Lower Decks

Over the past nine months, I’ve been periodically writing in about Star Trek as part of my increased duties in the relaunch of this website. In a way, this could not be more strange. Lower Decks is a direct descendent of the original Section31.com, an effort to keep an old family together that quickly realized it would have to embrace a wider audience in order to survive. In fact, except for the reviews of the new Star Trek movie and the half dozen columns I’ve done about the celebrated franchise, you’d hardly know it to come upon this site blind today that it was once so one-dimensional. And in a strange way, what’s true for Lower Decks is true for the new Star Trek film.

Those who’ve been reading my columns or are familiar with my long-term tenure at the Observation Lounge message board would probably find it easy to call me a Star Trek liberal and thus dismiss me when I say that ‘Star Trek’ is now the high watermark of the franchise. I’m the guy who liked the past four films, wrote two columns defending the first and fifth, and hey, liked the last two TV series. Most of that is sheer heresy for franchise conservatives. For one reason or another, these entries represent what drove away most of the massive support the franchise once enjoyed, if not as a widely popular phenomenon then at least a well-respected one, surely regarded as a touchstone of culture from the past forty years that at the very least inspired generations to cross racial and technological barriers that had previously seemed impassable. When J.J. Abrams said he wasn’t doing “your father’s Star Trek,” it turns out that he meant it. But not in the way people might have assumed.

Brilliant in execution as a transition from old continuity to new, the new film breaks the mold every incarnation of the franchise has followed since the beginning. For all the old arguments that I would have once dismissed out of hand that Star Trek seemed bent on maintaining a TV mentality, ‘Star Trek’ finally allows us to see how it’s truly possible. It’s not that there was a problem with the approach that was so often repeated or even all that impossible to penetrate for new viewers, but that, time and again, the characters in each new story seemed destined only to exist in those stories. What Abrams and his terrific cast of collaborators accomplish is truly making the Star Trek world lived-in, perhaps moreso than even the famous model of Star Wars. When we first meet Karl Urban’s justly-praised new interpretation of Leonard “Bones” McCoy, he seems like he’s cast more from the mold of Han Solo than the late DeForrest Kelly. His first reaction to Zachary Quinto’s Spock is even one of admiration! Eventually, however, as the characters tend to in the story, he falls more or less into the traditional patterns. This isn’t McCoy helping Kirk deal with aging in ‘Star Trek II,’ a shade of nuance audiences will accept, but rather real prowess. Better still, Simon Pegg’s Montgomery Scott comes out of nowhere, nearly steals the show, and gives the venerable engineer an even more authentic air than the accomplished character actor Jimmy Doohan did over the course of thirty years work. No bloody A, B, C, or D necessary. Well, we can keep that first letter.

The real star, of course, must be Kirk, James Tiberius Kirk, made an icon by William Shatner, but finally brought to vital life by Chris Pine, Hollywood’s best kept secret, finally exposed here for all to see. It doesn’t hurt that, like Spock, we don’t meet Kirk fully formed as Pine, but rather get to know him, his background (however altered by the timeline-violating Nero) and motivations. But it really doesn’t hurt when you have someone as brash as Pine portraying one of the most famous cads created for popular entertainment, tempered and capable, but willing to play fast and loose as the situation requires. In fact, the film’s one stroke of genius is to recast Uhura to actual purpose, the one female in the bunch from the star, as someone capable in her own right, but attractive enough to drive two disparate but kindred spirits alike wild, both Kirk and Spock. In fact, what the film does best is to ably illustrate the old sci-fi gag that a starship crew is always made up of the most brilliant minds. But here, for the first time, we can see how that actually works. Zoë Saldana’s Uhura is not just a communications officer, but someone who can help solve more technical crises, just as the neophyte Chekov (Anton Yelchin, Pine’s fast-approaching rival on film) and Sulu (John Cho, finally realizing the role George Takei always wished he had) do in their own right.

Eric Bana’s Nero has been consistently cited as, if there is one, the weak spot of the film, and if anything, his vengeful Romulan exposes ‘Star Trek’ to at heart be exactly the same film Picard and a previous (or, I guess, later) generation dealt with for the previous four films: crew meets villain, crew eventually blows villain up, thus foiling evil plans. But beyond fleshing so much more actual story and atmosphere out than any previous Star Trek, the new film almost seems to relish how cavalier, like Kirk himself, a plot can be. Having read the superb IDW prequel comic, I knew Nero’s story already, so by the time he explains it himself in the film, I had already invested more than most viewers had. Maybe it’s cheating, maybe it’s just accepting that a hero needs a foe to shine, but not necessarily a real threat. Bana isn’t bad, as it might as well have been suggested, but to the point, as a Romulan should, as any of the Vulcans are within the story, even the stately Leonard Nimoy as the elder Spock. We receive just about as much development in that arc, but there hasn’t been any complaints there. I suggest it’s the same argument that would say the film is heresy just for mucking around with which reality, exactly, we’re going to be following from now on.

Some of the details are endearing all on their own: Abrams and his Big Red Ball (and really, that’s all I need to know about that); Archer and thus ‘Enterprise’ itself being acknowledged; Tyler Perry playing a male character, and carrying his real weight for a change; the Kobyoshi Maru scenario remaining fresh and relevant; elder’s Spock’s awesome ship (the Jellyfish, for the record); Nero’s mining ship, yet another nod for those needing it to the other universally praised Star Trek film, a parallel to the Genesis Device; Kirk taking on the classic hero-dangling-from-the-edge just to help identify him as an unmistakable Hero (though this never seemed to work for Obi-Wan); aliens who look really alien, but still like Star Trek aliens as we’ve come to know them (including Scotty’s little buddy, who might have come right out of some of those aforementioned last few big screen adventures); Michael Giacchino’s score, the soundtrack of which I’d listened to several times but didn’t really connect with until I heard it with the film itself; the humor that my sister couldn’t stop saying was the best she’d ever seen in Star Trek (hey, everyone forgets Behr’s Ferengi, but in all fairness, she was referring to the films); and hey, the fact that I really do need to see it again to try and catch everything, like actually seeing Greg Grunberg in something other than the credits (knowing what his role is and registering his appearance are two completely separate things).

Star Trek could do worse than remain a movie franchise for the time being, especially if this team can duplicate this kind of success (and I don’t doubt that for a minute). If anything, after something like this, a new TV series would once again be a near-instant failure, unless the old rules there were thrown out as well. Saying that I love this film, however, doesn’t change the way I feel about the previous movies, but rather rates as an acknowledgement that it doesn’t take for granted for one moment its name. And that isn’t to say that the older films did, but they played it safe far more often than they didn’t. Worf managing to pop back into Picard’s crew three times without being a large plot point is something this film would never have considered. But then, we don’t know what the sequel will do now that our crew is assembled.

I could probably elaborate much further about the new film’s merits, but like Urban’s McCoy, sometimes I know when to leave them on their own. This isn’t just an action movie or a Star Trek movie, but an addition to the recent canon of franchise revivals that considers the value and implications of what came before, amplifies them, and leaves you begging for more. I could be self-serving, and say I told you so, that Star Trek still has life and vitality in it, but where would the fun be in that? The fun’s in the picture, folks.

In many ways, ‘Star Trek’ is exactly the film someone would create to lure a new audience, but that doesn’t mean it can’t satisfy the old ones, too.