GINO’s SCI FI CORNER

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

Alright, writing about Star Trek films is getting kinda boring and I’m exposing myself as the total dweeb, nit-picker that I am, so I’m going to be brief and inform all my faithful readers that First Contact is the last Star Trek movie worth writing about. Insurrection was so-wrong-headed and embarrassing that it went far beyond Shatner’s laughable Final Frontier into “Why the @!*& did I spend the money on this boring @$%!.” territory (Really, the main bad guy is consumed by desire to get a… face-lift?) Then with Nemesis the producers were so desperate to crack that elusive normal, non-nerd demographic that they hired an action movie director who knew nothing of Star Trek and threw a veritable stew of Star Trek cliches onto the screen, including yet another retread of Wrath of Khan, treating each idea as if it were new and unique when they clearly weren’t and the movie sucked hard. (A dune buggy chase on a desert planet, that’s what this series needs! )

Anyway, First Contact hinted at what a Star Trek movie could be while still exemplifying everything wrong with the film series. I was enjoying the movie when it started. Jerry Goldsmith was back as composer with a rich new theme to start the movie off right. Then the opening shots were impressive and downright cinematic. The cinematography by Matthew Leonetti was sterile blue and science-fiction-ish. We see the crew on the new Enterprise D , they’ve been out in space with new a new ship and new blue uniforms for a year and without too much exposition or b.s., they’re ready to fight the Borg. Seemed pretty good.

Disappointingly, there’s a fight with the Borg ship that looked too busy and Star Wars-y, big football field sized starships zipping around like X-wings, not terrific or what I would have liked, but still in the arena of feature film-making.

Then they go back in time and there it is, direct from T.V. land U.S.A., we have a cheap, uninteresting post-apocalyptic 21st Century earth with our man James Cromwell outfitted in a dumb hat. (which, one may recall, is my # 1 gripe about costuming actors).

I could go on pointing out all the irritating T.V.isms that threw me out of the movie, but I’ll sum it up in one shot. At one point, the Borg are taking over the Enterprise and they’re wearing these rubber costumes. I heard or read somewhere that they were expensive, but they just look lame. Forgivable on the TV show maybe, but on the big screen, when I saw the close up of the wonky rubber boot hitting the floor to the Enterprise and the sound effect goes “clang! clang!”, once again, I threw up my hands and gave up. For the movie, couldn’t the Borg be in like hard plastic sorta C3-P0 costumes, like? So, you know, they looked like robots and not fruitcakes at a sci-fi convention?

Meanwhile Jonathan Frakes (who did a decent enough job directing the film, really, it had more style than Generations) and co. are stranded on Earth without being able to communicate with the Enterprise and no one’s freaking out. They’re like, “Gee, we can’t communicate with our vessel. Hmmm. Oh, well. ”
Then Alfre Woodard has a big cheesy argument with Picard and he, ala Michael Jackson in the Bad video, breaks some glass and looks plenty fruity doing it, and then they quote Moby Dick, even though Khan already did that back in II. But this time, it’s Picard obsessed revenge, oh, what a twist! He’s losing his mind, he’s losing his crew. Good thing he gets a good old p.c. lecture on what it is to be a flawed human from a contemporary earth woman. Zzzzzz…. how about he just uses the technology at his disposal and beams the borg out into space and then uses a quantam torpedo to destroy them, since it didn’t take too many to destroy the Borg ship at the beginning of the movie?

Plus, in another monumental wasted opportunity, typical of Star Trek movies, the good guys go out on the hull of the ship to fight the Borg and it’s a BORING scene. Now at the time, I was tinkering with my own Star Trek movie ideas and dreaming of a fight on the hull of the ship in the space suit jet packs from The Motion Picture, where they’re zipping all over the nacelles and warp engines, so when I read there was a fight out on the hull in First Contact, I was somewhat excited, albeit a little perplexed at how Hollywood was always reading my mind and taking my ideas. Anyway, leave it to Star Trek to take a cool idea and make it completely flat and uninteresting. They move in slow-motion, and have gravity boots. Zzzzzz….

