And I’d say the Trek community was overdue for a Good One, so thank you, Great Bird of the Galaxy.

My biggest worry about this film was that the characters would seem like strangers.  That it wouldn’t feel like Star Trek and that the whole effect would be laughable.  But while there were a few moments when my suspension of disbelief was stretched a little far (space diving?  magic unfolding sword?), on the whole, I couldn’t be more pleased.

All our old friends were recognizable, despite having new faces, and they acted and spoke the way one expected them to.  Kirk is a reckless adventurer.  Spock is logical, conflicted, and is quickly developing a martyr complex.  McCoy doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with space travel.  And so forth.  The instant – but not unconditional – bond between Kirk and McCoy worked, and the gradual development of their relationship with Spock unfolded well.  None of it, mind you, quite the way I pictured it, but it worked and was consistent with the characters, and I liked it.

And I always love it when the other recurring characters get to come out of the shadows a bit.  Uhura got to show her chops at xenolinguistics.  Chekov has apparently become a boy genius – not too much of a stretch, since in the original series, he sometimes fills in for Spock at the science station.  (Although… I do want to know what a seventeen-year-old who isn’t Wesley Crusher is doing on the bridge of a starship.)  And Simon Pegg’s Scotty was a lot of fun, though I had trouble looking at him and thinking “Scotty” instead of “Simon Pegg.”

Some of the accents were a little… interesting.  Simon Pegg and Anton Yelchin probably had more authentic accents as Scotty and Chekov than their predecessors ever did, and though Chekov’s was a little strong, I thought the effect was charming.  McCoy’s accent seemed to come and go and never sounded quite right to me, but given that Karl Urban is a New Zealander, and was otherwise wonderful, I’m willing to give that a pass.

For those who would prefer to avoid spoilers, I’ll hide everything else behind the cut, but I do recommend reviews of the film from NPR and the New York Times, neither of which give away anything you won’t have gleaned from the trailers already.

Hie thee away spoiler-phobes, ’cause here we go.

In every interview I’ve read with the writers of this film, they’ve been coy about whether to call the movie a “reboot” of the franchise or a “prequel” or what, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand.  It’s neither.  I think what the movie does is to take the original timeline, acknowledge it (through the presence of Nimoy’s Spock), and then present a time travel story in which – shocker here – the aim is not to “fix” the timeline back into what it was before.  The aim is merely to keep the universe in recognizable condition and save as many lives as possible.  So it’s the same Star Trek, but not quite.  When Russell T. Davies brought back Doctor Who in 2005, his twist was that the Doctor now seems to be the last of his people.  J.J. Abrahms has brought back Star Trek, but has wiped out the planet Vulcan, and Amanda Grayson along with it.  New dynamics and new storytelling possibilities are ready to unfold.

So TOS episode “Journey to Babel” couldn’t happen in this universe – no Amanda (!!!), and no 18-year quarrel between Spock and Sarek.  “Balance of Terror,” which first introduced the Romulans, and in which it was a shock to find that they look like Vulcans, is also pretty much kaput.  But in a meta storytelling sense, who would want them to re-do all the old stories?  They all happened – they’re what made Nimoy’s Spock the man he is – we had no indication that changing his past was changing his memories.  They happened, and there’s room for more stories.  That’s good enough for me.

And it’s not that canon and continuity have been thrown out.  Kirk is still attracted to Orion chicks.  Sulu is the man you want in a sword fight.  Of course the guy unlucky enough to space jump in a red suit is the one who doesn’t come back.  Spock quotes Sherlock Holmes, Pike ends up in a wheelchair (though mercifully without becoming a quadriplegic), and all the familiar catchphrases are here, from “I’m a doctor” to “The engines canna take any more!” to “Set your phasers on stun” to “Fascinating.”

Happily, Abrahms and his team have added to the mythology of Star Trek as well as taking away.  It’s eminently fitting for Kirk, who never seems to feel comfortable except in space, to have been born in a shuttlepod, in the midst of the sort of space battle that will come to define his career.  And Spock, who, under the effects of a space virus in “The Naked Time,” wept for his mother, who had a son who could never say he loved her – what was the final straw that led young Spock to pummel the other boy?  Insulting his mother.  And just as we were presented with – have always been presented with – a Kirk and a Spock who are ying and yang, I loved seeing the contrast between the young conflicted Spock and the older Spock who has learned how to live in his skin.

And despite my distress over the fate of planet Vulcan and Amanda Grayson, they got the Vulcans right.  We heard about the control and mastery of emotion, not the absence or purging of it, and we were reminded that they do this in the first place because they know as a people how dangerous their strong emotions have been to them in the long-ago past.  And loss has clearly mellowed Sarek with a quickness:  his quarrel with Spock has either ended earlier in this universe, or it never happened.  I wasn’t crazy about Ben Cross as Sarek – I thought he didn’t have the gravitas Mark Leonard used to convey – but I did think the final scene between Spock and Sarek was lovely.  Controlling emotions never means one doesn’t have them.

