...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:fe44d93d-2264-4cec...@v9g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...

rot-13
http://decode.org/

[Gus]

"Greg Goss" <go...@gossg.org> wrote in message
news:b009vr...@mid.individual.net...

> Star Fleet: This was visualized by Roddenberry as a kind of UN, but
> the concept has drifted over time.
>
> Spoiler for the new movie: Va gur bevtvany GI fubj, gur trargvp
> fhcrezra gung nyfb fubjrq hc va obgu Fgne Gerx 2 zbivrf jrer ng gur
> urneg bs n ivpvbhf Jbeyq Jne va gur 1990f. Guvf vf n ceboyrz jvgu
> ybat-ehaavat FS. Gur fhcrezra ner fgvyy gurer (rkvyrq gb n pbyq-fyrrc
> fuvc) ohg gur jne arire unccrarq.

I've tried to enjoy the movies; but other than Wrath of Khan, I would rather
watch an episode from one of the TV series.

Isn't Star Fleet/Federation basically a military enterprise? Who is the
Head of the Federation? Appears that in the future big government/military
has taken over. And Isolationism lost favor.

[Stephen Morgan]

Howard Hail wrote

> I finally watched the Star Trek movie that came out a couple of years ago
> with young versions of all of the old TV characters, except for one of the
> old characters who showed up alongside the young version. Also, for some
> reason they never ended up taking a long side trip to White Castle,
> although one of the actors really, really makes me think they should have
> gone.
>
> Anyway, my question is based on having almost no knowledge of the Star Trek
> Universe. Chekov and Scotty speak with very strong accents, to the point
> that Chekov is barely intelligible at times. Does that mean on Earth of
> 500 years in the future, or whenever it's set, that there are still
> multiple countries on Earth with multiple languages? If so, who runs the
> Earth's space fleet? Is it some kind of UN?

The earth doesn't have a space fleet, the United Federation of Planets
has a starfleet.

Chekov is from the USSR, which is mentioned as the
place a ship appearing in early TNG is built. Obviously that episode was
filmed in the late 80s. The science ship Tsiolkovsky, in The Naked Now.
So obviously a hundred years after Kirk and co, there's still a USSR.

Scotty is from an English-speaking country.

> Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages? If
> so, how come everyone seems to speak English? Or does the Earth just speak
> English with regional accents, similar to the way we have different accents
> in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?

Picard speaks French, as does his brother and his nephew, before he
burns to death. Maybe not as a first language, depending on how you
think the translation convention is being used, but certainly they can
speak it.

[Stephen Morgan]

Gus wrote

They're a pacifist organisation dedicated to exploration. Who
occasionally do wars. The head of the federation is the Federation
President, who is some white-haired funny-faced alien when he appears in
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But Starfleet is always very
careful not to call itself a military, and their government doesn't seem
all that big. It's just that everyone lives lives of plenty, so there's
no room for profit-making business.

[Howard Hail]

Stephen Morgan <str...@darkstar.example.org> wrote

> The earth doesn't have a space fleet, the United Federation of
> Planets has a starfleet.
>
> Chekov is from the USSR, which is mentioned as the
> place a ship appearing in early TNG is built. Obviously that
> episode was filmed in the late 80s. The science ship Tsiolkovsky,
> in The Naked Now. So obviously a hundred years after Kirk and co,
> there's still a USSR.

>> Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages?
>> If so, how come everyone seems to speak English? Or does the Earth
>> just speak English with regional accents, similar to the way we have
>> different accents in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?
>
> Picard speaks French, as does his brother and his nephew, before he
> burns to death. Maybe not as a first language, depending on how you
> think the translation convention is being used, but certainly they can
> speak it.

So is the idea that the Earth still has countries, or maybe some kind of
federal system with semi-independent states?

I'm trying to get a handle on how the writers who defined the series saw
things settle out on Earth at that point -- was the idea that the world's
divisions were by and large ironed out, or was it more that the Starfleet
was a sort of French Foreign Legion (maybe not as military) where people
went to rise beyond the divisions back home.

In addition to language, did the shows deal with things like class
divisions, ethnic prejudice, etc. among humans, or was that considered a
thing of the past? (I know a bunch of plots were metaphors for stuff
that was going on at the time, but I'm wondering if the humans on the
shows still had those issues.)

