The New "Trek" - a mixed bag.

[mary_j_59]

Well, my sister and I finally got to see it tonight, and here follows my review. Basically, we enjoyed it. But I should add that I've been watching "Trek" since I was twelve (TOS, in reruns), and that I get seriously irked by bad science in an SF show. Wacky I can deal with; wild speculation I can deal with, but risible science just gets to me. OTOH, some of what was done with the characters was very interesting. My sister's comments, which sum it up pretty well, were, "This movie could make you scared of dentists. Begin drilling!", and "I loved Uhura! The actors were great!" Spoiler alert:

This is under a cut because there may be spoilers, for those few who haven't seen the movie. Overall, it is worth seeing. There were some things in it I loved, some I questioned, and some I absolutely hated. So -

I loved:
1. The actors - all of them. All of them put across their characters as people, and almost all managed to echo the original characters in interesting ways. New Uhura was great; Kirk properly and understandably obnoxious; Sarek good and wise; Bones testy; Spock intense and intelligent.
2. There were a few nods to long-time fans. The Kobiyashi Maru test - it is canon that Kirk cheated - and Spock getting teased by the other Vulcan boys, which came straight out of an excellent cartoon episode, were two good examples. So was Captain Pike.
3. The story had a lot of energy and held one's interest most of the way through, and the stakes were certainly high.
4. The villain was comprehensible - assuming you bought the wacky plot, you could see why he was crazed, and why he wanted to do what he did. You could also see why he would not consider surrender. He was actually looking for death.
Of course, of this long list, the main thing was how well they got the characters across in spite of the changes to Star Trek canon and the people themselves. As I said, I loved Uhura and Sarek; Spock was good; Sulu and Chekov were very much in character (and it made sense that Chekov was actually a boy. It's canon that he's a lot younger than Kirk, and that Spock is a more experienced officer.) Kirk was obnoxious, but he's supposed to be.

Things I questioned:
1. I didn't really buy the ending at all. Kirk is meant to be a new captain at the beginning of TOs season 1, isn't he? And Chekov, at that point, wasn't aboard the enterprise. Yes, Kirk saved the solar system (sort of/kind of - more on that later), but why on earth should he be given the command of the top ship of the fleet? And why should all the final crew be there with him, when they weren't on the show?
2. Though I understood that he was emotionally upset, I still had a hard time with Spock marooning Kirk on that awful planet, and I could have done without the extraneous and biologically improbable monsters.
3. Red Matter. Enough said. (As Deirdre said, it was pretty, though!)

Things I hated:
1.This movie, at times, had the modern facility for presenting cruelty as humor. I hated the spacing of Porthos the beagle. My dog was a beagle. Sorry. I just hated that, and I thought it made Scotty look bad.

2.I utterly reject the destruction of Vulcan. It didn't happen, not in my universe. (In TOS, a couple of my favorite episodes are Amok Time and Journey to Babel. This movie attempts to expunge them. I won't have it.)

3. The so-called mining vessel. Yes, I understand a scary villain has to have a scary-looking ship; yes, I understand that a ship that never leaves outer space doesn't have to be constrained by aerodynamics or weight. But shouldn't its form follow function? Why, why did the enemy ship have to look like a cross between a giant squid and Edward Scissorhands? And why all the platforms people were leaping onto? didn't this ship have floors?

4. Okay - Spock who (in canon!) had been ambassador to Romulus, was going to try to save the planet from an impending supernova by instead turning the sun into - a black hole? And exactly how was this going to help? Even if Romulus was beyond the event horizon of said black hole, they wouldn't have a sun anymore, and the planet would die, probably in a matter of hours. Also-

5. Speaking of black holes, exactly how was it going to be helpful to have a black hole as one of the moons of Saturn? Don't the writers know that black holes ingest everything in their gravitational field, and that their field becomes more powerful as they become more massive? They never stop growing. Placing a black hole inside the solar system is not a good idea.

6. So - the evil, mad Romulan has refused rescue and has vanished into the new singularity. And the enterprise is trapped inside the event horizon. And - they jettison the warp core, and manage to escape that way? Stupid and unnecessary, Mr. Scott! An event horizon, by definition, is the distance from the singularity from which light cannot escape. NOTHING can escape. Nothing that we know of. But, in SF mumbo jumbo, you could perhaps travel faster than the speed of light and get away that way. So - they jettison the warp core, which should make warp travel impossible? I got seriously annoyed by that nonsense. As I said when I began this review, I have no problem with wackiness or wild speculation. Plain bad science bugs me.

7. Finally, as I think I may have said above, I was irked by the ceremony at Starfleet at the end. It seemed heavy-handed and improbable.

Well, that's quite a list. I actually did like the movie. Deirdre and I agreed that we liked Caspian more, but this was worth seeing. Not, in my opinion, a classic, though. My favorite "Trek" movie remains Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home. It was worth seeing, though, and the cast was really good. I just wish the story had been better.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

and it made sense that Chekov was actually a boy. It's canon that he's a lot younger than Kirk, and that Spock is a more experienced officer.

