Star Trek Trousers of Time, Beyond & Into darkness

[agoodwinsmith]

So.  All three Pegg/Pine/Quinto/Saldana/Urban movies were on yesterday, so I finally watched them front to back.

Movies on TV[1] are just the worst.  The flow is broken at exactly the wrong time, so the urge to bail is encouraged.  I resisted and now I deserve a gold star.  And maybe a cookie.

My SODB-F[2] spot was the appearance of traffic cop/nazi officer caps on top of black uniforms for star fleet officers.  No hats.  Never.  And especially not those.  Those date from a period where there were heavy-duty rules about hats, and a person could get themselves shunned, possibly court marshalled for doing it wrong.

I got very tired of Pine being pummeled to a pulp.  I also got tired of super unrealistic action sequences since it means they can't lose no matter how dire.  So there is nothing at stake.  So.  This is not my time line, but its existence permits other timelines, so I can live with it, as long as I don't have to watch it.

I want think about casting comparing Trousers of Time with Strange New Worlds

ORIGINAL                             TOT                             SNW

Kirk/ Shatner                          Chris Pine                    Paul Wesley
Spock/ Nimoy                        Zachary Quinto            Ethan Peck
Uhura/ Nichols                      Zoe Saldana                 Celia Rose Gooding
McCoy/ Kelley                       Karl Urban                    missing
Chapel/ Barrett                      missing                         Jess Bush
Scott/ Doohan                       Simon Pegg                  Martin Quinn
Number One/ Barrett             missing                         Rebecca Romijn
Pike/ Hunter & Kenney          Bruce Greenwood         Anson Mount 
Sulu/ Takei                            John Cho                       missing
Chekov/ Koenig                     Anton Yelchin                missing


I prefer the Wesley Kirk to Pine because he has been written as showing more brain, and not burdened so much with rage.  I prefer the Peck Spock because he is very much in the style of his grandfather (!).  I'm not as crazy about the Gooding Uhura because she is a little too much cheerleadery[3] for my tastes.  Too perky.  I think the Quinn Scotty is given more range - and not burdened with a silly mascot.  I really like the Bush & Romijn versions of Barrett roles.  Anson Mount has the humour to play up the "hair", so that's a bonus.  The only TOT characters I prefer are Saldana and Urban.

So.  I guess I prefer ensemble acting in a non-action script, so that puts the action movie cast at a disadvantage.  Really, I just want more movies/episodes with the SNW crew.

[1] - I'm not buying streaming services.  First it's Five Bucks, and next it's First Born and All Yer Honey Forever.  No.
[2] - SODB-F = suspension of disbelief - fail
[3] - cheerleaders: not a big thing in my highschool, so I didn't angst to be one, or admire anyone who was one.[4]
[4] - it fact, cheerleading is weird to me like the Greek Changing of the Guards in Athens.  Both have pompoms, and there are severely right ways and wrong ways to do it - and I don't understand the allure.

Comments

[armiphlage]

Thank you for the footnotes.

[agoodwinsmith]

I really enjoy the freedom to tangent away into the cosmos while still sticking to (orbiting?) my original narrower topic. Terry Pratchett makes me grateful every day. ;)

[sabotabby]

I never understood cheerleading until I met a cheerleader in the high school 'zine club (we'd had a cheerleading team at my school but it'd fallen apart due to lack of interest). She was blond and perky and everything you'd expect from a cheerleader, and also she was wicked smart and wrote fantastic poetry. She talked about how it was the closest you could feel to flying, which I'd really never considered.

Anyway, I remember loving Urban's performance (but hating that they had to shoehorn an explanation for him being called Bones that broke the worldbulding completely) and I remember disliking Saldana's; I just thought she was pretty flat. I loved Gooding's performance in the first season of SNW but it seems like they kind of ran out of things to do with her. Overall my criticism of SNW isn't at all the casting; they're all pretty strong.

[agoodwinsmith]

We were traversing the 60's, where the cool girls were growing their hair long and hanging out with the wannabe guitarists. This was also pre-pyramids, so it was mostly just bouncing with pompoms. The *big* deal for little girls to imagine was being a Drum Majorette, with her fancy white boots, jaunty hat, sparkly costume, and her twirling baton. Your school needed a marching band for that, and we had a jazz band. Nobody was yet thinking of becoming the slinky singer.

I like the episodic nature of SNW, since it's like TOS. And I feel that the plots and the science are not sturdy enough to lean on, so I pledge my allegiance to the characters.

I'll grant you Gooding over Saldana. I just thought about which of them would end up being able to say, "I'll have Mr. Adventure eating out of my hand, sir. See you at the rendezvous." And it's Gooding.

[sabotabby]

SNW seems mostly unembarrassed by its source material, which turns out is my primary qualification. Still, I loathed the last season so much.

[agoodwinsmith]

Sorry, I had to review.

The Gorn being tidily tucked away.
The terrible wedding.
The immortal moss Klingon Zombies. (Moss is always immortal. Pieces die, sure, like skin cells.)
The holodeck trial run I liked very much, because the actors got to do fun stuff. I enjoyed Romijn's ersatz Lucille Ball, and Paul Wesley mugging his way through the science fiction show. I didn't recognize the actress performing the alien holding its eyes on sticks, but I enjoyed that, too.
The colony ship gone wrong.
The documentary had moments.
Demons in jars.
Temporary Vulcans. I love Doug. I love when the catnip effect is a mutual experience, even if they aren't in control of it yet. I also like La'An plotting to take over the universe. (And you know that if she had stayed Vulcan, she would have succeeded.)
Enemy survivors. The character development of Ortega was good, but the shooting of the Gorn was the easy way out, which is not interesting, and the Metatron, while of the old TOS, is also not interesting.
And stuffing Batel like a cork in the demon prison bottle is a severely unsatisfactory end to her storyline and the season.

There are moments, but not many episodes for rewatch. Concur, season three sucks.

[sabotabby]

THE LOVE INTEREST LITERALLY BECAME A SEXY LAMP

[agoodwinsmith]

Oh ... it's even worse than I thought. Ugh.