8/21/21

the star trek tos movies

star trek: the motion picture


“jim… [grasps his hand] this simple feeling is so far beyond v’ger’s comprehension.”


gene roddenberry had a really good idea that for the most part functioned best when roddenberry himself had as little control over it as possible.


as a lifelong star trek fan, this was something of a surprising revelation to me. i grew up during the “golden age” of trek (when the later tos movies were still being made and both tng/ds9 were airing, and continuing into when the tng movies were being made and ds9/voyager were both airing). back then if you were interested enough in star trek to have picked up any details about how the sausage was made, you were almost certainly getting a sort of mythologized version where roddenberry had this brilliant idea and had to fight tooth and nail against a hostile studio to get it made. just a wholesome underdog story. and all of it started and ended with gene roddenberry having an idea.


it’s only recently that i learned that this is the sanitized version. a version that mentions roddenberry was a pilot, but not that he was a cop and a soldier. a version that mentions that star trek was saved by a heroic “letter-writing campaign” by fans, but not that that letter-writing campaign was patient zero for weaponized toxic fandom.1


a version that doesn’t mention that gene roddenberry was heard bragging about casting women he wanted to have sex with in minor roles.


a version that doesn’t mention that roddenberry was accused of being verbally abusive by scores of people (mostly women) he fired. or that he was physically abusive to his first wife.


a version that doesn’t mention that grace lee whitney was sexually assaulted by “an executive” on the set,2 and that it is rather strongly suspected by many that the “executive” was roddenberry himself. which kind of goes a way to explain why a show that otherwise made space for women to have greater agency than many of its contemporaries had so many damn rapey subplots for this character. and after all that, she was fired.


i appreciate that the video i cited a few paragraphs above makes the case that star trek was really never just roddenberry’s. there was a highly dedicated team of professionals working behind the scenes to make the impossible possible. as the video calls out, people like d.c. fontana. people like leonard nimoy, who would go on to direct several of these films (and who, it’s worth noting, was apparently grace lee whitney’s main source of support when she was at her lowest point.)


i used to think it was a bad thing that gene got “kicked upstairs,” that “his” franchise was taken away from him… but it was never his. it had become something bigger. and a big part of that was the effort of other people cleaning up his messes.3


star trek: the motion picture is the only star trek movie over which gene roddenberry exerted quite a bit of influence. and while i give that a moment to sink in, i’ll add that he was famously “kicked upstairs” (removed from any practical impact beyond his name being on it and collecting a check) for the other movies largely because he was constantly disrupting the production of this one, seemingly because he was obsessed with getting a writing credit, and his responsibilities as producer were largely handled by other people who hadn’t signed on for this.


so, now that i’ve given you time to absorb the fact that this was the only star trek movie that roddenberry had any practical influence over, i think it’s time to come out swinging with this: kicking roddenberry out of “his” franchise absolutely saved star trek. and star trek was at its best without its creator.


i mean, just look at the motion picture compared to the rest of the tos movies. it’s very interested in impressing you with the scale of its effects. it’s largely devoid of emotion and characterization. in perhaps oversimplified terms it’s… not star trek. and given much less limited resources (and exceeding even the much loftier budget he was given here), this is the movie gene roddenberry wanted to make. and if we had gotten more movies driven by roddenberry, we would’ve gotten more of… this. it’s enough to make you wonder if everything that made star trek great except the very centralmost ideas were forced on roddenberry either by circumstance or by collaborators.


but it’s still true that gene roddenberry had an idea. because good things can come from bad people. roddenberry is hardly the only example of this in the franchise’s storied history. you need look no further than tos’s leading man for another example. william shatner was made to be gene roddenberry’s onscreen avatar. you wanna talk about politicking and being obsessed with one’s own position in a franchise? shatner famously was such a gloryhound that the rest of the cast just hated working with him. he stole lines and undermined costars and was jealous of leonard nimoy to the point of paranoia. he seemed like just the biggest asshole in the world even before he started calling people sjws & cucks on social media.


by the way, leonard nimoy is an extremely good boy, just in case you’re worried that it’s assholes all the way down. and there are so many other wonderful people who worked on these shows. nichelle nichols. george takei. patrick stewart. there are so many amazing people in this franchise, i promise!


but i said all this about roddenberry and shatner for a very important reason. because if there’s one thing i take away from all this, it’s that good things can come from bad people. i hate william shatner, but i love me some james t. kirk. every new thing i learn about roddenberry makes him somehow sink even lower in my estimation, but star trek is incredible. it changed my life, and i think the world, for the better. and i know i’m not exactly on an island with that opinion.


