This adaptation… I’d say should be in the category of don’t touch it even with a stick, there’s so much utter rubbish inserted, so many liberties taken I just can’t accept it. I mean, I know I don’t like Vonda’s writing style in the first place and have very little patience for her generally, but come on! If you’re going to write a film novelisation at least leave your bias at the door!
Lots of people have positively reviewed this ST:TWOK novelisation and said that it ‘explains it all’ and that they ‘didn’t enjoy TWOK because they didn’t understand it and this fills in all the gaps’… no, it doesn’t it makes up page count with utter trash filler that, if you’ve read a couple of McIntyre’s ST novels you know it is just self indulgence on her part.
What kind of trash filler you ask?
I don’t need to know that two of the scientists on Carol and David Marcus’ team are jokers with a thing for Lewis Carol. I don’t need a whole poem by Lewis Carol reproduced for me to read. I don’t need to know that these two genius scientists make games in their spare time and leave that as data for Khan and co to pick up instead of the genesis project information. Why did you have me read pages of utter rubbish about nothing characters that are shortly going to die?
Is Scotty really a prissy, thin skinned uncle? Do we really need to know that his nephew has a crush on Saavik and has maths lessons with her? Do we really need that painfully written scene with Spock trying to explain a ‘crush’ to Saavik? Or that Saavik really doesn’t like omelette because it’s bland and has to use chilli on it to make it palatable, or a vegetarian diet makes (half) Romulans sick?
On that note, I know the director pretty much edited out everything to do with Saavik being a Vulcan/Romulan hybrid because she never really acts like a Romulan, so he decided to simplify it with the view of if she always acts like a Vulcan, make her Vulcan, in fact, the actress was a pretty big Spock / Vulcan fan and so she pretty much acted like a Vulcan would – as she had done in make believe as a child (she used to pretend she was Spock’s daughter). So, if we keep in mind that her background in regards to Romulan heritage was edited out, a large section of the book which is dedicated to her and her tragic background is now erroneous. Why wasn’t this caught and edited out? Couldn’t they at least keep it consistent?
Speaking of consistency, wouldn’t it be fantastic if dialogue actually in the films was accurate? Especially for the most important scenes? It probably didn’t escape your notice that the dialogue quoted above does not fit with the dialogue in the film?
Found this wonderful comparison on facebook a while back. Sorry I don’t know where it was originally from! |
And really, this dialogue proves to be some of the most important when it comes to Spock / Kirk relationship analysis (doesn’t matter if you think that it is a platonic or sexual relationship), as in the graphic above the scene is a reflection of Spock’s response as early in the series as Amok Time.
This is how it plays out in the film:
I think what really characterises that whole scene is its quietness. Kirk’s quiet agony at watching his friend die, his t’hy’la (soulmate/brother/lover) die and Spock’s characteristic calmness… but with that obvious pain and distress. What really gets me is that the charismatic leader that is James T Kirk is struck virtually dumb, such is his utter despair and pain. What does he say, ever so quietly? ‘Spock’. ‘Spock’. ‘Yes’. ‘No’. Spock reaches out for contact he can’t have, a contact he should have had, which was even expected by Sarek as we see in the next film. If there was ever a perfect piece of cinema, it is this scene. What does McIntyre do, well aside from mutilate it with her clumsy writing and stilted sentences? She makes it loud. Gone is the quiet despair of Kirk, instead we have outbursts. Instead of a distressing, intimate moment between two souls saying good bye, we have an interjection by… Saavik. I read it and wanted to scream, shut up Saavik! You are not in this scene, of course Kirk will not understand because you are intruding, intruding I say!
You can have a picture ’cause I aint typing it all out. |
Even if this was in the original script she saw, if that was how it was done, I don’t know, an editor should have caught all this. Oh wait. Hold on. If you edited out Saavik from this section then you would have no reason to return to her for almost three solid pages as she visits Spock’s coffin and comes out with zingers like ‘Admiral Kirk’s opinion was of no significance‘. Well if his opinion is of no significance Saavik, then I don’t know whose is! In comparison, Sulu (another Vonda fav.) gets about a page of shared dialogue with Chapel, while Kirk gets a page of shared dialogue with Carol Marcus. Then we are straight back to Saavik again for a paragraph before we get to Spock’s funeral. Where Saavik is the first one mentioned. Again. I don’t care about a character introduced for this film, I really don’t. I want to know about the characters I’m invested in. And I have a real problem with those three scenes that McIntyre has inserted. They aren’t in the film, that’s fine, but they don’t add anything either. They could have been brilliant scenes, revisiting all the old crew, but no, we get too much Saavik, we get Sulu (urgh) and a pretty rushed scene with Kirk and Marcus (double ergh). Honest to God, she loves her side characters! That is a Bones and Kirk moment, absolutely, 100%, but no, Carol Marcus it has to be, why use the original cast anyhow? Additionally, having Saavik as the ‘bread’ of the sandwich in these scenes makes her too important. She is used to hold the *two* scenes involving original cast together, she isn’t that important, just WHY.