[Gus]

"Stephen Morgan" <str...@darkstar.example.org> wrote in message
news:slrnkpn817....@darkstar.example.org...

> They're a pacifist organisation dedicated to exploration. Who
> occasionally do wars. The head of the federation is the Federation
> President, who is some white-haired funny-faced alien when he appears in
> Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But Starfleet is always very
> careful not to call itself a military, and their government doesn't seem
> all that big.

Who pays Starfleet costs? The ships must be very expensive to build,
maintain, and staff. Not too mention, bases and support staff and training
costs. The people on the ships have titles that sound military. Ensign,
officer, lieutenant, captain, commander, etc. Security (who seem kinda
thuggish) put people in the brig... Pacificists and explorers don't
generally carry weapons, especially not such high power ones such as:
phasers, photon torpedoes, etc. Did Jacques Cousteau have weapons on his
ship?

[Les Albert]

On Tue, 21 May 2013 13:27:21 -0400, "Gus" <gus.o...@geemail.com>
wrote:
>"Stephen Morgan" <str...@darkstar.example.org> wrote

>> They're a pacifist organisation dedicated to exploration. Who
>> occasionally do wars. The head of the federation is the Federation
>> President, who is some white-haired funny-faced alien when he appears in
>> Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But Starfleet is always very
>> careful not to call itself a military, and their government doesn't seem
>> all that big.

>Who pays Starfleet costs? The ships must be very expensive to build,
>maintain, and staff. Not too mention, bases and support staff and training
>costs. The people on the ships have titles that sound military. Ensign,
>officer, lieutenant, captain, commander, etc. Security (who seem kinda
>thuggish) put people in the brig... Pacificists and explorers don't
>generally carry weapons, especially not such high power ones such as:
>phasers, photon torpedoes, etc. Did Jacques Cousteau have weapons on his
>ship?

Jacques Cousteau had harpoons on his ship, "Calypso". You could put
someone's eye out with one of those things.

Les

[S. Checker]

Howard Hail <howart...@notmail.com> wrote:

> In addition to language, did the shows deal with things like class
> divisions, ethnic prejudice, etc. among humans, or was that considered a
> thing of the past? (I know a bunch of plots were metaphors for stuff
> that was going on at the time, but I'm wondering if the humans on the
> shows still had those issues.)

Sort of the point of the original series was that those issues weren't
a problem, which was why you could have an African-American comms
officer, a sneaky Asian pilot, a pernicious Russki navigator and a
drunk engineer all in one happy crew. The Romulans, Klingons et al.
stood in for the stereotypes. So did the Ferengi in later episodes
("The Next Generation").

Somewhere around there the writers of the show discovered that a
perfect society where everybody is striving for peace, even with the
nasty Klingons, is kind of boring. So they have to come up with
villains like Q, who just was too ineffable to be understood and put
all of humanity on trial for past misdeeds. Then came the Borg who were
kind of the logical extension of the Federation - their society was so
great that they helped you join it whether you wanted to or not. Yeah,
you got turned into a gray cyborg with cartoonish dialogue but at least
you were efficient.

Then came Deep Space Nine, which was a Wild West frontier where
anything went and most of the cast weren't in the Federation. More
conflict, more bad guys. Then there was Voyager, which was like Lost in
Space, in space. The less said about that the better. And finally
Enterprise which was set before the original series, so things were
less advanced and civilized than in all the others. Even the Vulcans
were being kind of jerks. I think that was my favorite of the spinoffs.
--
Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to
curve.--Wheeler

[Shawn Wilson]

On May 20, 4:29 pm, Howard Hail <howardt...@notmail.com> wrote:

> Anyway, my question is based on having almost no knowledge of the Star Trek
> Universe.  Chekov and Scotty speak with very strong accents, to the point
> that Chekov is barely intelligible at times.  Does that mean on Earth of
> 500 years in the future, or whenever it's set, that there are still
> multiple countries on Earth with multiple languages?  If so, who runs the
> Earth's space fleet?  Is it some kind of UN?
>
> Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages?   If
> so, how come everyone seems to speak English?  Or does the Earth just speak
> English with regional accents, similar to the way we have different accents
> in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?

From the top down-


Different Empires, Federation, Klingon, Romulan, etc.

Federation- many races (Human, Vulcan, Andorian, etc), one overall
government. All touchy feely and holding hands and singing kumbayah.
Utopian. Starfleet is their 'not at all military, we just carry all
these guns for self defense' military/exploration/contact arm.

