Setting the bar very low for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.
I'm a fan of the original series, but I'm not a purist. If legends like Robin Hood and King Arthur can be rewritten and revised for new generations, then there's nothing sacred about a TV show, and I don't see any reason why the characters from the original series can't be treated like, well, characters. Basil Rathbone was my father's Sherlock Holmes, but he learned to appreciate Jeremy Brett, and Brett was my Holmes but I'm looking forward to seeing what Robert Downey Jr does with the part. William Shatner defined Jim Kirk, but Chris Pine might have something to add. There's no telling from a trailer or stills but, surprisingly, Pine looks more Kirk-like---Kirk-like, not Shatner-like---to me than Leonard Nimoy-lookalike Zachary Quinto looks like Spock. It's not just that Quinto looks so gosh darn young. It's that he looks young in the wrong way. Boyish. Little boyish. Like a kid in a contest-winning Halloween costume. Spock may have been young once, but he was never that kind of young. And Quinto doesn't look brainy enough. I can't see him winning a game of checkers let alone a game of three-dimensional chess. Pine, though, appears to have the right degree of humor and swagger.
Can't tell a lot about the other characters, except that Karl Urban seems to be doing a scarily exact impersonation of the late DeForest Kelly as McCoy, as if Kelly had managed to implant his katra in Urban's head before he died. Urban delivers a very Bones-esque line, not up there with "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer," but close: "Space is disease and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence." As Scotty, Simon Pegg looks absolutely nothing like James Doohan and in the one line he has in the trailer his Scots burr sounds more like the Lucky Charms leprechaun's brogue. But it's a very Scotty-esque moment. The Enterprise appears to have gone through one of those rock the camera back and forth and have everybody on the bridge throw themselves out of their chairs while the sparks fly moments of near-destruction, the first of many the ship'll experience under Kirk's command, with the usual results---Scotty has to pull off another engineering miracle, and Scotty, who's apparently new to the Enterprise, is thrilled. "I like this ship! It's exciting!" By which he means he knows he's going to get a lot of opportunities to fix things.
The movie jumps around in time. We're going to see Kirk and Spock as boys and Spock as a teenager. But it's impossible to determine the movie's timeline from the trailer. I can't figure out when in their careers the main action is meant to be taking place. There appear to be departures from the series' established history. As far as we know from the original, Kirk was never on board the Enterprise until the day he took command. In the trailer it looks as though he's assigned to her at the age when the series has him as weapons officer aboard the Farragut. Captain Christopher Pike was a young man the series' first pilot episode. In the movie, he's in his fifties. That isn't a departure if we're to think that fifteen or more years passed between the day he and the young Spock landed on Talos IV and the accident that crippled him. But it appears that Spock is meant to be fresh from Starfleet Academy. That would mean the visit to the menagerie must have happened in the movie's time, oh, about last week. And the villain is a Romulan, and we know from the series no one from Starfleet had ever seen a Romulan before the Enterprise met up with one of their ships in Balance of Terror. Smallville has proven that the "official history" can be changed in ways that make a story truer to the spirit of the original than other more faithful re-tellings. It's even possible for a re-telling to improve upon the original, as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have. Whether Abrams manages either trick depends on the script. I'll be ok with it if he makes a better Star Trek movie than The Final Frontier.
As I said. A low bar.
The movie looks like Star Trek, the Star Trek movies, at any rate, if not the original series, and why would it want to recapture that look anyway with its cheesy sets and goofy special effects? I'm prepared to enjoy it for what it's likely to be. I won't be surprised or too disappointed if it stinks, but I won't be shocked if it's good and turns out to be a successful re-boot.
But this is all based on the trailer and the photos and visits to the website and a couple of interviews with Chris Pine. So who knows?
There are, however, two things I think I see signs of in the trailer that worry me.
One is the apparent emphasis on Spock as a misfit and outsider. Of course, being an outsider is one of Spock's defining characteristics. He isn't at home anywhere except aboard the Enterprise and that's because of first Pike's and then Kirk's treating him as neither a Vulcan nor a human nor a mutt but as their friend and crewman.
As he was originally written, and as Leonard Nimoy started off playing him, Spock dealt with his outsiderness by trying to erase one cause of it. He insisted on his Vulcan-ness. This made him go awfully hard on himself. He would never let himself feel sorry for himself. That's a human thang, and he is not human. He may have actually appreciated McCoy's anti-Vulcan insults and prejudices because they were proof that he was being a good Vulcan. But while he never let up on himself, his father's critical voice always in his pointy ears, his sense of being neither one nor the the other himself often seemed to make him more open and tolerant of difference in others.