Speaking of love, the relationship between Spock and Uhura was a little… weird.  I feel like I shouldn’t be okay with it, but  I think I mostly am.  Mostly, I’m vaguely shocked by the implication that Spock was breaking the usual taboo (and I assume such a rule would be in place at the Academy) about relationships between an instructor and a pupil.  But I’m also more than a little amused that Uhura chose Spock over Kirk (not an uncommon indication of being a geek girl).

It’s not a perfect movie.  There’s plenty of room for nitpicks.  I want to know why McCoy seemed to spend the same three years at Starfleet Academy that Kirk did – clearly, he had already gone to medical school, so was officer training taking three years?  (And if not, why was he still in the red cadet’s uniform?)  Pug wasn’t happy with the portrayal of the science of black holes.  If you want to find all the little holes and faults, you won’t be disappointed.  But I was pleased enough by the tone and feel of the movie, and happy enough that they got the characters right, that I’m willing to handwave some of the details.

The writing was good and the cast were note perfect.  I want them to go make sequels.  Or better yet, a new TV show.  Now, please?

First, an editorial I particularly enjoyed about NASA, Star Trek, and the presidential campaign: The Next Space Frontier. While exploring the final frontier is hardly a high priority for our next president, it’s nice to see that the three front-runners all express support for the space program. (There are links to specifics within the editorial.)

And a few items that make you feel good about the Star Trek movie due out in summer 2009:

• In an interview with the Australian Herald-Sun, Simon Pegg (cast as Scotty) said with regard to whether the film will be “serious science-fiction”:

  Very much so. It’s not at all ironic. It’s not a jokey take on the original series. It’s a faithful and loving installment in the ongoing mythology of the show.

• Leonard Nimoy (who will be in it) seems to be very pleased about it. So does Nichelle Nichols (who is not).
• And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer (fyi, video begins when the page loads). It makes me happy.

And hey, look what happens when I ignore the Harry Potter news sites…the seventh movie is actually going to be the seventh and eighth movies: they’re splitting Deathly Hallows into two films. This means that Half-Blood Prince will be released next Christmas, Deathly Hallows, part I a year later, and Deathly Hallows, part II the following summer.

Now go eat some pie! I plan to!

(Yeah, it really was ten years. Elf, didn’t we go see at least one of them together? I could be mis-remembering, but it sounds plausible for ten years ago.)

Next item, let’s look forward to the next opportunity to see Star Trek on the big screen! I’m talking about the potentially spoiler-icious link posted on Nodwick yesterday. Yes, ladies and gents, behind the cut is Spoiler City…assuming, of course, that the source is actually in the know. Which we don’t know. But just in case, you’ve been warned.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Potential spoilers…

Yup. If you must tell a Starfleet Academy story, it’s gotta be how Kirk beat the no-win scenario. However, I don’t think this is an Academy story because they’ve cast the entire Enterprise deck crew. And to reveal that all these people happened to know each other at the Academy (and, moreover, were all there at the same time, which just doesn’t work) starts to sound like a Trek version of A Pup Named Scooby Doo or Muppet Babies (”All the same relationships, but cute and little!” I exaggerate. And for note, I adored Muppet Babies when I was about five. But that isn’t the point. Moving on…).

I’m also skeptical that the actors who have been cast would have been chosen if the characters are supposed to be Academy-age. I know these things are fluid in Hollywood, but that’s my hunch.

So I suppose there could be a part of the movie that involves the Academy and the Kobayashi Maru, but I think most of the story will take place on the Enterprise.

I also think a storyline that depends on the assumption that Kirk’s absence would change Federation history would have to be handled very, very carefully — (A) it sounds too much like things that were said in Enterprise about Archer and it got old, and (B) worshiping your main character is just kind of tacky. I don’t deny that his absence would change Federation history — I’ll spare you the list; you can make your own — but that’s entirely beside the point.

However. Incorporating the Guardian of Forever would be awesome. Brilliant! Fantastic!

Futher movie news: Appearing at some point in the movie are Kirk’s father and Spock’s mother… played by actors who are about the same age as those who are playing Kirk and Spock, so maybe we’re flitting all over time. Huh.

First Star Trek casting announcement made at Comic Con!

Zachary Quinto plays the sinister brain-eating Sylar on Heroes (which Courtney and I got ourselves hooked on last year) and does a marvelous job of creating an utterly creepy character you love to hate. This year we’ve seen Sylar as a somewhat nerdy watchmaker, a distressed son (he’d fit right in at the Bates Motel), a brilliant but raving lunatic, and a scheming arch-villain. I figure somewhere in that range, he can do Spock. He looks just right, too, so I’m pretty excited.

Plus, Leonard Nimoy is coming back to play an older Spock. Please let this one be good…we’re due a good one, right?

