CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

As I mentioned here yesterday, I often receive e-mails asking me to review specific films. One of the most oft-requested reviews is for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which is widely-regarded as the worst Star Trek film to feature the original cast.

I don't know this for certain, but I strongly suspect this particular review is requested in the hope that somehow, some way, this poorly-reviewed William Shatner film might be rehabilitated in popular imagination. For instance, requests for a review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier spiked after my positive review of The Motion Picture last year. My supposition thus leads me to believe that a lot of Star Trek fans must enjoy the oft-derided film, and are seeking valid, well-enunciated arguments in support of it.

I can relate to that.

After all, I am a Star Trek fan, and can probably see the silver-lining in every Star Trek movie ever made. So I am happy to enumerate the aspects I appreciate and like about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

However, for the record, it is also necessary for me to note where and when things went dramatically wrong with the movie. So -- to quote Joss Whedon -- this review isn't going to be all "hugs and puppies."

That established, there are indeed many components of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier worth lauding, and I will explain in detail below why I feel that way.

Let's start, however, with a brief re-cap of the plot. This fifth Star Trek picks up with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew on vacation on Earth -- in a the paradise-like setting of Yosemite -- when a dangerous hostage situation unfolds in the Neutral Zone. There, on Nimbus III -- on the "planet of Galactic Peace" -- a Vulcan renegade named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage the Romulan, Klingon and Federation counsels. He has done so with an army of devout "believers." Sybok's gambit is to capture a starship so he can set a course for the center of the Galaxy and find the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree (named after Sean Connery), where he believes "God" awaits.

An unprepared U.S.S. Enterprise, with only a skeleton crew aboard, is assigned to rescue the hostages. The attempt fails, and Sybok commandeers the Enterprise using his particular brand of Vulcan brainwashing to persuade the crew to follow him. In particular, he frees each man he encounters of his "secret pain." Kirk soon learns that Sybok is Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) half-brother, who rejected Vulcan dogma and came to believe that emotion, not logic, was the key to enlightenment.

With a Klingon bird of prey in hot pursuit, the Enterprise passes through the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy and encounters a mysterious planet. There, on the surface, awaits a creature who claims to be "God." Kirk questions the Being, and soon a vision of Heaven goes to Hell.

Because It's There: The Search for the Ultimate Knowledge; The Search for a Film's Noble Intentions

From Captain Kirk's effort to climb El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in the film's first scene to Sybok's probe through the foreboding Great Barrier, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier concerns, in large part, a typically-Star Trek conceit: the human quest to reach a higher summit and to find at that apex a new or deeper truth about existence.

When Mr. Spock asks Kirk why he would involve himself in an endeavor as dangerous as climbing a mountain, Kirk answers simply, "because it's there." That's a simplistic but apt way to describe one of our basic human drives. What our eyes detect, we want to explore, to experience. Enlightenment, for us, is often attained on the next plateau.

Sybok terms his search for "God" the search for the "ultimate knowledge" and he too seeks to climb a mountain after a fashion: penetrating the Great Barrier which protects a secret at the center of our galaxy. The means by which Sybok conducts his quest are not entirely kosher, however (kidnapping diplomats and hijacking a starship). But his quest, though coupled with his vanity, is sincere. An outcast among his Vulcan brethren, Sybok believes that if he can "locate" God, his beliefs will be validated, re-examined.

At one point late in the film, Kirk seems to realize that Sybok and he share a similar drive; that he has stubbornly refused Sybok the same liberty he affords himself, not merely to "go climb a rock," but to see, literally, what awaits at the mountain-top. Upon this realization, Kirk gazes knowingly at an old-fashioned captains' wheel in the Enterprise's observation deck. His hand brushes across a bronze plaque engraved with the legend "Where No Man Has Gone Before," a re-iteration of the franchise's "bold," trademark phrase.

It should be noted here that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is not out on a limb, franchise-wise, in exploring the existence of "God" or a planet from which life sprang. On the former front, the Enterprise encountered the Greek God Apollo in the second-season episode "Who Mourns for Adonis" and on the latter front, discovered the planet "Eden" in the third season adventure "The Way to Eden."

What remains laudable about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, however, is that screenwriter David Loughery, with director Shatner and producer Harve Bennett, carry their central metaphor (discovery of the ultimate knowledge) to the hearts of the beloved franchise characters. Star Trek V very much concerns not just for the external quest for the divine, but a personal and human desire to understand the meaning of life. Or, at the very least, the path to understanding the meaning of life.

What that comes down to is one lengthy scene set in the observation deck. There are no phasers, transporters, starships, Klingons or special effects anywhere. Instead, the scene involves Kirk, Spock, Bones and Sybok grappling with their personal beliefs, with their sense of personal identity and history, even. Sybok attempts to convert Spock and McCoy to his agenda by using his hypnotic powers of the mind. "Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me and gain strength from the sharing," he offers. One at a time, Kirk's allies fall. Then Sybok comes to Kirk, and the good captain steadfastly refuses Sybok's brand of personal enlightenment.

In refusing to share his pain, Kirk notes to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that "you know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

This specific back-and-forth is the heart of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The Kirk/Sybok confrontation embodies the difference between Catholic Guilt (as represented by Kirk), and New Age "release" (as represented by Sybok). In terms of a short explanation, Catholic guilt is, essentially a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an examined life. It's the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions and history (some call it Scrupulosity). And if you know Star Trek, you understand that this sense of melancholy is, for lack of a better word, very Kirkian.

