Anaraphla's Movie Mayhem: Star Trek: Into Darkness

Anaraphla’s Movie Mayhem: Star Trek: Into Darkness

    It should be obvious that the primary difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is of course the expositional scrawl that moves through space  to the top of the screen as if were actually going some place*. One can imagine some unknown alien planet colliding with the text that starts Episode One: The Fandom Malice and think some horrible disaster is on the way, or at the very least become very angry over the way Mr. Lucas disposes of his trash. Yes, I actually think of weird stuff like this.

*As well as the number of characters, that ironically are fairly easy to parody. One rather obscure Wars character named Plot Coon was allegedly a nod to Coon Plot, which of course refers to the episodes of Original Trek written by Gene L. Coon

    It was rather obvious that a second “reboot trek” movie would have to be made. Its sort of like after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; we had to drop another one on Nagasaki to  show we could do it. Its not that it’s a bad movie. Its just as though we needed another franchise go dark and gritty, violating everything we loved about the original. Don’t be surprised if Hello Kitty: War on Terror comes to your local theater.

    Ok, we start out on an alien planet. (alien to us, that is) Kirk and Bones are being chased by the natives. Why they are being chased we don’t know, but the gist of it is they jump in a lake and there is the ENTERPRISE** Spock is at an erupting volcano using his cold volcano logic, trying to stop the eruption.

    Kirk orders the Enterprise to rescue Spock, even though the natives would see the ship take off, violating the Prime Directive*** Of course there were better places to hide the ship, like maybe SPACE. As the scene ends we see the natives have drawn a surprisingly good picture of the Enterprise in the sand. Obviously they were very good artists, and no doubt the picture will be a symbolic warning against stupid writing, A few natives no doubt were wondering if next year’s Trek convention could possibly be better than this.

** Using space ships as submarines is not new. Thirty Days was a passable Voyager episode where Paris takes the Delta Flyer into a planet that was nothing but a ball of water( just don‘t ask why anyone would prefer living in a ball of water). My favorite one is Grace Under Pressure, a Stargate Atlantis episode. Mc Kay is the only person I know whose hallucinations are smarter than he is, and better looking. His imagination is almost as good as Felger

    Next we have a scene of Kirk getting some tail, literally. I don’t have anything against women with tails, especially since I have chosen he catgirl race as avatars in both Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Yet  Kirk is about as mature as a typical college football player, almost. I don’t know. Its getting a little hard to believe in this scene that Starfleet would make anyone like this captain of a starship. (Wait a minute, didn’t they send the cadets to do the fleet’s job in the last movie?)

    Of course even after saving the planet and Spock, Kirk is slapped by the 286th Rule of Acquisition; “No good deed ever goes unpunished”, even though there are no Ferengi in this movie. Pike demotes Kirk for violation of the Prime Directive**

***It was once said that the PD was a great idea, but practically was a bloody nuisance .
Shatner of course had no reluctance to kill god computers people depended on,  or explain to some random ridgehead aliens (sometimes forcibly) that the way they run their society is frakin stupid. No one at HQ seem to care. I really think Chris Pine should cry foul here. This would never happen to Shatner. Of course, Chris Pine’s “singing” isn’t considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction in certain parts of the known galaxy.

    Anyone with the intelligence of a cockroach knows Kirk will get the Big E back. Due to an explosion at a Starfleet, all the Admirals and Captain Pike are in an emergency conference, in an unsecured building with a target painted on the outside. Starfleet Security is as much an oxymoron as Military Intelligence.

    Pike and everyone in the room is killed except Kirk and Adm. Robocop. Robo orders Kirk to go after a guy named Harriman, whose name is disguised for dramatic reasons, even though the spoiler has already been spoiled. Harriman gets away from the scene of the crime using the transwarp device Scotty invents in the last movie, only for some reason the good guys don’t have one this time.

    Kirk is sent to the Klingon homeworld to deal with Harriman. Using the famed Vulcan talent for stating the obvious, Spock suspects there is something wrong about the admiral’s orders. There have been evil admirals on Star Trek before, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Adm. Marcus has lunch with Satan every Tuesday so that Satan can get evil tips from the admiral.

    Now we have this crazy scene where Bones notes there is something a bit abnormal about Kirk’s vitals. Well, if you had “experienced” most of the humanoid races of the Federation the way Kirk apparently has, being just “a little” abnormal is incredible. You would at least expect some blue warts on his… Anyway, JJ wisely decided not to go there.

    Next we meet Carol Marcus, who of course is Robo’s daughter. She is the Big E’s number two science officer. Why is she here? It couldn’t be a later scene where takes off her clothes in front of McCoy, could it?.

    Now we have this whole deal Scotty and these photon torpedoes. There is these special torpedoes that they forced to take on board. Scotty gets mad and quits for some bogus  reason, which is in fact a clumsy device to set things up later. The actual scene where Bill and Ted arrive on the ship to warn them that “Only the winners get to go back and set things up” was deleted. Well , the torpedoes contain people and back in an earlier scene in the Admiral’s office there was a model of a super badass secret starship, IN PLAIN SIGHT. I would say Roddenbery is spinning in grave at about Warp 5 at this point.

    So the Enterprise takes off to get Harriman (spelled K-H-A-N, but you knew that). Something goes wrong and the E is disabled. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura land a shuttle on the Klingon planet. This would normally be a big problem but for 2 reasons. One is that Uhura is such a cunning (I won’t say it). The other is that Klingon phrase “It’s a good day to die” due to a typo got changed to “It’s a good day to dye”, resulting in major confusion.

    Now things get weird. Kirk has Kahn in the brig and tells Kirk that Admiral Marcus is about as intelligent as a politician and wants to start a war with the Klingons, which the Admiral confirms and brings out the badass ship to destroy Kirk and Kahn. Of course as I told you, we arranged to have Scotty on the Bad ship in the nick of time.

    What the admiral didn’t figure on was Kirk pulling a trick from the Nemesis movie and shooting him and Kahn. Over to the admiral’s ship in nothing but a spacesuit. Kahn shows he is no weiner and kills the Admiral. Now we only have worry about Kahn blowing up the E.

    Now Kahn offers to return Kirk to the Enterprise if he gets the torpedoes back. The Enterprise complies. What Kahn doesn’t know is that his people have been replaced with real torpedoes. “Who put torpedoes in my torpedoes!”, Kahn screams. There is a bigass explosion. Kahn and the Vagrant (Yes I know its Vengeance but really I dislike the whole Section 31 thing Berman came up with in DS9 more than Kahn” )

    Strangely the Va (there I go again) and Kahn survive and Kahn wants to crash his ship into Starfleet. The E’s engines are dead and the ship is falling to its doom. Kirk runs into the brewery and kicks a few things around just in time to save the ship. The disembodied voice of Ricardo Montalbahn now pleased he has his revenge on Kirk, but hates that other guy for stealing his character, swears vengeance on him.

    Spock listens to his friends parting words, vaguely remembers something about a Genesis Planet. Then realizing that was the other movie screams ABRAHAMS! Meanwhile, McCoy manages to revive a dead tribble, Thanks to bones the Klinons will sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt, AGAIN. But yes., instead of a “Reset Button” to bring Kirk to life we have a Reset Tribble. The final battle between Kahn and Spock is somewhat unremarkable by comparison to the other stuff. However Uhura gives a rather stunning performance.

    Stay tuned when J.J. Abrahams does  for Star Wars what he did to..uh...for Trek.