This is the second in my series of posts on the flaws I found in watching the new 2009 flavor of Star Trek. The first post, where I dissected the ill-advised decision to use a time-travel device and create an “alternate universe” for the franchise reboot, can be found here. I will add links to forthcoming articles here as well, as the series progresses.
By the way, a study on “Star Trek Fandom: Why It Sucks” is probably long overdue judging by the reaction not only to my post but to the general discussion and disagreement that has taken place over this film. I’ve lived through this fight three times before when Trek fandom seemed irreparably smashed to pieces (the debate over TNG vs. DS9, DS9 vs. Voyager, and “Enterprise” vs. everything), but have seen nothing like the metaphorical bloodshed this movie is engendering. This movie has now caused the Trek equivalent of the Protestant Reformation, and the fandom is now in for some long and bloody Holy Wars. Sadly, all of this would not have been needed if the producers and writers hadn’t made some key mistakes.
Again, another disclaimer: I didn’t hate the movie. It was not as bad as I had expected it to be. It’s just that the few things that were bad about the movie were unbelievably bad. And must be addressed.
WARNING/GUARANTEE: The really bad thing about this movie that I’m going to discuss now deals with at least one major plot point. If you haven’t seen the movie and want to see it, I’m going to reveal a major, tremendously stupid decision by the production staff, and you might not want to read it before you see the movie.
With that out of the way:
The Mallory Dog Testicle Copout…why it sucks.
When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he answered “because it is there.”
When asked why dogs lick their testicles, the anonymous philosopher answered “because they can.”
Mallory sucked; the mountain killed him and his body lay in the snow for 75 years before someone stumbled over it.
Dogs suck; their tendency to lick their testicles in public means that they never get invited to the really good dinner parties.
Lesson number one: “because you can” does not mean “you should” nor “you must.” “Because I can” is never a good reason for doing something. But, obviously, no one ever bothered to tell the production team of the new Star Trek about that, and that’s why they made some boneheaded decisions with this movie.
I discussed the stupidity of the need for an “alternate universe” for this film, and the need to use a ridiculous plot device to create this alternate universe and still shoehorn it into the alleged “continuity” they were so eager to get away from in my last article, so I’ll keep my screaming about that to a minimum. Yet, once they created their alternate universe, they seemed to feel that they had to put as much distance between the original series and their new incarnation as they possibly could; they went out of their way to do things differently, to draw a line under their version and shout “oooh, look at us, we’re alternate!”
One of these, just a little disturbing, is the romantic relationship between Uhura and Spock. Spock has always felt compelled to control his emotions, including his romantic feelings. Besides, at the time he’s fooling around with Uhura (it started before we saw them both aboard the Enterprise, for the clueless) he’s still engaged to T’Pring. That bonding took place before the divergence point between the universes, so at the time he started fooling around Spock was still telepathically bonded to his mate and would have been unlikely to stray. That’s a minor nitpick. (Of course, since the same trauma to the timeline managed to turn Kirk’s brother into Chuck Cunningham and allow Porthos Archer to live to be 658 in human years, it could have just turned around and bitch-slapped T’Pring back to Nazi Germany for all we know.
The characterization of Kirk as a reckless young man with an apparent death wish is another unneeded change. True, this difference can easily be explained by the early death of his father and being raised instead by Matt Parkman (or by the possibility that he’s really his brother Sam — see the first post if you’re confused), but it wasn’t really needed.
Blowing up Vulcan, however, is another story.
That’s right. Afraid that people wouldn’t appreciate the whole alternateness of the alternate universe they created (why? because they could), the producers decided to blow up Vulcan. Or, actually, suck it up. True, they needed to demonstrate the power of the weapon yielded by the insane bad guy, not to mention provide some cool special effects, but, really, Vulcan? Dramatically, Star Trek has always been about the characters. From the very first series bible Roddenberry insisted that stories impact the regular characters in some way. What purpose for our regular characters does destroying Vulcan do? Nothing, really. Of course, it impacts Spock, meaning he’s homeless but Spock has never really had a home. He’s not fully Vulcan nor fully human, and has never felt comfortable around either.
Some might say it makes him more special since he’s now one of only 10,000 or so beings in the universe instead of one of 6 billion, but the problem with that argument is that Spock is already unique. He’s the first and at the time of planetary suckage only Human/Vulcan hybrid (well, the first successful one anyhow). It doesn’t make Spock more interesting as a character; if anything, it diminishes him because it makes him less likely to interact with other Vulcans and thus less likely to feel like an outcast and less likely to continue to feel the need to suppress his emotions to fit in with them.
