Wrath of Khan Hi-Def

Well I was fortunate enough to receive the Original Trek movies Blu-Ray set for Christmas, yay!

So today I've the opportnity to sit and watch some of them. It's morning still, so I've got me a big coffee and assorted snacks and I'm ready to go. I thought for a giggle, I would write a blog as I watch Wrath of Khan. (I'm starting with Khan. I will watch Motion Picture at some point, but let's be honest, when a Trekker gets this set, which film is he most excited about seeing?) Admittedly it's an odd giggle, but what the hey, if I find I've just typed out pointless ramblings, I'll still post it, have you read the crap I write? I just ramble on about geeky stuff! That's what this blog is!!! If I can let some of it out here then perhaps my patient fiancee will be spared some, so she wont completly lose the will to live, so she won't leave me for a non-geek and I won't be alone! It's my future happiness here!

Anyway, I have digressed. First impressions: Not too impressed with the picture. It's no better than the DVD. Wait, hang on, my TV has been moved to a preset colour setup for gaming. I'll just switch it back.
That's better! That's really good actually. Whew.

Sound is also good, I can hear the ship noises all around me in the surround, clear quality. Cool, so hs is good. By the time of my earlier rambling, we're already on the Reliant, orbiting Ceti Alpha V. Or VI. There will be consfusion. Reliant's bridge looks better, some more detail stands out, some clearer blue trims. And the same on the Regula spacelab, lots more shades of browns standing out. Makes it look more 70's than ever!

Ooh, the Ceti Alpha whatever surface looks better. Rock and sand actually clear rather than blurred with the wind.

Hopefully soon I will comment on the movie, not just what things look clearer. But it's always the way when you see a blu-ray of an old favourite. I'm looking forward to hearing @nathwilson's thoughts on Highlander in hi-def.

Uh-oh, Chekov's panicked! This is an awesome shot as the camera pans to reveal the group stood outside the ship as Terrell and Chekov leave it.

Ah, Khan. Why have you aged while your followers all look, frankly, younger than any of your followers from Space Seed? Have they all had children then died out? Apart from Khan?

Ricardo Montalban is always a pleasure. He's doing his creepy bit now. I'd love to hear him talk like that at the post office, just buying stamps in his creepy and dramatic voice.

'AdMIRal?' 'ADmiral?' Brilliant!

'It was only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that allowed us to survive' Makes me wonder what he did with that intellect? It took beyond normal intelligence to say 'hey, hide in the cargo containers and let's make some protective clothes!' did it? Oh, t I'm doing that thing where I try pick holes in it. Strangely it's a symbol of how much I love this film is why I do it! Seriously!

Ugh, the ear slugs. They're so gross, I remember as a child not being able to look at this bit.

Ah, here we go, they're coming to the Enterprise! Always love these bits.

Sulu's 'I'm delighted, any chance to go aboard the Enterprise' is such an awesome line to reflect the fan feelings for the movie. We're all delighted Sulu!!

I am a bit disappointed these blu-rays are the theatrical releases, as I've come to love the extra bits in the directors cut on DVD. Still, it's the version I grew up watching so I'm not going to complain too much.

Enterprise leaving Spacedock. I always enjoy bits like this, with all the lights coming on.

It's a fun sequence when Spock has Saavik take the ship out. Slightly odd, I don't know why Kirk is that worried, Sulu's steering after all. But Saavik's face when she's asked to take the conn, while and Admiral stands behind her! She's a Lieutenant though, shouldn't be too tricky. Hell on Voyager they'd give Ensign Kim the bridge for night shifts. But I'm in no mood to get into a Voyager discussion now, I'm in a good mood!

Slightly confused why Marcus doesn't expect the Reliant for 3 months if Ceti Alpha VI checked out. What would they be doing for those 3 months? Always enjoy Chekovs uncomfortable grinning while he tries to fake his way though the communication.

Going to have to pause it now, I need to run grab my charger.

Got it, right, where are we. Ok, Kirk's had a slightly odd conversation with Saavik in the turbolift. Not really sure why there's a thing about her hair. Anyhow, now Kirk recieves the communication from Carol Marcus. Excellent, now things are starting to happen! It's excellent, the first half hour sets up the necessary histories for Khan, puts the other players into place and sets the collision course as the Enterprise is summoned that way. It's building the excitement to the confrontation perfectly. Now we have Kirk and Spock discuss he command issue so we can bypass that tricky Admiralty issue with Kirk, also serving to give Kirk and Spock another nice moment, got to show the friendship that makes these two characters.

