New Star Trek

[Doctor Strange]

I saw it yesterday, and like young Spock I am having a great deal of difficulty integrating powerful emotions with a reasoned intellectual response.

As somebody who watched from the very first broadcast in 1966, wrote a letter to NBC to save the show in 1968, went to some of the earliest NYC conventions, saw The Motion Picture on opening day in 1979, and have followed all the series from begining to end(*), I realize that I am NOT the target audience for this film. My kids are. Anyway...

(* Except for DS9, whose run coincided with my children's infancy and early childhood, a time when I really couldn't spare the time and energy to follow its complex plot arcs. Plus, the characters and situations just never grabbed me. I have tried repeatedly, but I just can't warm to it.)

It's very nice to see an A-budget Trek film. A lot of serious work went into this movie, and it shows. The actors and action were all good. It had nice designs and effects work - though you'll excuse me if I still prefer the old-school versions. It had the right mix of humor and seriousness, and it did capture a lot of the key character points, as well as include the old Roddenberry optimistic view of the future. But...

The science was just outrageously bad for a Trek story. The plotting was terrible, relying on an endless sequence of absurd coincidences, impossibly lucky breaks/guesses, and force-of-personality trumping intelligence. Actually, there was no real plot, just an overcaffeinated origin story with yet another Khan-wannabe villain. And young Kirk's backstory was lifted nearly verbatim from Luke Skywalker!

So, I liked it, I will see the future films in the series... But it is galling for an aboriginal Trekker like myself to see EVERYTHING in the canon (except the mega-lame, set-earlier Star Trek: Enterprise - oh, the irony!) tossed aside. And I don't buy all the blather that the "old" Trek universe is still out there a la the Mirror universe or TNG's "Parallels" multiverse. Face it: Old Trek is dead. Long live New Trek.

It's a very bittersweet thing for an old-timer like myself. I am glad of the film's success and what it bodes for the franchise, and I guess I understand that Trek had to die in order to be resurrected.

Like both Spocks, I admit that it's logical... but I am also profoundly sad at what has been lost.

(For an awesome list of divergences from previous Trek, see:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/inconsistencies-trekxi.htm )

 

[scottyrocks]

careful reading this - much spoiler info included

I finally saw the movie this morning with my daughter.

I loved it. I thought everything was explained as much as it needed to be. I thought that Ive never seen Kirk being so much of a punching bag. I loved seeing Nimoy in the role he played. Brought a big smile to my face.

After thinking about it, I believe the a good possible reason for the reconstructed timeline was to create friction between Kirk and Spock. This was the major conflict in the movie (Nero was secondary). Without that conflict, this would have been not nearly as exciting because we've seen all the established stuff before. It was nice that the movie ended up ready to pick up where the original series started, character-relationships in place.

I liked, at the end, when Kirk comes out onto the bridge for the first time in his yellow command jersey, the way he said, 'Bones,' in the way that Shatner would have said it, because Pine didnt use any of Shatner's mannerisms in any of the movie before that moment.

The characterizations were good without going overboard. I was able to understand Checkov, no problem. McCoy cracked me up.

This is one I'll buy on DVD, just to have it.

 

[Lexybeast]

I caught this over the weekend. Loved it! Highlight text below to read on, some spoilers:

Spoilers on-
One of things I found refreshing was the complete lack of adherence to normal science fiction time travel conventions- characters, even good guys, were meddling with time lines, Old Spock meets young Spock face to face without a universe-destroying paradox forming*gasp*, etc. And why not? Who is anyone to say how time travel should work? The expanded back stories were great too- McCoy joining Starfleet because of a bitter divorce just seems to make so much sense, and I'd never thought of Scotty as comic relief before (to the extent that he is here), but it worked.

-Spoilers off.

Yes, the science, technology, and physics are ludicrous. Such is the nature of Star Trek, IMO- cowboys in space with heavy handed social commentary and laughable science. The main strength of the series was always the characters and interaction, and this film performed pretty admirably in that respect.

I just wished it was longer. I felt like it whizzed by.

 

[MrBern]

star...trek or wars?

a look at the similarities of the new film to a certain movie from `77

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUUhTgWpjSc

 

[Lone_Ranger]

And young Kirk's backstory was lifted nearly verbatim from Luke Skywalker!

I was thinking Thelma & Louise meets Top Gun, but I may be the only one.

 

[CopperNY]

caught it last night.

very good, not great. might see it again on the big screen for fun.

the paradox had me confused. not the time travel paradox, but the fact that Karl Urban was in a movie that wasn't horrible.....

 

[JennyLou]

caught it last night.

very good, not great. might see it again on the big screen for fun.

the paradox had me confused. not the time travel paradox, but the fact that Karl Urban was in a movie that wasn't horrible.....

