Tag: star trek nemesis

Throwback Thursday: Super Snappy Speed Reviews (Star Trek Edition)

Posted on by Ndrw
Originally published 24/09/2017
SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not seen all of the films in the Star Trek franchise is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

The day we’ve all been waiting for with a combination of both hope and dread is finally here. Star Trek: Discovery premieres in America today, and so, in honour of this momentous occasion (and since we Brits won’t be getting it until tomorrow), I am pleased to present Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition!

We’ve already had super snappy speed reviews for books (twice, in fact), TV shows and films but today it’s going to be a bit different. Today I’ll be reviewing all thirteen Star Trek films in order of release. As ever, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, phasered, disruptored and bat’lethed into just two or three sentences. So without further ado…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

While it has a lot of the elements we might look for in a good Star Trek episode, The Motion Picture is spoiled by ridiculously slow pacing.  Buckets of atmosphere but not much else to say in its favour.

My rating: 🖖🖖

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

This film’s got it all: a familiar antagonist with a score to settle, exciting space battles and plenty of sub-plot. Arguably the best film in the entire franchise.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

I can’t say much about this without giving away spoilers galore but suffice to say it’s a good popcorn muncher and is integral to the overall Star Trek canon. Its main let-down is the half-baked antagonist: a random Klingon with no redeeming qualities trying to steal a technology which he thinks will make a good weapon of mass destruction.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Definitely the most light-hearted of the Star Trek movies. Plenty of humour, a casual ecological moral and no real antagonist to speak of (okay, there is a giant probe thing threatening to destroy Earth, but only because it wants to make friends with some humpback whales and earth doesn’t have any them any more)

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

The rest of the world seems to hate this film but I quite enjoyed it. Sybok was a particularly interesting antagonist, in that he seemed to be well-meaning, if badly misguided. It probably could have benefited from unpacking some of the more important themes, however.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

My favourite Star Trek films and episodes are always those which focus on interstellar politics, particularly the Federation’s tense relations with the Klingon Empire. If that’s your flavour too then this film’s got it all: conspiracies, interstellar peace talks and even a Klingon courtroom scene.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: Generations

This film has a great bad guy (although I could have done without the Duras sisters…), strong themes and apart from being a little on the slow side at points, is generally well paced. The (mostly humorous) subplot concerns the previously emotionless android, Data, now fully equipped with emotions he can’t control, which is funny at first, then gets serious before kind of just fizzling out and resolving itself without explanation.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: First Contact

If Wrath of Khan isn’t my favourite in the franchise, this one is. Excellent acting, strong writing and well paced. The Borg Queen in particular provides the previously faceless Borg Collective with a leader who is as subtle and seductive as she is evil. Unfortunately, this film does also include my least favourite line of dialogue in all of Star Trek history: ‘You people, you’re all astronauts on… some kind of star trek?’

As an aside, non-Trekkies should not begin here; this film is full of important references to the TV series.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: Insurrection

This might’ve worked as a TV episode, but as a film it’s just boring, boring, boring with extra boring on top. Some dude we’ve never heard of (with a simply appalling plastic surgeon), from a race of aliens we’ve never heard of wants to chase some helpless innocent people we’ve never heard of away from their planet and Picard doesn’t like it and… zzzzzzzzz…

My rating:  🖖🖖

Star Trek: Nemesis

Tom Hardy and Patrick Stewart’s acting as Shinzon and Captain Picard respectively are about the only things this film really has going for it. In theory, the premise had lots of potential but it turned out to be a bit of a poorly written non-story about a disgruntled clone who decides to kill everybody with a particularly nasty WMD, only to be thwarted by an inevitable act of self-sacrifice from one of the heroes.

My rating:  🖖

Star Trek

As reboots (especially prequels) go, this was a zillion times better than I thought it was going to be. It features, quite simply, some of the best plotting, characterisation and pacing I’ve seen in a Star Trek film. There are a few inconsistencies with prime universe that are not explained by the time travel story but nothing anyone but the most knit-picky of fans would worry about.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek Into Darkness

Take all your favourite scenes from Wrath of Khan, mix them up a bit and boom! You’ve got Star Trek Into Darkness! Even so, with its strong plot, superb acting (especially from Benedict Cumberbatch) and plenty of excitement, this remains my favourite Star Trek film since First Contact.

My rating:  🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek Beyond

After Insurrection and Nemesis, Star Trek Beyond is my least favourite Star Trek film. The writers clearly decided to forget about pacing, characterisation and all that boring stuff and created a non-stop heart-pumping thrill ride instead. Great acting though, I’ll give it that. Click here for a more detailed review on this film.

