pennswoods | Drive By Review of the Star Trek film

Entry tags:

star trek

Drive By Review of the Star Trek film

Now that I've gotten a bit of the squee out of my soul, I've decided to enumerate what I did and didn't like about Star Trek the film. This is going to be super-spoilerific, so I shall be using a cut.

In the meantime, for those of you ~~looking for a good time~~ who don't want to be spoiled, here's a link to a LOLarous recap of Amok Time, credited by some as the slashiest episode in all history and the kick-off to all that Kirk/Spock slash. I guess, I should warn that there are lots of spoilers there too for those of you who've been living under a rock for the past 40+ years...

Things that made me squee!!!
1. So much shiny. The ships were shiny and bright, the actors and actress were absolutely beautiful or adorable. Uhura was beautiful to watch with her ponytail swishing behind her, Sulu was a babe, McCoy (!!!!) was quite the dish, Kirk had gorgeous eyes, and even Pike was yummy. But Spock... Ungh!!! I'm a total Spock fangirl now.

1b. Spock's ears... I want to lick Spock's ears...

2. Excellent eyebrow action. Kirk and Spock are particularly blessed in the brow bone follicle department. Yum! I want to lick Spock's eyebrows too!

3. Wee Spock - Awe!!! I loved seeing the Vulcan education system in action, and I loved the occasional shots of Vulcan architecture, but seeing little Spock wail on his classmates and then his wee little green bruised face when he spoke with his father - so cute!

4. Iowa as the site of Starship construction!!!! Can I just say how glad I am to see the awesomeness of Iowa being realized in this film.

5. Every single scene with Kirk and Spock together made my shipper's heart beat faster. There's some amazing fanon fodder in this film, and I cannot wait until the video is released so that its slashy potential can be fully realized. Not only did I absolutely love seeing Spock wail on Kirk (LOL!), but I loved the snarky lines that Kirk seemed to elicit from Spock. And there were several frames in which the two were facing off and standing so very, very close. Those are going to make brilliant fanart references.

6. LEONARD NIMOY!!! Leonard Nimoy is pure awesomesauce - even when his job is to play lame exposition fairy to speed up the plot to leave more time for Kirk to oogle chicks, get into bar fights and engage in highly unnecessary chase scenes with angry snow lobsters.

7. Every now and again I thought Sulu was channeling a bit of Harry Kim and that made me LOL! But I loved seeing him kick butt in hand to hand combat, and I also found the whole rolling around on the transporter pad with Kirk highly delightful. :D

8. Bones shooting Kirk up, and Kirk whining. A-ha-ha!!!!

9. Scotty!!!!!! Scotty!!!!! Scotty!!!! Scotty is love. I'm only sorry we had to wait until the movie was almost over before we got to enjoy his awesome awesomeness. He was almost like a Star Trek fanboy speaking for the fans when he found himself on the bridge. I'd be excited too!!!

10. Winona Ryder forever!!!!!11 She didn't get to do much but be motherly and die, but it was nice to see her in a film again.

11. Spock embracing even kissing Uhura in the lift and then getting all logical again the minute the door opened. That was so hawt.

12. Also, Uhura telling Spock what's what and getting him to assign her to the Enterprise!

13. I really enjoyed the way Pine seemed to shift and truly channel Shatner as he entered the bridge and settled into the captain's seat at the end of the film. It was a beautiful homage.

14. Hearing craggy Nimoy's voice recite those epic lines as the music from TOS rolled in for the closing credits. That gave me chills.

WTF?
1. The ship of angry biker dudes with facial tattoos, I mean, the spacefaring Maori, sorry, I mean the crew of Romulans who ALL shared the same bad logic as their captain and blamed Spock for everything AND had nothing better to do than help their captain avenge the death of HIS wife AND somehow didn't bother to mutiny in the 25 years spent lurking in the past, AND also didn't bother going and hanging out on the now extinct Romulus to maybe warn people about the future/attempt to avert extinction in a more productive manner than did NOT involve GENOCIDE/enjoy some good Romulan home-cooking...

1b. Also, Babylon 5 called. The Shadows want their warships back. KThnx!

