Category: Star Trek Musings

No, I Did Not Watch Section 31

It’s been a week since the release of the Section 31 streaming movie starring Academy Award winning actress Michelle Yeoh, reprising her tole as former Terran emperor Georgiou as she joins a top-secret suicide squad of Section 31 to take care of some business. It’s new Star Trek… so why isn’t uncle Dave talking about the new Star Trek thing?

Because I didn’t watch it. And I don’t plan on watching it.

In case you folks haven’t been paying attention or simply are unaware, previous trailers and preview material of this thing left me uninspired over this product. It looks bad, cheap, and second-rate. I’m not going to go into whether this is “actual Star Trek” or not because that doesn’t really matter. Something that looks bad looks bad regardless of whether or not it fits into what you define as “actual Star Trek.” And this Section 31 movie looked BAD. Even so, I would have at least given it a chance had word of mouth provided a glimmer of hope that maybe – just maybe – this is not as bad as everything looks to be. Maybe this could actually turn out to be a pretty entertaining movie.

Well, it’s been a week… and all the reviews and receptions that I’ve seen of this thing has been largely negative. Some have even compared this to the recent Borderlands movie – something featuring award-winning big name actors phoning in a performance on a script written by hack amateurs. Let me tell you folks something; anything that has it described to me as “Star Trek as conceived by Randy Pitchford” is enough for me to go “Nah, I’m good.”

I don’t care if it’s got the Star Trek branding or not. I’m under no moral obligation nor do I have any civil fandom duty or whatever to watch this film. I’m not going to waste time watching something that I know I’m not going to like. The whole concept of “hate watching” that seems to be a thing on internet culture – watching something you know you’re going to hate for the expressed purpose of hating something and expressing it online – is just utterly stupid. I’ve probably fell into that trap once at most and I’ve since regretted it – the actual watching part, not the words that resulted from that viewing. Any way you slice it, I refuse to fall into that trap again. Hence, my not watching Section 31.

Besides, that would require a subscription to Paramount Plus… and that’s one more streaming subscription that I do not require at the moment, so I can easily pass on that.

Now, is that a hard ban like some other films that I’ve sworn off? Of course not. There might come a time when, if I’ve got nothing better to do and curiosity has the better of me, I might actually give it a fair shake. That’s going to be a good while, however. Right now, I feel like I’d be going in with expectations that it’s going to be an outright awful waste of time that I’m going to regret wasting and I don’t want to do that. So, yeah, if it turns out to be vaguely entertaining schlock, great. That’s not the feeling I’m getting now from this thing. That’s not the feeling I want to go into a movie. I want to find some enjoyment out of it. Even if it’s bad and I end up mocking it, that’ll at least entertain me and that’ll be enough to make me like it just a tad.

That time is not now for Section 31. It simply doesn’t appeal to me… besides, despite the bad reviews, it’s actually been doing great in terms of streaming numbers, so clearly it doesn’t need another voice dogpiling on it.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of other things for me to bitch about that I’m not going to go into wanting to hate, but end up being more disappointed than most… what’s going on over at AEW as of late?

Is It Too Soon To Make The Corona Jokes?

I’d leave it to the imagination, so that people can the obvious assumptions and all… but no, the titular Corona refers to a collection of protostars that supposedly threaten the universe.

I wonder if this was where JJ Abrams got the idea for his Star Trek movie…

And I actually like the movie, you double dumbasses. Let’s set that to bed, right now…

This Trek Is A Lie.

So once upon a time, there was a show called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was the one with the black man who became captain at the tail end of the third season. Anyway, there was a 2-part episode called “Past Tense”, where the crew is warped back in time to a pivotal moment in Earth history called The Bell Riots, a violent confrontation in the sanctuary district of San Francisco. It’s one of the classic episodes of Star Trek that deal with serious issues in a way that give it gravity and weight, unlike today’s Trek where serious issues are not dealt with so much as one side hammered in while we cut to dancing Klingons and crying crewmen.

The date that the Bell Riots occured?

August 30th, 2024.

It’s been two weeks since then… and not a peep of a Bell riot nor any mention of anyone named Gabriel Bell.

So… what happened? More timey-whimey bullshit that we have to fix up. Did it get pushed up the timeline much like the Eugenic Wars were pushed up when 1996 came and went without so much a peep of a Khan Singh in the world news?

Well, I’m sure Alex Kurtzman and the crack creative heads at Star Trek World Headquarters will eventually solve this conundrum… maybe… maybe not…

Either that, or they’ll produce another Trek show with 10 hour-long episodes of crew people doing nothing but cry on the bridge or something. Hey, we need to fill the void left behind by Discovery, so might as well get on that bandwagon.

Anything has to be better than that Section 31 thing they’re crapping out…

Longtime Trekkie Reacts To New Alien Movie Trailer: “Where Are All The Romulans?”