“spock, this ‘child’ is about to wipe out every living thing on earth. now, what do you suggest we do? spank it?”


anyway. it’s pretty obvious in tos that kirk, spock, and mccoy are a polycule, right? spock is the dom, mccoy is the bratty sub who pushes his buttons with reckless abandon, and kirk is a more charming/sweet-talking bratty switch who tops with basically everyone but spock, which is part of what makes their relationship so special. plus spock mostly lets him adorably pretend to be in charge to keep up appearances what with him being captain and all.


if any of this sounds far-fetched i will ask you to do two things:

1. watch basically any two or three random episodes of tos.

2. remember that kirk/spock shippers literally invented both shipping and slash.


i trust that we’re all now on the same page, so we can continue.


so, at the beginning of tmp, our polycule is scattered! kirk has recently been promoted to admiral which doesn’t give him nearly as much space to be bratty as when he was captain. (get it??? space??? that wasn’t even intentional.) it doesn’t suit him and it shows. mccoy is off being a space hippie apparently. and spock is undergoing a vulcan ritual that is meant to purge all emotion and help them achieve a state of perfect logic.


quick important sidebar here. so, spock is literally about to complete the ritual when he senses v’ger, and the high priestess declares that something is calling out to “his human blood.” something i only recently learned is that spock apparently mouths “jim” when this happens!!! so that’s pretty gay.


meanwhile, back on the enterprise, kirk has dragged mccoy back onto the crew kicking and screaming. his presence is comforting (“damn it, bones, i need you... badly.”), but without their dom everything is still a mess. especially the enterprise itself, which is failing them as it almost never did in tos.


spock arrives just in time and struts aboard in a blatant “daddy’s home” moment. poor mr. chekov is stunned as the vulcan asks, “permission to come aboard?” with an air of casual authority that belies the request, and can only meekly answer, “granted, sir, gran...ted…” as he blows past him, clearly in charge. and within hours of spock’s return the enterprise is back up and running.


dude’s gotta be thinking, “for surak’s sake, can these hopeless bottoms do anything without me?”


the conversation between kirk, spock, and mccoy in kirk’s quarters pretty much seals it for this reading being the obviously correct one. we get mccoy being catty about spock’s absence, clearly having missed him more than he’s willing to let on, and kirk emphatically cutting him off with, “bones, we need him. i need him.” but on top of that we get the most blatant establishment of dominance we’ve ever seen in this relationship.


kirk, presumably still in pretending to be in charge mode from the bridge ushers his boyfriends into his quarters and tells them both to sit down. mccoy does so, spock remains standing. kirk starts to sit down, visibly hesitates for a moment, then awkwardly sits down, leaving spock as the only one standing. they then launch into their conversation, and at one point kirk repeats, “sit down,” and spock regards him coolly while remaining standing. they go on with the conversation for a bit longer, and kirk finally breaks down and says, “will you… please... sit down!”


spock finally sits down. he made him say please. the message is clear. remember that you’re not in charge behind closed doors, jim.


this is just the most obvious example, but really every interaction they have in this movie supports or at least doesn’t oppose this reading. i will die on this kinky hill. (hopefully it’ll be a kinky death.) c-rank


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star trek ii: the wrath of khan


“this is damned peculiar. yellow alert.”


it was rather nice to actually have someone to hold me this time when spock’s death made me ugly cry. and i love watching movies with my partners in general, because we’re cool with each other nitpicking the heck out of them and we both know that isn’t what makes the movies in question “good” or “bad.”4 what matters is a movie’s heart. and whether or not we enjoyed them.


when i was a wee one, as mr. scott might say, this was star trek to me. i saw the odd episode or other movie as blockbuster visits permitted, but this was the only installment my parents owned on vhs, so when i pestered them to watch “star trek” this is what i got. consequently i really took its greatness for granted for a long time, considering i watched it over and over when i was at the age where you fast forward through all the “boring” parts. (and, depending on what kind of mood i was in, the scary parts, like that genuinely terrifying scene with khan putting worms in chekov and terrell's ears.)


