Star Trek Review - Part Two

The High Council of the Vulcans are standing in a ring around a gigantic statue. That’s right, things are falling apart at a ridiculous rate, the landscape is literally tearing itself apart, and yet they stand as close as they can to the biggest, most precarious object in the room – which also happens to be made of stone, and thus liable to turn into rubble.

Spock arrives and tells the council something they should already know: it is dangerous to stand inside a cave during a planet shattering earthquake. As they leave, there is a hilarious sequence where council members are hit with ridiculously accurate rubble, statues, and rockslides. While standing on the very edge of a precarious ledge, the ground that Spock’s human mother is standing on collapses. Comrade Plot Exposition loses his signal, and she is stuck on the planet. (Did I mention that Spock has a human mother? Oh well. It’s no longer relevant.) There’s a shot of John Cho and Kirk standing side-by-side, mouths agape that looked like a shot stolen directly from “Harold and Kumar Defy Stereotypes”.

So Planet Vulcan disintegrates in a sad and moving scene. It looks like muddy bathwater being sucked down the drain. (I will say nothing of the fact that the black hole ceases to be as soon as the planet disappears, nor anything about Hawking Radiation taking more than 10 seconds to evaporate a black hole. Those piddling, trifling pieces of picky minutiae will stay well out of this critique.) Spock is understandably upset, and we discover that he is having a relationship with Uhura, the black girl that Kirk hit on earlier in the movie. This was hinted through earlier dialogue, but I didn’t care back then. I don’t really see what attracts him to her. Maybe it’s the way that he speaks in grammatically complete full sentences at all times, or the fact that he can’t go two minutes without saying the word ‘logic.’ Maybe it’s the po-faced way he stares at her – no expression, no feelings showing whatsoever. Maybe because his name isn’t Kirk.

We cut to the Captain, who so far has had so little impact on the plot of the movie that he barely qualifies for a humorous nickname. He was captured by the Romulans. The scene begins with the Romulan Commander Nero (who evidently has no underlings) saying ‘I suppose you have a lot of questions for me.’ His saying this gives the impression that he isn’t going to answer them, but I guess after 25 years of having nothing to do, he would be looking for a bit of attention, because straight away and with no prompting, he launches an evil monologue explaining his motives and outlining his plans. (Which reminds me: what did he do in his 25 years of waiting? Take up painting? Do a Masters degree in Applied Evil Smirking? Whatever it was, it wasn’t interior decorating, and that’s for certain.)

Anyhow, the Federation somehow failed in stopping the destruction of Romulus some time in the future, so Nero somehow ended up in the past and (quote) “that is why I will destroy all of the remaining Federation planets, starting with yours.” Then he drops a truth-bug down Captain Irrelevant’s throat – something he should have done at the start, without the bleedingly obvious exposition.

Speaking of bleedingly obvious exposition, we now cut to the Enterprise crew. We learn:

• That the Enormo-spike is heading for Earth
• That the Federation is a target
• That the technology to make a black hole is unheard of in the Star Trek universe at this time
• That the same technology could potentially make a hole in spacetime
• That Captain Hostage knows details of Starfleet defence
• That to catch up with the enemy ship the enemy would have to drop out of warpspace
• That Kirk is a military ignoramus, because he suggests that they disable the enemy ship despite it being like a billion times their size
• That they can’t speed up the warp engines, because all engineering crews are fixing radiation leaks.
• That even though Nero is from the future, he cannot predict how events will unfold because the timelines have been altered
• That they are in an alternate reality, therefore any Trekkies in the audience complaining about the continuity should shut up

All in a two minute scene. Kirk refuses to let (Acting Captain) Spock reunite with Starfleet. I can’t tell why, but I’m pretty sure it’s running counter to the whole “Kirk is a genius” thing that the film makers have going. Pretty much, he sees it as backing down from a fight they can’t win. Because Kirk is going red in the face, Spock has security remove him. (Aha! They DO have security personnel! There is absolutely no argument to support their First Officer and Pilot to be endangered on the platform.) Kirk fights the security personnel, because he’s that much of a genius, so Spock pulls what I believe is called the “Vulcan Sleeper Hold,” and tells the security guys to throw the First Officer off the ship.

Really. They pick a random planet, and hurl Kirk at it in an emergency escape pod. Well, I lied about it being random. It’s Hoth from Star Wars. Kirk’s pod is in a 10 metre deep, 2 metre wide impact crater with jagged ice walls. He somehow climbs to the top without so much as gloves to protect his hands from the sub-zero ice. When he gets to the top, it is featureless icy plains in all directions. Then the aerial shot has the surroundings as being rocky and cracked. This is screenshot worthy.

