almostwitty

I went to see the new Star Trek film at the London Imax, and alongside pretty much everyone else, I was awed and wowed by the action, laughed at the character interplay, and suffused with nostalgic feelings for the actions of Kirk, Spock, Sulu and everyone else. And acknowledged that even if green skin does not go with red hair, it still looks darned good.

However, there are a couple of things that are annoying me about new Trek (spoilers dead ahead, captain!)

Did they really have to change the rules? By breaking the one inviolable rule in time-travel fiction that people from the future trying to change the past cannot change the present? Aside from throwing away 30+ years of stories - no more Khaaaaaaaannn, for instance - it means you’ve broken the internal workings of the box, and it just won’t work as well any more.

Plus, Doctor Who is a 40-year story about a time-travelling person, for goodness’ sake - and if they didn’t feel the need to throw all the old stories away when they re-started the storylines - why should Star Trek have done the same thing?

It can also be argued that Doctor Who had a far more successful reboot than Star Trek. British kids are now pretending to be Daleks in the playground. Whereas most of the people I know who saw Star Trek and loved it were … Star Trek fans. Non-Star Trek fans don’t seem as interested - and that was with an action-packed 120 minutes with barely a mention of multi-phasic shielding.

Supplemental: Star Trek appears to have six different theories of time travel. So I guess it doesn’t matter!

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