It also really fucks up the entire dynamic of the Federation. As envisioned by Roddenberry, Earth and Vulcan have always been id and ego to each other. (In Enterprise this was expanded to be id/ego/superego with the establishment of the Andorians as id, pushing the humans up to ego and the Vulcans to superego). It really fucks up the chi of the Star Trek universe.
And it was completely unnecessary and gratuitous. They didn’t really need to make Spock unstable to allow Kirk to leapfrog him — it was always known in Star Trek that Spock was not ambitious, and was not even Pike’s first officer as was implied in the new movie — so they didn’t have to blow up his home planet to make him attack Kirk and be relieved, which is the only real impact the destruction of Vulcan and death of Spock’s mother (but the less said about that the better, please) had on the plot. A better, less contrived, method of doing that could and should have been worked up.
In drama, everything needs to have a reason. And in good drama, every reason should be the best reason possible. There was no real reason to destroy Vulcan. There were lots of other alternatives. It was sloppy writing, done solely for shock value.
And that sucks.
I understand why they think hiring non-fans (disbelievers?) to direct Star Trek movies is some sort of strategy, but in my retard opinion, it’s usually poor judgment. Okay okay.. Star Trek 2 was pretty awesome, despite having a bonehead for a director. (Thanks to Ricardo)
But what ev. The movies suck anyhow. No surprise about this one following suit. It’s just as hip, sexy and action packed as I expected it to be. ..and that’s essentially why it sucked.
I’ll make my version of the same case with my bid for a new franchise reboot. Mine is a reimagined ‘Rambo’ .. but this time, he’s a gay Eskimo in a wheel chair. I call it ‘Ram Beau’ .. It’s not really for fans of Rambo, but more for fans of gay porn. So long as I get paid, I really don’t care how the fuck it turns out.
Oh yeah.. Star Trek.. umm..
I like the new shirts, but I hated the part when the polar bear attacked.
Actually, I’ve made the argument in the past for a few of the things that the new movie did, including hiring a big gun director. However, where I argued for stripping the show down to its essentials, my complaint is that the people behind this one didn’t do that but heaped on more crap to make it look like they were stripping it down.
Speaking of polar bear attacks what was up with the bigger dog taking out the polar bear, discards him/her, and attempts to eat Kirk? That would be like a dog picking up a tbone only to throw it away in order to eat a crumb I dropped off the table.
I like your Rambo remake. Good luck with that LOL.
Huey Lewis has that song, “Hip To Be Square” .. I feel that it should be the anthem of Star Trek’s latest incarnation. Y’know, like I used to get ragged on for liking Star Trek.. then for a period of time, probably coinciding with channels like SpikeTV and G4 pumping it out all day, I found myself having the opportunity to say stuff to people like, “You don’t like Star Trek? What are you, gay or something?”
.. I should’ve known that was just a step toward me becoming temporarily anti-Trek. I’m not too worried, because I don’t see this new style sticking for longer than a couple or so movies. ..and I guess I’ve learned to reserve myself to what I like about Star Trek and ignore the rest. I have my own canon. Fuck the bullshit.
Keep forgetting to compliment you on the article. Very well done. I enjoyed reading it. George Mallory, lol.
Pab:
Spot on, as usual. “Kick ass, sexy, action-packed roller coaster of a summer blockbuster” is now my own code for all the re-boots of late of my old faves that may be visually interesting, but completely misses the point of the original. It is as though there is some generic adventure movie genre (think “game engine”), then they slap on the title and a few of the proper names like game mods and call it a “reimagining” of the original.
If it’s anything like “Watchmen,” if and when I finally go see this, I reckon I’ll come away saying, “WOW! Didja see that?” but with a the kind of nagging, starving feeling in my brain like what you get when you eat a Snickers bar for lunch when you coulda had a nice meatball sandwich.
Anyway, keep it up!
Oh, and “Queen Victoria” “rebooted” by J.J. Abrams… I love you, man but that is just sick and wrong! I can’t wait.
In some cases, length is therapy. Star Trek Xi Sucked. It sucked so bad I have created an entire BLOG about how it sucked so bad. http://startrekxisucks.blogspot.com/ The thing is none of what I discuss has anything to do with Trekkie Continuity errors. I wouldn’t have had a clue what was right and wrong about its relation to OLD Star Trek, the movie itself, the writing, the story, the cinematography is the biggest pile of shit I have seen in years, and I decided an ENTIRE BLOG would be required to fight the utterly shocking overwhelming GOOD reviews for this turd…did I just wake up in the TWILIGHT ZONE?
