I went to see Star Trek yesterday evening with my friends; John, James and Susan. I’d like to put some reference in here for you. John is a fan of Batman and Star Wars, so tends towards preferring Science Fantasy or Comic Fantasy. James is a huge Star Trek fan, it is pretty much the base of his Science Fiction fandom and I would like me grew up with TNG. Susan I guess to a lesser degree, but I guess prefers Science Fiction. I prefer good Science Fiction, but Fantasy of any type can go down well.
Now I’d like to state what I hope Star Trek is at its best, which is good science fiction that makes you think, but that is palatable enough for the general public, Inclusive Science Fiction if you will. A lot of this inclusion comes from believability based on continuity and science that works by stretching, but never breaking the rules.
In many ways this is what recent remakes like BSG and the Batman movies have succeeded in. Taking out the unreal-ism and treating your audience with respect. If you think how old BSG was, it felt a lot more like Star Wars than Star Trek.
Out of the four of us I believe John enjoyed the new Star Trek the most and James the least. Now taken as vacuous entertainment ST is pretty good, the effects are shiny and the explosions loud. However once my brain came out of sleep, I really didn’t need it to watch ST, stink set in. It is bad science fiction, with plot holes larger than the black holes in the film. Most notable is the extreme variability of speed in the film. I don’t want to spoil it for those that haven’t seen it, so please look away now. So an experimental 24th Century Vulcan high-speed ship can not get to Romulus in time and a Federation ship is too far away to call for help whilst under attack. However a 23rd century ship can get to Vulcan in about 10 minutes flat and get soo far away from Earth a huge black hole can cause no harm to the planet or system. That’s just the blindingly obvious. I won’t go in to the rest of the insane plot holes as, unlike this film, I won’t insult your intelligence.
Star Trek before this was suffering from many problems:
- A complete lack of strange new worlds and civilisations.
- Time Travel fixes/breaks everything, please bare in mind Time Travel was initially invented for a semi-comedic Star Trek film. It was not designed to be used all the time.
- Space Invaders level film plots. Nemesis and this film share so much in common it is scary.
- Being embarrassed to be Star Trek.
- Feeling like they are on the Final Frontier and not just 10 minutes from the safety of earth.
- Screwing up the canon for no good reason. Canon changes are welcome for the good of the series, not just because we can.
What we are left with if analogized as Batman; is a Batman with super powers, no interest detective work and half his family are still alive, but oh he still wears the right suit. It is the skin of a Star Trek on Star Wars as directed by Michael Bay. Frankly it is sad that Hollywood won’t fund new franchises as JJ Abrams obviously wanted to make The Fast and The Furious in space, which is what this is, what it isn’t is Star Trek.
Comment by Mrs Gerrbil
18th May 2009 @ 10:05 pm
I think James enjoyed it more than I did. I felt it was a “tick off the major charaters from Star Trek, the original series, and figure out a way for them to be in this new film and throw the canon out of the window”. The explosions and bangs were good though. Oh, and, is Leonard Nimoy cheap, or was he the only original Star Trek actor willing to be in this?
Comment by James
18th May 2009 @ 11:19 pm
Spoiler alert
Hmmmmmm wasn’t a bad film really. Just remember that Saturn hasn’t moved, so you’re still at least an hour away from earth at sublight speeds.
And why do films always fall for the black hole trap. You are in orbit around an object. All of a sudden the object is condensed into a black hole. The gravity of the object will remain the same, but instead of flying over Seti Alpha Five, you look out the window and see nothing below you. Gravity will remain unaffected, and as long as you don’t go lower and cross the event horizon, you can plot a course for earth. And I didn’t mention the Schwarzschild radius or Hawking Radiation once.
On a positive note, Given the speed of the destruction, Sybok may not have survived… That’s one for the nerds.
Comment by Chris
19th May 2009 @ 10:55 am
Couple of upsides of the film.
First I have scheduled my PVR to record some TNG as I had forgotten how much I do like real Trek.
Secondly the Blu-Ray release of the the Original Series
Comment by Chris
19th May 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Well Deforest Kelly is Dead (frankly my favourite of the lot), Old Kirk was killed off in Generations so the last of the Top Table is left in Spock. Also Spock is Vulcan and so live pretty long compared to Humans. Having Sulu, Checkov or Uhura return wouldn’t fit the plot. In this one regard it fitted canon very well.
I didn’t mind canon getting a rework, it just seemed for laughs half the time. I really liked Karl Urban as McCoy. Frankly if they had the guy who played George Kirk, play Jim Kirk with McCoy and Pike on Kirk’s previous post as a 1st officer minus everyone else (apart from the odd communication from them in other posts in Star Fleet) it would have been on the way to being so much better.
I have put a wee bit of thought as to what ST should ultimatly be, which is to stretch our minds and question our actions. They could have broached the subject of Safety Vs Freedom which is integral to the more mature Star Fleet and very topical. Or the affects of smaller space faring nation having large deposits of delithium and the power squables between SF, Klingons and Romulans. There could have been inclusion of people other sexual alignments or races not previously included like people of arabian or latin decent.
Instead they made things blow up, a lot, with more lenses flares than Babylon 5 and more shaky cams than Blare Witch :/ I guess I dislike it all the more because its potential was so much greater than say Fast and Furious.
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