I'm reluctantly pro-torture in ticking time bomb scenarios, but otherwise am certain we have to resist its dubious comforts.

Isn't the incentive by the torturee to give false info to stall time just enough for his plan to succeed? I don't see how torture is any more effective under that scenario.

I'll readily grant that if you have an hour to get the location of the H-bomb from the committed terrorist, nothing's going to work, but if you have three days and someone not quite that committed, gentle, friendly persuasion (which it's my understanding takes a great deal of time to be effective, since it needs to appear or even be genuine) even if effective, will be effective far too late. The only workable option is to get ugly.

And, yes, it's easy to abuse this kind of thing; to think there's a ticking bomb when there isn't; to assume that all threats, no matter how distant, are 'ticking time-bombs'.

That being the case, I'm assuming well-intended officers with good information, simply doing their damnedest to prevent literally imminent catastrophe.

A few years back I tried to watch TNG as I was going through a phase of tv series marathoning...

Terminator: the Sarah connor Chronicles, is my current marathon of choice. Extremely rewarding, in the way the characters grow and change, although Lena Headey is getting on my nerves. Her habit of ending a line of dialogue by nodding in agreement with what she herself just said is one of the oddest actorish bits I can remember seeing.

Still, bringing in the criminally underseen Stephanie Jacobsen mid-season as a sexy fighter from the future in desperate need of rest was an irrefutably brilliant casting decision.

@301: (It might be the case, too, where the terrorist is happy to blow up a few million innocents, but if you start clipping HER fingers off, one by one, she magically develops a conscience.)

Sorry. That was gross. I guess I keep coming back to 'one chance in a million is better than no chance in a million', considering what's at stake.


Btw, speaking of T:tSCC, the one episode where Cameron is discovering her humanity through ballet, and John's uncle spies on her while she dances (and his horror and disorientation at realizing this thing he hates is, in a very real sense, truly beautiful), outdoes imho the entire seasons of Star Trek: TNG's workout of Data in that regard.

Somebody ought to mention Stargate: SG-1, which I feel is one of the great sci-fi series of all time.

I'm reluctantly pro-torture in ticking time bomb scenarios

I'm of the belief that the so called "ticking time bomb scenario" almost literally never happens in the real world.

It of course happens in the movies, so lets go to Dirty Harry- the way the movie script contrives it was Harry morally right in torturing Scorpio in the stadium? Yes, yes he was. But that's a movie- how likely is it for something to play out like that in real life?

@304--agreed. That's why I mentioned in an earlier post that it's likely to be abused.

I'm geeky enough to find it disconcerting that Abrams is doing both Star Trek and Star Wars. It seems wrong.

I just didn't like the way a lot of the Star Trek reboot was handled. The beginning was wonderfully well done, but little Jimmy Kirk, played by some kid in a wig, and driving into a canyon that never existed in Iowa (it's like putting Mount Everest in the Sahara) was a throwaway bit of character establishment we all could have lived without. The plot was a horribly tangled mess hopelessly hung off an impossible coincidence. And a drill, a physical drill miles long, is necessary in order to bore to the center of a planet--in an era of transporters and energy beams? C'mon...

Still, they did well bringing Nimoy back, and the actor who played McCoy did a great job (as did the new Spock, Zachary Quinto). I can live with Simon Pegg as Scotty, and Sulu and Chekov were inoffensively done. Still, Spock with Uhuru? C'mon...

And don't get me started on the buffoonish handling of the Kobiyahsi Maru scenario. That could have been a great scene. Pine's just wrong for Kirk. Kirk had bravado and toughness in spades, and a hell of a poker player. He was never a buffoon, or close to it.

And don't get me started on the buffoonish handling of the Kobiyahsi Maru scenario. That could have been a great scene.

I agree with this 1000%. Pine seems like he beat the test because he didn't like his teachers or to impress a girl, Kirk should have beaten the test because he is driven to win at everything. And then later, he becomes Captain because Nimoy tells him what to do. Absolutely anyone could have done that. There's nothing that the character of Kirk adds to those scenes. They just happen to him.

I agree with this 1000%.