Khan's friend is trying to dissuade Khan from facing Kirk, pointing out that with a ship and freedom from exile, they don't need to hunt Kirk down. This shows that Khan has an obsession to go with his vendetta. So if we didn't already know he's dangerous...

The Genesis device. I start to realise just what a packed movie this is, beyond the veangeful Khan, the hijacking of the Reliant and everything leading to the confrontation, we now have the ultimate weapon of biblical proportions. Just to through an awesome concept in there. But it never feels rushed, which is good. There's a lot going on, but it all seems to flow naturally in the story. And of course means that we can have a Spock/McCoy exchange with the good Doctor getting emotional! Always a joy! 'My god, the mans talking about logic!'

Ah, Reliant approaches! Have to say what a masterpiece James Horners score is for this movie. Perfect all the way through, it perfectly enhances the mood for each scene.

I love the sequence of shots with the command chair in the middle, so you get a sense of the Khan/Kirk conflict with them facing each other in mirrored shots, even before Kirk knows he's facing an enemy.

Kirk looks utterly defeated when Khan signals demanding surrender. Caught unawares and the ship crippled, he actually looks defeated. But in the course of the conversation you suddenly realise he's planning. He's playing for time and he's worked out a plan. Suddenly he's Kirk again. And the music shifts perfectly to accompany this, which is marvellous. You go from despair to excitement so quickly, right up to Kirk's explosive response! (which is what I believe it's called on the soundtrack.)

Of course, the euphoria of the counter attack is suddenly cut short when Scotty arrives with the injured engineer. Scotty, why have you bought him to the bridge? Sickbay you dumbass!! Thankfully Kirk turns him round and gets him to sickbay, but too late. Of course the directors cut reveals that lad is Scotty's nephew, which I think adds a bit and frankly gives Scotty more impact in the film in which he has little to do but make repairs.

Another beautiful moment when Spock tells Jim to be careful and McCoy leans forward and pointedly retorts, 'WE will'.

The space lab is kinda creepy now it's all empty. Hey look, someone stuffed Chekov in a shoe cupboard! Walter Koenig's best tearful acting! 'Made us say lies!!' Then when Kirk talks to Captain Terrell, Chekov stares blankly towards the camera. Look at his unsettling stare! He barely blinks!

Kirk and Spocks coded exchange is marvellous, once you know it, it's so blindingly obvious!

Kirk's stunned look when he realises he's been punching his own son is funny. Another plotline in there! There's loads.

Wait! Chekov's turned traitor! Those dirty ear slugs! Terrell shoots himself, Chekov just collapses and the slug moves out. Gross.

Ooh, we know what's coming up! Kirk taunts Khan that he's 'managed to kill just about everyone else' and Khan realises he can just maroon Kirk there. What can Kirk say to that? Well, Shatner contorts his face in rage and screams 'KHAAAAAN! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!' I bet William Shatner loves it when people go up to him in the street and scream that at him!

So Kirk and Carol have a little chat about their son and we see the Genesis cave, a little demonstration of the scope of the device. Kirk reflects on feeling his age again, which has been recurring through the film.

Now the revelation that Kirk cheated on the Kobyashi Maru, (wonder if we'll ever see that!!) and cockily says 'I don't like to lose' then hails Spock! Perfect timing. Explains to Saavik that him and Spock coded their earlier conversation and they head to the bridge. Now we're all excited for round 2!

The climatic battle in the nebula is awesome. It's very tense, as the ships could see one another any moment. Having them blindly search for each other makes for very exciting sequences. Horribly tense as well when you realise the Reliant is heading straight for Enterprise before they do. But naturally Kirk gets the edge and Reliant comes off worse. Of course, Enterprise has taken damage and main powers out. Uh-oh...

It's Spock who see's Khan's weakness, pointing out to Kirk that Khan's pattern is 2 dimensional. So Kirk decided to use up and down as directions. And isn't it an incedible moment when Enterprise rises up behind Reliant!? Now Khan's gonna get it! Woo! Explosions!!

