khaosworks: (Kirk)
[personal profile] khaosworks
Here's the thing: JJ Abrams' Star Trek a good movie. It is even, I dare say, a great movie - moves along at a great pace, well directed, has amazing special effects, nail-biting suspense, nice dialogue and characterisation (well, as much as you can get in a summer blockbuster), and even attempts to drop in the right Easter Eggs to long-time fans.

So don't think I didn't enjoy it, because I did and very much so. Rest assured that this movie is worth watching, wish the franchise the best of luck and look forward to more movies.

But to really, really enjoy it, as a long-time Star Trek fanboy, you got to do one thing. You have to throw out any idea that this might be, as the writers and director has claimed, that this somehow is an alternate universe explainable by changes in time travel. Because you can't. If you can ignore it, it's brilliant. If you can't, then... not so much.

I'll just deal with my rantings below. This bit you can skip if you don't care.

Trust me, I tried to make it work in my head. Some know me as a Doctor Who fan, but long before that, I was a Star Trek fan. I had the costume, I ran the local fan club, I've written fanfic, I was one of the few Trek chronologists on USENET and can still converse freely about Trek tech and about YATIs (Yet Another Trek Inconsistency). I am, in short, much more of a sad, pathetic Trekkie nerd beyond what you can possibly imagine.

So trust me when I tell you that, as I was watching and enjoying the Abrams movie, somewhere in the back of my mind there was a dialogue going on desperately trying to reconcile what I was seeing and absorbing with the concept that this was an alternate universe that still fit within the overall Trek canon. It's a game that continuity freaks like me play, and I've done it before. But there comes a time in any examination and attempt at reconciliation where fanwanking just can't cut it anymore and you have to throw your hands up and say that it can't fit.

The basic conceit that the writers tried to fob off on fans was that this movie wasn't really a reboot, but that it could actually be explained by some quantum gobbledegook timey wimey stuff. That this is an alternate timeline caused by the intrusion of Nero's ship into the past, so killing George S. Kirk, Snr., the changes in the personal histories of Spock, et al. are all down to some kind of butterfly effect crap. But it doesn't work, because it is so obvious from the get go that Nero's entrance into the past is not the point of divergence.

Let's go back a bit, to "Yesterday's Enterprise". There we see how ripple effects work in the Trek universe. The Enterprise-C travels into the future, so is unable to fulfill its role in history and the effects ripple forward to the present day, resulting in a completely changed Enterprise-D. Let's go back even further, to "City on the Edge of Forever" where McCoy's changing history in 1930 Chicago ripples forward to the 23rd Century, or First Contact, where the Borg sphere going back in time changes history in the 24th Century. Point being, historical changes ripple forward, not back.

At the time Nero's ship enters the past, the USS Kelvin is already problematic because the tech looks different, the uniforms look different, Winona Kirk shouldn't really be on board ship (civilians don't become standard issue until the 24th Century, and George Kirk doesn't seem to have the pull to change the rules here). And you can't meta-wank it away by saying that this is just production issues (i.e. it was always supposed to look this modern but TOS production values meant that we didn't see it that way) because that explanation went out with Trials and Tribble-lations, which based gags precisely on the fact that things looked so different back then.

One more piece of evidence is that the USS Kelvin uses Stardates as equivalent to Anno Domini, which was never the case in any of the other screen versions of Trek. Also, changes in history don't explain why Delta Vega (a planetoid with an abandoned dilithium cracking station where Kirk tried to maroon Gary Mitchell, which appeared in the third episode - and second pilot - of TOS, "Where No Man Has Gone Before") is suddenly moved from its location at the edge of the Galaxy to Vulcan's system, close enough for Old!Spock to view his homeworld's destruction (and yet strangely remained unaffected by the gravitational consequences, but that's another rant). Yes, I tried justifying this by saying maybe they just named it that way, but that's pretty weak, given that it was obvious that the writers stuck it in as an Easter Egg, and there's no real logic to the naming convention unless Vulcan is in the Vega system, which it ain't - Roddenberry established it firmly in the Eridani A system.

