Wacky Reviews: Star Trek

[CaptainWacky]

These Are the Voyages... - Hoshi and Travis are talking about being on the ship for "ten years" so this is six years in the future. Hoshi and T'Pol have slightly different hair to show the passage of time, but everything else is the same. Archer is to make a speech, Enterprise is to be decommissioned (after only ten years?)...and Riker's on the Bridge. It's a Holodeck on the Enterprise-D! This was not a good teaser! We get a pretty nice CG model of the Enterprise, then Riker explains that his old Commander Pressman is on the ship, so this is set during 'Pegasus'. But Riker and Troi (Troi's here too) look older. Troi has advised Riker to watch this old hologram to learn about....something relating to his current position. We see Ten Forward and an Enterprise-D corridor. Well, we see archive footage of Ten Forward and then Riker and Troi sitting in a small part they recreated. Marina Sirtis isn't doing Troi's TNG accent. Holo Archer is contacted by Shran, who has been believed to be dead for three years. Shran is calling in his favour. Archer is on his way to found the Federation, but is convinced to help when Shran tells him his child(?) has been abducted. I guess it's six years later so Shran could have had a child but this feels wrong. Shran explains that he made some poor choices and became friend with criminals. Again this feels wrong. I'm going to keep saying this. Shran apparently doesn't have any Andorian friends so needs to the Enterprise crew to get his daughter back from the abducters on Rigel Ten. Archer tells T'Pol she helped him trust Vulcans so now she must trust Andorians. Porthos is still alive and still likes cheese lol omg. Riker plays the role of Chef and asks T'Pol if she "misses" Trip (they haven't slept together in six years, she says.) So yeah Trip and T'Pol have kept the fucking "we can't be together for some reason" shit up for another six years. I'm glad I didn't have to watch those seasons. Riker and Troi talk about the 71 people who died on Pegasus. Riker takes Troi to the Holodeck and they talk about how small the Enterprise was. Even Troi knows about Porthos. Do you know the name of a famous Captain's dog from two hundred years ago? Trip looks around Engineering and is sad that the Enterprise is being put in mothballs. Troi says, in a really casual way, it's sad that Trip has no idea he's about to die. Trip is worried about Archer going on this dangerous mission but Archer says it'll be fine because Rigel Ten was the first planet they ever visited. T'Pol asks Trip if he ever misses her. He says they won't lose touch even though they're taking different assignments. It's ironic, you see! Shran and T'Pol meet up with criminal types on the planet. He gives them a (fake) big diamond and they give his daughter back. Archer shoots bright lights at the criminals so Shran can escape. Trip nearly falls off a ledge but Archer saves him. It's ironic because he's about to die in another way!

The Enterprise-D arrives at the asteroid field or whatever where the Pegasus is. Data makes an unfunny voice cameo talking to Troi. Riker admits to her that Pegesus had an illegal cloaking device. Riker cooks with Reed and Hoshi, who both admit they hated Trip at first because he's an uneducated hillbilly who can barely speak English (seriously) but they like him now. Travis says something. Oh look, Phlox gets a scene at last! Talking about Trip. Archer and Trip have a drink. Archer hasn't written his speech yet. Enterprise is attacked. It's Shran's criminal buddies, who are somehow able to get onboard Enterprise. They run into Archer and Trip in the corridor and threaten to kill Archer. Trip instantly turns into a panicky idiot and says he'll bring them to Shran. Security are nowhere to be seen. It's ridiculous. Trip takes them somewhere and says he has to stick a wire in something to take them to Shran (these criminals are idiots.) Then Trip BLOWS HIMSELF UP to kill the criminals. Archer (who was knocked out) finds Trip's dying body as Riker watches. Phlox puts Trip in a special chamber for treatment. It doesn't work, apparently? It's weird they put the bit with the special chamber in? It makes you think he's going to survive but then the next scene is Archer and T'Pol talking about Trip's crazy parents. Archer tells T'Pol that he thought all the risks of space travel would be worth it but now he's not sure with Trip dying. T'Pol says Trip would be the first to say it's worthwhile. Trip might also point out he died in a really stupid way that was nothing to do with space travel really. Riker then has his cooking scene with Trip. Trip talks about what his friendship with Archer means to him and I guess this helps Riker decide to tell the truth to Picard. It's time for Archer's speech and Travis, Reed and Hoshi don't seem all that bothered about Trip dying. Archer gets ready with T'Pol and Phlox. He goes out for his speech as Riker and Troi watch...then Riker says he's ready to talk to Picard and ends the program before Archer speaks. What a satisfying end! Patrick Stewart says the first part of "Space the final frontier," Shatner says the second (it's all archive stuff) then Archer says "to boldly go where no man has gone before" to finish.