Longtime Trekkie Theodore L. Pinkus was interviewed by local media and expressed his excitement for the upcoming Alien: Romulus motion picture. The latest attempt by FOX to inject new life to the Alien franchise after several failed attempts was met with approval from the longtime Star Trek fan.

“You know, it was a well-done trailer,” Pinkus stated, “Looked really dark and scary. This might be the first Alien movie in a while that actually looks like it could be good.”

Pinkus did note one aspect of the trailer that got to him and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it until the last moment.

“Where are the Romulans?” he decried. “If you’re going to name your movie Alien: Romulus and you’re going to have it take place on Romulus, it only makes sense that there should be Romulans in this movie!”

“Instead, it’s just a bunch of humans. Boring.”

After a brief pause, the interviewer decided to – calmly and politely – explain to Pinkus that the Romulans are part of Star Trek, which has nothing to do with this movie. He also had to explain to Pinkus that Romulus was referring to the historical figure Romulus.

Pinkus stared at the interviewer blankly, trying to process what was just told to him. After what seemed like five minutes of uncomfortable silence, Pinkus finally mustered the energy to respond.

“Will there be Klingons, at least?”

Section Dookey-Von

So… Section 31… eh…

Yeah, I’ll be frank; this looks pretty bad… not just as a Star Trek thing, but just as a thing that exists. You’d have a better chance of getting me excited if you just remade Earth: Final Conflict into a Tee Vee Movie instead.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting out of Section 31… but this sure ain’t it. But at least I can say that this looks bad whether it’s a Star Trek thing or not because it just looks terribly generic.

But then I saw the SNW clip and…

I need a bit more time on that one, kids.

End Of Discovery… Eh.

Tomorrow, Star Trek: Discovery airs its final episode after five seasons of… stuff.

I’ll admit that Discovery is not a show that I was a huge fan of. I didn’t care for the first season’s redoing of the Klingons, the focus on “WAR! I’M GONNA STAB YOU IN THE FUCKING FACE” aspect, the main character was a bland, lifeless slab, and then pivoting to the Mirror Universe as an excuse to keep Michelle Yeoh around despite having her character killed off in the pilot… that and the uniforms with their weird collar things. Bad.

Second season was a little better, owing almost entirely on the performance and charisma of Anson Mount’s portrayal of Captain Christopher Pike. You still had issues with lots of emotional padding, lots of staring into blank space, evil robot things that remind me of the Borg without calling it the Borg, and once again, the main character is a lifeless vortex of charisma, which is sad considering the actress playing her is anything but.

Third season moves things into the distant future… where the Federation is all but gone and we have to figure out what the burn is… I dropped off after a couple episodes. Show did nothing for me. And even whenever I try to get back into it recently, I’m like… nah, this does nothing for me. This does so much nothing for me that I never bothered with the fourth season.

So I go back and watch some of this fifth season and… yeah, there are still some issues. Lots of emotion, lots of crying, lots of staring into blank spaces, lots of extras posing as main characters… but they gave the main character some personality for once. She certainly has nice hair.

The uniforms are still kinda ass, though… but at least the collars look like proper collars and not whatever the fuck they had before.

So yeah, Discovery didn’t do much for me… but it did get the ball rolling so that we’d get these other shows, which I tend to prefer. Discovery’s second season gave way to Strange New Worlds, Picard was a thing that happened, Lower Decks is a thing (that’s also coming to an end after five seasons), and we’re getting a Starfleet Academy show… in the FUTURE.

And also a Section 31 movie… because that was such a hot thing.

So yeah… thanks for five years of Trek, Discovery… you didn’t entertain me all that much, but you have a fanbase that loved you for what you were and that counts for something. Here you go. Have a gold star.

This has been my Tim Talk.

Very Sh!t Trek: The Next Generation

So the Star Trek Paramount people released another Very Short Trek… this one called Worst Contact and featuring the TNG crew making first contact with an alien race who pick their noses and are not familiar with the concept of basic hygiene. I am told this is hilarious and yet when I was done, my only question was “When does this get funny?”

I get that these are supposed to funny little shorts, but it would be nice if these things were actually funny. The only one that I remotely enjoyed was the Holiday Party one, where Spock shows off a blooper reel of sorts. I thought Clip #15 was an excellent blooper.

Beyond that… eh. Maybe next time, if you guys decide to do this again, maybe someone whose one highlight isn’t a drawn-out gag that overstayed its welcome ages ago. Hell, maybe get someone who knows how to write actual comedy. I don’t even care if it’s consistent with Star Trek canon – if you want to make me laugh, give me something funny… YOU DUMMIES!

Make it blow.

See?

That’s funny.

A Very Shit Trek

It’s Star Trek Day… apparently.

So they uploaded a new Short Trek animated thing where the captain says a metaphor and ends up offending somebody. It’s a cute little bit. And then it kept going. And it kept going. And then it kept going. And then finally the ship blew up.

What the fuck did I even watch?

Moral of the story; shut the fuck up and you won’t offend anyone.