Ben Buckman.net

I watched the new Star Trek movie the other night. I was a huge trekkie in elementary and middle school (knowing most TNG episode names by heart), didn't like Enterprise much at all, and can barely stand watching the old series on tv now: they're so linear, predictable, simplistic. There's little of the human complexity or thought-provoking plots like that of Battlestar Galactica. The villains are always too cliched, humanity too utopian. The last few movies (Insurrection, Nemesis) failed at the box office, probably because their plot and character styles, true to TNG's late 80s/early 90s roots, only appeals to old-timer fans.

But the new movie promised a break: a scifi film fit for 2009, with the Star Trek spirit but a new style. Bring Star Trek to a Battlestar Galactica fan base. Make the people real enough to make the world they inhabit plausible. A prequel offers so much freedom to work with to make something great.

I was disappointed. The plot was mostly incoherent. Something to do with an alternate timeline, but it was never clear if that alternate was truly alternate or supposed to be the prequel story to the original series. (I guess in the trekkie timeline it fits in between Enterprise and TOS, but that's not really important.) There was some kind of time travel but only half-assed; they went through black holes, time changed, explanation ceased there. Young Spock meets old Spock - Leonard Nimoy, his acting horrible (maybe it always was), their rendezvous more purposeful to old-time sentiment than any plot value. Chris Pine, the actor who played James Kirk, was the only memorable actor, playing the only truly human role.

About halfway through the movie, Kirk lands on an ice planet, walks a little, gets chased by a dinosaur into a cave, where - whaddya know! - he finds Spock, who tells him (and the audience) what the hell is going on in a minute of super-condensed catchup narration. It's like they made half a movie and realized they needed a story.

In another scene in the engine room - a comical factory of tubes and bubbles, the design of which only makes sense for that scene - Scottie gets sucked into one of the tubes, is about to go through a meat grinder (big metal water-grinding blades are required for warp speed, clearly) - and is rescued at the nick of time by an opened hatch which he falls through, wet but unharmed, engines still running. Uh huh.

I think it's fair to say we won't be seeing any new, rethought Star Trek tv series anytime soon.