You can see what they were going for here. It's Berman and Braga's first episode of the season. It's the last episode of Enterprise, but also the last episoe of Berman era Star Trek. After eighteen years of constant Star Trek on television we were about to have nothing. You can see why Berman and Braga wanted this to be not just an ending for Enterprise but some kind of coda for all Berman's time on Star Trek. Bringing in characters from TNG to guest star probably isn't a completely terrible idea. If you do it in a way that makes sense. The problem is they do it by just expecting us to believe Riker and Troi are their twelve years younger selves from TNG season 7. Frakes and Sirtis aren't really up to the task. I don't blame them, I doubt they had enough notice to get into TNG shape or whatever. All their scenes just feel "off" in some way, but so do all the Enterprise scenes really. And doing the whole thing as a holodeck adventure means that the Enterprise scenes aren't even real. You're not really watching Trip and T'Pol having an intimate conversation, you're watching the Holodeck invent one for them (for some reason!) As a TNG tribut episode this is bad, but as an Enterprise final it's flatout AWFUL. Travis, Reed, Hoshi and Phlox barely get anything other than scenes talking about how great Trip is (but also, bizarrely, talking about Trip being "barely able to speak English" which is pretty fucking insulting.) It's six years later but none of them have been promoted or changed in anyway. We don't get any sense of change in Archer, Trip or T'Pol either. It even feels like not only have those six years not happened, but season four itself hasn't happened. Then there's Shran, the most popular guest character, played by the wonderful Jeffrey Combs...turned into a jittery jewel theif. Trip's death is absolutely terribly written. He just looks like an idiot. And then they have to tie it back to the TNG episode and...it just doesn't work. How would any of this help Riker? It's just really bad, an insult to Enterprise fans. Nice CGI Enterprise-D though.

SCORE: 0.5/10

 

[whisky]

I wasn't a fan of this, it would be like if the last episode of scrubs was actually an episode of At Elsewhere, and then they crammed a bit of MASH in too.

They should have given trek a break instead of having four back to back shows in a row, still at least they won't make that mistake again...

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

I'm so sad we've reached the end of the TNG era. And even sadder that it ended with this explosive bowel movement of a finale.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Wtf

 

[CaptainWacky]

It's kind of weird that there was only four years between Enterprise ending and the first J.J. movie? Feels like more in my mind.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

The premier (First Minister) of British Columbia was sworn in today.



(his favourite trek is voyager???)

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Duet - A Cardassian named Marritza (Harris Yulin) with a rare medical condition seeks treatment from Bashir, but Kira orders him arrested for war crimes as she believes any Cardassian with the condition must have served at the forced labour camp Gallitep. He tells Sisko it's all been a mistake and seems like a nice enough Cardie (there's also a racist Bajoran in the cell opposite him, remember that for later!) Bashir however confirms that he has the condition and the only possible way he could have contracted it is from Gallitep. The Bajorans put Sisko under pressure to hand Marritza over to them. The Bajorans want Kira to head up the investigation but Sisko would rather Odo do it. Kira admits she isn't objective but gives her word as Sisko's first officer that she'll be fair. Sisko lets Kira question Marritza. He admits to being at Gallitep, but claims to have only been a filing clerk. But a very skilled one! He claims he witnessed no atrocities and Kira is disgusted. He claims Gul Darheel spread rumours of atrocities to scare the Bajorans. Gul Dukat (the guy from the first episode!) contacts Sisko, wanting Marritza released. He also tries to downplay the war crimes commited by the Cardassians as just bitter Bajoran lies. Kira admits to Dax that she wants Marritza to be something worse than a file clerk so she can punish him. Dax tells her Kira knows vengeance won't help her.

A Bajorans send an image from Gallitep which is supposed to show Marritza, but he's not the Cardassians they're holding. They find that their prisoner is in fact Gul Darheel himself. He admits to being Darheel and makes a big bombastic speech about what a great job he did running the labour camp and killing all the Bajoran scum. (Kira's resistace cell is named as the "Shakaar resistance cell" for the first time in here.) Kira can't stand being around him any longer and goes to Odo. But Odo wonders how Darheel knew the name of Kira's resistance cell. Kira demands answers from Darheel but he gleefully rants about killing Bajorans and claims he read her name in a report years ago. Survivors of Gallitep arrive on the station waiting for justice. Dukat contacts Odo and tries to make out they're old friends (Odo doesn't remember it like that.) He claims that Darheel is dead and he attended his funeral himself. He gives Odo access to his files to prove Marritza isn't Darheel. Darheel asks Kira how many Cardassians she killed and how many of them were civilians. Kira defends herself as doing what needed to be done and Darheel says he was doing the same thing. "What you call genocide, I call a day's work." Odo tells Kira that the man in the cell wanted to be caught. The records Dukat provided show that Darheel didn't have the medical condition. Kira thinks Dukat is trying to trick them so Darheel can be released. Odo has found that Darheel/Marittza came to the station on purpose. Bashir reveals that he had extensive plastic surgery, changing his appearance to look like Darheel. Kira goes to him one more time to get to the truth. He gets angry and starts talking about how much he enjoyed killing Bajorans again. Kira knows now he was really Marittza. Darheel says Marittza was weak and cried every night because he coudln't stand the screams of Bajorans. He finally breaks down crying. Kira lowers the forcefield to let him go because he didn't commit the crimes. He demands he be punished. Kira says he's not repsonsible for Darheel's crimes. Marittza wants to stand trial so that Cardassia will be forced to admit its guilt. Kira says she won't kill anyone else. She lets him go but the racist Bajoran from earlier stabs him in the back. Marittza dies instantly and the Bajoran says he deserved to die for being a Cardassian. Kira disagrees.

