Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Star Trek RIP, Part 2

[Narrator:] Last time on Exfanding Your Horizons...

[Begin montage of clips from yesterday's post]

"All the trailers I saw for this new Star Trek movie looked exciting. Everybody who saw them became instantly excited about the impending release of this film....Everybody but me. I was upset. I was nervous and upset."

"'It looks amazing,'" I said, with utter sincerity, 'but it's not Star Trek.'"

"Next Generation defined what Star Trek is for me, and no other fandom--not even Mega Man--is closer to my heart."

"All I asked for was just one more movie--heck, one more episode--that would truly do justice to the Next Generation crew and, for the sake of Worf, bring them the same honor that Kirk and his crew enjoyed."

"Instead....EVERYTHING was thrown out so that James T. Kirk--not Jean-Luc Picard--could have one more adventure with his ship and crew without worrying about pesky things such as logic, continuity, or the age of the actors..."

"They ruined everything....And I really enjoyed the movie."

"I am not....ablaze...."

"The four-issue comic series series Star Trek: Countdown....made everything okay. Well, almost everything."

[End montage]

[Narrator:] And now, the conclusion.

Star Trek: Countdown #2 coverOn a whim, I picked up Star Trek: Countdown. Considering it was the official prequel to the new Star Trek film (from the same people who did the story for the movie, no less), I figured I might eventually get around to reading it if I liked the movie even a smidgen, and the potential explosive popularity of the film meant there was a very good chance I'd never see Countdown on the shelves again (what with those speculators who routinely buy their weight in Obama Spider-Man comics), so it was in my best interest to buy now rather than never.

I put Countdown on my shelf and forgot about it for a little while, but as I kept hearing more of these little tidbits about the new Star Trek movie (unavoidable if you go anywhere near the Internet), it started to sound like the movie would be a flat-out reboot with little or no connection to any other Trek. Yet, Picard and Data and Spock are on the cover of the trade paperback, so there clearly was some connection. I got the distinct feeling I'd be missing something if I went into the movie without reading Countdown first.

I cannot emphasize how critical it was for me to read Star Trek: Countdown before seeing the film. In just under 100 pages, Countdown told a great story that felt like Star Trek; it gave me hope that the writers would handle the new movie with respect; it provided a feasible (as far as Star Trek goes) reason for a franchise reboot that actually fit into Star Trek continuity; it atoned for many of the sins of Nemesis and legitimated the film's existence; and it provided the closure on the Next Generation series that I desperately needed.

At long last, I was at peace.


[Cue main title sequence and theme song. Add "Now celebrating 6000 hits" in smaller font below the Exfanding Your Horizons logo.]

Star Trek: Countdown page sampleCountdown also gave me a sneak peek at some things I might not like about the new movie. If the comic was any indication, the film would probably be a little edger than I'd prefer, there were guaranteed to be one or two catastrophes you could see coming a mile away that would serve only to elicit an emotional reaction; some of the character interactions might feel just a tad off, there might be a push for more "average" characters (you know, like us not-futuristic modern-day folks), and there very well might be a Joss Whedon "WHY JOSS WHY???" moment when you least expect it, if you know what I mean. (That part came incredibly close to ruining Countdown for me.)

Regardless, I had gotten what I needed out of Countdown: finally, Next Generation had received a proper burial, and my fears and misgivings about the new Star Trek had been dulled to the point where I was honestly looking forward to seeing it.

Not bad for some rinky-dink four-issue comic I picked up on a whim.

Countdown also ended up being invaluable in the way that reading Watchmen before watching Watchmen is invaluable: the plot of the new Star Trek film isn't fully explained until about halfway through the movie, and even then there's a lot of basics that, bafflingly, only Countdown covers. To its credit, there is one section in the movie where Spock explains in very plain terms to Kirk (though it's obviously for the benefit of the audience) that everything about the old Star Trek has been thrown out and anything can happen in the new Star Trek because they just rebooted the franchise.

I think Spock's exact quote included the words, "rebooted the franchise," but I'm not sure.

Enterprise leaves spacedockStar Trek already had something very positive going for it: we saw it in IMAX. And let me tell you, when those phasers started blazing and those ships started zooming by, I was in tears. Tears of joy. I was watching Star Trek on the big screen again. The BIG screen. And, for a short while, I was in geek ecstasy. Even when things started happening that were very obviously to elicit an emotional reaction (and you could see them coming from a mile away), I still didn't care: I was watching Star Trek on the big screen again.

Then came the fluff.

You know how sometimes the characters in a musical spontaneously start singing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, and then their song ends and the plot suddenly resumes? That's how it was with Star Trek, except without the singing.