I spent the afternoon tripping around the city to do some preliminary Christmas non-shopping, which was fun. Spent a little while in the MIT Press Bookstore — I didn’t see any gift ideas there, but a few interesting-looking volumes caught my eye:

Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady. Even though my grandmother was a hospital dietician, she hadn’t heard of anyone who was really allergic to milk (as opposed to lactose intolerant) until when my parents learned that their baby girl had such an allergy. This could be a pretty cool book.

Hamlet on the Holodeck. I don’t know if this would actually be any good, but when I picked it up in the store, it looked like a very Jane sort of book — exploring communication and narrative and new technology. Looking closer, it’s been out since 1998, so that alters the definition of “new technology” in the last sentence. I wouldn’t buy it (without further investigation or recommendation), but it intrigues me.

And here’s one I don’t even really have any interest in reading, but the cover made me laugh and I think it will amuse you too: Textual Poachers.

I had two job interviews last week. The first was for a job I really wanted, as a guide at a local museum (a colonial house), and though I thought it went quite well, it apparently did not go quite well enough. Got the official rejection yesterday morning.

The second was an office assistant job in the payroll office at the college and consisted mainly of the interviewer talking at me for thirty or forty minutes (nice fellow, don’t get me wrong, but definately a talker). I was at the low point of a brush with a cold that day, and I thought I hadn’t come off as well as I might have – hard to get a word in at the best of times, and it was not the best of times. But he got back to me this morning and offered me the job and could I start Friday? Since it’s Payroll, part of my job would be delivering timecards all over campus every other Friday. It’s not much, but I’m feeling insecure about turning anything down right now and I’m leaning toward the idea of working two part-time jobs – especially since this seems so minimal. So I accepted the offer.

Coursework has been pretty light thus far, but it’s starting to pick up. I have two courses: a requisite overview of magazine publishing and a course in magazine design. Design started in earnest on Tuesday, as we had to present our first rough drafts of layouts for pages of mock-magazines. The overview will, I hope, finally kick into gear next week as we start work on the big project of the course (also revolving around a made-up magazine).

In lighter news, I’ve discovered television this month, partly due to Courtney’s influence, partly due to my having too much time on my hands, and partly due to the fact that I have a tv in my room. I’m not sure which is more is more novel, owning a television or having such a thing in my bedroom. Shockingly decadant. So I’ve discovered DS9, the new Doctor Who, Heroes, Gilmore Girls, and those are just the ones I’ve decided I like. Plus I’ve been going through Courtney’s collection of Buffy and Angel DVDs – after all, it is Joss Whedon…

Item 2: …and file this one under “being a snob.” I finished Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons yesterday morning. Funny thing about Dan Brown. I read The DaVinci Code when it first came out and heard from my mother that it was making a splash among our Unitarian friends, who were intrigued by some of the wacky ideas it presents and appreciative of the way it presents the sacred feminine. I enjoyed those aspects — and hey, it’s a fun chase story if you’re in the mood for that sort of thing. I was also impressed that one villain committed a murder by abusing his knowledge of another character’s peanut allergy. (Awareness is spreading! Yay!)

However, over time I met more and more people — often English majors, but not always, so I will characterize them as people who enjoy good books — whose were disgusted with Dan Brown. Not because The DaVinci Code presents ideas they were uncomfortable with, but because, they would say, the writing is just no good. And since I read the book so quickly and since I don’t remember noticing it one way or the other, I don’t argue the point.

Anyway, my mother picked up a copy of Angels & Demons not long ago (at an airport, I think it was, for something to read on the plane), and left it on my to-read pile. So I brought it with me.

Well, it was good enough that I couldn’t put it down. But Dan Brown is definately on the formulaic side. And after hearing all the complaints about what poor literature he writes, I noticed it too. And the book definately had more than its share of “oh, please” moments. It needs all the suspension of disbelief of Indiana Jones — and provides some of the same thrills (outrageously executed murders, hero not dying when he should have been killed three times already, dangling from high places, and (like DaVinci Code) has a huge twist right at the end). Character development is only cursory, and motivation is provided at the rate of one big secret per main character — generally not enough to move them out of the “static character” category.

All in all? Beach reading. More fit for a library trip than a bookstore purchase.

Item 3 (later): When asked the time this afternoon, I actually said, “Almost five ’til half past two.” My poor roommate was so confused. Damn German! My brain has been permanently Deutsch-ified!

Star Trek Inspirational Posters. I mean, the 20th century must have been a great place…’cause they were always going there.

(Previous line and title both shamelessly stolen from creator of the above-linked posters. Because I just wish I were that funny.)

There are a few clinkers, but I have too many “favorites” to start listing them.

(Btw, I’m a hack. Pug found these…I am merely the mouthpiece. Er, yeah.)

(How was that for melodrama? I’m pretty pleased with it.)

Topic under discussion is the Star Trek movie that’s in the works. Slated for release in 2008, nothing certain has been released — not even which incarnation of the franchise we’re dealing with. All that’s floating around out there are rumors and (now) a poster.
(Both links lead to articles on Star Trek.com.)

The poster makes some pretty strong suggestions, though it could be a clever ploy to lead us in the wrong direction. Thoughts?