Don't think I've written about Star Trek in any depth since James Doohan died, so it's no wonder my inner geek's been getting twitchy. Fortunately, from Jaquandor comes news that there are plans for a new Star Trek movie.
One featuring Kirk and Spock.
As young men.
Paramount's commissioned the Lost guy, J.J. Abrams, to produce and direct. Looking over his track record, Jaquandor doesn't see Abrams as a promising choice for reviving the Star Trek movie franchise. He'd rather Josh Whedon had the con. I don't watch Lost, don't watch Abarms' other hit show, Alias. I'm not going to see his movie, MI:3. I don't know if having Abrams at the helm will be good or bad. Obviously the hope is that he will find a way to appeal to the Lost demographic while still pulling in the Trek fans. Good luck to him. May he live long and prosper.
Jaquandor thinks Abrams has already launched himself off on the wrong foot at warp speed.
I don't care what the "official Trek timeline" says. I simply do not believe that Kirk and Spock were in the Academy together, at the same time. I just don't. If anyone can cite something from either a series episode or one of the films that contradicts me here, then fine, but I've never once had any other impression than that Spock is at least twenty years older than Kirk, or that Spock's been in Starfleet a lot longer than Kirk has.
There's no real problem here, timewise, that I can see. First of all, Kirk is something of a "wunderkind", one of the youngest Captains in Starfleet and a guy who's been driven by the idea of command his entire life. Spock is not driven by command at all; by the time he becomes a Captain, it's as the commander of a starship that's being used for training new cadets. And if we assume that the TOS episode "The Menagerie" happens early in Kirk's command of the Enterprise -- perhaps even in his first year -- then it's possible that Spock was already serving on the Enterprise, under Captain Pike, while Kirk was still at the Academy. (The events of "The Cage" are clearly stated to have taken place thirteen years earlier.
I've always had the impression that Spock was older than Kirk too. But not that much older. His mother Amanda was human, after all, and we've seen her, 60ish to his 30 something in the TV episode Journey to Babel, 80ish to his 50 in the fourth movie, The Voyage Home. Vulcans live longer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their childhoods are extended proportionally. So Kirk and Spock could be near contemporaries and it's possible that they bumped into each other when they were cadets or very young officers.
The problem, I think, if the film is to stay true to the series, is that Kirk and Spock were not friends before they served together aboard the Enterprise. During the first season they were clearly still getting to know each other. And throughout the course of the series there were important facts about Spock that Kirk just did not know. He wasn't aware of the depth of Spock's loyalty to Captain Christopher Pike. He'd never heard that Spock's father was the famous diplomat Sarek. And in Amok Time he's shocked to find out that every seven years Vulcans go into heat. That means, assuming they're both in their mid-30s during the run of the original series, Spock 35 to Kirk's 32 or 33, they couldn't have spent time around each other when Spock was 21 or 28 and suffering through pon farr.
That gives Abrams a window of 6 or so years in which to set his movie though, and Kirk and Spock don't have to become fast friends. The plot of the movie can just be that this was the time when they got to know and respect each other, building the foundation for their later friendship.
On Spock's side: Before the episode Shore Leave, Spock didn't know about Finnegan, the upperclassman who used to haze the young plebe Jim Kirk at the Academy. And in The Menagerie, he doubted if he could trust Kirk enough to let him in on his plan to spacejack the Enterprise and carry the severely crippled Captain Pike to Talos IV.
It does seem implied in the second movie, The Wrath of Khan, however, that Spock knew Kirk reprogrammed the computer in order to beat the Kobayashi Moru Maneuver at the Academy. That could be a funny plot point in the movie. Kirk could cheat and think he'd gotten away with it, without knowing he owes Spock for not ratting him out.
Spock and Kirk might actually have a lot in common. Both are science nerds who for some reason devoted themselves to military careers. Comparisons between Kirk and Captain James Cook have been made and they are apt. But Gene Roddenberry had Horatio Hornblower in mind when he created Kirk/Pike, and Hornblower was an unlikely naval officer, an intellectual and a scientist more than a swashbuckler. (Patrick O'Brian divided Hornblower in two when he created Lucky Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Aubrey-Maturin fans, Tom Watson and Mr Shakes, can tell me if he also was thinking of Jim Kirk and Mr Spock, bringing the literary allusions of Star Trek back down to earth and the sea.) Kirk is like Hornblower in that he knows the science of his command almost as well as the officers who are there to advise him on it. He is almost as good an engineer as Mr Scott, almost as knowlegeable a practical scientist as Spock, a better navigator than Chekov, and as well versed in history, anthropology, and other fields as the various guest star specialists who are brought aboard, usually as love interests with a soft spot for the episode's villain.