I found the film more or less okay, but that scene was just one of the stupidest, most bland things imaginable. No work, no perseverance, no cleverness, no brilliance, no emotion, no nothing from Kirk at all. It was an embarrassment, and the movie would have been better off ignoring that bit of canon, for how it turned out.

@306--yes. You said it better than I did.

I sign off completely on 305 and 306. For a while I was alone among many for not liking the new Star Trek.

309: and I REALLY wanted to like it. I'd have loved to see it kick off another half dozen terrific movies (which I suppose it may, anyway), but I was hoping it would also be the impetus for a new series, perhaps picking up where the 3rd season of the original Star Trek left off. Maybe a little more gritty, a little more BSG, but why not continue with the half dozen great characters already well established, but with room to grow?

No idea why this doesn't even seem to be in development.

Jack Carter - word. Just annoying. Oh well.

The most annoying thing about the recent Star Trek was that when I heard Winona Ryder was to be in it I was all excited to see her as a Vulcan (the role she was born to play really...aside from maybe an elf). Just being the mom of a Vulcan was ok too as it turns out. But the let-down was by the time I saw the movie I forgot she was in it, and totally missed her entirely.

As such I'm in no position to objectively rate it as a film as the dominant aspect of my movie-evaluating rubric (or to be honest the dominant factor in any evaluation I make in life) is what I call "the Winona Ryder Quotient". Of course the fact that I didn't notice her suggests that the WRQ isn't too high.

Winona Ryder is a could have been inner circle HoF, but her career just sort of dissapoints. Still great, but for me the 'could have beens' dominate. Fetching, talented, in my personal wheelhouse, and yet ...

Nothing really to add. Except that if I win the powerball, I'd be okay hiring all the non-torture posters on this page to do a reboot of Star Trek.

Star Trek should have been set entirely at the academy. The kobayashi maru incident could have been the climax.

Much like Prometheus, the gaping holes in the plot and the irritating coincidences (old spock happens to be within walking distance of Kirk on the moon?) ruined my suspension of disbelief. Although, to be fair, Star Trek was more entertaining than and not nearly as stupid as Prometheus.

313 -- exactly. She's the Dwight Gooden of acting.

If Winona Ryder is the Dwight Gooden of acting, who is Diane Keaton? Ken Griffey Jr.? Frank Thomas? Ages 24-33: The Godfather, Godfather II, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan. Those are four of the greatest movies of all times IMO, and one of the greatest comedies. Her career since then has been good, but hardly spectacular.

Women don't really have acting careers after 30. They either become "names" or character actors at age 55.

Writers of Star Trek movies have had a strangely hard time coming up with antagonists. And too often time travel is used as a key plot point, which gets tiresome.

Khan was great, of course. The Borg were a natural. General Chang was great, and ... that's it?

Of course, Star Treks I and IV (and, arguably, Insurrection) showed that you don't need a traditional villain in a Star Trek movie either, simply the challenge of dealing with an unfamiliar situation can provide enough dramatic tension.

But for the rest, sheesh. Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon? ... no. Spock's never-before-mentioned brother? .... no. Some random dude trying to get back to the Nexus? ... no.

The Romulans could provide lots of fodder for a challenging opponent but both Star Trek: Nemesis and the reboot botched it by chucking out pretty much all of the established canon regarding the Romulans.

Why is this so hard?

Diane Keaton had a good career after 30, it's just that there was almost no way she could ever maintain the level she was at in her 20s.

It's certainly harder for women to have a career after 30 than men, but some do. Streep is the obvious example.

Streep vs. Keaton is an interesting comparison. Keaton was in four great movies and several other very good ones, but hasn't done that much of note since her 30s. Streep has worked consistently and has been repeatedly praised for her work in a lot of good movies, but she's never been in a truly GREAT movie. (The onion had a funny article about this a few years ago.) I guess you could argue that Keaton is mostly peak and Streep is mostly career.

Edit: Streep was in Manhattan, but it wasn't a major role. And the Deer Hunter is arguably great. I also love Adaptation.

30 is too low. There are numerous stars who had careers into their thirties, late thirties, even forties, before sliding into oblivion or into character acting or into full-time domesticity. True, the male stars tend to last longer, but women tend to become stars/leading actors earlier than men.