Humans, one race owning many planets, but part of and under the rule
of the Federation.

Earth, united. But the history of different regions remains. So, one
one overall government, but Scots still have Scots accents, etc.
English is the common language of humans. Locals may speak their local
laguage as well. Universal translators are common.


Oh, and the original series (with Kirk, Spock, et al) was set 200
years in the future. Everything else but Enterprise was set 300 years
in the future. Enterprise was set 100 years before the original
series, or about 100 years in our future.

[Richard R. Hershberger]

On May 21, 3:31 pm, spam...@gmail.com (S. Checker) wrote:

> Howard Hail <howartholh...@notmail.com> wrote:
> > In addition to language, did the shows deal with things like class
> > divisions, ethnic prejudice, etc. among humans, or was that considered a
> > thing of the past?  (I know a bunch of plots were metaphors for stuff
> > that was going on at the time, but I'm wondering if the humans on the
> > shows still had those issues.)
>
> Sort of the point of the original series was that those issues weren't
> a problem, which was why you could have an African-American comms
> officer, a sneaky Asian pilot, a pernicious Russki navigator and a
> drunk engineer all in one happy crew. The Romulans, Klingons et al.
> stood in for the stereotypes. So did the Ferengi in later episodes
> ("The Next Generation").

Ethnic tensions were metaphored as inter-species tensions. Recall the
TOS episode where they first see what Romulans look like: a lot like
Vulcans. One of the crew members goes off on Spock at that point,
with the Federation equivalent of some combination of race baiting and
a Red scare.

>
> Somewhere around there the writers of the show discovered that a
> perfect society where everybody is striving for peace, even with the
> nasty Klingons, is kind of boring. So they have to come up with
> villains like Q, who just was too ineffable to be understood and put
> all of humanity on trial for past misdeeds. Then came the Borg who were
> kind of the logical extension of the Federation - their society was so
> great that they helped you join it whether you wanted to or not. Yeah,
> you got turned into a gray cyborg with cartoonish dialogue but at least
> you were efficient.
>
> Then came Deep Space Nine, which was a Wild West frontier where
> anything went and most of the cast weren't in the Federation. More
> conflict, more bad guys. Then there was Voyager, which was like Lost in
> Space, in space. The less said about that the better. And finally
> Enterprise which was set before the original series, so things were
> less advanced and civilized than in all the others. Even the Vulcans
> were being kind of jerks. I think that was my favorite of the spinoffs.

Seriously? I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that before. I
only got through the first season or so, and I historically have been
very over-tolerant of bad Star Trek. Indeed, I just went to an actual
movie theater for the first time in years to see the new one. It
wasn't exactly bad, but neither was it exactly good. It certainly was
loud.

Richard R. Hershberger

[Richard R. Hershberger]

On May 21, 4:21 pm, Shawn Wilson <ikonoql...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 20, 4:29 pm, Howard Hail <howardt...@notmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Anyway, my question is based on having almost no knowledge of the Star Trek
> > Universe.  Chekov and Scotty speak with very strong accents, to the point
> > that Chekov is barely intelligible at times.  Does that mean on Earth of
> > 500 years in the future, or whenever it's set, that there are still
> > multiple countries on Earth with multiple languages?  If so, who runs the
> > Earth's space fleet?  Is it some kind of UN?
>
> > Or is the Earth considered one country, but with multiple languages?   If
> > so, how come everyone seems to speak English?  Or does the Earth just speak
> > English with regional accents, similar to the way we have different accents
> > in Alabama, Australia, and Alberta?
>
> From the top down-
>
> Different Empires, Federation, Klingon, Romulan, etc.
>
> Federation- many races (Human, Vulcan, Andorian, etc), one overall
> government.  All touchy feely and holding hands and singing kumbayah.
> Utopian.  Starfleet is their 'not at all military, we just carry all
> these guns for self defense' military/exploration/contact arm.

I always got the impression that the individual planets, or perhaps
individual races, had their own governments, with the Federation being
a fairly tightknit cooperative body. So when, for example, Kirk finds
himself on Vulcan in the middle of a pon farr threesome, Vulcan law
applies. Federation law applies only to the extent that Spock has
voluntarily submitted to it. In an ordinary pon farr, you wouldn't
have Federation courts putting out an arrest warrant afterwards.

