Marginal Utility

There was a huge front page article on the auction at the NY Times some months ago, complete with large picture, and pretty much every other news source on the planet covered it, which is why I didn't bother to mention it, but as well, the Times included a large audio-visual slide show, which I did listen to, which further prevented me from blogging it, because I would have had a geek-aneurysm ranting about how wrong most of the narration was on the various objects; very little of the information was correct; stuff from the movies was attributed to the series, and vice versa, different series were confused, as were characters, as were races, and, well, you can imagine.

Oh, and the narration was done by the Christie's person in charge of the auction.

I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the authenticating process.

(Best films): "In my book, Khan and First Contact."

This is simply objectively correct.

Nemesis might have been an adequate NG episode, save for several violently stupid elements, such as a prolonged chase/firefight on a Federation Dune Buggy (I am not making this up, though they called it something slightly different) towards the beginning, with some utterly generic Violent Aliens, for no other reason than that Patrick Stewart likes to drive fast.

Why you'd fly a shuttle down to a planet, land it, and then proceed by dune buggy, for any other reason, I can't imagine (Captain Picard got a line about "itching to try it out," but it still makes absolutely no sense).

As well, the aliens had no discernable characteristics save growling and shooting (why?; no reason whatever, save to make the buggy chase "exciting," and then be completely forgotten about), and were thus utterly un-Star-Trek; neither is the faintest attempt made to communicate with them; let's just shoot them! Whee! Cause that's what Star Trek is about!

There were various other stupidities (and a few decent moments; I kinda liked the wedding at the beginning, though many did not), but Don't Let Me Go On Any Further. (According to everything I've read, and from what the director said, the director, Stuart Baird, had no clue about Star Trek, and was proud of that, and that was part of the problem, though the script was just mediocre, I'd say, as were the basic premises.)

It's not as bad as ST:V, though.

"Most items appear to be from the sequel series, though there are some items from the films and the original series, too."

Basically it's Paramount having emptied their storage, having apparently figured after they killed Enterprise, that they'd not have any use for any of the stuff any more (or at least no one left on the lot to speak up for keeping it), and that they might as well see what they could get for it.

"Though the space/time compression involved in transmitting the Klingon homeworld's eco-disaster to the outside galaxy makes the convenient application of instantaneous transport to galactic backwaters in the Star Wars prequels look mild by comparison."

If I got really geeky, I'd start discussing the continuity problems with the Voyager episode "Flashback."
 

Ah, Ken may have been ignoring that, but I missed it entirely...

I'd think authentication issues would be less significant for the large starship models. There's lots of impressive work by talented amateurs at Starship Modeler, though very rarely at anything approaching the scale of the 2-meter-plus Enterprises. (Certain LEGO maniacs do build 2-meter ships, but they don't glue 'em.)

I just couldn't begin to evaluate the market for stuff like Starfleet costumes, so I didn't even try, nor would I particularly want to think what uses someone who can pay a few thousand bucks for Jeri Ryan's form-fitted Borg costume might have for it.

As I think about it, the Reliant/Miranda-class model's value is probably impaired by its re-use for other purposes.

In a BSG commentary, Ron Moore says that Star Trek would usually require a page of technobabble dialog to explain why the super-advanced tech couldn't be used; the dune buggy certainly doesn't seem even to try.
 

Ignoring: I've gotten several e-mails from one of Shira's cousins about it, and had seen some of the coverage. (Disposable income <> having two young children, so I didn't follow up.)

I decided to pay brief attention because of some link (random to me, probably from someone who commented at Holly Black's livejournal) who—apparently as with Tom—didn't know about it. I see that was worth doing.

I'll dissent only in that I would include IV, even with the scenes where the boom mike is visible. (The first is [a] clearly the movie the studio wanted to make, which is not necessarily A Good Thing and [b] directed by Bob Wise, who graduated from my high school, so I wouldn't say anything negative about him anyway.)

John Ordover observed, after seeing the premier, that VI isn't a good film or a bad film, it was simply the wrong film. Which is more than I can say for almost any that came after it.
 

"In a BSG commentary, Ron Moore says that Star Trek would usually require a page of technobabble dialog to explain why the super-advanced tech couldn't be used; the dune buggy certainly doesn't seem even to try."

The thing that leaves me so infuriated about this -- well, there are several, really, but we start with the fact that this is a major part of the film -- I'm not bothering to check out the number of minutes spent on it, but it's considerable. and the only excuse for any of it is that we get the MacGuffin of pieces of Data's experimental predecessor being found on the planet, having been planted by the villain, as part of a plot that also makes little sense, but never mind that -- the point that it goes on for fifteen or more minutes, making no sense.

And Stewart and Spiner and others were thrilled! They went on in interview after interview, and in the commentary, about how great it was to indulge Patrick Stewart's love of driving fast!

For god's sake, they spent millions of dollars doing those scenes. Scenes which make no sense.

And then the film commercially crashes and burns, and they wonder why?

Maybe it's because you spent a major chunk of your film making no sense instead of giving Patrick Stewart use of some dune buggies for a week (or a month, or three, or free dune buggies for life! Who cares!?!) instead!

It was just such an unbelievably fucking stupid decision, and they were proud of it!

Because, you know, we've never before seen a film where people drive fast and shoot at each other! Who wouldn't pay to see that?!

And, as I said, there were a bunch of lesser stupidities, although, again, I don't hate the film, and it has moments I like, and was a decent enough episode in various ways; it just couldn't sustain being a full major motion picture, any more than the previous one could.

"John Ordover observed, after seeing the premier, that VI isn't a good film or a bad film, it was simply the wrong film. Which is more than I can say for almost any that came after it."

I'm enough of a Trekkie to not hate any of the films, although there are significant parts of V that I find painful; VI I thought relatively decent, although they'd have been better off just recasting Lt. Saavik a third time.

Generations is one I'd particularly like to rewrite; the major problems were the awkward sandwiching of the two crews/time-periods, the inadequate amount of screen time for the TOS folks (a minor irritation is the obviousness of Spock and McCoy's lines being given to Scotty and Chekov, with no change whatever), but particularly with the lameness of Kirk's death, and the whole "clambering around girders and wrestling and shooting will make for a wildly compelling ending" notion. (The fact that the Nexus made no sense didn't help, either.)

Still, I somehow manage to mildly like the film, anyway, which only shows how imprinted with nostalgia for idiotic things Trek I am.

"I'll dissent only in that I would include IV, even with the scenes where the boom mike is visible."

Taking that as meaning "as one of the better films," I'd agree, although I don't think it comes up to the level of Khan and First Contact. For one thing, Goofy Spock was plenty of fun, but still wasn't real Spock. But it's the third best film, I'd say.

"[b] directed by Bob Wise, who graduated from my high school, so I wouldn't say anything negative about him anyway."

I still haven't seen his Director's Cut, though; eventually.

Supposedly, incidentally, V, the one Shatner directed, had the script and budget badly cut by the studio, and he and others felt it badly hurt the film; I don't know how much better (or worse) it might have been -- it had some conceptual problems, I'd say, but one can certainly see places where structural flaws might have been repaired -- but I'm willing to cut a bit of slack as to the possibility.

You can find the deleted opening scenes of Kirk's orbital paradrop to earth at YouTube, last I looked, incidentally.

I doubtless should, in conclusion, point to my comments on Free Enterprise.