Beyond or behind?

 On Saturday afternoon, Karli and I saw Star Trek: Beyond. The new cast continues to do brilliant imitations of the original characters, the special effects were impeccable*, the villain is suitably villainous, and the day, as always, is saved in an epic fashion. It’s got some issues in terms of exposition, there are a lot of holes in the bad guy’s back story, but generally the movie builds very well on the foundations erected by the first two offerings from the rebooted voyages of the starship Enterprise. 

Coincidentally, I’ve also been watching episodes from the original series on Netflix during my stationary bike cardio workouts at the gym.  Here's the thing: why do I find myself preferring the old shows?

It’s an unexpected question.  In spite of the lasting popularity of the original series, no one denies that it had its problems, and I'd like to think that lessons were learned. (Although you'd never know it from the Qpid episode from The Next Generation.)  Star Trek: Beyond would have been a perfectly acceptable original series episode, but that's the problem: acceptable, rather than excellent or challenging or thought-provoking. And there's a very logical explanation for that - no Spock joke intended.

A movie, even one that’s part of a franchise with a 50-year legacy, is unlikely to make the same creative decisions as a series - especially one that’s as episodic as the original Star Trek. Some critics point at the show’s lack of serialization as a flaw, but really, it’s one of the great strengths of the original series.

The stand-alone nature of the episodes allowed for a huge creative variety in stories:  the taut, tense conflict of Balance of Terror versus the cheerful comedy of The Trouble with Tribbles; The Doomsday Machine, with its echoes of Moby Dick and references to the Mutually Assured Destruction standoff of the Cold War, or Ricardo Montalban’s suave villainy as Khan in Space Seed.  Amok Time, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror, Mirror, A Taste of Armageddon - there’s a substantial list of episodes that are considered to be excellent stand-alone examples of science fiction storytelling.

I acknowledge that there's also a substantial list of failures – The Omega Glory, Spock's Brain, The Way to Eden – but even the bad episodes of Star Trek were still attempting to do something original and interesting. 

Contemporary movie makers are faced with the challenge of trying to maintain that flavour of creativity and variety without being able to vary too widely from the formula.  It’s hard to imagine a two-hour Star Trek movie that would be as deliberately comedic as The Trouble With Tribbles – instead, the movie scripts have to strike a balance, mixing elements of humour, conflict, suspense and romance in an action movie framework.

It's one thing to roll the dice on an unusual idea when you're doing 26 episodes - it's a completely different thing to take a chance when you're releasing one movie every three or four years.

Regardless, if I could send a message to the creative team for the next Star Trek film, I would tell them to do exactly that: to play the long game with the movie franchise and treat it like a really extended version of the series. Take some risks, people! Challenge us, impress us, startle us! Come on - let's boldly go someplace we’ve never gone before.

- Sid

*  Karli might not agree with this statement - she noticed a couple of things that didn’t quite work.

At least the triffid part is off the table.

 

Make plans now to stay up late or set the alarm early next week to see a cosmic display of “shooting stars” light up the night sky. Known for its fast and bright meteors, the annual Perseid meteor shower is anticipated to be one of the best potential meteor viewing opportunities this year.

The Perseids show up every year in August when Earth ventures through trails of debris left behind by an ancient comet. This year, Earth may be in for a closer encounter than usual with the comet trails that result in meteor shower, setting the stage for a spectacular display.

- nasa.gov

The Day of the Triffids is a combination post-apocalyptic/monster menace novel, written in 1951 by British author John Wyndham. The story starts with Bill Masen, who awakes in a London hospital on the day that the bandages will be removed from his eyes following treatment for a workplace accident.* 

However, even without sight Masen can tell that something is wrong.  The usual roar of City traffic is absent, the nurse fails to respond to the buzzer, and the hospital is full of moans and complaints.

Stripping the bandages from his eyes, Masen leaves his room, only to discover that the world has literally changed overnight.  Radiation from a worldwide meteor shower has blinded everyone who watched it, leaving the vast majority of humanity without sight.  The impact of the disaster is worsened by the presence of the triffids, ambulatory carnivorous plants which are cultivated for a variety of purposes.  Without human supervision, the triffids have gotten loose from their pens and are stalking the helpless humans.

Last night was the second night of the annual Perseid meteor shower, which was predicted to be far brighter and more impressive than usual. Through an odd coincidence, I had a bad headache last night, and when I reached home I simply collapsed fully clothed into bed, and slept through until about 5:00 this morning, without any thought at all of watching the fall of the meteors.

It's pretty quiet at five in the morning ... but is it too quiet?

- Sid

* If the idea of someone awakening in a hospital to find out that a mysterious catastrophe has taken place sounds familiar, that's because it is.  Both 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead use exactly the same narrative device.

And the award goes to...

"I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - I want ROOM SERVICE! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."

Johnny, Johnny Mnemonic

We recently had dinner with Karli's friend Tara and her new boyfriend Gary.  As sometimes happens in the ebb and flow of first meetings and the associated who-when-where-what-why process, it came out that I was a science fiction fan. Gary, who works in the film industry, immediately asked, "Ah - what's your favourite science fiction movie?"

I realize that this is a standard conversational gambit, but whenever someone asks me about my favourite anything, I always feels a bit challenged, as if I'm going to be judged on my response* - it's not always a comfortable experience.

I was thinking about it afterwards, and I have an alternative that I'd like to propose to the general population.  Going forward, let's no longer ask people about their favourite book, movie, TV show or YouTube™ channel - science fiction or not. Let's ask people about their least favourite.

It's a thought provoking question, if perhaps a bit negative, and I think that in some odd way people are more likely to commiserate than disagree (as can be the case with favourites). There may well be a story as well, because generally people don't go out of their way to watch or read something that they won't enjoy.

I've done this a couple of times on a trial basis, and it's been quite interesting, perhaps more so than the question of favourites. For example, Karli cited Cool World, a movie I haven't thought about for literally decades.  Her sister Stefanie said, "The Wicker Man!" without a moment's hesitation. (Which she instantly followed with Mad Max - apparently Stefanie has already given this question some thought.)

My least favourite science fiction film?  Hmmmm...a little part of me wants to list classically bad SF movies that I haven't seen, like Battlefield Earth or the Sharknado series** (or any one of a legion of terrible low-budget SF movies from the 70s and 80s), but that's not the purpose of the exercise.

A slightly larger part wonders if Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back*** would count as SF - there's certainly a fanboy element to the film, and that movie represents two incredibly tedious hours of my life that are gone, gone forever.

In terms of bad SF that I have seen, Johnny Mnemonic is the first thing that comes to mind, mostly due to its wasted potential.  The source material was an excellent short story by William Gibson that contained the DNA for his breakout 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, but the brevity and style that made it so good was completely lost in translation.

There are a few others that required a little more thought.  Prometheus disappointed me: I felt that it was an ambitious failure, but a failure none the less.  Ridley Scott did all the things he's good at, lighting, composition and set design, but the script lets him down.  The Planet of the Apes reboot with Mark Wahlberg - the original was an extraordinary concept for the 1960s, and the re-reboots have cast a whole new light on the concept, but the 2001 version never made sense right from the very start.  I suspect I could come up with more, but as with Karli's sister, I feel that the initial instinctive responses are the ones that really count.

Oh, my favourite SF movie?  As previously discussed and explained, Star Wars, the original one.  Gary's choice was 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I found a bit surprising - sadly, it appears that this judgement thing is a two-way street.

- Sid

* And let's face it, I probably will be.

** Sorry, Laurie.

***  For the trivia fans in the audience, as far as I know this is the only movie other than the Star Wars series that features both Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher - albeit not in shared screen time.