C3PX

doubleofive said:

lordjedi said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Even if the tos fans hate this movie they pretty much have to embrace it.  Bring their friends and family to see it multiple times.  It is the only way new trek will happen.  If this thing Bombs Paramount would be well within its rights to never spend a dime on the series again.

Then so be it.  If this turns out to be a terrible Trek, I'd rather see it bomb than see it be successful and watch Trek turn into yet another teeny bopper flick.  Trek is better than that.  Trek's success should not hinge on whether the "tween" crowd wants to see this or not.  It should hinge on it being a good story or not.

Some people would rather Star Trek not exist than be reimagined.  That just blows my mind...

Its about dying with dignity. Something to do with letting sleeping dogs die. Whips and dead horses, all that crap. Who knows, fans are wacked, screw em and move on. They care too much about things for their own good. The studios/producers/powers that be who care nothing about any given franchise beyond how much dough it can rake in, they're the ones who know what is best for a series, and are interested in keeping its integrity, they are good people willing to whore out their assesets, and that is why they win. To succeed you must be willing to whore out, whore out yourself, whore out your daughters, whore out your wives. Whore out whatever you can, it tis the way to go.

LOL, looking back on the last few years, from the genesis of FE.org till now, this is all pretty funny. I never really paid much attention to the other site, so beyond what went on at this site, I missed out on all the drama. I knew Dayv had some sort of falling out with them, but I had no idea they pissed off that many of you guys. And here I was afraid I might have been stepping on toes with some of the things I was saying. :p

skyjedi2005 said:

Is it just me or is Simon Pegg the Jar Jar of JJ Trek. "I like this ship it is exciting".  Awful. 

I know. I really like Simon Pegg, at first I thought the idea of him playing Scotty was a bit odd, he just doesn't seem to fit, but then when I got used to the idea I thought it would be pretty cool. Now that I have heard him speak in the trailer... uh... err... must... reserve... judgment... until... release date... arrrg...

I doubt it was Adywan's edit that caused the crack down. Lucasfilm has already addressed the issue of fanedits, and they have pretty much said they'd give it a pass for the time being. My guess is it would be the whole idea of the site, and the fact that they are linking to copyright material.

JKP said:

Monroville said:

I think there will be a way around this; c'mon folks!  If the government couldn't stop BOOZE, they can't stop fan edits.

All those rapidshare files and torrents still exist.  They CAN'T take those down.  It's just that the convenience of knowing where to go to get the links has been disabled.  I think if people want to "take a look at Dr. Zhivago (to quote Clarence Whirley)", we can figure it out.

Still, you have to wonder.  What the hell took them this long to finally close shop?  I mean, the place has been up for at least a few years.  Did someone rat out FanEdit.org?

Exactly. The genie is out of the bottle... They're fighting a losing battle. Why not embrace it and use it as a way to promote sales of back catalog or use it in viral marketing of sequels or something creative. Suing, or threatening to sue, your biggest fans is just dumb. Hollywood / RIAA need to embrace the 21st century and let go of the 20th.

 

Biggest fans? Am I wrong in thinking that many fanedits are done by people who think the movie sucks and could be improved by the amateurish efforts of someone editing it on their home computer?

What ways could they use fanedits in viral marketing or sales of back catalog? I really can't imagine. Despite how crappy some of their films may come out, they are edited seemlessly by professional editors, which is a lot more than can be said for the vast majority of fanedits out there. Seems like they should be more afraid of fanedits defaming their products, by hacking them up to often make nonsensical films.

Personally, I think fanedits are such a niche thing, that it really isn't doing anyone any harm. But at the end of the day, you're taking copyright material, altering it, and distributing it online for free. Sure we say, "you MUST own the original" but how many people do you think actually go out and buy the original copy of Batman & Robin just so they can download Deassified with a clean concious? Fan edits are well meaning, but I do not blame the MPAA for not taking kindly to them. And I am no fan of the MPAA.

