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Into Darkness vs. STO (mega spoilers)
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
It's interesting to me how Star Trek (2009) was cited as a model for STO by many fans, players, and reviewers. The action focus. The design sensibilities. Even the lens flares.
What's interesting to me was how Into Darkness managed to be non-stop action while being the anti-STO in certain respects... and simultaneously having designs that reflected STO.
The similarities can be boiled down to three points.
1. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. The aliens were often very alien. From Kirk's one night stands to Ruk serving on the bridge of the 1701. It practically seemed that the briefer a character's appearance, the more inclined the filmmakers were to make the character look inhuman or alien. Even the Klingons got their "character slider" restrictions tossed. In turn, Starfleet had so many uniforms as to render the idea of a uniform moot. The TOS short skirt mods were back but in short and long sleeved variants. Kirk wore probably 3-4 uniforms in the film. The jackets with transparent windows to show division color undershirts seemed especially STO-like.
2. Action! Rifles are everywhere!
3. Ship combat is often stationary and on a plane. Small ships turn. Big ships point and fire.
The differences can be boiled down in several points:
1. Clunky ships = bad guys. Menacing ships? Bad guys.
2. Never trust an admiral. An old Trek trope, reinforced here. Admirals are not your friends and not the heroes.
3. Orders are a suggestion.
4. You can always team with the bad guy.
5. The Prime Directive matters.
6. The Federation doesn't want to fight the Klingons. Section 31? Yes. Starfleet? No.
7. Starfleet officers always try to reason with their enemies.
7. Phasers set to stun. In an action packed movie with lots of fighting and a massive bodycount, the heroes walked out of this film responsible for none of the deaths. Hated how they killed Nero last time? They went the opposite route this time. There is precisely one death in the entire film attributable to a Starfleet officer and that's an indirect death, when Scotty opens the airlock and the Section 31 grunt proves too stupid to recognize a countdown.
The officers in this film saved their enemies every time they could. They rescued the augments. They rescued Khan. They didn't kill Marcus and locked phasers on stun. They didn't kill the Klingons (Khan did).
Try finding a mission in STO with a player-driven bodycount as low as Into Darkness.
Heck, try find as many lines about how Starfleet isn't supposed to be military, how exploration is the prime focus. How often do you see a pacifist willing to resign over moral objections?
I was even dismissive of some of this criticism three years ago but after watching Into Darkness, I'm left feeling that the Starfleet of STO isn't run by Undine and isn't making necessary sacrifices but is Section 31.
Section 31 in the film wears one of the STO uniforms. They use rifles. They want cannons on their cruisers and use dark hulls on ships with kibble-heavy designs. They want war with the Klingons. They want better gear and are involved with weapons crafting and special weapons consoles (long range drone torpedoes). The STO similarities were so pronounced that I'd practically expect a Featured Episode series in STO where it turns out Quinn, Yanishev, and T'nae are ALL Section 31, along with others.
What's interesting to me was how Into Darkness managed to be non-stop action while being the anti-STO in certain respects... and simultaneously having designs that reflected STO.
The similarities can be boiled down to three points.
1. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. The aliens were often very alien. From Kirk's one night stands to Ruk serving on the bridge of the 1701. It practically seemed that the briefer a character's appearance, the more inclined the filmmakers were to make the character look inhuman or alien. Even the Klingons got their "character slider" restrictions tossed. In turn, Starfleet had so many uniforms as to render the idea of a uniform moot. The TOS short skirt mods were back but in short and long sleeved variants. Kirk wore probably 3-4 uniforms in the film. The jackets with transparent windows to show division color undershirts seemed especially STO-like.
2. Action! Rifles are everywhere!
3. Ship combat is often stationary and on a plane. Small ships turn. Big ships point and fire.
The differences can be boiled down in several points:
1. Clunky ships = bad guys. Menacing ships? Bad guys.
2. Never trust an admiral. An old Trek trope, reinforced here. Admirals are not your friends and not the heroes.
3. Orders are a suggestion.
4. You can always team with the bad guy.
5. The Prime Directive matters.
6. The Federation doesn't want to fight the Klingons. Section 31? Yes. Starfleet? No.
7. Starfleet officers always try to reason with their enemies.
7. Phasers set to stun. In an action packed movie with lots of fighting and a massive bodycount, the heroes walked out of this film responsible for none of the deaths. Hated how they killed Nero last time? They went the opposite route this time. There is precisely one death in the entire film attributable to a Starfleet officer and that's an indirect death, when Scotty opens the airlock and the Section 31 grunt proves too stupid to recognize a countdown.
