u/jman24601

I quite enjoyed the portrayal of the Dragonseeds in Season 2 of HotD, in particular the portrayal of Hugh Hammer is quite intriguing as I would argue it is the strongest improvement of the source material in making him the son of Saera Targaryen. That makes Hugh riding Vermithor both more fitting and ironic simultaneously. Fitting that Jaehaerys grandson is Vermithor's rider. But ironic that Vermithor went with the grandson of Jaehaerys that Jaehaerys refused to acknowledge.

But going beyond that I also speculate that this season we will get more into Hugh's parentage and that slight entitlement which makes more sense for why he had delusions of the Crown than in Fire & Blood. A distant relative of some Targaryen is a long shot for the crown even with the biggest dragon, but the grandson of Jaehaerys riding Jaehaerys' dragon? It still is crazy, but I can more understand Hugh's ambition.

But what prompted me to speculate is this, we know that Hugh will betray Rhaenyra, but his teaser poster is Burn Love. So does Hugh accidentally kill his wife, and does that drive him to betray the Blacks, or does she die and that very fact cause him to snap and pull a Bells on Tumbleton?

My first time reactions and thoughts on the genuinely infamous Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. But is it really THAT bad?

The Worst One? – I have gotten through at last all of the odd numbered original series movies and let me just say unfortunately the reputations are true. The Motion Picture is not so much a movie as a bloated TV Pilot/TV Movie that stretches itself out by having people look at things. The Search for Spock is competent and entertaining, but it never quite works because it does not seem to know what it wants to be beyond resurrecting Spock. The Final Frontier has effects that do not look great, has themes done so much better in previous episodes, the Sybok-Spock relationship is undercooked, and it is nowhere near as profound as it hopes and should be.

I may be bold to say that of the odd ones The Final Frontier is much more of a movie compared to the stiff cerebral piece that is The Motion Picture.  Also, in The Final Frontier’s defense at least the crew is behaving closer to themselves and not being intentionally different and having no camaraderie as is the case with The Motion Picture. But, then again, the ideas in The Motion Picture are genuinely thought provoking and intriguing, and the visuals are genuinely captivating. Meanwhile, The Final Frontier just is not the amazing science-fiction adventure movie it wants to be. Quite frankly I would prefer that Sybok’s goals are discussed and developed more within the first 30 minutes to get more into the strange and genuinely bold idea of searching for God.

Why Would God Need a Starship? – According to most reports for so long Gene Roddenberry wanted the crew of the Enterprise to meet God. Eventually he got a version of that in The Animated Series, in that the crew of the Enterprise would go to the center of the galaxy and met the Devil, with Kirk forced to defend the Devil’s right to existence.

I know some may say that was an episode of The Animated Series, so it does not count. But this is not the first time that Star Trek has effectively remade an episode into a movie and much as it was for The Motion Picture, I am afraid The Final Frontier is inferior to a 24-minute animated episode.  

The Magics of Megas-Tu was banned from re-airing due to complaints from certain infuriated Christian parents at the themes of that episode. That episode is also much more intriguing  both from concepts, general ideas, and Kirk is both more heroic and intriguing in his words and actions in that one episode than in a movie directed by Shatner himself.

The notion that the crew of the Enterprise would be even remotely considering that the “God” that they meet is the God of Abrahamic religions seems a little bit of a leap. Even forgetting that they met Lucifer and Kukulakan as those were animated adventures and “don’t count”, they met the Greek god Apollo who assured them that the other Olympian gods were real once. They have seen Trelane. They have met the Plutonians. They have met the Organians. At this point, they must not be that surprised that there is a being that has powers greater than most sapient life they encounter. This is one of the reasons that “Why does God need a starship?” is such an in-character moment for the eternally skeptical and open-minded Kirk. After all, Kirk has gotten many a computer to blow-up, he has dealt with haughty gods before, how is this entity supposed to really make Kirk pause for a moment?

Wasted Potential – There are good concepts in this movie that are wasted.

Just the idea of the perils of navigating “the Barrier” sounds like an excellent visual section that could rival The Empire Strikes Back’s asteroid field sequence. But I guess if we focused on that we would not get scenes of singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. Also having to delicately navigate some dangerous area while being chased by hostile forces? We've seen that in Wrath of Khan and that was fantastic!

I don’t mind watching Kirk, Spock, and McCoy camping. That feels in character, and what they do while is also mostly in character. It’s absolutely silly in a movie that is supposedly dealing with concepts of looking for God and going to Heaven, but then again, they did not want it as dour and serious as the concept suggested.

The Crew Get to Do Something – I must say that contrary to Shatner’s reputation, he gives a hugely dramatic moment to Bones, Spock, and does have the crew get to do things on their own. While still Kirk is the main character, the closest he gets to a Captain’s speech is when he disputes that he is fine with living with pain and wants it in his life.

