Star Trek: Retribution - Page 15

tnpir4001 · January 5th, 2012, 12:17 AM

Just thought I'd share (but read this ONLY if you want major spoilage):

Spoiler

I've decided to move ahead with the production of a third film when Retribution is done. The third installment, tentatively to be titled "Redemption," will center around the restoration of the Prime timeline and the ultimate elimination of the evil version of Braiyon Garr forever.

Retribution will end on a cliffhanger; with the USS Fitzgerald and its allies unable to best the ISS Voyager in battle. With the dark ship attacking Captain Prentice's fleeing shuttlecraft, first officer Kendra Ronston makes the decision to physically ram the duplicate vessel, sending it into the gravity well of the black hole. As it spirals down to its doom, all Federation and Romulan forces retreat, only to be buffeted by a massive temporal explosion. When it's over, there is no trace of the ISS Voyager or of Drakus, and the Romulans have all stopped firing at the Starfleet ships. Losses on both sides are heavy, but Starfleet agrees to lend aid to the Romulans to bring their civil war at last to an end. Meanwhile, when Captain Prentice returns to the damaged Fitzgerald, he discovers two surprises waiting for him: Gaius Reyf has apparently been dead for four years instead of mere minutes, and more shocking, his chief science officer is none other than Braiyon Garr. As the film ends, the real Kristie visits the Fitzgerald while it undergoes repairs, having been summoned by a Starfleet communique four days prior, a message bearing the initials "GSR." At first Garr is reluctant to even speak with her, knowing thanks to Captain Prentice what took place because of her in the alternate timeline. She quotes the message as saying "your future hasn't been written yet, no one's has; so make it a good one, both of you," and when she identifies the sender as Gaius Reyf, Garr realizes that he and she are both different people from the ones Prentice knew in the alternate history. With that, he agrees to dinner with her in Ten Forward.

The film's epilogue returns us to Sector 585, where the last of the Starfleet and Romulan ships have retreated. The camera pulls in close to the mouth of the black hole, where a single shuttlecraft decloaks. Badly damaged, the camera takes us inside, where we see Drakus fuming at his defeat, and vowing revenge against those who caused his downfall, commenting that "This time, I'm not alone!" The camera pans over his shoulder, where we see a second pair of glowing red eyes in the darkness of the shuttle interior. A figure steps forward, revealed to be none other than Gaius Reyf, sporting the same dark blue uniform Garr is wearing. In the same chilling and supernatural voice as Drakus used through most of the film, the admiral says only one word: "Indeed."

The third film picks up ten years later, in 2399, less than one week before the start of the 25th century. The USS F Scott Fitzgerald--now under the command of Captain Kendra Ronston--is visiting a distant planet and had just bid farewell to the delegation, when suddenly disaster strikes: a portion of the planet seems to simply disappear, and then reappears just as quickly, turning the entire world into a seething volcanic wasteland in mere minutes.

The crew fears some form of natural disaster, until sensors reveal the truth: the planet was caught in a time distortion of unimaginable power, and it's not alone--hundreds more litter space within sensor range. Contacting Starfleet, Admiral Thornton tells them that space-time across the entire Federation has been "shattered" somehow, turning it into a nightmare of different time zones intersecting with the present. Ronston immediately tracks the distortions to their source, an underground laboratory on a deserted planet that was the former home of Dr. Ira Graves.

Transporting to the surface, they find a laboratory in ruins, and energy signatures which suggest the cause was the detonation of an Omega molecule, though the particle itself is nowhere in sight. Immediately, they are greeted by a fresh surprise: Admiral Bradley Prentice is already there, with Dr. Braiyon Garr in tow. As they examine the wreckage, Garr theorizes that the detonation was not accidental, and that it was done deliberately to harness the energy release. Prentice then provides the connection: Drakus is back and out for blood, and used the energy released by the explosion to propel himself back in time. Although this version of Dr. Garr lacks much of the expertise of his counterpart with regards to time, he knows enough to know that the damage can only be corrected in the past, and for that they need help from the only mind with the needed expertise: his alternate self. To do so, Prentice says they will have to undertake a risky procedure that involves using boronite ore (recently discovered on a planet in the Badlands) to power the warp engines.