McCoy could never let go of his view of Spock as Vulcan, because as far as the large-hearted, overly-emotional McCoy was concerned, Spock's "cold-blooded logic" was a character flaw. To Kirk, though, Spock was always just Spock. When at Spock's funeral in The Wrath of Khan he called Spock's soul the most human he had ever known, he wasn't saying that Spock's biologically human side was his real self. He was struggling to express his feeling that Spock was the most completely formed individual he'd ever met---that Spock was what the best of us aspire to be.
As he grew older, that is, as we see him in the movies, Spock seems more and more to accept Kirk's view of himself. Not that he sees himself as some sort of saint. He just sees himself not as a Vulcan, not as a human, and not as a mutt. He sees himself as just Spock, for all that is worth or matters.
He's learned to ease up on himself, to accept his Spockness, which includes his Vulcan side. He's no less logical, no less disciplined, no less a good Vulcan. But he is more forgiving, even more tolerant, and he's learned the logic of eccentricity. He's learned that being a good Vulcan, and a good human, means being a good Spock, as weird and eccentric as that is. By the time he shows up on Next Generation he's reached the point where he's ready to re-define Vulcan, human, and Romulan natures at their best as eccentric individuality.
Probably I'm just thrown by Quinto's boyishness, but I don't see any signs in his Spock of this side of Spock, of either his self-discipline or his openness. All I see is a teenager who feels sorry for himself. Which isn't necessarily wrong. Vulcans are slow to age. They may be slow to mature too. Spock at thirty could still be an adolescent. What would bother me is if the movie asks us to identify with Spock the lonely outsider's self-pity, a real possibility considering the differences in sensibilities between the time when the original series was produced and now.
Star Trek the TV show was the product of an era of confident adulthood. If you judged us by how Hollywood portrays us now we live in a time of perpetual, sulky adolescence. In the 60s, true love and fame (which was a matter of popular respect, not of popularity) were the rewards for grown-ups who achieved their goals. These days true love and popularity are the goals.
Movies and TV shows often start out celebrating their main characters as outsiders and misfits, but by the end they've become the popular kids. This is achieved either by it turning out that the misfits and outsiders have super-powers---not literally, figuratively---they are able to do something wonderful that makes them more popular than the popular kids or by a redefining of popularity. You used to be the ideal, but now I am, so there.
What this would mean, if it's what's going on in the movie, is that Spock will turn out to be a good Starfleet officer not because he's smart, self-disciplined, logical, and open-minded, but because he's...different.
In other words, success and achievement aren't the rewards of hard-work. They're the natural outcome of you just being you.
But we'll see. On the one hand, Abrams produced Lost, not an advertisement for the self-esteem movement. On the other, he's responsible for Felicity, a quintessential depiction of teenage self-absorption.
What I'm a bit more worried about is what looks like an emphasis on Kirk as rebel and rule-breaker.
In the trailer, we see him as a kid, joy-riding in and wrecking a three-hundred year old Corvette and then speaking up defiantly to the cop who's chased him down. We see him as an adult, riding a motorcycle, Hollywood shorthand for "independent spirit." And we see him on board the Enterprise without his uniform shirt, which we know he didn't lose in a fight, because if he had he'd have lost the black undershirt too and we'd be seeing him bare-chested, a Kirk-Shatner habit neatly satirized in Galaxy Quest, still the third-best Star Trek movie. Maybe he's on board the Enterprise as a passenger, but I'm guessing he's out of uniform because he's either been demoted or kicked out of Starfleet.
He's temporarily in disgrace. We've seen Kirk in that condition, in his "future," in The Voyage Home. He wins his commission and his command back by saving Earth. But by that time he has a long record of saving not just Earth but the galaxy. At the time the new movie is set, Kirk has been an exemplary junior officer but saving whole planets and star systems is still in his future. Simply saving the Enterprise, even if he saved the galaxy while he was at it, might get him back into Starfleet's good graces, but it wouldn't earn him command of a Starship, unless somebody among the powers-that-be believed that was more typical of his behavior than landing himself in hot water and indicative of his potential, neither of which opinions career military types are likely to hold of an incorrigible rebel and rule-breaker.
In fact, such a character would be seen as a poor choice for a command post of any kind because rebels and rule-breakers usually make very poor leaders. (See McCain, John. Maverick.) Starfleet would have been willing to put up with the original Kirk's occasional foul-ups and lapses of judgment because his commanders would knew it wouldn't be long before he returned to form. But if his form is fouling-up and that's the secret of his success, he's a great captain because he's a rebel and a rule-breaker then to me that'll be just another variation on the theme of outsider and misfit as the true insider and more of the same old success is just desserts for those who are true to themselves and follow their hearts nonsense, and that'll make the movie another celebration of narcissism and perpetual adolescence.