Then finally, Picard and the Borg Queen have it out and Picard’s saying, “Yes, I remember you! You tried to mate with me! YES! YES! It all comes back now!!!” Well, that’s funny, I hadn’t seen too many episodes of Next Generation, but I did see Best of Both Worlds and I distinctly do NOT remember Picard having any interraction with the Borg Queen. So, since she was a new idea and they were revising history, how about spending a little money and showing a flashback because when a character describes a major event in a movie with lines of dialogue, it feels like a play. And I don’t like watching plays much, especially in a movie theater. And there’s poor, stranded Alice Krige having to suddenly play rejected by Picard and angry at him for SPURNING HER! (”HEAVENS TO MURGATROID!!”) Well, sorry, it doesn’t work. I never witnessed her desire for him, so I don’t buy at all that she feels rejected by him. And why’s she getting mad in the first place, she’s a bleepin’ borg?

So that’s it. That’s been Star Trek for the last four movies. TV on the big screen. Maybe it will be different with this new movie directed by a TV guy who made a very TV-ish Mission Impossible movie with a plot basically ripped off from Mission Impossible 1 and True Lies –right down to a wife who doesn’t know her husband, our hero’s an agent and a caravan on a bridge–, who, from all reports, wants to cast his new Trek with young and gorgeous tv type actors, but you know we Trekkies are always hoping for a brighter future.

Warp ahead!!!

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)

Now, just for context, I absolutely don’t like any incarnation other than the classic Shatner/Nimoy Trek, so this probably won’t be the most analytical review on the subject. I think the Next Generation films were textbook examples of a television producer’s complete inability to think like a big screen movie maker. But even on its own small screen terms I felt The Next Generation was pretty crummy television. Where TOS had the vibrant colors, the cool 60’s music, Shatner! Nimoy! the fights, the babes, and above all, the more interesting and lasting themes and social commentary, Next Generation spent seven years regurgitating old themes and in most cases making them tiresome with Levar Burton, using that Reading Rainbow voice, saying something about a warp cores or Data talking about fractile codes and learning emotion and blah blah blah. Once or twice they lobbed a good idea out there, but even when the show showed signs of a pulse, like having Picard turn into a Borg, they all wussed out, and in classic television style, Picard was instantly cured and brought back to normal in one episode.

Umpteen episodes of the TNG series made me throw my hands up and say, “They just don’t have it.” I see it like this: In 1966, Gene Roddenberry was an ex-cop, ex-airline-pilot, regular joe making a living in the tv business and he cast a show with reliable, working stiff actors with charisma who took the job seriously but not too seriously and they all created magic. By 1987, after millions of fans had been fawning and drooling all over “The Great Bird” on the convention/cruise circuit and the like, he had this enormous head and a serious moneymaking franchise to live up to. Plus, like George Lucas, Rodenberry ceased to be just a guy working in “pitchas” now metamorphasisizing into one of those clay-footed Gods he was always trying to deflate on the show. So, now looking down from Mt. Olympus Roddenberry chose stentorian-voiced, super serious Shakespearean Patrick Stewart to boom out his grandiose notions of humans evolving into socialist, peace-loving weenies. And taking Patrick Stewart’s cue, the rest of the cast poured a lugubrious over-earnestness into their one note performances and lo’ there came to pass a television show with the Star Trek name that had flat uninteresting characters, sissy action, uninspiring effects, dopey ship design, HORRIBLE MAKE UP(say what you will about the 60’s spit and paste stuff, Spock and the Vulcans look cool) , lifeless unhummable tv wallpaper music (except for, of course, Goldmsith’s and Courages themes and fanfare. ) and above all, no magic. (I notice the same phenomenon happened with the second Star Wars trilogy, instead of fresh, likeable, not-too-serious actors like Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill creating something new and exciting, Liam Neeson and co. were moping about, so preoccupied with their part in history that they distanced the audience, and were shadows of who came before.) So, in the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it was no longer cutting edge, socially relevent sci-fi television, but ‘they’ve done all this before, only better’.

