I went to see the new Star Trek movie on Wednesday, and rather enjoyed it. I tried not to find out too much about it beforehand, so I was mainly worried about whether the technology would look more advanced than in TNG despite the film being set before it, and about whether Spock would look too much like Sylar.
On the first count, the look was about right, although TNG is indeed looking a bit dated. And the actor who played spock must be very good because although in Heroes Sylar is terrifying, I did not have any problem seeing Spock as Spock.
There were only a few problems, and while I enjoyed the movie, listing its problems is part of the fun. Scotty didn’t work well for me because he just seemed like Simon Pegg with a funny accent. The plot gets sillier the more you think about it, so it’s best not to. The astronomy is all wrong, or at least distances and travel times aren’t conveyed properly. Space should be made to seem ****HUUUGE****, and yet the Enterprise and even shuttles zip around from planet to planet no problem. Black holes and supernovae don’t seem quite right, either.
I came away feeling like the way in which the franchise was “rebooted” was a bit of a cheap cheat, but having read Eric Raymond’s review I can see why it was done and that it was necessary. So hopefully we will get a whole new series of movies. A TV series would be best but I don’t expect one.
By the way, some more discussion of Star Trek economics and politics over at Counting Cats and in the Samizdata comments, including one by pa annoyed which says a lot of what I was trying (badly) to say last time I wrote about it. I think I have a good post about economics of high technology in me and it might appear here soon…
Well for the look of the technology they really only needed to look at the first lot of movies based around the TOS crew. IMO those sets managed to look like they were roughly of the same design origin of the TOS tech while still looking more like how I’d imagine an actual spaceship to look – i.e. still lots of physical buttons around rather than the touchscreen type interfaces they seem to have in TNG.
I think the film looks enough like the first TOS films while still being updated enough to fit with what you might expect. The TNG/DS9/Voyager tech does kinda look more advanced still (albeit dated in some regards now) but I seriously doubt they’d have flown shuttles with those touch-screen interfaces (look at Voyager – when they build the Delta flyer Tom Paris insists on joystick control if I remember correctly)
I think the way they’ve rebooted the whole thing was necessary – if you’re going to go the prequel route for this and subsequent films you’ve got to have some sense of not knowing if people are going to make if through to the end. If this was supposed to just fit in the existing continuity a) you don’t have that suspense because you already know character X will live and b) you’re going to get constant griping from the hardcore Trekkies that A, B and/or C doesn’t tie in with what was already in the show.
Hopefully they’ll use the way events have changed to be able to write the characters a bit differently than how they were in TOS and the TOS movies since their formative experiences will have been different to varying degrees.
I think this also gives them an opportunity to revisit some classic stories and characters from both the TOS and TNG/DS9/Voyager series from a different angle. Having said that, they could take it too far (i.e. would you want to see them running into the Borg?)
It would be good for there to be a new Trek series, although to be honest I think they’ve already tapped most of the stories a few times across the different series (and sometimes more than once in the same series).
One of my few real criticism of the film (and perhaps I’m being too geeky here) is the Kobayashi Maru test. Bearing in mind in Wrath of Khan they find out that the way Kirk re-programmed the test led to them having a new ending on the test, I don’t see how just reprogramming it so that the Klingons suddenly don’t have any shields sort of works – i.e. if they’d had to do something in the simulation to make that happen then yes, but just “oh, all their shields are mysteriously down” just seemed a bit dumb.
Re the performances in this film, Simon Pegg was definitely just used as the comic relief, and god knows what that accent was supposed to be. I know he’s going to be seen as a comic actor given his background but they could have given Scotty something a bit more substantial to do. I thought Karl Urban pretty much nailed the McCoy role and elements of the Kirk/McCoy/Spock relationship were definitely there. Zachary Quinto was ok as Spock – when I heard Leonard Nimoy was going to be playing the older Spock I was all for it but after watching the film I think it would have worked better if they’d just given Quinto old age make-up – I found the difference in the voices a bit odd.
Thanks for that, Cerebros. Not much to disagree with!