Of course Khan is a stubborn bastard, so though his ship's all but destroyed, he's still gotta try to kill everything in sight, even if it means he goes down too. He's activtings the Genesis device and quoting like a madman. It's fantastic of course, he's a marvellous bad guy. Obsessed, veangeful, intelligent, literate and a ham.

Hey, where's Spock going?

Deforest Kelly is doing a great Karl Urban impression here. Hey, Spock's nerve pinched him! Remember? Remember what? Hey, don't go in there! There's radiation!

He never listens.

Of course as Spock opens up the thing he works on, it sounds like Scotty shouts out 'Nooo, bad dog!' Never worked out why.

When Kirk asks the time and Sulu says 'we're not going to make it are we?' I'm always reminded of The Corbomite Maneuver, when Sulu counts down to Balok destroying the Enterprise and is accused of an annoying fascination. Seems he's a bit defeatist.

Yay, warps back on line, and they escape!

Again, the music changes tone when Kirk notices Spock's empty chair. Brilliantly done. And Kirk's race to engineering is intercut with the birth of a planet so well.

I always smile when I remember watching this with my fiancee. Scotty says Spock's dead already, but Spock stumbles to his feet, so Faye said 'he's not dead, that guys a rubbish doctor.' So I had to point out Scotty's an engineer. Since then she's had tremendous trouble telling McCoy and Scotty apart.

There's little I can say about Spock's death. It's done very well and is a very emotional scene. For the funeral, Shatner plays Kirk so well as a man desperately trying not to break down in front of everyone. Shame about those sodding bagpipes though. They always spoil this bit for me. Particularly for a Vulcan, I think that song is an odd choice.

So we have a resolution on the Kirk's son thing, so we see David accept his father. It's a good scene, though I always thought it was a little unnecessary as they just kill David off later so the whole Kirk has a son thing for me seemed pointless.

Now I see it's more about Kirk aging storyline in this film, finding himself with a grown son he never saw. And the last scenes underscore new life and new beginnings, he now has time with his son and there's a new planet and he feels young again. I think that might have been what they were going for.

It also reminds me to have another go at reading a Tale of two Cities.

And to further underscore the new life, looks, there's Spock's torpedo on the planet and he's going to do the 'Space, the final frontier bit.'

And credits!

Wow, that makes for a long blog! Excuse any errors, my proofreading will be tricky this time. But those are some of my thoughts on Star Trek 2 as I watched it. Sort of a rubbish commentary. You could put the film on and read this as you go! Or probably not.

Anyway, I'm going to watch 3 next, after I go to the toilet. I'm not doing a commentary blog with that though, I'm tired from typing!

Convenient Amnesia

Last week I was having a debate with a aficionado of the superhero world regarding the TV Series Smallville. Basically he banned watching of it in his house, due to it's 'factual inaccuracies'.

Factual Inaccuracies, I should clarify, refer to the differences between events portrayed in Smallville and ones portrayed in the comics. Or the movies.

Now I'm not always the biggest fan of Smallville. I found that the earlier series had a fairly poor 'monster of the week' format with the recurrence 'oh X found some Kryptonite and it mutated them with weird powers' kinda stories. While it grew out of that and improved greatly, I still tended to find the episodes a bit hit and miss in places. But overall I've found it generally annoying.

So I countered this statement of factual inaccuracies, by pointing out that Superman gets a new origin story pretty much every decade. Add to that the fact of the DC multiverse allowing for either infinite or at least 52 versions of Superman, can you not just let the differences in story slide and enjoy it as a different take on the Superman legend? I mean the basic key elements are there, he's from another planet, sent to earth when Krypton was destroyed, crash landed in Kansas and was raised on a farm. Sure, I guess that there's some character appearences that can feel a bit 'gimmicky' and don't always reflect the characters as we know them from the comics. Bart Allen's appearence as a superfast thief for instance. But then everytime Bane is portrayed by any Batman thing that's not the comics I get mad, so Smallville's transgressions in that area barely register.