wrath of khan is a damn good movie. it’s mature. relationships are complex and multifaceted. there are wants and needs splattered all over the screen that have nothing to do with space but which play great with space as a backdrop. there are heartbreaks. there is catharsis.


to get a bit more specific, wrath of khan has two central thrusts. the one that never really grabbed me as a child (which i guess makes sense) is captain kirk’s anxieties about mortality, manifesting specifically in his less than sanguine feelings about aging early in the film and confronting his dearest friend’s death later in the film. of course, the movie is called the wrath of khan so there's gotta be some wrath in there. that comes from the titular antagonist, khan noonien singh, played by the immortal ricardo montalbán. he is not only the greatest star trek villain of all time, he is without exaggeration one of the best screen villains. what’s really interesting is how this plays into the internal conflict kirk is experiencing through the film; in a film where he’s grappling with mortality, his past is literally coming back to haunt him.


it does feel like a lot of the rest of the crew gets left behind. spock feels badly underutilized at times until you get to (gulp) y’know... but he’s given a lot more to do than most of the rest of the tos veterans, who are largely relegated to minimalist utilitarian roles. i get it; there wasn’t really enough room in this narrative to service every character. but if you had to point to a biggest weakness, this would probably be it.


but hypocritically, i also love a lot of the new additions to the cast, even though they obviously took a lot of screentime away from the returning veterans. especially lieutenant saavik. one of my biggest regrets about the films is that saavik wasn’t used more after the wrath of khan, she had so much potential. (and did a lot for the gender balance, just saying.) on a personal note, i always enjoyed the idea found in the non-canonical but commercially released novels that spock & saavik eventually married. i wouldn’t have liked it as much after just the wrath of khan because of spock’s position as saavik's mentor and all the implications that has, but after the events of the search for spock and the way spock’s character softened from the voyage home on, it really feels like they would’ve been on more equal footing a few decades after the undiscovered country.


my favorite addition to the cast, though, is hands-down kirk’s old flame dr. carol marcus. there is so much unspoken strength & confidence to her character. she could’ve used a few more scenes to really shine, but even what she had to work with gave her the opportunity to project someone who was intelligent, principled (and not in a obvious way like david’s cliched zealously anti-starfleet feelings), someone who you could easily see holding her own in a relationship with james t. kirk. i want to know more about her, but i love what little we do know about her.


despite being made relatively on the cheap, the wrath of khan doesn't feel like a limited film. it’s a pretty remarkable feat considering that it reuses a ton of exterior shots from the motion picture. but the model-work is a huge strength throughout the films, including here. the action scenes that are constructed with somewhat more reined-in effects shots than the motion picture are still some of the best action scenes in the series. this is largely achieved by a shrewd mix of dramatic interior scenes and short but well-composed exteriors. and, of course, by letting the story do a lot of the heavy-lifting to imbue the action sequences with a larger sense of meaning.


speaking of cuts, the wrath of khan’s reduced budget priced them out of jerry goldsmith, so they went and discovered a fellow you may have heard of named james horner. so that worked out pretty well for them. the score is pretty much always going to be a strength of any star trek movie, but following up goldsmith’s the motion picture score with horner’s in the wrath of khan and the search for spock is almost unfair. and the differences between goldsmith’s and horner’s scores aren’t insignificant. i think i prefer horner’s slightly, as i love the main theme (which doubles as kirk’s theme and is reused extensively in the search for spock) and i love the sharply contrasting theme used for khan. it really combines well with the visual elements to tell a story during all the exterior shots, even the ones that are essentially just two ships flying in each other’s general direction or chasing each other.


“i have been and always shall be yours.”


so, yeah. sttmp was the story of the tos polycule getting back together after going their separate ways, so it was basically part of the first arc of love live! sunshine!!. (you’re welcome and/or no, i’m not sorry.) wrath of khan sees brat mccoy celebrate switch kirk’s birthday with him because daddy spock is busy working, but they join him soon enough. spock even lets kirk pretend to be in charge, just like old times!!! but he’s there to keep him in line if need be, also just like old times.


also, this movie is about spock’s polycule getting to know their new metamour, saavik! she’s very brash, i think it’s reasonably likely that she and spock have a less d/s relationship, and might have designs on co-domming with each other. she certainly does bully her metamours a bunch, constantly negging kirk for not knowing starfleet regulations, and even forcing her way onto an away team mission with them so she can hang out with spock’s polycule without him and get to know them better.