Women can be stars but they are rarely "leading actors" when they are young or for that matter when they are older as well. Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, or real any of the big names females stars that got huge paychecks were almost always teamed up with a major male lead and their movies tended to flop when they weren't paired up with a major male actor. One of the few exceptions to this would be Angelina Jolie who managed to star in a handful of movies and have them make money and have her be the only human draw in the movie.

Women for the most part get roles because they are the new good looking female which is also why they tend not to have long careers or act much past 30 since they weren't really hired in the first place because of their acting ability. Once they are no longer new or new and young the calls stop coming for those kind of parts and there are only so many other kinds of parts females beyond that with a handful of female actors already taking those parts. So the ones who last when they get older are for the most part the ones that actually have acting ability.

All that may be true to some degree, especially if one sees it with preconceptions. There have been hundreds of pretty boys that have flashed across the cinema skies and quickly petered out.

However, there are women who were never big stars but had leading roles--George Brents, so to speak. Rene Russo is a recent example. I'm sure we could dig out a number of others. Ruth Roman, Glenda Farrell, Ruth Hussey, Glynis Johns. The Lane sisters. Lucille Ball's pre-TV movie career. Celeste Holm. Donna Reed. Jane Wyatt. Claire Bloom. Barbara Harris. Julie Harris. Paula Prentis. Karen Black. Vera Miles had a long career doing that and never rising above that level.

Someone, as Bill James once said, should actually count them, rather than go by top of the head impressions.

part of what's confusing is that since, oh, about, the '40s, there have been much roles for men than women in the aggregate.

Helen Mirren seems not be having issues getting pretty good roles in her later years.

Also saw Alison Brie on Letterman a couple of nights ago and I dont get her appeal cause her appearance was annoying as hell.

There will always be leading roles for females so simply naming actress who were the leading female role is rather pointless to the discussion.

My point was that women are very rarely THE actor in a movie, when women are major stars they are still almost always paired with major male actors, when they aren't their movies generally don't draw, and regardless of age women's roles in film are almost always secondary to the male roles.

A major male star can be the only star in a film and have it draw well. A major female star can do that once in a blue moon.

Parag. 2: why is that? It wasn't always so, certainly not to the extent it is now. I find it fascinating that there were more women stars, A and B level, who carried a movie, in the '30s than in the last few decades.

Still, Spock with Uhuru? C'mon...

My friend and I were recently rewatching some old episodes, and one of the first Star Trek scene broadcast is Uhura kind of hitting on Spock. It happens a couple times in the first several episodes.

I can think of a couple reasons for Alison Brie's appeal.

Parag. 2: why is that? It wasn't always so, certainly not to the extent it is now. I find it fascinating that there were more women stars, A and B level, who carried a movie, in the '30s than in the last few decades.

I think it's because movies driven financially by teenage boys now.

A good article on the popularity of Alison Brie

Not entirely relevant to the back and forth going on at the moment, but Michelle Williams seems to be in a bit of a zone right now as far as being the lead in fairly well-received movies.

In some she shares the lead with some "names" - Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine, and Gael Garcia Bernal in Mammoth. I suppose even Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York. But she's essentially the draw for Take This Waltz, and My Week With Marilyn.

Who'd have thunk an actual acting career would spring from Dawson's Creek?

A good article on the popularity of Alison Brie

Well played, sir.

Well played, sir.

I will never let a low road go untraveled...

.........

The Romulans could provide lots of fodder for a challenging opponent but both Star Trek: Nemesis and the reboot botched it by chucking out pretty much all of the established canon regarding the Romulans.

Why is this so hard?

Right? The original series showed it needn't be. Just of the Romulans in particular, there was that episode where Kirk is sent in to steal the cloaking device, and Spock feigns attraction to the female Romulan commander. That was when they had all of a week for an episode, and it was very well-plotted. The female commander was a complex, very 'human' villain, of a very non-traditional kind.

My completely WAG is that throughout the last century, with a couple of notable exceptions, sci-fi was drama's poor cousin. The budgets often weren't quite there, or weren't there at all. Top tier actors didn't want to be involved. Top directors had their pick of other projects. Top scriptwriters, too. The cream of all those things help when it comes to dreaming up a strong villain. Maybe it's that strong villains are simply tough to do, and when you have the many handicaps sci-fi has traditionally labored under, it's that much harder?

