Supplemental

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Picked up the Star Trek Countdown graphic novel at work the other day,* and pleased I was to discover that it's official canon that Nemesis Never Happened. It was an excellent handwave: two panels of "It's good to see you're not dead after all!" "Yeah, I get that a lot." And then they go on with explaining How Real Spock Got His ROFLcopter and Why Nero's Simple Mining Ship Is A God Damn Death Star.

This is the correct approach for Nemesis.**

It's also nice to see that the reboot was ushered in with a demonstration of the Worf Effect. Gotta love the fanservice in this franchise.

So, yeah, enjoyable graphic novel. Now, allow me to rant about supplemental materials in general!

Here is my thought: I like 'em a lot, but dammit they're supposed to be supplemental. I hate it when the answers to big gaping plot holes get buried in deleted scenes or the comics or whatever. Avatar would've been a better movie with that HOUR of cut stuff that explains pretty much everyone's motivation, the theatrical cut of Aliens leaves out some very useful information, and upon a rewatch I discovered that the theatrical cuts of LotR make NO GODDAMN SENSE. Aragorn has an actual character arc in the extended editions. Also, did you know there's an explanation for why the District 9 aliens have no idea how to pilot their own ship? Yeah, neither did I.*** Which, you know, would be nice to know in the movie itself.

I guess what I'm saying is, dangit, give me the infodumps. You can never have too much information, by god!


*God DAMN it's good working in a library.

**The most correct outlook is that none of the the TNG movies happened, on account of they were stupid. TNG's my favorite series, but the movies are not so much.

***Because they're the lowest caste of a eusocial society, is why. Apparently there was a big old epidemic on the ship that killed off all the smarter castes, and the ship itself limped to Earth on autopilot. Now they've got to start producing those smarter castes again.

Comments

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

Apparently there was a big old epidemic on the ship that killed off all the smarter castes

Well, all except for Christopher, I guess. He's pretty smart. Or, that lower caste is becoming smarter on its own?

BTW, I got this feeling from The Avengers as well - a lot of the scenes centering around Bruce's... condition, and the powers of Loki's staff felt like they were part of a bigger arc that was mostly cut from the final movie...

[beccastareyes]

I actually hate the Worf Effect. (And I was disappointed that Crusher and Troi were left out, since otherwise it felt like 'hey, look here's everyone from TNG'.)

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

...I thought the District 9 thing was explained in the movies. Or maybe I have magical mind-reading powers that I didn't know about o_o.

But man, I totally hear you. Time/money constraints suck for movies that really need that background info. And for those of us who aren't into comics, that means we never get those holes filled in until we stumble across it on a wiki years later.
Or we just write EVEN MOAR fanfic to fill the gaps for ourselves. :p

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Alien 3 is apparently significantly better with the extra material in the Director's Cut as well. I wouldn't know for sure, since that's the only version I've seen, but I've heard it from others, and given that the Director's Cut was quite good and the Theatrical Release pretty much got panned, it seems a reasonable conclusion.

[shadesofmauve]

Oh, man, yes. Supplemental materials should be supplemental. Been encountering this with story-oriented RPGs a lot, lately -- it's especially obnoxious because most of the supplemental material is really poor quality compared to the actual games, and I refuse to waste my time with crappy writing when there's so much good writing to be had.

Thankfully there are wikis. Otherwise I'd be so confused.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

But I want to keep First Contact! It's got great stuff like Data's "resistance is futile" and Troi's "In my opinion, as ship's counselor, he's nuts!"

Insurrection is essentially an overblown episode. It doesn't work as a movie, but would have been perfectly fine as an episode. Not an outstanding one, but not a terrible one, either.

But yes, the other TNG movies were definitely lost in the Time War. As were any Alien movies after Aliens and any other Highlander movies - there can be only one! Oh, and Star Trek V, too.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I knew why the "District 9" bugs couldn't pilot their ship. I thought it was heavily implied in the introduction.

And while I've seen the LotR Extended versions so many times I no longer recall the theatrical releases well, I don't recall ever finding someone's characterisation confusing in itself. Frustratingly and pointlessly tampered with, but not confusing.

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

I thought the Aliens in District 9 couldn't pilot their ship because they were the Telephone Sanitizers, the TV producers, Hairdressers, etc.