01 June 2009

Some random musings on the new Star Trek movie

Saw the inventively named Star Trek yesterday afternoon and I enjoyed it. Not a complete classic by any means, but a good movie.

In lieu of giving away plot spoilers, some random thoughts about the film, in roughly chronological order: 

  • the USS Kelvin didn't appear to have any warp engines - indeed it looks like the Enterprise without warp engines. I wonder how they got around. 
  • Kirk's black cadet top looks way cooler than the traditional yellow 'tour leader' jersey that Shatner wore on TV. In fact, as they sussed out in the TNG movies, everybody should wear black. 
  • Karl Urban as Bones - brilliant.
  • Zachary Quinto as Spock - beyond brilliant. Uncanny. 
  • Simon Pegg as Scotty - more Irvine Welsh than James Doohan, but good nonetheless. 
  • Anton Yelchin as Chekov - come on guys, Walter Koenig's accent wasn't that ludicrous in the original. And where the hell was his Beatles/Monkees hairstyle? 
  • the plot lacked originality to say the least - seemed to be assembled from a cut-up of The Wrath of Khan and Nemesis - but it was at least well executed and provides a convincing rationale for breaking series continuity (which was pretty strained to begin with after Star Trek: Enterprise)
  • Thank God, no cameo for Scott Bakula (although 'Admiral Archer' is mentioned at one point.) 
And that's all I can think of at this precise moment in time. Star Trek looks set to be the box-office smash of the year, which means a sequel asap, I should imagine. People are lapping this stuff up. And good luck to them. I mean, to us.  

4 comments:

Steve said...

The Kelvin had a single warp nacelle underneath the saucer, mirroing the engineering hull above the saucer. An odd arrangement.

T.N.T. said...

It damn sure is - previously I'd only ever seen warp engines in pairs.

Steve said...

How long have you got?

Single and triple nacelled ships have appeared in fan publications since the 70s. The most famous such publication The Star Fleet Technical Manual was used by the art departments working on the first few Trek movies. However, Gene Rodenberry fell out with the author and subsequently wrote his rules for starships which said that nacelles always came in pairs.

So whilst there were a few ships with odd numbers of nacelles in background designs seen in the wreckage of Wolf 359 and in fleet scenes in the Dominion War the only high profile example until now was the 3 nacelled future version of the Enterprise-D seen in the TNG finale.

All of which reminds that http://steve.pugh.net/fleet/ hasn't been updated in over five years.

T.N.T. said...

Ah yes - the Starfleet Technical Manual. I have a copy floating around somewhere.

I'd forgotten the 3-nacelled future version of the Enterprise D.