Space, the final frontier

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These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise….

In 1966 the voyages of the Enterprise started. I was only a lad then, but I was glued to the set for 1 hour each week. Then this wonderful show went into syndication. For a time is was on every afternoon. It was on weekends. There were Star Trek marathons on the weekends. Then a cartoon, some movies, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Finally, this past weekend, another movie was released.

While I like Star Trek, I would not consider myself a die hard fan. After the initial run of Star Trek, I was no longer glued to the set. If it was on, and I happened to find it, I would watch. I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. Marriage, family and friends became more important than Trek. So you didn’t find me waiting for the midnight showing of this movie. I did want to see it on the big screen, with full sound and comfortable chairs. So I had some time available last Saturday, and I was near the multi-plex.

For those who don’t know, this movie goes back to the beginning of Star Trek. It starts with James T. Kirks birth and quickly goes to his first time on the Enterprise. I found the characters plausible for the Star Trek Universe and the story line seemed to be well thought out. Overall a good movie. Lots of action, reasonable storyline and good characters. Even for the non Trek fan, this is a good Sci-Fi action movie.

More than that I can’t say, without giving the whole story away. So if you don’t want any spoilers stop reading now……

S P O I L E R S

This started out as a standard Trek time travel movie/story. Someone goes back in time and changes the future of our intrepid Enterprise heroes. Kirk’s father dies in the very beginning of the show, making his upbringing quite a bit different than the normal Trek time line. In the TV shows and the movies, the crew of the Enterprise usually would go back in time to fix something (bring back whales, prevent a star from exploding, get the pilot back to his plane ect.). This time the people that did the time traveling either end up dead or staying in the future. Hmmm, does that screw up the time continuum? You bet…

This whole movie was one big screw up of the Trek time line. As of this movie, almost anything you thought you knew about Star Trek has been thrown out the window. They started fresh folks. Let’s see if I can touch on the basics.

Kirk was still an conceited, womanizing, know-it-all jerk (some things never change), but wow, Spock was made captain of the Enterprise before Kirk was. Kirk was marooned on a planet by Spock! He wasn’t even supposed to be on the Enterprise, he was under suspension for cheating on a test. Hmmm, he didn’t start out nearly as well in this ‘reality’.

Spock, still logical, still had problems as a child on Vulcan, but his choice is a bit different. It seems he chose to be a bit more human. In this show he had a human girlfriend!!! I think that is a good thing, since Vulcan was destroyed, he can never go back during Pon Far. He may need that girl friend.. Except now there are two Spocks in the universe. Old Spock who remembers all the stuff that isn’t anymore, and the new Spock who doesn’t.

Uhura, still bright, competent and beautiful, and she is Spock’s love interest!!!! Hmmm and in the 60’s the first inter-racial kiss between Uhura and Kirk was a major deal on TV.

I’m not sure that Dr. McCoy changed at all. This character seemed immune to the changes in the time line.

Scotty, well he was an engineer on some out of the way Ice World. I don’t recall enough of his history to know if this was happened or he was down on his luck too.

Chekov and Sulu, well Chekov wasn’t in the first season of Star Trek in 1966 (joined the crew in 1967) and Sulu was the pilot of the ship, so something changed here…

One final question… How the heck did everyone know about the Romulans? I seem to remember the first time they appeared, and everyone on the Enterprise was surprised they looked like Vulcans. Hmm something really changed in the time line. It seems the Federation knew about Romulans and the similarity to Vulcans before Kirk was born and before the random act of time travel that changed everything. Why didn’t the crew of the Enterprise know it? Hmmm?

9 thoughts on “Space, the final frontier”

  1. Great movie! And I agree that even non-Trek sci-fi fans will like it! At least it wasn’t the mess that the Star WARS prequels were. A few Trek novels place Scotty in engineering (in a junior capacity) during Captain Pike’s time if I remember correctly they paint him as a typical Scotsman who likes to sneak a wee nip o’ the drink while on duty. Many of my favorite eps. were time travel/alternate reality tales.

  2. I know nothing about anything Star Trek, and I’m not usually a sci-fi fan. I don’t know if I’ll catch this one, but I stayed away from most of the review just in case!

  3. Nope, not gonna read this post. I plan on seeing Star Trek soon though, so I may come back to it. Deciding right now on whether or not I want to pay $14/ticket to see the IMAX version.

  4. It’s actually more than a $4 difference since I wouldn’t go to that theater except for the IMAX movie. The local theater is cheaper, but of course it would be a standard arena-theater-sized screen.

  5. I remember days of watching Picard save the day with diplomacy, wit, and good manners. A show of force when necessary, but much less punching than Kirk. I never thought he was all that great. Spock, on the other hand, was a god; remember when you would “play” Barbies with me? The Ken doll would be Spock, and we would have a Lego spaceship. Spock would have breakfast with his wife and kids, then go off to work. you would take the doll and ship, and go do whatever needed to be done. Then, when it was time for Spock to come home for dinner, I would come get you, and you would come back for another 15-30 minutes of playing. I thought this was awesome, and you got things done around the house while still spending quality time and encouraging your oldest’s imagination. You know, you’re really an awesome Daddy…

  6. That IS awesome, j. If I were ever to “play” Barbies, I would definitely use something relatable to make it more fun for me and hopefully for the little ones. Funny, I don’t think the nieces ever got into Barbies (or the youngest have yet to).

    As for the big debate, there were missions when you needed the “cowboy diplomacy” of Kirk while the more traditional diplomatic approach of Picard could only be used on others. But as Jean-Luc could show force when needed, Kirk occasionally took the non-violent approach… even if he needed gentle encouragement from his First Officer.

  7. Kiddo, I really don’t remember doing that. If I did, I can’t really take credit for it. I liked that idea when your mother told me how her big brother used to play house with her.

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