Star Trek by the Minute 057: Have Guts Enough to Get the Point

-

STbtM: First /\ Previous

In a sweeping shot over the drilling platform, we see Kirk and Sulu fighting Romulan miners. There are some silly stage-fighting exchanges of blows until Kirk ends up hanging by his fingers off the edge of the platform. In an overhead view, we again see the problems that the effects crew had in visualizing large objects and distances. The drilling beam is about 15-20 meters in diameter, so while the platform is shown very high from the surface, many times the altitude of the cloud layers, the drilling beam terminator point is fairly large when it should be hair thin, if visible at all. The Romulan tries a few Frankenstein-like stomps on Kirk's fingers for some reason, when all he needs to do is keep Kirk from climbing back up.

Sulu's embarrassing fight scene continues with neither participant actually trying to hit the other in a vital organ, but making lots of wild arcing sweeps with their weapons. Finally, Sulu blocks a straight down chop by the Romulan's battle axe, completely stopping a crushing, full force blow with his sword held aloft in one hand and the axe is half a meter from Sulu's hand. There has never been a more unbelievable cinema combat defense. Sulu pushes the Romulan onto one of the flame vents, and he looks at Sulu like a cartoon coyote, then down at the vent, then back at Sulu, and is engulfed in flames. Is this a hilarious tribute to Saturday morning Looney Tunes villains, or insulting cinematic drivel? You decide.

Meanwhile, the Romulan is still ignoring what's going on behind him in order to stomp on Kirk's fingers, at which point his commitment finally pays off in a pyrrhic victory: he steps on Kirk's fingers…immediately followed by Sulu's sword bursting through his chest like the queen's tail ripped through Bishop in Aliens or the chest burster did in all of the films. Like them, the emerging object is covered in appropriately colored gore, white, red or in this case, green.

The Romulan decides to use his final moments of consciousness to stage a dramatic, leaping somersault off the platform without even trying to take one of his killers with him.

No women appear or speak in this sequence.

After the battle is over, Kirk and Sulu pick a very dangerous way to use some of the firearms lying around in our next segment of Star Trek by the Minute, Episode 058: "What's the Matter?"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Star Trek by the Minute 018: Vulcan Racism

-
Previous: Proud Mama In a great contrast, this segment makes a sharp cut from the warm light of Winona Horowitz's all-too brief close up appearance with a flash to a slanted, rotating and zooming medium shot in sterile cold blue lighting of a large amphitheater. The closely intimate, loving family interaction supported by soft cellos is juxtaposed with ludicrously high benches occupied by 3 stern-looking ministers and harsh silence. The bench is set against a backdrop of severe, angular architecture with the roof beams giving an appearance of cross-hatched cuts of a scalpel across cadaverous sky beyond. The voice of the male head minister echoes through the high-tech judgment cavern: "You have surpassed the expectations of your instructors. Your final record is flawless with one exception; I see that you have applied to Starfleet as well." It seems reasonable to question the characterization of an application to Starfleet as a "flaw". Without attempting to gath
Read more

Star Trek by the Minute 117: My Honor, Commander

-
Image
"Bones!" says Kirk, slapping his Chief Medical Officer: "Buckle up!"  McCoy rolls his eyes.  Kirk sits in the Captain's chair and calls engineering, "Scotty, How we doin?"  Does ANY ship actually require verbally checking with personnel in engineering in to determine operational status?  Would the Flight Director at NASA actually need to contact a launchpad engineer to make certain the rocket was fueled, or would fuel status be automatically visible in Mission Control? "Dilithium chambers at maximum, Captain," replies the Chief Engineer, who then turns to Deep Roy and yells "Get down!"  The obvious question regarding Scott's report is: how does a "chamber" vary from maximum to minimum?  I suppose if one knows very little of "Treknology", one might think dilithium is a fuel, like diesel or gasoline, in which case this report would make sense, like saying (of a car) "The tank is full."  Although trek
Read more

Star Trek by the Minute 019: Ladies’ Night

-
Previous: Vulcan Racism As Spock finishes his interview with the council, we cut to a car driving down a lonely Iowa cornfield with the last flames of dusk dying on the horizon. Without stopping (or slowing) at the crossroads, the car pulls up to a what we discover is a futuristic roadhouse bar. The driver appears to be the Uhura, and we follow her swishing red turtleneck mini dress through the club as she approaches the bar and orders a Clavian Fire Tea, 3 Budweiser® Classics (another shameful product placement), 2 Cardassian Sunrises, and what sounds like a "Slushle Mix" at the bartender's suggestion. Now we see there are women everywhere, but at least they're just functioning as scenery, and ordering drinks. At GirlBar in Hollywood one might see 5 to 1 ratios like this…but in Iowa? OK, it's the future in an alternate universe. The bartender goes to work on her order. "That's a lot of drinks for one woman" comes from our tipsy future hero James T.
Read more