The officers in this film saved their enemies every time they could. They rescued the augments. They rescued Khan. They didn't kill Marcus and locked phasers on stun. They didn't kill the Klingons (Khan did).
Try finding a mission in STO with a player-driven bodycount as low as Into Darkness.
Heck, try find as many lines about how Starfleet isn't supposed to be military, how exploration is the prime focus. How often do you see a pacifist willing to resign over moral objections?
I was even dismissive of some of this criticism three years ago but after watching Into Darkness, I'm left feeling that the Starfleet of STO isn't run by Undine and isn't making necessary sacrifices but is Section 31.
Section 31 in the film wears one of the STO uniforms. They use rifles. They want cannons on their cruisers and use dark hulls on ships with kibble-heavy designs. They want war with the Klingons. They want better gear and are involved with weapons crafting and special weapons consoles (long range drone torpedoes). The STO similarities were so pronounced that I'd practically expect a Featured Episode series in STO where it turns out Quinn, Yanishev, and T'nae are ALL Section 31, along with others.
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Comments
Loved the Section 31 references
tails rule hahaah...hmm memory alpha (for the summary) says the girls in the one night stand were caitians....did they actually look like caitians? hehehh
I found the part with Bones talking about the emergency c-section for the Gorn pretty funny
So you can say you're not really killing anyone... you're just stunning them badly so they can be put in Starfleet prisons.
So... JJ turned the unsung heroes of the Federation into mustache twirling villains? Surprised I am not.
I agree with all of your points except this one. Each uniform displayed in Into Darkness had a specific purpose or utility but there is only 1 standard duty uniform.
all this tells me is that jjcrapverse has a twisted morals universe and unpredictable behavior, which by itself is nothing special as just one person, but as a starfleet officer representing starfleet and the people of the federation and their needs it just shows how bad abramscrapverse is if its all shoot first ask questions later, then suddenly save everyone even your enemy in a naive way to hold hands and play friends... no, it's likely to swing the other way doubtless in the next film.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I think if you're reading Section 31 as "unsung heroes" then you really didn't pay attention to their portrayal in DS9 or Enterprise.
EDIT: I love the nerd-rage some of you show toward the newer Trek movies. And even better that you're completely ignoring what the OP wrote in order to get a snide remark in, aimed at? Nobody in particular?
don't forget they used odo to try and kill off all changeling sorry but they where not good guys in the show to
this why I didn't expected to play Tal Shiar because they where bad guys to a point in the show but I did expect to play for the romulan military
system Lord Baal is dead
Seriously! They're way better movies than any TNG film.
Don't go into the movies looking for the slower pacing and action-less scenes of the TV show. TV and movies are completely different mediums in regards to pacing. The last time someone tried to make a Trek movie like the TV show, we got Insurrection -- I'd rather see an actual film, thanks.
you can called use say Title of rank you want to show...... rank bar you can pick not show that to
system Lord Baal is dead
actresses were actually TWINS.
imho the Section 31 reference (there was just one) was way too short, most movie goers will have no idea what that means or how that impacts the story.
Gorn C-Section -> that was a direct nod to the Gorn Videogame, too bad that while it happened inside the games timeframe, you don't get to actually see it, but Bones only tells us about it in a Voice Over.
@Topic:
i completely agree with everything but the first sentence. that ST09 connection you are pulling out of your rear end, nobody ever said that STO had anything to do with STXI. (well nothing beyond Hobus Nova and Romulus being destroyed... from which we are now receiving the fallout)
Stun setting should totally be a thing in STO, disabling Ships should totally be a thing for STO.
To make matters worse, that Gorn Videogame has a Stun setting... stupid enough, you have to run up to the enemy and knock him out.
All this nonsense about "Fun > Canon" or "Gameplay > Canon" ... nope not acceptable.