Ronston balks at first, but then relents when the others convince her that there is no alternative. After reuniting with their old crewmates and finding a stretch of undamaged space large enough for them to use as a departure point, the Fitzgerald successfully arrives twenty years prior, in the year 2378, on the same day Braiyon Garr attacked the Alcawell Mineral Refinery. They manage to arrive at the station ahead of him, slipping aboard in the confusion as Garr forced its crew to evacuate, intercept him as he boards the station, and are able to convince him to lend his assistance, thanks in part to Prentice's observations of the Garr hologram in the previous film.

I still have to flesh out the plot from there, but that's the preliminary storyline I've come up with. Sorry to dash hopes, but the three-nacelle version of the Galaxy class will continue to portray the USS Fitzgerald for this outing.

Bryguy · January 5th, 2012, 12:54 AM

I love it!

evil_genius_180 · January 5th, 2012, 01:05 AM

Sounds cool. Just one request:

Spoiler

While you're at it, can you take out the JJVerse?

tnpir4001 · January 5th, 2012, 01:16 AM

@evil_genius: I'll do my best

In 24 hours no spoiler tags will be necessary, so anyone who wants to brainstorm plot ideas for this can feel free to do so openly. I'll look forward to seeing what ideas you come up with to fit this framework...there are a lot of possibilities, but a few key questions still have to be answered:

Spoiler

1. What does Drakus want to go back in time for? Remember that he no longer has a starship, and when our heroes arrive in 2378, he's nowhere to be found, as if he's entirely vanished. Just what is he up to? Should 2378 be our final destination or do we go back even further?
2. What's happened to Reyf? Where did the evil version of him come from that we saw at the end of Retribution? Is this yet another alternate version of Garr?
3. A key part of this story will be an ethical debate over just what constitutes the "proper timeline," and who gets to decide. Ultimately, just what do you see as the "proper" timeline that we should end up with? Who should be alive, who dead? Who should have what disposition toward whom else?
4. What kind of ending would you want to see--the dawn of the 25th century, or a return to the events at the beginning of Specter, this time without an evil Braiyon Garr to mess things up? (Or both?)

evil_genius_180 · January 5th, 2012, 11:25 AM

I'll think about possibilities and see if I can come up with some ideas. If I do, I'll post them tonight.

tnpir4001 · January 7th, 2012, 09:03 AM

Alright, I've got more (and since it's 24 hours plus, no spoiler tags now).

Garr's primary impetus this time is simple--at the conclusion of Retribution, Prentice shoots him with a specially modified phaser, which damages (but not destroys) the nanoprobes said to be sustaining him. By the time the third film starts, his physiology is badly degraded and he's near death. Having failed to either obtain or manufacture a fresh supply of nanoprobes, he resorts to the only option left to him: to travel back in time to a place where he can get them, specifically the Borg attack on Earth in 2367. But since he lost the ISS Voyager in the previous film, he has no information to draw on, so he first visits 2373 (the same night his counterpart takes off in the shuttlecraft, prior to his apparent suicide), to download the information he needs. Then he continues on to 2367, his objective to sneak aboard the Borg cube while the crew of the Enterprise-D verifies that the Borg are "asleep," and steal a supply of nanoprobes from one of the dormant drones. In so doing, the Federation will never realize what happened, since all evidence of his presence will be obliterated in the explosion of the Borg ship.

Garr's plan actually works, and with the last of his fading strength he manages to get the nanoprobes, only to be confronted by an away team from the Fitzgerald--who kills him on sight. So as not to be surprised by his resurrection a third time, the away team examines the body closely, confirming that both its biological and technological components are lifeless, but have to beam off as the Borg cube counts down to self-destruct. In the moment before the vessel explodes, the duplicate Reyf appears, and sees Garr's dead body just as the countdown reaches zero.

What do you think?

evil_genius_180 · January 7th, 2012, 10:23 AM

That sounds cool. I like the idea of combining some elements from the TNG TV series into the 3rd film.

tnpir4001 · January 13th, 2012, 01:15 AM

Just a quick update, new video test for the upcoming battle sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy81-BAT1uY

Another one's going up sometime this afternoon that includes more footage, sound effects, and music, and which in my opinion, is DEFINITELY climax-worthy.

evil_genius_180 · January 13th, 2012, 02:14 AM

That's really cool. I see you "borrowed" a bit from the big Trek battles, especially ones where Starfleet was fighting Borg cubes.

tnpir4001 · January 13th, 2012, 03:52 AM

@evil_genius: there's actually some pretty significant symbolism there. Remember that in Specter, we learned that the ISS Voyager was outfitted with Borg weaponry and, by implication of the sound effect during a pan from it to the Fitzgerald (remember the exterior shot as Prentice made his log entry after Reyf beamed over), other unspecified Borg technology as well. The chase scene at the end implied that its shields were all but impenetrable, and beneath that was a hull with the kind of armor that "could probably survive a trip through a sun."

