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[QUOTE]Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: [QB] I have no problem with the [i]themes[/i] of TWOK--friendship, age, obsession, sacrifice, parental responsibility, etc--but rather with the way in which the writers and director chose to carry those themes across. Take Khan as The Evil Villain<sup>TM</sup>, for example. Evil Villain<sup>TM</sup>-type characters are a ridiculous and hackneyed Hollywood movie plot device in general, but turning Khan into one was an especially stupid move. In "Space Seed" (TOS), Khan was cunning and ruthless, but not evil and hateful for the sake of being so. The key element of that episode and of Khan's character was the ambiguity of the line between being a strong leader who looks after his people and being a tyrant who goes too far. Kirk, McCoy, and Spock [i]debated[/i] whether Khan and his ilk were to be admired or reviled, coming to no definitive conclusion, and of course McGivers had her [i]own[/i] ideas. Flash forward to TWOK, Khan has turned into just another Evil Villain<sup>TM</sup> [i]a la[/i] James Bond. For all the lip service that his genetically-engineered intellect gets paid, we really see nothing of it. There's no depth or reason to the character. He's just a nemesis for Kirk, and the great bulk of the plot is just constructed as an excuse to bring the two of them into conflict. (Along with carbon-copying numerous other elements from TWOK, [i]Nemesis[/i] would [unsurprisingly] do the same thing with Shinzon and Picard, only there was no nostalgia factor to mitigate the response to [i]that[/i] film.) Additionally, look at all the incongruities in the movie that can only be the result of sheer thoughtlessness on the part of the writers/director/production staff: -- Why is the entire former bridge crew of the [i]Enterprise[/i] conducting an inspection of the ship together? -- How could the [i]Reliant[/i] crew possibly mistake Ceti Alpha V for Ceti Alpha VI? -- Was Kirk really so irresponsible that he never reported the Ceti Alpha system as Khan's location, so that other ships could avoid it? -- Why do all of Khan's followers look like 20-year-olds? -- The [i]Enterprise[/i] is the only ship in the QUADRANT??? Besides, what about the [i]Reliant[/i]? As far as Starfleet is aware, she's only days away from Regula. (If SF had called upon the [i]Reliant[/i] to investigate, they would have found something amiss and the whole film would be cut short! Can't have [i]that[/i], can we?) -- McCoy doesn't scan Chekov and Terrell? (If he had, he would have detected the Ceti Eels.) -- If Khan "never made it down" to the Regula One's transporter room, how did he get aboard the station? Site-to-site transports were extremely dangerous at this time. -- Why does Scotty bring his injured nephew from engineering to THE BRIDGE instead of Sickbay? -- Where the hell did Khan learn Klingon proverbs? -- 23rd-century starships have torpedoes that are loaded and fired manually by [i]deckhands[/i]??? -- If the Mutara Nebula could have been used to test the Genesis Device in the first place, then why was the [i]Reliant[/i] out looking for a testing ground? -- They can't just BLOW UP the Genesis Device before it finishes building up to detonation? -- Kirk needs a lousy pair of 400-year-old glasses to read? They don't have corrective surgery or [i]contact lenses[/i] in the 23rd century? -- Why do we have huge spacecraft maneuvering at proximites of mere hundreds of feet? I could go on with this, but it's getting tiresome. You may say that these things are not important and that I'm just nitpicking. You may say that you enjoy the movie so much that they don't bother you. Fine. I enjoy (parts of) it too, and I'm not saying it's the worst movie or the worst [i]Trek[/i] ever, by any means. It's not anywhere [i]near[/i] on par with TMP as far as coherent and well-thought-out sci-fi drama is concerned, though. -[b]MMoM[/b] :D [/QB][/QUOTE]
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