I'll probably get burned alive for this.
First Contact had a really promising start, great opening score, space battle, tension building. Then as soon as they go through the temporal rift. Film grinds to a halt and stays there all the rest of the movie. I just could not get into it.
I just prefer Nemesis and Insurrection, yeah they were a bit silly to the more serious First Contact but I just love them more. I thought the characters were better, visuals were better more 'fun'. First Contact for me plodded after the start, characters were boring, it was just the Enterprise crew being chased by Doctor who Cybermen, the Borg Queen trying to get Data off and Riker chasing a drunk chasing Troi.
How many out there feel the same as I do?
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it's so predictably 'trekkie' to classify by which one you hate the most or least ....
---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----
but they messed up Nemesis with the bs happy end story line, it was the wrong way to go,
a strong romulus and remus alliance story line with a fed need to pull back in the end could have started a new long cold war and we would have had a 5 to 10 season show.
now first JJ was good and second one was good too, but the why the hell didnt they start new show from the first one, they are waesting idea with the 90 min movie instaed of a 24 episodes 45 min long show with a open door for many season to come
now to you all JJ haters, the TOS was good, but with all we can do today it could blow our mind IF done right
TOS/Babylon wirters did very good job with what they had at the times and ds9 was very good , now voyager and TNG was good but with few episodes well I anyway jump over some of them.
now Enterprise was good idea but got derailed.
but the few Mirror Universe episodes over the year had open my narrow minded view. so at the start of JJ The Future Begins there was no shock, non-like when I saw this for the first time
I'm with Tacofangs on this. First Contact was excellent, and it actually had a movie worthy story, in my opinion. I don't mind Nemesis, it's got some good stuff. I remember the biggest draw for it it had going was Dina Meyer as a Romulan. Insurrection to me felt like little more than a lost two part episode, something that could have been a midseason cliffhanger.
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
Yep, I think so, too.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
This is my order as well, but I didn't find Nemesis as horrible as everybody else did, either.
Insurrection.... Yeah I didn't like that one...
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
Insurrection was terrible and forgettable. The Ba'ku were worthless, and it was not at all clear why the enterprise was working so hard to save them. It seemed more like Frakes' excuse to do a bathtub scene with Sirtis. I barely even remember the skin graft enemy dudes.
I will say, Data going haywire was a great start to Insurrection.
Insurrection was a solid 'middle of the pack' Trek movie. I really do like it quite a lot, and I think it's a shame that more fans don't get into it. It's got some really fun elements, a good core theme throughout, a chance for Picard and crew to stand true with that strong moral backbone that makes Star Trek so important, and it's got an enemy that is compelling and multidimensional. It would've made an excellent two part episode of Trek, but it does lack some of that 'big screen' magic that First Contact had. All in all, it's very underrated.
Nemesis was a travesty. It was recycled, the enemy was unimportant and uninteresting, the whole 'clone Picard' angle was trite and without any depth, it swept too many key characters into worthless background roles, many aspects of the story were ill considered. And I shouldn't have to say this- but THERE ARE NO BOTTOMLESS PITS ON THE ENTERPRISE!! This isn't Star Wars! Nemesis' biggest problem was that Jonathan Frakes didn't direct, but considering that he didn't, you'd think they could've found a more central role for Picard's Number One... but again, he was shuffled into the background quite a bit. The end of Nemesis was again, recycled as most of the movie was from TWoK, and left me saddened and angered that this was the sendoff for the most important ensemble cast in my life. Just sucks. I hate Nemesis.
By contrast, First Contact turned the Borg into caricatures of their former selves (suddenly they're space vampires, and they don't even try to handwave how Picard suddenly out of nowhere knows exactly what to shoot at to destroy the cube), time travel is an automatic black mark, and I prefer the portrayal of Zefram Cochrane from the Reeves-Stevenses' novel Federation, which this movie jossed a good third of.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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And yet even as much as those horrid characterizations annoy me, its still better than Insurrection.
I like watching Plinkett's reviews tear the TNG movies new ones. Even First Contact isn't spared.