And in the case of Generations, the story that they already did better was Shatner’s disastrous Star Trek V. Instead of Spock’s brother looking for God, we have a non-descript Malcolm McDowell looking for Heaven of some sorts. And in each case, you have completely unmotivated villains committing needless crimes to find answers that any third grader could probably answer fairly credibly. i.e., Seems kind of retarded to look for God on a planet as is trying to move a planet to get into something that he could just beam into. So, here’s Generations, a film rife with stupidity, continuity errors and paradoxes in one of the biggest wasted opportunities in the history of science fiction movies.

I saw the film when I was two years out of college, when Star Trek movies were losing their lustre but still something to look forward to. I wasn’t nuts about the prospect of having to sit through a big screen TNG movie , but part of me hoped that maybe the show was hampered by television budgets and the fifty minute format. Maybe they’d bust out with a real barn-burner of a story. And while I heard that Kirk was going to die, I never for one minute imagined that he’d die falling off a bridge. So without reading much about the film– not really interested in the behind the scenes interviews with Patrick Stewart and Rick Berman, I went to see the film on opening day, November 2004, with low expectations, very little pre-knowledge and slight hopes that it would be good.

Now, I have to point out here, that Generations has hands down the BEST opening title sequence of the entire film series. (an object floating in space, what is it? Oh, a champagne bottle, crashing on the new Enterprise! If only ST:TMP opened with that much flair)

So after being somewhat impressed and ready to see a cool movie, the film immediately let me down with television thinking. Kirk opens the bridge doors and walks into newspeople with head cameras. HEAD CAMERAS!!! PAH!!!

It’s the late 23rd century. We’ve scene floating suitcases in the first movie. You’re telling me we can’t have floating ominpresent camera balls from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie? News people are going to wear headgear in 2290? In an era of holodecks and transporters? C’mon! (and in the next movie LevarBurton acquires robot eyes, so one would think at the very least, that TV cameras of the future would be based on that technology.)

Okay, so yes, a minor gripe but still, I’m looking for this film to wow me and already it’s giving me what I fully expect from television hacks. Then the dialogue. “Captain Kirk meet Demora Sulu.” “Your father is Hikaru Sulu?” “Yes, you’ve met her before when she was so high.” Ah, thanks for telling us. Hey, how about Lt. Sulu Jr. simply says, “Hello, Captains, great to see you again.” to Chekov and Kirk. And Kirk’s line, “It wouldn’t be the Enterprise without a Sulu at the helm” explains who she is. Because you know, Sulu nearly gave up his career for Kirk and Spock and was seen at Kirk’s apartment drinking wine from a futuristic (television prop! television prop!) test tube, so you know, KIRK F***ING KNOWS SULU HAS A DAUGHTER! Then Scotty says, “Well, Captain, it’s like you always say, if you want something you have to make the time.” Wait. Kirk’s been bestowing old Scottish fart platitudes on Scotty? Since when? And Kirk says “It’s good thing you’re an engineer. With tact like that you’d make a lousy psychiatrist.” Written and approved by a team that clearly doesn’t know or understand the characters.

Then they leave spacedock and there’s an admittedly funny bit with Kirk saying “take us out”, to pompous applause. And then the plot starts with this Nexus ribbon that kills Kirk for the time being. giving him a more interesting death scene than his actual death, but still, the opening is basically like Spock’s death in Khan. So what started out as an average Star Trek film with Shatner, Scotty and Chekov, now shoots forward 80 years to Picard and company, testing our patience with gimmicks on a boat. And the film comes becomes a duck in the water.

