[huskily whispered voice-over]
What Eonwe doesn’t know is that we’ve replaced Knead with Ricardo Montalban. Let’s see if he notices the difference.
[/huskily whispered voice-over]
Oh, and did I mention Knead, you’ve got quite a marvelous chest. Is that real?
I have nothing to add to this conversation other than ‘Foam Rubber Titties’ is a perfect band name.
And yes, I know that’s getting rather old.
WoK is a fantastic look into Kirk’s personality, and shows exactly why he’s “the captain”. His unwillingness to lose, even against the no-win scenario tells volumes about the man.
Kirk - “I don’t like to lose”
ST2 is my favorite, i wore out my tape of it (the ABC extended broadcast version) and need to get the DVD.
At the risk of getting gang-tackled, I gotta admit IV was my favorite. You’ve got San Francisco, (I live about 200 yards from where the Bird of Prey landed in GGP), time travel actually done well for a change, a conservation theme, freaky chirping space whales, Kirk does not automatically get the girl, plus tons of quotable dialog:
“Well, double-dumb-ass on you!”
“A little too much LDS”
AP Kirk Thatcher’s punk song on the bus: “I hate you! And I berate you! And I say SCREW YOU!!”
“There be whales here!”
“It’s not just the whales - it’s the water!”
“Computer?”
“Where are the nucular wessels?”
Plus, I never liked the actors that played Kirk’s son and ex-wife, and I always thought that whole “hours seem like days” thing was a little wheezy. Don’t get me wrong - II is definitely my 2nd favorite, but I’ve always liked IV better. YMMV.
Yup. Why? It wasn’t boring, it had the cheesey Kirk tricks we’d come to love, and was most like a lively TOS episode, but with better production values. Plus, Spock bites the big one! Oops! Spoiler!
On further thought, one element of WoK I find irresistable is the “And I wish to go on… hurting you” speech. Most times, movie villians are so single-minded that they chase the hero recklessly and end up causing their own deaths, usually in some stupid fashion involving the villian dangling off a cliff, the hero reaches down to help him, the villian attacks the hero with a knife and ends up falling. I mean, c’mon stupid, don’t knife the guy who’s trying to help you! Get back on solid ground and then knife him. It’s all a wishy-washy way for the villian to die (as justice demands) without having the squeaky-clean hero actually kill him (which might be morally ambiguous).
Anyhoo, Khan knows Kirk is stuck in the asteroid and delivers his little speech. Khan’s about to sail off and destroy the Enterprise and he’s perfectly happy leaving Kirk marooned (he thinks) forever. Montalban looks so satisfied and spent during his speech that I almost expected him to light up a cigarette. Now that’s a villian who knows when to declare victory. Khan’s calm is so absolute that Kirk’s screaming stands as harsh but just contrast.
Of course, later on Kirk goads Khan into the nebula with “I’m laughing at the superior intellect” and it’s back to Ahab and Moby, but by that point it’s well established that Joachim is Starbuck and though Khan overrules him out of anger, he never does so out of arrogance or stupidity. On several occasions he actually takes his lieutenant’s advice, something movie villians rarely do (see rule 37).
Plus there was that mega-cool moment (one among many):
Joachim: [“that’s wierd”] Our shields are dropping.
Khan: [classic “huh?” expression] Raise them!
Joachim: [low-level panic] I can’t!
Khan: [high-level panic] Where’s the over-ride? The over-ride?
Kirk: [ice-cold] Fire!
Unlike numerous DS9 and Voyager episodes in which aliens hijack the ship and can instantly and flawlessly pilot it, this scene shows that training and experience actually count.
And Ricardo’s breasts are real. And they’re spectacular.
I gotta get to Walmart and buy the DVD.
[sub]and I’m positively glowing with all the praise for my earlier comments - seriously[/sub]
It’ll always be my favorite of the series, probably because of how well it’s written and all of the underlying themes. One of my favorite scenes is the one when Kirk visits Spock in his quarters before taking command. It’s a little “talky,” but it begins to raise many of the central issues of the story. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the other way around? How will the characters deal with the unwinnable situation?
That being said, however, it’s not perfect. It still suffers from many of the plot holes & technical issues as the rest of the series:
[ul][li]Why do the ships always meet on the same plane (except for the final battle)?[/li][li]Why does Kirk not follow regulations and raise the shields? (Because otherwise there would be no movie)[/li][li]Why does Scotty bring his mortally wounded nephew to the bridge instead of Sickbay?[/li]Most importantly, where does the Genesis planet come from? The Carol Marcus video only shows the Device working on a lifeless planetoid. Can it turn any matter into a planet teeming with life, even interstellar matter, and furnish that planet with its own star? That never made a whole lot of sense to me.[/ul]
I like it best, but I have one minor quibble.