My rating: 🖖

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AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:

Due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

TV Review: Star Trek: Picard, ‘Remembrance’

Posted on by Ndrw
Spoiler Alert

Anyone who has not seen the first episode of Star Trek: Picard (entitled ‘Remembrance’) or any episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the subsequent movies is hereby warned that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

It’s been eighteen years since Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard bowed out of our lives in the disappointing movie Star Trek: Nemesis. Now he’s back in a much anticipated brand new show, Star Trek: Picard, chronicling later life of the now former captain of the USS Enterprise.

As regular readers of this site and it’s related social media accounts may know, I haven’t been overly impressed with recent additions to the Star Trek franchise. It all started to go wrong with Star Trek: Enterprise and it was a bit of a downward spiral from there, but I had much higher hopes for Picard. We’re only one episode in but so far, I have loved, loved, loved it.

Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart), now a retired admiral, is living in relative seclusion at his family vineyard with his dog, Number One, and a couple of Romulan refugees who work for him and also act as his only real confidants. He is now retired from Starfleet and has become jaded and embittered towards the organisation he once served and perhaps even towards the Federation as a whole for their failure to learn the lessons from history. His tired old zeal is awakened, however, when he is a approached by a frightened young woman called Dahj (Isa Briones), who begs him for help and who may well be the offspring of his deceased friend and colleague, Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), who continues to haunt Picard’s dreams twenty years after his death. As much as I loved Data in The Next Generation, and am generally not a huge fan of dream sequences, I am glad to see that he has so far only appeared as a dream and nothing more. There’s nothing spoils a good story more than sucking the permanence out of death by contriving some lame excuse to resurrect a dead character.

This show accomplishes something in a single episode which Discovery has, in my opinion, failed to accomplished throughout its entire run: create continuity between the original story we all know and love and still create a well written brand new story. Star Trek: Picard begins with Jean-Luc very much at the end of his previous character arc and at the beginning of a new one, having lost much of his zest for life only to now be given an urgent and deeply personal reason to reawaken it. In spite of this, Picard has lost none of his sense of righteousness or his passion for history, as we see when he becomes angered by the TV journalist’s questions about why he left Starfleet. The first episode was also full of little Easter eggs and other references to The Next Generation which fans of the show couldn’t fail to appreciate, such as the ‘Captain Picard Day’ banner (TNG: ‘The Pegasus’), Picard’s Dixon Hill fedora and, best of all, the singularly beautiful opening sequence with Irving Berlin’s ‘Blue Skies’ playing over a starscape moments before the Enterprise D appears.

If I was forced to say something critical (and I must confess, I find it difficult to say anything truly bad about this episode, but I’ll give it a go), I would say that some of the other characters besides Picard, and perhaps Dahj to a lesser extent, seemed rather under cooked by comparison, especially the two Romulans who live with Picard. That’s not a criticism of the acting, but it feels a bit like Picard and Dahj were the only characters who were written with any real depth; clear motives, clear goals, obvious demons and things that matter to them. I am, of course, very conscious that it was only the first episode and first episodes of brand new shows take time to heat up so I’ll reserve any further judgement on that point until the series is finished.

All in all, a very encouraging beginning to a show which I was anticipating with both hope and fear. I am counting down the seconds until the next episode, partly because of the cliffhanger ending but mostly just because it was the best offering I’ve seen from the Star Trek franchise in a long, long time.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and also follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter, Pinterest and like Penstricken on Facebook.

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

6 Terrible Bad Guy Lines From the Big Screen

Posted on by Ndrw

If you Google famous bad guy lines, you’ll find there’s a lot of blog posts out there devoted to cataloguing some of the coolest ones. Not surprising, since bad guys often have some of the most memorable lines of dialogue, especially in movies. However, there are plenty of bad guy lines out there that are really not all that good: cheesy ones, cringe-inducing ones and occasionally downright meaningless ones. This post catalogues a few bad guy lines that I personally love to hate.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a list of bad movies or bad characters (though it does feature more than its share of bad movies and bad characters). This is a list of lame lines of dialogue delivered by villains, irrespective of how good or bad the rest of the film was; lines that were probably meant to sound cool and sinister but failed to produce quite the right effect.

I’ve probably missed loads out, so please, feel free to comment below with any others you can think of that make you want to scrape your ears off with a fork every time you hear them.

So, without further ado…

Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.