Kind of changing course here, but it is closely related. I have always been a fan of the philosophy, "information should be free". I don't care about old TV shows enough to pay a lot of money for them on DVD, but if I could access them for free, I might revisit them just for kicks. This is not becomming possible legally with studio websites hosting high res full length shows with limited ads, had they done that sooner, I think the piracy revolution would not have boomed as it did. And Youtube is a great place to search for and listen to that latest hit single that you have stuck in your head, without having to go buy the album or steal the mp3 in order to listen to the song enough to get it out of your system. If information was free, and all movies, music, games, books were free for the taking, it would leave artists with little reason to continue to produce their work, unless they felt like doing it just for kicks. I also think the current studio system is pretty rotten, as the artists don't get anywhere near what they deserve, especially a problem for smaller artists. So the legal way and the illegal way are both severly flawed.

I used to think the pirate bay guys were pretty cool, raging against the machine, bucking the system, fighting the power, and all that good stuff. But then one day I was listening to some interviews with them, and other pirate bay users, and all I saw were a bunch of kids who didn't feel like paying for anything, but wanted to experience those things all the same. The interviewer asked them what other laws they break and think should not exist, and the guy smiled and said speed limits, he breaks the speed limit all the time and thinks it shouldn't exist. To me that completely fizzled away this whole heroic revolutionary fighters of the evil corrupt studios image that they kind of hold onto. I think we can all agree speed limits have an important purpose. Anybody who has witnessed the grizzly mess of a high speed accident would have a hard time disagreeing with this. These guys are not revolutionaries or heroes to be looked up to, they are a bunch of rebellious kids without much respect for rules, and fortunately for them, they had the technical knowhow and the means to make enough money off of it to protect themselves and expand it.

When skimming the FE.org forum I often feel that same "fuckit all, we do what we want and those suites can't touch us!" pirate bayish sort of attutude, obviously not from all members, but a few. Maybe I am wrong on that.

Anyway, hopefully for their sakes they manage to get things back up and going, and perhaps find a way to distrubute their stuff that doesn't attract so much attention. I sound like a pretty harsh critic of fanedits, but I actually am very fond of the concept. Adywan's SW:R was really cool, but it was kind of frightening the amount of attention it attracted. You can't search SW on amazon or imdb without the name Adywan popping up on the message boards or in the reviews boasting about this free edit of the movie downloadable online. With a hobby such as this, staying under the radar is the way to go.

Jay said:

C3PX said:

That may very well be the most misinformed, ignorant bullshit I have ever read on this site.

I think he's being facetious and poking fun at boon.

Oops, my mind read "this bullshit" for some reason instead of "his bullshit". Yeah, he was most definitely being facetious. Sorry about that Dark.

Moth3r said:

(Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Wookieepedia is just a playground for TFN fanboys and EU nerds?)

Nope. Not just you.

dark_jedi said:

boon will set you straight on how fanedits are under the radar Sky,I have heard all his bullshit before,I cannot believe he is not spouting it out now,because he is in the right,fanedits are legal LOL,you bought the DVD and can do whatever you want to it,either in whole or in part.

 

That may very well be the most misinformed, ignorant bullshit I have ever read on this site.

But that is my point, a lot of people claim to have had that scene on the recorded VHS they grew up with, a lot of people of varying ages, claim to have seen this on TV or on VHS. Even the one time airing Star Wars Holiday Special managed to get recorded on VHS back in 1978. People are claiming the scene was on the VHS tape they grew up with, then why can't any of them produce this evidence? The vast amount of people who claim to have seen this would seem to indicate it was not rare or obscure, but that it was extremely common. Yet the evidence is less than nonexistant. If just a handful of people claimed to have scene this, all coming from the same part of the country, and all claiming from the same theater or the same TV station, all giving similar details, then I'd say there was a good chance there is something to their story. Instead we have people claiming it aired in New York, in California, in Germany, in this place and that place, claiming they had recordings of it that they grew up watching. These claims make it very easy for me to dismiss, and they make it really hard to take it seriously. 