Way to be internally consistent, guys!

The following sequence – of all the dumb sequences in this movie – is by far the dumbest. Kirk bitches about Spock into his space-diary, and this alerts a snowy white, three legged, toothy space monster to chase Kirk. Tough guy ain’t so tough now, and Kirk runs for his pathetic life. In a scene reminiscent of a far better movie – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace – there’s always a bigger fish. A gigantic red lizard bursts from the snow and eats the space monster whole, just as soon as it pounces for Kirk. Sorry, no, it chomps on the monster for a bit, then throws it aside so it can focus on the far smaller, far bonier snack. Me typing as I watch means that sometimes I insert logic into this movie. A mistake, to be sure.

So the fire-engine red snow-lizard roars in Kirk’s face, not a metre and a half away from him. Then the camera angle changes and he is suddenly ten metres away. Way to cheat for cinematic effect there, Abrams. I spent this whole sequence both laughing at the implausibility of a fluorescent red monster living on an ice planet, and waiting for the inevitable ‘bigger fish’ to terrify us further about the horrors of space. The ‘bigger fish’ turned out to be disappointing.

It was gravity. Kirk nimbly slides down a hill, while the monster hits every ice boulder on the way down. Kirk is momentarily stunned at the bottom, but quickly regains his super-human stamina and continues running. He sees a small cave opening. He runs into it. The composer seemingly got bored at this point, because he’s been spamming the same note continuously for like five minutes in full brass. (Note to composer: Trombones have like 30 notes on them. You don’t need to restrict yourself to just one, the whole movie.) The Lizard monster smashes through the cave opening, and snares Kirk with his stretchy long tongue. I guess it was just waiting for the right moment; otherwise it would have done this five goddamn minutes ago.

Who will save our hero now, considering he can’t save himself? An… old guy with a torch. Of course. The monster was a Nazgul, and thus scared of flames. I think this a good moment to point out that the monster is the worst CGI I have ever seen. It looks like a monster from a computer game, and the torch lighting does not help with this judgement. As far as I can see, they used bump-mapping for the monster’s texture. Dudes, you had like $50 million dollars, and spaceships are notoriously easy to render. You could have spent a liiitle bit of that time properly rendering your bad guys.

So, who is this guy? He walks backwards slowly for about five minutes to add the mystery. Finally he turns around to reveal that he is… Spock!

Like the real Spock! Like Leonard Nimoy himself. Spock aged 150. I honestly have to say that I did not see this coming. Apparently he has learned to speak fluently in the 130 years between this prequel and his final appearance, because he speaks without the sharp, one-word-at-a-time thing that Zachary Quinto has going on. But then I realise why I didn’t see it coming: it’s absurd.

The chances that you would find a person you know, in a random cave, in a random area of homogenous ice-fields, on a random planet in a random area of space is literally infinitesimal. It’s like walking through the Sahara desert, miles from civilisation, and finding Jesus himself manning a lemonade stall on top of a sand-dune. We are talking probability on the level of the sun spontaneously forming darkspots that read “Brendan Byron Should Be Made Prime Minister.” With an accompanying picture of my face and phone number. Printed in Times New Roman font. On the side of the sun facing earth. Visible with the naked eye. Okay, you get it, its ridiculous. Now let’s all pretend that the magic of cinema has convinced us of this nonsense plot point and continue.

They have a fireside chat, in which Spock shows by mind-meld exactly his journey up until this point. It’s a level above a simple flashback, but only a small one.

Basically, 129 years from now, a star threatens the whole galaxy by going Supernova. You could raise points like “Stars go supernova all the time,” but since this is a sci-fi movie, shut up. Romulus is orbiting the star in question, and asks Spock to stop it. Why you would make a prominent, nay universally famous figure to stop a star going supernova is again beyond me, but he uses the same gravity bomb stuff that the Romulans use to destroy Vulcan to create a black hole to stop the star. Spock fails, and Romulus is destroyed. Nero, who was off-planet, takes umbrage at Spock’s failure, and (quote) “In my attempt to escape, we were both pulled into the black hole.” Nero arrived in our time 25 years ago, and immediately goes spastic at a passing Federation ship, while Spock arrived a few days ago, and was immediately intercepted by Nero. Nero’s master plan of revenge was to make Spock watch Nero destroy Vulcan, in the same way that Nero watched Spock let Romulus get destroyed.

