Star Trek
About 16 minutes before the end of the new Star Trek movie, the prequel to the original series, I realized that the writers weren’t going to tie up the interesting space time alteration they created. And if you are a Star Trek fan and you haven’t seen the new movie, I would consider this a SPOILER. But nary a review of this movie has mentioned spoilers at all. So SPOILER: the new movie is not a prequel in any way that I would consider a prequel. I wondered how they could tell a back story about characters we’ve watched, loved, hated, analyzed for 40 years and still tell a story. How it could be new and different and yet still get us to the beginning of the original series?
The answer? They don’t. They are starting over. Instead of the life James Kirk lived that led him to Starfleet, the original series, the Enterprise, the movies…Kirk led a different life. Starting at the moment of his birth, when his father was killed by what turned out to be an Romulan from the future. And so, this prequel is actually an alternate reality. The filmmakers get to tell the story all over.
As for a movie review, the movie was everything the Onion promised, watchable, funny, exciting. My flaw my be literalism, but I spent most of the movie trying to figure out the puzzle of how they get this batch of familiar cadets onto the path that leads to the original series. I wondered how many movies they could squeeze in before they got to William Shatner’s Kirk. I am a little vague on the chronology of Star Trek. I suggested to Rob we find a Trek fan to help us fill in the gaps. And SPOILER alert, when Spock’s mother doesn’t get beamed off of Vulcan, and then the planet itself gets destroyed, I realized we weren’t in the same playbook. Maybe not even the same universe. I may be a fast and loose Trek fan – no Klingon boggle in my future - but I always liked Spock’s mother and I knew she had been a presence in Spock’s life.
There was something profound about the idea of constancy of personality and character. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scottie – we know them, love them, care for them. And it doesn’t seem that they’ve had the same life events, but it was them. And while considering the nurture v. nature, genes v. environment debate as generally complex, I am fascinated to see that personality is so resilient in the Star Trek universe. If Rob were to read this over my shoulder he would point out that Kirk may have essence, but the storytellers were hinting at a whole new Spock. Spock and Uhura kissing was a shift in a new direction. If he was confounded by human behavior in the original, in alternate reality, he is having a much harder time sticking to logical Vulcan.
The skeptic in me says that if we didn’t know and love the logical, cold original Spock, the emotional new Spock would be much less interesting.
I don’t know if the movie reviewers don’t care that this new Star Trek movie is not a prequel but a do-over or if the reviewers don’t know or like Start Trek enough to feel the discontinuity. Up until that last 16 minutes, I still thought they might close the loophole in time and go back to the original timeline. Kirk’s dad wouldn’t die, Vulcan wouldn’t be destroyed, Spock’s mom would live. And that would be OK. It was mind bending to think that the story starts again. I can imagine a new series where they redo the original episodes – can you imagine the Trouble with Tribbles with modern CGI?
So if you like Star Trek, see the movie. We saw it on the UltraScreen. That was pretty cool. (See my next unsolicited review on the ultrascreen). If you aren’t a Star Trek fan, I think the movie will still be entertaining. Go see it. It will its sequels more interesting.
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