SciFi Channel Rants

So uninformed was I, that I had no idea that this movie was supposed to be a 'reboot' of the Trek universe that we all had come to know so well. I generally am not a big fan of reboots or reimaginings of established art, though some remakes have worked quite well and improved significantly over what had come before. But for a series as wildly popular as Star Trek, which had spawned ten movies, five additional TV series (most folks forget the cartoon version from the 70's), hundreds of books, comics, and fan fiction, it would certainly seem that this was a universe totally devoid of a need to reboot itself.

Let me pause my rant for a moment and say that I did, for the most part, enjoy the younger versions of the characters portrayed, a movie set in the established Trek universe featuring their early exploits should have gone over well with Trek fans. I also enjoyed the action, though the effects were laid on a bit thicker than they really needed to be. Effects can really enhance the movie experience, but they can also be a crutch for a poor storyteller. I didn't even have a problem with the Spock/Uhura romance, with a younger, less logical Spock, it certainly could have been something that was plausible. The makings were there for a pretty good movie. They blew it.

There were little things that bugged me, there were big things that bugged me, let's start with the use of black holes for time travel. Nowhere in the Trek universe (movies and shows, at least, there are a great many books I haven't read) is there an indication that a black hole can be used for time travel, getting caught anywhere near them is always considered to be a bad thing, and generally accepted relativistic effects are accounted for. Seeing a ship emerging or slowly being pulled into a black hole without being torn to bits is totally contrary to what has been shown before. Had the writers instead chosen a wormhole over a black hole, that 'hole' issue would have gone away.

The reason for this black hole was apparently Spock had created it to prevent a supernova from 'threatening the entire galaxy', which also makes absolutely no sense from a scientific point of view, and even allowing that perhaps Spock meant this politically, even losing their home planet, the Romulans must surely have enough colonies elsewhere in the Romulan Empire that this would not be as disastrous as it sounds. Also, we had pretty much the same plot line in Star Trek VI, when the Klingon homeworld was 50 years away from being uninhabitable, an awful long time for a big spacefaring race to not be able to do something about the problem. Anyway, the Romuman sun was heading towards supernova (a process normally taking thousands of years and (according to Wikipedia) quite common in our galaxy, occurring about every 50 years), Spock for some reason was the one to rush to their rescue in a fancy new ship, and was going to use 'red matter' (huh?) to create a singularity that would somehow avert this. Why this wouldn't have just sucked in the sun (like it did with Vulcan) is beyond me, but according to ST:TNG the Romulans already possessed the technology to create quantum singularities, and should have been able to use their own technology to do pretty much the same thing. Like a black hole, as a plot device, this one sucked.

Now, since the timeline we've come to know and love changed at exactly the time of Kirk's birth, it would be assumed that events prior to this are unaffected, but sadly, that doesn't appear to have been the case. Technology has, overall, apparently progressed rapidly since events in Star Trek Enterprise, the futuristic look of the USS Kelvin's interior, for example, and later the look of the USS Enterprise, looking far spiffier than even ships we have already seen from a century or more later, including 29th century models. From a continuity perspective, this is really a bad thing, and more than anything was the thing that turned me off in watching the trailers.

But, despite that great technology, the USS enterprise for some reason has water powered turbines? WTF? Obviously these aren't steam powered, or Scotty wouldn't have survived his little trip through the plumbing. Nothing about that scene made any sense, especially that Spock would have let Scotty beam into such a solid object as a tube full of water.

And speaking of beaming, in this movie Scotty has managed (almost) to beam things from one planet to another in the same system, something not seen even in the series 100 years later (with minor exceptions), but certainly not with equipment of that era. Further, we learn that Scotty would later perfect transwarp beaming, which could be used to beam onto a ship traveling at warp. Combining these two, Spock manages to beam Kirk and Scotty onto the Enterprise, which is traveling at warp, on it's way to Earth, having left the vicinity of Vulcan what may have been hours before. The ship should have already passed several star systems by this point, making such beaming, even with the flimsy explanations of the movie, totally impossible.

Along with other impossible things, we find the newly constructed Enterprise to have been built, not in a space dock, but instead on the Earth's surface. Not until Voyager have we seen a vessel of such size able to take off from a planet's surface, or even fly through a planet's atmosphere (no prior Enterprise had apparently been able to handle this task), and Voyager is a much smaller ship than even the Enterprise from the original series. I was groaning at this almost as much as I'm sure the engines would have been trying to take off.

Next, why would elder Spock, having reunited again, for the first time, with Kirk and Scotty not have tried to hatch a plan to restore the timeline, traveling back to the past to stop Nero when he emerged and preventing the changes in the timeline, thereby saving Vulcan, the future, and most importantly, using that fancy ship of his to head off the Romulan supernova over a century before anyone had a clue about the danger? We'd have had a great Trek movie (two, even!), a classic plot, old fans kept happy, new fans brought in with the fresh actors, win-win all around.

Finally, my biggest nit, and surprisingly it's not a technical one, but it is in several parts. Scotty seems to be the older of the crew, having already served enough time to earn himself a post on Delta Vega, where Kirk and Spock catch up with him. Spock is next oldest, which is reasonable. Next, we seem to have everyone else. Several members came directly from Starfleet Academy, and having not seen a graduation ceremony anywhere in there, presumably all these folks are still cadets, no commanders, no lieutenants, no ensigns. Just Captain Pike, and his crew of cadets. In the original series, there would have been a few years difference between several of these folks, but not here. Fine, I can live with that. But next, we have Pike having to leave the ship, and turning over the reins to Spock, his First Officer, and already an Academy graduate, though I don't recall his exact rank being mentioned previously. Next, Pike gives a lowly cadet the position of First Officer. Sure, it moves the plot along, but does that actually make any sense at all? There was nobody else with more experience on board? Not even the plumber looking after all those turbines?

Things only get worse, when later, the victorious crew returns home, and Kirk, still apparently not having graduated from the academy, goes straight from Cadet to Captain. Seriously, in what universe does this make any sense whatsoever?

This could have been a good movie, had all Trek references been removed. The plot could have worked, it wouldn't have had the baggage of keeping continuity or keeping with established principles, it could have existed in its own universe and stood apart, and it would have been well liked. Science geeks would still have dissed it, but everyone else would have taken in the eye candy and been happy. As a Trek movie, it sucked, and I can only now wait for the reboot to itself be rebooted.