After his awe-inspiring title sequence, director David Carson suddenly stops making a motion picture and doesn’t even use the most obvious camera moves and transitions. Before leaving the Kirk era, we’re treated to an impressive pan across the damaged section of Enterprise B and then we dissolve to a still ocean and the HMS Enterprise sitting in the water? BORING! Seems like a bonafide movie director would pan down the hull of the seafaring Enterprise to the crashing waves in the same manner that we left the last one. You know, with a flourish.

So then there’s Data, boring old Data with his tiresome quest to be human, starting his section of the film doing something seemingly out of character for cheap laughs. He pushes Dr. Crusher in the water and Levar Burton, still unable to shake his Reading Rainbow delivery, admonishes with, ‘That was not funny! Hmmm. I would’ve laughed if I was there. Seemed funnier than what happened to Worf. But that’s just the tip of the iceburg. By the time Data’s saying “open sesame” to a tricorder, I was ready to leave the theater. BUT FIRST! In a shocking scene of how-low-can-you-go, cheap-ass television mentality, Geordi unscrews Data’s head to insert an emotion chip, revealing a cheeseball dome of plastic and blinking christmas lights. Say, fellas, ain’t nobody seen the Terminator? They’re still in 1966 TOS territory! At least the androids made out of goop in “What Are Little Girls Made Of” were creepy. All they can do on the show is talk about how human Data can be and he’s got a screw off head with blinking lights? COME ON!

Meanwhile, Picard finds out his brother and nephew are dead, leading to some of the worst ham acting ever to come out of Star Trek. I said ever. (and that’s saying something) Every TNG lover always loves to slam Shatner, and heap the praise on old baldy, but if you put David’s death scene from part III next to Picard’s nephew’s scene, Shatner wins by a lightyear. I literally expected Stewart to bellow, “Heavens to Murgatroid!” The lip spluttering, “F-f-falling in love!” Ha! Ha! Ha!

THEN! Ryker and his team beam onto the Armagossa (Duh!) Space Station with FLASHLIGHTS!? Not even those wonky camera hats from five scenes back but yep, good old fashioned two dollar Ray-o-vac flashlights. Except these are more futuristic in that they’re really small and don’t emit much light. They don’t even use some sort of Night vision lamp, which I think would still be outdated in the 24th century, they have battery powered flashlights. The minds behind Star Trek… What makes me laugh is how the front office can watch this stuff and not send a flurry of memos scolding them for being such backward thinking dimwits. I mean, aren’t those tanned boobs in the studios up to the minute with all the lastest security devices and technology? And I’m still talking 1994 here.
And we’re treated to yet more TV when a crewman finds a dead Romulan and says to Ryker “Commander, you better come see this.” which is really like #2 on the list of Television/B-movie dialogue cliches. Say, I have a cutting edge idea, you know, since they’re like matter of fact, scientific people of the future. Wouldn’t the crewman simply say, “Commander, there’s a dead Romulan here.” And we can still cut to the guy holding the dummy with the cheap make up, if you must have that.

It only gets worse from there. Data gets dopier and downright irritating with each subsequent scene, Malcolm McDowell is wasted, Whoopi Goldberg shows up in another one of her patented horrible hats, there’s a fight with the Klingons that uses stock from Undiscovered Country. And here’s an example of writing your characters stupid: good old boneheaded Ryker knows Geordi was kidnapped by the Klingons and he doesn’t order a complete security scan on those cheeseball sunglasses just in case there maybe a cutting edge camera in it, (evolved from those hats from the 23rd Century news crews?)

While I wasn’t blown away with their VI output, ILM completely phoned in their fx shots with this one. The Enterprise D, which I thought looked pretty unconvincing on the TV screen managed to look even phonier in 70 mm, gets beaten and crash lands on a planet in a sequence that looked like it was filmed for Thunderbirds. (The 60’s version, that is). Literally, the shot of the Enterprise coming out of the clouds called to mind a paper plate wobbling over a paper mache mountain.