If I were any good at photoshop, I'd consider making a parady of Mulder's "I WANT TO BELIEVE" UFO poster from the X-Files, instead using a blurry picture of Luke's grappling hook missing, or Han talking to Jabba.

Gaffer Tape said:

It's cringeworthy when people stretch out a 4:3 image to fit a 16:9 screen.  I saw my roommate go above and beyond that.  He was watching a dual-sided DVD.  One side was 4:3, and the other was widescreen.  He was watching the pan and scan version stretched out to widescreen.  I think a few synapses in my brain blew out when I realized the total lack of logic in that.

Wow, just reading those few sentences literally made me shudder. How odd such a thing should evoke such a response. I think this would be a far more effective form of torture than waterboarding. I could only watch a few minutes of 4:3 image stretched to fit 16:9 (or 16:9 squished to fit 4:3) before I'd spill the beans and betray my friends, familiy members, or country. Tear off all my finger nails, pull out all my teeth, but please... don't stretch or squish the damn image...

adywan said:

I know. its all getting a bit conspiracy theorist now isn't it. What next? Princess Diana wasn't killed in an accident but was in fact killed because he had a copy of the "secret cut"?. lmao

Don't TV stations get sent copies of the movies for transmition? And wouldn't all the copies be the same transfer? So why only the Bay area got to see this scene then? Utter rubbish

Pleease, that thing about Princess Diana being killed by Lucas' thugs is hardly a secret. Only it was a pristine 35mm reel of the Star Wars Holiday Special, not some "secret cut" that she was in possession of that put her on George's hit list.

Just skimmed through those old threads. Lots of people claim to have seen it, or claimed it was on their VHS TV recording of the movie they grew up with, only in every case their tape has long since been lost, recorded over, and so on. Star Wars has aired on TV so many times, and so many people recorded it. The fact that just about everyone seems to have at one point or another seen the missing grappling hook scene, yet after all these years not a single VHS recording of this scene has surfaced, pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin of this crazy idea. Had it truely been something obscure, very few people would have seen it. Instead, just about everyone claims to have seen it with their own eyes, to the point of being offended when they are told it is their minds playing tricks on them. Just read through those threads and see how many people within our tiny little community, people spread out all over the world, have seen a version of the film with this scene in it. If so many people have seen it, then surely it exists! No. I see this as damning evidence of the power the mind has to make us remember things we never saw.

How likely is it so many people happened upon a version of the film so obscure that not a single VHS recording of it has surfaced? (Trust me, there are people who have gone through great efforts in their quest to find this "Holy Grail" of a scene, and so far all have come up empty handed). If so many people, from so many parts of the world have seen this, then why can't any of them produce their VHS recordings with this on it? Why does the lead always end in, "well, I checked my recording, and it didn't have the scene", "If I'd have only known it was so obscure, I would have recorded it", "It was on my recordings of the movie, but I lost them over ten years ago". There is just no proof.

When something as big as the bloody Loch Ness Monster is said to be living in a place as small as Loch Ness, how many times does the entire loch need to be combed before people will finally say, "Well, I guess there is not monster in there after all"? The truth of the matter is, no matter how much searching is done, no matter what technology is used,  people will continue to say, "Well yes, you came up empty handed this time, but that still doesn't prove Nessie doesn't exist..." You could drain the whole Loch and prove beyond all doubt that Nessie is not in there, yet people would continue to catch sightings of her. It is the nature of myths and legends. And so it goes with the elusive SW scenes that were never filmed. "Wow, you saw a monster in the Loch! I was there the other day and saw something, I thought it was a duck, but now that I think about, I bet it was the monster!" If people want to convince themselves that they saw Luke miss with his grappling hook on a TV broadcast they watched back in the eighties, then they are going to convince themselves they saw Luke miss with his grappling hook on a TV broadcast back in the eighties. No facts or evidence will sway them. Of course, all it would take for me to believe would be a single viewing from a single VHS recording, out of hundreds of recordings that must have been made of this, that shouldn't be too much to ask for.