It may stretch credibility a bit, but the symbolism with the use of Borg-combat shots is that the ISS Voyager is just about as hard to beat tactically as a Borg cube. (In fact, if you read the spoiler for the next film, you know that this is an important fact indeed.)

gmd3d · January 13th, 2012, 03:57 AM

Great battle sequence,

I thought the movement of the Romulan ships could more independent from each other seen them move in such a tight formation did not look quite as I expect.

tnpir4001 · January 13th, 2012, 04:06 AM

The new test sequence is up: http://youtu.be/ICJ8i0CsiU8

If you never watch anything else I ever make, I encourage you to watch this. (Incidentally, when the last battle scene went up, a number of people said I should include the Prometheus' multi-vector assault mode, I did some tests with it and I haven't quite found a way to make it work just yet, but that is something I'm tinkering with.)

BGM: "Outgunned," by Dennis McCarthy (Star Trek Generations), which will be the actual BGM used

gmd3d · January 13th, 2012, 04:15 AM

The soundtrack really lift the sequence.

again I would love to see one of the 3 Romulan Ships pull off in a new direction.

The slower approach shots of the Galaxy class and the Excelsior class pumping in torpedoes was really cool, gave a great sense of big ships in action.

Bravo

Bryguy · January 13th, 2012, 08:12 AM

I have always wondered what the battle scene from First Contact would have looked like had the Enterprise-D survived and been there in that battle versus the Enterprise-E. You made my day with this one.

One question. I watched the clip a couple of times. At 12 seconds in, are the torpedoes firing out of the phaser lance? It could be my eyes playing tricks on me. However I'm having some traumatic flashbacks of the phasers firing out of the torpedo launcher in "Darmok" right now. Oh the humanity! *shudder*

tnpir4001 · January 13th, 2012, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryguy

One question. I watched the clip a couple of times. At 12 seconds in, are the torpedoes firing out of the phaser lance? It could be my eyes playing tricks on me. However I'm having some traumatic flashbacks of the phasers firing out of the torpedo launcher in "Darmok" right now. Oh the humanity! *shudder*

I recall that effects glitch from the episode...a stunning (but thankfully rare) example of a major blooper on the part of the effects people.

It took me a minute (and a quick viewing of the clip) to realize which shot you meant, but the answer to your question is yes. But, there's a good explanation for this:

In "Darmok," the effects people made a gaffe that flew right in the face of what had been previously established in the show. (They'd fired probes and torpedoes from that same location, and never any form of directed energy--and it was never again seen after that incident; the only other time we saw anything of that sort was in "The Battle," when a tractor beam came from midway up the neck of the engineering section, about where the torpedo launcher is--but the first season is barely considered canon even by the writers, so who's counting?)

In that episode, there was absolutely no justification for it...there was an order for phasers to fire, and that was that.

This time around, we have some flexibility. Granted, we did see that large canon fire what looks like a souped-up disruptor of some kind in Scene 23, "Escape from New Romulus." But recall also that in the same scene, we saw the Fitzgerald fire what looked like standard Starfleet phasers from its ventral array.

From then to now, we've had the holographic Braiyon Garr busy doing upgrades to the ship's systems, including the warp drive (notice that after the scene in the cargo bay, suddenly the visual effect is identical to what we saw in the last film when the ISS Voyager was at warp), the shields, and--according to Ronston in the second-to-last scene that was posted--the weapons systems as well.

The change in the visual effect from a beam of directed energy to bursts not unlike Klingon disruptors, thus, is conceptualized in the script notes as an effect of Garr's upgrades.

evil_genius_180 · January 13th, 2012, 10:16 AM

Just think, if Phase II had happened instead of TNG, the phasers would have fired from the "torpedo launcher" on a daily basis. Because, in the Phase II bible, it stated that that was where the phasers fired from now, as opposed to the saucer. (I have no idea where torpedoes might have come from, or if they would have even used them)

The sequence is really nice, though I agree with Ger about the Romulan ship movement. I thought something was off with those this morning, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Also, when the Akira-class ships fire their torpedoes, they fire what look like photon torpedoes, but the sound effect is that of a quantum torpedo.

