Tag: Star Trek (page 6 of 6)

Jotting in the Margins: Consistent Characters

Writing

I’m going to jump ahead a bit. My next post on building character is going to deal with antagonists & adversaries who aren’t necessarily evil and allies who aren’t necessarily the kind of people you want to invite over for dinner. Spoiler warning: I’m going to be talking about Q.

Q

In that future post, I’ll be talking about what makes Q exemplary in this role of adversarial ally. But that’s the pinnacle of his character, and here I want to discuss the ups and downs. It’s something that comes from different writers handling the same character with varying degrees of success. Charles Sonnenburg has discussed the Q character arc at length in his opinionated episode guide videos of his episodes, and I recommend checking those out.

When we first meet Q, in Encounter at Farpoint, he’s an officious and clearly omnipotent being with every intention of wiping humanity out of existence. Hide and Q casts Q as Mephistopheles and also establishes his penchant for playing games with mortals. Q Who introduces us to the Borg, and Q is more grounded and less flamboyant. The result is a dimension of depth to the character that will be explored later. We also see what happens when Q is stripped of his powers and interacts with other Q beings. Yet at the same time, we’re ‘treated’ to what happens when Q goes gift-shopping and, despite his protestations that humans are unevolved savages with disgusting biological processes, chases skirts.

It would have taken the writers of some of the weaker episodes in the Q arc all of five minutes to check on the characterization & information established in his previous appearances. Alas, they seemed more interest in playing his “omnipotence” for laughs. It’s one thing to take the ball & run with it. That’s what you do when you catch a ball. However, you don’t want to run in entirely the wrong direction. It’s not just a case of a writer not doing the research, it can also lead to a serious case of dis-continuity and character decay, which may become terminal.

How do you avoid this? Keep notes, and check them often. Lend an ear to feedback you receive on your work, both positive and negative. Above all, keep your characters consistent. Say what you like about Stephanie Meyer, the character of Bella Swan remains co-dependent and nearly obsessed with Edward throughout her books, so at least she got the consistency right.

In other news, this is my 100th post, so… yay?

100!

Movie Review: Star Trek

Courtesy trekmovie.com

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, and Leonard Nimoy.

How do you stay true to established canon in an effort to reboot a franchise, when the established canon is a cold wet mess?


You do this.

Stuff I Didn’t Like

  • What, exactly, is “red matter?” Is it some form of dark matter? Primordial ooze from the heart of a star? Spock just says “red matter” and we see it create singularities, but… how? I’m assuming it has to be rare since miners can weaponize it to make localized black holes anyplace they please. If it’s prevelant in Spock’s future, there’s a lot Starfleet hasn’t told us.
  • We get not one but TWO ice monsters. Were the creature folk from Cloverfield that hard up for work? One would have sufficed to have us saying along with Kirk, “This planet sucks, and Spock is a horrible travel agent!”
  • Maybe this was just due to the cinema where I saw the film, but the score seemed VERY loud. It drowned out some of the dialogue towards the beginning and threatened to overwhelm shots later on. I guess I’ll just have to see it again to be sure.
  • While it was pretty, and consistent with current design mentalities, I’m not sure the iBridge is going to age well. We’ll see.

Stuff I Liked

  • There’s a sensation that a few things plant tongues firmly in cheek. This is done with love, however, rather than being played for the sake of parody. Having seen more than my share of Star Trek, I picked up on these, as well as some of the things characters did, and I appreciated the winks.
  • Space is three dimensions. I liked the fact that starships didn’t necessarily all share the same z-axis orientation.
  • I’ve always liked Romulans as bad guys. They’re dark reflections of the Vulcans, in that they’re thorough where Vulcans are logical, and utterly ruthless where the Vulcans are detatched. Eric Bana in particular seems to measure his emotions, unleashing his rage at key points rather than ranting and raving at every turn. Such controlled megalomania makes him a more compelling villain.
  • I didn’t even recognize Winona Ryder. This was a good thing.

Stuff I Loved

  • I’ve established in previous reviews that actors that inhabit their characters make a movie much more watchable. Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai springs to mind. He’s not Tom Cruise in that movie. Likewise, the actors in Star Trek don’t just honor the iconic characters they portray. They become them. From Chris Pine’s star-making turn as James Tiberius Kirk to Anton Yelchin’s adorable Chekov, they remind us in every frame that this is not a send-up. This is not a parody. This is Star Trek as we’ve never seen it, and possibly, the way Gene Roddenberry envisioned it.
  • The Enterprise feels huge. The engineering sets seem to be pulled right out of Crimson Tide. Even the little bit of the Kelvin we see in the opening sequence makes it clear that Starfleet vessels are military ones.
  • The opening sequence. It could have been played cheesily but is played straight, and drives home the humanity of the characters and immediately takes hold of our attentions.
  • Have I mentioned how fantastic the actors are in this? Again, things could have been done to make this a parody of the original series, but Chris Pine in particular channels Kirk’s swagger, self-confidence and smarts without making us laugh at his speech patterns. Zachary Quinto is going to be wearing those pointed ears for quite a while, and it’s clear why Leonard Nimoy gave Sylar Zachary his blessing, spread fingers and all. Karl Urban is very comfortable as McCoy and clearly happy not having to grunt and swing a sword to earn his lunch. Everybody does a great job.
  • Time travel has been used as a plot device on multiple occasions by Star Trek. The fact that the time travel in this case is not only accidental, but carries shades of actual relativistic physics – two ships go in at the same time, but emerge at different points in the past – actually makes a lot of sense, and branching universe theory promises to carry this ship and crew, and us along with them, into a place where Star Trek has never gone before. And if this film is any indication, that journey will indeed be bold.
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