Insurrection would be my 2nd. As it had a great story line. And showed the moral side of Federation. Where there was a reason to help them out and discover the bad side. Action wise was just as good as it blended a nice mix as well.
Last would be Nemesis. The story was kinda lacking and some of it seemed off. Good idea for a story plot. Just acted like it couldn't get a good start. However action wise it was good, plenty of that. Just hoped they would done another movie to show the outcome of that one. And from DS9 or Voyager crew. Instead we get a reboot of garbage.
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Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Why? the plot bored the crud out of me. We're fighting the Borg for the 7 millionth time.... Starfleet inexplicably decides to keep the guy who is best at it away from the battle, then the admiral who made that stupid decision gets KIA. Picard shows up to save the day and wastes the Borg cube in minutes. Except the Borg had a backup plan and chaos ensues... It had a lot of good moments(like the Borg Queen), but overall the plot was kinda tired and over used.
To me, Nemesis and Insurrection had much better plot concepts. Sure they each had bad moments, but the basic ideas to the stories were better IMO.
My character Tsin'xing
1) Data is a moron, and that target WAS a vital system (perhaps it's where the borg store all their dynamite?), and Picard knows this because he's psychic/leftover information from being assimilated/a wizard did it :V
Or the far more plausible interpretation:
2) The target doesn't matter, what matters is that the entire fleet masses their firepower on one spot in a 'time on target' style attack to defeat the borg's shields. Concentrated firepower>dispersed firepower. You do more effective damage that way.
Given these two competing interpretations (they can't BOTH be right), which do you think is more reasonable? That Data is an idiot and wrong and Picard somehow knows that the target has some special vulernability? Or that for the first time ever, someone in charge of a Fleet came up with the rather obvious idea of time-on-targeting the entire fleet's arsenal on one spot? Especially since we have some idea of how Wolf 359 was fought thanks to the opening scene of 'Emissary' where we see phasers fire all over the place and a Fleet of ~40 starships only having small ones and twos groupings of starships approach the cube? (where were the other ~36 starships that Adm. Hanson was commanding? What the hell were they doing?)
Bear in mind that raw power does defeat Borg frequency adaptation, with numerous canon examples of this, and interpretation #2 becomes even more compelling.
At that stage we only had the next gen episodes. This was about the 5th encounter with the borg at this stage. The initial ep, best of both worlds, a single drone in hugh and the disconnected ones in decent. Hardly over kill at that time with only a couple of them being proper encounters. They were the natural choice of villains for the films at that time. If anything Voyager was more at fault for over using them.
their reasons were hardly inexplicable either. He (not through choice) killed 11'000 people and destroyed 39 of their ships. they know next to nothing about borg tech and their capabilities. he could in their eyes have very easily turned up and begun acting strangly. hindsight is a wonderful thing but before you know whats going to happen he could have been as big of a threat as a help.
Star Trek in it's essence is truly about exploration, human soul, friendship, morality, not so much about fighting. Problem is people have changed over time, and now people value fighting in movies more than they do all these important moral features. First contact and Insurrection had much more of that. In FC Picard had to deal with his inner conflict with the Borg, having to overcome what happened to him, and he had to be willing to even destroy his ship. In Insurrection we saw how much the crew valued their Captain, and that they would even go against their orders to do the right thing. It had morality in it, and the crew feeling pity on the locals of the Ba'Ku village. In Nemesis all it was was an action flick. All there was to it was just fighting (not including of course Data's sacrifice and Picard trying to understand his twin). Most of the movie purely concentrated on fighting, and nothing else at all. Another great movie previously was the Undiscovered Country.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
What did I like about Insurrection and Nemesis?
Well, Insurrection was a very big morality tale. One thing I've heard about it several times was that it felt like it could have easily been a 2-3 part episode instead of a movie. I can easily understand that. The crux of the story is in determining who owns the Briar Patch and the resources therein. Dougherty, and apparently others in the Federation, claim it as Federation territory. But, the truth is that the Baku territorial claim supercedes that of the Federation. Dougherty even admitted that after Picard confronted him about it. That aspect of it is what made it such a compelling story for me.
