Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

J.J. Abrams ventures into the final frontier with a new cast

By Carl Lawrence

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I have a number of problems with the plot of this film, not the least of which is its seemingly, on the surface at least, erasing of all prior original series-related canon, which is in fact its greatest sin, and its overall implications don’t even stop there because it renders virtually all subsequent modern Trek mythology established in later shows null and void as well. That amounts to hundreds of episodes and ten movies rendered completely moot by virtue of their being undone. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would ever say this, but this is worse than if they were to have resurrected Kirk from the dead post-Generations the way a contingent of the fan base had been pining for over a period of many years because the implications here in contrast are much more far-reaching. J.J. Abrams and his two writers, along with Leonard Nimoy, have stated in interviews that what takes place in this movie occurs in an alternate universe. However, the clear evidence attesting to that is lacking in the film itself. My review will therefore proceed taking that into account for what it is: an absence of hard and credible evidence.

In terms of action, the film opens well. Nero, the Romulan Captain of a ship called the Narada, emerges from the future and into the past, initially without his even realizing it. In a rage over having just witnessed the destruction of his planet in his own era, he attacks the first ship he sees: a Federation Starship (the USS Kelvin) that also carries Kirk’s father and his pregnant mother. The Captain of the Kelvin is instructed to beam aboard Nero’s ship during the assault and Kirk’s father is placed in command. As a result of the peril at hand, Winona Kirk goes into labor as the ship is being evacuated and Kirk’s father sacrifices himself and the ship in order for the crew to escape safely. High intensity action and I couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance of the escape shuttles to the shuttles seen in the original series –a nod and homage of a sort that I really liked and appreciated.

Jump-shot to Kirk as a boy racing a 20th century Corvette recklessly over the side of a cliff just after being warned by his stepfather not to damage the prized vehicle. The young lad barely makes it out of the classic sports car in time and pulls himself up from the side of the cliff as the automobile crashes to the bottom of the canyon. I can understand some boyish impetuousness, but this is just plain crazy. Kirk’s mother is never seen again. His stepfather is never shown and never heard from again, and this standalone scene can almost be edited out of the film entirely, but it does help set the stage for the older Kirk we’re about to meet, who—to put it mildly—still has issues.

He hits on the first girl he sees in the next scene, which happens to be Uhura, and in his bold inebriated stupor then proceeds to pick a fight with four Starfleet cadets, asserting that they’re short on muscle to put him in his place. Chris Pine is good in the role, and this is an angrier Kirk than we’ve come to know up until now, with the underlying reason for his defiant rage a result of the absence of the father he never got to know and who wasn’t there to raise him. (This becomes clearer later in the movie when he meets the elder Spock and specifically asks him if he ever knew his father in the other timeline that Spock came from.)

Overall the stage is set and the film doesn’t waste any more time on Kirk’s misspent youth. Pike sits down and has a father-son type talk with him following the bar fight and manages to convince him to join Starfleet. Initially I had some reservations about Bruce Greenwood in the role of Pike, but he does a fine job. What happens with his character ultimately, as with all the main characters, is another matter entirely, however.

As we met up with Kirk as a young lad, so too is the case for Spock as well, who has a bad encounter on his home planet, Vulcan, with full-blooded Vulcan boys intent on tormenting him into showing human anger and emotion resulting from his mixed heritage. This is certainly consistent with what we already know about the character’s background and childhood, but what follows later in his early adulthood is not. These two principal characters—Kirk and Spock—meet in Starfleet Academy following Kirk’s having cheated on the Kobayashi Maru Test, which, as it turns out here, had been designed, or at the very least maintained by Spock. The original series and big screen features in no way indicates anything like this, and the writers rely here on vagueness and a lack of implication in those prior films to reach this contrivance. And while Kirk’s life up to this point has taken some very different turns than what he had experienced in the original unaltered timeline, Spock’s existence appears to have gone unaffected up to this point for the most part, seemingly consistent in both.

Here is where things begin to get hairy again, however, because unbeknownst to all, and what Kirk will shortly figure out is that Nero has lurked about quietly for the last quarter of a century and decides that it is now time to re-emerge finally. Another contrivance, and instead of taking a more logical course by having Nero’s ship disappear into the black hole that hurled him into the past immediately following the destruction of the Kelvin, only to have him reappear again twenty-five years later, with it being only mere moments to him and his crew, writers Robeto Orci and Alex Kurtzman choose to have them skulking around in the shadows for that period of time waiting for Spock to appear. One wonders why Nero’s crew would remain steadfast and loyal throughout all that time, and even though they’re Romulans, who like their Vulcan cousins have a considerably longer lifespan than human beings, it is nevertheless somewhat remarkable that Nero and his crew show no signs of age nonetheless compared to how they look when they’re first encountered at the beginning of the movie.

