New Star Trek Film Honors the Original Series

The new Star Trek film has been out a couple of weeks, now, and after the hype has died down, it's worth a dispassionate discussion. The film deals with the creation of the crew of the Enterprise in The Original Series [TOS to fanatics]. Actors have faced the challenge of taking one iconic roles without doing mere impersonation, the special effects people have easily out shown the TV show, and the problems with time-travel science fiction stories remain. It is a fine film, but one feels it was over-hyped.

Perhaps the toughest role was Zachary Quinto's Spock. Leonard Nimoy (who takes part in the latest film) plays a half-human, half-Vulcan first officer. As part of his Vulcan philosophy, he eschews emotion in all forms in favor of logic – a noble if unrealistic goal for humans. Thus, young Quinto must find a way to act without showing much emotion. He doesn't do a bad job of it.

Among the other cast members, Chris Pine does an admirable job of playing William Shatner's old role of Captain James Tiberius Kirk – being a better actor helped. Karl Urban as DeForest Kelley's Dr. Leonard “Bones" McCoy was as close to an impersonation without crossing the line as one could get. Zoe Saldaña as Nyota Uhuru, Nichell Nichols' former character, was credible, but written awkwardly – she did the best she could with what she was given. Simon Pegg as Montgomery “Scotty” Scott plays the role with more humor (as if he could help it) than did the late James Doohan, but it worked. John Cho, as Hikaru Sulu, was the equal of George Takei in the role and proved he could do much more than “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” Finally, Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekhov plays the role with the seriousness of a 17-year-old, which Chekhov is in this film. Sadly, he chose to keep the “V” for “W” accent that Walter Koenig had in the original, and it is one that doesn't ring true to those familiar with Russian.

The real downfall of the film, to the extent it has one, arises from the inherent trouble with time-travel stories. For those who don't much mind the logical difficulties, then the film is a grand slam. However, among real sci-fi buffs, there are a few problems with this story. There is no reason to spoil the plot, but one can say the film ends with certain divergences from Star Trek canon. It will be interesting to see if the next film (most of the cast have signed a 3-movie deal) tries to resolve the divergences, deals with the alternate reality, or simply ignores the changes.

Star Trek remains a powerful franchise with millions of devoted fans. The reason for this goes far beyond sci-fi geekdom. Back in the awful 1960s when TOS was on the air, America seemed to be falling apart due to a social revolution or two and a war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the world was on the knife edge of nuclear war each and every day. And this silly TV show had a simple message with its bold exploration of space by a crew from every part of Earth, and a few other planets -- “We're going to make it.” The rest is future history.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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