Okay, been out of the loop, lied about doing S3 reviews last week, bad me. Expect "Utopia" either today or tomorrow, just cuz.
Right, so, first things first. There's talk that Star Trek the Star Trek 2 will involve Khan. In other words, it will be yet another remake of Star Trek II: The Best Star Trek Film Ever Made. For those of you who were late to the party, Star Trek the Star Trek (which is what I'm calling the 2009 film to differentiate it from the Trek franchise as a whole) was essentially a remake of Star Trek Nemesis, which was a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What do I mean by that? Well, Khan and Nemesis both involve a villain who spent the last decade in an inhospitable environment nursing a grudge against the captain of the Enterprise. Eventually he breaks free and gets ahold of a powerful ship and a superweapon. A battle takes place in a nebula, where the Enterprise has trouble seeing the other ship. When his ship is too badly damaged, the villain activates the superweapon, requiring a Heroic Sacrifice on the part of the Asperger's character to save the day. Then Nemesis and The Star Trek both involved Romulans, hyperpowerful ships, superweapons, ships ramming other ships, and oh, yeah, a villain who had a grudge against one of the Enterprise crew.
Look, Khan has only been decently remade once, and that was as First Contact. (2009 was different enough for me not to call it a remake.) And First Contact was clever enough to change the paradigm so that the Captain Ahab character was the good guy this time around. Beyond that, Khan is easily the best Star Trek film ever (the only real competition being The Undiscovered Country). This is ironic, given the sheer number of things that could have gone wrong with it. (Note to self: write a separate blog post entitled The Sheer Number of Things that Could Have Gone Horribly Wrong with Star Trek II.) But just trying to recapture that magic seems like a horrible mistake.
This is, of course, from the same guy who thought re-casting Kirk was a stupid thing to do and that Star Trek the Star Trek would just be a heartless cash-in. I certainly didn't think it was the greatest science-fiction film of the last decade (I'd nominate the Battlestar Galactica minseries if I could bend the rules a little bit, but otherwise it's Inception or Wall-E), but it was still about ten times better than I thought it would be, and better than seven of the other ten films with Star Trek in the title to boot. So what do I know? They might surprise me.
Okay, next up is the David Yates Doctor Who film. There are essentially four things you could do: Doctor Who and the Daleks, The Enemy Within, Star Trek Generations, or Battlestar Galactica Razor. Here's what I mean by that:
Doctor Who and the Daleks was a 60s film that had absolutely nothing to do with the show's continuity. Doctor Who was the real name of a human who built a Tardis in his backyard. Then they re-enact The Daleks on the big screen. That's about it. I'm not saying that Yates should re-do City of Death or something, but that is one possibility: just cast a completely different Doctor and acknowledge that the film has nothing to do with the show's continuity. This will piss off the least number of fans.
The Enemy Within was the unofficial name of the 1996 Doctor Who telemovie. You know, the one starring Withnail's flatmate as the Doctor, while Eric Roberts drezzed for the occasion. The one that was made by people on the wrong side of the Atlantic with an aim to continue the show, which had been cancelled back in 1989. It was an absolute disaster. We all kind of pretend that it didn't happen. Yes, Paul McGann was the 8th Doctor, but he had a bunch of adventures we didn't get to see. Very sad. Even if Yates were to do a Who movie, it's unlikely that he would take this approach, for the very simple reason that the show isn't cancelled right now and isn't likely to be any time in the near future.
Star Trek Generations was the first attempt to put the crew of Star Trek TNG on the big screen. It was co-written by Ron Moore, and his failure to make it as good as his later output on some other show is the main reason why I rank it worse than Star Trek I on my overall list (which goes 2, 6, 8, 11, 3, 4, 1, 7, 5, 9, 10, in case you were wondering). It also served as the death knell for the TNG show, but that was for reasons other than the film's lackluster quality. As in The Enemy Within, somebody died as a means of passing the torch on, although I honestly couldn't tell you whose death was more ignoble. Since The Moff has categorically denied any plans to do a film, I think it's safe to rule out both the Enemy and Generations models.
Battlestar Galactica Razor was made just before Season 4 but set at the end of Season 2, and as long as you don't mind the minor spoiler that a certain death near the end of Season 3 isn't exactly permanent, you might as well watch it just before the end of Season 2. Though it more or less fails as a stand-alone film because it tries to tie in too many plotlines (which, come to think of it, is probably Moore's greatest fault as a storyteller), it could have worked. Eccleston's out, Tennant's probably running away, but my understanding is that McGann would still be game provided he didn't have to wear a wig. Of course, I say the words "Doctor Who film starring McGann" and everyone runs away. I'm speculating here. Basically, you could use this opportunity to tell the lost Doctor Who story, the one that you couldn't do on the show's budget or which just wouldn't work in the show's regular format.
Frankly, I'd like to see the Doctor on the big screen. I actually thought that last year's Christmas special (which I shouldn't have to remind you is in my opinion the best thing the show's ever given us since City of Death) could be adapted really easily to a film. (So there I go saying you could do stuff you couldn't do on the show in a movie, then I say that the Christmas special should have been a movie... but the Christmas special was a special instead of a regular episode. So there.)
So, should Star Trek 2 be a remake of Star Trek II? No. Should David Yates make a Doctor Who film? Why not?
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