2. Just about every single thing that happened on Hoth, er... I mean the icy M-class planet inhabited by giant ferocious lobsters that Kirk landed on where he was conveniently saved by Spock Prime, who just happened to have holed up in the same cave ON THE SAME PLANET that Kirk found himself in and just happened to have scored some wood or something that he could set on fire, and who... oh for heaven's sake!

3. Chekhov's accent. I acknowledge that this is a relic of TOS of the 1960s and therefore a charmingly familiar feature of the character that had to be maintained, but I get irritated when a movie expects us to chuckle at someone's accented English.

In my irritation, I started wondering why Chekhov should have such a marked Russian accent at such a young age (17!!!!) and why he's the only one who seems to have this "problem". And it is a problem if the speech recognition software on a brand new starship cannot process your voice commands. Somehow, Uhura's Orion roommate manages to speak English with a distinctively North American accent. Perhaps she was raised on Earth. Perhaps she's a language genius. Perhaps all Orions are excellent mimics, able to acquire language in minutes. Or perhaps everyone (including the Romulans) are running around using universal translators to communicate, but I'm kind of skeptical about this because it would sort of nullify Hoshi's, I mean, Uhura's awesome mad skillz as an xenolinguist fluent in 5 Romulan dialects. So, I assume that the resetting of the timeline means that no universal translator exists yet. Thus poor, Checkhov, who is only 17, who only spent the past 4 or 3 years in San Francisco, who must have known some English before being accepted into the academy at 13 or 14 is severely challenged when it comes to acquiring English phonology - WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING I FIND FUNNY!!!!

4. Speaking of language and linguistics. I vomited a little in my mouth when Kirk somehow managed to impress Uhura with his knowledge of xenolinguistics. Oh, yeah, as an applied linguist myself, I'd be impressed too if some guy I met in a bar demonstrated superficial knowledge of my field of study by flinging around a few VERY BASIC terms he'd come across while reading wikipedia. Ugh!

5. The new McCoy didn't quite bring the crotchety that the old McCoy did. Maybe it'll come with time - such lines ring truer with a more wizened face and more gravely voice.

6. Uhura stripping down to her skivvies while Kirk gawked from under her roommate's bed was just gratuitous nonsense. However Uhura's nonchalance at walking around nearly naked while her roommate also lounged around similarly undressed seems to have whetted the appetite of femmeslashers in the fandom, so maybe this was supposed to be a gift.

7. I wish Uhura could have been more relevant and awesome. She was sassy, she was pretty, but she didn't even have the same impact that Chekhov did saving lives and such. Again, this is an artifact of the character's role from TOS which was slightly expanded here so that she did more than act as a space operator. Nevertheless, this is one of the problems that is inevitable when rebooting something initially designed for 1960s television audiences and which seemed to have a much narrower scope for women's roles.

8. One minute Spock is too emotionally compromised by the death of his mother and the destruction of his ENTIRE PLANET to captain the ship, but a half hour later (wtf? did he have a good cry or something) he's good enough to return as second in command????

9. And speaking of VULCAN... the destruction of a whole rich civilization and culture will no doubt fuel a flurry of fanfic. However, I left the theater feeling emotionally bereft and angry, and this feeling of loss is growing, not fading. Why this culture? Why?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

re: B5

That was weird.

I have to admit that I was not a close follower of B5, so perhaps I'm a bit off. But when I first saw the Romulan ship, B5 is exactly what I thought of.

Nope my B5 watching friend and I both agreed the Romulan shi was a totally Vorlon or Shadow tech.

Shadow I guess given how they acted.
*L*

No we know where they went to =P

I bow to you and your friend's awesome B5 expertise. I guess it must be harder and harder for scifi movie makers not to be a bit derivative.

Not being a Trek fan--indeed, knowing little of Trek other than the obvious--I went in with very few expectations. I have to say that I wasn't incredibly squeeful about it--I'd give it a B or B+.

The biggest problem I had with it was that it felt like too many of the events were engineered to let each crew member have a scene to chew. It was almost like clockwork. I was impatient for the story to continue, honestly, because I kept feeling like I had to sit through each Crew Member Moment until we could acknowledge that, yes, this person is awesome, and, yes, we have given them enough screen time now. *rolls eyes*

Also, I thought that there was too much screen time given to Spock Prime. Honestly, that little bit at the end was too much. At first I was thinking, "Awww! Spock!" and then I was thinking, "This is getting gratuitous."