They also oddly seem to hint at Uhura and Scotty romance that unfortunately does not go anywhere.

On the other hand it is somewhat tiresome to have the crew be mind controlled yet again. I preferred all of this thread in This Side of Paradise to what is presented here. For one the mind control and the Trek-like message railing against the lazy hippie communes was worthwhile compared to just this minor underdeveloped subplot.

To mildly address it, I rolled my eyes that the big moment that Shatner and the producers give to Uhura in this movie has to be her doing a fan dance. It is Original Series Trek, so they had Uhura and other women wear ridiculous outfits numerous times, so even in 1989 apparently they cannot resist getting some adolescent boys moments. Something the series will not get better at, looking at you Into Darkness. But mild points for progressive, it is nice to see a 50+ woman presented as being sexy, and this was in 1989!

Star Trek The Silhouettes! – The one striking visual in favor of the cinematographer and Shatner’s visual eye is that the movie has these striking silhouette shots. Alas if only the other visuals were up to par with these nice shots.

Also, it is wonderful to have Jerry Goldsmith back who does excellent work. Too bad it's again in a lackluster Trek movie.

Sybok We Hardly Knew You – In point of this movie being underdeveloped and not thought well enough, it is immediately striking to see a Vulcan who behaves in the opposite manner of a Vulcan. Just that alone is enough to inspire some intriguing discussions about emotions vs logic being a key to enlightenment.

The performance for Sybok by Laurence Luckinbill is excellent, but his actual character arc is unfortunately too familiar. A well-meaning misguided man who tries to find answers that we all seek, only to have been tragically led to a false god. I think in a better movie, I would see Sybok use his pain healing methods to actually heal the angry god and have him join the crew of the Enterprise.

To sound somewhat Keith RA DeCandido, I am honestly somewhat annoyed at the end that they torpedo “God”. At least in Who Mourns for Adonais? Apollo was going to enslave the crew of the Enterprise which motivated the crew to have to end his life. Here, while “God” zaps some people, it does not seem like he can actually take the Enterprise or the crew, so why not just leave him there?

Also again, the relationship between Sybok and Spock should be far more central to the story. That it is not, and that there is no dynamic explored of the fact that Sybok is full-Vulcan and yet rejects the Vulcan ways compared to Spok being half-Vulcan and embracing Vulcan culture seems a sorely missed dramatic opportunity. Again, none of this is done so that the drama is focused more on Kirk, so it is not really Shatner’s ego having anything to do with the movie not being enough about Spock and Sybok.

Would I Watch This One Again? – Honestly, probably not. The movie did not test my patience like The Motion Picture, or annoy/upset me as Into Darkness did. But this is not horrendous enough to be fascinating, nor on the cusp of excellent like The Search for Spock, or The Motion Picture to really be one I will actively seek to watch. But I did not hate this movie, and honestly Shatner has nothing to be ashamed of for this movie. This is hardly the worst Star Trek movie.

Here are my stray thoughts after seeing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for the first time.

Our Ongoing Mission – It is quite intriguing and something that Star Trek really does not often repeat is serialized storytelling. To be clear, it is not something as serialized as Lord of the Rings or that other sci-fi series, Dune. But, The Voyage Home immediately picks up after The Search for Spock with the crew of the Enterprise now operating the captured Klingon vessel (HMS Bounty) with the movie framed with discussion of the previous movie as a potential act of war in the eyes of the Klingon’s and certainly a court martial offense in the eyes of the Federation. It is intriguing to see so much of previous stories factor into the story that is being told. That is not to say this is a MCU movie of heavy continuity, but like The Animated Series, as the series progressed the writers seem to be more comfortable with a continuity of sorts, which brings us up to the next point.

We’ve Done This Before – A very fair critique of the Star Trek TOS crew movies is that they are sometimes transparently remakes of previous Star Trek stories/episodes. The Motion Picture is sometimes dubbed “Where Nomad Has Gone Before”. In some ways The Wrath of Khan is a higher-stakes version of Balance of Terror. It is bemusing how much the crew of the Enterprise immediately acknowledge that they have traveled through time before. There is no discussion on the possibility of time travel, or time travel paradoxes, or general rules of time travel. We’ve seen Kirk and crew go through that more than once in one season of the show, let alone across the series. At this point, it’s just more that they are concerned with the logistics of being able to time travel and getting home.

In terms of similar plot beats, we yet again have basically an equivalent to V’ger coming to Earth and is accidentally destructive. But unlike The Motion Picture, while Kirk does consider using destructive force, once assured of the futility and in a quintessential Star Trek moment, he is trying to understand the goal of the entity which leads to the new adventure.