So the universe that Nero (and subsequently Old!Spock) find themselves in is already substantially different from the original universe before Nero makes his over-dramatic entrance. It's not an alternate universe - it's a parallel one (if you appreciate the distinction). An alternate universe has a clear point of divergence. A parallel universe developed independently and any points of congruence are mere coincidence.

So basically yes, TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT are still there, they still happened, nothing was rewritten, but not because quantum mechanics allows the original timeline to merrily progress onward, but because it's a whole different universe altogether. Nero and Old!Spock travelled to the past of another universe, not their own. So Old!Spock and Young!Spock are not the same person at all, they're just alternate universe counterparts. To wit, this is "Spock of Two Worlds", or Trek Earth-2 (or Earth-1 if you really want to be pedantic, with TOS being Earth-2).

Which, actually, makes Nero even more bugfuck, because he's basically revenging himself on a universe which has absolutely nothing to do with the one where his Romulus was destroyed.

Oh, and to complicate matters, Old!Spock might not even be from the original universe because his ship gives the Stardate it was built as 2387! That way lies even more madness.

But I'm not naive. I can understand that, ultimately, the writers didn't want to admit this because they thought it might negatively impact the urge for fanboys to go watch the movie, like the backlash that resulted from the Battlestar Galactica reboot, even though in the end it was amazing. But it sticks in my craw a bit because it's not really being honest. But that's just me, and I know I'm just being a nerd about it all.

But there is one thing to be noted, though. One thing missing from this that would have made it truly Star Trek.

While the movie is a rollicking adventure, and works very well on that level, Star Trek was almost always about something quite apart from the action. Even if it was as heavy handed as a parable about prejudice ("Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"), or as insubstantial as a Christ metaphor ("The Alternative Factor"), or as repetitive as god-like aliens, insane computers or societies based on Old Earth cultures, it was about something more than just the action in the episode, some kind of theme or humanistic message. And there's really nothing behind the movie like that. Something they need to think about before they can convince me that this is the same kind of Star Trek I grew up with.

So do watch it, do enjoy it. Just keep in mind this is a re-imagining, and you'll do just fine.

Date: 2009-05-09 04:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] querldox.livejournal.com
I've pointed out elsewhere that Trek is now the pre-Crisis DC multiverse;

Classic Trek = Earth-2
NuTrek = Earth-1
Mirror Universe = Earth-3
That planet where Kirk's old Academy Instructor reenacted the Nazis = Earth-X (OK, so it's not strictly speaking a parallel world)
Animated Series = Earth-S (simplified world)
Trekkies the documentary = Earth-Prime (OK, so I'm really stretching here)

Date: 2009-05-09 05:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fizzixrat.livejournal.com
"At the time Nero's ship enters the past, the USS Kelvin is already problematic because the tech looks different, the uniforms look different,"

"And you can't meta-wank it away by saying that this is just production issues (i.e. it was always supposed to look this modern but TOS production values meant that we didn't see it that way) because that explanation went out with Trials and Tribble-lations, which based gags precisely on the fact that things looked so different back then."

I really have no trouble putting these two away as production value issues. The fanwanky DS9 argument falls down in the face of the look of the tech on Enterprise, a show which is directly referenced in the movie ("Admiral Archer's prized beagle"), unlike DS9, which has only a casual reference (Uhura ordering a Cardassian sunrise). Perhaps all of the continuity glitches you notice are actually fallout from the Time War?

"Winona Kirk shouldn't really be on board ship (civilians don't become standard issue until the 24th Century, and George Kirk doesn't seem to have the pull to change the rules here)."

Unless, of course, Winona was also a crewmember. She's out of uniform at the moment, because she's a maternity patient in Sickbay. (Maybe the plan had been to put her off at the nearest Starbase for leave when she was approaching term, but maybe Jim decided he wanted to show up three weeks early?) We really don't know much about Jim's parents within the context of the original 79 episodes, the animated series, or the seven films Kirk appeared in prior to this. Could be that she did a stint in Star Fleet, but didn't make it a career.

I'm not saying that these are necessarily the most satisfying answers, but there are possible explanations.


