Lois McMaster Bujold strafes Star Trek XI

[Emerson33260]

"Millions for defense, not one cent for a scriptwriter!" The new Star Trek film.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... =520145013

[Crazedwraith]

Who is the person and why should I care what they think? There's nothing there that hasn't been said here a couple of dozen times. The only think I really took note of was the retard notion that all pregnancies would end with the baby being beamed out instead of normal child birth.

nST's transporters can't even account for gravity why should be able to extract one life form from inside the other with no consequences? (All right that example doesn't scan well. But nST transporters clearly aren't that reliable; witness the widespread use of shuttles throughout the film instead. )

[Azron_Stoma]

I watched the DVD commentary, and they mentioned the beam out C section thing that people like her and even some people I know commented on.

It was used in the original script. However it resulted in Winona Kirk's death. Even though she never appeared in the film after that, they still wanted Kirk to have a mother he would know, rather than be an orphan.

[Anguirus]

Why the hell are babies not routinely and safely *transported* out of their wombs at term, skipping all the pain and drama of childbirth?

This just made me think of "The Enemy Within," and the amusing childhood fun that could result if, say, a pair of identical twins each got an evil identical twin. (Yes I know that rarely happens blah blah blah. It's still not hard to imagine that this is a time when the transporter is used as needed, not as a matter of convenience...and also not hard to imagine that escape shuttles don't have transporters.)

I suspect others have gone into the dodgy physics of the parachute drop from orbit?

I think Bad Astronomy praised them for getting it right. The key point IIRC is that the ships weren't in orbit, they were hovering at low altitude with magic station-keeping thrusters.

[Emerson33260]

Who is the person

Four-time Hugo winner, Best Novel. Best Novella Hugo and Nebula for The Mountains of Mourning. The winner of the fourth Hugo, Paladin of souls, also won a Nebula.

and why should I care what they think?

No reason you should. Doesn't appear that you are much interested in written SF.

[Mayabird]

Childbirth in the future is one of her little pet things. In her science fiction 'verse most civilized worlds grow babies in uterine replicators, as it's seen as safer on everyone and not stressful on the mother's body, plus it takes out that randomness factor where the kid could just end up with messed up genes and chromosomes. Among other things, it allowed an all-male colony to develop, where they can keep reproducing so long as they still have viable samples of ovarian tissue to get eggs.

Though speaking of beaming the babies out, I seem to remember a Sonnenburg review of one episode where they did that, and the baby, well, dissolved. "Cells lost structural integrity," or something. Which...yeah.

[Vehrec]

Even if there are artificial wombs and the ability to grow kids from scratch-which Star Trek obviously has, otherwise Spock would not exist, some people are going to by accident or design do things the old fashioned way. I do happen to agree with Crazed on the subject of 'beaming kids out of moms might be a bad idea.' What do you do if you take a slice out of the blood-rich uterine tissues and start some internal bleeding? Or what if you accidentally wrap the beam out field too tight and the kid comes out missing a few toes? Hell, they can't even get people who are falling through the air transported right without a wiz-kid at the controls. For Nu-trek, I'm with Dr. McCoy. You ain't beaming me nowhere Scotty, I'll take the shuttle. Although to be honest, critiques about utilization of technology can be leveled at almost all visual Sci-fi.

My primary critique of her review is twofold. First, she's not specific about it and it seems like she losses any interest after the first five minutes. Secondly, and far more annoyingly, she criticizes it for not being original like the first Star Trek episodes. If I had a profile to respond with, I'd tell her 'No F*cking Shit! Of course it's not original, it's STAR TREK. And it's a Remake to boot. You don't make a remake and then tell a story with absolutely no connections to the original one you're retelling. This thing has 40 years of momentum behind it, and you think a scriptwriter could somehow overturn those expectations and needs? The hard core fans who yearn for the comfort of the Magnificent Seven and would cry out for your blood if you fuck with that core crew? The lowest common denominators who make up 50% of the movie-going public and will demand explosions and tits every 10 minutes or they lose interest? Because Star Trek was never what you might call smart or hard sci-fi. It wasn't quite sweeping space opera, but it was softer in some respects than Star Wars-and that had outright magic! So why would you expect or even want that from it?'

[Patrick Degan]

Even if there are artificial wombs and the ability to grow kids from scratch-which Star Trek obviously has, otherwise Spock would not exist

Have you forgotten that Spock was born in the finest cave provided by the Vulcan National Health Service?