things get hella awkward when kirk’s abusive ex khan shows up, though. and just to make matters even more complicated his other ex, carol, is wrapped up in the whole thing. it’s all just a lot to deal with and the entire polycule has to rally around him.


this also makes spock’s sacrifice even harder somehow? yes he’s sacrificing himself for the entire crew but you know it’s really for his subs, and hi any of my dommes who are reading this *glares* you are not allowed to do that thanks. mccoy has the misfortune of being on the scene when this happens, and spock puts him into subspace to keep him out of the way long enough to do what must be done.


when he regains his faculties, mccoy desperately begs spock to “get out of there” but it’s too late. kirk, innocent of this horrible knowledge, finds out only when he calls engineering. and that’s when he hears his co-sub’s broken voice. “jim... i think you’d better get down here.” jubilation turns to dread. “bones?” he asks with obvious concern and confusion. “better... hurry.” and then he notices the empty chair.


he rushes through the entire freaking ship to get to engineering before the unthinkable happens. he tries to fight through mccoy and scotty’s grip to save his partner, even after being warned that he’ll flood the entire compartment with radiation, putting himself and everyone else at risk. only when he’s told it’s already too late to make a difference does he relent, defeated. there’s nothing he can do.


he’s shattered by this. he sheds some of the rare tears you’ll ever see the character shed at the funeral. it’s not quite right that mccoy and saavik don’t also get to speak, so we’ll just assume that happens offscreen. either way... they have to say goodbye.


... look. let me reiterate that i’m not sorry.


i do have to say though... as much as i was mostly joking about khan being kirk’s abusive ex dom, wow his character has even more dommy energy in the episode where he’s introduced (“space seed”) than he does in this feature film???


his entire seduction of mcgivers is SO bdsmy. at one point he demanded that she “go, or stay, but do so because you WISH to” at which point i joked she should “get on her knees because she wishes to” NOT EXPECTING HER TO ACTUALLY LITERALLY DO THAT??? and at that point he says “it is no longer enough for you to wish to stay, you must ask me.”


WOOF. you basically just saw power exchange negotiation happen in a star trek tos episode, y’all. s-rank


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star trek iii: the search for spock


“i choose the danger.”


i’ve always liked this one a bit better than most fans, where writing off the odd-numbered movies is something of a meme. (and tbh, that’s kind of super fair with the tos movies other than this one.) the search for spock forms a sort of loose trilogy with wrath of khan and the voyage home which is pretty easily the best stretch of tos movies.


the scene where they steal the enterprise is one of my favorite of the entire series, and would be enough on its own to make this movie worth seeing. and we get to see uhura bully some nerd and literally shove him into a locker!! i was SUPER gay for this part, ngl.


speaking of me being gay, even with battle damage the enterprise is still an absolutely gorgeous ship, and they took plenty of opportunities to show this off before blowing her up. yes, i just highly implied that i’m gay for a starship, leave me alone. (... definitely don’t shove me in a locker like uhura did with mr. adventure~)


christopher lloyd playing a klingon is a lot of fun, even though i have literally no idea why he had to kill his girlfriend for seeing the genesis information when he was gonna show two of his officers later. shrug.


i get that this isn’t wrath of khan or anything, but i’ve always had a soft spot for search for spock, and i think it’s at least good enough to disprove the whole “the odd-numbered ones are always bad!!!” thing.


“the word… is no. i am therefore going anyway.”


this is the movie where jim & bones have to try to make their polycule whole again while bereft of their dom’s guidance. i do have to say that i find it disheartening that when it became clear that jim didn’t have spock’s katra, he and sarek didn’t just automatically assume that the third member of their triad had it. c’mon, jim. have some faith in y’all’s mutual boyfriend.


anyway, i’m delighted that kirk and mccoy got to save their dom, and that all of their friends helped. b-rank


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star trek iv: the voyage home


“may fortune favor the foolish.”


i can never decide whether this or wrath of khan is my favorite. they’re so hard to compare to each other. (the undiscovered country used to be my favorite just to be contrarian.)


the political situation in the galaxy is pretty confused in this? like, the klingon ambassador is yelling at the president of the federation because a rogue klingon ship got blown up in federation space? and the vulcan ambassador makes a dramatic entrance like a wrestler rushing in to interfere with a match and the klingon ambassador is like UH THE VULCANS ARE THE PUPPETS OF THE FEDERATION and like... excuse me??? the vulcans are IN the federation??? which is who you’re negotiating with? for... some reason?


this gets even more confusing in the undiscovered country when the romulan ambassador is CLEARLY written/played by people who have no idea that romulans aren’t vulcans AND is treated like a trusted ally by the federation president??? idk this aspect of the movies is kind of a mess.