As a starship captain, James Kirk has sent men and women to their deaths and made tough calls. But he has never been one to do so blindly, or without consideration of the consequences. "My God, Bones, what have I done?" He asks after destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, and that's just one, quick example of his reflective nature. In short, Kirk belabors his decisions, so much so that McCoy had to once tell him (in "Balance of Terror") not to obsess; not to "destroy the one called Kirk."

What Captain Kirk believes - and what is crucial to his success as a starship captain -- is that he must carry and remember the guilt associated with his tough decisions. He must re-hash those choices and constantly relive them, or during the next crisis, he will fail. His decisions are part of him; he is the cumulative result of those choices, and to lose them would be -- in his very words here -- "to lose himself."

By contrast, Sybok promises an escape from melancholy. His abilities permit him to "erase" the presence of pain all-together. This a kind of touchy-feely, New Age balm in which a person lets go of pain (via, for example, ACT: Active Release Technique!) and then, once freed, suddenly sees the light.

Sybok's approach arises from the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (the era of the Original Series), and might be described -- albeit in glib fashion -- as "Do what feels right" (a turn-of-phrase Spock himself uses in the 2009 Star Trek). But Sybok is a master of semantics. He doesn't "control minds," he says, he "frees" them. Left unexamined by Sybok is Kirk's interrogative: once freed from pain, what does a person have left? Isn't pain, borne by experience a part of our core psychological make-up? The New Age depiction of Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier led critic David Denby to term this entry "the most Californian" of the Star Trek films (New York, June 19,1989, page 68).

In countenancing the false god of Sha Ka Ree, these belief systems collide. Sybok -- freed of pain and self-reflection -- is unaware of his own tragic flaws. Eventually he sees them, terming them "arrogance" and "vanity." But Kirk, who has always carried his choices with him, is able to face the malevolent alien with a sense of composure and entirely appropriate suspicion. Kirk is able, essentially, to ask "the Almighty for his I.D." because he has maintained his Catholic sense of guilt. He's been around the block too many times to be cowed by an alien who wants his ship.

The lengthy scene in the observation deck, during which Sybok attempts to shatter the powerful triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is probably the best in the film. Shatner shoots it well too, with Sybok intersecting the perimeters of this famous character "triangle" (of id, ego, and super-ego) and then, visually, scattering its points to the corners of the room.

And then, after Kirk's powerful argument and assertion of Catholic Guilt, the triangle (depicted visually, with the three characters as "points") is re-asserted and re-constructed. Sybok is both literally and symbolically forced out of their unified "space."

In point of fact, Shatner uses this triangular, three-person blocking pattern a lot in the film. Variety did not like the movie, but noted the power of this particular sequence in its original review: "Shatner, rises to the occasion," the magazine wrote, "in directing a dramatic sequence of the mystical Luckinbill teaching Nimoy and DeForest Kelley to re-experience their long-buried traumas. The re-creations of Spock's rejection by his father after his birth and Kelley's euthanasia of his own father are moving highlights."

While discussing Shatner, I should also add -- no doubt controversially -- that Shatner has a fine eye for visual composition. The opening scene on the cracked, arid plain of Nimbus III, and the follow-up scene set at Yosemite reveal that he has an eye not just for capturing natural beauty, but for utilizing the full breadth of the frame. As a director, Shatner came out of television (helming episodes of T.J. Hooker), but his visual approach doesn't suggest a TV mentality. On the contrary, I would argue that there are moments in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that remain the most inherently cinematic of the film series, after Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Abrams' big-budget reboot of 2009.

What Does God Need With a Starship? Pinpointing the Divine Inside The Human Heart and in the Natural World

I've noted above how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier involves the search for the ultimate knowledge, and uses two distinctive viewpoints (Catholic Guilt embodied by Kirk and New Age philosophy embodied by Sybok) to get at that knowledge.

What's important, after that "quest" is the film's conclusion about the specific "ultimate knowledge" gleaned.

In short order, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the angry Old Testament-styled God-Alien reveals his true colors and demonstrates a capricious, violent-side. After Kirk asks "what does God need with a starship," "God" is wrathful. And this is what the site Common Sense Atheism suggested was really being asked by our secular, humanist hero.

"One might ask, "What does God need with animal sacrifice? With a human sacrifice? With a catastrophic flood? With billions of galaxies and trillions of stars and millions of unstoppably destructive black holes? What does God need with congenital diseases and a planet made of shifting plates that cause earthquakes and tsunamis? Isn't the whole point of omnipotence that God could make a good world without all these needlessly silly or harmful phenomena?" Moreover, why should humans obey the commands of someone as capricious, jealous, petty, and violent as the God of the Jewish scriptures?"

This critical line of thought reminds me of my experience seeing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, who is Jewish.

Afterwards, she was utterly convinced that Kirk and company had indeed encountered the Biblical, Old Testament God. And that they had, in fact, destroyed Him. Her reasoning for this belief was that "God" as depicted in the film looked and acted in the very fashion of the Old-Testament God.

On the former, front (God's appearance), The Journal of Religion and Film, in a piece "Any Gods Out There?" by John S. Schultes, opined: "This being appears in the stereotypical Westernized figure of the "Father God" as depicted in art. He has a giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white hair and booming voice."

On the latter front, behavior, there are also important commonalities. The Old Testament God was cruel, self-righteous, unjust, demanding, and acting according to a closely-held personal agenda (moving in a mysterious way?) without thought of courtesy or explanation to humans. Consider that the Old Testament God destroyed whole cities (like those of Sodom and Gomorrah), and that it's his plan to kill us by the billion-fold in the End Times, if we don't believe in him. The Old Testament God is indeed one of violence and punishment.