Hey, it's a great episode! Typing out my probably too long recap I realised I wasn't really getting across how good it is because the strength is in the acting, of Nana Visitor and especially Harris Yulin (though Marc Alaimo is also great in his short appearance.) The double twist works because you can see there's something not quite right about Marittza all along. At first it's pretty obvious he's lying, but it makes sense he'd make it obvious because he wanted to be caught. Then when he comes out as Darheel he goes very theatrical, trying to really hammer home how evil the Cardassians were. It's one of the best Trek guest star performances. The story for Kira moving past her hatred is great too...but the last line where she says "no, it's not!" when the racist Bajoran says being Cardassian is reason enough to be murdered is a bit too on the nose. And really Marittza dying instantly when he's stabbed is a bit silly. But do I downgrade the episode based on the last minute being not quite as great as the rest? Nah, that would be unfair, it's not like the last minute ruins it or anything. It's a top level episode.

SCORE: 10/10

Watching Duet on BBC America right now. Harris Yulin should have got an Emmy for that performance.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Still planning to do the final three movies sometime!

 

[jack]

 

[jack]

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Endgame - Voyager is home! It flies over the Golden Gate Bridge as fireworks go off. It's actually the tenth anniversary of Voyager getting home and it took them 23 years. Janeway is old and haunted. There's a reunion party where Captain (lol) Harry Kim meets Naomi's daughter (is Icheb the dad?) The Doctor has a blonde wife. His name is Joe. Tom writes holo novels now because "Tom likes the Holodeck" is one of his few personality traits. Old lady B'Elanna...looks kind of hot? Janeway has sent Tom and B'Elanna's daughter on a secret mission. Barclay makes a toast "to the journey." He teaches a Borg class at Stafleet Academy and seems to have been cured of his autism by Voyager? Admiral Janeway appears as a guest speaker in his class but doesn't want to answer questions about Seven of Nine. Admiral Janeway visits Tuvok, who has gone mad because the writers love giving Tuvok some kind of mental disability. Janeway tells him she has to go away and may never see him again. She kisses his head. The Doctor gives Janeway a physical and she asks him to get her some drugs. She says goodbye to Reg and visits Chakotay's grave (the Native Americna type music plays when his name is shown, which makes me laugh for some reason.) Back in the present day at last, B'Elanna tells Tom the baby is coming and we get the sticom cliche of the father not knowing what to do. And it turns out to be false labour anyway. Chakotay tells Janeway that Chell wants to take over as chef from Neelix. He then goes on a picnic date with Seven and urgh I don't buy this at all. Icheb beats Tuvok at the Vulcan Jenga game and Tuvok is worried. He visits the Doctor and we learn that he's already in the early stages of his brain disorder.

Seven plays Kadis-kot with Neelix over subspace. He tells her he's thinking of asking Drexa to marry him. Seven and Harry detect thousands of wormholes in a nebula and Harry's excited as always (Tom: "Who knows, Harry, maybe it'll lead right into your parents' living room!") In the future, Tuvok is ranting about Janeway going missing. The Doc doesn't know what's going on and asks Barclay if he knows where Janeway is. Barclay's stammer returns because he knows where Janeway is and eventually tell the Doc. Admiral Janeway meets up with Ensign Torres and some Klingons (she dismisses Torres quickly.) The Admial speaks to a weirdo Klingon who she helped get a seat on the High Council. He refuses to hand a mysterious object of mystery over to her. In the present day, Voyager enters the nebula and nearly flies into a Borg Cube. The Borg Queen (ALICE KRIGE) tells the Collective to let Voyager go but keep an eye on them. The nebula's full of Cubes but Harry whines about not giving up. He tries to convince Tom to go off on a crazy scouting mission in the nebula. Chuckles asks Seven out for dinner again and I just realised that between him and Icheb-Murdering-Lady it's now cannon that Seven makes terrible romantic choices. Seven tells the Doc she wants her cortical node removed so she can feel all the emotions, man. In the future, Admiral Janeway offers to give up Starfleet technology for "the device" but actually just steals the device from him and flies away on her Batmobile armour equiped shuttle. Captain Harry Kim catches up with her and wants to arrest her, just like Geordi did to future Harry in 'Timeless.' The Admiral tells Harry her plan will work (we still don't know what it is yet) but he thinks it's too risky. She asks him to trust her. Present day Seven beams into Chakotay's quarters and they kiss. Yet Robert Beltran still hated the episode. Captain Harry helps Admiral Janeway because he's still her bitch. If it's not obvious by now, the Admiral is travelling back in time. She's attacked by the Klingons but Harry's ship saves her. The Admiral arrives in the past and orders Captain Janeway to close the temporal rift she just flew threw before the Klingons follow her. The Borg Queen is intrigued by this!

The two Janeways talk in the Ready Room. The Admiral only drinks tea now, the first sign that she's evil. The Admiral tells the Captain she has to go back to the Borg nebula as it can take her home (how does the Admiral know this? She's from a future where Voyager never used that nebula.) She says there will be many more deaths in the next sixteen years if Janeway doesn't use the nebula. The Doctor proves the Admiral's identity and tells him about a neural interface he invented that let's her fly her ship with the power of her mind. Voyager begins installing the upgrades the Admiral has brung which will help them fight the Borg. The Borg Queen appears to Seven in her head and tells her she's always left Voyager alone because she loves Seven so much. What. She literally assimilated Janeway, Tuvok and Torres a year ago! She warns Voyager to stay away from the nebula. The Admiral convinces the Captain to stick to the plan. Chakotay tells Seven he plans to shag her when they get home. Voyager deploys its Batmobile armour and enters the nebula. The Borg attack but Voyager has new super torpedos that can blow up a Cube with one shot. We discover there's a "transwarp hub" in the nebula and that's what will take Voyager home, but Captain Janeway isn't happy the Admiral didn't tell her it was there and orders Tom to take them out. So all those thousands of drones on the Cubes Voyager blew up died for nothing. Captain Janeway wants to destroy the Hub because it's one of the Borg's most powerful weapons. The Admiral tells her it's impossible to destroy the Hub and getting Voyager home is all that matters. She thinks destroying the Caretaker Array was a mistake now. She tells the Captain that Seven will die and it'll destroy her (urgh) husband Chakotay who also dies. And Tuvok's going to go mad. The Captain confronts Tuvok who tells her he'll be fine for a few years but the only cure (a mind meld with a family member) is in the Alpha Quadrant. He didn't tell Janeway because destroying the Hub and saving millions of lives is more important (and quotes Spock who I guess went around saying "the needs of the many..." all the time.) The Admiral tells Seven she's being selfish for valuing the lives of others over her own (or something, the Admiral's kind of mad.)