Darth Vader in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Darth Vader is, of course, one of the most famous and widely loved villains of all time. He may even be the most popular villain of all time, and justifiably so. He’s my favourite too. He’s also got plenty of other genuinely cool bad guys lines in his back catalogue. There aren’t many characters who could pull off ‘we can rule the galaxy as father and son’ or ‘I am your father’ with quite the same flare Darth Vader does.

Nevertheless, this particular line is a disappointment. In this scene, Vader force chokes a dude, which is usually enough in and of itself to get the fans excited. Maybe it’ll be like that scene in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope where he force chokes Motti and delivers the immortal line: ‘I find your lack of faith disturbing’.

But no, not in Rogue One. In Rogue One, we get a James Bond style pun about choking on aspirations.

Heck, it’s not even a very good pun.

Speaking of James Bond:

Global warming: it’s a terrible thing.

– Gustav Graves in Die Another Day (2002)

Yeah, Gustav, but not as terrible as that bad guy line.

The James Bond franchise has, of course, given us loads of memorable villains with really cool bad guy lines. Lines like: ‘Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him’ (Drax in Moonraker) and of course, ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die’ (Goldfinger in Goldfinger).

Unfortunately, Die Another Day did not live up to its predecessors, not by a long mile. It was a terrible movie, with a terrible bad guy and one of the worst bad guy lines I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. I wouldn’t have minded so much if Graves was a concerned environmental campaigner (global warming is a terrible thing) but he’s not. Graves smugly uttered this line after believing he had killed Bond by firing a big ray of solar energy from an orbiting satellite (pul-eez!) which, you know… isn’t the same thing as global warming. The worst part is, the dudes he’s trying to impress with Big Sunshine Space Gun respond respectfully to this cheesy line while he stands there with arms folded, an eyebrow raised and leaning slightly backwards as if he’s the cat’s pyjamas.

Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, b*tch!

Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Even though I knew this quote was very unpopular, I wasn’t actually planning on including it here at first. That was before I learned the story of its origins.

I was aware, of course, that there were an awful lot of memes out there which included this line but I didn’t realise that the memes actually came before the movie. For those memes aren’t based on this (frankly disappointing) movie as I had supposed; no, they are a homage to this little parody video created by My Way Entertainment, which came out four months before The Last Stand (beware: bad language abounds). The movie was actually copying this, presumably because somebody thought it would be funny:

*sigh*

Come to dinner, just the two of us… Or should I say, ‘just the one of us?’

Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Star Trek: Nemesis is widely berated as one of the most disappointing films in the entire franchise, and I’m inclined to agree. This line, however, stands out as one which makes me shiver every time I hear Shinzon utter it.

And by that I mean it makes me shiver the same way I shiver if I accidentally rub my hands together when still they’re wrinkly from being in the bath, or perhaps the way I shiver whenever my fork accidentally scrapes against my plate with a high pitched shriek. It really hurts to listen to. Shinzon had already dropped about a billion subtle-as-a-brick hints to Picard that he is Picard’s clone, and this final ‘dramatic’ gambit only needed a ‘DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUN!‘ and the moment would’ve been complete.

Allow me to break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well, for it’s the chilling sound of your doom.

Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin (1997)

The moment I started to write this post, I knew Mr. Freeze was going to be in it somewhere but I didn’t know exactly which quote of his I was going to use. If you’ve not seen Batman and Robin, do yourself a favour and watch it if it’s ever on Netflix again and you’ll see why I was struggling (I can’t justify asking you to buy the DVD, but remember: piracy is stealing, no matter how bad the movie is).

EVERY line this bad guy utters is a really lame ice/cold related pun. He doesn’t deliver a single cool line (boom boom!). Most of them don’t even make much sense. I (ice-)picked this particular one because it feels like the most honest (but still failed) attempt he makes to deliver a genuinely GOOD bad guy line (I’m quite certain the rest were deliberately bad). It also gives you an overall flavour of what the rest of them are like, because they’re all in much the same vein. I’m not even sure this one is the worst.


Sindel in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Need I say more? You knew she was coming the moment you saw the title of this blog and you were right. Sindel’s first, ‘dramatic’ opening line in the sequel to Mortal Kombat will go down in history as one of the most cringe-inducing lame-o bad guy lines ever uttered on the big screen.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and also follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what freeze chokes your global warming.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition

Posted on by Ndrw
SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not seen all of the films in the Star Trek franchise is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

The day we’ve all been waiting for with a combination of both hope and dread is finally here. Star Trek: Discovery premieres in America today, and so, in honour of this momentous occasion (and since we Brits won’t be getting it until tomorrow), I am pleased to present Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition!

