I don't think that means what you think it means -- it's an artwork aimed at the learner. In music, there are "études" which take the theme of a larger piece as a vehicle for teaching, and students of brush painting often perform a "study" of an established artist's work in which they try to copy it in order to master their brush technique.

Whether this was intentional or not, lens flare served a rather useful function in early Babylon 5 episodes -- it subtley said "you are not here". Which is fair enough, because you're never going to be floating in space watching shuttles approaching a space station with your naked eye. Early Bablyon 5 was based on the station, and shots outside were establishing shots, or "meanwhile" shots of an incoming spacecraft presaging the latest crisis, or someone leaving, marking resolution. But the viewer, as an observer of the action, was rooted firmly on the space station. In Babylon 5, the action came to you (or at least in the first series or two... the series did lose something as it got older, was it a concidence that it lost momentum when the main characters started flying around in spaceships regularly?

So in a sense, JJ Abrams is being slightly daft and missing the point. By trying to create "immediacy" and "authenticity" by mimicking the look of fly-on-the-wall documentaries, he may in fact be losing it by removing the audience's illusion of being an actual fly on the wall.

Then let me give you a reasoned argument on behalf of those that just "hate on it": cognitive dissonance. Willful suspension of disbelief is central to all fiction. But contradiction of known "fact" (even fictional fact) breaks your ability to suspend disbelief. I once saw a film where this sicko had been raping children. But he'd already been castrated. Perhaps it is possible to maintain an erection after having your balls chopped off -- this is the sort of detail I would hope the writers would have checked with experts. And yet the truth or otherwise is irrelevant -- I could not immediately reconcile these things, and I was awoken from the illusion, and conscious of watching a film.

I am not a trekkie or a trekker or whatever, but I found it impossible to watch the first film. I could not accept the young Kirk as Kirk (heck, I couldn't accept him as someone who didn't just get expelled from the academy immediately) and assembling all the major characters from the series (including the not-even-in-series-one Chekov) was just far too improbable. For all I know it could have been one of the best written blockbusters of the era, but I would have been unable to see that because I was simply unable to accept the basic premise.

Yes, but this is a reboot of Slashdot. The original Slashdot included many episodes of informed debate focusing on human nature. In the rebooted franchise, there are goodies and baddies, and "-1 troll" means "you're wrong".

As a proper cinema fan, I take great umbrage to that. Movies are an art. These films aren't.

Star Wars wasn't cowboys and indians... it was mostly people of equal technology and intellect, but republicanism vs authoritarianism.

Good point. Worth noting that ToS took a lot of its cues from ancient mythology, and the succubus of legend (which is what this episode riffs on) is rather different in its behaviour from the incubus. The succubus also has precursors in sirens and similar myths, where the goal is death of the possession of the man's soul. The incubus is really just a guy out to get his wicked way with women. These two parallel threads continue the old view that casual sex is fun for blokes but makes victims of women, and the notion of the wife as a "ball and chain" to the man. By starting with a female succubus archetype, the episode plugged into existing folk consciousness, then added the twist that equalised men and women in terms of gender politics.

Yes, it would be hugely entertaining to focus almost exclusively on the angst and loneliness of being a starship captain, seeking solice in superficial relationships to try to ease the eternal pain.... And the angst and loneliness of being a half-human Vulcan, seeking solice in superficial logic to try to ease the eternal pain.... And the angst and loneliness of being in love with your captain, who does not even look at you.... And the angst and loneliness of every single creature in the universe being your sworn enemy, existing only because of you and only to hunt you down and destroy you.

Moffat's an emo, writing self-indulgent cathartic claptrap, plumbing the depths of self-doubt, resolved in a flash of sudden self-confidence and a stupidly bombastic piece of near-tuneless music then "bang, flash...I am the Doctor" and done.

Having not seen the film I can't comment, but I'm assuming that the mechanism of time-travel was established relatively early on. This would make it Deus in machina -- the all-powerful element is part of the known continuity of the universe.

Yeah, but the factories were shut. How can you make a gun when your entire manufacturing infrastructure has been undermined by replicators that can reproduce anything instantly?!?

Except that <<spoiler alert>> they let him live, so he is still alive to come back and attempt to kill them, whereas if he won, they would be dead and wouldn't be able to come back and attempt to stop him. The only realistic winner in that fight was De Nomolos....

Although Bill and Ted suffered a serious cause-and-effect gap. Spoiler alert! How could they defeat Chuck de Nomolos if he was willing to kill them and they weren't willing to kill him? As soon as he got out of prison, he could kill them. Life imprisonment? Well he could just come back from after his breakout to help himself break out....

Except sketches, designs, moulds, casts etc are all talking about artwork. Your argument suggests it would be OK to make a complete walkthrough if the LPer recreated the graphics from the ground up.

Hollywood's already established precedent. If you have guys watching the TV in your film, you have to get an agreement with the people who made the programme they're watching. They can license it for free if they want, and they can even pay for product placement if they want, but they're well within their rights to demand cold, hard cash.

Subtle point: they don't have to claim copyright on the entire video, simply on the visual material depicted therein, and you can't argue that an LP doesn't include their material. Now there's the question of royalties. Just because you own part of the copyright (assuming playing the game is a "creative" act, which is not necessarily a safe assumption), doesn't mean you can claim part of the royalties. Nintendo can set whatever licensing rates they chose to use their copyright material within your work. It just so happens that this time, they're claiming 100% of the royalties, and LPers don't have enough influence to negotiate.