The whole “thinking in 2-D” thing would have been much cooler if, instead of just using space to sneak up behind Khan, Kirk had come at him for a completely different angle. I think it would have rocked to see the Enterprise completely coming from underneath.
And I’ll get flamed for this, but I gotta say what’s in my heart: The whole Spock’s Death thing seemed way tacked on to me.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by av8rmike
[ul][li]Why do the ships always meet on the same plane (except for the final battle)?[/li][li]Why does Kirk not follow regulations and raise the shields? (Because otherwise there would be no movie)[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Well…the answer to the first question is simply a matter of convention. If it matters to you, they did try to play with this in ST:TNG pre-production regarding their design of the Romulan Warbird, but it never took off (the idea, not necessarily the Warbird).
As for the second question, Kirk was already showing signs of “coasting” through his job, possible fatigue (aging, coping, etc.), and he made a tactical error. He chides himself for it afterword (paraphrasing): “I did nothing. Just got caught with my britches down. I must be going senile.” It moves the plot, yes, but it’s not outta nowhere.
The other two, yeah, those are big holes, but Trek is covered in 'em.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by av8rmike *
**[li]Why does Scotty bring his mortally wounded nephew to the bridge instead of Sickbay?[/li][li]Most importantly, where does the Genesis planet come from? The Carol Marcus video only shows the Device working on a lifeless planetoid. Can it turn any matter into a planet teeming with life, even interstellar matter, and furnish that planet with its own star? That never made a whole lot of sense to me.[/list] **[/li][/QUOTE]
The first two questions have been handled, so I’ll get these two.
[li]Scotty just watched his nephew suffer horriffic burns in the engine room. I can understand how he would take the turbolift to the wrong deck (he’d be in mild shock at the time), and I can also see him wanting to go where most of his friends are for help.[/li]
The Genesis device used matter from the Mutara Nebula to create the planet and (possibly) to put more fissionable fuel in the star - a nebula would have at least one star within it to start with, wouldn’t it? If its powerful enough to rebuild a planet, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to have it build one from a handy supply of matter just floating there looking pretty.
Interesting little factoid:
Montalban never met Shatner, Nimoy, or the rest of the E’s crew during filming. All his parts (and his crew’s) were shot in one time period, then the E crew came later and finished up.
No cite, just a documentary hosted by Nimoy I once saw.
Regardless of the other crew, at the very least Montalban met and acted with Walter Koenig. Remember, Khan put that space bug up Chekov’s ear.
This brings to mind the following continuity gaffe. Khan appeared in the first season episode “Space Seed”, while the character of Chekov was not introduced until the second season. So, how did Chekov know about the Botany Bay and Khan? Conversely, how did Khan recognize Chekov?
He was still below deck then. Yeah, that’s the ticket!!
Well duh, Chekhov rented the video of “Space Seed” during one of the long stretches between the Enterprise’s misadventures.
While the death of Spock seemed a little contrived to me too (so, he takes a Chef’s hat off a pillar and this saves the Enterprise?), I like the duality it shows in Spocks character: his logical mind tells him what he should do, as the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, but his goodbye to Kirk is still emotionally moving.
Well, Wrath is certainly the best trek film with First Contact close behind however I do have some nitpicks.
How did Khan and his gang overcome the crew of the Reliant and take control of the ship so quickly and more importantly how do they know how to operate it?
Why did the Reliant’s sensors not detect Khan & co?
The Reliant did not notice that planets were missing form the system, did they loose their starcharts.
Once again the Enterprise is the only ship in the quadrant.
The movie gave me a let down from the episode Space Seed because that ended with a magnificent line and the promise of a future: “A world to win an Empire to Build”. I guess not.
I’d never heard the urban myth about Montalban’s chest, but I had wondered if it was just a prosthesis.
I just have to be the first to say it: had his chest been a fake job, you know it wouldn’t have been standard-issue “foam rubber titties”…
Yep, it would have to have been skillfully handcrafted by master artisans out of nothing less than the finest, genuine…
…Corinthian leather [wth?]. Whatever the heck that is.
Galaxy Quest was the best Star Trek movie, bar none.
Lucky for Kahn the Reliant was still on Starfleet’s “Crystal Key Program” I Like What They’ve Done to my Starship…