All this long post, and I have yet to even mention the fact that everyone remembers and describes that scene differently... should this lead us to believe there are several versions of this scene out there, all a little different?

Alright Vaderisnohayden, I finally searched some of our older threads on this topic, you will likely find these an interesting read.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Closest-to-1977-release/post/214945/#post214945

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/my-memory-isnt-that-bad-is-it/topic/6521/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Lukes-rope-throwing-talents-in-EP4/post/216470/#post216470

Hunter6 said:

The double throw grappling hook scene:
Here is a little help, The double throw grappling hook scene was shown on channel 4 (kron/NBC) in bay area, back in the mid-80's in their TV version at 9:00pm.

Again, where is your proof of this? You know the exact channel and hour it was shown on, but not the exact date or year, where is your evidence of this? If some alternative cuts of this film really did exist, I'd be very interested in knowing real facts and details about them, but all that exists out there is hearsay. You can't trust half of what people say on the internet, they will make up all sorts of crap telling in the most sincere manner for no reason at all.

Stuff like this comes about from one guy posting something along the lines of, "I am 100% that the first time I saw Star Wars it had a scene where Luke misses the first time he throws the grappling hook. When I bought the VHS that scene was missing! Perhaps this was on an alternative TV version, since the first time I saw Star Wars was when it aired as the 9:00 movie on channel four here in the bay area. That was back sometime in the mid eighties." and another poster responds something along the lines of, "Yeah, I could have sworn I had seen a scene where Luke missed the first time too, I also live in the bay area, maybe I am remembering it from the TV broadcast." and a third poster after having read the previous too posters suddenly recollects, "You know what, now that you mention it, Luke missing sounds familiar, I also lived in the bay area in the 80s, maybe I happened to see that broadcast, probably that is why it sounds familiar to me."

Suddenly by a few people assuming and speculating we have determined that an extended version must have indeed been broadcast in this area, now it has become a fact. Maybe I am wrong, I'd love for you to prove me wrong Hunter, but so far all you are doing is spitting "hard facts" as matter-of-factly as possible, while failing to show any sources or evidence to the fact that they are facts. If you could kindly indulge us by providing some proof beyond "Adywan is disproving himself, ROTFLMAO!!!"

Missing the first time when throwing a grappling hook is a bit of a cliche, it has happened so many times in films, that we have almost come to expect any character throwing a grappling hook to miss the first time. It would not be hard to convince any casual viewer of the film that Luke missed the first time. If you could convince people that Luke missed the first time he threw the hook on every theatrical print, but that it was removed for the VHS, you'd have just about everyone who originally saw it in the theaters agreeing that they too seem to remember having seen it. Day old memories can be hard enough to trust, 20 - 30 year old memories even more so. Until even the slightest proof can be provided, this debate could go on forever.

zombie84 said:

 Audiophiles listen to vinyl records, cinematographers shoot in 35mm film, photographers use chemical emulsions in whatever format and painters use oil or water based pigments on a physical surface. Digital emulation is not a replacement for any of the above, not yet and not ever.

Very well said!

It is not that he followed it super closely, but to such an extend that it feels really cheap. Romeo and Juliet has been done and redone so many times and in so many ways, what was once original and new about that story has long since disappeared.

To me, that question is similar to the question "is the death of the oil painting a bad things and why". If the use of film were to come to an end, it would be the loss of an art form. Unfortunate that a form of art should be lost due to advancing technology, but so it goes. But, I do not see that happening anytime soon, too many people still have an appreciation for film, just like some professional photographers who can't stand digital, I have faith that plenty of film makers will continue to consider film superior to digital, even with digital making major advancements, it just isn't the same thing.