"Canon = Fun" and if your Gameplay doesn't work well with Canon then that is just simply bad gamedesign or you recycled the wrong game engine for your trek game, a Trek game should be designed from the ground up to work with what people expect from it and not work against it.
yeah i figured as much
yeah realized i put an S in there and never went back to correct it haha
thats true lol
It's funny to me because I'm pointing out a list of things the JJverse did this time that reinforced classic Trek points and there are people attacking the idea of a Federation that avoids lethal force or pursues a scientific mandate because the JJverse did it. That is, if they read the post and didn't just come out swinging at the mention of JJ Abrams.
I'd think if somebody DIDN'T like Into Darkness, they might be more upset that STO has less in common with the Prime Universe than Into Darkness does in some ways.
This isn't a total dumping on STO (or Abrams) thread for me. Both did a lot right and a few things wrong. But I think as much as STO could initially stand behind the 2009 reboot as "this is how new audiences see Star Trek and how we have to do it" at one point, Into Darkness reverses a lot of that.
It's still joke-y and action-y but the funny thing for me is that as much as it is that, the Into Darkness Kirk would be considerably more serious about a lot of things that the game has never taken seriously under the pretense of being an action game... And still wind up in a more exciting action sequence while standing against senseless violence/killing.
I feel like Into Darkness could be a very good template for STO in terms of looking at how to do action without making your heroes overly militaristic or butchers, which we sometimes feel a bit like.
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I like the STID formal grey uniforms with caps.
I like the STID Klingons. I realize the premise behind "The Trouble with Tribbles" would have been more difficult to believe with this version of Klingons, though.
I like the STID Klingon D4 vs. the D4 that looks just like a D7 in other Star Trek works.
I prefer the TOS (and thus STO) Enterprise bridge.
Now...if someone would be kind enough to make a client mod that makes the ugly STO Caitians look like the STID Caitians, I'd be forever grateful.
For me:
STID formal uniforms ALL look like TMP uniforms with a more military cut. They have the same color schemes, although we didn't see any tan ones. Officers in grey. Medical in white. Admiralty/ship commanders in grey with a white chest stripe. Rank on the shoulders. It's one thing I like about the JJ verse that they seem to have adopted, more or less, TOS uniforms for duty assignments and TMP uniforms for military dress. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a variant of WoK for diplomatic dress if they want to present a less hard edged vibe for formal occasions. (Ie. I could see them using a version of WoK for state dinners, balls, and galas.) It's a nice mix of Kirk era uniforms with a purpose behind each.
I'm guessing soft canon sources will establish that JJverse Klingons used a more crude method of reversing the augment virus, which resulted in the "super-Klingon" look. Maybe something they took when they had the Narada in custody. It doesn't necessarily affect Trouble with Tribbles because Arne Darvin was surgically altered to look human. (And the soft canon sources show him as having forehead and spine ridges before the surgery. So he probably never looked like the TOS Klingons.)
The Enterprise ship was never actually called a D4; that was a fan/soft-canon supposition. My preference is towards the STID ships being the D4 and maybe the Enterprise ships being a D5 or early D7 prototype.
Who wouldn't prefer the classic bridge? That said, the JJ bridge with the lights knocked out looks more like the TOS bridge than I would have thought. If they'd just knock the lights down, darken the bridge, and paint the railing red, I'd really like the JJverse bridge. Overall, I felt the ship interiors were beginning to look more like glorified TOS interiors (a lot more open spaces and bridges/archways) and hope the director of the next film continues that evolution a bit. Heck, the brewery main engineering would look better to me with a bit more of a black and gunmetal color scheme and some red grating.
I suspect and hope the next film will place more of the character moments on the ship. The five year mission should finally start to setup the idea that the ship is home.
One thing that did sell Kirk's rapid promotion for me from the last film is that this time, they establish a few things:
- The Enterprise is not the flagship or seen as special as it was in TOS at the beginning of Into Darkness. It's just a ship and appears to be more or less a cadet ship assigned to non-vital tasks and not intended for deep space use until the retrofit.
- The Enterprise appears to have been patrolling known space, close to home, under Pike's watch.
- Kirk was resented for being handed command.