And this is precisely how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier depicts this creature. He wants to deliver his power -- his violence and judgment -- to "every corner of creation." Naturally, Kirk can't allow this.

Over the years, I have come to agree with my former-girlfriend's assessment. The alien portrayed in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may indeed be the Old Testament God of our legends. Just as Apollo was indeed, Apollo of Greek Myth in "Who Mourns for Adonis."

And, in fact, Captain Kirk kills God. (Or rather, it's a cooperative venture with the Klingons...). In doing so, Kirk frees humanity (and the universe itself) from the oppression of superstition, judgment and tyranny.

The ultimate knowledge, according to this Trek is that God only exists "right here; the human heart," as Kirk notes near the film's conclusion. Accordingly, The Journal of Religion and Society explains that this is a narrative wrinkle true to "the collective history of Classic Star Trek," a re-assertion of Roddenberry-esque, secular principles. In his essay, "From Captain Stormfield to Captain Kirk, Two 20th Century Representations of Heaven, scholar Michel Clasquin concludes:

"In "Final Frontier", Heaven turns out to be Hell: the optimism is deferred until the heroes have returned to the man-made heaven of the United Federation of Planets. The film ends where it began: with Spock, Kirk and McCoy on furlough in a thoroughly tamed Earth wilderness. This, the film tells us, is the true Heaven, the secular New Jerusalem that humans, Vulcans and a smattering of other species will build for themselves in the 24th century, a world in which the outward heavenly conditions reflect the true Heaven that resides in the human heart."

Clasquin's point here demands a re-evaluation of the book-end Yosemite camping scenes of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many critics complained that the film takes a long time to get started, since the crew must "laboriously" be re-gathered from vacation. However, if Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's point is that "God" resides in man's heart (And is man himself) and that the Garden of Eden, or Heaven itself is "a tamed Earth wilderness," -- a finely-developed sense of responsible environmentalism, in fact -- then these two sequences of "nature" prove absolutely necessary to the narrative. Heaven on Earth is within our grasp, the movie seems to note. We don't have to die to get there. We just have to act responsibly, as stewards, of our planet (or in Star Trek's universe, planets, plural). The human heart, and the Beautiful Earth: these are Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's (atheist) optimistic views of where, ultimately, Divinity resides.

All I Can Say is, They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To: A Movie Shattered (not Shatnered...) by Poor Execution

William Shatner handles many of the visual aspects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with flair and distinction. He is badly undercut, however, by three catastrophic weaknesses. The first such weakness involves interference in the very story he wanted to tell. The second involves inferior special effects, and the third involves slipshod editing.

On the first front, William Shatner sought initially to make a serious, even bloody movie concerning fanatical religious cults and God imagery. His plan was shit-canned in large part, by Paramount Studios. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) had just proven a major success, and the Powers That Be judged this was so because the movie evidenced a terrific sense of humor, particularly fish-out-of-water humor. The edict came down that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had to include the same level of humor as its predecessor.

Frankly, this was the kiss of death. The humor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home grew organically out of the situation: advanced people of the 23rd century being forced to deal with people and activities of the "primitive" year 1986.

Above, I described the thematic principles of Star Trek V: seeking the ultimate summit, both externally and internally, and discovering that the Divine is inside us -- or is, actually, the Human Heart. How exactly, does Scotty knocking himself out on a ceiling beam, or Uhura performing a fan dance, or Chekov rehashing his "wessel" shtick fit that conceit?

The short answer is that it doesn't. Such humor had to be grafted on here, and it shows. It's forced, iawkward, and entirely unnecessary. The inclusion of so much humor actually runs counter to the grandeur and seriousness of the story Shatner hoped to tell.

And then -- in typical bean-counter nonsense, what does Paramount do next? Well, it advertises and markets Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with the ad-line "why are they putting seat belts in theaters this summer?" suggesting that the movie was an action-packed roller-coaster ride. This is after they demanded the movie be a comedy! Talk about assuring audience dissatisfaction! Tell audiences that the movie they are about to see is super-exciting and action-packed, and then give them Vulcan nerve-pinches on horses, Uhura and Scotty flirting with each other, and crewmen singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

The second aspect of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that damages it so egregiously involves the special visual effects. A movie like this -- about the search for God, no less -- must feature absolutely inspiring and immaculate, awesome visuals. We must believe in the universe that includes Sha Ka Ree, and the God Creature. Originally, Shatner envisioned Sha Ka Ree turning into a kind of Bosch-ean Hell, with demons and rivers of fire. But what we get instead is a glowing Santa Claus-head in a beam of light, and...a desert planet. What's worse is that many visuals don't seem to match-up. When Kirk's shuttle flies over the God planet initially, the surface of the world looks like a microscopic landscape (a sort of God's Eye view of the head-of-a-pin, as it were). But when the shuttle lands, the planet just looks like a desert. This is Heaven?

Perhaps Star Trek V could have surmounted this problem, since the TV series was never about special effects anyway, but about ideas. But the special effects in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier fail to even adequately render believable and "real" such commonplace Star Trek things as starships in motion or photon torpedo blasts. Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a little bit like watching Golan and Globus's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1986): the cheapness of the effects just make you wince, and stands in stark contrast to a franchise's glory days.