Back on the Enterprise, McCoy (remember him?) attacks Spock for throwing Kirk off-ship. Spock acts callously, and we hate him some more. I could have left this scene out, as could have the directors, but I suppose one of the first characters introduced should be shown to have some contribution to the plot.

Spock Senior and Kirk reach a Spacefleet outpost on Hoth, and they are received by a little alien man. By the way, there are random alien characters scattered throughout the movie, but the Spocks are the only ones aboard the Enterprise. This amounts to the sci-fi casting equivalent of racism, I am sure. But when they reach the quarters, they meet – hold your breath for this one – some original series guy!

So we have Spock Senior in a cave, and now Scotty in a remote outpost on the same planet. Wikipedia tells me that he is played by Simon Pegg, but I have to say that this again is case where the movie is let down by the series. His name is Montgomery Scott, and he is Scottish. This amounts to the sci-fi naming equivalent of racism, I am sure.

So Scotty, as well as being an original series character, and as well as being on the same icy rock as Spock Senior, and as well as this icy rock being the planet that Kirk was randomly thrown at – sorry, I interrupted the logical structure of that sentence to complain, let me start again. Scotty is also a genius at transportation physics. In the future, he discovers a way to transport onto a ship in warp, and so Future Spock tells it to him. No paradoxes there, because they are in a different timeline, remember?

Kirk asks Spock 2.0 if he’s coming back to the Enterprise, to which he replies in the negative. They are not allowed to know of each other’s existence. Future Spock helps Kirk overthrow himself by reminding him of Space Corps Directive 593:

(Rimmer: Space Corps directive 593? Under no circumstances can a male officer wear female underwear? Well I can hardly see how that’s relevant.

Kryten: Uh, no sir, Space Corps Directive 593 states that a captain cannot pilot a ship while emotionally disturbed, sir.)

The Red Dwarf references show that I am getting tired. Nevertheless I must press on. They warp back to the Enterprise engine deck. Well, Kirk does. Scotty gets transported to the inside of a cooling fluid container on the Enterprise engine deck. This sequence – so soon after a huge influx of plot – slows everything down to a crawl, as we wait for the situation to get worse, then worse, then miraculously better, then plot hole, then continue.

Scotty’s cooling fluid container is sucked into a series of transparent pipes, and he has no air. The liquid rushes forward quickly. Kirk notices their final destination. It’s a gigantic swirly razorblade turbine thing. But it’s okay, however, because there’s an emergency hatch right before it. Question time: why, of all the pipes in the room (there are hundreds) are the cooling fluid ones the only transparent ones? Why does Scotty have his eyes open in the industrial coolant? Why are there razor-sharp turbines in a coolant piping system? Why is there an emergency hatch, seeing as there are no other visible hatches, and coolant never enters or leaves the pipes? Why is the hatch not manually operated? Why are there razor-sharp turbines in a coolant piping system?

So Kirk goes to a computer nearby and activates the release valve. Two seconds later, the flow of coolant stops of its own accord. Nothing apparently overheats in these two seconds, considering that the coolant was obviously needed as it was being pumped.

A coolant release valve being triggered without permission is big enough news to distract the acting captain while he is piloting warp space, because he brings up the security feed and sees Kirk and Scotty fleeing the scene. The heavily armed security personnel (Who are effective as well as being existent, so the Hostage Captain had even less of an excuse for endangering vital crew members) capture Kirk. One, in obvious need of a self-esteem boost, somewhat lamely calls Kirk ‘cupcake’. I guess he was jealous.

Kirk is dragged to the bridge again. What follows is a badly written and obvious attempt to piss Spock off. If he wanted to show the acting captain as being emotionally disturbed, probably the worst way to bring that about would be to actively provoke him in the middle of the bridge, as everyone sees exactly what you are trying to do. He even says – “What, that doesn’t frustrate you? My lack of cooperation?” This is the kind of dialogue a child would write. Unconvincing, obvious in its intentions, stupid, out of character (for a genius with advanced interpersonal skills who has previously shown his aptitude for manipulating others into doing his bidding) – it is simply bad dialogue. Even Spock, Mr Logical, realises what’s going on: “These experiences have not affected my judgement”, and yet he still falls for it.

