Star Trek the Motion Peekture

I haven't watched STtMP in decades, literally. Last night I found a version that someone had cut down to a bit over an hour as a class project and watched all of it. While they'd taken out footage, they hadn't actually changed the remaining footage, so it's basically the same film.

The biggest complaint I had about the cutdown version was taking out the Klingon attack at the beginning. That needs to be in there. Ordinarily I love that scene because it's got Klingons being badass, but having it taken out really jams home the plot of STtMP. Whatever happens, the Enterprise can't just go shoot the cloud. The Trekverse's resident badasses already tried that with an entire task force and it didn't work.

I came to the conclusion that a slower pace like the original was a good thing in some ways - but that the original didn't actually use the time it had to best advantage. STtMP had some pretty thematic stuff going on; everyone's back together on the Enterprise, but it's not perfect as Spock's trying to figure out how much logic is too much logic, and Kirk has pulled strings to get the band back together, which means that he comes very close to destroying his beloved ship, alienating McCoy, and really alienating Decker. That's around 30 minutes or so of pretty good tension build up before they even hit the cloud, but I know that really didn't get explored in the cut down version and I don't feel it was there in the original. Aside from Kirk, Spock and to a much lesser extent Decker, the characters are all cardboard standees. It's really too bad in the case of Ilia because a lot of the movie hinges on her theoretically having a personality other than being The Hot Chick. The whole plot is dubious (uh, surely a hyperintelligent self-aware machine exploring the universe would have clued in that carbon-based intelligences were similar to machines and interfaced with them on a lot of levels), but the ultimate revelation of V'ger's identity and past history is basically our heroes sitting around the desolate main core of an alien spacecraft, just shootin' the shit over by the hyperintelligent AI. There's "show not tell" and then there's "at this rate, just install a coffee machine and sit down and have a muffin."

So yeah. In review tMP could have been a good movie, it wasn't, and honestly the slow pacing wasn't the big problem with the thing.

More Pathfinder

Pathfinder's "Gunslinger" class is a thing of beauty and also seems ridiculously impractical. The Mysterious Stranger archetype runs off of Charisma, so that really opens up the class to halflings (who'd also have the high dexterity desired in a ranged combatant) and gnomes (who make sense as gunsmiths), although the usual wisdom requirement makes me wince. I am not going to think too hard about playing Inari-no-Teppo, kitsune gunslinger extraordinaire.

But... your character's based around something which makes crossbows look appealingly fast (maybe it's assumed you carry more than one gun, Iron Kingdoms fashion?); you'll need Rapid Reload, you need Dodge and Mobility to get any of the really good grit feats and like any other ranged combatant you'll need Point Blank shot and Precise Shot. So either your character is at least a 5th level human or a 7th level something else before you can have a chance at the two seriously cool grit feats, Deft Shootist (don't provoke AoOs when shooting at something in the next space) or Leaping Shot Deed (the gun equivalent to Shot on the Run or Spring Attack). And by that point an actual bow using archer would be dealing out more damage and faster.

Someone, please tell me that I'm wrong about this. Gunslingers are thematic and cool and I really want to play one in some hypothetical future.