The New "Trek" - a mixed bag.
May. 29th, 2009 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mary_j_59Well, 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.
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.
