Star Trek Review

To Boldly Do What Has Been Done To Death

I was a trek fan as a kid. Not a Trekkie as such because I never really had the toys or played Kirk and Spock in the local park. As kids, we all liked Star Trek because it was interesting. As a teen I grew away from it, and the Star Wars franchise stole the thunder of Star Trek for a good deal of my teens. It was only in my Twenties where I began to turn over the ideas in the Star Trek universe in much finer detail.

The movies from the 1980s provided much fodder for thought about who these characters really were, and what was inherently dramatic about Star Trek as a universe. All these notions came to us through movies such as 'Wrath of Khan' and 'Search for Spock'. Indeed, 'Wrath of Khan' marks some kind of highpoint in 1980s cinema to the extent that it even got Seinfeld's ringing endorsement.

Yes folks, there's a lot of interesting detail in the Star Trek universe that is thought provoking which is why it sustains itself through various incarnations. When the Next Generation series came along, I was riven with ambivalence. On the one hand, I wanted to like this new group of characters, but on the other hand I had developed views of my own about how captains of a starship ought to be based largely on Captain Kirk and Captain Piccard sure wasn't Kirk.

Eventually the 'Next Gen' characters moved onto the big screen and gave rise to their own coterie of films culminating in 'Generations' where they killed Captain Kirk, and I think that was about the time I totally switched off the saga.

I'm relating this long-winded background to my appreciation in as much as it's probably representative of most people who are passingly familiar with Star Trek going in to see this film. So this, in a sense, is my caveat about reviewing this new Trek movie - I'm going into with a lot of baggage.

What's Good About It


For the fist time in a Trek movie, the action is pumping. The fisticuffs, the stunts, the photon torpedoes, the exploding planets, the monsters on frozen ice worlds, all have a heart-stopping quality that's never been part of the Trek movies.

The action has enough energy to keep you on the edge of the seat with sweaty palms, holding your breath. There was never a moment in any of the old TV episodes where the Kirk fisticuffs had as much compelling action. The movies are more concerned with aging than action, and so there never was this athletic feel. There's something very appealing about this burst of energy.

The film is also true to the sequence of films. While it is a re-boot, what we're seeing is an entirely new Kirk and crew come together in an altered universe, which was altered indirectly because of Spock from the original series. I've been pondering this idea over since seeing the film and I think it is one of the better things about the film.

Zachary Quinto's Spock is spookily reminiscent of a younger Nimoy's Spock. The slight slouch, the raised eye-brow, the squint, the deadpan delivery. Chris Pine's Kirk is a far cry from Shatner's caffeinated loony maverick. He's more like an adrenalin junkie ready to leap into any action, regardless of the consequence. The rest of the cast round off nicely.

In any case, you can tell the writing, directing and casting of the film was a labor of love, and that is exactly what needed to be done to bring this franchise back.

What's Bad About It

The action is good, the energy is good, but sometimes the film feels like it's more flash than thought. Maybe I'm being a little obtuse here, but the thing that separated Star Trek from Star Wars was the meditative quality of space itself. Space in Star Wars is a backdrop against which spaceships speed and shoot and dogfight. In Star Trek, space itself is the medium upon which human, Vulcan and Federation thought is writ.

This is an important distinction between the two franchises. To boldly go into the unknown is the original mission. Star Trek has always tried to grapple with the nature of this exploration. Star Wars by contrast is a war that is being fought after all the discoveries have been made, and then forgotten and re-discovered. So to take away the very meditative quality from Star Trek and substituting in the Star Wars ethos is something with which I feel uncomfortable.

This film might be the least cerebral, un-thought-provoking Trek movie, ever.

What's Interesting About It

I've been thinking lately with all these re-boots that one of the features of 20th Century Fiction was the creation of so many characters that sustain multiple narratives. That might be James Bond or Indiana Jones or Jason Bourne or Spiderman. If there was one distinguishing feature of fiction in the last century, it might have been the explosion of these characters that now inhabit our consciousness.

If you line up the best characters of the 19th century, you end up with 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. If you did the same with 20th Century fiction, you would have an Army of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Forget whether it is highbrow or low-brow for a moment. The fact that these characters keep coming back tells you something about who we are. And here's another interesting thing - James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock are making a return this year as America reaches out for hope in a way that it hasn't since the 1960s when Kirk and Spock first graced the small screen.

The incarnations of Kirk, Spock and company have gone through TV shows to animated series to the 6 films on the big screen, 7 if you include the tragic and execrable 'Generations', and here we are again, watching with avid interest. So, one has to think there is something inherently interesting about these very characters, otherwise we wouldn't be bothered with them so much.

Trekkie fanboy-isms by some aside, the degree to which these characters inspire revisiting suggests that our culture needs Star Trek more than we care to admit. There's something primal about the appeal of people going deep into space to solve dramatic problems. Don't be surprised if there are lots more of these movies to come.