OTOH, I am wondering what happened to George Samuel "Sam" Kirk, Jr. Wasn't he Jim's older brother? In which case, where was he during the events of the new Star Trek film? Was he back home in Iowa being raised by grandma? Was he left for dead on the Kelvin? Was he never born? This seems a much larger gaping hole in the film's continuity.

Date: 2009-05-09 05:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
I really have no trouble putting these two away as production value issues. The fanwanky DS9 argument falls down in the face of the look of the tech on Enterprise, a show which is directly referenced in the movie ("Admiral Archer's prized beagle"), unlike DS9, which has only a casual reference (Uhura ordering a Cardassian sunrise). Perhaps all of the continuity glitches you notice are actually fallout from the Time War?
Thought about that, too. But whither TNG: "Relics" and ENT: "In A Mirror, Darkly?" And "Admiral" Archer's beagle can't be referring to Jonathan Archer because he had already retired from Starfleet and become President of the Federation as of 2184.
Unless, of course, Winona was also a crewmember. She's out of uniform at the moment, because she's a maternity patient in Sickbay. (Maybe the plan had been to put her off at the nearest Starbase for leave when she was approaching term, but maybe Jim decided he wanted to show up three weeks early?)
I admit this is possible, given only screen canon, but it's a bit weak - I'd think that Starfleet would put off pregnant women off duty almost immediately, especially on a starship, which is front-line duty in any time. But even if you eliminate this there are the other problems.
Edited Date: 2009-05-09 05:57 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-05-09 06:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] logam.livejournal.com
It's parallel universe Old!Spock and parallel universe Nero, travelling back to parallel universe past to kill parallel universe Kirk's father, and thus creating parallel universe v2.0.

Which kinda violates causality, because by changing the past, won't Old!Spock cease to exist?

And anyways, with a cargo-hold full of Red Matter, wouldn't Nero's first action be going to and and bugzapping the sun that would go supernova before it could deep-fry Romulus? It makes as much sense as that Bond villain with a freaking orbital laser using it to destroy landmines.

Priorities, people! Back to villain school for you!

Date: 2009-05-09 06:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osj.livejournal.com
There's no villain school, because every villain in film history has completely c**ked up, and none has survived to pass on the lessons he learnt.

Date: 2009-05-09 07:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daveon.livejournal.com
Easy. The POD was the original Archer Enterprise mission getting tangled up in the time war. That gave them access to tech they shouldn't have had i.e. the nice cool video displays :p and also the other changes to StarFleet and the Federation.

Like, for example, people knowing about Romulans and what they look like, when they didn't know that in the Original Series.

From a cannon perspective I thought that the Enterprise was already a pretty seasoned ship by the time they let Kirk near it.

Never mind. I still enjoyed the movie.

Date: 2009-05-10 03:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Enterprise is a whole different set of problems, because the Temporal Cold War also cannot be a universal handwave either - there is absolutely nothing to suggest that temporal changes were in place during the final episode of Enterprise when we had that flashforward to "The Pegasus", for one, but don't get me started on the nits and pieces that ENT throws up. I'm also this close to arguing that ENT isn't even canon.

Date: 2009-05-10 03:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
By the by, the USS Enterprise (Constitution class), by all accounts, was already 20 years old by the time she was given to Kirk, having been built c.2245 and initially commanded by Robert April, then Christopher Pike. Pike, in fact, commanded her for at least 13 years, because that's how long Spock served with him on the ship, according to "The Menagerie".

Date: 2009-05-10 04:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daveon.livejournal.com
That's pretty much what I thought...

Also, without the training and life experiences on the Faragut I wonder what this Kirk will actually be like...

Date: 2009-05-10 07:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] querldox.livejournal.com
And that right there was the silliest moment in the film.

I don't care how great a job he did on a one-shot, short duration, command mission. There's no way Starfleet jumps a not even graduated cadet 1) clear up in rank to Captain 2) gives someone with zero duty experience save for that mission command of a ship 3) much less the fleet flagship. They really needed to make the next to last scene just Kirk and Co. receiving their medals, then a "Five Years (or so) Later" caption screen before the final scene showing and telling us that they're reuniting for the first time as the Enterprise command crew. Jumping all of these cadet types to flagship command rank and posts just wouldn't ever happen unless pretty much every existing Starfleet officer was killed off.