And finally, when it can’t get any worse, Kirk shows up again and seems like a guest star on a TV show that he used to be a part of. And this is my biggest beef with an already nearly-intolerable film.

Okay, keeping in mind that Captain Kirk not two movies ago, refused the idea of a magic wand that would release his pain, why is he calmly accepting his existence in a dream state where his cicrumstances are always changing with the slightest thought which completely proves that it’s clearly not reality? He needs to jump a ravine to find that out when he’s got Picard in his back yard and can’t complete the act of seeing his girlfriend without the scene changing AND HE’S CONTENT TO STAY THERE? JAMES T. KIRK?!!! (The man who raged, “Be content? Be content!? BE CONTENT!!?)

And on top of that, if he’s accepting of this load of bull, why isn’t he playing catch with young David Marcus while Joan Collins folds laundry and sips cocoa in the background? We just heard in the LAST film that Kirk’s still pretty busted up over the death of his son. And uh…GEE… SEEMS LIKE THE THEME OF THIS FILM IS LIKE ABOUT DEATH AND REGRETS OF BEING ALONE AND TIME BURNING LIKE FIRE AND STUFF. Wouldn’t that be foremost on Kirk’s mind, NOT some horseshit out of left field character named Antonia? Wouldn’t that character trait be the one that unites Picard and Kirk and which they both decide to live with for the greater good, etc. etc.

Antonia. ANTONIA!!? Unbelievable that with all the stuff written about Kirk and this is the end of Shatner’s thirty years in Trek, this is the best he can come up with. Yes, if his book is to be believed turns out SHATNER conceived of the Antonia plot device. (Which isn’t surprisng when one considers the non-canonical Final Frontier plot.) But here’s Ron Moore and Brannon Braga, supposedly big fans, and seasoned writers and they went along with it — more worried about appealing to Shatners’ love of horses than to the millions of fans who’ve done nothing but watch Star Trek over and over for years and years?

You hand me that assignment and I’d be all, “Yeah, so we do Forest Gump and Captain Picard is running with Kirk and company on the Genesis planet and they stop the Klingon from killing David, then Picard watches Kirk save Edith Keeler and then Kirk raises the shields on Khan and blows the Reliant out of space before Khan knows what happens. And you know, cool stuff happens because it’s Kirk who’s going to die and we need a swan song for the greatest space hero of all time.

Anyway, Kirk dies and that’s it. He fizzles out. And so did my interest and hope for the Star Trek series.

STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)

In December of 1991, I was a senior in college, and a theater major mind you, and at that point, like Spock, I had found myself as person. My love of Star Trek was as deep a part of me as conservatism was to Ronald Reagen. Most people who knew me, knew that aspect of my character. Meanwhile, I was in a kinda screwy but mainly typical college romance, and I wasn’t getting cast in plays and had to think about my future, so I wasn’t really thinking so much about Star Trek. When I saw the trailer in mid-October, I got excited but a few weeks later I had broken up (for the umpteenth time) with the college girlfriend, so there were other things on my mind. When the film came out in December, I was down, and you know, when you’re down, you tend to gravitate toward the things that give you comfort. So I saw part VI on a sneak preview the night before it opened– even though I had finals the next day– and I liked it fine, but I wasn’t overjoyed with it. And of course, I left the theater thinking I wish my ex- girlfriend had seen it with me. “If she really loved me, surely she would have gone to Star Trek with me! So what if we weren’t going out anymore! That bitch!”