So the following point of annoyance that was raised, is that why would characters like Lex Luthor not remember Clark and the odd occurances from their youth? Well, this is fine, assuming, that the grown up characters will revert to the accepted status of film and comics. Again, as an alternate reality, I'd argue that this Lex Luthor could concievably investigate Clark forever. But, and I liked this point, is that argument not just ignoring the concept of future storylines? They way that after the Phantom Menace came out, everyone cried out 'Why doesn't C-3PO remember all this stuff?' Ok, 'everyone' is an unfair generalisation, but I heard the question a lot. Did all those people forget that a trilogy means 3 films? Which, minus the one you just watched, leaves two more films to go? But surely a story which involved Threepio forgetting he knew Anakin and so on, would be a vast epic that could never be contained in a mere 2 movies? Oh, wait, they say at the end of Revenge of the Sith that they'll wipe his memory. Ok then.

In the same vein, I would imagine that there's scope in future Smallville storylines to have traumas occur that cause characters to forget key facts. Actually, now I think about it, that happens in Smallville every third episode doesn't it? How many times did someone find Clark's secret only to suffer conveniant amnesia 3 minutes before the end credits?

Anyway, it was a fun discussion. Right up till the point when someone said that Smallville using Green Arrow was good, certainly better than using Green Lantern. After all, what's the point of a guy with a magic ring that doesn't work against yellow?

And that's when I got mad...

Spoiler warnings

I've been thinking lately about how I watched my favourite sci-fi shows in my youth and how I see them now. Things are a bit different. For a start there was no internet back then (not as a common household fixture at least). Also, as a child, I had much less awareness of news articles. The upshot is that I was happily watching my favourite shows with little to no idea what might be coming up.

As an example, when I first started watching Doctor Who it was in the 80's. When Sylvester McCoy became the Doctor, the first time I saw what his outfit was like was when I watched the show. Now I don't know if this was due to a lower amount of coverage of the show at that point in it's history or my own general ignorance of the media. I suspect the latter. But that doesn't happen now. It's almost impossible to have missed the shots of Matt Smith in his bow tie. It's similarly impossible to have missed the media follow up to the announcment of his casting. Or David Tennant's announcment he'd be leaving.

With the recent Star Trek movie, I'd had a informal policy of not letting myself get too excited by it, to avoid possible disappointment. (So not an issue in the end!) As such I'd not sought out any information about it really. However, despite this, I went into that movie knowing that it involved Kirk going to the acadamy, a Romulan enemy, a time travel element and the appearence of the older Spock. Those are fairly key points to the story and they were really widely known. But I remember the days when each episode of The Next Generation was a complete surprise to me, I never had any idea what could be happening.

I'm basically missing the times when I could watch a tv show or film that I'd love and be in complete ignorance of what awaited me. I'm probably being a bit unrealistic in thinking this could ever really be re-captured though. Nor am I placing any real blame on anyone. After all, I could avoid this information. Though in fairness, to properly avoid all information, I would have to forgo the internet, newspapers and tv news to be completely safe, and I'd end up cutting myself off from a lot of information.

And it's not just spoilers. Though those are the worst parts of it. To really be able to enjoy a production in complete ignorance of upcoming plot twists or character appearences, I'd have to avoid reviews. General news of upcoming releases. Cast and creator interviews. Even trailers. And in a lot of cases I enjoy these things. If I see of an interview with Leonard Nimoy, I'm probably going to find it interesting and wouldn't want to deprive myself of it purely because he might let something, although minor, slip about the Star Trek movie.

The main reason this has been on my mind is the realisation of how much we already know about the Doctor Who specials coming over christmas. I won't list all the things that I've heard about in case you are forunate enough not to have heard them. And what I have heard are many things that just make me more excited about seeing it. There's some awesome stuff in there and I can't wait to see how it all comes together. And that's why a lot of this information comes out. It's to promote the show/movie. Give a preview, get people excited, bring in the fans, have a success.

But there's a little part of me that has a wistful longing for ignorance. It wonders how awesome would that episode be if I were to watch it knowing absolutely nothing that was happening? Imagine if I didn't even know it was to be David Tennant's last show? Imagine! How mindblowing a climax would that be??

But all shows need some promotion. After all, a mindblowing episode of Doctor Who with constant surprises would be useless if I didn't know it was on.

I do think sometimes it would be fun to have that childlike ignorance of the media and internet reports and enjoy everything as completely new and surprising.

Though I suspect todays youth probably have a lot more exposure to this information.