Wow, anything that can get me to spend 20 minutes writing a response to a blog must have some type of power…
I saw this new movie this past Saturday, and I am still reeling over the decision to a) humanize Spock, and B) destroy the planet of Vulcan. I get it, the idea of waking up the echoes while digging up a little more dirt under the surface, but destroying the planet of Vulcan is messing with Big-time Trek Mojo, and can the cap really be put back on the bottle?
I agree completely with you, there must have been a better way to re-boot the Star Trek saga without destroying basic tenets of the Canon that makes up the body of Trek. Gene Roddenberry couldn’t have seen this one coming. And to completely shift the scope of Spock and Uhura’s public displays of affection, not to mention unbalancing Kirk’s personality with a Jimmy Dean edge. No thanks, I’ll stick to re-runs I guess, and hope for a better revival in a decade or so after all of the copies of this farce have been destroyed…
Thank goodness I am not the only one who thought this movie was a pile of crap. I should have known, everything JJ Abrams does is loaf. What is all the hype around JJ Abrams anyway? I feel like such a sucker, he got me again. First, he got me with Alias which turned to crap; then, he got me with Lost which also turned to crap and now this…
I won’t even go into details about how stupid this movie was. The honest critics have already said it and the people who can think for themselves know it sucked big time. Can I get that two hours of my life back…???
If I hadn’t seen the movie before reading this article then I would’ve thought you were pulling my chain. I mean, what Trekker in their wildest dreams (or nightmares) would’ve thought anyone in control of the Star Trek franchise would let this crap stain the carpet.
I consider every single Star Trek fan production to be more closely aligned to Star Trek canon that this pile of detritus. How come people who put their own money into producing Trek can do a better job than some knob that got paid millions. C’mon, the man doesn’t even know what Trek is!
It looks like Trek has gone the same way as Sliders (season 2.5 onwards) and all of those other great sci-fi shows that got turned into soap operas in space. Semi-clad actors recklessly wielding their phallic-like ray-guns against each other does not equal sci-fi. Well established plots about something to do with science usually does equal sci-fi.
Star Trek XI: The Unfettered Debacle – A Space Opera on raunchy inter-species gang-banging and man-on-man self love. Look for it in a trash can near you.
Screw these guys… I’m creating my own sci-fi series that will have continuity and canon tighter than a fish’s butt.
“A Space Opera on raunchy inter-species gang-banging and man-on-man self love. Look for it in a trash can near you.” That’s too funny.
This is one of the greatest articles I’ve ever seen on the Internet.
I’ll be honest, my problems ARE with the continuity – but they’re so obviously screwed up, really it has to be a parallel universe for two big reasons:
1. The time travel science in ST has been pretty (not completely) consistent – from “Yesterday’s Enterprise” to your example, time is fairly immutable, changes in the past affect the future, if not the traveler himself.
2. Beaming onto a ship in warp. (but not being able to beam up someone…simply…falling. Still, it’s Winona Ryder, so I can understand the technician’s reluctance to really try.)
I disagree, funny as it is, with the Archer beagle. Archer could have gotten a new beagle. It’s not necessarily the same one.
The fact that you pitched a DS9 script and were invited to write Voyager eppies, though, that’s really awesome. I am envious.
What got to me was the Science, it’s all wrong. Takes the ship 10 minuits to get to Volcan mbut about 5 hours to get back (judging from the time Kirk stayed on the ice planet), the way the Enterprise
was shooting Phasers (a la Starwars) The universal translator not translating russian & so on. I also have to mention the immaturity
of young Kirk at the Kobayashimaru. I don’t believe any military insitution would accept a student eating an apple on a serious exam
as this. Anyway I could go on like this forever.
This movie made money this time, but I believe they will kill the franchise if they do not change there way of things
James, you reminded me of a good point. What the HELL were they thinking with the Kobayashimaru scene. I mean, if I were going to cheat, especially in Starfleet Academy, I would try to sell it better than that. But no, he just sat there and acted like an ass for 2 minutes until, mysteriously, all the screens got fuzzy and the shields dropped and, of course, the instructors didn’t have a clue what was going on. It seemed as if they only threw in the scene to placate the people they were going to stab in the back later.
Hey Zach, what do you think of Spock accepting to let Uhura aboard
the enterprise based only on personal argument (Breaking the rule)
but decides to let a cadet (Kirk) become captain of the ship according to regulation #xxx (by the book) when earth is menaced.