Anyway, I remember not liking Cliff Eidelman’s opening theme, it seemed too much like Danny Elfman’s Batman music, which didn’t suit Star Trek, I thought. I remember really liking the cinematography by Hiro Narita (who’s now an acquaintance — since I work in film– and the first time I met him I gushed to him about how much I liked his Star Trek VI work and how it was one of the only Trek films to actually look like a feature film, but he’s a quiet and gentle fellow, a true artist, and not the type to engage in much nerd talk.) And after Star Trek V, which was this big cracked egg in the series with no relation to any of the other films, it was good to have the movie series continuity back with Brock Peters and John Schuck from The Voyage Home and mentions of Kirk’s son and the crew’s experiences in the other films. Also after The Final Frontier, which, as stated before, boasted the worst visual effects in any film from that era, it was nice to see the starship models actually moving via motion control camera again.

There were some cool sequences, mainly the impressive zero-G death of Gorkan scene and the final space battle shot where the Excelsior and Enterprise pelt the Klingon bird of prey with torpedos.

The actors were all good, notably Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan and Walter Koenig, were also good or at least noteworthy in their small roles. And while Walter Koenig didn’t have much to do, he finally looked good and stood out as a grown man after five films of being trapped in the cub officer role. But it all felt kinda light and purposeless and not the monumenatl send-off that I was hoping for. I left the theater thinking, ‘It was okay.’

But then school ended for the Christmas Hols (as they say in England, or so I’ve read) and I had to do a work-study job to earn money and was alone whilst everyone went home. So with little to do, and desperately trying to forget my ex, like a depressed drunk, I went back to see The Undiscovered Country a record six more times. I bought the tape of the soundtrack and developed an appreciation for the darker tones of the film and its music. On the 2nd and 3rd viewings, I thought it got better and better. It did have a packed script, it covered LOTS of Star Trek ground, homages galore, a topical storyline, Kirk fighting a mirror image of himself, Spock solving crimes, a trial, Klingons, space battles, and even a correction of past continuity errors. (notably maneuvering thrusters in Spacedock as a regulation, in part III, Kirk orders one quarter impulse power which is just too damned fast!) and it was the final movie for the original crew, maybe it WAS a monumental send-off.

Well, no. It’s not. It’s actually kind of weak when you actually start thinking about its Manchurian Candidate inspired plot, which became apparent on viewings 4, 5 and 6, and when I bought the vhs with the extended scends. On the small screen, without the razzle dazzle of Mr. Narita’s bigscreen camera work, Nicholas Meyer’s and Denny Martin Flynn’s script becomes glaringly mortal and really not as tight as it could have been. But to their credit, they had to hammer it out in record time to meet the release date.

Anyway, the biggest problem with the script is that suddenly Starfleet officers are acting like weird ultra conservative jerks for no other reason than to help illustrate the sledge-hammer in the face parallels about end of the cold war. Lt. Valeris, a character we know nothing about except that she was a Vulcan who graduated at the top of her class at the academy. (???? A bad line. Don’t all Vulcans graduate at the top of their class wherever they go?!! And if not, can we see the one who didn’t, where we have this underachieving Vulcan Van Wilder? Come to think of it, I guess that was Sybok…) and Spock is just all over her, saying “you have to succeed me, and you’re the best.” But when we find out she’s one of the conspirators, it just doesn’t matter, no one’s invested enough time or interest in her character. Now, according to William Shatner’s book about the movies, Valeris’ character was supposed to be Lt. Saavik from the other films and she would have been one of the conspirators. Unfortunately, the idea was nixed by Gene Roddenberry and also, it seems, Robin Curits was suddenly deemed not good enough to reprise her role as Saavik. So they recast with Kim Catrall and changed her name. Too bad, it would have been much more believeable to get behind the idea that Saavik hated Klingons since she sort of had an implied relationship with David Marcus, Kirk’s son, and she watched him get murdered and she’s half Romulan and probably angry about all that. That would have been a good scene, right? Where Spock does the mind rape on Saavik and we find out she conspired to kill the chancellor out of revenge since she loved David Marcus. Then Kirk would have to really analyze how his words and actions influence others, torn between the memory of his son’s murder and his desire to change the galaxy for the better. )

