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daibhidcWow.
That was awesome.
I nearly didn't go. I saw Wolverine last week, and I don't normally go to the pictures twice in the same month. And, while I like the original series, my Trek-fan loyalties are mostly with the later series and, darnit, I wanted a DS9 movie!
On the other hand, I've seen every Star Trek film at the cinema since I was thirteen (The Final Frontier), and the buzz about this has been pretty good. So I decided I should go.
And, as I believe I mentioned, it was awesome.
Confession time, I'm a continuity-geek. A major one. I'm the guy complaining DC Comics' editors weren't doing their jobs, because the death of Orion occured three different ways (in Death of the New Gods, Countdown and Final Crisis). I'm the guy who wants the Doctor Who New Adventures to be in the same canon as the Big Finish audios, and is annoyed that this means Benny goes through the same adventure twice, with and without the Doctor (Just War). And, by that standard, I should be complaining that this movie got everything wrong, right?
But it didn't. It didn't break the rules, it changed them, and I'm totally cool with that as long as it gets explained[1]. History may alter obviously with the attack on Vulcan, but it's made quite clear it altered on the day of Kirk's birth, and as a result they can justifiably change anything they want. The only two things I found jarring were the engine room (it doesn't look like a place where matter and antimatter are anihillated, creating the awesome energies needed to warp space itself, it looks like the boiler room of a submarine. And not a particularly modern submarine, either), and the realisation that the bridge wasn't in the little bubble on the top (I'm not sure there was room for it in the little bubble on the top; is it me or was this ship about half the size of the one in the series?)
And that didn't stop them making plenty nods to the past; the Kelvin uniforms are clearly close descendents of Enterprise's jumpsuits, and there's an even more blatant nod with the throwaway line about Admiral Archer and his unfortunate beagle. Old Spock seems to spend a fair amount of time quoting himself, and I think one of the crewmembers on the Kelvin was the same race as the three-armed helmsman in The Animated Series! And that's all aside from the histories of the crew; Kirk's cheating on the Koboyashi Maru and Spock rejecting the Science Academy (although Sarek seemed a lot more understanding in this timeline). (And am I right in thinking that Bones's divorce is from an unmade episode by D.C. Fontana?)
The actors were brillaint, nicely balanced to suggest the characters without doing impressions of the originals (except for Zachary Quinto, who simply was Spock as surely as if they'd actually dragged a twentysomething Nimoy forward in time), although I was slightly distracted by the realisation that Chris Pine looks a lot more like William Shatner when he's being strangled. Simon Pegg was an excellent Scotty, and I don't know why I ever doubted him.
And the story itself was solid. I was slightly taken aback by Spock/Uhura, because it seemed so out of left field, but in an altered history it works. (At least, unless Christine Chapel gets introduced, at which point I'll probably embarrass myself by shouting "OTP!!!") And the destruction of Vulcan was genuinely shocking, because it's something that we know shouldn't have happened. I didn't think Nero was a very compelling villain though, although that may be because on a ship full of bald Romulans (apparently Shinzon's Praetorship had a profound effect on Romulus in one regard, at least) I kept losing track of which one he was!
Looking forward to Star Trek: The New Original Series Prequel Motion Picture II ( which I'm prepared to bet will reveal that one of the consequences of Nero's incursion is that the Klingons got a cure for the Augument Plague some twenty years early).
[1]Indeed, my continuity-geekery is instead fascinated by wondering how everything else goes in the new timeline; I look forward to spin-off novels explaining what this universe's 24th century looks like. (Since the novels currently seem prepared to take more risks with the "main" timeline than alternate ones, I confidently predict that Tuvok's ancestors all made it...)
That was awesome.
I nearly didn't go. I saw Wolverine last week, and I don't normally go to the pictures twice in the same month. And, while I like the original series, my Trek-fan loyalties are mostly with the later series and, darnit, I wanted a DS9 movie!
On the other hand, I've seen every Star Trek film at the cinema since I was thirteen (The Final Frontier), and the buzz about this has been pretty good. So I decided I should go.
And, as I believe I mentioned, it was awesome.
Confession time, I'm a continuity-geek. A major one. I'm the guy complaining DC Comics' editors weren't doing their jobs, because the death of Orion occured three different ways (in Death of the New Gods, Countdown and Final Crisis). I'm the guy who wants the Doctor Who New Adventures to be in the same canon as the Big Finish audios, and is annoyed that this means Benny goes through the same adventure twice, with and without the Doctor (Just War). And, by that standard, I should be complaining that this movie got everything wrong, right?
But it didn't. It didn't break the rules, it changed them, and I'm totally cool with that as long as it gets explained[1]. History may alter obviously with the attack on Vulcan, but it's made quite clear it altered on the day of Kirk's birth, and as a result they can justifiably change anything they want. The only two things I found jarring were the engine room (it doesn't look like a place where matter and antimatter are anihillated, creating the awesome energies needed to warp space itself, it looks like the boiler room of a submarine. And not a particularly modern submarine, either), and the realisation that the bridge wasn't in the little bubble on the top (I'm not sure there was room for it in the little bubble on the top; is it me or was this ship about half the size of the one in the series?)
And that didn't stop them making plenty nods to the past; the Kelvin uniforms are clearly close descendents of Enterprise's jumpsuits, and there's an even more blatant nod with the throwaway line about Admiral Archer and his unfortunate beagle. Old Spock seems to spend a fair amount of time quoting himself, and I think one of the crewmembers on the Kelvin was the same race as the three-armed helmsman in The Animated Series! And that's all aside from the histories of the crew; Kirk's cheating on the Koboyashi Maru and Spock rejecting the Science Academy (although Sarek seemed a lot more understanding in this timeline). (And am I right in thinking that Bones's divorce is from an unmade episode by D.C. Fontana?)
The actors were brillaint, nicely balanced to suggest the characters without doing impressions of the originals (except for Zachary Quinto, who simply was Spock as surely as if they'd actually dragged a twentysomething Nimoy forward in time), although I was slightly distracted by the realisation that Chris Pine looks a lot more like William Shatner when he's being strangled. Simon Pegg was an excellent Scotty, and I don't know why I ever doubted him.
And the story itself was solid. I was slightly taken aback by Spock/Uhura, because it seemed so out of left field, but in an altered history it works. (At least, unless Christine Chapel gets introduced, at which point I'll probably embarrass myself by shouting "OTP!!!") And the destruction of Vulcan was genuinely shocking, because it's something that we know shouldn't have happened. I didn't think Nero was a very compelling villain though, although that may be because on a ship full of bald Romulans (apparently Shinzon's Praetorship had a profound effect on Romulus in one regard, at least) I kept losing track of which one he was!
Looking forward to Star Trek: The New Original Series Prequel Motion Picture II ( which I'm prepared to bet will reveal that one of the consequences of Nero's incursion is that the Klingons got a cure for the Augument Plague some twenty years early).
[1]Indeed, my continuity-geekery is instead fascinated by wondering how everything else goes in the new timeline; I look forward to spin-off novels explaining what this universe's 24th century looks like. (Since the novels currently seem prepared to take more risks with the "main" timeline than alternate ones, I confidently predict that Tuvok's ancestors all made it...)
