I had three big problems
with Star
Trek: Into Darkness. (Four if
you count the bland stupidity of the title.)
In order to talk about these problems, I’m going to have to spoil the
movie for those who haven’t seen it, so:
FAIR WARNING: PLOT DETAILS DISCUSSED BELOW.
KEEP READING IF YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE.
IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE, AND YOU DON’T WANT
TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN IT, THEN READ NO FURTHER.
ABANDON ALL SURPRISES, YE WHO ENTER HERE.
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Okay. Here we go.
The Three Who Are One. One of the
things that made the original Star Trek unique and memorable was the way Dr
McCoy went from a bit player to a regular.
If you watch the first season all the way through, you can see the show
evolve from a two-way dialogue between Kirk and Spock to a two-way dialogue
between McCoy and Spock about what Kirk should be doing. I don’t know whether Roddenberry had this in
mind from the start, or it was the actors and writers who helped develop it,
but by the beginning of Season 2, it’s canon: McCoy reacts with his gut, Spock
reacts with logic, and Kirk balances the two by finding a way between the two
extremes. But in New Trek, Kirk is the
one acting with his gut—he even says as much to Spock in New Trek 2. Which completely eliminates the necessity of
a triangle. In New Trek, Kirk has become
McCoy.
Texas Rangers
In Space. If you’ve ever read Harlan Ellison’s original
script for City On The Edge of Forever, then you know how different it is from
what was finally televised. One of the many
changes that Gene Roddenberry made to it was the episode's inciting
incident. Instead of McCoy accidentally
injecting himself with a drug that drove him bonkers, there was a crewman on
the Enterprise
who was addicted to a hallucinogenic drug, and it was this crewman who cause
the whole time paradox. If I remember it
right, Roddenberry told Ellison in so many words that nobody in Star
Fleet—nobody ever in Star Fleet—would do drugs deliberately. End of story.
Which is not to say that there couldn’t be One Bad Apple, or that everyone
on the Enterprise
was pure and unsullied, or that they couldn’t be weak or misguided. It’s just that there’s a line that would
never be crossed—a line, say, where the weakness couldn’t be supported into
strength, or the misguided turned to the correct path, or the bad apple
redeemed.
How would Roddenberry have
felt about the black ops Star Fleet initiative that shows up in Into
Darkness? Hard to say. It reflects our time as much as Roddenberry’s
original vision reflected his, so in that sense there’s a certain necessity to
it. But what it also reflects is this
weird self-flagellating undercurrent in a lot of action movies these days that
say The Real Enemy Is Us. (When they’re
not saying We Only Ever Fight When The White House Is Destroyed.) That kind of fits in with Season 1 Original
Trek, at least in my mind, where there’s this rolling loop of Kirk pointing out
the evil behind Fear Of The Other, or making a plea for mercy, understanding
and tolerance, when he isn’t making a play for some alien hottie.
But see, to me, that falls
under M for Misguided. And say what you
will about Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus—misguided he ain’t. Which is why I think that, in Original Trek,
he would have been an alien, and the whole debate about pre-emptive attacks
against a potential enemy would have been played out in the same triangle
format as Kirk/Spock/McCoy, with two warring alien factions and the Federation taking the place of Kirk. Making the enemy an earthman—making him a Star
Fleet Admiral? I don’t think Roddenberry
would have allowed it.
Stardate WTF. The original premise of the reboot was that
Kirk grew up without a father, which changed everything in his life. It also seemingly changed everything in Christopher
Pike’s life, since he never wound up crippled from visiting that off-limits
planet with the green-skinned space hoochie girl. And I can buy that. But what I can’t buy is that, if we’re to
believe what we’re seeing in Into Darkness, then (SPOILERS) a couple of hundred
years ago, Khan didn’t go off into space
in a rocket full of cryo-chambers, but wound up a prisoner of Star Fleet. Now maybe in all the excitement I missed the
part where Admiral Marcus rescued Khan and his men from that rocket sometime
after Kirk’s dad died, but either way, this is a MAJOR change from what was
supposed to be an established universe up until 25-odd years ago. And that bugs the hell out of
me. Either say this is a completely
different universe, or stick to the single change in the established universe
and see how it plays out. Don’t play
both sides against the middle, or change the rules as you go along. (I know, I know—why should I look to the guy who
created LOST for internal consistency?)
Seriously—the more I think
about this, the more it bugs me. It bugs
me even more than Spock shedding tears.
Spock does not shed tears, JJ.
Spock is the guy who sees someone crying and observes “Your face is wet.” (He doesn’t yell “KHA-A-A-A-A-AN!!!” either,
pal.)
So Kirk is McCoy, Star
Fleet is corrupt, Spock cries, and God knows what else has changed in what was
supposed to be a single-cause reboot.
Verdict: whatever it is we’re watching may be fun and
engaging, but it ain’t Star Trek.