Um, I fail to see the comparison between the ridiculousness of a 9 year old Anakin claiming he was going to marry Padme, and artistic liscense ADF used by not following the script 100% (even less connection with things like Jabba, which WAS 100% accurate at the time the novel was written).

Also, it isn't just 1 line from the novel, Terry Brooks didn't make it up or add it, it was in the script, written by the godlike hand of George. This line is also referenced in Weird Al's song The Saga Begins, with the line "he said is gonna marry her someday..." Al put the line in the song, because it was in the script that Lucas gave him to read shortly before the release of the film.

Concerning the ridiculousness of a nine year old boy stating that he wanted to marry an older girl, there is nothing ridiculous of this in of itself, the ridiculous part is the nine year old eventually actually marrying her. As rcb's point was, Lucas was trying to make it a Romeo and Julietish love story. Aww he has been in love with her since he was nine, how sweet! ...!

Of course he doesn't have any facts to back it up, because everything he said is completely false. If we are comparing the existence of another cut of Star Wars to aliens, then Hunter is the equivalent of someone claiming he has been abducted by aliens. The conspiracy theory factor is even there, "Lucas has turned this little thing into an urban legend" and comic book writers must have seen it.

I could just as well claim there was in fact a film version of Shadows of the Empire made, and that all the actors stood and acted the same way as they did in the Shadows of the Empire comic books, which proves it exists, because the comic artists obviously saw it in order to drawn the comic the way they did.

It is not uncommon for movie adaptions of comics to include things in the story not found in the film, not just cutscenes, but even things never intended to be in the film. It is also pretty common for scenes not to appear in the panels of a comic book exactly as they appeared in the films, so the fact that the comic book characters have different poses and stances than the ones in the film, doesn't prove anything. Even if the mythical cut does exist, there would be no way to know if the stances are the same as those in the comic short of comparing the two side by side. It is easy for someone to look at the comic book and say, "Yeah! That is exactly what I saw! That was exactly what the scene I saw in the movie looked like!".

Vaderisnothayden said:

I think after we petition to get Lucas to give us the OOT on blu-ray, we should petition to get him to edit Hayden Christensen out of the prequels. ;) If he put in Jar Jar as Anakin instead I think I'd find it more believable.

Whoa, Jar Jar Binks becomes Darth Vader, that boggles the mind. I can imagine the scene where Luke removes his helmet at the end of ROTJ, and discovers that his father is a Gungan, yells out "Noooooooooooooooooooo" then stands up, ignites his lightsaber, and falls on it. "Watsaa da madder wit yussa my boyoh? Nooo yussa don't wanna be doin dat! Noooo, Lukey!!!!! Noooooooo hoooo hoooo hoooo!"

Johnboy3434 said:

In my opinion, what matters is what was meant to be in the shot, what was meant to be seen. In other words, the actors, the sets, the props, and whatever special effects that are added in post. Anything and everything else must go. That's why I like Lowry. Not only does it remove the offending spots, but it fills them in with what most likely would have been there. I'd rather see simulated perfection than actual imperfection.

D'oh!  *slaps hand on forehead and shakes head in despair*

These types of conversations remind me of the countless conversations I have had with people who feel full screen is better than wide screen because "it doesn't have those black bars covering up half the picture". Of course film grain is a slightly more complex subject, but you still have people who will never understand it no matter how well you explain it to them. It is like trying to teach grandma and grandpa how to use the VCR.

We have actually had some interesting indepth discussions on this in here before. Once with a fellow who swore he had seen those very scenes with his own eyes, and was irritated to be told that he had been imagining things, I think, it has been so long ago my details are fuzzy.I'd do the search function to try to find it for you, but the new forum's search function always just pisses me off, so I will let somebody else do it for you. I believe the particular post I am referring to began with a poster asking where he could get his hands on a cut of Empire Strikes Back with extended Hoth scenes he remembered from when he saw it in the theater, or he was looking for a cut of Star Wars where Luke swings the grabbling hook and misses the first time and has to try again, I don't remember which one the conversation started out with, but I think both were discussed.  