I'm thinking back, too, to films generally. For every good villain there are a bunch of okay ones, and a bunch that just aren't convincing. Maybe Star Trek is just in line with the percentages.

My point was that women are very rarely THE actor in a movie, when women are major stars they are still almost always paired with major male actors, when they aren't their movies generally don't draw, and regardless of age women's roles in film are almost always secondary to the male roles.

Assuming this is true, why do women not want to see women as the focus of films? Also, is this true for females regardless of age? Hollywood follows the money, so if women wanted to see 40 year old women in lead roles without a comparably strong male actor, we'd have a flood of those. We don't, therefore women don't want to see that. Ipso ergo propter hoc.

.

Well that explains it then, a shot of her boobs with the sound turned off gives me a better understanding of the appeal.

Right? The original series showed it needn't be. Just of the Romulans in particular, there was that episode where Kirk is sent in to steal the cloaking device, and Spock feigns attraction to the female Romulan commander. That was when they had all of a week for an episode, and it was very well-plotted. The female commander was a complex, very 'human' villain, of a very non-traditional kind.

The Romulan?/Klingon? Kirk had a spaceship strategy duel with was good, too. Didn't they bring him back as Spock's father later? I'm just not good at this Star Trek nerdery...

Winona Ryder is a could have been inner circle HoF, but her career just sort of dissapoints. Still great, but for me the 'could have beens' dominate. Fetching, talented, in my personal wheelhouse, and yet ...

Obligatory post

Women can be stars but they are rarely "leading actors" when they are young or for that matter when they are older as well. Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, or real any of the big names females stars that got huge paychecks were almost always teamed up with a major male lead and their movies tended to flop when they weren't paired up with a major male actor. One of the few exceptions to this would be Angelina Jolie who managed to star in a handful of movies and have them make money and have her be the only human draw in the movie.

I would also exempt Sandra Bullock from this, at least to some extent. I couldn't tell you who the male leads were in Blind Side, 28 Days, Miss Congeniality, Miss Congeniality 2 or the Net (or Speed 2 for that matter).

I knew Sandra would get brought up and she should have a couple of asterisks next to her resume. Blind Side was a football movie based on a football book.


Speed 2 was a bomb. The Net a minor hit. 28 Days did about as well as expected and her rom-coms did well at times but were for the most part second tier films when it comes to to the box office like almost all rom-coms are.

Put her in a drama that isn't geared totally to a female audience and she does mildly well or poorly with the exception of The Blind Side.

Murder by Numbers
The Premonition
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Net

The Romulan?/Klingon? Kirk had a spaceship strategy duel with was good, too. Didn't they bring him back as Spock's father later? I'm just not good at this Star Trek nerdery...

That was "Balance of Terror" with Mark Lenard. He also played Sarek, correct. Quite possibly the best of the original series episodes.

In general the Romulan episodes of TOS and TNG were among the best.

There are many great great episodes in the original series. City on the Edge of Forever and Trouble with Tribbles are probably the consensus picks, but I don't know that I could choose without re-watching. Balance of Terror is on the shortlist though.

My point was that women are very rarely THE actor in a movie, when women are major stars they are still almost always paired with major male actors, when they aren't their movies generally don't draw, and regardless of age women's roles in film are almost always secondary to the male roles.

Sigourney Weaver sold a hell of a lot of tickets for the movies of the "Alien" franchise. Jodie Foster has been "the" star in a fair number of major successes, too: The Silence of the Lambs, Contact, Panic Room, etc. It may be harder for women to carve out that role, but it can be done.

That was "Balance of Terror" with Mark Lenard. He also played Sarek, correct. Quite possibly the best of the original series episodes.

Basically, a submarine movie re-purposed as space opera. Same thing with the end of Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan ("two-dimensional thinking").

Since I love submarine movies, I enjoyed these as well.

@340: good catch. Romulans were also much more interesting as a race than, say, Klingons. Some distant shared ancestry w Vulcans, iirc, made them less brutish than Klingons, therefore more complex. Pulled much as Spock was between reason and emotion/violence.

