Star Trek

My surname is Kirk and I am an astrophysicist. Given these factors it would be a miracle if I wasn’t a Star Trek fan. However, I don’t believe in miracles unless they’re preformed by a Scottish engineer with a dodgy accent. Therefore I am a Star Trek fan. My random thoughts on the new film (including spoilers) follow…

The main threat of the new film is Nero, a genocidal Romulan from Captain Picard’s era, who has accidentally found himself stranded in the past. This gives a nice thematic link to Star Trek Nemesis where Picard’s Enterprise found themselves fighting a Romulan with a massive doomsday starship. This time around Cadet Kirk and his future crew find themselves fighting a Romulan with a massive doomsday starship. Nero isn’t really fleshed out in this film – he’s just the plot device that accelerates Jim Kirk becoming Captain of the Enterprise. This style of time travel is a formula that Star Trek has used before, but usually the status quo is restored at the end of the story. This time it isn’t. Nero’s intervention creates a clear and delibreate change to the timeline that is not reset at the end of the story.

You know all those Star Trek Academy ideas that use to float around? Well this is that film. Only we don’t get to see the original crew come together, instead we see a version of that crew come together in an alternative timeline created by Nero’s actions. One of Nero’s first acts in the past is to destroy a starship commanded by Captain Kirk’s father. By growing up without a father this Jim Kirk never gains the focus that turned the original Jim Kirk into a Starfleet fast-track career officer. This Jim Kirk has the same potential, bravado and flare for the impossible as the original, but without his focus and ambition. He’s not much more than semi-drunk farmhand with authority issues until Captain Christopher Pike gives him a kick up the backside.

In the usual course of things Kirk would probably entered the Academy sooner and would have served as a lieutenant on several star ships before being made Captain of the Enterprise. However, Nero’s reappearance forces Star Fleet to draft the senior cadets at Star Fleet Academy to man the recently completed Enterprise. Kirk and his friends are rushed into action together five years before they should have encountered each other. They’re younger, less experienced, but they’re still recognisable as the people they would have become had Nero not interveined.

I find it actually quite hard to review this film. Let’s just say it’s brilliant and throw in a few fanish nitpicks for old time’s sake. Nothing in this film really fails. There are a couple of slapstick sequences that jar a little bit. They are nicely done and are quite entertaining, but seemed a little bit too jokey given the emergency facing them and the crew. The effects are top notch, but the phasers should be more of a beam than a pulse. About the only thing I didn’t really like was the editing – too much chopping around for my tastes, but that’s just modern cinematic style. Now what they really needed was some nice long beauty shots, a few minutes at a time, just showing us the ship.