Now, I am not actually a huge Trek fan, in any of the Trek incarnations.
I remember watching the original series (TOS), back in the 60s, after we had returned from Tokyo, when my mother dragged me off to Weight Watcher's meetings, on a black & white TV, in the lobby of the Olean, NY, YMCA. I had to be talked into watching The Next Generation (TNG) because I'd seen the first few completely sucky episodes, and was not convinced that anything good could ever come out of that mess. (The talking into involved something about me being like a female Klingon character, K'Ehleyr, who was rather emphatic in her approach to life.)
The later series: Deep Space Nine -- Brooks Avery, Rene Auberjonois, Colm Meany, Armin Shimerman -- pretty good for about 4 or 5 of the 7 seasons; Voyager -- 7 seasons, of which I did not watch more than 1.5, did not like, and never saw the sexy Seven of Nine; Enterprise -- complete and total suckitude, full stop. And thus we finally got rid of Rick Berman, who "chose" not to renew his contract around the time Enterprise was circling around the toilet bowl.
I like the ideas of Star Trek just great -- I mean, who doesn't like the idea of an optimistic future, in which racism, poverty and need are generally things of the past. But the execution of those ideas hasn't always been as well-done as might have been hoped. So when news (aka marketing) if a reboot movie started percolating, I was at least curious, and planned to go.
Ed, of course, was good to go as soon as he heard about it, and was salivating on almost every trailer and news article. Hearing about the sneak preview at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse with Leonard Nimoy was near geek-heaven. For him, the only question was opening Thursday night, or opening weekend.
We chose opening weekend, at the Cinerama, which really is the best venue for something like this. It's also where we saw The Dark Knight and Superman Returns. And we took R, our apartment manager, with us, because we'd been discussing the movie with him for several weeks.
Now R likes science fiction, and he's a big fan of TOS. I mean, a BIG fan, and he doesn't like the notion of anyone monkeying around with his Trek. Canon (that what has gone before) MUST be adhered to. So the news that somehow Kirk and Spock were going to be meeting in a wholly different manner than in TOS, well, that was just anathema.
I even told him that Wil Wheaton, aka Wesley Crusher in TNG and blogger-extraordinaire, had just loved it. In fact, Wil said, and I quote:
Ed and I were kinda with Wil. We wanted to see it again, RIGHT AWAY. But we decided to be responsible human beans, and waited until today. When we're going to see it again, this evening, at one of the two multiplex theaters we can walk to.Speaking both as a member of the Star Trek family, and as a fan of what we do, I can tell you that it is fucking incredible. As I said on Twitter: Star Trek has been reborn, and it is SPECTACULAR.
The story is such a perfect Star Trek story, the cast is pitch-perfect, the visuals are brilliant, and the sound design will blow your mind. I loved it so much, I wanted to watch it again RIGHT AWAY as soon as it ended, and I hope they do eleven movies with this cast and creative team.
R is still deeply unhappy about this movie. He doesn't like the different timeline angle, because everything is changed, but it's somehow still the same.
I've tried explaining to him that this approach simply encompasses the notion of the multiverse -- the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The multiverse is postulated by a number of different scientific disciplines, and is damned near required by quantum mechanics. R is not a fan of the notion of mutable reality, despite being a scifi fan.
Since I am a fan of science fiction, of Star Trek, of Wil Wheaton, and most especially of quantum mechanics, I have less than zero problem with the whole notion of alternate timelines and universes. Gosh, I'm looking forward to seeing it again.....
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