But here's the thing.
Kirk is a rule-breaker and he does often succeed because he breaks the rules. The reason for this, however, isn't that rebels and mavericks make the best Starship commanders. The reason is that very often the rules aren't applicable to the situation because no one had encountered a situation like it before Kirk and the Enterprise got there.
Kirk does have a rebellious streak---he steals a whole goddamn starship!---but he's been very good at keeping it tamped down. Being a good Starfleet officer matters to him, and being a good officer means being willing to go by the book, at least sometimes. We know from characters in the original series who knew him at the Academy, his friends Ben Finney and Gary Mitchell, and his "personal devil" when he was a plebe, the bully Finnegan, that as a cadet Kirk was a bit of a stiff and a prig. Mitchell remembers him as "a stack of books with legs." Kirk describes himself back then as "postively grim." He wasn't a rule-breaker, he was a rule-minder. Hacking into and reprogramming the computer so he could defeat the Kobayashi Maru scenario wasn't an act of rebelliousness. He did it out of stubbornness and pride. He couldn't accept that there was really such a possibility as a no-win situation. For Kirk, every problem has a solution. It's how he thinks, in terms of problems and solutions. He's the son and brother of scientists, after all. In his own way, he is a scientist himself, a gatherer of knowledge for its own sake, amazed and enthralled by what's out there waiting to be discovered.
Kirk is an explorer.
Gene Roddenberry modeled Kirk, and Pike, on Horatio Hornblower and James Cook. Hornblower is a portrait of military man as intellectual, and Cook was the embodiment of scientist as adventurer. And that's Kirk, loyal soldier, adventurer, and intellectual. Quick. What's his hobby? Right. History. His favorite teachers at the academy were the scientists and the historians. And he can quote from Moby-Dick and Shakespeare. Kirk is also a talented engineer and a well-read amateur astrophysicist. He's not as brilliant as Scotty or Spock, but he can keep up when they explain things to him. The mother of his only child---the only one we're told about. I've always been sure that the galaxy is well-stocked with Kirk bastards, at least one of them with green skin.---is the inventor of the Genesis project. Another one of his former girlfriends was a doctor and another is a lawyer. Kirk did not chase dimwits and airheads. (Maybe that was Yeoman Rand's problem.) And his two best friends are a doctor and a Vulcan scientist.
Whatever other motivations Kirk had for joining Starfleet, one of the chief ones was to get out there and take a look around just to find out.
That's why the last line he ever says in his saga---I don't count Generations. That's not one of his movies, and besides it's goofy. Not as goofy as The Final Frontier, but close. Abrams' film shouldn't have much trouble beating it. Like I said, I'm setting a low bar.---his last line in The Undiscovered Country is so perfect. Responding to Chekhov's request for a heading for the Enterprise's last voyage under Kirk's command, Kirk sets this course:
"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning."
It's the course he's been steering his whole life.
"Let's just go and see what's out there."
Kirk the explorer, the TV series Kirk, might have stolen that Corvette---he'd have said "borrowed"---but how else was he going to find out how it worked or learn how fast it could go? The point wouldn't have been to go fast for speed's own sake, although he'd have enjoyed that. It would have been to figure out how to make the machine go fast.
This quality of mind, this habit of asking questions and then seeking the answers, would have been a qualification for command of a starship, because that was the mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations...
This isn't an assignment that would have been given to any hide-bound, by-the-book blockhead. But it wouldn't have gone to anyone lacking in self-discipline and with a habit of losing his temper and making snap judgments based on what his heart tells him to do. Eccentric thinkers welcome. Rebels need not apply.
The trouble, from Starfleet's perspective, is that habits of questioning and of going to see it for oneself can lead to a habit of independent thinking. And another potential problem is that another qualification for the job would be the ability to make sound judgments and take the right action without having to wait for instruction or orders. Remember, that in the early episodes, the Enterprise was so far from home that communications to and from Starfleet took days and days to get back and forth. A more than usual degree of self-confidence, self-reliance, and independence of spirit would be required. A person like that, left to his own devices for long periods of time, might get very comfortable acting on his own authority and, especially if he was as good at the job as Kirk, grow to trust his own judgment over that of anyone else, especially that of desk officers way back of the Neutral Zone who'd never seen a phaser fired in anger, let alone a doomsday machine eat a whole planet. Even if he wasn't naturally geared that way, given an order he didn't like, a person like that might develop a strong rebellious streak on the spot.
