Yup, it's a Star Trek blog!
***WARNING: Spoilers Ahead***
So, a reeboot eh? How did they go about that? Did they do it Battlestar Galactica 2003-esque and simply "re-imagine" the whole thing or did they take a more Star Trekky approach and use time travel to create an alternate time-line which would fundamentally alter the Star Trek universe as we know it - hmmmmmmmm I wonder.
Yeah, they went with the time travel.
The back (or forward) story is that some 200-ish years in the future (from the *present* of the film - i.e. James T, Kirks formative years) a super nova is about to kick off that will destroy Romulus (maybe the galaxy too, I forget). Spock of the future promises the Romulans he can save their planet with his bad ass black-hole forming red matter device, however he arrives too late and Romulus is destroyed. When Spock turns up he encounters a Romulan mining ship commanded by a now disgruntled fellow named Nero who is rather pissed with Spock and The Federation at large for (what he perceives as) fucking over his planet (which had his family on it). Spock still has a super nova to stop though and he fires his bad ass black-hole thingy which causes some mad shit to happen that sucks Neros ship and his own into the past.
Nero's ship goes through first and proceeds to attack the shit out of a Federation ship - a Federation ship whose First Officer just happens to be one George Kirk, a George Kirk whose pregnant wife also happens to be on board. Events unfold and Kirk ends up commanding the ship, the plan is to have the ship engage their attackers on auto-pilot while the shuttle craft escape with the crew and passengers - unfortunately the auto-pilot dies on its arse and Kirk is forced to pilot the ship manually to his valiant end to allow the crew - including his wife and unborn child to escape. The child is born in the shuttle and before his ship is destroyed George Kirk gets to name his son - Jim.
So that sets up the basic difference between new James T. Kirk and original James T. Kirk - noob Kirk grows up without a father, and is portrayed as a rebellious, cocky and brash young man as a result, but retains the strong intelligence of and wilful streak of his original.
When we first come across Kirk as a young man he's a loser going nowhere, hitting on girls in a bar and picking fights with Starfleet cadets. Said fight is broken up by Captain Christopher Pike (with Kirk on the wrong end of an arse kicking by this point). Pike upon discovering who Kirk is (or rather who his father was) and the impressiveness of Kirks aptitude tests (off the charts dontcha know) urges him to join up with Starfleet - which of course he does.
Re-enter Nero, it's like 20 years since he shot up Kirks dad and now he's back, he has Spocks bad ass black-hole-a-ma-jig and he plans to use it on Vulcan (revenge for Romulus, see?) - and shock-shock-horror-horror he succeeds! Although not before a heroic (though failed) attempt by a cadet crewed Enterprise captained by Christopher Pike.
So yet more difference - Vulcan gets destroyed! Nero sets his sights on Earth (having taken Pike prisoner), Spock and Kirk have a disagreement that leads to Kirk being ejected from the ship onto a nearby snow planet. Kirk meets up with future Spock who dishes him the gravy on Nero and the time travel shit and they meet up with Montgomery Scott at a remote Federation outpost on this planet. They then use some magic transporter trix (that Scotty hasn't even invented yet - courtesy of future-Spock) to get back on the Enterprise, Kirk forces Spock out of the captaincy via emotional blackmail (and getting punched in the face a lot) assumes the captaincy and launches a crazy counter-attack on Nero - to ultimate success (obviously)
Hey-presto Kirk is given full captaincy of the Enterprise and the credits roll.
All in all it was a fairly average flick - I think it'd have been waaaaaaay better if they'd done a proper reboot rather than incorporating a crazy time travel aspect that ultimately achieved the same freakin result - but that wouldn't be the Star Trek way. Really they could have had everything that happened in the film happen without time travel. They could have made the focus conflict with the Romulans - The Romulans could have been responsible for George Kirks death and they could have destroyed Vulcan. It'd probably have made for a better storyline, and it'd set the scene for future conflicts with the Romulans - who, lets face it, are pretty much always complete wanks anyway.
I don't know where they plan t go from here, and really they could go anywhere, which is I suppose what they wanted. I just hope they leave time travel alone for a bit - I'll be fucking pissed if the next film features a time travelling Jean-Luc Picard trying to save the future by changing the past or stupid shit like that.
freedoms_stain, out.
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