Both of Kirk's former major love interests are scientists: Dr Carol Marcus, the warm-hearted inventor of the Genesis device in Wrath of Khan and, incidentally, the mother of Kirk's son, David, and Dr Janice Lester, the crazy one---Every guy with any kind of romantic past has a warm-hearted one and a crazy one.---who works a soul-swap on Kirk and steals his body in Turnabout Intruder, thereby allowing William Shatner to camp it up divinely as Lester can't stop being a femme fatale even while in a man's body.
So Kirk could have been a scientist himself.
But that's his older brother Sam's vocation
Becoming a Star Fleet officer might have been his way of separating himself from his brother, even of outdoing him at something.
A fraternal rivalry is a part of Spock's history too.
But suppose Kirk's joining Star Fleet wasn't just an act of rivalry. Suppose it was an act of rebellion as well.
Kirk never mentions his parents, that I recall. As far as we know, his brother's the only family he has. What if his big brother was a lot older? Enough older to have become responsible for the young Jim Kirk when their parents died?
Kirk's heading off to the Academy instead of Stanford or the Vulcan Institute of Technology doesn't have to have been a family-fracturing act of defiance. But it might have caused enough friction that the young Kirk was still smarting from it and he might have let off some steam to the pointy-eared cadet who was his lab partner.
And Spock's enrollment at the Academy we know estranged him from his father.
The two outsiders, two geeks among the military jocks, each a secret rebel, would have been drawn to each other, and this could be the dynamic behind a good movie, as long as Abrams remembers that on the surface it would have appeared one-sided, with Kirk doing all the talking and making all the moves towards starting a friendship---a friendship that Spock would have resisted and not admitted to after it was established.
Jaquandor's concerned that so far there appears to be no plan to introduce any of the other series regulars as characters. Of course, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura would have been too young, but Scotty's kicking around Star Fleet somewhere and can show up easily enough. But the one Jaquander wants to see and who he thinks is essential is McCoy.
Making a movie centering on Kirk and Spock alone commits a serious error, misunderstanding the character dynamic that made the Star Trek: TOS so iconic that it spawned decades of spinoffs and sequels. It's not the Kirk-and-Spock dynamic that lies at the dramatic heart of Star Trek; it's the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic. It was the way McCoy's passions and Spock's cool logic, often set in conflict, informed Kirk's eventual decisions that made the original show work.
As far as the series is concerned, Spock and Kirk's history together doesn't appear to go back farther than the day Kirk assumed command of the Enterprise. But, depsite the difference in their ages, McCoy and Kirk go way back. McCoy very probably was a part of Kirk's life when he was beginning his career, but this causes a problem for any movie about those days.
McCoy is not a career Star Fleet officer. He had a medical practice that was, if not on Earth, then on the ground of some other planet. When he calls himself a simple country doctor, he's exaggerating for emphasis, but what he's emphasizing is that he is not a military man or an astronaut. He joined Star Fleet after his wife died. Don't tell me you didn't remember he was married? Did you forget he has a daughter too?
If the new movie sends Kirk and Spock off into space, and it has to or it won't be Star Trek---I see it ending with Spock heading off to his new assignment aboard the USS Enterprise, but they have to fight a few Klingons or Cardassians before that---they'll have to go without McCoy.
Assuming McCoy's practice was near the Academy, wherever that's supposed to be, and Kirk and McCoy met up when Kirk needed to have his first dose of the clap taken care of off the records, McCoy can only be around for the first third of the film at the most.
But there is a character who was there during Kirk's Academy days who can step into the place McCoy occupied in the triangulated relationship Kirk has with his executive officers.
In fact, she has to be there for what we know from The Wrath of Khan to make sense.
Kirk and Carol Marcus had to have had their big love affair when they were both very young in order for their son to be around 30 when they meet up again.
Which means that a subplot of the new movie has to be Kirk getting Carol knocked up.
Before the scene where Spock reports to his new captain on the Enterprise, there has to be a scene where kindly young Doc McCoy tells Carol that the rabbit died.
Carol, of course, refuses an abortion and makes McCoy promise not to tell Kirk she's pregnant.
McCoy: Dammit, Carol! I'm a doctor, not your father confessor! We're talking about your future here!
Carol: Please, Bones?
McCoy: He's the father, he should be told.
Carol: I won't have him throwing his career away for me.
McCoy: He loves you, Carol.
Carol: He thinks he does. What he loves is the service. He's married to Star Fleet now. I don't want to wake up some morning to disccover I'm competing for his love with a starship!
Heck. Now I want to see this movie.
Kirk and McCoy met up when Kirk needed to have his first dose of the clap taken care of off the records
Buddy, that is solid gold.