Nemesis was cool primarily because of the way it looked at Romulan politics from the inside. That was awesome and something we hadn't gotten to see before. I have to admit that the "human clone stages a military coup" angle was kinda weird, but it worked reasonably well IMO.
My character Tsin'xing
It was a vulnerable point on the Cube and Data's still a genius. Data was looking at the ship's sensors. Picard was eavesdropping on the Collective.
Data didn't say that wasn't a vital system. He said that did not appear to be a vital system. And he knew that a Borg Cube was generally decentralized and massively redundant, meaning it shouldn't have any easily exploitable weaknesses. But obviously there can be weaknesses, in a ship that already has battle damage and who knows what else going on.
While they all had their moments, all in all they just didn't cut it.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Sorry, that's what it boils down to. 'Picard had first hand knowledge'. So does Data, as he's been on away teams in Borg cubes as well. Besides which, Picard had first hand knowledge of one Borg cube, not that particular one. Are all cubes identical? 'Data's knowledge is limited to scanning *snip*' Yeah, but so what? Their scans are the point I'm making here - he says that it doesn't appear to be a vital system. That's actually not at all surprising, since the Borg have decentralised designs. It wouldn't make sense that there's this one spot on all cubes where if you fire on it they blow up.
Data's an idiot then. There's no ifs or buts about it. You can't have it both ways.
Yes but he doesn't communicate that information to Data in response. If that spot was vital because he heard it via the psychic link, then he could have replied with that information to Data. But if that were the case, Data was still wrong, because it WAS a vital system.
Instead Picard replies 'Trust me, Data.'
Uh, the distinction you're making between both sentences is irrelevant. Seriously this is semantic nitpicking. The gist of what he was saying is that the target Picard selected wasn't any kind of obvious 'SHOOT ME' target.
You guys are overcomplicating this example. Data said the spot didn't appear to be a vital system, and yet the fleet's combined firepower broke through the Borg shielding and blew it up. Either he's wrong, and it WAS a vital system, or he was RIGHT, and it WASN'T a vital system, and the borg blew up for another reason.
That fact that you brought up the Borg design philosophy of decentralisation just arms my case for me. If cubes and so on truly are decentralised, then there shouldn't be a vital system at all. Certainly not on the surface of a cube, if anything the vital systems should be buried deep within the superstructure. In 'BOBW' they estimate something like three quarters of a cube could be severely damaged and yet still be functional.
Besides which, what kind of vital system could it possibly be anyway? It can't be the warp core, since that's buried deep within the Borg cube's superstructure. Ammo dump? Is that spot where the Borg keep all their dynamite? No seriously - I'm not being facetious. If it's a vital system then there must be some vital function it fulfils. What function can that system be that if it were fired upon would result in catastrophic destruction of the entire ship? The only thing I can think of is an ammo dump. But if this is so, they're pretty stupid - any target that close to the surface is just asking for trouble. And if it were an ammo dump, then it really should be apparent from sensors. But that doesn't jive with the whole 'decentralised ship design' thing the Borg have got going, and the previous example from 'BOBW' where they said three quarters or thereabouts of a cube could be damaged and the ship wouldn't lose functionality.
And really my final point is that this was in response to someone who believed that Picard gleaned tactical information from the Borg via eavesdropping on them, which he accused the writers of handwaving that psychic link away without any explanation. You guys seem quite keen to accept that psychic link without question. My whole point is you can interpret that scene one of two ways, and the way you guys have chosen to interpret it means that Data is a moron, and Picard has psychic powers which the writers handwaved away. Or the Fleet's combined firepower is enough to penetrate the borg shields and thus it blew up. This interpretation means that Data isn't a moron, Picard's psychic link to the Collective wasn't a factor in the cube's destruction, the writers didn't handwave away anything and it is also consistent with other examples where the borg are defeated by raw firepower rather than deus ex machina plot devices.
I don't even understand how this is so controversial. All Picard did was call a time-on-target artillery barrage with the Fleet's firepower. That... actually IS a great and effective military tactic. It's effective for a reason, because combining firepower is far, far more effective than dispersed firepower. There's a reason why the military does this in real life.
My character Tsin'xing