We’ve already had super snappy speed reviews for books (twice, in fact), TV shows and films but today it’s going to be a bit different. Today I’ll be reviewing all thirteen Star Trek films in order of release. As ever, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, phasered, disruptored and bat’lethed into just two or three sentences. So without further ado…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

While it has a lot of the elements we might look for in a good Star Trek episode, The Motion Picture is spoiled by ridiculously slow pacing.  Buckets of atmosphere but not much else to say in its favour.

My rating: 🖖🖖

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

This film’s got it all: a familiar antagonist with a score to settle, exciting space battles and plenty of sub-plot. Arguably the best film in the entire franchise.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

I can’t say much about this without giving away spoilers galore but suffice to say it’s a good popcorn muncher and is integral to the overall Star Trek canon. Its main let-down is the half-baked antagonist: a random Klingon with no redeeming qualities trying to steal a technology which he thinks will make a good weapon of mass destruction.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Definitely the most light-hearted of the Star Trek movies. Plenty of humour, a casual ecological moral and no real antagonist to speak of (okay, there is a giant probe thing threatening to destroy Earth, but only because it wants to make friends with some humpback whales and earth doesn’t have any them any more)

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

The rest of the world seems to hate this film but I quite enjoyed it. Sybok was a particularly interesting antagonist, in that he seemed to be well-meaning, if badly misguided. It probably could have benefited from unpacking some of the more important themes, however.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

My favourite Star Trek films and episodes are always those which focus on interstellar politics, particularly the Federation’s tense relations with the Klingon Empire. If that’s your flavour too then this film’s got it all: conspiracies, interstellar peace talks and even a Klingon courtroom scene.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: Generations

This film has a great bad guy (although I could have done without the Duras sisters…), strong themes and apart from being a little on the slow side at points, is generally well paced. The (mostly humorous) subplot concerns the previously emotionless android, Data, now fully equipped with emotions he can’t control, which is funny at first, then gets serious before kind of just fizzling out and resolving itself without explanation.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: First Contact

If Wrath of Khan isn’t my favourite in the franchise, this one is. Excellent acting, strong writing and well paced. The Borg Queen in particular provides the previously faceless Borg Collective with a leader who is as subtle and seductive as she is evil. Unfortunately, this film does also include my least favourite line of dialogue in all of Star Trek history: ‘You people, you’re all astronauts on… some kind of star trek?’

As an aside, non-Trekkies should not begin here; this film is full of important references to the TV series.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek: Insurrection

This might’ve worked as a TV episode, but as a film it’s just boring, boring, boring with extra boring on top. Some dude we’ve never heard of (with a simply appalling plastic surgeon), from a race of aliens we’ve never heard of wants to chase some helpless innocent people we’ve never heard of away from their planet and Picard doesn’t like it and… zzzzzzzzz…

My rating:  🖖🖖

Star Trek: Nemesis

Tom Hardy and Patrick Stewart’s acting as Shinzon and Captain Picard respectively are about the only things this film really has going for it. In theory, the premise had lots of potential but it turned out to be a bit of a poorly written non-story about a disgruntled clone who decides to kill everybody with a particularly nasty WMD, only to be thwarted by an inevitable act of self-sacrifice from one of the heroes.

My rating:  🖖

Star Trek

As reboots (especially prequels) go, this was a zillion times better than I thought it was going to be. It features, quite simply, some of the best plotting, characterisation and pacing I’ve seen in a Star Trek film. There are a few inconsistencies with prime universe that are not explained by the time travel story but nothing anyone but the most knit-picky of fans would worry about.

My rating: 🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek Into Darkness

Take all your favourite scenes from Wrath of Khan, mix them up a bit and boom! You’ve got Star Trek Into Darkness! Even so, with its strong plot, superb acting (especially from Benedict Cumberbatch) and plenty of excitement, this remains my favourite Star Trek film since First Contact.

My rating:  🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖

Star Trek Beyond

After Insurrection and Nemesis, Star Trek Beyond is my least favourite Star Trek film. The writers clearly decided to forget about pacing, characterisation and all that boring stuff and created a non-stop heart-pumping thrill ride instead. Great acting though, I’ll give it that. Click here for a more detailed review on this film.

My rating: 🖖

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Be sure to leave us a wee comment if you enjoyed it and don’t forget to ‘like’ and share this post and follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what crystallises  your dilithium.

Live long and prosper.