Posted by: Matt | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 12:01 AM
How could they possibly find actors to play those roles? Nimoy and Shatner are those roles, any other actors, even if they are far better then shatner( not exactly a tall order) would just not feel right. It would take the whole movie just to get used to them and , god forbid, they didn't fit right the whole project would crash and burn. But it would be fun to see the kind of actor they got to do Kirk.
Wanted: Major ham with no self-consciousness. Odd speech patterns and galactic sized ego a plus.
Criminy. To get the youth market they would probably get owen wilson to be kirk.
So my question is, who could play those roles?
Oh and why not just try to make a good TNG movie.
Posted by: g | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 01:49 AM
I'm not a big Trek fan, although I did run into Lt. Uhura when she was performing at the Officers Club at Travis AFB in California in 1968 (singing, I suppose; I doubt if there were a lot of Trekkies in the AF Officer Corps at that time, at least not ones willing just to hear her tell stories about the show).
But I agree with g that no other actors could play Spock/Kirk. Heck, I stopped watching Bond after Connery quit. On the other hand, Abrams finds actors in odd ways. He originally wanted the Korean actress in "Lost" to play the part Evangeline Lilly got. One of the other actors showed up for a casting call and Abrams wrote him into the story. Granted "Lost" was an ensemble cast in its formative stage, unlike Star Trek, but Abrams might surprise people.
Posted by: Linkmeister | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 02:15 AM
I'd probably go see it if Owen Wilson plays Kirk.
Hee-hee.
...which one's Kirk again? Kidding!
Posted by: blue girl | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 07:57 AM
Maybe Heath and Jake can become a screen couple again and do the honors... "I wish I could quit you, Spock!"
Posted by: Jennifer | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 08:26 AM
I'd watch it if you were writing it, anyway.
Only one thing. "Assuming McCoy's practice was near the Academy, wherever that's supposed to be..."
The Academy is in San Francisco, specifically in the Presidio. And the Golden Gate Bridge is still standing. This is true both in TNG and in the movies, though TOS never mentions it.
Posted by: Ron | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:11 AM
As OutKast once lyricized: "Drip, drip, drop, there goes a nerdgasm."
Posted by: norbizness | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 12:46 PM
Argh. Now I want to see it too.
The Lance Mannion version, that is.
Posted by: Rana | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 01:51 PM
As your post illustrates, the Trek franchise has so much baggage that it's almost impossible to do another series, especially with different actors, without alienating portions of the audience. Shatner and Nimoy are Kirk and Spock, and it'd be hard to see anyone else in the role.
Personally, I'd reboot the entire concept and start over again from scratch. Put characters called Kirk and Spock in it, but make it clear that the series is completely new and the actions of the characters won't necessarily feed into something established in the 1966-2005 continuity.
Posted by: Jeff | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 02:52 PM
Anyone who has happened to catch the webcast "New Voyages" series knows that it's not just irritating watching someone else (Elvis hair anyone?) play Kirk and Spock, it's downright embarrassing.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I've always thought that whenever a long-running series (in this case, franchise) resorts to the "When Harry Met Sally..." episode, then it is clear that it has truly run its course.
At least the point of WHMS was that when you decide to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible. In so many other cases, we've seen enough of the rest of their lives to know that the beginning doesn't matter.
Posted by: mac macgillicuddy | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 03:06 PM
Kirk need not necessarily be ignorant of Carol's pregnancy; in STII, the dialogue makes clear that he knows exactly who David is. (Shocked when David tells him "I'm Dr. Marcus!", Kirk turns to Carol and says, "Is that David?" And a little while later, when Kirk and Carol are alone, Kirk says: "I did what you wanted. I stayed away."
Your version sounds kind of interesting -- and part of it already exists as a novel that came out back in the 80s, called something like "Enterprise: The First Adventure".
Posted by: Jaquandor | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 05:25 PM
I'm thinking there is no way I can out geek Lance Mannion on Star Trek-ness.
I feel so inadequate now.
Posted by: carla | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:41 PM
dearest mr manion,
i believe i have fallen in love with you
Posted by: a rose is a rose | Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 11:01 AM
You forgot the point of the second pilot, Mr. Mannion: Bringing Kirk and Spock together, by TPTB getting Gary Mitchell out of the way.
No, no, he didn't do it intentionally -- but it was really one huge deus ex-machina working out at the edge of the galaxy, taking away Kirk's best friend once he got a taste of god inside him. It was very clear in that episode that if Spock wasn't absolutely right in his judgement about Mitchell, Kirk would have embarrassed himself by slugging him.
Kirk and Spock respected each other, but weren't friends; by episode's end, they came together by way of mourning.