Overall, I did like it, though. It was enjoyable. I don't think I'd watch it again, nor would I read fanfic, but it was a pleasant experience.

Yes! Yes! It was clear that the movie was character driven or perhaps was driven by a desire to really sell the characters to the audience so that the plot had to be contrived to accommodate this.

I found the final discussion between Spock and Spock Prime really grating too - especially in light of just how fundamentally earth-shattering such an encounter would be for both men, particularly in light of the destruction of Vulcan.

I had a good time, and I will be watching it again just to get a good look at everyone in more detail. It was VERY visually engaging, and I'm a sucker for pretty shiny things, but I expect the more I think about things, the more annoyed I will be.

I loved the movie! And LOL, thank you so much for the link to that recap! So awesome!

Isn't that a totally awesome recap!!! I keep rereading it when grading gets me down. :D

Hee, I think I'll be keeping the tab open for quite a while and doing the same thing. Except not with grading, but, you know, all the other tasks that might threaten to bring me down during the day.

One minute Spock is too emotionally compromised by the death of his mother

Hmmmm...I guess this breaks away from TOS. I think an episode of TOS had Amanda on it, so I guess now she dies before?

Dood!!! You haven't seen the movie yet. These are massive spoilers. Get the hell out...unless you're desperate to be spoiled.

Don't worry...I just glanced at that one thing and realized the spoilers awaiting!

Hee! Can't wait to read your take on the film once you have a chance to see it.

I keep wibbeling about Vulcan too. I have to tell myself "it's an AU" over and over *L*

I'm even more wibbly over Amanda also . . . I love her. I mean okay she had little screen time in the the ToS series, but she was awesome.

Chekov's accent though. I love it. I'm horribly biased though as I adore Russian accents. I get what you are saying about playing it off as a joke though. Hah ha he can't speak English is a bit . . ethnocentirc in a bad way

Still I am glad it's there, and Scotty's. IMHO it helps that Scotty has an accent so Chekov is not the only one. I don't know, it's just nice to see that Starfleet is not a "perfect English Speakers only" club.

That and it doesn't seem that much different than all the accented people I can think of that I work with or that I ran into in College.

HOWEVER I agree, the Victor Victor joke was too much and it was a pretty cheap gag. I'd rather him have made a joke about Russian inventions (and have it clearly being a joke showing that no he's not actually a moron, it's a joke, that always bugged me in the old show and apparently bugged Gene too as there's a memo telling the writer's to knock it off).

But just as far as him having an accent goes (and Scotty) I like ^__^

I think it would actually be nice - and far more realistic - if there were a wider variety of accents being depicted and that we weren't laughing at them.

Oh agreed, though I don't think I'd have though Chekov's was played for laughs (I don't think Scotty's is so much) IF they'd left out the Victor Victor stupidity. I mean the rest of the time, he just has an accent like anyone does . . . heck my Texas accent is probably that thick ^^;;.

Sure, I'd have wondered why the heck the person who is the hardest to understand made the ship announcements, but whatever.

And you point about the Orion girl was spot on.

And one of my wibbles was when the Nero said "hello Christopher" and sounded like generic psychopath out of a law and Order. I man where the hell does a Romulan MINER get not only perfect English, but a particularly American infliction!

It's because they just don't care about Romulans the way they do Klingons :( But yeah the English there drove me nuts.

So yes agreed, more accents would have been nice.
An less laughing.

I was curious to see what you were going to say here. I have to admit that I don't really disagree with any of the criticisms, but I also don't actually agree with them. Heh. I realize that may not make much sense. ;D

It's a fantastic film, very faithful to and respectful of the source material. I suppose I could do some nit-picking, but I see no reason to harsh my own squee with things that honestly didn't affect my personal enjoyment one bit. Even the icky het was okay. ;D But I understand YMMV.

Though in regard to #7, if Uhura had not been able to support Kirk's contention that it was the Romulans who attacked the Klingon ships rahter than a natural disaster, Pike may not have been willing to listen to him and the movie would have been over before I could finish my popcorn. ;D. Certainly Spock would not have done so. And she did no more or less heroics than Scotty, McCoy and even Sulu (though he did save Kirk's life). Chekhov managed to look more over-eager to me rather than heroic. Though he was also that. Uhura stuck me as considerably more than eye-candy and I am a very tough sell in that department.

