Peter Travers highlights J.J. Abrams' excellent new Star Trek Into Darkness, which he says is as enjoyable for series superfans as it is for someone who's completely new to the series.
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Alternate Timeline? That Cheap Parlor Trick?
Pat Travers of Rolling Stone says "Into Darkness" is "as enjoyable for series superfans as it is for someone who's completely new to the series." Really Pat? How many of these "superfans" did you poll as they slunk away from the theater with their hoodies pulled down over their Spock ears so nobody would recognize them? Because you sure didn't talk to me or any of my cadre of life-long Trekkies who actually thought TOS had a lot worth preserving for a new generation.
For the sake of clarity let's just call me and my crew, "Bitter Old Trekkies," in reference to those who find J.J. Abrams New-Trek as hard to swallow as New-Coke. It's not that I didn't enjoy watching these kids play at "Star Trek," bless their little pea-pickin' hearts. There were some great scenes, beautiful shots of the Enterprise-- in 3D, no less, and lots of whiz-bang action. But just as my friend David and I found out the hard way by wearing our uniform shirts to junior high, a yellow shirt does not Jim Kirk make, and a rock to the head hurts whether it is hurled by a Gorn or a buck-toothed seventh grader with a Moe haircut.
Speaking of yellow shirts, let me slip into something more comfortable...
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| Captain, you appear to have become substantially younger than in the previous image. Fascinating. |
Now, that's more like it!
I recall the shock of the 2009 reboot-in-the-ass where 40 years of canon were swept away by a mere wave of the hand. By taking the lazy way and employing the cheap parlor trick of simply declaring this strange new world to exist in an alternate timeline, the writers and producers were free to do whatever they wanted, regardless of what had been established in five live action and one animated series as well as ten feature films.
I knew going in that J.J. "Fix It If It ain't Broken" Abrams was no Trekkie, a fact he copped to in an interview with John Stewart.
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| A J.J. Abrams/ Irwin Allen Production |
You have got to be out of your Vulcan mind! The Enterprise as a submarine? Unless the marketing department is about to ambush us with U.S.S. Enterprise bathtub toys just in time for Christmas, I can only assume that this is a deliberate poke in the eye to us B.O.T.s.
"Oh, don't take your silly old show so seriously," Says J.J. in my fantasy, just before I phaser him on full stun setting. I cringe at what they'll do to the poor Enterprise in the next one. Have monster-truck tires pop out of the bottom so they can chase jawas across the dunes of Tatooine?
Just in time for Christmas its MONSTER, MONSTER, MONSTER ENTERPRISE!!! Radio-controlled, interplanetary monster truck madness-- Launch your photon torpedoes as you do out-of-this world spins and wheelies! Then slam it into warp speed and lay some Vulcanized rubber! It's MONSTER, MONSTER, MONSTER ENTERPRISE! (Dilithium batteries not included.)
Heck, even the "Thunderbirds" knew that you need specialized vehicles for specialized operations. But there's always some know-it-all who has to screw it up for everybody else with their hubris. For the heroes of International Rescue that know-it-all was their brilliant but self-important engineer Brains. He shares a lot in common with Mr. Abrams. They even look alike.
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Can You Tell Which Is The Fake Plastic Puppet And Which Is From The "Thunderbirds?"
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I wasn't expecting "Into Darkness" to be a shot-for-shot remake of "Wrath of KAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHNNNN!!!!!" But I did hope for something a little more faithful to the original and I do expect a filmmaker to respect the source material. And if you plan to alter that material almost beyond recognition why not do something original instead? I would love to write about what an amazing new adventure we shared on the big screen instead of looking at that smug smirk on the guy's face and feeling as if my nose just got tweaked for a sawbuck.
Lets start with the aesthetics-- What did you do to my beloved Enterprise?
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| My Reaction To Seeing The Enterprise Redesign |
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First off, the lines are all wrong. The proportions are off. Look at that wasp-waisted secondary hull topped by warp engines that are entirely too long, and capped by
Stripperella sized nacelles. If there is such a thing as misogyny in starship design, this is it. (
Perhaps they should've turned to artist Matt Wiley for inspiration. Inside and out, that guy knows how to tweak a starship's contours into a retro-chic statement!)
But it is worse than bad aesthetic design. This is the nightmare of every Enterprise-lovin-mother's-son. Let's take it point-by-point.
Everything is in the wrong place:
The Bridge
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| Great Illustration by Franz Joseph From the, "Starfleet Technical Reference Manual |
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If 50 years of canon have taught us anything it is where the bridge is located and how much space it takes up. We Trekkies take our make-believe world seriously and have the blueprints to prove it.
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| The Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701 |
Everybody knows that the bridge sits in that first ring directly beneath the dome. The teardrop shaped section contains other decks and equipment.
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Canon Bridge Layout
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| Primary Hull Cutaway Showing Position of Bridge Relative To Other Decks |
Everybody but J.J. Abrams & Co. evidently. See that big bay window
waaaay down the superstructure, almost to the top of the primary hull? Yup.
That's the bridge.
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| A Bridge Too Far |
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| You missed a spot. |
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| See? That's just not right. |
Some of the more eagle-eyed among us have tried to suss out the bridge layout and dimensions.
The scale anomalies have freaked out the hard-core Trek hardware nerds out there. They have tried to figure out where everything is on the new Enterprise and how it matches up with previous incarnations of the ship.