Then you got Christopher Plummer spouting Shakesepeare and this is funny at first but it’s not as clever as everyone thinks it is. There’s a line in Die Hard where Alan Rickman sees the Nakatomi plans for world domination and says, “And lo’ Alexander looked upon his kingdom and wept for he had no more worlds to conquer.” Then he says so all the flat top, thick necked jocks in the audience will understand, “Benefits of a classical education”. Star Trek VI suffers from that kind of annoying, theater nerd, “let’s explain how intelligent we are” humor. Where if the one line was, “You’ve never heard Shakespeare unless you’ve heard it in the original Klingon,” it would be a terrific throwaway. But no, the character goes on wearing the Shakespeare quoting lampshade and it gets old FAST. Just like the title, Undiscoverd Country, while pretentious for Star Trek II, would have been sort of appropriate, and you know, TV episodes fromt he 60’s were always using Shakespeare in their titles, (By Any Other Name’, ‘The Conscience of The King’) but for this story, it’s really a square peg in a round hole. Gorkan says, “To the Undiscovered Country.” And no one’s saying, “You mad man! Shakespeare was talking about death!” Why use a phrase if it’s not a perfect fit? Why not, Star Trek VI: Cold War or The End of The Future something like that. (yeah, those aren’t great examples, but still not as perplexing as The Undiscovered Country. And really, does ANYONE remember the name of VI as The Undiscovered Country? It’s always, “Which one was that?” )

Anyway, what else? Like all Star Trek films, it doesn’t have big Star Wars effects and cool locales. Kirk and McCoy are sent to an ice planet with an underground prison but that looks like a Universal Theme park ride and not very dangerous. Due, of course, to the budget limitations, which gets me pointing the finger yet again at Paramount. Here’s the last of the series with a cast and crew that made you millions, nay BILLIONS of dollars and you can’t spring for a Klingon City or vast, imposing underground prison that doesn’t play into every cliche about prisons and doesn’t seem all that alien? I liked the prisons on the old show, where one was mind-raped by the dentist chairs with the swirling lights. That would have been more interesting, if McCoy and Kirk were actually treated pretty badly and not free to make plans of escape like it was no big deal.

And then there’s Spock solving a crime that’s all guesswork and no logic at all. He guesses about a Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked, he guesses that its Valeris, and the big fact that they unveil is Valeris heard Kirk’s personal log and gave it to the the Klingons for use at his trial. Well, that’s a big piece of personal evidence and it seems Michael Dorn, the attorney should have checked the source and gotten Valeris arrested the moment it was used. Why doesn’t Spock arrest Valeris upon hearing the tape at the trial?

And finally, you have the assassination attempt at Camp Khitomer that’s just plain stupid. A guy, (in a Klingon costume as it turns out in the extended version, which I wish they hadn’t included, since it’s so lame) sitting in the front row, coughs, excuses himself and picks up his giant suitcase and goes about trying to assassinate Rosana DeSoto and Kurtwood Smith to start a war. Are Starfleet and Klingon personnel so used to peace and the groovy future and whatnot that there’s no security? No, tricorders to say, “Hmmmm. seems like a big gun in that big suitcase that you’re carrying in front of everybody, MR. STARFLEET OFFICER IN A KLINGON SUIT! Our tricorders detected the cheap phoney latex on your face!”

Then Kirk and company beam down and gets pretty awful with people cheering and clapping when guys have just fallen out of windows and fired phasers, you know, where in reality it would be a huge, chaotic yelling security nightmare. And I thought this in 92, long before 9/11.

Anyway, most people reading this would probably think, “Geez! This guy sure rattles on about things that are no big deal! It’s just a Star Trek film! These films are like family reunions, you’re not supposed to get caught up in the paper mache and the crap fx and plot holes, you’re just supposed to have a good time.” And yeah, I guess that’s true and I make excuses for the original tv show all the time, but I guess the difference is in the 60’s, they were doing their best with the budget limitations and television grind scheduling. But with the feature films, and billions later, Paramount and the producers started relying on the charm of the characters and the fans willingness to look the other way with all the flaws. So knowing they’d make a profit no matter what, Paramount didn’t sink much money or effort into making truly great sci-fi cinema, even though they had the actors and directors to do it. And while VI has plenty to enjoy, it just doesn’t try hard enough to make it stand on its own as a genuine sci-fi film.