Oh, and #4. I don't think she was at all impressed. Caught off-guard a bit because he wasn't a complete and total waste of oxygen, perhaps, but she wasn't remotely interested. She had bigger fish to fry.

As for #1, that's a staple in Trek. No clue where all these mindless follower drones come from, but it's rampant in Trek. Just think of any of the previous villains - Khan, anyone? And there are certainly more than a few examples of this in rl. People don't always ask the questions they should of their leaders.

Heh. And I loved the recap. Tin foil dress man. *snicker* Still, I'm not sure this is the slashiest episode. I think there are too many contenders for that position in the original series. *g*

Yes, you're right. Uhura was just as relevant as the other backup boys and got loads more screen time than Scotty, Chekhov and others. Scotty in particular got the shaft. I think I'm just a wee bit spoiled by Voyager and Buffy and BSG where I got used to seeing the chicks getting in on more of the action. I guess making Uhura an action hero (as opposed to Spock's girlfriend!!!!) would have been too much to expect of a reboot.

I'm not totally convinced that she wasn't impressed by Kirk in #4. I think she actually did stop to smile at him instead of dumping her beer over his head like she should have. There was also something about the way that scene was filmed with Kirk spewing out the names of linguistic subfields as if he was actually supposed to be demonstrating his apparent genius that really rubbed me the wrong way.

That recap is pure awesome! Spock with a MySpace page!!! I bow down to your expert eye for slashiest episodes. I remember watching ToS reruns with my old man and he never bothered to educate me on the awesomeness that is K/S. I was clearly missing out!

All good comments. All valid.

I just want to add: that bit at the end... "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages..." with the music. I cried, I confess. Had a hard job mopping myself up before the lights came back on. I am such a geek.

Oh, I also want to add that I was a bit cheesed off that Uhura was fluent in all dialects of Romulan - the Romulans were just a rumour until half way through series one of TOS, so she couldn't be. Alternative time line or not. All we have in this AU is a rogue Romulan ship careening around and probably not sharing its dialects with the infidel.

I just assumed that the incident 25 years before had been investigated and Romulus discovered/explored earlier? But then again, it doesn't do to think too hard about these things.

McCoy (!!!!) was quite the dish, Kirk had gorgeous eyes, and even Pike was yummy. But Spock... Ungh!!! I'm a total Spock fangirl now.

Only now? Laaaaate....

I thought Sulu was channeling a bit of Harry Kim and that made me LOL!

So I wasn't the only one who got that!

Also, Uhura telling Spock what's what and getting him to assign her to the Enterprise!

Heheh, I liked that too. Only logical not to upset her and cause more trouble, I gues...

The ship of angry biker dudes with facial tattoos, I mean, the spacefaring Maori, sorry

Yeah, I didn't quite get this interpretation of Romulans either.

So, I assume that the resetting of the timeline means that no universal translator exists yet.

Er... they were developing that in Enterprise, weren't they? And regardless, didn't we see interaction in this film that would seem to indicate the presence of such a translator?

Thus poor, Checkhov, who is only 17, who only spent the past 4 or 3 years in San Francisco, who must have known some English before being accepted into the academy at 13 or 14 is severely challenged when it comes to acquiring English phonology - WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING I FIND FUNNY!!!!

Um... in my experience, people who learn English as a second language often maintain an accent all their lives, even one as pronounced as Chekhov's, unless they study accent reduction specifically. Heck, even people who start out with some other English accent, like one of the 3240832094832 British ones or Irish or Indian or Australian or even our sub-North-American accents often remain distinguishable throughout life.

(That said, no, it shouldn't be funny that Chekhov speaks the way he does; I guess now what's funny is that this Chekhov speaks the way the old Chekhov did and so it's the echo that's amusing.)

Re: the spiky Romulan ship, apparently there is an in-universe answer about them having appropriated Borg technology and it growing, which would explain why me and my husband's first thoughts on seeing it were that it was visually similar to the Borg "claw" logo and why the hell didn't it look like any other Romulan ship we could think of (even granted that mining ships might not look like government-issue warships).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drive By Review of the Star Trek film

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject