It’s Trek Talk Tuesday, and it’s the anniversary of Star Trek Into Darkness, a movie where I never once saw the twist coming. I really didn’t. I know a lot of people in the community did, and I found that out after the fact, but I was sitting in that theater going, oh wow, let’s see what this is going to be all about.
That’s the look back. Before I get there, there’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, both last week’s episode, Children of the Comet, and this week’s, Ghosts of Illyria. They put out some sneak peek material and a trailer, and I watched that trailer for the first time on camera.
Children of the Comet Is So Very, Very Star Trek
Spoilers for Children of the Comet, episode two of Strange New Worlds. By now you should’ve seen it.
I saw some criticism online from people saying, hey, what’s going on, all the old episodes only ever started with the captain doing the narration. Guys, really? It’s weak sauce, man. I didn’t mind it. I liked it. I think it sets a tone.
These are very much character-driven stories, which we’ve always had. Season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation, probably seasons one through three, gave us literal deep dives into every individual character, what they’re going through, their psyche, all of it. This episode focused on Uhura, and specifically her journey as a cadet. She’s a young protege who’s brilliant in a specific field and she’s asking the question: I really like alien languages, but I don’t have to join Starfleet and put myself in danger to study alien languages. And she’s absolutely right. You don’t have to do that. Now, if you want to be the first to study an alien language, it’s a whole different story.
There’s a great scene where Ortegas does that whole hazing thing, and I just love how Anson Mount steps into it like, hey, what’s going on everybody, Ortegas, cadet, welcome, dress uniform, huh, grab a drink, I’ve got to deal with the ribs. I connected on that level. I totally get it.
It’s also starting a pattern for the characters. The next episode is one where you can clearly see Una, Number One, is the focus. As we go through the storylines building up to wherever this is headed, there’s going to be an awful lot of material that’s specific to the characters, because this is how you learn who characters are.
Why There Aren’t Twenty-Some Episodes
I’ve also seen people complain about the episode count. Why are they only doing this many, why don’t we have twenty-some odd episodes?
Several factors go into that. The first is that it’s almost impossible to do the shows at the level they deserve on the budget you were doing them on back then. The original series episodes were, I want to say, close to half a million dollars an episode, and it might even have started at something like 375,000 and kept going up as the series progressed. But that was for something like 26 episodes in a season, and you had filler episodes. When you’re doing episodic television that’s fine. If you’re trying to give the season an arc of any kind, it can be very difficult to carry 26 episodes without having filler episodes that feel like filler episodes.
With Strange New Worlds we’re getting cinematic quality. For me, you could string any two or three of these episodes together and make a movie. Seeing Star Trek presented at this level, I’m thrilled by it. It’s something I could have never imagined as a kid.
The Ghosts of Illyria Trailer
I’d only read a short synopsis, so this was my first look.
“We have a situation. Landing party members are showing symptoms of some kind of contamination.” They’re being attracted to light. Somebody says “I want to feel the radiance on my skin,” and the answer is that it’s a thousand degrees and it’ll kill you. “It’s only a matter of time before we all become infected.” It ends on “I’m arming us with knowledge,” and I love the way they’ve been doing Spock lately.
A lot happened in there, so I played it back. There’s Una up top. One guy has clearly taken off one of the light covers that adjusts to the lighting in the area, and he’s just sitting in the light of it. And when you look at the moment where he says “what did you do that for,” he’s burned. They’re exposing themselves to unhealthy levels of sun rays.
This has very much the vibes of The Naked Time and The Naked Now. That’s an original series episode and a Next Generation episode where something infects the crew and makes them start feeling very, very amorous toward each other, partying, almost drunk. Next Generation handled it differently than the original series, and I actually like the Next Generation version. It was a nice little twist that they weren’t able to just use the cure from the previous Enterprise. They had to come up with some variation on it for themselves.
So this feels like that. They get exposed to something, probably on a planet. Some of the stills that have come out show an away team, that nice shot with the gray jackets. And from what I read, Number One is the focus, and it looks like she may be one of the last ones standing. There’s a shot where she’s looking up with this fiery burn effect, almost like the Iron Man 3 effect, the thing they were using on themselves. I’m willing to bet that’s toward the end, when she’s really close to solving it and all of a sudden she gets infected and it’s, oh no, I’m not going to have time.
I like it. I’m excited for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Why the 2009 Movies Had to Look the Way They Did
I had been very excited by the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek, the 2009 film that started the reboot series with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and others. So when I heard the sequel was coming and that Benedict Cumberbatch was going to be the quote-unquote antagonist, I was in.
For those of you playing at home, there were legal reasons they had to make Star Trek specifically that way. Paramount and Viacom had split (they’ve since rejoined). So there was Viacom the parent company, there was CBS, and there was Paramount. Everyone had a piece of what this thing was, but because of how some contracts were written, they only had access to their particular piece of that pie, and never the twain could meet. What a lot of people fell into was a whole new crew reimagining the original series people.
As fans we’ve known for years that after Gene Roddenberry’s original series he’d been pitching a Phase Two. It would have taken a lot of the thoughts and ideas they ended up putting toward the films, a lot of that creative sensibility, the design work, the advances in visual effects. Eventually the network was like, yeah, we can’t really afford it. They weren’t doing million dollar episodes back then, or 10 million dollar episodes like they are today. So what ended up happening was you got the motion pictures.
Even The Next Generation wasn’t welcomed at first. Somebody posted a newspaper clipping showing the Next Generation cast and crew, and it shows what new Trek was like back then. New Trek was basically The Next Generation, and everyone was like, how can you have Star Trek without the original crew? It’s hilarious to see how quickly those things got ingratiated into people’s lives, and how fast we forget as fans.
Quinto Was Channeling Nimoy
The 2009 film was the first time we ever got to see someone representing characters we knew and loved who weren’t the original actors who played them. Zachary Quinto was doing Spock, and he was channeling Leonard Nimoy without doing a Leonard Nimoy impression. I think that’s a very important distinction.
Everybody sometimes wants to think that Tuvok was just a Black version of Spock and T’Pol was just a female version of Spock. The truth is no. Vulcans have a way about them, and Quinto was essentially channeling a type, a Vulcan. There were some Spock mannerisms he adopted, which is great, and it really helped.
He Don’t Look Like No Normal Dude
Then you shift to Into Darkness, and you get this look and taste of James T. Kirk and the crew in the middle of a mission. I almost said superhero movie. It starts with them having to save a species, he gets in trouble for it, he gets the Enterprise taken from him, and a day or two later he’s back in command because of a thing that happened.
Then Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are in front of RoboCop. Sorry, the actor who played RoboCop. He plays Admiral Marcus, and I can’t remember his name right this second. He sends them off on a mission, and I’m sitting in the theater while the admiral starts hemming and hawing about who Harrison is, and I was like, no.
They did kind of telegraph it. The minute they’re on the Klingon planet fighting the Klingons and you see Harrison just wrecking shop, I’m like, he don’t look like no normal dude. That dude looks superhuman. Oh no. Don’t even tell me.
So I was already super suspicious, and then you get the scene in the brig. Who are you? “My name is Khan.” And I was like, really? Is that your name? Because you sure as heck don’t look like a Spanish man with his chest all bared. You killed my father. I’m kidding.
I rolled with that punch quick. Okay. This is ridiculous. Okay, I’ll go with it. This is Spock and Kirk and Khan, apparently.
Then you get the one moment that felt very contrived, where Spock is suddenly calling old Spock. I know I promised never to ask you any questions, but I need some spoilers. And old Spock tells him Khan is one of the most dangerous men he has ever faced, don’t trust him. And I’m just like, okay. All right.
Don’t Do This, Don’t Do This, Don’t Do This
Then you get to the part where they swap the dialogue from The Wrath of Khan, because Kirk has to go down. Again, I completely saw this telegraphed, and I was like, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this.
You’ve got to remember, The Wrath of Khan lives in a special place in a lot of Star Trek fans’ hearts. It’s the trilogy of Star Trek, if you will. The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home: three movies that live hand in hand within the Star Trek universe. You can literally show somebody those three and they’d be like, oh, got it, Star Trek, the original series, this is their trilogy. They’d understand, because the Spock arc goes through the whole thing.
So I liked the movie when I saw it, and at the same time I understood the problematic nature of it. But I’m the same guy then that I am today. It’s Star Trek in the movies, it looks good, and I’m happy and excited about it. Okay. I can do this.
The Gateway Drug
For a lot of people, that was their Khan. Just like for a lot of people, Jar Jar Binks was their first Ewok.
Sometimes the thing you get isn’t as good in our minds, because we saw the old stuff. But for someone else this was their first, and it wasn’t a bad first. And if this is the gateway drug that gets them into Star Trek? Come on, kids. Let me show you a little something right here. Just take a little. It’s all right. I’ve got Star Trek. You’re going to love it. Just a little hit.
And when you’re done with this candy of the 2009 version that looks beautiful and glossy, I’ve got some original series, Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise. Oh, you love all this? Here’s Discovery. And now that you’ve seen Next Gen, here’s Picard.
All this stuff lives in this wonderful, happy family world that is Star Trek.
Home
I’ve been excited about Star Trek for years and years. Getting the chance to geek out about it like a fanboy with you on Tuesdays gets me through the week in a way I can’t even explain.
We’re at 400 subscribers as I say this, and I’m both blessed and humbled. I’m not going to get emotional, I promise. I just want to be entertaining. I love talking Star Trek, I love talking pop culture, and I definitely want to get into more things like Marvel reviews. But for right now I’m really happy being home, and by home I mean here in Star Trek. Star Trek was my original fandom. I’ve said that before and I’ll keep saying it.
I’ll be back Thursday for Strange New Worlds.
Two things I’d love to hear. What did you think of Star Trek Into Darkness, and what’s your read on the Ghosts of Illyria trailer? I want to see if we’re all right or not. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