Zachary Quinto does a fairly adequate job as Spock, but his portrayal is very different from Nimoy’s in the original series or the movies that followed. While we shouldn’t have expected nor hoped for simple impersonations by any of these actors in their respective roles, it’s more noticeable in Quinto’s case that the performance varies from his original counterpart because Nimoy is in the movie, which also serves as an unintentional reminder. Some of what Quinto does in the role is also very out of character, such as stranding acting First Officer Kirk on the inhospitable far side of planet Delta Vega (nice nod to “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” though seemingly inaccurate nonetheless), and damn near getting him killed as a result. And while the planet harkens back to the second pilot episode of the original series, where it was Spock’s recommendation to strand Gary Mitchell (who is nowhere to be found here interestingly enough) once he began developing superior god-like powers, and thereby endangering the ship, young Kirk is hardly the same kind of threat here in contrast, although events leading up to this perpetrated by Nero could be deemed enough for Spock to behave in a seemingly irrational manner. Nevertheless, it still amounts to a lot for Kirk to forgive once he makes his way back to the Enterprise.

It’s on Delta Vega that Kirk meets the elder Spock as he runs for his life from a giant predator into a cave. (I guess we’re supposed to chalk this “chance meeting” that defies astronomical odds up to “fate.”) From there the two meet up with Scotty, who, in addition to being awkwardly brilliant, is intended for comic relief more than ever before in the annals of Trekdom, which incidentally, no longer matters a darn anyway as previously pointed out. Upon their return to the Enterprise, young Kirk follows through on elder Spock’s instruction to expose Spock the younger as being emotionally compromised after the destruction of the Vulcan home world by Nero, and in doing so the writers blow an excellent opportunity to show the shrewd and cunning side of Kirk and his ability to outsmart Spock the younger at a critical moment by having Kirk remove Spock from command after his outburst instead of Spock removing himself. I guess they felt they were being true to the Spock character here by having him realize the extent to which he is emotionally compromised right away rather than it taking a little longer for him to realize it, but it would have provided a great distinction between the two characters had it been handled the way I just suggested instead, while also helping to illustrate why, of the two, it is Kirk who actually belongs in the command chair.

At least with The Wrath of Khan there was the strong sense of a continuing saga, with an old familiar foe coming to exact vengeance. Here, however, the villain appears out of nowhere, and with undo prejudice proceeds to wipe out all of established canon in the blink of an eye, basically telling longtime fans of the franchise of all stripes to just forget about all they’ve watched for the last forty-plus years because none of it matters any longer. (Should that be viewed as an appreciation of the fan base, or as a slap in their collective group of faces?)

The film’s climax, while exhilarating to many, was in many respects nothing we haven’t already seen before, which is why it fell somewhat flat for me, although points for showing the Enterprise firing scores of high intensity bursts, very atypical of what longtime fans are accustomed to seeing, are in fact well deserved. However, the movie ends on a note not consistent with the characters we have come to know, especially in the case of the elder Spock, who never would have stood for the destruction of his home world. The Spock we know would have convinced young Kirk to help him undo the damage that had been done by Nero by their going back in time to change a course of events that was never intended in the first place as evidenced by the original timeline (and deep down this is something Kirk also knows to be true from a much more personal standpoint). That’s just basic “Star Trek 101” – we’ve seen it many times before in similar situations, and the rest of the new Enterprise crew here would have agreed to help restore things to their natural order simply because it was the right thing to do. Kirk’s father need not have died in vain as a result, nor the six billion inhabitants on Vulcan, not to mention their future generations that had been deprived of ever being born as a result of Nero’s actions, none of which was ever meant to be. Genocide on a scale so massive that it is almost inconceivable is instead allowed to stand.

Star Trek has always been about hope –hope for mankind, hope for our future, but with that ending, hope is in very short supply and hard to come by …to say the least.
…And if it all really does take place in an alternate universe as Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman have been saying for the better part of a year at this point, they really should make that irrefutably and abundantly clear in the sequel so that there is no longer any doubt.

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