How can he in all ligic do this, he’s either stupid or dosen’t care
what happen to earth.
If anybody remembers in original episode Journey to Babel he would not even help his dieing father because he was in charge of the Enterprise, Kirk then told MCCoy that he sure could not dam Spock for his loyaty.
Anyway as far as I’m concerned the whole movie is a mistake from the beginning to the end.
Yes! Trek 11 sucks. It is fun to watch, but don’t try to understand the plot.
1. Nero spends 25 years as a prisoner at Klingons’ Rora Pente (?). The Klingons are so stupid that they have no clue whatsoever (based on Nero’s vessel and its technology) that Nero is from the future until 25 years later.
2. Black hole stuff? How big is the smaller black hole? Greater than 1 solar mass? How strong is its gravity? Can Nero drop it to the surface of Vulcan and that’s it? Why wasting time drilling a hole to the planet core?
3. Or dropping the red matter somewhere near Vulcan moon will work as well. Oh dear!, Vulcan has no moon! (from TOS).
4. Red matter? You need only small amount of it to create a black hole. Why does Spock carry a tank of red matter? It sounds like Spock plans to suck the whole galaxy. Traveling with a large amount of red matter is comparable to carry WMD with you. That’s very illogical by Spock’s standard.
5. JJ Abram wanted to do fast paced Trek, just like Star Wars, to lure younger audience. Should he make Star Wars instead?
Some guys may already talk about this Trek and its alternate timeline. I do not want to discuss time travel. It has been a pain watching it!
I must say….I have a feeling that this Trek makes “The Final Frontier” look really good. At least Kirk meets God and he does not impress! Kirk is as Kirk by his standard.!
That’s why I said earlier that we should just accept this universe to be the mirror universe of the Terran Empire. It makes all the continuity issues more tolerable:
1) This would explain why the USS Relativity doesn’t show up to fix the timeline. Because it’s the mirror universe they don’t care about what happens there.
2) This would explain why there is no George Samuel Kirk. This Kirk does not have a brother in the Mirror Universe, so he is essentially George, but is named Jim due to the destruction of the USS Kelvin and early death of his father Lt Kirk. It also explains why he is such a trouble maker without conscience, unlike the original Captain Kirk. Why, because this is the mirror universe.
4) This would also explain why Uhura and Spock have a relationship. This Mirror Spock doesn’t care about his bond with T’pring and with the destruction of Vulcan she dies anyway.
3) Why does Pike not get court martialed for doing such a poor job defending the planet Vulcan? Because he is an officer of the Terran Empire, not the Federation. They probably perfer the destruction of Vulcan to a lesser degree or don’t care otherwise. Since the Romulan Empire is independent in the Mirror Universe, the issue of defeating a new Romulan Ship is likely a more pressing issue than saving Vulcan.
4) It would also explain why the USS Kelvin looks so weird. The design of the Kelvin that we see on screen was influenced by the appearance of the Constitution class USS Defiant that appeared in Tholian space in the time of Captain Archer of the Terran Empire.
It will be cake for writers to retcon this version of Star Trek in the future. If the Tholians could open a gateway into an alternate future universe, then the Red stuff that Spock was using could do the same into the past. In fact this timeline could be an attempt by the Terran Slave resistance to keep the Terran Empire from losing power to the Alliance with the assistance of maniputating the time line in the Mirror Universe.
blowing up Vulcan was te best decision they made. Not only did it show the threat but it actually changed something in Star Trek without it being reset to the status quo. It lost its impact as I thought they’d make the mistake of previous star trek writers and fix it at the end.
I wrote a parody to review the film would like to know what people think.
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/191154_star-trek-xi-parody-script
Quit crying!!!!!!! It was a good movie that separated itself from the original story line right from the start. Stop over thinking it….. The original “UNIVERSE” is still in tack. I look forward to more adventures with the old characters and the new twist the new actors and actresses will put on them….. I can’t watch the old re-runs anymore, I’ve seen them over and over and over and over again.
This new time line will allow the cast of characters, I love, to give us some new material to watch. And all of you die hard trek dissectors, something to bitch about.
Can’t wait for the next movie!!!!!!
As long as the script for the new movie makes sense, because this one
was absolutely brainless, that is the major reason I dislike this movie. If you can’t admit that you are either blind or don’t really
care for plot in a flic.
Unfortunately, I believe this movie breaks the whole time travel rule paradox and made it so that essentially the TNG series no longer exists. Therefore there should never be a TNG movie again.