I thought he was a great McCoy and greatly resembled the original McCoy played by DeForest Kelley

 

[CopperNY]

I thought he was a great McCoy and greatly resembled the original McCoy played by DeForest Kelley

don't get me wrong, he was great. just, for a while there, his name was the 'kiss of death' for movies. right up there with "Sci-Fi Channel presents".

 

[Edward]

I thought he was a great McCoy and greatly resembled the original McCoy played by DeForest Kelley

Wasn't he just? I felt they had the perfect balance between holding so true to the characters from the original, and setting it up as a parallel universe where they can do their own thing.

(As I type this, a repeat of Enterprise is on the television..... gah, what an unbelievably awful theme song...).

I loved that they held to the original Trek theme at the end...

 

[JennyLou]

Wasn't he just? I felt they had the perfect balance between holding so true to the characters from the original, and setting it up as a parallel universe where they can do their own thing.

(As I type this, a repeat of Enterprise is on the television..... gah, what an unbelievably awful theme song...).

I loved that they held to the original Trek theme at the end...

Oh, I agree- it is an awfule theme song. All the other Trek Series have good theme songs except Enterprise. Enterprise is the only series I don't really watch.

 

[MrBern]

philadelphia imax

slideshow of trek exhibit in Philly:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/29/arts/20090530-startrek-slideshow_index.html

and review of exhibit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/arts/design/30star.html

 

[MrBern]

mirror darkly

Oh, I agree- it is an awfule theme song. All the other Trek Series have good theme songs except Enterprise. Enterprise is the only series I don't really watch.

Yes, that theme was AWFUL.
Theres one fun episode. A time travelling mirror universe episode. As such the opening theme is full of conquest&drama instead of the easy-listening crappy theme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTk8FjID_I

Oh, the final scene of that series was nice too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXotJu1CapU

 

[scottyrocks]

(As I type this, a repeat of Enterprise is on the television..... gah, what an unbelievably awful theme song...).

I loved that they held to the original Trek theme at the end...

If youre talking about Faith of the Heart, sung by Russell Watson, I happen to think that the song, combined with the imagery of evolution of state of the art vehicles over hundreds of years (coincidentally named Enterprise), was fairly brilliant. I loved it.

I also loved that they finally broke with tradition and attempted something different, using both real history, as well as 'future manufactured' history, to set up the idea of the show.

 

[JennyLou]

slideshow of trek exhibit in Philly:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/29/arts/20090530-startrek-slideshow_index.html

and review of exhibit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/arts/design/30star.html

I would have liked to see the exhibit evern though it got a bad review.

 

[MrBern]

I would have liked to see the exhibit evern though it got a bad review.

Wasnt it in LongBeach or SanDiego last summer? Matt Deckard LOVED it.

 

[JennyLou]

Wasnt it in LongBeach or SanDiego last summer? Matt Deckard LOVED it.

Oh, you mean the Star Trek tour? I didn't realize that and the other thing you posted were the same event. The Tour looked wonderful but I didn't attend it. I wish I had.

 

[MrBern]

Actually, I think it was originally the TOUR, now its stripped down into The Exhibit. I believe there are now TWO of them, one with the TOS bridge set, the other with the TNG bridge set. The Tour had them both.
So now they are covering more cities but with fewer sets. At least that was the plan after the economy tanked & the operators had to restructure.

 

[bobalooba]

The characterizations were good without going overboard. I was able to understand Checkov, no problem. McCoy cracked me up.

This is one I'll buy on DVD, just to have it.

liked bones, liked new spock, I thought Kirk was OK though I may take another movie to warm up to him, all the other characters were fine and dandy EXCEPT, checkov, I really like the old checkov but I couldn't stand the new one, he could have been so much more than a brainy nerdy guy used for comic effect.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Saw it when it first came out. As someone who used to be able to name an original series episode by watching a few seconds of it I went to simply have fun and enjoy it without doing a lot of comparisons. That said, the one thing that drove my military mind nuts was the "adolescent reading" part of the show where Kirk goes from about to be booted from the Academy without graduating to commander of the Enterprise in what seems to be a matter of hours, along with the others moving instantly into "A-Team" positions. It just smelled too much of "after-school special" to me.

I know that this was commented upon shortly after the film opened (I just went back and read several pages) and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who felt that way.

I'm in the process now of working my way through the Enterprise series while I exercise. I like it. You can see where they worked to lay the foundations of what was to come in Star Trek and subsequent shows and movies retroactively. Someone was paying attention.

I think that the reason so many don't like the theme is that it wasn't a variation of Alexander Courage's original theme... and it had a song element to it that none of the other themes had. I was going to say "vocal element" but the original theme definitely had a vocal element!

Regards,
Tom

 

[Viola]

Actually, one series did: Enterprise had soft-rock singing vocals and I haaated that.