And, yes: I am Geek... Hear me roar.
Posted by: cgeye | Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 01:09 PM
["O'Brian split Hornblower in two to make Aubrey and Maturin, was he aware
of Kirk-Spock"?]
There are similarities among these characters, and then there are direct
influences, and you have to be careful not to confuse them.
Roddenberry explicitly mentioned Hornblower as a model for Kirk. But the
way Shatner took the character was less Hornblower-like, more the traditional
action hero. Picard is much more of the Hornblower type -- you could view
the first season of TNG as establishing the superiority of the Picard/Hornblower
captain over the Kirk/Riker type.
There is controversy over the amount of influence Hornblower had on the
Aubrey-Maturin stories. Probably a good first approximation is "none", but
there is some evidence that O'Brian at least read Hornblower. Both Forester and
O'Brian were deeply immersed in the primary literature of the real Napoleonic-
era Royal Navy, which I think is adequate to explain most of the similarities
between their works. Nikolai Tolstoy's biography of O'Brian argues that Maturin
is a greatly autobiographcal character, and suggests that Aubrey was based on
a retired officer O'Brian knew in Wales in the 1940's.
It is unlikely that _Star Trek_ had any influence at all on O'Brian, because the
latter lived in rural France, with little contact with any popular electronic culture,
from 1950 or so until he became famous late in his life. I agree that you can
think of Aubrey as a Kirk, and Maturin as a Spock-McCoy composite, but these
are literary analogies without any causal basis.
Your points about Kirk and Spock are well taken.
Posted by: Dave MB | Tuesday, May 02, 2006 at 04:59 PM
Very intersting. I agree with Dave MB that it is unlikely O'Brian was influenced by Star Trek, and for the same reasons. Although I have been holding off on reading Tolstoy's biography of him until I am done with the series (only 70 pages of the last complete novel - Blue at The Mizzen - is left to me :-s), it does seem as though O'Brain's particular brand of geekiness lay more in the musty records of the Admiralty's basement than on his sofa in front of the tube (he was still laying down his novels with a typewriter in 2000). Though I suspect that had he ever caught an episode he probably would have enjoyed it a great deal.
Characters such as Aubrey, Maturin, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Frodo, Sam and Hornblower do seem to crop up a great deal, and all are patterned after literary stereotypes that stretch back to Homer's Odyssey. The most noticable commonalities between them are that they are exclusively male, are involved in a journey that traverses philosophy as well as geography and are distracted from said journey by the interference of women - who often take the form of mysterious, powerful and terrifying feminine symbols such as the Sirens or Shelob (the imagery of Sting and the Spider's abdomen? And from a devout Catholic, too - for shame!).
It is a compelling cocktail, especially to men, and I think that it encapsulates the secret dreams and fears that reside within many of us. Having plotted a lonely course during previous stages of my life I know that it is a dream that is undoubtedly more enjoyable in the imagination than it is in reality. However, it makes for some damn fine storytelling nonetheless.
Before leaving I should note that Thelma and Louise was a very cool inversion of the format. So perhaps the dream isn't as exclusive to men as it may seem!
Posted by: Mr. Shakes | Wednesday, May 03, 2006 at 11:13 PM
Before the scene where Spock reports to his new captain on the Enterprise, there has to be a scene where kindly young Doc McCoy tells Carol that the rabbit died.
My God - he really *is* a simple country doctor.
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans | Thursday, May 04, 2006 at 02:05 AM
Mr Shakes - I find your comment on the literary stereotype interesting. I have been studying the matter for years, if somewhat empirically. The issue of "the journey which traverses philosophy" involves the concept of a "soulmate", the Adam&Eve factor. The reason why the pairs are male could be because of their bonded duties to their own time (they must be heroes, leaders, etc).
I can assure you I am female, yet the 'male dream' you mention greatly appeals to me as well. I'm sure you are familiar with slash fiction, which is rather exclusively women's fiction; yet I have wondered how men perceived such pairings. I do not believe it is something to do with "secret fears" as you call them - or if it did, it would not be a healthy preoccupation. Things which encapsulate secret fears are nothing more than addictions. However, I have found the opposite of it to be true: sensitivity to such a pairing (be it to their 'platonic' friendship) involves a person's transcending of their own boundaries and taking that journey across philosophy, as well. In other words, by corroborating the evidence, it gives people access to the existence of their own soulmate. All other details are incidental, and are not so much patterned after male/female factors (gay or straight), but after "inside" and "outside", forces of unity versus forces of dismemberment, good/evil, etc - all ways to discern that the primary relationship withstands all (even death).
Posted by: Slender Sail | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 05:12 PM