Again With the Star Trek

Warning: More spoilers.

So I've reviewed the movie and given my thoughts on the changes. This post will be devoted to some of my favourite moments from the movie.

1) Captain Pike: the movie prominently featured Captain Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Enterprise. Fans remember him from the original pilot of the original series before Gene Rodenberry made the second pilot that introduced Star Trek as we know it. Pike wasn't terribly different than Kirk, but I've always held a special place for him in my heart. It was good to see him in a movie, albeit played by a different actor. In the movie, he's an important factor leading to Kirk becoming captain of the Enterprise.

2) The red ensign: a long-standing joke about Star Trek is the unfortunate "red ensign". Whenever an away team beamed down, it consisted of people such as Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, and an unknown character of low rank wearing a red shirt. More often than not, this character died violently. The writers of the movie purposefully and humorously provided a blatant "red ensign" moment. Captain Pike orders a space drop (sky diving from orbit). Reporting in drop suits are Kirt, Sulu, and some guy dressed in red that has made no previous appearance in the movie. His name was Ensign Olsen, or something like that. He was amusingly gung-ho about kicking Romulun ass, and the movie makers introduced his character in a way that you just absolutely know that he'll be dead in a few minutes. And what do you know: he pulls his chute too late, breaks his leg when he lands, falls over the edge of the drill, and gets sucked into jet of flame underneath the platform. I've never laughed so hard at such a horrible death.

3) Scotty's question about the future: Kirk and Spock Prime arrive at the lonely Federation outpost on the ice planet that Spock abandoned Kirk on. They find Scotty, and in the course of their discussion, it is mentioned that Spock Prime is from the future. "You're from the future?" Scotty enthusiastically asks. Spock Prime answers in the affirmative, to which Scotty, who clearly doesn't believe Spock Prime, asks, "Do they still have sandwiches there?"

4) Spock loses it: I mentioned this part in my review, so I won't go into detail. Kirk needs to take command over the Enterprise from Spock, using a regulation stating that someone who is strongly emotionally affected by the situation should be removed by command. Kirk antagonizes Spock, accusing him of not loving his recently-deceased mother, and Spock goes absolutely ape-shit, beats the tar out of Kirk, and only stops choking him when reprimanded by Sarek.

5) Ringtone: Near the beginning of the movie, when a young Jim Kirk steals his step-father's antique Corvette, his step-father calls Jim on the car's phone. The ringtone is the same annoying ringtone has been used on cellphones for years now. "Do-do-do-dooo! Do-do-do-dooo! Do-do-do-doo-doooooooo!" And the phone is a Nokia. Nice to see that Nokia will survive World War III.

6) Breaking the tension: After the beat-down Spock inflicted on Kirk in point number 4, the bridge crew stands around in an awkward silence. Scotty looks around with a wide-eyed expression, and then says, "I like this ship! It's very exciting."

7) Spock/Uhura romance: There's an episode of the original series where everyone is hanging out in the mess hall. Uhura starts singing a song, making it up on the spot, about the Enterprise and it's crew, and there's a verse about Spock that she sings directly to him. That's the most intimate moment between the two of them I can think of. The writers of the movie seemed to take that small, brief spark and run with it. I was surprised at first, and didn't really know what to think, but I eventually decided that I like it. I especially liked the look Kirk gave them when he realized that the two of them were a couple.

8) Kobaichi Maru: I have no clue if I spelled that correctly. It's the test in Star Fleet academy that was designed to be a no-win situation to see how cadets would react to it. It turns up in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn when Savik takes--and unavoidably fails--the test at the beginning of the film. As the movie goes on, it is said that Captain Kirk is the only who ever passed the test. Kirk finally explains to his son, David, that he reprogrammed the computer to change the variables of the test. In other words, he cheated. It was nice to actually be able to see that moment, especially when it is revealed that this is how Kirk first meets Spock, who is the designer of the test.

Star Trek

I'm a Trekkie. Not the loser kind of Trekkie who goes to Star Trek conventions wearing rubber Spock ears or a banana clip painted gold over my eyes. Heck, the only time I've ever been to the Vulcan, Alberta Trek Centre (which is about an hour away from where I've lived for most of the last seven years) was to ask directions to a funeral. I could beat up most other Trekkies, and I'm not a fighter. But I am a Trekkie nonetheless. I watched reruns of the original series when I was a kid, and I loved the movies. I was a faithful and devoted fan of The Next Generation, which is my favourite of the five TV series. I had a passing interest in Deep Space Nine. I watched Voyager faithfully even though it paled in comparison to the original series and TNG. And I thought Enterprise was one of the most under-rated TV series of this decade. I own Star Trek I through X, most of them the two-disc collectors editions, and I have numerous DVD fan collections.

This past Saturday, Avril and I went to watch the latest Star Trek movie, the reboot done by J.J. Abrams. The original characters played by a new cast. This movie very easily could have sucked. Thankfully, it didn't.

WARNING: the remainder of this post contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you may want to stop reading here and come back after you've seen the movie. Unless you hate Star Trek and don't care if I ruin the movie for you.

Let me make this perfectly clear right from the start: I love this new Star Trek movie. Chris Pine was a good Kirk (nobody can be Shatner without coming off as silly, and Pine wisely didn't try a Shatner impression. He managed to get the feel of Kirk without aping Shatner. In fact, the more I think about it, the more impressive that seems.) Zachary Quinto did an excellent job portraying Spock. Karl Urban was an amazing Dr. McCoy. Simon Pegg's portrayal of Scotty was one of the highlights of the movie, and I'm sad that he didn't play a larger role. Eric Bana as the bad guy, Nero, did an excellent job. Winona Ryder was an...interesting choice to play Spock's mother. I'm glad I didn't realize it was her until the end credits were rolling.

The writing was top-notch. They captured the essensce of the characters without falling into the rut that has been trapping Trek writers since the mid-'90s. This was the most refreshing Star Trek, on film or on TV, that I've seen in a long time. The direction was also refreshing and excellent. The special effects were great, and even the look of sets were great. The shuttle crafts taking the recruits for training looked well-used and real, something that Star Trek has never really done, and the engineering section of the Enterprise looked like it was the actual functioning engine room of a ship.

The story was engaging and emotionally gripping. The opening scene in which George Kirk sacrifices his life to allow the escape pods to get away while his wife is giving birth to James Kirk caused more than a just a few moist eyes. Leonard Nimoy's cameo as Spock Prime was nice to see, and it played a more important role to the plot than I was expecting. The destruction of Vulcan was a powerful moment, especially for Trekkies. Destroying Vulcan is almost as drastic as destroying Earth to us. Another powerful moment was when Kirk antagonized Spock into losing control of his emotions, which lead to Spock beating the crap out of Kirk.

An awesome movie. I loved it. Loved it!

But there is a small part of me that can't stop thinking about the drastic changes this movie has made to the Star Trek universe. Destroying Vulcan in the prequel to everything else that has happened over the last 40+ years that Star Trek has been around is huge. The planet Vulcan is gone. Only about 10,000 Vulcans out of 6 billion survived. Tuvok, from Voyager, most likely will never be born. The Federation will be fundamentally changed. I actually woke up around 3:00 Sunday morning wandering how the galaxy will be different by the time TNG roles around. The Star Trek universe is changed. My Star Trek universe!

But, like I said, that's just a small part of me. I'm interested and eager to see what the future holds for the Star Trek franchise.