Date: 2009-05-10 06:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhayman.livejournal.com
Aside from the fun geeking about things Trek, I agree with this point. I actually can pretty much swallow the other quibbles because ST cannon has pretty sloppy anyway. But cadet to captain? Not in anyone's reality.

Date: 2009-05-11 03:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
Overall, I liked the movie but I didn't like the story (or lack thereof). I wouldn't even have minded some minor canon changes if they had been done for a specific purpose to advance the story but all of the changes were either gratuitous or just plain bad decisions. I'll even lend some small credence to the action over cerebral story for the purposes of this movie. There were certainly classic Trek episodes that were less cerebral but this one, to my knowledge, had no central thesis or overall plot. The only story I could draw from it is "revenge is bad". Heaven knows "Wrath Of Khan" told us that, as did "The Undiscovered Country", "First Contact", "Insurrection" and "Nemesis". Perhaps that's why Star Trek became predictable; if all of your villans are simply named differently but all have the same motivating factor of revenge, it becomes the same story with just different names.

I still don't understand the 25 year waiting period to destroy Vulcan (or even the destruction of Vulcan, but more on that later). Surely as the only half-Human/half-Vulcan, Nero's future sensors could have easily detected young Spock on Vulcan, popped him into a space suit in orbit of Vulcan and dropped the red matter into the planet without having to wait on Spock' (Spock Prime for lack of a better name) to appear. If you've read the official comic prequel, you know that Nero was able to mine for red matter without having to obtain if from Spock', so waiting 25 years in a clear technologically superior ship was just pointless.

Also from the prequel, Vulcan pioneered the research into red matter. By destroying them 120-some-odd years prior to the need for that research to be realized, you've just doomed Romulus2 to the same fate as Romulus'. Again, pointless.

Chekov being the same age as the others I'll even forgive but minutes prior to Amanda's death we see him grab bodies falling at terminal velocity in the transporter but he can't catch a body he's already locked onto who is just starting to fall and hasn't even come close to reaching terminal velocity in her fall? Loophole at best. Just drop a statue on her and close that loophole right up.

Captain Pike told Spock that the Enterprise was new. Where was Captain Robert April?

For Vulcan to be that large an object in the sky, Delta Vega would have to be a moon. We all know Vulcan has no moons and even should Spock have been dropped off on one of the sister planets seen above in "The Motion Picture", Delta Vega was not on of them.

Under what possible rule or code would Spock just dump Kirk out of the ship onto a planet in the middle of an attack zone?

These aren't even nitpicked points from a life-long Trekkie. Okay, maybe the Captain April one was, but overall it just speaks to decisions made by J.J. that did nothing to advance the plot (what thin one there was).

In the end, I find myself enjoying the movie and even the brief allusions to the chemistry between the big three and even the rest of the crew. I did not, however, enjoy the story. It was just too loose with established canon when it didn't need to be. Any number of substitute decisions could have been made that told the exact same story without compromising the "history of the future" we all know as students of Trek.

Date: 2009-05-11 03:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Hence, the motherfucking "alternate reality" (MFAR, which I will use from now on). Parallel universe. I'm just sayin'.
Edited Date: 2009-05-11 03:30 am (UTC)

Date: 2009-05-11 06:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
I agree with you on this, but much like with my fault of DC writers & editors; why the need for an alternate reality at all? Weren't we happy with the existing reality? The whole notion of the cadet years of Spock, Kirk and the rest of the esteemed crew is unmined (no pun intended with Nero) potential. There are hundreds of stories that could be told and that all could fit within existing canon without having to drag every new fan into the depths of research into the old stories. And it wouldn't even have to be a limiting factor to make them fit canon as was easily felt in several middle-of-the-whole-run Enterprise episodes but they could drop a nugget of old reference (like Delta Vega or even Archer's beagle) without it even being central to the new stories' plots. Kevin Smith, even with his up and down performance as of late, at least tosses old references for the long-time fans into his work as more easter egg than anything. I think J.J. took the easy way out and went all Deux Ex Machina to get a "cool" story when he could have spent a week or so talking to people like the Okudas or even Bjo Trimble and use their knowledge to pepper the story with references without rewriting such large and important parts without any story-serving need to rewrite them. I'm reminded of Gene's reluctance to use time travel and even when he did he used it to set things back to the way they're "supposed to be". I'm betting Abrams would let Bones or Kirk save Edith Keeler just because it would be "cooler".

