The Case for Continuing Voyages

Once upon a time, there was a television series called Star Trek. It was a series that showed a future where men and women of all creeds and races (including alien) worked together for the betterment and enlightenment of all. In time, this series spawned several others, and also a move franchise, that all tried to capture the spirit of meaning in the original series, to varying levels of success. But then someone said, “Screw it; make a move that is fun”.

And so, Star Trek XI: A New Beginning (not called that, of course) has really almost nothing to do with its predecessors. It is like someone took a script written by fans and normally enacted in the privacy of one's basement and threw a few tens of million of dollars and a great looking cast at it too. So, for those wedded to the “original” Star Trek, this will come as a bit of a shock; to those who just want action and thrills and a bit of a twist on a very clichéd tale, this could be loads of fun.

While the various series of Trek was riddled with inconsistencies, it struggled vainly to try and at least pretend that there was some sort of sense to how they imagined the future to be. This version doesn’t really care. Space has never looked so small – everything is very, very close together (Saturn is apparently about a 5 minute walk from Earth) and the final frontier looks like it is really not that big a deal.

This goes nicely with the film style, as almost every shot of the cast is either in extreme close up, is all shaky and unfocussed or else has a bright light flashing directly into the camera. It is quite irritating, but given the frenetic pace of the film, you don’t notice it after a while – until things calm down again anyway.

The actors are obviously having fun playing well-loved and established characters. While Kirk and Spock are played as brilliantly as one would expect (and, in Kirk’s case, smugly and irritatingly too – again, as expected), Carl Urban’s McCoy is eerily close to DeForest Kelly’s, and Simon Pegg brings a sense of the ridiculous as Scotty. But the stand out has to be Zoe Saldana as Uhura, who gets the chance to bring Uhura out from behind the funky earrings and be given a bit more sass, and she even gets her man – even if her character is still not that well developed.

But then, none of them really are. As I said, this is about the action, not such inconsequential things as story and character development (bah, humbug). A red shirt dies (yay!), Winona Ryder makes a surprise cameo playing “old”, things are “homaged”, other things explode. What more does one really expect?

I have to say though that I was not a big fan of the set design: Spock's personal ship made no sense and definitely was not in keeping with the "theme" of Trek; the layout of the bridge was a bit hard to make out at times amidst the cacophany of light and sound and glass partitions; and somehow the engine room from the Titanic ended up in the bowels of the Enterprise, though quite how it fit within the confines of the Enterprise's structure seemed to have more to do with TARDIS technology than warp drive.

Personally, I am a big fan of Picard-era Star Trek, and there is no way I can be a fan of the both of them and consider them both to be “Trek”. I would have loved to ask those who came to our session at the Embassy (this film deserves big screen treatment like this, BTW) dressed in quasi Star Fleet uniforms if they thought the same thing. But I was able to enjoy the film by seeing this movie as a “spin” on the real version, not by trying to reconcile it with what I consider canon. The film is accessible, looks amazing, and quite a bit of fun. And I enjoyed it. Lots.

Verdict: Even though there is no citing of Moby Dick, this Star Trek is still going to go down as one of the good ones. I am not quite sure how the great Paramountal powers would go around making a second film of this ilk, but I am sure they will give it a try, and hopefully, it will be as fun as this one. I may not want this version to live long and prosper over the one I grew up with, but for now, the needs of the cinematic many outweigh the needs of the few. 8 Vulcan nerve pinches out of 10.