It’s amazing the people who love Axanar. One email I got last year was from Andy Weir, the author of The Martian. Andy wrote me last year and told me he loved Axanar. This was before I even read the book! But Diana had read it and I promptly borrowed her copy and read it. I have to say, the book is a MUST READ. Well, this past summer at San Diego Comic Con, our good friend Mary Anne Butler was interviewing Andy, and she arranged for us to meet Andy after her interview was done.
Diana, Andy Weir and me
So go see The Martian, as I hear it is an awesome movie! Diana and I will see it this week.
Meanwhile, today was spent driving up to Modesto to Steamhouse Con. We don’t have high hopes for this con, as it is a first year con, but we were featured and the promoter really wanted us, so we will see!
Dinner with our friend and Prelude to Axanar sound designer Mark Edward Lewis Friday night.
Alec
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the book (it’s mostly an exercise in problem-solving featuring a likable protagonist whose experiences don’t change him all that much, which isn’t what I read novels for, not even SF novels), the film version has the advantages of some awesome production design, a great cast, Ridley Scott’s most assured direction in many years, and of course Mars, Mars, Mars. It’s also a hopeful vision of the near future that privileges cooperation and a real sense of wonder over armed confrontation, and as such is for my money much closer in spirit to TOS than the Abrams films. I’ll gladly take it.
You do know that in order for the original series to survive on TV, Roddenberry realized it had to have action adventure? That it had to have jeopardy in the cold open (and did so in many episodes?) I think that way too many years of Roddenberry’s flawed concept of the future in Star Trek: TNG (derived in part from his drug addiction and brain damage due to said addiction and strokes) has rubbed off on people, and they forget what Star Trek: TOS was like it wasn’t what happens on TNG. Star Trek is an action adventure space opera franchise-it isn’t The Martian, 2001, Gravity or anything else based on hard science fiction on film and in print, no matter how some episodes (or novels ) seem to be written depicting Star Trek to be hard sci-fi.
I’m amazed at how fans seem to love Axanar, which has a lot of war in it (and a conflict with the Klingons that was prevented from happening in Star Trek Into Darkness) but hate the new movies for having ‘pew pew’ when this movie’s got it in spades. I wander if they don’t see how contradictory that is?
Just as a reminder of what the movies before the most recent two were like:
(TMP) Somewhat cerebral. Mostly a 2001 knockoff. Illia in a ridiculously short skirt.
TWOK) Revenge. Explosions. Getting old. KHAAAAAAAN! A FUCK TON of Pew!Pew!
TSFS) GE-NE-SIS?! Kirk’s son killed. Get out! Get out of there! Lots of Pew!Pew!
TVH) They are not the hell your whales. One damn minute, Admiral.
TFF) Three boobed cat stripper. Sha-ka-ree. Lots of Pew!Pew!
TUC) Racism. Cold War. Shakespeare. Lots of Pew!Pew!
GEN) Fantasy land. Duras Sisters. Enterprise go Boom. Lots of Pew!Pew!
FC) BOOM! Sweaty Borg. Sexual healing. Drunks. A METRIC FUCK TON of Pew!Pew!
INS) Face lift. Forced relocation. F. Murray Abraham on a couch. Lots of poorly paced Pew!Pew!
NEM) Dune buggy. Mentally deficient android. Slowly moving doom device. Lots of random Pew!Pew!
Trek was an action franchise from the second pilot episode onward. To suggest (and believe) otherwise is to completely ignore what Roddenberry said in his prospectus for the show back in 1966. It seems that people like yourself have faulty memories of the original show, and have allowed them to colour your perceptions of the Abrams movies and this fan production.