The Captain tells the senior staff that they'll only destroy the Hub if the whole crew (well, the important characters) agree to it. Harry makes his famous "maybe it's about the journey!" speech which we'll all be mocking by the end. The Admiral tells the Captain she was wrong to lie to her and wants to help her carry out her mission. The Captain thinks there's got to be a way to have their cake and eat it too. The Admiral says there may be a way but it's very risky. The Admiral goes off on her shuttle after saying goodbye to the Captain. Seven doesn't want to be sexy with Chakotay anymore because she know she's going to die and it will hurt him if he's in love with her. This scene's supposed to be sad but I'm not invested in their relationship at all and I don't buy this sudden character chance for Seven. B'Elanna goes into labour for real and tells Tom to report to duty rather than stay with her because he's their best (only?) pilot. The Admiral projects a message to the Borg Queen using her implant and tells her she'll let the Borg live if they help Voyager get home. She even agrees to give up her future tech to the Queen. The Queen knows this is bullshit and captures and assimilates the real physical Admiral Janeway. But somehow the assimilation infects the Queen and the Borg and they start blowing up and stuff. The Queen pulls her own arm off. The manages to send one Sphere after Voyager as it flees through a transwarp conduit after destroying the Hub (or whatever.) The Queen dies saying that if Captain Janeway dies it'll mean the Admiral won't be able to travel back in time and none of this will happen. Err, it's not going to happen anyway because the Admiral's from a completely different timeline. The Borg conduit thing opens near Earth. The sphere flies through then Voyager comes bursting out of it. Admiral Paris (with Barclay) hails them and no the episode can't even give us one moment of him and Tom talking. The baby is born and Tom goes to see it, with Chakotay taking the helm. Janeway tells him to set a course for home, the final shot is Voyager flying towards Earth with "EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS RICK BERMAN AND KENNETH BILLER" appearing on screen before we can even take it in.

So that's it. After seven seasons we end with...a really medicore finale. You could say that's appropriate for Voyager, but I know they could have done better. Voyager had its share of great episodes over the years. This episode takes stuff from one of them ('Timeless') as well as TNG's classic finale 'All Good Things...'' because Voyager's writers are obsessed with time travel. We also get the Borg one last time and they feel more routine than ever, even with Alice Krige back as the Queen. It's an episode that tells the story of how Voyager got home but tells us nothing of what happens after (sure we get the future scenes, but they're erased by the end!) It would be like if DS9's finale had ended when the Dominion War did, crosscut with Sisko falling off a cliff, and not told us anything of what happened next. Not to mention that DS9 did a whole ten episode arc to give us closure whereas last week Voyager was just another silly comedy episode. It ends up feeling like they just wanted the show over with so they could move on to Enterprise. "THERE, IT'S EARTH, THE END, HAPPY, NERDS?" One of the only bright spots of the episode is Kate Mulgrew doing her best acting for a while playing two versions of Janeway. She manages to convince you she's really talking to a different person in the scenes with the Janeways together. If we got a really strong story with the two Janeways pitted against each other that might have made up a little for the abrupt ending. Sadly we get a really poor copout of a story! To compare it to Avengers: Endgame for a moment (they have the same name and both involve time travel!) imagine if that movie had an older version of Tony Stark travel back in time from the future, kill Thanos and save everyone else...and our version of Tony lived and the only character to die was this old guy we just met. Would it have been the biggest movie of all time then? I don't think so! But that's what happens here. Captain Janeway wonders if there's a way they can have their cake and eat it too...and there is. The only person to die is an alternative version of her who we just met. No one we care about has to sacrifice anything to get Voyager home. And what about the future timeline that's now erased? What about Naomi's daughter who'll now never be born? Nobody brings it up, not even future Harry who literally fucking met the daughter at the start of the episode. The only moral debate we get is "should we destroy the Borg or go home?" and they resolved it by saying "let's just do both!" Harry's "it's about the journey" moment is laughable (and his acting's as weak as ever) because the episode says the opposite. And I think I've made my feelings about Chakotay/Seven clear above so let's not get into that. Anything else good outside of Kate Mulgrew? Well there's certainly some impressive special effects and explosions if you like that. Krigee has a couple of moments where she's a bit creepy and it's cool when she rips her arms off. But really I can't imagine that even people who have Voyager as their favourite Trek would be satisfied with this as a finale. I can't imagine many were wiping away a tear at "set a course for home" being repeated. It's ironic that Neelix got a better sendoff than the rest of the crew. It was the one time this season that Voyager actually wrapped something up before the finale. Imagine if they'd been doing that for the last several episodes and we got to see Voyager back home for at least the entire finale (and something actiony could happen like the Kazon showing up to attack Earth or something.)