And the editing! Oh dear. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is edited -- in polite terms -- in disastrous fashion. During Kirk, Spock and McCoy's escape on rocket boots through an Enterprise turbo shaft, the same deck numbers repeat, in plain view. When Kirk falls from his perch high on El Capitan, the movie cuts to a lengthy shot of Shatner, in front of a rear-projection background, flapping his arms. And just take a look at how Kirk's weight, make-up, hair-cut and disposition shifts back-and-forth in his final scene with General Koord and General Klaa aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. This was due to post-production re-shoots when the original ending was deemed unacceptable.

Forget the script (which might have worked without the studio-demanded humor). Forget the acting (which is pure Star Trek ham bone -- and, in my estimation, perfect for a futuristic passion play), it's the editing that scuttles this film. Whether it's allowing us the time to notice that Sybok's haircut and outfit change on Sha Ka Ree, or permitting us to linger too long on visible wires in two fight scenes, Star Trek V's cutting is just not up to par.

There's a Star Trek fan out there on the Net who has taken it upon himself to re-edit Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and you know something? It's a worthy enterprise. Preferably, Shatner should do a director's cut, and trim his misbegotten film down to a mean, lean eighty-five minutes. The worst editing, effects, and jokey moments would be excised, and audiences would be surprised, perhaps, how visual, how dynamic, how meaningful (even spiritual?) this Final Frontier could be, sans the theatrical release's considerable problems.

Let's face it, modern criticism often thrives on hyperbole, so it's fun and dramatic to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is one of the ten worst science fiction films EVER! The only problem is, it's not necessarily true. I don't even know that it's actually the worst Star Trek film, to be blunt. One of the women I saw Star Trek: Insurrection with actually threw up during a screening. She wasn't sick. It wasn't what she ate. It was the movie. She vomited somewhere after Spiner's Gilbert and Sullivan rendition, Patrick Stewart's mambo, and before Gates McFadden -- the best physician of the 24th century and Counselor Troi-- made a passing reference to their "boobs."

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier conforms to Muir's Snowball Rule of Movie Viewing. Allow me to explain. Because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perceived by the majority of critics and Star Trek fans as "bad," everything about the film gets criticized, when -- in point of fact -- many other Star Trek movies feature many of the same goofy errors. For instance, I have read some Star Trek fans complain vociferously about the fact that the Enterprise travels to the center of the galaxy here in a matter of hours. The fact that in First Contact, the Enterprise gets from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in time to join a battle against the Borg, already in progress, goes unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. So, the starship got there in like, you know, a few minutes, I guess. But because First Contact is beloved and evaluated as good, it generally doesn't garner the same level of negative attention or scrutiny. When it fails in a spot here or there, it gets a pass.

Whereas, by contrast, the details in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier definitely get heavier scrutiny. The "bad movie" snowball, once rolling down a hill, just grows larger and larger. We forgive less and less.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious failure. But ambitious may be the operative word here. The movie certainly aimed high, and hoped to chart some fascinating spiritual and philosophical ground that is true to the Star Trek line and heritage. But plainly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

30 Years Ago Today The Human Adventure Was Just Beginning

It was thirty years ago today -- December 7, 1979 -- that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in theaters across the United States. I was in the fourth grade at the time, and I've got to say, the movie made a huge impact on me.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from my recent review of the film:

As the Star Trek franchise prepares to re-invent itself with the premiere of J.J. Abrams' big budget Kirk and Spock "origin story" in just a few short weeks, it seems an appropriate time to remember the first big-budget re-invention of the durable science-fiction mythos. That expensive and highly-profitable film arrived in American movie theaters nearly thirty years ago, on December 7, 1979, and was titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Directed by Robert Wise (The Day The Earth Stood Still [1951]), Run Silent, Run Deep [1958], The Haunting [1963], Audrey Rose [1977]) and produced by TV series creator and "Great Bird of the Galaxy" Gene Roddenberry, this forty-five million dollar voyage of the starship Enterprise launched a film series that has endured a whopping three decades.

Despite proving a box-office bonanza and the father to ten cinematic successors of varying quality, Star Trek: The Motion Picture remains today one of the most polarizing of the film series entries.

The received wisdom on the Robert Wise film is that it is dull, over-long, and entirely lacking in the sparkling character relationships and dimensions that made the 1960s series such a beloved success with fans worldwide.

It is likely you've heard all the derogatory titles for the film too, from The Motionless Picture, to Spockalypse Now, to Where Nomad Has Gone Before (a reference to the episode "The Changeling.")

Conventional wisdom, however, isn't always right. Among its many fine and enduring qualities, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is undeniably the most cinematic of the Trek movie series in scope and visualization.

And, on closer examination, the films features two very important elements that many critics insist it lacks: a deliberate, symbolic character arc (particularly in the case of Mr. Spock) and a valuable commentary on the co-existence/symbiosis of man with his technology.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture also re-invents the visual texture of the franchise, fully and authoritatively, transforming what Roddenberry himself once derided as "the Des Moines Holiday Inn" look of the sixties TV series for a post-Space:1999, post-Star Wars world.

Bad Editing: A Klingon in the bush is worth...?

So...I was re-watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) on the weekend, and I caught this blooper that I had long ago forgotten about. Actually, it's not a blooper per se, but actually an example of some really sloppy editing.

At about the 57 minute point of the movie, Lt. Saavik (Robin Curtis) is on the surface of the Genesis Planet resting (top picture), when a tree in the foreground suddenly pops up (as part of the "unstable" matrix of the artificial planet). Saavik then stands up, as the ground spits steam (bottom picture). Saavik approaches adolescent Spock, who is about to undergo Pon Farr.