There is absolutely no evidence to such scenes having ever been in the film, but very strong evidence to the contrary. Your own post went into a great deal of detail on it actually. It seems people either read the scene in the novel or the story book, or heard about it from friends, it became stuck in their head, then later upon rewatching it they were surprised to see the scene missing. I have had this happen with movies before, I'd remember something happening in the film, and be confused when it didn't happen, then realize that it is from another similar movie, or a movie with the same actors in it, or a parady of that particular movie. Memories are tricky things.

TheoOdo said:

...Perhaps a subtitled Admiral Ackbar or newly voiced Ackbar could be used to explain that the planet the Death Star II is orbiting is in fact Kashyyk and not Endor.

The enslavement of the wookies can be explained visually, if as the imperial cruiser in which Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie are riding arrives it flies over a clearing in the woods in which wookie slaves are toiling in a quarry, surrounded by stormtroopers. Chewbacca looks out on them on growls mournfully.

Everything else can be explained via subtitles (Chewbacca, on principal, would not be subtitled) and using the occasional grab from the radio series to fill in gaps of dialogue from 3P0 and Luke. A simple *growl* subtitled as something along the lines of "You should not have come back, exile" or something to that effect could be used to explain Chewbacca's relationship with this particular group of wookies.

I guess for monolingual people, the idea of two different individuals carrying on a conversation, each in their own native tongue, doesn't seem so odd. But for those of us who know two or more languages, the idea is so awkward, words fail to explain it. Imagine seeing an American and a Mexican having a long indepth conversation with one another, the American speaking in plain and fluent English, and the Mexican speaking in plain and fluent Spanish, but yet they seem to be communicating with each other just fine. ???? As far as I know, this only ever happens in the first Star Wars movie and even more so in fanedits of the other ones.

I have always felt that the scene with Han and Greedo talking was a bit ridiculous, and later the same stupid, bizzare, retarded idea was used again in the Han Jabba conversation. Utterly ridiculous. If Han knows Huttese, why the hell would he just not speak in Huttese, or if Greedo know Engish, why not speak it. Speaking multiple languages myself, it is really hard to speak in one language, then suddenly switch to the other. I cannot even imagine having such a conversation as Han has with Greedo. 

This issue was thankfully fixed in Return of the Jedi, where we have Leia speaking to Jabba in Huttese, or with Threepio translating. Fanedits brought the dumb idea back by having Jar Jar speaking in his language, while everyone else spoke to him in English. Makes even less sense, how would so many people know Jar Jar's dumb obscure language? When two aliens are having a conversation in a single language, this subtitle idea works just fine. The idea of having Ackbar explain things in subtitles while everyone else listens and understand him just fine, to me, is creating an even bigger problem than we already had.

That said, while I don't mind Ewoks too terribly, the Wookie idea is really cool. But I think it would be close to impossible to get it to match up with the original footage in any kind of a reasonable way. Convincing Wookies would also be quite a challenge. Also, how would you get shots of Chewie growling mournfully? Or of Chewis having a conversation with his former tribes men?

I have always thought of the Wookies as more of an advanced race than animal skins and spears. Probably I picked this up from the EU books were they are said to be fantastic mechanics and pilots. Even in the Holiday Special they are not depicted as primitive, despite the fact that they live in trees.

Sorry about the politics Dayv.

@Ash, Hunter is talking about the difference between Classical Liberalism, and Rousseauian Liberalism. Some of the things he said are kind of weird and confusing, but he is on his mark when saying that John F. Kennedy with his "ask not what your country can do for you..." is much closer to the original liberalism than people like Clinton and Obama with their, "ask not what you can do for your country..." way of thinking. 

