Quantcast
Channel: Doobious » John Pruner
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

My Trouble With Tribbles and Trusting Your Audience

0
0

TOS_2x13_TheTroubleWithTribbles0381

*This article contains massive spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness. I’m assuming that after a few weeks since its release that you’ve seen it; especially if you’re reading this article.

Of all the problems I had with the new Star Trek movie, there’s one thing that completely pissed me off. It wasn’t the nonsense about people in torpedoes, or that the reveal of Khan had no relevance or meaning, or that the title is missing a colon; but that the writers had no faith their audience would get the set ups and pay offs of the film.

I’m talking about the dead tribble McCoy is fiddling with for god knows what reasons. Why does he have it just sitting there on his desk in the first place? Wouldn’t it smell?

Anyhow. The dead tribble is a set up early in the movie to establish the payoff later that Khan’s Kryptonian-like blood can provide super healing and apparently bring people back from the dead. It’s a really ham-fisted way of telegraphing the end of the movie to the audience in it’s own right, and also completely unnecessary in the context of the movie because the concept has already been set up beforehand.

The "shoe on the head" meme of the future.

The “shoe on the head” meme of the future.

For those of you who don’t know what a tribble is, it’s a lint-like space rabbit.

At the very start of the film a Star Fleet officer (we’ll call him Mickey) is offered a miracle cure by Khan that will save his terminally ill daughter. That cure is Khan’s blood. It’s not a secret that’s revealed later, either: we, the audience, explicitly see that she is ill, Khan says “I can save her”, he takes blood out of his own arm, hands it over, and we see it cure the little girl. Isn’t he just a dapper chap?

Also in the first act Bones dicks around with that dead tribble sitting on his desk and someone makes an off-handed remark about it. (This is the set up you’re supposed to remember.)

Later they take a blood sample from Khan again for plot reasons and discover he gains his power from the sun and is allergic to green rocks. …Wait, hang on…

Star-Trek-Into-Darkness

“You think that’s cool; you should see what my semen can do!”

At the climax of the film Kirk is mostly killed by radiation, and since Miracle Max has been long gone by the 24th century, Bones arbitrarily injects human super blood into a tribble that has ostensibly been stone dead for a least a couple of days and instantly comes back to life 10 seconds after he plunges the syringe into it. Bada-bing! And with a transition fade to white, Kirk is saved to fight another day, completely undermining any emotional weight and impact his death would have had in under 30 seconds.

Bad writing aside: the tribble thing is proof the writers either thought the audience would be full of morons that wouldn’t get the subtle hint of the sick little girl, or that they had to find something for McCoy to do in the movie because he had no reason to be around otherwise.

I get that this is a Star Trek movie without Star Trek. I get that the people in charge of making this movie leaned on the nostalgia of the core audience until the weight of their collective money bins crushed any good will garnered by the previous reboot. But poor writing, rehashing old ideas, and cowardice by playing to the hypothetical common denominator for a franchise with a whip-smart fan base is inexcusable.

It’s a symptom of what’s been plaguing Hollywood for the past ten years. Since the big money all goes to tentpoles that are expected to break the $1 billion mark each summer the edict of “same but different” of endless sequels are the safest bet; and the redundant tribble is there to make sure no child is left behind.

But hey, they cut down on the lens flares. So I guess that’s a plus.

 

You can find John online on Facebook and Twitter @johnpruner.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images