Okay, I have to take a breath in my full nerd-out about Star Trek to recommend the funniest film of 2006! Idiocracy!

Written and directed by Mike Judge the guy who did Office Space and Beavis and Butthead (which, I’ve never seen a whole episode of) Idiocracy is a spot-on hilarious look at how crappy our culture is today and how bad it’s going to get 500 years from now. I’m not big on synopses since you know, every newspaper, EW article, etc. is constantly bombarding us with these kinda descriptions and I figure if you’re on this blog, you probably already know but since my readers are few, I’ll explain: Idiocracy is the story of an army shemp (played by Luke Wilson) who volunteers for a stasis experiment and remains frozen for 500 years only to wake up and find out that he’s the smartest guy in the world.

So I heard about the film for awhile and then learned that it got shelved and then had a limited release so I figured it had major problems. While I was pleasantly surprised to find out its problems were few and minor, and it was a really funny and specific film, I was shocked that a film of this quality was cast aside like a straight to video train-wreck. It’s rare these days to find specific comedies since most of the people who make comedies are the morons that Mike Judge depicts in this film, and God forbid that you tell people that they’re idiots. (Even though the movie studios tell us this weekly with their releases of Cheaper By The Dozen 2 , the absurd remake of Yours, Mine and Ours, comic book movies of Ghost Rider (?!) and Elektra(!?–like who?!!! Sure, Catwoman, Elektra, any other second banana characters to get their own movie? (Hey, how about Kid Flash?) and Saws and Captivity or say, Soul Plane, or {fill in the blank with all the shitty movies that have been pouring out of Hollywood for the last decade}.)

So, anyway, I won’t carry on about the film, otherwise I’ll be spoiling it, but I will say that all the actors are great in Idiocracy, especially Dax Shepherd, an actor I dismissed after Zathura, but who won my admiration for courageously pouring himself into playing, without any winking or wussing out, a completely believable and irritating moron. Another actor who won my trust and enthusiasm was Justin Long, whom I hadn’t heard of until I saw the trailer for Live Free or Die Hard and was thinking that he was a smarmy sitcom star, well, I was wrong, he’s a real actor and comedian and he’s hilarious as well. (I’ve since seen Dodgeball and learned that Mr. Long was also the main geek in Galaxy Quest, so I have newfound respect for his talents.)

Other than that, the film is about a future where everyone is fat, everyone wears clothes peppered with logos, there are heaps of trash everywhere, automated, robot voiced kiosks screw up constantly while uttering their corporate slogans, Costco is a city with a law school and Gatorade has replaced water since corporations bought out the FDA.
And that reminds me, 20th Century Fox must be shown that they need a new marketing director. I read that their marketing department was unsure of how to promote the movie. Which has to be the lamest, most over-used and unconvincing excuse that always comes from the studios. Weren’t they unsure how to market Forrest Gump, so they simply showed trailers that explained the enitre movie, and voila! The fat boobs in logo-laden clothes came out in droves? I don’t believe it for a second. I think the Costcos and the Starbucks and all corporations who mindlessly signed the product placement contracts, suddenly saw a film where their images were sullied and they forced the picture out of the theaters. But that’s just my hypothesis based on how the world works.

(If anyone knows anybody and has stumbled upon this blog, please tell me what happened. I’m into this kind of stuff. )

Other than that, if for whatever reason, you’re reading this blog, PLEASE! OUT OF RESPECT FOR HUMANITY, RENT OR BUY IDIOCRACY!!! The film must be seen. That is all.