It is surely a sign that they don’t know other ways to add emotional weight than destroying the Enterprise or threatening Earth.

Yes, but:

It would have worked just as well in Beyond if the ship had been hijacked and the crew, fearing a destruction that never came, used the escape pods. The actual destruction of the ship was just a plot device to get them all onto this planet and into interesting situations.

Tobar said:

I like to think it was also an excuse to finally move away from their awful redesign.

+1701

SilverWook said:

Tobar said:

I like to think it was also an excuse to finally move away from their awful redesign.

Uh, isn’t the 1701-A being built at the end of the film exactly the same?

No. The nacelles are slimmer, and farther back from the disc, among other things iIrc.

SilverWook said:

Tobar said:

I like to think it was also an excuse to finally move away from their awful redesign.

Uh, isn’t the 1701-A being built at the end of the film exactly the same?

Not exactly. See “Enterprise Redesign” on http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm

I finished the TOS films and started TNG season 1.
I see why people have many complaints about the first TNG season now…oh boy does it seem dull.

What do you guys think is the best TOS film? I couldn’t decide between II and IV but ultimately gravitate towards IV as it felt the most like the spirit of the original series.
I liked all six for the most part and didn’t actively dislike any of them.

TMP surprised me. It’s a hell of a lot of contradictions and does the characters quite badly but is the only film with an epic scope. If it had been trimmed to say 90-100 minutes it would play far better.

WoK was much better in tone but I felt a bit underwhelmed to be quite honest-though this may be due to the buildup of always hearing it was this amazing thing. I didn’t quite buy Khan’s character shift from his TOS roots and the sudden arrival of Kirk’s son was beyond coincidence and really shoehorned in.

SFS was never bad, but outside of
the stealing of the Enterprise, is nothing but filler and has a very confused tone leading one to think some sequences are a TV movie.

TVH nailed the tone in the middle section but I felt the bookends were rather dull and was especially frustrated to just see the probe disappear without any context for why it ever came in the first place.

TFF is not as bad as people make it out to be. The story was fundamentally broken and rewritten too many times. Many sequences either do not work and some are mind bogglingly silly. The ending is an incomprehensible mess. The effects are below par almost every shot. All that said, there are some well performed moments and I enjoyed a bit of it here and there.

TUC should have been great but the studio pressures and short schedule compromised the film. I also felt the prison sequence bordered on the silly and wasn’t very necessary. The tone veers form the optimism of TOS and instead of merely paralleling the Cold War, the film seems to try and force a duplication of world events at times. And the Shakespeare quotes got out of hand. Also-WHY IS THERE AN ACTUAL GALLEY ON THE ENTERPRISE???
At least the ending was a good sendoff and TUC is better than III and V in my mind.

Spock’s death makes The Wrath of Khan unassailable in my opinion. No other scene in the original crew films comes close. There’s also the Genesis device, which is genuinely inspired writing.

The Journey Home is probably a close second, since 'thar be whales in ‘ere!’

After those two, it’s a toss-up, as I probably enjoy the rest of them about equally. The Final Frontier has the worst story and execution of the lot, but the best ideas and intentions so it gets a pass.

^ looks more like a time machine. Made from stuff found at a dollar store. Yikes. Is that supposed to be a Starfleet transporter?

…well, they could at least use a level or ruler when taping the construction paper to the wall 😉

They didn’t have dollar stores in them days…did they?