The fun of Star Trek--for me, at least--has always been in the action sequences and the banter between characters and all that good stuff. However, when somebody accidentally got stuck inside a tube filled with fast-moving liquid, or when big monsters appeared out of nowhere and tried to eat someone, there was this tangible sense that it was somebody's job to come up with scenes the masses might consider "fun" and shove them in whenever the talking had been going on too long and the next fight sequence was too far away.

Battle on mining platformNow, I'm torn. I really enjoyed one or two of these "fun" scenes, and even the ones I wasn't as keen on were still tolerable enough... but I couldn't figure out what they were doing in my Star Trek movie. These scenes felt vaguely like the humorous sequences that were forced into the Star Wars prequels (you know; "Meesa Jar-Jar Binks!" Hahaha! This creature is inherently hilarious!), except Star Trek, while still silly, felt like "silliness for all ages" instead of "silliness for kids."

Oh, and as far as Jar-Jar Binks is concerned, there's an incredibly minor character whose only function is to attempt to be weak comic relief (and possibly to demonstrate that very short aliens don't just exist in Star Wars), and this alien is quickly shaping up to be Scotty's sidekick.


I'm not knocking the actor who played the alien, though. In fact, I have mostly positive things to say about all the actors. Now, I could be excruciatingly persnickety and whine that the casting wasn't absolutely perfect for every single character, but when you consider that these young'uns were trying to interpret these characters for themselves while still emulating the actors who are now inseparable from the characters, I think they did a fine job.

For the most part.

New Star Trek movie castOver the course of the film, Chris Pine managed to develop Kirk from a brash and reckless hooligan to a brash and reckless starship captain, and though the difference is subtle, it made the movie that much more enjoyable to watch that development. But as far as characters go, Spock was without a doubt the reason to watch this movie. Regardless of whether or not the events of this new movie resemble the untold backstory of the old Star Trek, watching Spock manage his dual heritage in several different periods of his life was something I had always wished to see more of in TOS, so this movie made Spock that much deeper for me.

I have nothing but praise for Anton Yelchin, who not only looked and acted like a young Chekov but pulled off the accent impeccably. I've heard his accent described as annoying, but consider that Koenig's Chekov rarely had a chance to string more than two sentences together before somebody else had a chance to start talking before the accent could become grating. So there.

I'm now officially a fan of anything Bruce Greenwood does, and I was pleased and surprised to find out that he was not only in this film but also that he was playing Captain Christopher Pike. Brilliant.

Sulu was good (Sulu's probably the hardest character to emulate because he's probably the most average); Scotty was good but just a little more Simon Pegg than Scotty; Karl Urban didn't consistently feel like McCoy to me (mostly because of the sound of his voice, though he nailed the speech patterns), but there were several moments where I swear it was DeForest Kelley speaking. Sarek didn't do much for me, Kirk's father was great, Eric Banana made a good "down-to-earth" villain (although I missed the snotty, posturing Romulan bad guys), and I don't have much to say about anybody else, either way.

Nero broodingExcept for Uhura. The Uhura I remember wasn't such a floozie. She felt more like a Mirror Universe Uhura than a young Uhura whose past theoretically shouldn't have been altered all that much by the events of the film.

Now, let's see... am I forgetting anybody...?

(Yes, of course I am.)

Spock Prime! (As he's referred to in the credits.) Just as McCoy passed the torch to Next Generation in its first episode, just as Kirk passed the torch to Picard in Generations, just as every new Star Trek has had at least one character from a previous Star Trek grant their blessing on the new direction of the franchise, Leonard Nimoy returns as Spock to do the same. I don't know exactly how Nimoy felt about the new actors or the new Star Trek, but it's clear that he enjoys wearing those ears again.

The appearance and significant involvement of the original (and, arguably, the only) Spock was almost as important as Countdown in subduing my fanboy rage. Even if he showed up only to lure longtime fans back to the theater, the illusion that they cared about the integrity of the franchise made a difference to me.

Truthfully, Star Trek made a great deal of effort to honor the original TV show and movies. All the characters' most famous lines and catch phrases are spoken at some point (a few times they feel a little shoehorned in, but you can tell they were trying), and there were references here and there to things that only longtime fans would be able to identify. There's a fine line between honoring the memory of something and pulling in nostalgia to superficially improve the quality of something, and I think Star Trek made its best effort to do the former.

Of course, the original Star Trek got virtually all the attention. Unless I really wasn't watching hard enough. But I guess that was to be expected.