[Greg Goss]

"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:

>> And finally
>> Enterprise which was set before the original series, so things were
>> less advanced and civilized than in all the others. Even the Vulcans
>> were being kind of jerks. I think that was my favorite of the spinoffs.
>
>Seriously? I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that before. I
>only got through the first season or so, and I historically have been
>very over-tolerant of bad Star Trek.

I say the same thing. I kinda liked the portrayal of "logic uber
alles" generating a policy of restrictive paternalism.

In reaction, humanity (including the captain, viewed in flashbacks)
reaspond with racist hatred for the "pointies".

In later seasons, the "jerk" quotient gets ramped way up.

[John Mc.]

Mine was DS9 especially once they got into the Dominion Wars. I agree
that Voyager was terrible. Enterprise was good once they actually put
some effort into the scripts. Brent Spinner's appearance as Arik Soong
was a step in the right direction. But by then the writing was on the wall.

John Mc.

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <b009vr...@mid.individual.net>,

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>
>Star Fleet: This was visualized by Roddenberry as a kind of UN, but
>the concept has drifted over time.

The original series clearly had a past history of wars with the Romulans
and the Klingons. Wargames even featured in one of the episodes. Scotty
was implied to be a veteran--"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged
phaser bank". The United Federation of Planets was formed as a mutual
defense organization, according to suplementary material that came out
in the seventies. That would make the Federation something like a cross
between the UN and NATO. Starfleet is merely an instrument of the
Federation. Clearly, the Enterprise is well-armed.

Later, they tried to retcon most of this away.

--
"Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS
crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in
TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in
bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither."

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <XnsA1C7831BC9...@94.75.214.39>,

Howard Hail <howart...@notmail.com> wrote:
>
>So is the idea that the Earth still has countries, or maybe some kind of
>federal system with semi-independent states?
>
>I'm trying to get a handle on how the writers who defined the series saw
>things settle out on Earth at that point -- was the idea that the world's
>divisions were by and large ironed out, or was it more that the Starfleet
>was a sort of French Foreign Legion (maybe not as military) where people
>went to rise beyond the divisions back home.
>
>In addition to language, did the shows deal with things like class
>divisions, ethnic prejudice, etc. among humans, or was that considered a
>thing of the past? (I know a bunch of plots were metaphors for stuff
>that was going on at the time, but I'm wondering if the humans on the
>shows still had those issues.)

It is mentioned several times in the original series that ethnic and racial
issues are history. In fact, one of the crew mentions studying such things
in history in the episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" where a half
black/half white and a half white/half black guy are trying to kill each
other.

[Xho Jingleheimerschmidt]

On 05/21/2013 09:14 AM, Stephen Morgan wrote:
>
> Chekov is from the USSR, which is mentioned as the
> place a ship appearing in early TNG is built. Obviously that episode was
> filmed in the late 80s. The science ship Tsiolkovsky, in The Naked Now.
> So obviously a hundred years after Kirk and co, there's still a USSR.

But is it a sovereign entity, or just a regional name?


Xho

[Xho Jingleheimerschmidt]

On 05/21/2013 10:27 AM, Gus wrote:
> "Stephen Morgan" <str...@darkstar.example.org> wrote in message
> news:slrnkpn817....@darkstar.example.org...
>
>> They're a pacifist organisation dedicated to exploration. Who
>> occasionally do wars. The head of the federation is the Federation
>> President, who is some white-haired funny-faced alien when he appears in
>> Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But Starfleet is always very
>> careful not to call itself a military, and their government doesn't seem
>> all that big.
>
> Who pays Starfleet costs? The ships must be very expensive to build,
> maintain, and staff.

You just make them with big replicators. Does the staff even get paid?
They do need to be fed, but for that they have smaller replicators, or
whatever those things are called. It is hard to say how much cheaper
things would be in a couple centuries, it might just not be all that
expensive.

A lot of stuff is vague. "Star Trek: Now Hiring Plumbers,
Quartermasters, and Accounts" might explain it all, but probably
wouldn't do well in the box office.

> Not too mention, bases and support staff and
> training costs. The people on the ships have titles that sound
> military. Ensign, officer, lieutenant, captain, commander, etc.

The merchant marines have captains and officers. So do cruise ships. I
don't know about the other levels.

> Security (who seem kinda thuggish) put people in the brig...

Go on a cruise ship and start punching people in the face, and see what
happens.