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| That would be fine if that was truly the scale. |
But the scale of the ship changes not just from movie-to-movie, but from scene-to-scene as well! She varies in size from around 300 meters to over 900 meters. Wow.
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| Is she a big-boned gal or a petite flower? |
Engineering
The best scene in the movie was when Scotty was running and running and running in Engineering. It seemed like that deck went on forever (Yes, I know that was the point of the scene.) I guess Scotty scored some TARDIS technology because the sure managed to cram a whole lot of plumbing into a finite space. Which brings me to my first digression: Is this the Enterprise or the Titanic? (the fate of both ships notwithstanding.) Who knew that in the 23rd century starships would run on steam? They sure have enough pipes for it.
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| From the 2009 "Water Slide" Version of Engineering |
And what are these big corrugated metal vats? Is Scotty bootlegging Romulan Ale? Or could they be refining gasoline for their internal combustion warp core.
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| We get seven parsecs to the gallon at warp 5. |
I kid you not. The warp core looked pretty much like a "Land of The Giants" automotive engine. I can imagine J.J. Abrams getting his first look under the hood of a car. He probably marveled at the belts and wires and hoses, oh my! I can see him saying to himself, "Someday I'm going to have an opportunity to ruin Star Trek and I know just how I'm going to do it!"
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| Yeah, it pretty much looked like that. |
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| See what I mean? |
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| I think it needs a new distributor cap. |
Kirk kicks this big spark-plug thingy into place to save the ship. Percussive Maintenance is there nothing you can't fix? And so ends Captain Kirk, at least for the moment. Too bad J.J. didn't have this back in his "Lost" days. This would've been much more satisfying if Jack had found this down the well instead of that big ol' stone plug?
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| Now all the rainbows won't leak out of the world! |
And what about Kahn and the giant ugly-ass ship he designed?
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| Looks like it was built in Minecraft. Look at those awkward angles! |
Again J. J. Abrams shows his inability to keep things in proper
proportion, the clunky, chunky, Dreadnaught so far out of scale with the
Enterprise to be laughable.
I think J.J. must have been one of those kids who insisted on playing with G.I. Joes, and little green army men at the same time, ignoring all differences in size as he straddled a 5" jeep with a 12" action figure. To me, this is just another example of how little regard he has for the material. His ghastly proportions remind me of an old Star Trek comic that shows a cutaway of the Enterprise that is remarkable for its inaccuracy and complete ignorance of the TV show.
Abrams' design disaster is every bit as egregious as those old comics were.
Which brings us to the biggest logical failure of the whole movie: Why would you expect a man, even a genius, who slumbered through the last hundred years of technological innovation, to be able to design the ultimate weapon of advanced technology? That would be like thawing out the Red Baron and asking him to design the perfect fighter plane. I can see him now, rubbing his hands together and exclaiming, " Okay boys, I'm going to need some good, sturdy spruce and a bunch of canvas-- lots and lots of canvas!"
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| "Spock, I'm scared..." Say what? |
J.J.'s
Coup de grâce had to be the oh so clever trick of role reversal that had Kirk save the ship whilst Spock opened a can of Vulcan whoop-ass on Kahn, culminating in the touching scene between Kirk and Spock wherein concern for the fate of the ship is expressed and each avows their affection for the other. Kirk tells Spock something to the effect of, "I just did what you would've done," then promptly shuffles off his mortal coil.
Only, it didn't happen that way.
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| "I have been - and always shall be - your friend." |
I was there in the darkened theater in 1982 as I watched my favorite Vulcan die in an explosion on the
Enterprise bridge during an ill-fated attempt to rescue the
Kobayashi Maru. I'd heard rumors, spoilers and gossip that Spock would die in this movie, a concept I could hardly wrap my head around-- yet, here it was, in this moment, at the first of the movie no less!
I heaved a sigh of gratitude and relief when the bridge cracked open like an Easter egg to reveal that it was all a simulation, Spock lived! What a fine trick to play on us all. Thanks Nicholas Meyer, for giving me a heart attack.
Then it happened... The battle with the U.S.S. Reliant, the Genesis Device activated, the damaged Enterprise unable to make her escape unless somebody hoofed it on down to a radiation filled compartment in Engineering with a left-handed sheepfoot flange-spanner and tightened the Heisenberg wing-nut on the ol' flux capacitor. Not an easy task for sure, but try doing it while being blasted in the face with a fire extinguisher.
And then came one of the most touching scenes of self-sacrifice ever captured on celluloid...
My eyes brimmed over with tears. I tried to muffle my sobs so that no one else in the theater would suspect that I was... You know, a Trekkie. And it got worse: Spock's funeral scene, Scotty playing amazing grace on the pipes, Spock's torpedo case shot out into space. We'd never see him again. It was true. Spock was dead!
Only... Not so much. It took two more movies before we set Spock right again. But in this latest film it just took a couple of hits of conveniently available Tribble juice laced with Kahn's "super-blood" to have Kirk up and violating alien lasses and the Prime Directive as if he had never been very dead at all.
I can only hope that this is a line of continuity that will be carried forward to the next film. For truly
, I would gladly slap down a few bars of gold-pressed latinum just to see this--
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| Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley, Tony Dow, and Chris Pine as the Beiber... |