But between these two shots, the editor inserted a brief view of a huge tree rippling in the wind...and you can see a Klingon warrior standing there, in the shadow of the tree (middle picture). Look closely. At the right side of the photo. Contextually, he shouldn't be there...

This got me thinking, what's the worst example of editing/cutting you've seen in a major motion picture?

Khan Jobs: Why Star Trek Doesn't Need Any More Wrath

Right about now, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are beginning to pen their sequel to this summer's smash hit, Star Trek (2009). In doing so, they'll have to answer an important question: Khan or no Khan?

Count me down in the "no Khan" corner, at least for now.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) remains a hugely popular incarnation of Trek for many good reasons. The entire Nicholas Meyer enterprise, if you will, exhibits a more Naval, Hornblower-esque feel than many Treks, the friendship between Kirk and Spock is paramount in the story, and the threat -- universal Armageddon -- is tremendous indeed. Khan, our villain, is charismatic and powerful. And his motive is easy to identify with: VENGEANCE.

Wrath of Khan was so successful, in fact, that it has become the template for about half of the Star Trek films since. And mostly -- let's be honest about this -- to the franchise's detriment.

After Star Trek II, a charismatic villain deploying a deadly WMD in the tradition of the Genesis Device has been repeated much too often. Dr. Soran harnessed the power of the "ribbon" to destroy whole worlds in Generations (1994). Ru'afo harvested the "metaphasic energy" of an extra-planetary Shangri-La, almost wiping out an entire population in Insurrection (1998). Shinzon threatened Earth with his Thalaron weapon in Nemesis, hoping to revenge himself against Picard. And then there was Nero in this summer's Trek, who had his red matter weapon which destroyed Vulcan. Also deployed, incidentally, out of vengeance.

These were all charismatic madmen, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that the most highly-regarded Star Trek movies after Khan -- The Voyage Home (1986), The Undiscovered Country (1991), and First Contact (1996) -- utilize a different template.

And really, why focus on wrath when there are six other deadly sins out there? And revenge committed in the wondrous final frontier tends to bring everything down to very Earthly, grounded and human terms. We have superhero movies and James Bond movies about vengeance and charismatic madmen. Star Trek should differentiate itself.

More to the point, I'll bring up a quip from Howard Dean. It was advice offered to and ignored by John Kerry in 2004. "You don't beat George W. Bush by being Bush-Lite." Well, in a similar vein, you can't out-Khan the Wrath of Khan either. Best not to try.

Besides, Star Trek offers a rich source of mythology and history, and even storytelling styles. Why not explore that potential? The series rarely featured charismatic madmen as villains, instead focusing on weird scientific phenomena, new civilizations-of-the-week, alternate-universes, even evil machines (like "The Doomsday Machine's" Planet Killer). A great Star Trek movie could combine two Original series episodes and really prove something special.

To wit: The crew of the Enterprise battles the Planet Killer, while Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov super-age thanks to "The Deadly Years" plague, giving Shatner a last shot at the center seat (playing Old Kirk).

Or, while transporting scoundrel Harry Mudd to prison, war breaks out with the Klingon Empire, and the Enterprise must warp to Organia to secure peace...

You could even adapt "Arena" as a damn-fine two hour story. Act I: The battle on Cestus III with the Gorns (and the Enterprise) in orbit, while Kirk and Spock are under fire on the surface. Act II: The pursuit of the Gorn ship into unexplored territory as Kirk contemplates a declaration of war. Act III: The Metrons, and Gorn vs. Kirk. There's also a message there about not going to war unnecessarily, which seems timely.

No doubt it's a really, really fun parlor game to think about who could play Khan in the next Star Trek movie. But do we really need another variation on Soran, Ru'Afo, Shinzon and Nero right now? If we get a new Khan, a new madman, that'll be three similar threats in a row.

Here's a thought: let's apply some of Star Trek's "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" to the franchise's villains.

Boldly go.

All's Well That Ends Well: Final Episodes, Cliffhangers and Goodbyes

Approximately a week ago, author and blogger Brad Templeton penned a vast (and widely-linked) essay terming Battlestar Galactica's series finale ("Daybreak") "the worst ending in the history of science fiction on the screen."

His reasoning is sound, not to mention brilliantly expressed, and the author points specifically to three problems. They are: an egregious scientific error, an overall sense of storytelling laziness to resolve important "mysteries" (relying on God and God's powers as the explanation for a multitude of events), and most damningly, poor internal consistency. In that final regard, "Daybreak 1 & 2" don't even track with earlier episodes of the four season series, particularly one important installment set on Kobol.

I suggest you read the entire, meticulous piece for yourself, so you can draw your own conclusions. Personally, I agreed with the author on at least one of his main points. Although I never even registered the Mitochondrial Eve/scientific error (and scientific errors tend not to bother me that much anyway...), I was dumbfounded that audiences were expected to believe "Daybreak's" closing conceit: that a technological race would voluntarily (and in one voice...) give up health care, air conditioning, telephones, and indoor plumbing to live on a primitive planet in close proximity to their sworn enemies (you know, the ones who had attempted their genocide...). I mean, the Colonists had only survived the Genocide because of technology; because of their spaceships. I just don't believe for a second that an advanced people would willingly give it all up. I also disliked the final explanation -- or lack of explanation -- for Starbuck's character. It was a cop-out on a cosmic scale.

Yet I write today not to curse Battlestar Galactica's disappointing finale, but because the essay got me thinking about the ways that other genre series have arrived at their final chapters. It wasn't that long ago, actually, that most series just went off the air without any sort of wrap-up whatsoever.

