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Neo-opsis Review
Star Trek: The Future Begins
Paramount Pictures
Tor Books
Rather
than discuss the entire Trek movie, I’ll just mention a few brief
thoughts.
Most of
the characters are different in some ways in the movie, compared to their
counterparts in the series. The reasons behind these differences is apparent in
most cases. The differences between the versions of Spock are easy to
understand for example. Spock’s father Sarek in the series was very big on
ordering Spock around and telling him he should act as he thinks a Vulcan
should act (not show his emotions and do his best to not even feel them), and
do what he thinks a Vulcan should do (work at the Vulcan Science Academy).
However, in the movie Sarek is very supportive of Spock and tells him he should
choose his own path. While this explains Spock’s different behaviour quite
well, the explanation is at its core a ‘turtles all the way down’ explanation,
because we have no explanation at all for why Sarek is so different.
Another
notable point for me in the movie was them showing numerous shuttlecraft on the
Enterprise on its maiden voyage. Why this was notable to me was that in the
series episode “The Enemy Within,” Sulu et al were trapped on the planet Alfa
177, because the transporter is duplicating everything it transports into good
and evil versions. (This variation on the “Jekyll and Hyde” idea has been
parodied, in such shows as Red Dwarf and Ren and Stimpy.) I
wondered when I first saw it why they didn’t pick them up with a shuttlecraft.
Some have post hoc claimed that the Enterprise didn’t have shuttles during that
early episode. Having shuttles on the Enterprise’s first mission in the movie
is suggestive that they didn’t pick up Sulu... because they didn’t like him.
But then again, if they really didn’t like Sulu, they might have beamed him
down some spare blankets, just to see what the evil versions of the blankets
would have done to him.
While
many people claim that it’s the characters that make a story, I confess it was
the sets of the Enterprise that impressed me the most in this movie. I wanted
to go on the ship and play, more than I wanted to talk to any of the characters
there. I wanted to do both of these about equally with the original TV-series.
My
biggest complaint about the movie is the same complaint I have for any story
featuring time travel. Time travel in a story is like a magic wand. The
limitations in such a story seem contrived, because just about any problem
could be fixed with a magic wand or a time machine.
Over
all, the Trek movie felt like Star Trek and it felt like science
fiction, so I was happy.
Review by Karl Johanson.
Originally published in Neo-opsis issue
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