WHY DID YOU PUT GIANT BAY WINDOWS IN YOUR SITUATION ROOM. I DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT THE STORM, THAT’S JUST A BAD IDEA IN GENERAL.


... hey. hey. who cares? this movie was clearly written by someone who was VERY, VERY high. like. HEY MAN. WHAT IF. WHAT IF THERE WAS THIS... THIS LIKE ALL-POWERFUL PROBE. AND IT WANTED TO TALK TO THE WHALES, MAN.


why is everyone wearing the clothes they wore in star trek iii. surely you can get some new clothes on vulcan? it’s the second most important planet in the federation. please change. you probably smell.


HEY WHEN YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE CREW MEMBER OR THE OTHER MAYBE DON’T LEAVE THE RUSSIAN ON THE NUCLEAR-POWERED NAVAL SHIP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COLD WAR.


i actually kinda wish the crew had been given the excelsior like the ending head-faked at. the setup was definitely there for it (from a movie ago, even!), the excelsior is COOL-looking, and it wouldn’t make casual fans have that head-scratching moment of like “wait how did they make a ship that fast.”5 then again, you might not get the enterprise registry number lettering scheme thing, which becomes a feature of the franchise, and is a thing i rather like. maybe they coulda just recommissioned the excelsior as the enterprise-a though? idk.


i’m guessing one of the reasons this was so great was that nicholas meyer helped with the script. like, it’s basically time after time? and time after time is suuuuuuper underrated. it freaking rules. i want more movies like this.


spock’s polycule is having a hard time dealing with his memory loss though. i hope they pull through ok. spock gets the BEST lines in this, though.


on a personal note, living in the bay area now makes me appreciate the setting of this movie even more. like, i’m literally thinking OH COOL I’VE BEEN THERE at times, and also wondering how the HECK they’re going up and down those hills like they’re nothing.


... oh shit, they have to quarantine the earth and no one has any idea how things are going to turn out and they all have to shelter in place. that kind of hits differently right now.


let’s end on a good note. uh. i like whales. s-rank


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star trek v: the final frontier


“i lost a brother once... lucky for me i got him back.”

“i thought you said men like us don’t have families.”

“i was wrong.”


honestly? i think this single interaction might be worth the rest of star trek v. and i know that’s a hell of a lot to answer for, but... yeah. maybe it’s enough to make it a net gain. maybe.


i joked to one of my girlfriends while watching blade runner about how like “they forgot to put the MOVIE in there. like, they forgot the MOVIE part of the movie.” that’s actually also star trek v’s problem in a nutshell, which… congrats to me for probably being the first person in human history to compare star trek v to blade runner. i’m not sorry.


my partners and i got EXTREMELY high for this in the hopes that it would make it better and it didn’t, y’all.


IT DIDN’T.


i hated this movie so much even before i knew that bill “i say cuck & sjw on the internet because im edgy” shatner was a terrible human being, and i hate it even more now. it only exists in the form it does now because billiam saw nimoy direct the last two movies, stamped his foot, and whined “no fair!!! i can do that too!!!” and you can’t, billiam.