We never saw the final voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise's five year mission. Nor did we witness the Alphans discover a new home, or return to Earth. The Searcher never found those "lost tribes" of Earth.

Television audiences never knew if David Vincent stopped the alien invasion of Earth, or if Carl Kolchak finally convinced anybody that there were monsters running around Chicago. Nope. Those TV series just...stopped. The axe of cancellation fell...and that was the end of the story.

On the other hand, some notable series did get to inscribe their last acts, ending with some modest sense of completion (even if dedicated fans were left begging for more....) Now, I'm specifically discussing endings in this essay, folks, so you might consider the descriptions ahead as spoilers. If you don't want to know how a number of sci-fi series ended, then read no further.

"Fall Out"

First off, we have Patrick McGoohan's legendary series about individualism and "The State," called The Prisoner (1968). The 17-episode roster ended with an episode titled "Fall Out." If you've never seen it, there's simply no way to satisfactorily explain it, except to state that, well, it's really bonkers. The imprisoned Number Six (McGoohan) -- after undergoing a trial/psychological test of sorts -- discovers that the Village's leader, Number One, is actually a man in a chimp mask. No scratch that...Number One is actually himself. Then Number Six destroys the Village, flees with a midget, and -- through images repeated from the familiar opening credits montage -- we are led conclude that the whole cycle of imprisonment may be starting over again.

Though bizarre, the ending of "Fall Out" succeeds because it suggests that even outside the walls of the Village, Number Six will always be a "prisoner" in an increasingly de-humanized society determined to catalogue and number citizens. We relate this message to us: we're all prisoners.

Yet "Fall Out" isn't coherent in any traditional storytelling sense, and it actually abandons the tight, "literal" narrative of the earlier episodes for an entirely allegorical finale. Some regular viewers of The Prisoner were actually enraged by the abandonment of the literal for the metaphorical, while others undertook the tough task McGoohan had sought for them: they interpreted the psychedelic, powerful images and found their own answers about the underlying meaning.

"Blake"

Blake's 7 (1978-1981), another British sci-fi series, also featured a rather definitive and downbeat ending, and one much more literal in nature than "Fall Out." I like to call it "The Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" End. After years of successfully fighting against the tyrannical and powerful Federation, Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow) finally leads his gang of rebels into a trap from which they cannot escape.

The last scene of the episode "Blake" (and of the series) involves all the main characters being gunned down in slow-motion by Federation soldiers. Our last view of the cunning Avon sees him offering a strange smile...and raising his own weapon in a futile demonstration of defiance. The screen goes blank and laser fire dominates the soundtrack...

This ending was and remains perfect -- not because of the brutal massacre -- but because of the character-based events leading up to it. Before Avon faces the shock troopers of the Federation, he encounters the idealistic, missing hero of the series, Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) and -- because of a misinterpretation and poorly chosen words -- ends up killing him in cold blood.

Blake's 7 always concerned character fireworks more than action, and "Blake" is true to that longstanding quality. Blake trusted too much...and died. And Avon trusted too little...and also died. In other words, the same problems that had always plagued these men throughout the series plagued the freedom fighters right through the violent finale. Yes, "Blake" is dark, but any other ending wouldn't have seemed realistic in Blake's 7's cynical universe. Tie-in writers, fans, and producers have toiled ever since "Blake" aired to figure out an acceptable way for the heroes to somehow survive the events of this final episode, but the massacre stands as the final video chapter of Blake's 7. And it remains one of the most mind-blowing series finales in the genre's history.

"All Good Things"

In 1994, after seven successful seasons in syndication, Star Trek: The Next Generation achieved the sense of closure that the Original Series had been denied. It occurred in an adventure called "All Good Things" that recalled the past (and the premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint,") had one foot in the present, and even featured a subplot set in the future, twenty-five years down the line.

Although "All Good Things" was mired in tongue-twisting techno-babble, the story -- which saw the Enterprise-D and Picard investigating a mystery in three time periods -- was satisfactorily epic: the entire universe was at stake. The God Entity Q even took Picard back in time to the Dawn of Man in one dynamic scene. But by going returning to the beginning of the series ("Farpoint"), and Q's "Trial of Humanity," "All Good Things" also granted The Next Generation series a nice book-ends quality. Q's trial was finally adjourned...and mankind passed with flying colors.

"The Truth"

The X-Files (1993-2002) ended after nine highly-rated seasons on broadcast television, and unlike other series finale's featured on this list, it's goal was not just to wrap-up character fates, but actually offer the viewer a linear, top-to-bottom explanation of the show's long-standing alien conspiracy and mytharc.

Creator Chris Carter used the occasion of fugitive Fox Mulder's trial to present evidence (and exposition) about the conspiracies that had become part and parcel of 1990s pop culture. Witness testimony, first-hand evidence, and character recollections painted -- for the first time -- a larger, more coherent picture of the X-Files meta-story.

So much of The X-Files also concerned two world views or perspectives in conflict...and in love, exemplified by the believer Mulder (David Duchovny) and the skeptic, Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Appropriately, "The Truth" reunited this pair, and gave them one last go at the Cigarette-Smoking Man, the enduring villain of The X-Files. Then, in a touching and romantic coda, Mulder and Scully talked about their future....and the planet's. There was even the hint of a sequel since these final moments discussed the date for the alien "colonization: 2012.

