The Movie Club: 80s Trek

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

11 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

 

Today is indeed the day.

 

Am I allowed to use colorful metaphor in reference to the phallic imagery?

 

Indeed, it is encouraged. 

[sarakingdom]

7 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Indeed, it is encouraged. 

 

[Scaly Freak]

Hulu is once again informing me that the movie that comes right after the one I am currently watching, is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I am pleased to see the AI has learned.

[sarakingdom]

Refresh my memory here: did we technically not do Star Trek 4? Which I believe I do have the DVD of...

 

So this weekend, guys?

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, sarakingdom said:

Refresh my memory here: did we technically not do Star Trek 4? Which I believe I do have the DVD of...

 

I believe we intended to, but seeing as how no discussion came of it... 

 

I still have my Hulu account. I'm in. Star Trek 4 this weekend!

[Scaly Freak]

On 9/21/2021 at 7:56 PM, sarakingdom said:

Refresh my memory here: did we technically not do Star Trek 4? Which I believe I do have the DVD of...

 

So this weekend, guys?

 

So are we doing this?

[sarakingdom]

2 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

So are we doing this?

 

I'm in. I think I have the DVD, and I've lined up my fellow marathonner. @Harriet and @Tanktimus the Encourager?

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

14 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

 

I'm in. I think I have the DVD, and I've lined up my fellow marathonner. @Harriet and @Tanktimus the Encourager?

I've seen it so many times I can run it in my head. In fact, the score is playing in my head as I type this.

[Scaly Freak]

I have run into a difficulty - Hulu no longer provides this movie. I'm open to suggestions on where else to stream it.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Amazon prime may still have it. 

[Scaly Freak]

29 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Amazon prime may still have it. 

 

Looks like they do, if I am willing to pay for it. This is very annoying.

[Harriet]

I lost this thread and now I am summoned and have refound it! I too, will watch the films. I have to watch three first, though. I will watch three today.

[sarakingdom]

5 hours ago, Harriet said:

I lost this thread and now I am summoned and have refound it! I too, will watch the films. I have to watch three first, though. I will watch three today.

 

Two, surely. There isn't a first movie for the purposed of this rewatch. Unless you mean ST:III, in which case, you will be okay with the vaguely remembered version. This was made back in the days when that's all people had between movies. Unless you just mean that it's good and it's time to see it again. That I can't argue with at all.

 

[Harriet]

24 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

 

Two, surely. There isn't a first movie for the purposed of this rewatch. Unless you mean ST:III, in which case, you will be okay with the vaguely remembered version. This was made back in the days when that's all people had between movies. Unless you just mean that it's good and it's time to see it again. That I can't argue with at all.

 

Ah, I forget we skipped one and watched two and three. I will watch one movie; movie number four.

[Harriet]

Well I have watched IV 😊

 

 

Whaaaaayles!!!

 

 

I loved it! The plot, in which an alien species nearly accidentally destroys earth because an extinct species of cetacean (which humans wiped out some hundred of years ago) doesn't answer their probe with whale song, would be wonderfully Douglas Adamsy if presented with more absurdity and ironic flair (and if the destruction of the earth actually succeeded). The trip to San Francisco was fun, Spock is happily back to normal (though I would personally have given him a sexier outfit than that bathrobe.) It is always amusing to have a constitutionally earnest character who cannot lie, even when the situation calls for it. Also funny was Dr McCoy healing the old woman on dialysis (the dark ages!) in the hospital, and her shouting at everyone that she grew a new kidney. Time travel to the technologically backwards past is fun!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

• Double dumbass on you!
• No ma'am, no dipshit.
• Perhaps it is time for a colorful metaphor.
• Don't bury yourself in the part

[sarakingdom]

This movie on the one hand is so not a fit for Star Trek, and on the other hand is so damn good it kind of defines Star Trek. I don't know what to make of it, except that it's hilarious and great.  It's a really solid 80s comedy, and nothing about that says "Star Trek", and it's a heist movie where they steal whales, and nothing about that says Star Trek either, except they made it work. And not just work, but work well.