Chekov is actually older here than he would be in the original timeline, unless they've pushed the whole thing back (so e.g. Kirk was also born and graduated earlier). He's supposed to have been born in 2245, but Kirk graduated in 2254. (First five-year mission was to begin in 2264.) Chekhov shouldn't even be 10 years old when this is taking place, yet they've made him 17. (He'd have been ~20 when he joined the TOS crew in the second season.)

I can only suppose that they didn't concern themselves with fitting into every fine detail of the established timeline since they were purposely taking it in another direction. Perhaps something about Kirk being born in space while his doomed father listened was a "butterfly wing" that rippled into Mr. and Mrs. Chekov getting it on a little earlier. ^_-

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's interesting! I do not know all those star dates, but I did know that Chekhov was supposed to be an inexperienced kid when he started out in second season of "Trek". So no, though they do have a general feel for the characters, they aren't cleaving to Trek canon at all.

Which means it's quite possible they are making Kirk a bit older than he was. After all, canon Kirk had an older brother. And I can't help thinking this Kirk might not have been such a hell raiser if big brother Sam had been around to help him out. But who knows?

[anne-arthur.livejournal.com]

I was very interested to read this a few days ago, and, as I have now seen the film (sitting in state through the early evening showing tonight with half-a-dozen other people) I thought I'd give you my reaction.

1) I agree with you about the rash creation of badly-sited black holes, and the pointless jettisoning of warp cores, but I'm not terribly surprised. Black holes are dramatic and sexy, jettisoning the warp core is drastic and exciting (didn't they do that in another of the films?) so, alas, they have to be included. Actually, I think that the potential supernova that Spock was going to turn into a black hole was near Romulus, but not its own sun, so it wouldn't have killed the planet in the way you describe - but it still doesn't sound like a good idea to me. However, I did rather like the barefaced cheek of simply calling the red matter 'red matter' with no further explanation!

2) Another thing that has to be included in a sci-fi film is a ship/space station that has a vast cavernous area at its centre, criss-crossed by narrow walkways and platforms, just so that someone can fall to their death at some point . . . I had forgotten your comment when I saw that in the film, but I did groan at it. Like you, I didn't like this ship at all. I just couldn't work out how it all fitted together. There seemed to be vast arrays of lit windows, but a tiny crew! The design rather reminded me of the Shadows' ships in Babylon 5: but as the Shadows were meant to be a species so alien as to be incomprehensible, it seemed quite reasonable that 'form follows function', for them, should result in something that looked like a giant spider - for the humanoid Romulans, it seemed quite out of place. And I think Kirk was left hanging by his hands over a precipice no fewer than three times in the film: why? Was it some kind of joke? Did he do it a lot in the original series?

3) The thing that annoyed me most about the film was the way it was all set in an alternate universe, brought about by Nero's trip back in time. So we get a world where everyone knows that Romulans are related to Vulcans, doing away with one of my favourite episodes of the original series, we get the destruction of Vulcan, we get Romulan ships that look quite unlike any Romulan ships we've seen before, we get a love affair between Spock and Uhura that didn't happen. GRR! I would have much preferred a story that at least tried to fit in with canon.

Those were my major gripes. As to minor ones: I didn't believe the way McCoy smuggled Kirk on board the Enterprise at all: surely a sick man would have been left at base? And I think Spock would have thrown Kirk into the brig rather than maroon him on such a hostile planet. From your comments, I was really expecting to see poor Porthos actually floating away into space, so that the reference completely underwhelmed me: but if it had caught me cold, I think I would have found it gratuitous and nasty.

That said, I did enjoy the film. As you say, Nero was a plausible villain, and the plot kept me hooked for most of the time. And the cast were all very good - Kirk and Spock in particular were very believable, and Pike was also excellent. So it was a very entertaining way to spend a couple of hours - but I think I would have preferred something that tried to fit into the 'real' Star Trek universe more.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with you, Anne, especially about point 3! I've since come across two other reviews, both very interesting. One (by a young man, I believe, on imdb), pointed out that this movie seemed to want to ditch Star Trek altogether in favor of Star Wars. I think he had a point. The woman was even more interesting; she said exactly what I'd been feeling; she enjoyed it, but it worried her that she did, because she felt there was something mean and thoughtless at the center of the movie. Here is the link to her review - I'd be interested to know what you think.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mihic05292009.html

Anyway, I showed my sister your comment, and she was laughing out loud, especially at your description of the Romulan ship. I may message you privately about the counterpunch review and things I found actually dismaying in this movie - even while I was watching it. The short version is exactly what you said. I would have preferred something that fit the original Trek, and did not discard everything generous and idealistic about that vision. (I personally think the Federation could not have existed without Vulcan - so it won't exist in this iteration. I really resent that. And the casual way the genocide of the entire species - for Vulcans and Romulans are the same species - was presented, was chilling.)