> Pacificists and explorers don't generally carry weapons, especially not
> such high power ones such as: phasers, photon torpedoes, etc.

Explorers very often carry weapons, depending on what they are
exploring. The power of those weapons depends on what kinds of entities
they might expect to encounter.

> Did
> Jacques Cousteau have weapons on his ship?

I would expect so.

Xho

[S. Checker]

Richard R. Hershberger <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:

> On May 21, 3:31?pm, spam...@gmail.com (S. Checker) wrote:
>
>> Then came Deep Space Nine, which was a Wild West frontier where
>> anything went and most of the cast weren't in the Federation. More
>> conflict, more bad guys. Then there was Voyager, which was like Lost in
>> Space, in space. The less said about that the better. And finally
>> Enterprise which was set before the original series, so things were
>> less advanced and civilized than in all the others. Even the Vulcans
>> were being kind of jerks. I think that was my favorite of the spinoffs.
>
> Seriously? I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that before. I
> only got through the first season or so, and I historically have been
> very over-tolerant of bad Star Trek.

Bad Star Trek is generally better than good Star Wars. But yeah, I
think I really wanted "Enterprise" to be good. I would have liked it to
be better but for a while there it satisfied my jones. No shields and
pitiful weaponry on the ship. No Universal Translator and very few
other resources for the ship to call on. Plus, everyone on the ship,
from the captain down, was trying to figure out how all this stuff
worked.

Not to say it was a great show. It was just better than it could have
been. Voyager wasn't, and neither was TNG a lot of the time.

> Indeed, I just went to an actual
> movie theater for the first time in years to see the new one. It
> wasn't exactly bad, but neither was it exactly good. It certainly was
> loud.

I've seen all of the movies in the theater, even the odd-numbered ones.
I'll see the new one. But I will tell you, I re-watched the first
reboot (the 2009 J.J. Abrams movie, just called "Star Trek," for the
unfamiliar) (but then again, if you're that unfamiliar why have you
read this far into a geeky discussion like this?) and I thought it
stood up well. The characters are interesting to watch, the action
scenes were entertaining and not that predictable. They could have made
the movie without Leonard Nimoy but even those parts were acceptable.
And I still was moved by Captain Pike's part.
--
I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers
It didn't take long - I don't know much about Turkish drummers.
-- Bruce Cockburn

[Richard R. Hershberger]

On May 22, 12:23 pm, spam...@gmail.com (S. Checker) wrote:

I saw the 2009 movie on Netflix. It was better than this one. Its
being pretty good is why I was willing to go to a theater to see the
new one. (I saw Star Wars eps. 1 - 3 through a sense of generational
imperative. They pretty much worked that out of my system.) The
objection to the new one is that it is essentially a summer
blockbuster blow-em-up, with a bunch of winking at the Trekkies in the
audience. As I say, it isn't exactly bad. It is a more-than-
competent summer blockbuster blow-em-up. Star Trek has always been
happy to blow stuff up, but that isn't really the point of Star Trek.

The best observation I have read is that in a better world, Joss
Whedon would have been given the Star Trek franchise and J.J. Abrams
the Avengers.

Richard R. Hershberger

[S. Checker]

Richard R. Hershberger <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:

> The best observation I have read is that in a better world, Joss
> Whedon would have been given the Star Trek franchise and J.J. Abrams
> the Avengers.

I just had a a little flutter in the heartal regions. Oh well, I guess
we'll just have to se how he does with Shakespeare.
--
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged
lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
-- Nicholas Chamfort

[rroger]

Different people go to Star Trek movies for different reasons.

[bill van]

In article
<f5acfe5a-6f94-4eb9...@a8g2000yqp.googlegroups.com>,

Or not.

bill

[Richard R. Hershberger]

Sure. There undoubtedly are lots of people who are thrilled to learn
that the new Trek film blows lots of stuff up, because that is what
they want in a movie. And I'm sure many of them also want as little
of that "philosophy" crap as possible. Indeed, J.J. Abrams said much
the same thing about himself. But there are ample opportunities in
the theater to see stuff blown up, sans philosophizing. That is
fine: give 'em what they want. But some of us have other tastes,
too. Given the historical commercial success of the Star Trek
franchise in delivering this other stuff, there clearly is a market
for it as well. 'Tis a tragic market inefficiency to leave this
segment unserved.

Richard R. Hershberger