So, with Spock provoked into beating him up and then choking him, Kirk is made captain. Let me just add here that he still shows no discipline, still has no respect or propriety, still isn’t a registered member of the Enterprise and is technically still grounded for cheating at the beginning of the movie. Imagine the look of the Starfleet tribunal guys when he disappears once grounded, and comes back a captain of a ship! What would you do? Would you lift his suspension? Technically, no. He did after all cheat. Perhaps cheating and subsequently saving humanity cancel each other out, but if a bank-robber saved humanity, would we let him get away with armed robbery?

We are treated to another heartfelt talk between Spock and his father, in which they trade clichés in wooden monotones. His father speaks solely in wise pronouncements, all spoken with an air of utmost authority. Then we are treated to a plot-dump from our good friend Comrade Plot Exposition. Chekov calculates that the magnetic distortion from the rings of Saturn will allow the Enterprise to remain undetected when Nero and the Pincushion pass through the system, allowing – look, I just don’t know. Can we accept this as crap and move on now?

The Romulans arrive in orbit around Earth, and destroy all the defences. I think. We aren’t shown that. That would be plot relevant and awesome, and as we all know the two are mutually exclusive. They drop their platform on a string down on top of San Francisco. They are shown specifically targeting San Francisco, so I suppose they have some monument destroying in mind. After all, this is a sci-fi movie, and this is an invasion of Earth. You’ve gotta have some monument destruction. But no – the laser beam lands some five metres away from the Golden Gate Bridge. Those Romulans ain’t so tough! They can’t even aim for national monuments!

Spock invites himself on the mission to sneak aboard the Pincushion, as does the captain. The security personnel sit in their bunks and cry. I must make the note here that there is strength in numbers, and the transporters have a capacity of about six. It would be logical, then, that you would take six people with you on your raid.

So Kirk and Spock beam aboard the Pincushion with no backup or support whatsoever. Scotty tells them that they would most likely be dropped in some out-of-the-way area. They end up right on the bridge, not five metres away from Commander Nero. Apparently the aiming skills of the Romulan security force have eroded a little over the last quarter century, because the two main characters run past all of them without even ducking their heads once. The protagonists, however, manage to shoot a dozen guys while running and without so much as aiming at the enemy, let alone holding their weapons properly (holding a gun in one outstretched hand while facing the enemy front on is not the right way to go about things.)

A Romulan alerts Nero of the two, and he goes running off to solve the problem himself. Apparently the Romulans have as much of a difficulty finding reliable security forces as the Federation people. Spock mind-melds with an unconscious guard, and finds out where his elder self’s ship is. Once he gets there, the ship welcomes him back aboard. He asks the ship where it was built, and it answers with a Stardate. Not a manufacturing place – a year. Spock confronts Kirk about the existence of his other self, and Kirk brushes it off. The movie quotes Star Wars again when Spock says “The statistical probability of our success is less than (blah percent)” Gee, couldn’t the movie be at least originally bad?

The black-hole-maker is aboard Spock/Spock’s shuttle, so we no longer care about Earth’s plight, as it is safe. So all we need to do is rescue the Captain and kill the nut-job. Walking along a corridor, Kirk gets the perfect opportunity to do so, but because the Commander doesn’t fire back, Kirk doesn’t kill him. Sometimes, Kirk, your sense of honour needs to be replaced with a more common sense – Common Sense. Just because the bad guy is smirking evilly at you, it doesn’t mean that he is invincible from gunfire. Quite the opposite, in fact. So his opportunity passes, and a Romulan goon knocks Kirk on the back of the head. Then Nero shoots Kirk in the face and the movie ends, right?

Wrong. Nero runs over to taunt Kirk – someone only barely related to his plan of revenge – and throw him around, holding him over ledges and stuff. For that matter, I’ve noticed for a ship with giant, gaping chasms three metres from its control panels, there is a distinct lack of safety rails. There are actually sections of floor that jut out from the ledges, seemingly tempting people to stand on them and fall ten kilometres to their death.

Spock shoots open the giant sphincter-like doorway to the hanger bay, and escapes cleanly. Not even a single missile is fired at his ship. I’m sorry, but what happened to the giant crew? The missile armada? Did they need orders? Are they just retarded? Or does Nero simply control the ship with his mind? Wait – no – the Romulans aren’t retarded, the filmmakers are. Once he escapes, he destroys the drilling platform, meaning that short of building a new one, the Romulan plans are scarpered permanently. Someone tells Nero this, and he immediately stops strangling Kirk, jumping to a control panel and ordering his men to fire at Spock’s little ship. (Kinda like they should’ve been doing as soon as Spock ran off.) Someone tells Nero that they can’t shoot Spock’s ship because there’s a gigantic Black-Hole-Generator aboard, and to shoot it would destroy everything (aha!) to which Nero responds in a petulant baby voice “I want Spock dead NOW.” Who made this babyish toddler captain again?

