Star Trek has been reinvented countless times with new adventures starring the same actors, and new adventures starring new actors playing new characters. The watering down of the Star Trek universe with too many spin off series finally reached its limit with the television series Enterprise. It barely lasted 3 seasons while its cousins Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager each lasted 7 seasons.
New Star Trek
The fans had enough. They found it harder and harder to fall in love with newly invented shallow characters in the Star Trek universe. The new Star Trek movie is like finding a younger woman to reenact the first time you fell in love. It's not exactly the same, but most are willing to give it a try.
Star Trek Movie
Star Trek starts off with visual splendor. The special effects are unprecedented. Star Trek fans gasped in amazement at the first screenings. The glimpses of the childhoods of James Kirk and Spock are wonderful. It showed a part of the characters fans never saw before. This is the kind of stuff Star Trek fans hungered for.
Star Trek Timeline
The movie moves at an impressive clip until about midway. Hard core Star Trek fans start noticing flaws in the time line and character histories. They remember that Jim Kirk had a brother who is not mentioned in this film. They wonder why there is a bar full of Star Fleet cadets and Captain Pike in a bar in Iowa. They wonder why Spock's mother dies when she is alive much longer in the original series. They wonder why the entire planet of Vulcan was destroyed. They wonder why Jim Kirk is a mere cadet with Dr McCoy and Uhura as classmates while the much younger Sulu and Chekov are already commissioned officers.
Captain Kirk
Then the big head scratcher occurs. Kirk seizes command of the Enterprise. Not only is he a mere cadet, he is on suspension and isn't supposed to be on a starship at all. How could the hundreds of superior officers aboard the Enterprise allow this to happen?
Mr Spock
Some will explain all this with the time travel element in the plot. Though that itself is strange. Just because old Spock got sucked into a black hole he also time traveled? More explaination needed. Also, if they are going to explain away the discrepancies with time travel changing the time line, then all of the things fans know and love about the Star Trek characters is also gone.
Star Trek Movie Review
Still, even a flawed Star Trek movie is pretty damn cool. All of the roles are well cast. The actors do a fine job being true to the characters, though the romance between Spock and Uhura is a bit much. As in the original series, there is not enough face time for all of them and not enough interaction. Hopefully in future Star Trek movies, and there will be more, the characters will be able to mix it up. After all... Star Trek was never really about space. It was always about great characters.
 |