"Chosen"

When creator Joss Whedon first imagined Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he projected the future of horror's most popular archetype, the "Final Girl:" a woman who could not only defeat the monster, but whom the monsters actually feared. The long-lived WB/UPN series followed the adventures of the heroic Slayer, but even as an admirable female superhero, Buffy was still trained by men (A Watcher), and sent on missions by men (A Watcher Council).

So it was only appropriate in the final episode of the seventh season that Buffy all-but-declared her independence. With the help of Willow's powerful magic, Buffy not only led an army against the forces of the darkness, she "awakened" the female power of would-be female Slayers the globe over, who were suddenly able to harness their "potential."

It was, perhaps the ultimate statement of "Girl Power," which seemed entirely logic given the development of the series, and Whedon's original intent of creating a character who could overcome monster/horror movie cliches. "Chosen" also saw the final destruction of Sunnydale's pesky Hellmouth, the source of all the series' monsters over the years. So not only were viewers inspired...they knew they could sleep safe at night.

Many other series had interesting conclusions too. Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) brought Voyager home in Star Trek: Voyager. Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) grabbed his young daughter Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) out of school and went into hiding with her after Peter Watts' death. And so on and so forth.

Another kind of series ending doesn't really bring closure at all. On the contrary, a number of programs ended on a catastrophic cliffhanger -- one with evil on the ascent -- that was intended to be resolved the following season. When that next season never came, the cliffhanger became the de-facto ending of the whole run. American Gothic (1995) offered one such cliffhanger, with Lucas Buck -- the Devil himself -- finally taking over the soul of his son in the South Carolina town of Trinity. Angel (1999-2005) ended with an unresolved battle against an army of demons in a dark alley' a perfect reflection of the main character's fight against a more powerful foe.

"The Trap"

Sapphire & Steel (1978-1981) was another genre series that went out with a cliffhanging bang. On a seemingly normal mission, our heroic "agents," Sapphire & Steel investigated a strange gas station and diner in a pocket universe of sorts. They quickly learned that the cosmic way-station was a trap sprung for them by an unseen enemy.

The serial and thus the series ended with Sapphire and Steel peering out from their inescapable prison...into infinity itself. This cliffhanger was ultimately resolved in a 21st century audio production, but the time trap stood for years...a chilling reminder of the dangerous, enigmatic nature of the series. It was an ironic capper too: after years of solving temporal riddles, Sapphire and Steel finally walked into a riddle they couldn't figure out, a deliberate reversal of the initial premise.

"The Return"

V: The Series (1985) had a tumultuous run on NBC, with an unusually high degree of cast and character turn over. Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside) and Robin (Blair Tefkin) had been written out mid-season, and Elias (Michael Wright) and Nathan Bates (Lane Smith) had been killed off. These unexpected deaths and surprise departures worked well in a series about a life-and-death Resistance fight against evil, militaristic aliens. The final cliffhanger was no different: it offered abundant surprises. Peace was suddenly declared on Earth, and the Star Child, Elizabeth (Jennifer Cooke), was slated to marry the Leader (unseen on a Visitor spacecraft).

In the episode's final moment, Elizabeth's human boyfriend, Kyle (Jeff Yagher), stowed away on the Leader's ship for the journey back to the distant Visitor home world. But a not-quite vanquished Diana (Jane Badler) revealed she'd planted a bomb aboard the same ship...one just waiting to detonate.

V: The Series ended with a long, dramatic pullback (from the viewpoint of the imperiled, departing shuttle...) as Willie (Robert Englund), Donovan (Marc Singer) and Juliet (Faye Grant) watched it lift off. Did Diana kill the Leader and the Star Child? Did Kyle stop the inter-species marriage? We'll never know, but at least V: The Series went out with a dramatic flourish.

How we judge the success or failure of a series finale ultimately depends, I suppose, on how we viewed the series that preceded the ending. Enterprise (2001-2005) had a terrible, insulting finale that randomly killed off a beloved character and ended with the terrible idea that the whole series was a holodeck game for Will Riker. But who -- watching that show -- could have honestly had high expectations for the finale? I know many people believe Battlestar Galactica set the bar high...and that's why "Daybreak" felt so weak. Let's face it: if the producers begin every episode of their series with the line that the bad guys "have a plan," the producers should probably have one too. And that plan should eventually be made clear to audiences. It never was. The mystery of the five Cylons overtook the series' real sense of drama in the last two years, turning Battlestar into what I once termed "a cosmic game of Clue:" a parlor game about guess who "the secret Cylon" was. Everything else became secondary...

But heck, at least the Galactica's crew didn't go down to Earth on flying motorcycles, right? Or encounter invisible cub scouts from space? Which series endings (listed in this essay or not) stick with you as being the best? Or particularly irk you?

Not Truly The Final Frontier, I Trust.

Forty years ago today, Apollo 11 became the first manned spacecraft to land on our only natural satellite, The Moon.

As for me, I was still in the womb, but my father informed me last night at dinner that he and my Mom were in Cedar Grove, New Jersey on July 20, 1969: visiting my grandparents on my mother's side (both now deceased), and glued to the television....along with approximately 500 million others.

In terms of genre entertainment, the Moon landing of July 1969 arrived barely a month after the last new episode of Star Trek ("Turnabout Intruder") aired on NBC.

Nonetheless, NASA's inspiring lunar accomplishment dominated the immediate future of the sci-fi genre on TV. For instance, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's UFO (1970) and Space:1999 (1975-1977) both posited the Moon as stepping stone to the stars.

I don't want to belittle NASA's sincere efforts in the forty years since the Eagle Landed, or the hard work of today's brave astronauts, but we desperately need to get back to space in an exciting way soon; not just to grapple with "flooded toilets."

