The STAR WARS MONTHLY MONDAY Thread

[NewFun#6]

[Ken]

I loved the Lost finale. Simply put the show was always about Science vs Faith, and Men of Science hated the ending while Men of Faith loved every second.

Funny thing is, in real life I'm not a man of faith at all. With Lost, however, I was all about what the island meant than how it worked (which they told us anyway, not all seemed to see it though).

As for Star Trek V, yes you're right. The problem is the journey sucked too.

Going back to Star Wars, I'd be perfectly fine with the idea that it's George's story and he can do what he wants, if he was a better storyteller. He's NOT. Period. There is a fantastic story underneath the prequels, for example, but the execution just sucks. I can look past the bad acting, Jar Jar and horrible dialogue because I focus on the story itself, not how the story is being told. I can't explain it better than that. Scott and I talked about this on the book review of Revenge of the Sith. If a fraction of the story told in that book made it to screen it would have been so, so much better.

Lucas's problem with The Clone Wars contradicting the EU are not with his story, mostly. It's with the details. You can reconcile TCW with the EU with broad strokes. There have not been any big events that directly confront established EU, it's the fine details. Things like Even Piell, Zabracks on Dathomir, or even Asokha calling Anakin Master. Which, btw, I really think it's master as in teacher, not Master as in title. This could be easily clarified by not having other characters call him Master as well.

For the moment, I'm mostly content. I just want him to stay away from post Episode VI (which he claims to have no interest in anyway, and I'm fine with). Should he ever do that, and for whatever reason choose to not have Jacen, Jaina, Mara Jade, etc. ever exist, then he will effectively wipe out the entirety of the EU from standard continuity.

Then I'm left standing with the Star Trek fans after the new movie came out being consoled with, "But the books are still there, you can still read those."

[Hair-Metal Hero]

I'm the opposite, I'm a man of faith, and the show was clearly a science fiction show with fantasy elements in my eyes, so it seemed like a complete change of premise to me. Also, when a show is predicated on "Look at all these weird things! Tune in to find out what they mean!" then the explanations need to be somewhat satisfactory by the end of the run.

[NewFun#6]

[JonathanCrites]

Count me in the camp that loooooooooved Lost and the Finale. Just for the record.

In regards to ST:V, I haven't watched it since I was a kid but I did recently watch ST:IV and to me it definitely doesn't hold up as much as I remember. It get's kudos for being the closing part of the ST 'trilogy' but as a stand-alone adventure it isn't as strong.

[NewFun#6]

[NewFun#6]

Just found this cool pic online. I really hope to see R2-MK out and about this year during Star Wars Weekends. I think he's cool.

[Bibliomike]

What, in your opinion, counts as an "ugh" moment in ST 2? I would argue that's the only film of all them that has not a one. I don't think even Shatner's much-parodied "KHAAAAAAN" is an "ugh" moment. It works in the moment, and is only funny now because it's been played out of context to death.

We've differed before on Star Trek "being all about the Kirk." And I even take issue with your statement that ST V itself is Kirk's story, from start to finish. It is, for starters, just as much Spock's story, as he comes to terms with the reapparance of his half-brother (and I am one of those fans who didn't like the movie that much in '89 but who still sticks with it as canon on the strength of Luckinbill's performance). And so it is also Sybok's story. It is also McCoy's to the extent that he comes to terms with his role in the death of his father. In fact, Kirk is one of the few characters who doesn't go through any change, from start to finish. He is Awesome Captain Kirk at the beginning (freeclimbing El Capitan -- ok, Bill, whatever) and Awesome Captain Kirk at the end (standing up to "God" -- and, to his credit, rightly so). I think it is very much to Shatner's credit that, finally given the reins of a Star Trek film, he most decidedly did *not* make it "all about the Kirk." Even you say, in your next paragraph: "What really wins more over about V is that it is a strong character piece between the three principals -- Kirk, Spock, and McCoy." Had he stuck to that principle in "his" Star Trek novels, they probably would've been better books. They *are* "all about the Kirk," and they suffer for it.

[Hair-Metal Hero]

Word up my friend, STV remains immensely watchable because of the Trinity.

[JonathanCrites]

Because this was a lot of Star Trek talk for the Star Wars thread I posted a video of Kirk's Bad-assery from ST:V in the STMM thread:

An oldie but a goodie...

[NewFun#6]

[Ken]

[NewFun#6]

Kirk



Not Kirk

Questions?

[ljacone]

I also cannot wait for the Freaks to cover STV... and not just because I have been trying to worm my way onto that show since the STTMP episode!

Now, to talk about Star Wars in the Star Wars thread...

I think the changes and discrepencies between the "official" stuff and the EU stuff in Star Wars really is just more foder for the "personal canon" argument more than anything else. Whatever works for you is what you should stick with, and if something contradicts that, then as a fan I am willing to bet that you can think of a cheat to make it work.

Now this won't help you if it's something like super-major ("Chewbacca is Luke's father!") but a lot of the stuff here is as Ken says, in the details. And while the devil is in the details, at the same time they tend to bog things down and get in the way of a good story. I tend to think of stories like Philbin talks about music in Phantom of the Paradise: "A song is a song. Ya either dig it, or ya don't."

I can sympathize with having continuity contradict itself because something new came along and retroactively is applied to the past. Tony Stark, for instance, being the prisoner of a man named Raza rather than Wong Chu, bug the living heck out of me. But having Mandarin be there behind the scenes (which itself was obviously a retcon, but was a retcon back in the 80s even though most people don't know that) is cool with me because it adds to the story without invalidating it. I could just say that Raza referred to himself as "Wong Chu" or something, but that doesn't work because of Chu's later appearances. But those happened ~2000, long before the movie became "canon" and thingd changed. So my main recourse is to grin and bear it because while it bugs me -- and I mean really bugs me -- to have Wong Chu jettisoned, in the end, its a detail in the broader story of Iron Man, which is a story I love.

Sorry about tangenting despite my best efforts not to...

[Ken]

[NewFun#6]

[Hair-Metal Hero]

Enjoy that birthday man.

[Irredeemable Shag]

[Arthur Ratnik]

[Bibliomike]

I recently started re-reading the first of those Brian Daley Han Solo books, and it's really not that bad. The fact that I haven't finished is due more to real life getting in the way than the quality of the writing. Trivia: apparently, the name of the robot Bollux had to be changed in the British editions, since "Bollocks" is a swear word over there. (I forget to what it was changed --Zollux, maybe? I just happened to run across it in the Encylcopedia one time.)

Your "swirling kaleidoscope of sound" was especially nice this time out, complete with TARDIS groans and everything! Nice! And John Houseman is exceptionally hard to mimic if you haven't been listening to him recently. When I was watching "The Paper Chase" DVDs on a regular basis, I could do a passable imitation, but not now.

I tried to write a sequel to "Skin of Evil" for the Strange New Worlds contest, but was never quite able to pull it off. The "beautiful ones" in my version, though, were going to be the Medusans. Supposedly, they are too ugly for humans to look at -- but Dr. Jones says at one point, "Or is it that they're too beautiful to behold?" I thought it would have been interesting if this race the Federation was using as expert navigators turned out to be the race that inadvertently (or deliberately?) created Armus. How would the 1701-D crew have reacted to have a Medusan on the ship (as they would have in my story -- I almost set it in season 2 just so I could call Dr. Jones out of retirement while Dr. Pulaski was aboard, ha ha!) once they learned the connection? Oh, well, wasn't to be.