And yes, indeed. It's all coming back to me thanks to the nerdery on display here. "Balance of Terror" was very, very good. First appearance of the Romulans, and no one new what they looked like... The script plays it very much like the sub chases of old, to good effect.

I did a little looking into the new ST movie, and Simon Pegg (Scotty) mentions being at work on it for five months. Leads usually aren't on set or location for half that time. I wonder what it means...

Streep has worked consistently and has been repeatedly praised for her work in a lot of good movies, but she's never been in a truly GREAT movie.

Is this true? Huh. Mentally combing through my personal Top 100, and all close calls as well, she's not there. The Deer Hunter's also definitely not her movie. She's the ethereal blond bauble, the untouched dream gliding self-effacingly through grubby, small-town Pennsylvania. She just doesn't have much to do beyond look winsome (which she does beautifully) and symbolic (one of the movie's weaknesses). I've seen The Deer Hunter half a dozen times and I still can't decide whether these characters would be singing "God Bless America" at the end. In which case, maybe they would.

As The River Wild showed, Streep could also be a credible action star, even in her late 40s. Interesting woman.

edit: Damn you, Srul! Drinks!!

@342: The list of male stars that fit what McCoy has in mind is not that long, and male stars often have shelf lives, too.

@341: You bet. This thread has me googling 'top original ST episodes'. I haven't come across Mirror, Mirror yet. Think that's the one with Spock in a beard. Excellent work all around in that one. Shatner actually underacts, iirc (and I may not. It's been at least 20 years since I watched it), leaving room for Nimoy to shine.

I knew Sandra would get brought up and she should have a couple of asterisks next to her resume. Blind Side was a football movie based on a football book.


Speed 2 was a bomb. The Net a minor hit. 28 Days did about as well as expected and her rom-coms did well at times but were for the most part second tier films when it comes to to the box office like almost all rom-coms are.

Put her in a drama that isn't geared totally to a female audience and she does mildly well or poorly with the exception of The Blind Side.

Yes, her resume is a mixed bag like that of every actor on Earth*, and it looks worse when you put asterisks next to her movies that appeal totally to females (rom-coms) and those that also appeal to men (Blind Side). Until she proves she can draw plants and inanimate objects to the theater, I'll never call her a movie star or a "leading actor".


*John Cazale excepted.

Sigourney Weaver sold a hell of a lot of tickets for the movies of the "Alien" franchise. Jodie Foster has been "the" star in a fair number of major successes, too: The Silence of the Lambs, Contact, Panic Room, etc. It may be harder for women to carve out that role, but it can be done.

Silence of the Lambs: Anthony Hopkins
Contact: Basically broke even
Panic Room: Modest hit


She pretty much has the same kind of career arc as Sandra Bullock when it comes to non rom-com movies. Some modest successes and some clunkers with a resume full of mid tier movies.

The list of male stars that fit what McCoy has in mind is not that long, and male stars often have shelf lives, too.

It may not be long but it is a helluva lot longer than the list of females that can pull it off and the list of male actors who can become major movie stars after the age of 35 is also a lot longer than the list of females that can do the same thing.

Yes, her resume is a mixed bag like that of every actor on Earth*, and it looks worse when you put asterisks next to her movies that appeal totally to females (rom-coms) and those that also appeal to men (Blind Side). Until she proves she can draw plants and inanimate objects to the theater, I'll never call her a movie star or a "leading actor".

Rom-coms are basically today's B movies. They get made for about 20 to 40 million dollars and are expected to draw about 40 to 80 million at the box office with the occasional one cracking 100 million. They aren't major motion picture releases.

In general the Romulan episodes of TOS and TNG were among the best.

And the best episode of DS9 -- "It's a Fffaaaake!"

Are some of you guys actually trying to argue that Hollywood and moviegoers are gender neutral in their preferences and that the sexes have achieved equality in Hollywood?

edit: Damn you, Srul! Drinks!!

Hey, I'm one of the few people here who was old enough to watch TOS when it first came on.

EDIT -- Oh Lord, we are just 3 years away from the 50th anniversary of the first season.