Date: 2009-05-11 06:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Better yet - move forward, not back. I wouldn't mind seeing Peter David's New Frontier books as the basis for a new series.

Date: 2009-05-11 06:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jost.livejournal.com
I would also really enjoy a New Frontier series / series of movies. It's Trek enough to gather the Trek fans, non-Enterprise enough to bring in new fans and they could cast a whole group of new people. Hell, throw purple contacts into Josh Holloway's eyes and tell him to play is as Sawyer in space and you've got Captain Calhoun right there.

Date: 2009-05-12 04:23 am (UTC)
ext_18496: Me at work circa 2007 (Default)
From: [identity profile] thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com
>>I agree with you on this, but much like with my fault of DC writers & editors; why the need for an alternate reality at all? Weren't we happy with the existing reality?<<

WE were happy with it ("we" being the old-time fans), but Viacom/Paramount wasn't. The franchise is now four decades old, ratings for Enterprise were so crappy it became the second Trek TV show to get cancelled for that reason, and the movies had been taking in less and less at the box office each time. They needed a new, hip, "cool" movie to get new butts in the seats; we old fart Trekkers are dying off, y'know. That's why Abrams was picked in the first place, and why he and the studio made the creative choices they did.

As for old Trek being like DC pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths, I think Marvel has the better analogy. This is Ultimate Star Trek, restarting the characters and storylines "now," to free writers and readers from having to know four decades' worth of canon.

Date: 2009-05-11 03:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khaosworks.livejournal.com
Re: the red matter mining. IIRC, from the comic book, Nero didn't have the technology to refine decalithium into red matter, so while he could have mined the former, he couldn't convert it into the latter. So, he had to wait for Spock to show up.

Although the bigger question is, why waste time drilling into a planet's core when he could just dump the red matter into the Sun and let it swallow up the system is anyone's guess. There are also geological issues about drilling into a planet's core to begin with, but I'll leave that to sites like Bad Astronomy to quibble about.

If I really wanted to nitpick with canon, I could go on about other geeky stuff like the tech being weirdly wrong. The USS Kelvin's impulse engine looking exactly like a backward-pointing main deflector. Phasers instead of the lasers Pike & Co. were using in "The Cage" (but then the chronology's all screwed anyway). And wouldn't ejecting the warp cores (plural!) simply mean that their warp bubble would collapse and the ship come to a dead stop?

"Admiral Archer's prize beagle" as an Easter Egg is also chronologically wrong. Contradicting the comic book (by the same writers!), why the Jellyfish states the year it was built as Stardate 2387 instead of Stardate 64xxx.xx which was the date given in the comic book - why not just give the year if they're frightened people will be confused? Plot wise, there's Scotty acting like he's some kind of exile when he's actually in the same system as a major Federation member. Why does his alien sidekick look like a mutated midget Jem'hadar?

I think ultimately, this still works overall because it's snappier and more exciting than Nemesis was, and because of its snappy pace and novelty of the new crew and look people can tend to overlook the plot holes, which, to be fair, are everywhere. At the end, Nemesis was simply not entertaining, while Star Trek is. That's why I liked the movie. And if it gets a new generation excited about Trek again, I'll just be like the JSA fans being appreciative of the JLA.

That's why I'm a bit more forgiving - and thinking of this as a re-imagining instead of trying to fit it with canon is the only way I can do that without brain damage, so I'll let it go on that basis.

Date: 2009-05-17 01:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osj.livejournal.com
Late to this particular party 'cuz I only just saw the film yesterday, but:

Yeah, totally agree that Spock jettisoning Kirk made no sense whatsoever.

For that matter, when Kirk came back on board, why did nobody intervene when he started screaming and yelling at Spock? The security guards, for example.

And WTF is that Uhura-Spock thing? Why does every Hollywood blockbuster have to include a love interest for someone?

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