Star Trek!

[sholio]

Saw it!

Okay, so ... TOS was the first show on TV that I think I could reasonably consider myself fannish about. It's one of the first shows I remember watching on TV, in fact. My sister and I used to draw our own Star Trek comics. My love affair with McCoy and Spock and Uhura (haha, notice who's not mentioned; sorry, Kirk) goes back at least 25 years. I've really never participated in Trek fandom because a) I had bad experiences with Trekkers back in college, and b) I used to be so intimidated by the huge size and history of the fandom that I never really felt comfortable joining in (although, after three years in SGA fandom, I've realized that I don't really feel that sense of intimidation anymore).

Anyway ... I loved the casting. Loved, loved, loved it. My first act on getting home was to look up Karl Urban and find out what else he's been in, because, OMG. I didn't think anyone could match Kelley's McCoy in my eyes, and he's still the one and only and first and best, but Urban? I WANT SOME MORE OF THAAAAT.

I really loved them all, in their own way; I didn't dislike Kirk (high praise, coming from me :D) and the rest of them totally knocked it out of the park. Not enough McCoy, though! Not nearly enough McCoy! But I was utterly thrilled to get so much Uhura, and one of the few exceptions to my general lack of overt 'shipping is Spock/Uhura; I have shipped them since I was eight years old, and I really can't express my squee to see it become !!!!!CANON!!!!!

So many little character bits made me squeak and flail. Vulcan bullies! (And wee!Spock ... *squishes him*) Scotty didn't do a whole lot for me on the original show, but this Scotty totally stole my heart. Sulu! Fencing! Wheee!

I had no idea Nimoy was in the movie (I have no clue how I remained unspoiled for that) and I loved that he got to do the voiceover at the end. Sweet.

And, maybe my biggest bit of love for the movie is that it really was a reboot, a canon AU, and it wasn't all about going back and fixing things and wiping out this timeline. They kept it all, dark as it was, and now they're all poised on the verge of their own unique future, and I'm completely thrilled about that. I would totally go see more movies with this cast, though I really hope they get a better plot the next time around -- I'm confident they could pull it off.

Which leads nicely into the UnSquee! part of the review! (*leaves some squee!space*)














OH MY GOD THE PLOT. IT HUUUUUURRRRRTTTSSSS MEEEEEEEEEE.

SO MUCH LACK OF PLOT LOGIC AND SCIENCE LOGIC THAT I CANNOT BEAR IT. *flails*

It's hilarious, because my reaction to the movie is such a total mix of EEEEEEEE! and AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH! that even on the way out of the theatre I was flip-flopping between flailing at my husband "Oh my god! I loved Scotty! Eeee! Baby Spock!" and then in the next breath, "BLACK HOLES! SUPERNOVAS! PLOT SUCK! HELP!"

(My husband suggested that old!Spock really shouldn't have stopped at the store for a gallon of milk on the way to save the Romulan homeworld. So much tragedy could have been averted that way. *snort*)

I don't really know where to begin with the plot!suck because there's just so much of it, from the utter unbelievability of sending a shipful of ensigns into battle and then leaving them in charge, to the ridiculous way Kirk got on (and stayed on) the Enterprise, to Kirk being jettisoned right on top of old!Spock on the ice planet (or jettisoned, period, onto a world filled with ice monsters; that doesn't seem like a Spocklike thing to do), to the ludicrousness of Kirk "having" to be in charge of the Enterprise even though it makes NO SENSE either within the plot itself or in context of putting a demonstrably crazy and violent ensign in charge of a spaceship...

And I hated the scene where Kirk makes Spock break down in front of the crew with the passion of a thousand blazing Vulcan suns. It was a lousy, horrible thing to do to him as a person, and it was a horrible thing to do to him in context of the TOS!verse, where he was just about the only Vulcan in Starfleet and had to constantly prove himself to his human crewmates; to start out his career in Starfleet by proving him unfit for command, and THEN to top all of THAT with the pure, unmitigated character assassination of having him remove himself from command and turn over the command to an aggressive, untried cadet who is also a mutineer -- HATE! HATE HATE HATE! HAAAAAATE!

*pant pant*

And this is supposed to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship? I ... I CAN'T EVEN. *wails*

Even leaving aside the massive, massive plot!suck (and don't get me started on the science!suck), could I get a little speculation in my spec fic? Aside from the above scene, my other least favorite thing about the movie was the total lack of any effort to think about how people live in the future, and how they think, and what the impact would be (emotional, political, or otherwise) of the events in the movie. Awesome casting, beautiful cinematography, and the actors did great with what they were given ... I just wish they'd been given more. What really made me love TOS was the character scenes and the show's endearingly earnest efforts to grapple with human questions.

I really like shiny special effects and explosions, and I'm willing to cut a show or movie a lot of slack in the world-building and plausibility departments if it delivers shiny things and heart-pounding action, but even I have my limits, and this movie pushed them pretty hard. For one thing, it really made me think about how media sci-fi has been seriously taken over by the "shiny, 'splodey" factor at the expense of plot and character development. You know, if the RIAA/MPAA is right that the era of big-budget sci-fi is going to eventually be torpedoed by downloading (which REALLY does not seem to be happening -- see Exhibit A which I just viewed at the matinee) -- but even if it does, all I have to say about that is, yay! We've had years of big-budget movies with awesome effects and no heart; let's get a few low-budget, independent SF series with genuinely ground-breaking ideas and real diversity and solid writing, huh?

SIGH.

But I just read on imdb.com that they've greenlighted a New!Trek series with the new cast for 2011, and I am THRILLED! I guess it remains to be seen if it'll happen, or if they can get all of the movie cast for it (I can haz Karl Urban, pleeez?), but maybe with TV-show pacing and more time to slow down and focus on the characters as individuals, without having to stop for an explosion or near-death experience every five minutes ... maybe the movie's deficiencies will be less, well, deficient, and maybe we can get some cool thinky stuff and fun Spock/McCoy character moments as well as spaceship chases and 'sploding planets too.