They shoot missiles at Spock, despite the fact that they need his Black Hole Generator to senselessly genocide whole planets. Nero is not depicted as the sharpest tool in the shed – just as a tool. Spock warps off to the depth of space, and the Pincushion follows.

Kirk, noticing a single guy approach him, gets up and does a running jump down to a lower level of un-handrailed decking. The vertical height distance is equivalent to a two storey building. Kirk groans for a moment, and then a Romulan goon lands next to him and kicks him into the abyss. Whoops. I keep making these mistakes. What really happened was the goon picks up Kirk, chokes him for a while, while insulting his weakness. Kirk, who on top of being a karate master and genius leader of men, also seems to have advanced skills as a ninja, because he pickpockets the Romulan’s gun and shoots him while being choked and with multiple broken ribs from his 20 metre fall.

Spock materialises from warpspace, and the Pincushion materialises in front of it. A computer politely informs Spock that he is no a collision course. Nero politely informs his crew “FIRE EVERYTHING!!!” Who made this idiotic jackass captain? I WANT TO KNOW. Spock flies right for the unavoidable barrage of missiles, even though he has a universe-destroying Black-Hole generator sitting in his shuttle.

Suddenly, the Enterprise appears out of nowhere, without any visible means of finding out where either Spock or the Pincushion is. It immediately starts spamming lasers at the giant ship. The missiles, uh, disappear or something. I don’t really know. I suppose Spock’s plan all along was to assume that the Enterprise would zap into space at the right moment and then destroy all the missiles with 100% accuracy seconds before they hit him. (Keep in mind: this ship is piloted by untrained recruits.)

Kirk meets the Captain, and they exchange witty banter. While Kirk unties the captain, the captain takes his pistol and shoots the bad guys coming up to kill them. Weren’t you being tortured? You should be having trouble lifting the gun. Aiming it and firing it would be a little beyond you.

Spock flies his shuttle right at the control deck of the Pincushion. He was again seemingly relying on the Enterprise’s omniscience, because he was teleported out at the very last moment. The shuttle’s explosion sets off the Black-Hole generator, which starts ripping the Enormo-Spike in two. They have time, however, to call up Nero on the view-screen and offer to rescue him. I don’t know how they planned to manage this, because there’s a black hole ripping the ship in two.

No matter how stupid Kirk’s potential rescue plan was going to be, we never find it out, because the bad guy is stupider. “I would rather die in agony than accept help from you.” I’m imagining a Romulan on the control deck sticking his head in front of the camera saying “Uh, I wouldn’t mind being rescued,” but seeing as they’re all bad guys beyond redemption – let alone common sense – they all chose to follow their commander into stupid, pointless death. Kirk tells his crew to fire all weapons on the enemy ship, seemingly ignoring the fact that it is being eaten by a black hole and is thus beyond all attempts to kill it further.

So because they were to busy being vindictive pricks, the black hole increases in size to a point that the Enterprise is in danger of being sucked in. Scotty shoots these… blue things… out of the back of the ship, as they might explode for some reason, propelling the ship out of the gravity well, but he “cannae promise anything.” They explode in a big blue explosion that is for some reason not affected by the planet-destroying black hole, and the Enterprise triumphantly warps away.

We cut to Earth, for the dumb conclusion to a dumb movie. Spock has a short conversation with Spock, in which the Elder Spock basically says that he played Kirk like a chump by implying galactic-scale paradoxic consequences for keeping the two Spocks apart, where he was really teaching Kirk the value of friendship. Kirk – despite being an unreliable and undisciplined retard with no sense of self-preservation, and who achieved most of what he did by chance and luck – got a medal and got to keep his Captaincy. He relieves the former captain, who everyone had forgotten about. Then we get a short epilogue scene, where Kirk – who still looks three days out of high school – runs a checklist of sub-systems, with smiling crew-members and cliché clichés. Then the Elder Spock delivers the customary final monologue: “Space, the final frontier. Etc.”

I’ll say that this movie was better than Harold and Kumar, but only because it was expensive on top of being bad. The cinematography is nice, as is the acting, but they’re still acting corny lines in a plot devised by a toddler. I think its bed time.

Total for the two parts: 7,900 words. 6,000 of those being written in the one night. I cheated and spent 2 hours today doing the last 15 minutes.