YOU CAN’T.


there are just. so many ways in which this is bad. there’s SOME good stuff with the polycule hanging out at the beginning but even parts of that are kinda meh. the whole “oh no the enterprise is broken!!!” angle is aggressively dumb both in concept and execution.


when i was a kid i appreciated all the shuttlecraft stuff and like the bird of prey sneak attacking the enterprise late in the movie, but it just doesn’t make up for the rest of the movie.


the entire tone of the movie feels vastly different than any other star trek movie. it feels a little similar to some of the worst episodes of tos, and like… i guess you could almost defend it as a worthy successor on those grounds??? i guess??? but like… in movie terms it’s just a really awkward, sloppy comedy that isn’t funny??? like… it’s just… it’s just NOT funny??? and that just really sinks it.


i can’t say for sure that this movie missed its target, but it was a BAD target and it should feel bad. c-rank


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star trek vi: the undiscovered country


“you have not experienced shakespeare until you have read him in the original klingon.”


it’s the end of the space cold war. this movie’s perspective is so american and weird. spock gives a speech at a podium and afterwards talks to jim and says the vulcans have a saying “only nixon could go to china.” somebody says something about “the end of history.” it’s just so anachronistic and weird hearing these words coming out of these characters’ mouths.


the end of the space cold war is ushered in by a moon blowing up. a misfortune that comes from inside the borders of the klingon empire and wasn’t anybody’s fault. in reality the cold war ended thanks to decades of unremitting economic warfare and callous sabotage by the imperialists, coupled with an overly top-heavy government that increasingly took more responsibility out of the hands of their citizens. by the time the soviet union fell, its rank and file citizens were basically no longer actively participating in the revolution and could only stand by and watch helplessly as bystanders while the collapse of their way of life unfolded.


despite it having always been their subtextual function, the klingons just aren’t that useful as an analog to the soviet union because they aren’t communists. the cold war was a stark, obvious ideological conflict between those who wanted the exploiters to continue being in charge of society to the detriment of its people & the planet we live on and those who wanted to build a better world. and that’s just not the case here at all.


the conflict is divorced from its real-world motivations, turned into this fantasy of an “apolitical” conflict where everyone was paranoid and what side you’re on is supposedly based on some arbitrary geographic accident of your birth. and it’s solved by everybody just... sort of deciding to get along. definitely not by the side that was objectively in the right if we’re going to survive as a species being defeated by underhanded means. in spite of it all, i do still enjoy the weird, incongruous gravitas the space cold war is treated with. if you can detach yourself from the ideological conditions that make the movie look this way, it’s just pretty damn funny hearing these characters talking like this. i don’t know. i’m just surprised it never used to strike me as weird. it’s weird it’s really, really weird.


but y’know, there’s still part of me that only cares about this as a star trek movie. there are so many great character moments. standouts include the conversation between kirk & spock in spock’s quarters, and the conversation between kirk and mccoy on rura penthe. i also really love getting to see sulu in the captain’s chair of the excelsior, and basically every scene with him is delightful. probably my favorite moment in the movie, though (and i’ve noticed i’m not the only one to call this one out) is when the investigation into the conspiracy seems to hit a brick wall and scotty announces mournfully, “then we’re dead.” the moment is held just long enough for us to feel its weight, and then spock breaks it by calmly declaring, “i’ve been dead before.” it’s a very small dramatic turn that lasts barely more than 30 seconds, but the movie is just peppered with little moments like this that really make it what it is.


the undiscovered country also managed to be very self-aware of its status as the last film featuring the original crew and gave them a very tasteful sendoff. we get to see our beloved crew sail off into the somewhat literal sunset. kirk provides a voiceover that never fails to make me tear up a little because the entire moment feels like such a culmination of all the shared history of three seasons of television, six movies, and countless lives touched. the original star trek crew took us on a journey that we never wanted to end, but despite our unwillingness, they found a way to end it on a satisfying note. that is no small feat.


captain sulu spinoff when. a-rank


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notes


1. neumann, mikey. “movies with mikey: the story of star trek.” youtube, uploaded by filmjoy, 21 february 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA7OTFp_kDI


2. whitney, grace lee and jim denney. the longest trek: my tour of the galaxy, quill driver books, 1998.


3. which isn’t to say that some of the people who cleaned up his messes weren’t assholes, too. the part of the broader strokes narrative that i was familiar with in the past that i still agree with is that rick berman can go to hell, but that’s a rant for another day.


4. also, i’m not super sure “good”/“bad” is an especially helpful framing for talking about movies in the first place anymore, but y’know.


5. for the record, roddenberry said they recommissioned the yorktown. which is hilarious because you see that ship’s captain in one of the starfleet command scenes calling for assistance, and you’re like “hey bud, i don’t want to make your day worse or anything but…” but that isn’t canon and there is an alternate explanation floating out there so who knows. but i just love the yorktown explanation because it makes that part of the movie just very tragically funny.


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