The Funny One – This is remembered as the “funny” Star Trek movie, and indeed, compared to how stiff The Motion Picture was in general; this is a much more lighthearted movie. It probably would have gone to a possibly distracting level of comedy if they went with the original intention of having Eddie Murphy be the doctor in the movie.

What I say in my encounters with the Star Trek Movies is that they more often reflect The Original Series/Animated Series, of that they could bounce from something as serious and tragic as Balance of Terror to something as delightful as I, Mudd. The movies can go from something as cerebral as The Motion Picture, to a submarine character drama in Wrath of Khan, to now a time travel comedy movie and none of these genre shifts are jarring.

The funnier episodes of Trek generally also did not make it a habit to suddenly have the characters randomly become cartoons. Instead the series was open to having a more ridiculous or silly conflict with some of the humor being Kirk exasperated at dealing with someone as irritating as Trelane. So, a Star Trek movie being closer to a comedy is not really such a sudden shift for this series.

Most of the comedy comes from the delightful “fish out of water” humor. My personal favorite is all the sequences of Bones being aghast at the crude medical science by his standards. In his understandable eyes, it would be like a doctor from The Pitt suddenly seeing the saws in the US Civil War.

We Must Break the Prime Directive – Compared to how Star Trek will eventually go in the TNG era, it is bemusing just how much the crew does not seem to remotely care about the Prime Directive or in this case Temporal Prime Directive. Granted almost always the Prime Directive was mentioned in TOS only to immediately be broken.

We have Scotty nonchalantly giving aware future technology, and McCoy give future medication that allows an elderly woman to grow a new kidney. Luckily the movie does not seem hellbent on the butterfly effect. But the most blatant blasé attitude to changing history, and one that some grumble makes one wonder why this did not apply to Edith Keeler, is that Kirk and crew end up taking Dr. Taylor with them.

All the Crew Matter – Every member of the core 7 of the HMS Bounty gets a good moment in the movie. They do give some good moments to Uhura from her helping out with the whale signals to having a trip with Checkov. Of course this is the movie that has the most fun with Checkov’s accent. But my favorite crew member moment of this movie goes to Sulu with his piloting of the helicopter. Just fun to show that a starship is hardly the only thing Sulu can fly.

The Popular One – In some ways, The Voyage Home is the best exemplar of Star Trek. I am comfortable saying that this is a better reference point for what is Star Trek for moviegoers curious to experience The Original Series over something as magnificent as The Wrath of Khan.

The Voyage Home is, in the most complimentary sense of the phrase, a crowd pleaser. It is fun, light-hearted, funny, and yet there is some medicine with the sugar. The movie carries a blunt but necessary message about saving whales made at a time when the whale populations was down to 10,000. That it is the crew of the Enterprise delivering the not-subtle message that saving the whales guarantees Earth’s survival makes this more warmly embraced than the same message coming from Captain Planet.

The film does not feel preachy, but this absolutely is an openly liberal message that we must not let the future depicted in Star Trek be true in the case of hunting the whales to extinction.

The message is given with such a smile, and it captures the utopian optimism of Roddenberry that you will be smiling throughout this fun movie. This is a movie that is happy endings, optimism, and belief in humanity and the betterment of society. It is very much a great showcase for Trek.

I have written about this before but I recently revisited Under Siege via audiobook, and I just want to again say if you want the major themes and previews of ASOIAF, Under Siege is probably the biggest preview of Bran, Stannis, and Tyrion you will ever encounter.

Firstly we have this major story of a fortress that is on the verge of collapse that the Swedes are holding off Russian incursions. All the while there is a game of thrones type of debate on whether or not to surrender. How similar is that to the Siege of Riverrun or the Siege of the Wall?

Beyond that the very concept of Geek-ing and possession by the dwarf main character from the future is an all-to obvious parallel to warging and the dubious nature of bodily possession attempted by Varamyr Six Skins and other characters.

But at the heart of this magnificent story is also the central debate weighed by Stannis and Davos, "What is one man's life against the lives of thousands?" The protagonist of Under Siege is about to sacrifice the person on the vague promises that it will prevent the formation of the Soviet Union and therefore the nuclear war that destroyed them. But beyond how there are implications that this sacrifice will lead to a massacre, that there just could be a change of nations engaged in nuclear war, and that they are sacrificing a good and innocent man on all of this is so dangerous. All of that ties to Stannis Baratheon and the dream of Stone Dragons arising with the blood of Edrik Storm, and his eventual destiny to face the Cold as Azor Ahai with the blood of that whom he loves most.

Did Maekar incline to his brother for forgiveness for the Blackfyre Rebels or did he ironically support Bloodraven and urged execution of the rebels?