Bryguy · January 13th, 2012, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

Just think, if Phase II had happened instead of TNG, the phasers would have fired from the "torpedo launcher" on a daily basis. Because, in the Phase II bible, it stated that that was where the phasers fired from now, as opposed to the saucer. (I have no idea where torpedoes might have come from, or if they would have even used them).

That is truly frightening. Had that happened, Everything would have been up for question. Who am I? What is real? Does the world spin, or are we just dizzy? The world would have been without order. Total anarchy. I don't think the human race would have survived. (I might be slightly exaggerating the matter)

evil_genius_180 · January 13th, 2012, 12:30 PM

Actually, if it had happened that way, you'd never have known the difference.

Had Phase II become a reality, there would have been no TMP, because the pilot episode for Phase II became TMP. Everything else would have been changed also. So, if you'd seen phasers being fired from the "neck" of the ship, after only seeing TOS, then it would have been no more weird than seeing torpedoes fired from the "neck" in TMP, because both weapons were fired from the saucer in TOS.

quniverse · January 13th, 2012, 06:32 PM

must get a copy of poser...

tnpir4001 · January 16th, 2012, 09:35 PM

New video test is up, I think I got it right this time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlY_8MT50Ls

evil_genius_180 · January 16th, 2012, 10:36 PM

Looking great.

gmd3d · January 17th, 2012, 03:14 AM

looks a lot better...... nice one

tnpir4001 · January 20th, 2012, 12:20 AM

Alright so I know I said that last video I posted was the final draft, but...I'm cooking up one more, with a shot that I had desperately wanted to include but was having trouble re-creating. I'm waiting on some renders to finish up, but I'll post the updated sequence when they finish. I really think you'll like this one, even better than the previous one.

Any update on getting the attachments bug fixed? I want to post the narrative writeup I have for the last few scenes and get some feedback.

gmd3d · January 20th, 2012, 02:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tnpir4001

Any update on getting the attachments bug fixed? I want to post the narrative writeup I have for the last few scenes and get some feedback.

no update tnpir.

tnpir4001 · January 22nd, 2012, 12:18 AM

New video test sequence is up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9mqjKRzuBs

Everything that I wanted to include is here, I like the pacing and the buildup at the end (seeing everyone shooting for all they're worth and still Voyager's shields are holding). Let me know what you think.

tnpir4001 · April 10th, 2012, 12:41 PM

Just letting everyone know, even though Retribution still isn't complete, I'm starting to lay some groundwork for the third film, and I thought I'd let everyone here have the first look at the first poster:

Discuss!

I've decided that this trilogy deserves a name, and a YouTube commentator suggested The Time Warp Trilogy. I'm very much open to suggestions!

(And yes, that IS a lava-planet version of Earth there at the bottom.)

gmd3d · April 10th, 2012, 12:50 PM

Welcome back-----

Good name for it bty .

Sounds exciting and looking forward to your finished production

evil_genius_180 · April 10th, 2012, 08:40 PM

Why do they have 2 sets of rank pips?

Looking great. I was actually just thinking about your movies earlier while I was downloading some other fan films and thinking "we never did get to see the end of Retribution." I hope it's coming soon.

tnpir4001 · April 10th, 2012, 08:44 PM

@evil_genius: unfortunately it's going to be July (about 2 and a half more months) before I can finish Retribution, but believe me it's going to be worth the wait. And now knowing there's going to be a third film and that it's going to be a trilogy, hopefully will make that ending a lot more epic

As for the uniforms, it's just early artwork, I haven't decided yet whether I like the collar insignia better or the AGT-style rank. What do you think? (And for that matter how do you like this uniform design? Inspired by STO)

evil_genius_180 · April 10th, 2012, 09:19 PM

Yes, I recognize the uniforms. I've been playing STO since last year. (In fact, that's what I'm going to do next

) I like them. Aside from looking cool, they also serve to tie in your films with the game, which should take place not too long after the 3rd film, if I'm getting the math right. Personally, I'm not that big a fan of the chest rank, though. I like the collar rank better. But, that's just me.