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major_clangerWhy the new Star Trek film is so good, and in particular why J J Abrams is not Russell T Davies but might have matched one of his achievements.
I saw Star Trek last night, along with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chilperic, fjm and purplecthulhu. We all loved it; what might easily have been a ham-fisted effort to remake a four-decade-old TV show was instead a splendid homage, well-acted and faithful to the original characters whilst developing them far beyond the originals.
But the most fundamental reason it was so good? Because J J Abrams had the courage to escape from the crushing weight of 11 movies and over six hundred TV episodes, but the style and wit to do so in a way that was actually intensely respectful to the original continuity, even nodding in places to fan canon. Because he avoided the need to nit-pickingly weave a path through the thickets of increasingly contradictory 'history' of the Star Trek universe. And because, unlike Russell T Davies, he was able to resist the temptation to hit the great big plot reset switch. (In the finale, I was convinced until the very end that some sort of technobabble such as the jettisoning of the warp cores into the singularity would throw everyone back in time and avert the destruction of Vulcan. But no, Abram's decrees that the planet's gone, and we've just got to live with it.)
One of the comments Abrams made about the new movie was that it was 'not your father's Star Trek', and it certainly isn't. Although what we're left with in the final scene look superficially like the original series, it is different in many crucial respects. Kirk is captain of the Enterprise at a far younger age, the full crew are united from the outset, and Christopher Pike's tenure as captain is limited to part of one short mission (so that's 'The Cage' and 'The Menagerie' out the window). Most important of all, this is a new timeline with no Vulcan and next to no Vulcans. The culture that discovered Earth, took Humanity to the stars and co-founded the Federation is gone. There's a massive great schism between this new history and that of the whole original franchise, and no attempt to take it forward can ignore that.
And this will be the real test of Abrams' achievement. Has he done an inspired one-off, or is this the Trek counterpart of what Davies did achieve with Doctor Who, a restart so effective that it takes off in its own right? A sequel to Star Trek will have to both honour and respect the original, as this film has done, whilst continuing to strike out its own path in terms of distancing itself from the original continuity.
(*'Total Bollocks Overdrive' is a trade mark ofswisstone and is used without any permission whatsoever.)
I saw Star Trek last night, along with
chilperic, fjm and purplecthulhu. We all loved it; what might easily have been a ham-fisted effort to remake a four-decade-old TV show was instead a splendid homage, well-acted and faithful to the original characters whilst developing them far beyond the originals.But the most fundamental reason it was so good? Because J J Abrams had the courage to escape from the crushing weight of 11 movies and over six hundred TV episodes, but the style and wit to do so in a way that was actually intensely respectful to the original continuity, even nodding in places to fan canon. Because he avoided the need to nit-pickingly weave a path through the thickets of increasingly contradictory 'history' of the Star Trek universe. And because, unlike Russell T Davies, he was able to resist the temptation to hit the great big plot reset switch. (In the finale, I was convinced until the very end that some sort of technobabble such as the jettisoning of the warp cores into the singularity would throw everyone back in time and avert the destruction of Vulcan. But no, Abram's decrees that the planet's gone, and we've just got to live with it.)
One of the comments Abrams made about the new movie was that it was 'not your father's Star Trek', and it certainly isn't. Although what we're left with in the final scene look superficially like the original series, it is different in many crucial respects. Kirk is captain of the Enterprise at a far younger age, the full crew are united from the outset, and Christopher Pike's tenure as captain is limited to part of one short mission (so that's 'The Cage' and 'The Menagerie' out the window). Most important of all, this is a new timeline with no Vulcan and next to no Vulcans. The culture that discovered Earth, took Humanity to the stars and co-founded the Federation is gone. There's a massive great schism between this new history and that of the whole original franchise, and no attempt to take it forward can ignore that.
And this will be the real test of Abrams' achievement. Has he done an inspired one-off, or is this the Trek counterpart of what Davies did achieve with Doctor Who, a restart so effective that it takes off in its own right? A sequel to Star Trek will have to both honour and respect the original, as this film has done, whilst continuing to strike out its own path in terms of distancing itself from the original continuity.
(*'Total Bollocks Overdrive' is a trade mark of
swisstone and is used without any permission whatsoever.)
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Date: 2009-05-11 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 06:03 am (UTC)Two choices here - if you can manage it, a daytime showing in the week will be quite low on anything but some pensioners and people out of work. On the other hand Vue, bless them, do over 18 screenings in the evenings - so if you can find a Vue cinema you can, at least, be spared the kids.