Star Trek

[marsden_online]

Went to the movie last night with quite a sizable group, as a casual fan I quite enjoyed it.


Despite plot holes big enough to steer a Constitution class starship through I was comfortable with the the way they handled the reset while not completely disregarding everything that has gone before. I can see dedicated trekkies having fits over they way they ditched certain elements of continuity, but on a practical level the franchise doesn't have seasons at it's disposal to gradually re-introduce established races like the Romulans and their Vulcan history tie-ins, or not adding 'core' members of the crew (Chekov) until later.

The writers threw in a lot of the pop-culture Star Trek references and quotes which mostly worked and I thought was a clever move on their part. There were also some more obscure references (many of which I probably missed), including a couple I thought to Babylon5 and Futurama. Particularly liked how they used Captain Pike, and reversing the 'equation from the future' scene from Star Trek: Save the Whales.

Casting or how the actors handled the role:
Kirk - acceptable
Spock (new) - Dead on
Bones - pretty good. Something they did here which failed elsewhere was to set him up as visibly older than Kirk in his first scene
Sulu - Jury's out
Chekov - Jury's out
Uhura - Jury's out. I thought they did an OK job of expanding her role while showing restraint by not gratuitously introducing new bridge members to balance out the gender ratio. Look for more from this character in later movies.
Scotty - I think they flubbed this one. Too young to mesh properly with my concept of Scotty, and played too much as accented comic relief.


The designers did a good job of harking back to the originals with the fairly blocky lines of the starships and other elements such as fit of the uniforms. Overall the movie actually felt kind of raw and like something beginning, that hadn't quite found it's feet yet. That might be what excited me the most. I saw a Star Trek where earth is still finding it's feet in the Universe; where it is crewing its starships with graduates straight out of the Academy - not necessarily because of the attrition of some ongoing war but because it is still building its fleet. The movie conveyed that there is a whole new universe of possibilities out there in a way that I think Enterprise (as the most recent approximation) didn't.

The Star Trek Roleplaying games have always used the lines along "the Enterprise is one of the best known ships of Star Fleet, but there are other ships and crews with equally illustrious careers". It's always seemed to be a bit of a cop out. With this reset of Star Trek though - I can see playing a game in this setting and actually feeling like you are stepping out and creating your own legend which could match or supersede the Enterprise's entries in the annuals of the Federation rather than being overshadowed by them.

Comments

[pepperbeast.livejournal.com]

Simon Pegg *is* only about six or seven years younger than James Doohan was in 1966.

[bigdee.livejournal.com]

Personally, I loved the film from start to finish. And that's said as a geek who's been an avid Trek follower since childhood...

It's neat that the franchise has got some new life, after a solid decade-and-a-half of relative mediocrity. Going back to the very beginning was a good move, and it's even better that they've managed to mix things up and create the potential for completely new stories.

Using all the characters to their fullest potential in one movie would've been difficult, and probably messy. Considering that, they did a good job of giving everyone a fairly crucial role.

I didn't spot any obvious plot-holes, aside from stuff that could be covered by conjecture fairly easily. There're contrivances, to be sure, but nothing that I found to actively defy explanation :-)

[pepperbeast.livejournal.com]

Nero, dumbest bunny on Romulus is flung nearly 130 years into the past folowing the destruction of his home planet. He's so thick between the pointy ears, it doesn't occur to him he's essentially been offered a giant do-over and a really good chance at saving his home from future catastrophe. Rather than using the red matter to collapse the star destined to supernova and destroy Romulus, or warning Romulans that they've got about 100 years to pack their bags, or doing anything *useful* that would return him to a much happier timeline, he spends 25 years(!) very slowly deciding to to destroy Earth and Vulcan. It also doesn't dawn on him that rather than saving Romulus, destroying Earth and Vulcan will potentially lead to the red matter device's never being invented. And this dim bulb was put in charge of a ship!

There's absolutely no explanation for why Spock is flying around with enough dangerous "red matter" to hoover up half the quadrant when the amount needed to create a singularity is something like a millilitre. It's also not obvious why no-one noticed a star about to go dangerously supernova until it actually happened.

And still, not one female in Starfleet has said "fercrissake, I am a military officer-- I am not wearing cap sleeves and a goddamned miniskirt!!"

[bigdee.livejournal.com]

I reckon many of those are covered by dialogue or events in the film...

One of Nero's reasons for wasting the Federation is to make Romulus strong and independent again - which'd be a fairly daft objective if he didn't stave off the disaster too. Sure, it could be argued that changing the future would make his whole revenge scheme pointless, since the supernova will never happen. But despite that, it's still already happened to him and his crew, who've lost their families and home irreversibly. Since he's pretty far from a noble altruist, it's safe to assume that "blowing poo up" would be his first priority, rather than letting anything potentially interfere with his revenge...

That 25-year lull is partially expounded on in some deleted scenes, which involve Nero being interred at Rura Penthe. It's hinted at in the film, but fairly tangentially.

As for Red Matter - since the stuff defies known physics, it's fair to assume some technobabble/fanwank reason for why Spock needed a big ol' beachball of the stuff. I just assume that it's only stable in large quantities. And that supernova - an exploding star that threatens more than one solar system, let alone the entire galaxy, is pretty far beyond regular astrophysics, so it stands to reason that it'd come as quite a surprise even in the 24th century.

I may have to pick up the Countdown comics sometime, which detail the back-story of Nero, Spock et al in the 24th century. They also sort out some of the twaddle left behind by Nemesis, thankfully...

[pepperbeast.livejournal.com]

You might want to look up supernovas-- they do indeed blow neighbouring star systems all to bits :-)

[bigdee.livejournal.com]

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. I know that supernova remnant nebulae are often dozens of light-years across, but never realised the destruction spread similarly far afield :-)

[blackphoenix524.livejournal.com]

I'm a lot more interested in plot I find, which is probably why I thought it was only average. Plot holes kinda ruined what would otherwise have been a nice movie.
That and I was probably watching with the mindset 'is this movie canon?'. I thought Spock and Kirk were well acted though.

[pepperbeast.livejournal.com]

I assume they put the movie still in an alternate timeline to give a broader scope for sequels *without* having to stick too close to canon for that era.