Friday, May 8, 2009

Star Trek: Everything You Know Is Wrong

So I saw Star Trek last night.

It was awesome.

Really.

I loved it. I'm totally planning on seeing it again.

Casting was spot on. Minor quibble that Simon Pegg's Scotty doesn't sound like James Doohan's, but I'm a nitpicking bastard so it's excusable. Besides, Simon is awesome.

Dialogue was great. Plenty of the one liners and refrences to the show for the long time fans, but still accessible to those who'd never seen Star Trek.

The Enterprise was awesome. You finally get an idea of how massive the ship could be. Of course, it looks nothing like it does on the series, but I'm a nitpicking bastard, remember? Besides, I suppose the differences can be explained by the story in the movie.

*cue spoilers warning*


















So you remember The Original Series? Next Generation? DS9? Voyager? All the movies?

None of that happened.

From the point that Nero shows up, the Star Trek we know and have loved since 1966 has ceased to exist for us. With the exception of "Enterprise", for all intents and purposes, none of those shows or movies will happen.

I know, I know. We're in an alternate universe. I know that, technically, they all happened in the timeline we used to watch. Now we're just watching this timeline. And I totally get why they're doing this. Now they can do whatever they want, and it won't affect what we know from the original time line, right?

So let's look at this. They destroyed Vulcan, and - unlike pretty much every other time they've screwed with time on Star Trek - they didn't undestroy it. So now it's gone. What does that mean?

What are the chances that Tpau and her daughter survived? Also, Spock has a thing with Uhura now. Come his Pon Farr, instead of going to New Vulcan, instead of the epic funky polearm battle with Kirk, he just has to get it on with Uhura. Problem solved.

Kirk grew up without a father in this timeline. Let's assume he still has his son, David, in this new timeline. Would Kirk be more or less likely to try and play a greater roll in his son's life. Would David still grow up to be a scientist, or would he enter Star Fleet to be like his dad? If David becomes a Star Fleet officer, would Genesis ever happen? More to the point, what if Khan is never found?

If there's a Khan and no Genesis, Spock doesn't get reborn. If there's a Genesis and no Khan, Spock doesn't die. Either way, there's no Search for Spock. So now the crew may not be together - or worse yet, on Earth - when the whale probe appears and starts jacking everybody up with it's "Whale Song o' Doom". They can't go back in time to get more whales, and there goes Earth. So now TNG, DS9, etc won't happen even in some bizarre, unrelated way.

Maybe.

Like I said, I loved the movie. I want to see it again. I just don't think they thought it through, is all.

On the bright side, maybe in this timeline Kirk won't die on some backwater planet saving half a million lives on a podunk preindustrial planet that aren't even aware that aliens exist. "Oh, my." WTF? That was just a lame, lame death. Yes, I'm still bitter about it.