None of these points were pushed heavily but I felt like they were all well presented in the film. It does reconcile some of the absurdity of the 2009 film's ending if you imagine the Enterprise as a non-vital training ship for cadets and new graduates that stayed close to earth until its 2360 retrofit. The first film hinted at that by having Spock double as an academy instructor while acting as Pike's XO. But we got a few more snippets that seem to indicate that the JJverse ship was more or less one step above being a flight simulator until they refit it at the end. It's obviously a prized, capable ship in terms of its engine power but the implication is that it was more or less just a ship they kept relatively close and staffed with fresh graduates until the 5 year mission refit at the end.
Very, very well said. I really don't have much to add except to agree with this post in its entirety.
Spoiler: Lots of explosions and the good guys win, horrible acting as to be expected in the franchise.
I think that covers everything.
If you're looking for some mindless "boom" then go see the movie, but if you're even remotely interested in Star trek they stay away as far as possible.
Nah they are all 8472's.
Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
if STO was based on the original timeline, there would only be ONE phaser type 1, and ONE phaser type 2, only ONE phaser type 1 rifle, all Starfleet weapons would have an optional setting to be wide/narrow warm/stun/heavy stun/deadly/vaporize
NOT 5+ phasers
narrow stun
wide stun
wide beam
narrow beam
dule beam
BUT ONLY ONE PHASER per "type" (type could have been the MK#)
Kirk made reference "they gave us the most advanced ship in the fleet! Of course we're getting a five year mission!" on his way to Pike's office. The two were discussing what the meeting could be about. This was before Spock told Kirk that he had been truthful in his own report of the situation.
Mine is Missile Commander!
You really have a prejudiced opinion about this subject, don't you?
I was saying the opposite.
Always was annoying they did that, guess they had to split up the function to boost the item drops.
IMHO, they should have basic firing phasers, Uncommon having 2 settings, Rare with 3, Very Rare with 4, and Unique with 5 or more. That way the lower rarities, you could mix up the types like we have with modifiers. Or mixing up settings with modifiers.
that movie was so cool
I refuse to watch it based on how bad the previous film was, and nothing Paramount can do will ever redeem themselves in my eyes, for so long they were loyal to the fans and then they tossed all the fans out of an airlock. As far as STO and it not acting like Starfleet thats a given in an MMO, I accept that and do not consider this game cannon, the last real peice of cannon was Nemesis
What's this cannon people keep talking about is it a magic cannon, how big is this cannon, can it take out the moon....it must be powerful.
I'll take STID canon over Nemesis any day...oh god Nemesis is so horrible, oh god that killed trek for me, and pooped all over everything that was TNG....such a horrible horrible movie, I wish we could erase my memory and take out all references to that movie.
Yeah in the new Star Trek the video game which is supposed to be a prequel of this film, that exact thing happens, sulu and bones are left at the shuttle while kirk and spock go off exploring the gorn planet. Bones comes over the comm and says sulu stunned a pregnant gorn and he had to preform an emergency c-section, and the "Scaley TRIBBLE nearly ripped my face off."
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm4283150592/nm2369966
Very cute.
But seriously why are people so upset about the new Trek movies. I think they work great as movies. The TV show had the benefit of an entire season to develop characters/plots and then slowly come to a resolution. you can't do that with a two hour movie. I have watched every Trek series every movie and read a few books. JJ Trek holds up pretty well compared to most of the other Trek stuff. With that said I hope that a new TV series gets made and that it does have a different pacing then the JJ movies and is more like DS9/TNG.
Mr. Spock: And the ways our differences combine, to create meaning and beauty.
-Star Trek: Is There in Truth No Beauty? (1968)
Then don't watch it, seriously. You're the one who'll miss out, not the people who watch it. Personally, I loved the film, for many of the reasons Leviathan states. I actually found myself thinking "this is how Cryptic WISHES they could write" while watching it.
All you griefers -at least, those who actually see the film BEFORE nerdraging.... novel concept, I know- keep this in mind: if the ideals of Into Darkness are "mindless", TRIBBLE and unTrek, then you're REALLY not paying attention to STO's core message and style.
If we had all stopped watching Trek when we saw one bad episode/movie/season (and ALL the shows had each) we wouldnt've gotten very far.
Case in point: how did you get to watch Nemesis, when Insurrection was such an awful awful movie?
Lastly... don't mean to be a jerk, but your sig really should say "Boldly". Bodly is not a word.