an icepick through the keyhole

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.

( This bit you can skip if you don't care. )

Pictures after the cut. Work safe.

( KHAAAAN! )

In case you haven't heard, Bryce Zabel and J. Michael Straczynski have released their never-picked-up treatment for the revitalisation of Star Trek. Zabel's remarks on it can be found in his blog here, and the PDF file of the treatment can be downloaded here.

Essentially, they were going to reboot the Star Trek universe: i.e. start it from scratch, like the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica or, as they put it in the treatment, the Ultimate Marvel universe of the comic books. It wasn't going to be as radical as the BSG reboot; they were going to tell stories of the original five-year mission, but adding story arcs, some changed characters, some readapted episodes, but basically trying to keep to the spirit of the original.

After reading the treatment, I'm not sure it would really have worked. Sure, they cite examples like Lois and Clark and Smallville, but those are reworkings of a comic book medium into a television one. Nobody expects a television treatment of Superman to be one hundred percent faithful to the source material: the budget just isn't big enough, and the dramatic conventions are totally different. You can do stuff in a comic book you can't do in a television show and vice versa, and fans don't expect the stuff to translate properly. Also, unlike BSG, this re-imagining would not have been as radical a shift in tone — it would have been trying to recreate the original. With BSG as markedly different from its source material as it was, they weren't trying to pander to the old fans, but this Star Trek reboot is, and so the dividing line between the original and the reboot is much, much, finer, and people would have expected more fidelity. And Trek fans are much more numerous than BSG fans, and their voices much, much louder by sheer numbers, if not volume.

Original Trek, especially the original series, is so firmly ingrained in the psyche of science fiction fans that it is impossible to dispel the figurative ghosts of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and the literal ghost of DeForest Kelley from the collective imagination, and people would be comparing them constantly to the new guys playing the same roles. It just would not be fair. Similarly, I'm skeptical about the new J.J. Abrams Trek movie, which aims to tell the story of the original meeting of the Big Three. Good luck.

But maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man, afraid of change. You read it, and you decide.

Let's State The Really Obvious For A Change By Mr. Terence Chua, who really should be reading about the Hatfield-McCoy feud right now

I'm sure it's nothing you've never heard before, and I'm probably going to look like a total goof for not thinking about this in detail earlier.

( Some vaguely connected ramblings follow. )

Too tired this week, so Trip's foray into "Enemy Mine" territory will get off lightly from me - I won't do my usual snark fest. All in all, John Shiban (who sucked terribly in "The X-Files", really), doesn't do all that badly in Enterprise. It's the usual predictable stuff, but relatively enjoyable due to a virtuoso performance by Connor Trineer, who doesn't get to play Trip as the redneck moron for once. They really need to get Bermaga away from the writing chores.

I think Star Trek is suffering the same fate for me as is comic books. The current crop doesn't interest me anymore, and I look back on the old days for better times and better stories. In my comic stash today came the archive edition of Wally Wood's "T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents", collecting the 1st four issues of that classic run, recolored and all. DC put a superb reproduction together, and even made the pages a little off white so it felt like an archive. The stories are cheesy, but the art is slick, gets the job done, and it feels and reads FUN. Trek , like the current comics, just ain't much fun anymore, and I wish they felt like were like when I was a kid again. I think to myself it can't really be my fault because when I pick up the old stuff I still get that same rush, but I don't know.

I've read comics for thirty years. Been a Trek fan for over twenty. Maybe that's too long. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I am old.

Just saw Star Trek: Nemesis.

Didn't suck as much as Insurrection, but not as good as First Contact. Wrath of Khan it ain't, and it's not a very good send-off if it's meant as such.

( More after the cut. Some spoilers. )

No thoughts as I watched - this time I wanted to concentrate on Hoshi. Mmm. Hoshi. However, a few remarks...

( Spoilers for Enterprise, Season Two, Episode 10: 'Vanishing Point' )