Daryl Tay.net

Star Trek

Unlike many Trekkies, I haven’t waited for years for a new Star Trek film. In fact, prior to watching the show today, I wasn’t sure which incarnation of Star Trek was which and found myself wondering “when’s Worf going to show up?”, until I realised that was a different Star Trek.

Armed with that much “knowledge” of Star Trek, I freely admit I wouldn’t have been bothered to watch the 2009 film if it weren’t for the creators like JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who’ve worked on many of my favourite shows like Alias, Lost and Fringe.

Whatever I was expecting going in the show (a space show) it wasn’t it. Instead we had multiple realities, alternate words and time travel (I don’t know if this has happened before on Star Trek), and it was just like watching an episode of Lost or Fringe.

I did pretty much enjoy the show, getting to know Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Scotty, McCoy and Chekov for the first time (I swear in one scene Kirk refers to him as jerkoff), but I will say I didn’t feel the “magic” of Star Wars, or the Matrix from the film.

The opening scene where Kirk’s dad sacrifices himself to save both Kirk’s mother and Kirk, as well as other crew members, is very emotionally powerful, as is young Spock’s musings about which path to choose in life. Unfortunately, the level of emotional tension eases once adult Kirk is brought into the picture with his arrogance and fight-picking for no apparent reason.

The biggest thing I didn’t like about the show was the portrayal of Captain Kirk. I don’t know if it’s down to the writing or Chris Pine’s acting, but it just didn’t work for me. He’s shown to be too much of a jackass throughout most of the show to really be the “hero” by show’s end, and the reconciliation between him and Spock just came too easily for me.

Speaking of Spock, old Spock (or Prime Spock) really revealed the awesomeness that is Leonard Nimoy and I think the few scenes he was in really added much needed weight to the show.

There were not Lost references as far as I could tell, the closest being the number on the Enterprise reading 1701, which backwards is 10(7+1) = 108. But you know, Lost fans see Lost everywhere, even when they don’t exist.

As a prequel (or a light reboot), I think the show works. It’s kinda like watching Spider-Man for the first time and finding out who he is and what is character’s like, but having to wait till the sequel for the story to really develop. As long as JJ Abrams and gang are on board, I will be too.

ps: You can read the review that the girlfriend put up here.