Here is why.
They blew up Vulcan. Go through all of the original series, TNG, DS9 and Voyager (wasn’t a Vulcan a key member of that crew?) each time you see a Vulcan on the show… Nope – they are dead. Shows are not the same…
There were several episodes that Spock or someone visited the home world. Never happened.
That episode where all of the races were looking for the “Magic weapon” that turned out to be a message from the past – Never happened Vulcan was destroyed so they were missing that piece of the puzzle FOREVER!
Vulcan was destroyed by a Rolmulan – you’re telling me that didn’t set off an intergalactic War between Romulus and Earth and what was left of the Vulcans?
How would that have affected the Klingon, Human relationship? Don’t you think that after a Romulan DESTROYED and entire home world, that the Klingon’s would have never let their guard down and the incident at Kitimer sp? (where Worf’s dad died ) would not have happened? – would that have also impacted the Tasha Yar story? Would Enterprise C or the Klingon outpost been so lax coming in when a Romulan was attacking?
Both of the unification episodes – Gone!
AND – since that changed the entire Future – it would have been better if just when Vulcan disappeared, Old Spock should have vanished… Who knows what happened to him after that change in the continuum…
This movie was a mistake in the StarTrek Universe…
But it’s just a movie…
What are you, some kind of communist? Dogs don’t suck!
I’ve now done a article outlining why Star Trek XI was a good movie if anyone wants the other side of the argument.
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/191154_star-trek-xi-parody-script
I am a huge fan of lost by abrams but every movie i have seen him involved with with the exception of the mediocre but ok mission impossible 4 has really been god awful. its a new generation of sleezy filmmakers like nolan and micheal bay who regurgitate beloved franchises for new audiences who have no clue why old franchises worked.
i hated the music, star trek started to flounder like most franches when they dropped the james horner star trek II music (wich is why almost all of the next generation movies sucked compared to the series wich had the music in it except first contact (in my opinion the star trek movies pinacle are II-4 and first contact)
half the cast was weak, i disliked pines angry kirk and they had the relationship of kirk,spock and mccoy completely messed up with kirk saying bones’s lines. mccoy, kirk and spock argued but it was always funny and meant with humor. shatner was great as kirk as he went from super friendly to intense, pine just had one speed of intense.
i did like urban as mccoy, pegg as scotty, anton as checkov and especialy quinto as spock but hated zaldana as uhurah (wtf spock in love out of character), cho as sulu as incredibly bland perrformances.
gone is roddenberrys alegoric storytelling replaced by a micheal bay angry jocks in space designed to target 13-25 year old crowd with no moviegoing history and sadly the age demographic of older movies in the 70s and 80s (the golden age of moviemaking in america in my opinion) targeted 9-45 year olds. this version of star trek will never be more than an attempt to whore the name and make money as the vision of trek in the 60s and 80s has been completely lost and replaced with what started the franchise downhill in the first place with enterprise (actualy starting with voyager dowhill)..action trek wich is why star trek has sucked since voyager although im missing voyager compared to the last outings.
i would have rather a time traveling scenerio involving all the series with perhaps the termporal time travel wars featured in enterprise with guest stars from all the series than this outing.
can we please stop dropping music and learn about continuity people messing up the beloved franchises of my youth, a great series is one that feels like an extra two hours of a well done original.i highly agree with your assesment.
I repeat (sort of, from the first half of this review), this movie sucked beyond all belief. These are just SOME of the problems:
1: What is worse? What is more dangerous? An impossibly expanding Super Nova, or a Black Hole capable of swallowing it? Just stop and think, even for a second.
2: Spock throws Kirk OFF THE SHIP and no one protests. “Oh yeah, lets just strand a guy, its OK!” Is everyone on that ship brain dead???? Where in Star Fleet protocols does that one come under?
3: Everyone they need to pick up later lands on the ‘displaced’ Delta Vega. Stop. Please Stop.
4: Checkov suddenly knows how to do everyone else’s job, and can leave the Bridge during his shift with impunity. Why didn’t HE wind up on Delta Vega?
5: The Enterprise’s Engineering deck looked like the Manchester Connecticut Sewage Treatment Plant.
6: Nero winds up 200 years in the past, and instead of using that time to warn everyone of what was going to happen, goes postal instead.
That’s enough for now. The writers obviously have zero ability to work within established Trek history, so they took the cheap way out and destroyed about 40 years of Star Trek. JJ Abrams sucks, and anyone who knows a lick about Star Trek that likes this monstrosity, is an idiot.