@Hunter, is 24 a "republican show"? I have never watched it, what makes it that way? I have always seen shows reflect the views of their writers, but I have never thought of a show as "Republican" or "Democrat" in itself.

You are right enough in saying that the original series was not as "fake liberal" as TNG and the following series were. But I think the films, TNG, and the following shows all plastered on a very thick layer of modern liberalism (what you call false liberalism), and it stuck. From Star Trek IV with "save the whales!" as its central message, and the very first to the very last episode of Star Trek: TNG, the modern liberalism was still there. I know Roddenberry was alive for Trek IV and for the first little while of TNG, but not sure how involved with either of them he was. I don't know who to place blame on, or what political views any of the writers, producers, actors, etc., hold. All I know is that it has been there for a very long time, and as silly and futile as I believe modern liberalism is, I have always really liked that aspect of the show. Can't really explain it.

I just disregard them. I'll watch my extremely trimmed down and edited version of TPM from time to time, because for all its flaws, it still felt like a Star Wars movie, and back when it came out, the prequels still had the potential to be something really cool. I really couldn't ever watch AOTC again, even if I were to consider it only a side story. To me it is as unwatchable as any movie with Jim Carrey in it (and I do not watch Jim Carrey films, because they make me want to puncture my jugular with whatever is handy). ROTS is depressing to watch, because there was so much potential there that was wasted. Should have been awesome, but it was so over the top ridiculous in all regards. So yeah, AOTC makes me suicidal and ROTS depresses me ;) So I try to stay as far away from them as possible.

Count Dushku said:

I need to make a comment before I log back out for a real long time.

The reason why Star Trek began to suck began with TNG. Some hack job liberal writers got together and began to spew their evangelical message with all the fervor of fundamentalists. Sure, Rick Berman has his share of the blame, but the writers were the ones who ultimately burned the ship. It got to be too preachy.

Wow, "liberal", "evangelical message", "fervor of fundamentalists", sounds like somebody has been picking up a lot of political jargon off the news, but yet fails to understand what any of it means. I guess I get what you are trying to say, but barely with what a dizzying and contradictory way in which you said it. 

I don't give a damn if most of the Trekkers don't like the new Star Trek. Go watch your TNG, you who were in your twenties and thirties when TNG came on. Give those of us who grew up with Star Trek from a young age something cool again.

That is all.

Lost you at the "you who were in your twenties and thirties". Which Trek were you at a young age when it came out? Star Trek came out long before I was born, let alone before I was at a young age. I was at a young age when TNG came out, and I thought it was pretty cool, not so much when I was at a young age, I didn't really understand it, but when I got older I began to appreciate it. I liked the preachiness of it, I always found it amusing (for very much the same reason John Lennon's Imagine is one of my all time favorite songs, it is so idealistic and idiotic that I cannot help but love the hell out of it).

---------------------------------------

Star Trek is the hippies wildest dreams come true. Hippies have beautiful dreams, but unfortunately dreaming is the only damn thing they do. If hippies really got their way, we would be far from having the ability to explore space in the futuristic equivalent of a luxery liner. Earth would be a stupid insignificant planet that the prime directives of other alien races would forbid them of screwing around with. It would be a planet with no infatructure, just a bunch of people living around the globe in tents, getting high and getting laid while enjoying endless Woodstock style concerts and dying of starvation and diseases transmitted through sex and needles, all the while wishing they had something to go and protest. Food replicators would be their welfare, keeping them alive to continue living their pointless lives until the inevitable day they ODed and died. Woooooooohoooooo, the final frontier man! These are the voyages! Boldly going where almost every other man in this room has gone at least a couple of times this evening already. Live long and prosper! And pass me the bong! Woooohooooo!

Star Trek without hippies and liberal messages is like a balloon without helium, sure you can blow it up with just air (or explosions and endless action scenes), but it just doesn't float.