And that's exactly what we saw happening to Kirk over the course of the series. In the first few episodes he's stolid, earnest, steadfast and true, a Boy Scout in space. Temperamentally, he's much more Horatio Hornblower than he is James Cook. Doesn't take many episdoes though before he starts acting more like Jack Sparrow than like either Hornblower or Cook. Kirk finds his inner pirate.
If the trailer is a true indication---big if, there---the movie Kirk is his inner pirate and he needs to start cultivating his inner Hornblower.
But that's not necessarily bad. Depends on how it's done, and if it's done. As I said, if the movie has it that Kirk succeeds because he's a pirate at heart, I won't be happy. But if the movie Kirk is on an intersecting course with the TV Kirk, if the pirate joins up with the scientist and the rebel melds with the good soldier, then he'll become the Kirk we know and it won't matter very much that he got there from the opposite direction.
As Kirk would see it, the point isn't what was back there, it's what's ahead.
"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning."
______________________
Captain's Log, supplemental:
Again, can't rely on the trailer, but it looks as though the movie Kirk has one definite thing in common with the TV Kirk. He gets a fair share of action in the sack. And it looks as though one of the women he goes to bed with is a shipmate, the Enterprise's communications officer.
Yep. It might be that we see Kirk and Uhura have a fling.
Which would explain a lot, wouldn't it?
Also, I am curious why Abrams decided to make Captain Pike decidedly middle-aged. I'm guessing to give Spock a father-figure instead of another big brother-figure. Maybe to give Kirk the rebel a father-figure to rebel against as well or, since Kirk's real father is a character in the movie and so is there to be rebelled against, a father-figure against whom not to rebel. In the series, Kirk did have a middle-aged man he looked up to and who was a mentor to him, but we don't meet him because he's already dead. The captain of the Farragut, and Kirk blames himself for his death.
Another thing, and this has to do with Zachary Quinto's boyishness as Spock. In the series it seemed implicit that Kirk and McCoy go way back, their friendship cemented long ago. I like to think that they met when Ensign Kirk needed a discreet doctor to cure him of his first case of space clap. But I think it was also the case that Spock hadn't met McCoy before Kirk assumed command of the Enterprise and brought his old friend aboard as his chief medical officer and that there's a kind of rivalry between them for the right to be thought of as Kirk's best friend.
The movie has it right that McCoy is older than Spock and Kirk. But if McCoy met Spock when Spock was barely more than a kid, it seems unlikely that Bones would have developed the habit of insulting Spock's Vulcan nature. It's one thing for one grown man to make sneering comments about another grown man's green blood and cold-hearted prizing of logic above feeling. It's another for an adult to make the same sort of comments to an insecure and lonely boy. So I'm hoping that the movie leaves that aspect of their relationship out or finds a more affectionate way for Bones to go about picking at Spock, as though McCoy started out trying to help Spock become more human, which he'd have thought of as helping him to become a better person, and over time, as Spock matured but didn't change, McCoy lost patience with him or gave up hope.
Trivia Question: Back to Pike as an older man. Besides Captain Garrovick of the Farragut, there was another older starship Captain who was Kirk's friend and mentor. Name him and the episode in which he appeared. Email your answers please. First ten people to answer correctly will win a tribble.
KHAN! I missed the news the other day. Ricardo Montalban, who played the Kirk's great Melville and Milton-quoting nemesis Khan Noonien Singh in one of the best of the old episodes, Space Seed, and the second-best of all the movies, Wrath of Khan, died Wednesday.
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my freshman year in college. It wasn't assigned. One day I decided I needed to read more Updike---"Who's the best American writer? Mailer? Roth? Updike?"---and I walked down to the local bookstore and bought it. I didn't feel particularly grown-up or sophisticated. I felt furtive and anxious and guilty. I was skipping a class I hadn't done the homework for and spending money I should have put towards paying my phone bill. Buying the book made me feel like I was running away from something only to run right smack into it. I read it in one sitting and realized that before I even knew his story I was feeling like Rabbit Angstrom.
, 
, and 
, novels that spooked me and continue to haunt me. 
, qualities, habits, and methods Woodward discovered they didn't have when it came time to write his next two books, 
, Ron Suskind had no problem seeing and reporting that Bush and his gang not only lacked those qualities, habits, and methods but openly disdained them. But then he didn't rely solely on the word of liars, sycophants, and cringing careerists for his research.
.But then he was there.
. Truman turned out to be his own best advocate. Historians had already begun to revise their estimation of Truman, but Truman himself is the one who changed the popular conception of his Presidency.
were only a surprise to people who hadn't read his letters and war dispatches or met with him for extended conversations.
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