The story is mainly about Kelvin Kirk learning to be less of the cocky dipshit he still is at the end of '09. He’s still riding high from his victory over the future Romulans, so he really doesn’t respect the seriousness the Chair should command. You see this in the completely unforced error at the start of the film–Spock is (for some reason) dead to rights, and Kirk decides that the power of friendship is more important than the Prime Directive. Pike rightly reams him out for this, but the character thread really comes to a head when the USS Vengeance catches up to Enterprise and prepares to utterly destroy her. Much as I complain about the movie, I do like this little moment of helplessness from Chris Pine’s Kirk. Staring down the larger ship’s guns, Kirk can only watch helplessly and apologize for leading his crew to their deaths. It has the same vibes as Kirk from Generations–he didn’t believe he was dying until he actually did. Obviously, the general thread of Kirk actually taking responsibility for his crew culminates in him doing percussive maintenance inside of the Warp Core and dying for Enterprise’s sins. He gets better, but honestly I can accept this as the transition between cadet Kirk of the 09 and the actually quite competent Captain Kirk in Beyond.
Spock is the other big character in this movie. Sad as it is, this is the only real time we get to see Kelvin Kirk and Kelvin Spock’s friendship explored in depth. They were at each other’s throats for most of '09 and Beyond focused more on McCoy + Spock’s relationship. Spock’s friendship with Kirk is the main avenue through which they explore Spock’s classic dilemma of his Human vs. Vulcan sides. As cynical as I am about them recreating the end of WoK in reverse here, I will at least concede that Pine and Quinto did well with what they were given.
Main complaint, besides Cumberbatch being Khan: they totally wasted Bruce Greenwood’s Admiral Pike here. I’m of the opinion that Kelvin Pike was the best version we’d seen prior to Discovery, and probably did more than a little bit in reviving interest in the character. Here he gets stuffed in the fridge like half an hour in to make Kirk mad/sad. What a shame.
I love this take. Especially calling out the growth of the character. I’ve always seen the Kelvin movies as one trilogy, not individual movies. I never watched them individually which might help with that. If you see them all together you can really see the growth of all the characters. If they marketed it as a trilogy maybe people wouldn’t be as bothered by it. I’m not super surprised that what I see to be the middle of the trilogy is the most disliked though. Most trilogies have this problem with the middle movie being vastly underwhelming to the others. Even the Star Wars Original Trilogy had that problem. When Empire Strikes Back came out the reviews were clowning on it for that reason. The story didn’t really go anywhere.
Into Darkness feels like that to me. A second movie in the trilogy that spins its wheels on everything except for the character development. Nothing feels particularly awful to me, just sort of… okay. The only real problems I have is, as you mentioned, Pike being fridged almost immediately and how little buildup there was to Khans special blood. If you wanted to have the blood revive Kirk, go for it. I legitimately don’t care. We’ve resurrected people for less in Star Trek and I’m more than happy to suspend my disbelief over the tech, medical or otherwise, in Star Trek. If you can turn into a salamander if you go fast enough or if spaceships can become pregnant, then you can do basically anything else. I’m fine with that. But there was no buildup for it. I think there’s like two scenes from what I remember. One where Bones takes Khans blood and tests it and mentions that it’s weird, and one where he injects it in a tribble. Basically zero attention drawn to it until the tribble randomly starts breathing again and suddenly it’s a huge deal. If they had given like… 3-5 more minutes of random scenes throughout the movie of Bones talking about the weird blood or something I would not have given a fuck.
As much as I loved this movie (it was my first exposure to trek at all, which franchise has ultimately made me a better person), I hate that Abrams does what he does. His influence tends to just ruin things.
It “works” in tv because writers have to excrete an episode every week for half a year and only get to spend like a day writing. It strings audiences along through the ad breaks and keeps them hooked for next week.
It’s bad. It isn’t good writing. It isn’t saying anything about art besides “watch more”. It is easy though, and it sells shit.
Agreed Abrams ruins things, but this is the corporate art we deserve for allowing monopolies.
Corporations don’t care about making something good. They just want more return on investments than Oreos or whatever else they could have invested in.
Break up the big studios. Maybe we’ll get movies again instead of box office targets.
Yeah Abrams’ mystery box method only “works” while watching a show for the first time. But it inevitably leads to a poor conclusion, and thus a negative re-evaluation after the fact. Because the key aspect of how Abrams does it is that he doesn’t care what the resolution to the mystery is. So it hasn’t done the legwork to make the mystery feel satisfying after-the-fact. The best mysteries have reveals that in hindsight seem inevitable, which means there’s evidence that could have been used to infer it earlier, as well as red herrings which end up having adequate alternate explanations. If you decide the answer to the mystery after the fact, that’s never going to happen. Especially if you pick your answer—as he is known to have done—based on what audiences didn’t guess.
All good points for sure. I feel like the reintroduction (or new trek introduction) of section 13 was its main contribution to series going forward. Maybe some social allegory about government distrust too?
Strictly speaking, O’Brien is a “Senior Chief Petty Officer” in rank, and a “transporter chief” in role. Those two happen to both include the word “chief”, but they’re no more related than “Lieutenant Commander” and “chief engineering officer” are for La Forge. I believe “chief”, on its own, is referring to any of the ranks of NCO with chief in the title, [master | senior] chief petty officer.
Starfleet seems ridiculously officer heavy
Indeed it does. Whether this is actually true, or just an artifact of the fact that we tend to primarily watch the actions of those in command, I’m not sure. But if it is the in-universe reality, that’s probably a consequence of the post-scarcity society and the abundance of time and education people have in order to become officers.
And where are all the warrant officers?
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve tried numerous times, but have never managed to really understand what WOs are. I have this vague sense that their rank sits somewhere between that of NCOs and of commissioned officers, and that they’re involved in more unusual or specialised tasks, but I don’t think they normally sit in a regular chain of command, and I’m not really sure how it works.
Often true, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to be rescued from bad situations. Rich people can abuse and neglect their pets, as can breeders.
A Tibetan mastiff dog can cost thousands. If you found out there was an abusive Tibetan mastiff puppy mill and someone rich helped with a charity that rescued those dogs, I assume you would be in favor of that.
I did a bit of googling to see if I could find a written version of this so I didn’t have to listen to Wil Wheaton who I find grating but couldn’t find anything but people discussing. Is a tl;dw asking too much or would it detract too much from the story?
"Pasta." "Salsa for the nachos." "Nazis." All with that short "a as in cat" sound.
He was probably pretty pissed that he slipped and got called on it. Any actor working for a US market would know how odd it would sound south of the boarder.
When I picture Koenig, I think of Bester, not Chekov. He was amazing in Babylon 5.
I know TV was different then, and they were making Trek the Kirk/Spock and sometimes McCoy show, but man, Chekov should’ve been more than just a comedy relief character with a bad accent.
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes? Doc Watson is the narrator of their stories and sometimes (not very often though) shows his medical knowledge as an ex military surgeon.
$10,000 in 1967 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $92,911.98 today, an increase of $82,911.98 over 57 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.99% per year between 1967 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 829.12%.
I think it’s about the continuation of pay. If you made $100,000 this year but then make nothing next year… Your average really starts pulling that number down.
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