SCORE: 3/10

Goodbye, Voyager. Even though I complained about you a lot you did have a lot of great episodes in there. And I did enjoy watching a good old fashioned often light-hearted Trek again in this age of serialised darkness from Discovery and Picard. I'll watch Enterprise sometime I guess!

The Hollywood Reporter had some thought on the VOY finale today (for some reason)...

Abandoned ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Finale Ideas Could Have Given the Sendoff It Deserved - THR

 

[CaptainWacky]

It should have ended with Chakotry shooting Janeway in the face and saying "ONCE A MAQUIS ALWAY A MAQUIS."

 

[The Question]

The Hollywood Reporter had some thought on the VOY finale today (for some reason)...

Abandoned ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Finale Ideas Could Have Given the Sendoff It Deserved - THR

Was one of the ideas having Janeway busted back to Lieutenant for getting her ship stranded on her very first outing as Captain? There are ways to screw up harder than that, but anything worse than that usually means not having to answer to the higher-ups. (See, for example: Matt Decker.)

 

[jack]

 

[whisky]

That can't be the freinds reunion, there are black guys.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

I found something from a lost episode.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Star Trek (2009) - We start with the U.S.S. Kelvin investigating some weird space thing. And oh boy I know the lens flare thing became a meme but there really is a lot of lens flare right from the start. A big huge evil black spaceship comes through the weird spaceship. It easily disables the Kelvin with some spikey looking weapons and a woman is blown out into space. A Romulan (it's Ayel!) appears on screen and asks for the Kelvin's Captain to come to his ship by shuttle. Captain Robau(!) takes a shuttle to the evil ship, leaving first officer George Kirk to serve as Captain of the Kelvin. The Romulan Captain Nero sits in silence while Ayel asks Robau if he knows the location of Ambassador Spock. Nero stabs Robau on laerning the stardate and resumes his assault on the Kelvin. Lots of stuff blows up as Kirk gives the order to abandon ship. George's wife Winona just happens to be in labour too. What a day! George stays on the Kelvin as the others leave; he has to fight off the Romulans to give the shuttles (no escape pods?) a chance to get away. There's some nice directing and music combination as it cuts between things exploding and Geroge and Winona. He launches the Kelvin in a suicide run as his son is born. They call him Jim after Winona's dad (George's dad is named Tiberius!) There's a really great shot of the Romulan ship dead in space while the shuttles crawl away and the music starts as the "STAR TREK" logo appears on screen. I mantain that this is a great opening scene.

In Iowa, a child has stolen a car. Greg Gunberg's voice is angry at him over the phone so the boy plays The Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' loud then waves at George (his brother but they don't explain that.) A cop who might be a robot or a cyborg chases the kid and he drives the car off a cliff, diving out at the last second. His name is James Tirberius Kirk! On Vulcan, kids are being tested in pod things. Three Vulcan BULLIES try to get an emotional respnse out of half human Spock. He gets angry when they insult his human mother. Hi father Sarek tells Spock he must choose to be either human or Vulcan. Years later he asks his human mother (Winona Ryder who was like 38 in this movie which seems too young for this character!) if he should complete the Kolinahr ceremony and purge all remaining emotion. Some old Vulcan men tell him he is accepted to the Vulcan Science Institute, despite his disadvantage of having a human mother. Spock decline the invitation and decides to join Starfleet instead. In an Earth bar, Kirk tries to chat up Starfleet cadet Uhura. She has a talented tongue. He gets into a fight with some Starfleet cades and "accidentally" gropes Uhura's tits (did Joss Whedon ghost write this scene?) Christopher Pike breaks up the fight. He knew Kirk's dad and thinks James should join Starfleet instead of getting into fights and groping Uhura. George was a Captain for 12 minutes and saved eight hundred lives and Pike dares Jim to do better. Jim rides out on his bike to look at the Enterprise which is being BUILT ON EARTH even though that's a terrible place to build starships. And within bike riding distance of Jim's house, which is lucky! He gets on the shuttle to enlist in Starfleet and meets Leonard "Bones" Mcoy (his ex-wife took everything but his bones in the divorce!) who is scared of going into space.

THREE YEARS LATER and Nero's ship is operational again (if you want to know what he's been up to in the lasy twenty five years then you have to watch deleted scenes I guess!) Another ship with spinny things around it comes through a weird space thing. Nero says "welcome back, Spock." Jim tells Bones he's going to be the first person to pass the Kobayashi Maru test (remember that, from Star Trek?) Jim is in bed with an Orion and she makes him hide under the bed when her roommate Uhura come home. Kirk watches Uhura change from under the bed because he's the worst and they wanted a shot of Uhura in underwear for the trailer. Kirk "wins" the the Kobayashi Maru test while eating an apple. Spock is not happy that Kirk passed "his" test. Kirk is brought before a tribunal and faces Spock, who accuses him of reprogramming the test. Kirk admits he did so because he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. Spock brings up Kirk's father and I have to note how many times Kirk or Spock's parents have been mentione so far (it's a lot.) Spock says his test is about facing death. Everyone's called away for some emergency at Vulcan. Kirk is on suspension but McCoy comes up with a plan to get him on the Enterprise. Uhura also wants to serve on the Enterprise but Spock initially assigns her to another ship before she tells him off. McCoy makes Kirk sick because that can get him on the Enterprise under McCoy's care (it doesn't really make sense.) We get this movie's version of the characters seeing the Enterprise for the first time from a shuttle and it's a lot shorter than in The Motion Picture. Also the inside of the Enterprise looks exactly like a brewery. Like even if you don't know it was filmed in one it's really distracting. The fleet goes to warp but Sulu (Sulu's in this movie) stalls the Enterprise. PUNCH IT. We also meet Checkov who, unlike Uhura and Sulu, still has his accent. The ship's computer can't understand him. Kirk (with comedy medical side effects) notices something about a "transmission from a Klingon prison planet" (refering to something from a deleted scene) that has him very worried. He runs to the Bridge to tell Captain Pike that Vulcan is under attack by Romulans. Spock wants him locked up but Uhura confirms Kirk is right because she intercepted the Klingon transmission. Uhura gets a quick promotion because of her tongue.

The Enterprise raises shiled before arriving at Vulcan and finding the rest of the fleet completely fucked-up. The Enterprise's bridge is distractingly bright during this scene. Nero notices the Enterprise and introduces himself with "hello Christopher I'm Nero" and it sitll makes me laugh. Nero seems interested in young Spock and asks Pike to come over to his ship (the Naruto) like Robau all those years ago. Nero orders the "red matter" to be prepared and it looks like its name. Pike promotes Kirk to First Officer and makes Spock the Captain. He sends Kirk and Sulu to take care of the giant drill Nero is going to use to destroy Vulcan. McCoy is Chief Medical Officer now because the old one is dead. Promotions for everybody! Sulu reveals his combat training is "fencing" as that's the only character trait anyone remembers about him from the original series. Kirk, Sulu and a redshirt to a spacedive into Vulcan's atmosphere and it looks pretty cool. The redshirt gets too excited and ends up vapourised. Kirk and Sulu land on the drill and fight some Romulans. Sulu breaks out his fold-out sword. Shouldn't they have sent more than three guys on this mission? They kill the Romulans and disable the drill. It's too late as the Romulans have already drilled through to the planet's core but they do three the Enterprise from Nero's clutches. Chekov reports that Nero is opening a black hole inside the planet and Vulcan only has minutes left. Spock beams down to rescue the Vulcan High Command. Aren't there any ships or shuttles on Vulcan they could evacuate on? Kirk and Sulu fall off the drill but Chekov manages to beam them to safety just before they hit Vulcan. The skies of Vulcan don't look red enough. The Vulcan High Command are all just standing around a thing praying instead of evacuating so I guess it's good Spock got there. Some of them are crushed by giant statues. Spock's mother falls to her death right before the rest are beamed out. That was a pretty thankless role for Ryder. Vulcan implodes. Most of the six billion Vulcans on the planet are dead and Spock estimates no more than ten thousand Vulcans are alive in the universe, which seems pretty low. Don't they have colonies anywhere? Uhura kisses and hugs sport to comfort him as she's his girlfriend. He doesn't show much emotion.

Nero has Pike as a captive and he wants the security codes to Earth's defence systems. He explains his backstory to Pike: he was a siple miner who was off planet when Romulus blew up. He blames Spock for not helping them which doesn't make much sense but you just have to explain everything Nero does away with "he's crazy." He wants revenge for his wife's death by wiping out the Federation as he belives that will save Romulus in the future. He sticks one of those brain slug things from Wrath of Khan down Pike's open mouth. Spock is Captain now and works out that Nero must have travelled back in time from the future. Kirk wants to rescue Pike but Spock wants to meet up with the rest of Starfleet. Pike thinks they should be unpredictable (as Nero is from the future and would know what they'll do) but Spock looks directly into camera and says "WE'RE IN A DIFFERENT TIMELINE NOW, NERDS." Kirk shouts at Spock as Spock tells securit to remove him. Kirk punches the security guys so Spock nerve pinches him and just instantly says "get him off this ship." Because the Brig wouldn't be good enough? I get that Spock's supposed to be angry under the surface but it's pretty exteme. It's also really lucky that they happen to be flying by an ice planet with a Starfleet base on it that Kirk can be dumped on. But Kirk still has to walk through a blizzard and is nearly killed by a furry snow monster, which is then kiled itself by a mouth monster. So basically Kirk could have very easily died here and it would have been Spock's fault! Kirk is rescued by LEONARD NIMOY's Spock who says a line from Wrath of Khan (I'm pretty sure the only Trek J.J. watched before making this movie) to prove it's really him. Nimoy's voice sounds a bit off here (I think due to dentures) but he's still Nimoy and he's still cool. He mind melds (which isn't treated with the reverance it deserves) with Kirk to give further exposition: he was on his way to Romulus to save it from a super nova but it blew up before he could get there. He destroyed the super nova using red matter (not sure why when Romulu was already gone? Maybe to save Remus!) and he and Nero were sucked through a blackk hole to the past (they arrived at different times.) Nero stuck Spock on this planet so he could watch Vulcan explode. Don't know, feels like Spock would have had a better view from Nero's ship and Nero should have kept him there. Spock tells Kirk that Kirk's father was still alive in his future and Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise. McCoy asks young Spock if he's out of his Vulcan mind in a fun Karl Urban way.

Kirk and Nimoy Spock meet Scotty (played, for some reason, by Simon Pegg) who just happens to be stationed on the ice planet with an alien midget. He has a tribble. Scotty explains he was exiled for testing his transwarp beaming transporter on "Admiral Archer's prize beagle." I guess they though they should reference Enterprise because it was the most recent series but this line kind of makes Scotty look like a sociopath? Scotty's accent sure seems to appear and disappear with ever word! Spock helps Scotty finalise his transwarp beaming formula to send Scotty and Kirk to the Enterprise. Spock says he can't come because Kirk must fulfil his destin to become Captain of the Enterprise now. What. Where did he come up with that? In the original timeline he wouldn't be Captain for years yet. And it wasn't in these circumstances at all. So why would Spock think it's ah who cares don't try to make sense of it. Kirk and Scotty are beamed right to the Enterprise and holy shit that makes no sense again how the fuck did Spock know where the Enterprise even was? They should have emerged in space and died. Scotty does arrive in a water piper for some fucking reason at least. Captain Spock sends security after Kirk and Scotty. He wants to know how they managed to beam aboard while the ship was at warp. It's a good fucking question. Kirk and Spock have a face off as Kirk yells at Spock about not feeling anything when Amanda died. Spock finally loses it and attacks Kirk. He chokes him to near death until Sybok tells him to stop (everyone else just watches!) HOLY SHIT the lens flare is annoying in this scene. It was actually a pretty good scene before J.J. decided to blind the audience again. Spock steps down as Captain, leaving Kirk to step up and take command. Spock tells the crew they're going after Nero. Spock and Sybok have a nice scene where Sybok tells him he's grateful to have a son who is a child of Vulcan and Amanda's planet Earth. I'm still not totally into this version of Sybok though. Chekov figures out that the Enterprise can hide behind one of Saturn's moons to ambush Nero. Also he's 17. Spock his his groove back now and wants to be part of the team that beams over to Nero's ship to protect his mother's home world.

The Enterprise comes fling up from the moon of Saturn in a cool shot. Spock and Uhura have a close moment on the transporter pad as Kirk watches and finally discovers Uhura's first name. Kirk and Spock beam over and have a fast-paced running phaser fight with the Romulans. Shouldn't they have beamed over a security team too? Spock mind merges with a dying Romulan to find the location of the black hoel device and Pike. The Naruto begins to drill into Earth (right next to Starfleet Academy, conveniently.) Kirk and Spock find old Spock's ship with the red matter still on it. I think that's Majel Barrett's voice as the computer in her final on screen role but it doesn't really sound like her. Spock pilots the spinny ship while Kirk finds Nero. They have a fight above one of those bottomless pits all evil starships have. Spock manages to destroy the drill and save Earth. Nero leaves Kirk becaue he's so mad at Spock and the Naruto chases Spock's ship. Kirk has a fight with Ayel jumping between platforms. He shoots Ayel with his own gun. The wait (for Ayel's death) is over. Nero orders his ship to "fire everything!" as Spock flies at him. The Enterprise arrives just in time to shoot Nero's missiles out of the sky and save Spock. Kirk rescues Pike and Scotty beams everyone out in time. The Naruto is trapped in the mouth of a black hole after the red matter ignites. Kirk offers to save Nero and Spock isn't into it. Nero says he doesnt want assistance so Kirk blows him up. The Enterprise is nearly sucked into the black hole too. Scotty says "I'm giving it all she's got, Captain!" and Pegg's delivery is not a patch on Doohan's. He ejects and detonates the warp core and that saves the Enterprise like it usually does.

Young Spock finally meets Old Spock on Earth, at first mistaking him for Sybok. Old Spock explains that he didn't help because Spock and Kirk had to become friends as they need each other. Nimoy tells him to "live long." Kirk is given command of the Enterprise, relieving a wheelchair bound Pike. Yep, Kirk was a cadet like a week ago and now he's a full Captain. Nimoy watches and says "thrusters on full" which feels like a weird choice. Kirk takes the Enterprise out with his new crew who were mostly cadets five minutes ago and First Officer Spock. Nimoy does the "space, the final frontier" speech. The cast are listed alphabetically in the end credits, meaning John Cho is listed first despite having like six lines. I don't know why this bothers me, it just does! Imagine if Takei had been billed above Shatner in anything! At least Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy get the "with" and "and".

The previous movie Star Trek: Nemesis was released in December 2002. It was shit and it flopped. The tv series Star Trek: Enterprise ended in May 2005. It had finally gotten good in its fourth season, but it was too late and it became the first Star Trek series to be cancelled since the first back in the sixties. We were well and truly in the Trek wilderness when this movie was released in May 2009, no movie in six and a half years and no Trek at all in four. This was a very different version of Star Trek, literally set in another universe (which went against previous depictions of time travel in Star Trek, but you've just got to accept it, okay?) and not resembling anything that had come before. I can completely understand why the creative team made this choice: Nemesis was really bad and Enterprise wasn't very popular. Would the public have shown up for another movie with the TNG crew? You might think "YES, OF COURSE THEY WOULD HAVE, WACKY" but we live in the era NOSTALGIA MEDIA. Cast your mind back to 2009. Would you really have been excited about seeing the aging TNG crew again, after their last two movies were so bad? There was little chance Paramount would have gone with an Enterprise movie and a Deep Space 9 or Voyager movie has never seemed like a realistic possibility. So Paramount completely relaunched the franchise with a totally new creative team, cast and continuity. J.J. Abrams had directed Mission Impossible 3 for Paramount and it had been pretty good and saved that franchise after the disaster of Mission Impossible 2. (I think it was later that everyone turned on Tom Cruise for a while?) So he seemed like a fine choice to direct this new Star Trek, despite admitting that he didn't actually like Star Trek much and it being obvious he'd much rather be directing a Star Wars movie...

Is it any good though? I enjoyed it when I saw it in the cinema in 2009. It felt fresh and exciting. It probably didn't really feel like Star Trek to me, but at the time I could excuse that because it was the first in a new franchise. This was a total fast-paced, action blockbuster, obviously meant to appeal to the mass audience more than the Trek nerds (who would of course show up anyway!) and it made sense for Paramount to start over with a movie like this. And it was a huge hit! "The film was a box office success, grossing over $385.7 million worldwide against its $150 million production budget" says Wikipedia. That's a fuckton more than Nemeshit. So, at the time, despite it not really feeling like Star Trek to me, despite the online grumblings, I was pretty much okay with how this film turned out. It had to be this way to win the audience back. They could be more thoughtful and slow-paced in the sequels, right? Now that everyone loves Star Trek again, they could do proper Star Trek after this! Well, we'll see how that turned out when I get to the next movie.

IS IT ANY GOOD THOUGH? Wathing it in 2022 I'm less inclined to excuse its many fault. But it is well made. It's very fast, I never felt bored. The performances are mostly good. It looks good, the music's great. Objectively speak it's a good action blockbuster...

But yet, it's not Star Trek. It's all surface-level thrills. As I said it looks nice, but there's no long-lingering shots of anything. There's no real sense of awe. It doesn't give me the Star Trek feeling. People complain about First Contact being too much of an action movie for the TNG crew, but to me it always felt like Star Trek. Look at the scene with Picard and Lily, or Riker talking to Cochrane about his legacy, or the Vulcans arriving on Earth. Those are Star Trek scenes. Is there anything like that here? Not really! I'm not saying that makes this bad (it's not bad), but it's very much blockbuster film-making. There's an attemtp at something with Kirk and Spock, their relationships with their parents, contrasting the two. And some of it works and is quite nice, but overall it feels like it could be happening in any Abrams-directed movie. There's nothing uniquely Star Trek about it.

Chris Pine is a good charismatic actor, but he doesn't feel like Kirk here. I'm not saying he should have done a Shatner impersonation: that would have been horrible! Nobody could be the Shatner Kirk but Shatner. I think it's the writing that's to blame, as for the first half they portray him as a sleazy horndog type. That's not Kirk! Kirk respected women! The thing about him sleeping aorund with a different alien every week is a meme that the writers mistook for a crucial part of his character. The stuff with him perving on Uhura is embarrassing and doesn't really come to anything.

Quinto also suffers from comparisons to Nimoy, which isn't helped by having Nimoy appear in this movie. He does good at barely controlled anger bubbling under the surface, but doesn't get the chance to show the other sides of Spock.

Karl Urban is the most successful at creating a version of Bones which does feel like the original but also feels like a cool guy in his own right. Uhura really feels nothing like the original and seems to be an African American woman now rather than a proper African? Sulu is just there Chekov is just comedy accent guy...which is what he was in the original to be fair (but why does he keep his accent and Uhura loses hers?) Simon Pegg's Scotty accent is TERRIBLE and I know the defence is to say "YES WELL JAMES DOOHAN WASN'T SCOTTISH AND HIS ACCENT WAS TERRIBLE TOO." Yes, but that doesn't mean that Scotty always has to be played by someone who can't do a Scottish accent!

Nero is the most underwritten villain yet, though somehow Eric Bana manages to put in a very memorable performance. "Hello Christopher I'm Nero" is hilarious, but also a good bit of characterisation as the only way Nero makes any sense in this movie is if you think of him as being completely insane.

Really again I know it's a member but the lens flare is ridiculous. I'm not just complaining about the movie looking different from previous Trek, it's genuinely distracting.

I really dislike that Kirk is CAPTAIN by the end of the movie and that he has his full crew. Old Spock acts like this is DESTINY and had to happen now, but it's only happening because general audiences know this crew and that Kirk is a Captain. In movie it's really really silly!

So yeah. I enjoyed this more in 2009. I don't hate it now, it moves along well enough that you don't have time to get mad at it. J.J. is generally good at this kind of stuff when he's not handicapped by a terrible script. But knowing that the direct sequel was far worse really taints this for me! They had a hit on their hands and they totally squandered it with the next in the series. I still don't believe fourth movie will actually happen. Again though if you just watch this movie on its own and don't think about things (and maybe I'm guilty of giving nerd complaints too much weight) you''ll probably enjoy it.

SCORE: 7/10

 

[Cassie]

I thought it was a fun movie, too. I don't know if I'll ever watch it again. It's not that kind of Trek.

 

[The Question]

Simon Pegg's Scotty accent is TERRIBLE and I know the defence is to say "YES WELL JAMES DOOHAN WASN'T SCOTTISH AND HIS ACCENT WAS TERRIBLE TOO." Yes, but that doesn't mean that Scotty always has to be played by someone who can't do a Scottish accent!

They should have cast Paul McGillion as Scotty, instead of giving it to the human version of Jar Jar Binks.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

I've always said they mostly nailed the casting, so that wasn't the problem. I remember coming out of the theater thinking "What the fuck was that?", though. It seemed more like a parody. Maybe it was supposed to be? I dunno.