[Vehrec]

Even if there are artificial wombs and the ability to grow kids from scratch-which Star Trek obviously has, otherwise Spock would not exist

Have you forgotten that Spock was born in the finest cave provided by the Vulcan National Health Service?

I'm cashing my personal Discontinuity chip on Star Trek V. Like some other people I consider the only canon bits of that to be the camping trip in Yosemite, followed by a really strange trip from snacking on the local shroomage.

[Ilya Muromets]

Who is the person

Four-time Hugo winner, Best Novel. Best Novella Hugo and Nebula for The Mountains of Mourning. The winner of the fourth Hugo, Paladin of souls, also won a Nebula.

Well, good for him. Doesn't make his opinions the be-all end-all. Not saying Trek XI didn't have shitty writing, but that doesn't invalidate Crazedwraith's points.

and why should I care what they think?

No reason you should. Doesn't appear that you are much interested in written SF.

Oh, wow, now we crank up the smug. He doesn't know an author you apparently like and doesn't think much of his opinion so "clearly" he's some dumb Trekkie not much interested in written SF?

Yeah, because it's not possible that he's just interested in the countless other sci-fi written by people other than Bujold.

[Mayabird]

Her, dude, her. Not his. She's of the chick persuasion, Bujold is. And she happens to be one of my favorite sci-fi authors as well.

AND AS I ALREADY MENTIONED, futuristic childbirth is one of her pet thought-projects. THAT'S why she's all up in arms about it. It's one of those things that bugs her a lot, and she has put a lot of thought into it, and written it into the fabric of her 'verse, so when she sees some bloody regular birth in the Distant Future and there's not some special or weird circumstances involved, she throws up her arms and starts screaming because it pisses her off.

Granted you could say for these circumstances, "They were in escape pods and escape shuttles. Facilities were limited or missing. So okay, fine." But everyone here just seems willing to dismiss it because of quantum or shit. Which, granted, it's Star Trek, but then we're all getting into hurf hurf territory.

[Darth Wong]

I suspect others have gone into the dodgy physics of the parachute drop from orbit?

I think Bad Astronomy praised them for getting it right. The key point IIRC is that the ships weren't in orbit, they were hovering at low altitude with magic station-keeping thrusters.

Lucky for them that this planet apparently has zero wind, so they fell straight down parallel to the chain. Of course, the whole scene begged the larger question of why they even bothered, when they could just shoot the fucking thing.

[Sea Skimmer]

Lucky for them that this planet apparently has zero wind, so they fell straight down parallel to the chain. Of course, the whole scene begged the larger question of why they even bothered, when they could just shoot the fucking thing.

Presumably because that would mean Enterprise gets blown up out of hand, vs. the captain being able to stall for time and save the ship while the commando attack went forward initially unnoticed. After all Enterprise surviving was vital, since they hadn’t yet been able to transmit a message to Starfleet and had no real idea of the enemies intentions or capabilities, other then that they could blow away Federation ships easily.

[Connor MacLeod]

Its been said before by many people, but STXI is good as a "big dumb action movie" type, and simply as that alone. Its' got nothing actually to do with previous treks, conceptionally, continuity wise, or whatever (despite what some wish to believe - thats obviously just a marketing ploy.) The original Trek movies were nothing like "big dumb action movies" and some of the action scenes could be pretty cheesy. The post STVI stuff was a mixed bag and seemed kinda "intermediary" in terms of story and plot (it seemed to try mixing the old ST movie formula with the big dumb action movie concept.. most notably Nemesis). STXI is a "reboot" (which means that we just stick some largely superficial elements of Trek onto a Big Dumb Action Movie plot and rake in the cash) . They're two separate entities, will largely appeal to different kinds of tastes (but someone who likes both kinds could still appreciate this I think), and comparing the two isn't easy IMHO.

[NecronLord]

The thing that gets me about that review, is 'don't the federation taxpayers ever get tired of this' - given the sheer number of planet killing things out there that you can't reason with, like the Doomsday Machine, I can't imagine why they would. It's a well funded starfleet or antimatter death or worse.

[Junghalli]

This statement sums up one of the big issues with writing convincing fiction so well:

n movies as in real life, the application of intelligence normally acts to reduce drama. That's kind of what smarts are for. The challenge for a writer is to have everyone, including the villains, acting with the maximum intelligence, and still find some way to make it dramatic. This is, actually, quite hard...