Due to a variety of circumstances, I didn’t get around to seeing the new Star Trek movie until Saturday. Very good movie, well worth seeing. Overall, it rates an A-.
The visual and sound effects were stunning, and for me, that’s reason enough to go watch a movie. The new Spock character is unbelievable. He’s not just good; he’s spooky good! You could almost imagine that it really was an earlier version of the original, and that imagining stood up just fine with a side-by-side comparison.
They also did a good job of modeling younger versions of the other main characters. McCoy was another outstanding replacement. A younger Scotty is still inventing crazy stuff that somehow works, and Kirk goes off to defend the galaxy against hopeless odds. The time twist involved in the plot was very gracefully done.
Still, there were a few detractors. The most obvious is the disgusting level of brutal violence. I’m not talking about the “high violence” of spaceships getting shot up. There was plenty of that too, and that’s fine. But the repeated use of bloody fistfights added nothing of value, and was a serious detraction. It made the film worse. The overall tone of the movie was also darker than I like.
Many of the action scenes, when they weren’t being excessively personally violent, were just chaotic and visually confusing. Stunning in visual and sound quality, but jumbled, and undisciplined. And they dragged on in that condition for too long.
As a more minor thing, the relationship between Spock and Uhura was tacky and contrived, and added nothing useful to the plot at all. The fact that the Spock character was so perfect a rendition added to the failure of this ploy. It was just clearly unnatural, and it didn’t work.
Overall the new Star Trek movie is a very good film. It could have been an excellent film with more civility, and more discipline. Sounds sort of like today’s youth culture, doesn’t it?
Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
The End of Winter
My first book, The End of Winter, is now published, and available at Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/end-of-winter-savage
I would very much welcome comments about the story here! A brief summary appears below.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In 2808 AD, humanity has achieved faster than light travel, and has explored thousands of light years away from Earth. Many other races have been encountered, but the Earth Space Force is clearly the dominant military power in the region. However, there are pirates and renegades of many kinds that plague space commerce, and the ESF has primary responsibility for suppressing them. As the story begins, Commander Curt Jackson of the ESF is commanding a squadron of fighters searching for renegades. When he finds them, he discovers his own squadron is hopelessly outnumbered by smaller, faster ships, and he begins to prepare for the worst. Suddenly, an enormous unidentified vessel joins the battle, and the tide turns in favor of Curt’s squadron. For centuries, there had been rumors about an ancient race just beyond the boundaries of known space. The people of Earth are about to meet them.
******************************
The opening scene in 2808 is on the edge of the region of space known to the Earth Space Force. The first few centuries of human exploration of the galaxy included many encounters with other intelligent civilizations, but only a small fraction of them had achieved faster than light travel. As the ESF pushed the boundaries of the Earth sphere of influence thousands of light years away from Earth, the number of mid-tech civilizations continued in one direction away from Earth, around the disc of the galaxy, with the number of spacefaring civilizations actually gradually declining.
The trend in the opposite direction of exploration was entirely different. People had theorized for generations that the density of advanced civilizations would be uniform around the galaxy radially, with an increasing density toward the center. Not so! There were clearly a decreasing number of civilizations in one direction, and an increase in both number and level of sophistication in the other. The further out the ESF explored, the more widespread and specific the rumors became of an ancient empire that had receded many millennia ago.
As the level of technological sophistication of the planets increased, the level of believability of the rumors declined. The Ancients weren’t just one species, but dozens of them. Their ships were enormous, with impenetrable shields, and incredibly powerful weapons. They were rumored to be able to obtain speeds in excess of several light years per hour! Their expansion seemed relentless, until they were beaten back by some terrible, mysterious force. The humans mostly ignored these fantastic stories, but when they got several thousand light years away from Earth, the rumors became too pervasive to ignore. There were even first hand reports of live contacts with the Ancients!
http://tinyurl.com/end-of-winter-savage
I would very much welcome comments about the story here! A brief summary appears below.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In 2808 AD, humanity has achieved faster than light travel, and has explored thousands of light years away from Earth. Many other races have been encountered, but the Earth Space Force is clearly the dominant military power in the region. However, there are pirates and renegades of many kinds that plague space commerce, and the ESF has primary responsibility for suppressing them. As the story begins, Commander Curt Jackson of the ESF is commanding a squadron of fighters searching for renegades. When he finds them, he discovers his own squadron is hopelessly outnumbered by smaller, faster ships, and he begins to prepare for the worst. Suddenly, an enormous unidentified vessel joins the battle, and the tide turns in favor of Curt’s squadron. For centuries, there had been rumors about an ancient race just beyond the boundaries of known space. The people of Earth are about to meet them.
******************************
The opening scene in 2808 is on the edge of the region of space known to the Earth Space Force. The first few centuries of human exploration of the galaxy included many encounters with other intelligent civilizations, but only a small fraction of them had achieved faster than light travel. As the ESF pushed the boundaries of the Earth sphere of influence thousands of light years away from Earth, the number of mid-tech civilizations continued in one direction away from Earth, around the disc of the galaxy, with the number of spacefaring civilizations actually gradually declining.
The trend in the opposite direction of exploration was entirely different. People had theorized for generations that the density of advanced civilizations would be uniform around the galaxy radially, with an increasing density toward the center. Not so! There were clearly a decreasing number of civilizations in one direction, and an increase in both number and level of sophistication in the other. The further out the ESF explored, the more widespread and specific the rumors became of an ancient empire that had receded many millennia ago.
As the level of technological sophistication of the planets increased, the level of believability of the rumors declined. The Ancients weren’t just one species, but dozens of them. Their ships were enormous, with impenetrable shields, and incredibly powerful weapons. They were rumored to be able to obtain speeds in excess of several light years per hour! Their expansion seemed relentless, until they were beaten back by some terrible, mysterious force. The humans mostly ignored these fantastic stories, but when they got several thousand light years away from Earth, the rumors became too pervasive to ignore. There were even first hand reports of live contacts with the Ancients!
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