Kirk strikes a pose in the captain's chairAs far as modernizing the look of the Enterprise goes... whatever. It's tough to work around the retro look of the original Enterprise, and there's no reason for them to stick with the old design if they're throwing out continuity anyhow. It looks futuristic enough, but it lacks the same design aesthetic of every Starfleet ship ever made.

And, concerning Kirk driving a vintage car bearing blatant Nokia ad placement: I could have done without that. It was a fluff scene that had already been shown almost in its entirety during the movie trailers, so the surprise of that little rabblerouser at the wheel being James T. Kirk wasn't a surprise at all, and I was able to relate to Kirk just fine before he started driving a car. (Hey! I drive a car, too! Suddenly I can connect with this character!)

I dunno... maybe it was necessary for the uninitiated to learn that Kirk is a bit of a troublemaker, but I already knew the characters well enough that I soon grew weary of the introductions that didn't really add anything new to the characters.

Once it finally got going, Star Trek did have moments that felt like Star Trek. The punchline to Captain Pike's pep talk with Kirk in the bar was thought-provoking (something to the effect of, "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes and he saved forty bajillion lives. Let's see if you can do any better.") and the prejudices of the Vulcans and other "thinky" things were right in line with what I was accustomed to.

The space battles took me back to First Contact and other times where everything was exploding from everywhere. The numerous fistfights felt just like I was watching TOS again. The Romulans and their ship would have fit right into another Next Generation movie. The dialogue had some good humor woven throughout, as well. So much was right with this movie.

Shuttle bayBut so much was different. The "thinkiness" didn't last. That occasional Star Wars vibe that arose with the new aliens and a few of the action sequences and some of the detours into the territory of needless fun. The relationships of some of the characters (all of which have to do with Uhura)... and the total lack of relationships between others. The highly predictable moments of forced emotional reactions. Scotty's new sidekick. The look and feel of the Enterprise. The different brand of villain. And a completely new cast of actors who, as someone pointed out to me, will never need to worry about finding a job again for the rest of their lives.

The verdict? The movie was amazing... but it wasn't Star Trek. Between Countdown, Nimoy, and the references to the old Trek, the movie proved that it still cared about the diehard, traditionalist fans (or was at least trying to appease them a little). Yet, I refuse to believe that this reboot was necessary. They could have hired the exact same cast, given them different names, and kept the fancy-pants ship designs, and it would have worked perfectly in the old Star Trek continuity.

But, no, they've charted a course for mainstream sci-fi, or at the very least, a little more mainstream than Star Trek has ever successfully been. They're free to do whatever they want with the franchise, and you know what?

I don't care what they do with it.

The Star Trek I know has been laid to rest. I watched it slowly die over the past several years, and I had already said my goodbyes. Countdown was the silver lining. Star Trek (the film) is in a different continuity altogether. As a fan of the old continuity, I am under no contractual obligation to like the new continuity, just as I don't need to like Ultimate Spider-Man if I'm a fan of The Amazing Spider-Man.

I'll watch the next Star Trek movie, and I might even enjoy it, but I won't get upset if Scotty turns traitor and blows up the ship, killing Sulu and forcing Kirk and Spock into a romantic love triangle with Uhura. It's an alternate universe, for alternate fans. And it just doesn't have the same appeal to me.

Boldy go, Star Trek. Maybe I'll catch up with you later.

New Enterprise
[Countdown cover from memory-alpha.org. Countdown sample from www.iesb.net. Overly huge movie stills from www.startrekmovie.com.]


Anonymous said...

This entry did make me realize one positive thing (unless something in "Countdown" obviates it): in the universe of the reboot, "Insurrection" and "Nemesis" won't ever happen. That's a nice thing to think about.

Flashman85 said...


The only problem I had with Insurrection was that it didn't feel like a real movie.

What they *should* have done was have a time-traveling bandit mess with only the continuity of the episodes and movies we didn't like so that only the good stuff remained.

That would have been perfect.

DaveCoupe said...

I loved the new Star Trek movie. It wasn't perfect and I agree that reading Countdown helped tremendously, but I think that this Star Trek is something that Gene Roddenberry would've been excited about. Hell, he intended to do a movie like this instead of the The Motionless Picture, but got the exec heat for thinking about veering away from Shatner and Nimoy. This new movie is a raging success not just because I was ecstatic leaving the theater, but also because the non-fan friends I went with found a new love and respect for the franchise as well!

Flashman85 said...

As I said, it was an amazing movie. I really enjoyed it. And I'm glad it's getting non-fans interested in Star Trek. I just don't care much for the new direction. And I realize I'm likely in the minority here, and I can accept that.

Who knows? Maybe the next film will blow me away and lure me back in. It's far too early to make a final decision on whether or not I like this new Star Trek after all.