 

 

Dee Kelley stole the show yet again. You watch the TV show, and it's not obvious, but you watch the movies, and he's clearly just about the sharpest and most charismatic actor of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, Nimoy is great. And his comic timing is up there  with the best of them. And the role he's playing means he's usually the straight man, so he doesn't get to shine quite as much sometimes. But Dee Kelley is the total package.

 

 

Both of Spock's parents are in this one, and they both make the leap from TV well. In some ways, I think they got more to do in the movies than in their TV episode, despite probably having less screen time. Nimoy considered this film the one where Spock finally learns to resolve the tension between his Vulcan and human selves over the course of the film, and there's probably something in the way his parents are used in the  film that foreshadows or parallels that. It's sort of interesting that we initially see them fitting in and working on each other's home planets, to hint this sort of fusion is possible, but we don't see them together, like Spock's human and Vulcan halves are literally separated, and it's when they're about to come together at the end of the film, with Sarek returning to Vulcan, that Spock is able to give them both the message that he's able to be both human and Vulcan. So they're kind of functioning like metaphors for Spock, in a way.

 

 

Also, I just like his parents, and I like the actors. (There have been two attempts to replicate them, and neither even comes close.) Nimoy, Lenard, and Wyatt are some of the strongest character actors from the original series, and do a really good job of making all those characters complex with very little screen time. And they all have a light touch when it comes to Spock's family drama. It's tempting to make it The Most Iconic Father-Son Conflict Evar with clear bad guys, and I know it's tempting because that's what is increasingly done in later shows, but those three are playing a very ordinary and bittersweet sort of family conflict, just three well-intentioned people with strong personalities and culture clashes who can't all figure out how to connect. There's no bad guy there, just the small every day tragedy of a family trying and failing to be close, and the small every day victory that they keep picking themselves up and trying again.

 

 

I love the whale biologist as a female lead. Nimoy was so, so much better with women than Roddenberry. There's nothing sexualised or romanticised about her, she's just a very real (and very annoyed) woman who is not having her best day. She's extremely relatable. And does not fall for Kirk or any of his bullshit at all. Which is also very relatable. No gratuitous sideboob, no makeout sessions with Captain Boiled Ham, she's just a scientist with a pickup truck and an "I ❤️ whales" bumper sticker and a lot of irritation with the nutjobs and idiots getting flung at her. He just did not pick a good time to try to sweet-talk her into anything.

 

  

 

Seriously, no woman should have to put up with that on less than two martinis. And he got off lightly; she slapped the next guy she saw.

 

Vulcans have strange underwear. And Klingon movie recaps are maybe a great addition to things in general. Maybe all sequels should have Klingon recaps. Not just Star Trek, I mean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to admit, more and more, every time I see Kirk, I kind of want to replace his ass with someone else. I've been ruined for other captains.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

2 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

Dee Kelley stole the show yet again. You watch the TV show, and it's not obvious, but you watch the movies, and he's clearly just about the sharpest and most charismatic actor of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, Nimoy is great. And his comic timing is up there  with the best of them. And the role he's playing means he's usually the straight man, so he doesn't get to shine quite as much sometimes. But Dee Kelley is the total package.

@Heidi I thought you might appreciate the Dee Kelley Appreciation.

[Scaly Freak]

5 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

I love the whale biologist as a female lead. Nimoy was so, so much better with women than Roddenberry. There's nothing sexualised or romanticised about her, she's just a very real (and very annoyed) woman who is not having her best day. She's extremely relatable. And does not fall for Kirk or any of his bullshit at all. Which is also very relatable. No gratuitous sideboob, no makeout sessions with Captain Boiled Ham, she's just a scientist with a pickup truck and an "I ❤️ whales" bumper sticker and a lot of irritation with the nutjobs and idiots getting flung at her. He just did not pick a good time to try to sweet-talk her into anything.

 

She's awesome.

 

I also appreciated the hints and glimpses they gave here and there of the sexism she's been facing while making a career for herself in a field where women still aren't very common. As I recall, they sent the whales away a day early and didn't tell her about it, because if they had she would have become so emotional about it... and the entire team was onboard with this. That is not the way to treat a respected colleague.

[sarakingdom]

27 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

I also appreciated the hints and glimpses they gave here and there of the sexism she's been facing while making a career for herself in a field where women still aren't very common. As I recall, they sent the whales away a day early and didn't tell her about it, because if they had she would have become so emotional about it... and the entire team was onboard with this. That is not the way to treat a respected colleague.

 

That's gotta be what turns her. The whales aren't in any more or less danger than when she refused to help Kirk the day before. She's just waaaay more pissed off at her colleagues, and figures she owes them fuck-all.

 

(In which case, I have to wonder why you'd turn to James Kirk if you were tired of sexist colleagues, especially when approximately none of his behavior included things that were not lying to her or trying to charm her. But at least she confirmed his wild story and met all his sane friends before giving him her whales, and then turned the tables on him to get exactly what she wanted. Which was mostly a better career with more respect and her whales, and absolutely zero condesending dinners or sharing of body parts with James Kirk.)

 

 

I'm just saying, if you sent in former science officer Janeway to talk to the cetacean biologist and get some whales, there wouldn't have been little problems like the condescending dinner date from heck, or sending the Russian guy onto a nuclear-powered navy ship at the peak of the cold war when he was not only completely swappable with the doctor, but a doctor makes more sense when  you're handling radioactive materials. Good ol' southern boy McCoy could have talked his way out of that one long enough for Scotty to beam him out. Hilarity ensued, but what a double-dumbass that guy is.

 

[Scaly Freak]

9 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

(In which case, I have to wonder why you'd turn to James Kirk if you were tired of sexist colleagues, especially when approximately none of his behavior included things that were not lying to her or trying to charm her. But at least she confirmed his wild story and met all his sane friends before giving him her whales, and then turned the tables on him to get exactly what she wanted. Which was mostly a better career with more respect and her whales, and absolutely zero condesending dinners or sharing of body parts with James Kirk.)

 

Obviously she was convinced/charmed by either Spock or Scotty, or both, and going along with Kirk's theatrics because she could tell he was in charge and the one she needed to placate and keep happy. (She's a woman in academics, she knows how this works.) And in the end, she got to be with her whales and got the recognition she wanted and deserved. Well played, Dr. Taylor.

[sarakingdom]

45 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

Obviously she was convinced/charmed by either Spock or Scotty, or both, and going along with Kirk's theatrics because she could tell he was in charge and the one she needed to placate and keep happy. (She's a woman in academics, she knows how this works.) And in the end, she got to be with her whales and got the recognition she wanted and deserved. Well played, Dr. Taylor.

 

Both, probably. There's Scotty, doing his job like a professional with zero bullshit, and so proud of his whale tank. Then, once you realise Spock isn't an unconvincing 1960s burnout but an alien, it's obvious the only thing he was doing was getting Gracie's consent. And apparently against orders. Ladies do love a guy who gets clear consent. And there's Uhura and McCoy, and it rapidly becomes clear that Kirk isn't representative of the future, he's the screw-up of the pack.

 

And then you've gotta ask, what are the odds of her getting another pair of whales here and now and what do her career advancement options look like, when she can have her old whales and be the only live cetacean biology expert on the planet, which would make up for several jerks dragging on one's career, so it's clearly her best career move. And she ends up in an egalitarian post-capitalist utopia with her own ship and lots of staff and highly protected whales. And, frankly, probably enough political favors owed to get herself a whole institute one day. Are you going to say no to the woman who turned over the transponder codes to her whales and saved a planet? And all she had to do was charm Kirk enough to not immediately beam her off the ship again.

[sarakingdom]

On 9/27/2021 at 12:42 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

@Heidi I thought you might appreciate the Dee Kelley Appreciation.

 

 

[sarakingdom]

I don't watch Star Trek Picard, but I have learned about this absolute masterpiece of a guest cameo.

 

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

21 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

I don't watch Star Trek Picard, but I have learned about this absolute masterpiece of a guest cameo.

 

 

That was a very good moment. Whatever it's flaws, Picard did right by Seven of Nine.