Why? well, the answers to many enduring problems on Earth no doubt rest out there, in space. A new "space race" could bring forth amazing advances in technology, energy, medicine, transportation...the works.

But perhaps the most important reason for a serious return to space is psychological. There's a certain train of thought out there that the date July 20, 1969 represents the pinnacle of our civilization...and that the near half-century since has been nothing but slow, steady decline from that glorious apex.

I don't believe that for a second. With a little inspiration, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Moonbase Alpha could be within reach. Just a decade or so late...

In cosmic terms, that's nothing.

CULT TV FLASHBACK #84: Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Q-Who?"

Although I very much enjoyed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation during the original syndication run (1987 - 1994), it's not my favorite Star Trek series by a light year. I'm an old-school Trekkie, I guess you'd say. Just talking personal taste here, I find The Next Generation a little sedate and passionless compared with the colorful Original Series. It's so very...beige.

That personal bias established, there are a number of outstanding episodes in the Next Generation canon: "Yesterday's Enterprise," "The Measure of a Man," "The Inner Light," "A Matter of Honor," "The Outcast," "The Best of Both Worlds," etc.

One of my personal favorite episodes is the sixth-season two-parter, "Chain of Command," which lands the belligerent - but gloriously colorful -- Captain Jellico (Ronny Cox) aboard the Enterprise in the absence of Captain Picard...and has him run roughshod over our easy-going crew. Jellico even tells Counselor Troi to put on a real Starfleet uniform instead of one of those damned purple jump suits.

I recently watched another terrific Next Generation installment from the second season. Point of fact, it held up remarkably well on its twentieth anniversary. It was taut, exciting, surprising and scary as all get out.

But Maurice Hurley's brilliant "Q-Who?," directed by Rob Bowman, is famous, I suppose for one dramatic reason. It introduces a new and awesome villain to Star Trek lore: The Borg.

Equally as important, however, Hurley's economical and inventive teleplay injects a much-needed sense of creeping uncertainty, doom and terror into a sci-fi series that too often came across as safe and self-satisfied.

"Q-Who?" commences as a new engineering crew member, Sonya Gomez (Lycia Naff), spills hot-chocolate on Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart). The good captain heads to his quarters to change uniforms, but steps off the turbo-lift to find himself on a shuttle under the control of Q (John De Lancie), the mysterious and enigmatic entity that has twice before challenged the crew of NCC-1701-D (in "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Hide and Q").

Because he's been kicked out of the Q Continuum, Q apparently wants to join the Enterprise crew. Under guidance from Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) the bartender, however, Picard rejects the offer, calling Q "next of kin to chaos." Q points out Picard's hypocrisy in his out-of-hand decision, pointedly asking him "where's your adventurous spirit?" When Picard won't relent, Q informs Picard that he will live to regret his choice, that the Federation is "not prepared for what awaits" it in space. He claims that the Romulans and Klingons are but "pitiful adversaries" compared to "what's waiting."

With the snap of his fingers, Q then transports the Enterprise 7,000 lights years distant to the J25 solar system. It will take the starship nearly three years at maximum warp to reach the closest Federation starbase.

Picard decides to investigate the system before starting the long trek for home, and soon the Enterprise encounters a spacehip that is "strangely generalized in design" -- meaning that there is no bridge, no living quarters, no engineering deck. The ship is, in fact, a gigantic cube.

A worried Guinan informs Picard that the ship belongs to a race called "The Borg," which "swarmed" into her system and "scattered" her people across the galaxy. The Borg have been developing their brand of human/machine hybrid for "thousands of centuries." Picard attempts to communicate with these aliens, but to no avail. And then a Borg Drone, an enhanced human -- part man and part machine -- beams aboard the Enterprise. The drone promptly identifies the ship's technology as something the Borg "can consume."

Q informs Picard that he has met his match in this new adversary, that the Borg are not interested in "political conquest, wealth" or territorial gain. That Picard can't "outrun them or destroy them." That they are "relentless."

They're also apparently hungry, because they promptly attack the Enterprise and -- in the words of Riker (Jonathan Frakes) -- proceed to "carve up" the ship like a "roast." The Enterprise breaks free, but not before 18 crewmembers are presumed dead in the confrontation.

After an Away Team mission to the Borg ship -- one that involves the discovery of an unsettling Borg Nursery -- Picard comes to realize that he may very well have no choice but to beg Q for help. All too soon, the Borg take out the Enterprise's shields and keep coming. They take out the warp drive, and keep coming. They survive blasts from the aft photon torpedoes and keep coming...

At the end of "Q Who?" Captain Picard concludes that perhaps Q did them all a favor by giving them a "preview" of the Borg threat. He realizes that "what we most needed was a kick in our complacency."

And you know what? You can accurately conclude the same thing of The Next Generation as a series, at least previous to the introduction of the Borg. The good-natured series wasted a tremendous number of episodes and airtime devoted to silly holodeck adventures (with the crew relaxing in a virtual reality setting), "Love Boat in Space" stories (with family members coming on board to solve the soap opera problem of the week), and other blind alleys. The crew hardly ever seemed to break a sweat, and it never seemed as though they were in real danger.

The villains up to that point generally weren't worth the Federation's time or energy either: the silly Ferengi ("The Last Outpost"), manipulative drug dealers ("Symbiosis"), petty warlords ("Code of Honor"), and feuding aliens by the boatload ("Lonely Among Us," "Loud as a Whisper," "The Outrageous Okana.")

Yep, it seemed like Star Trek: The Next Generation had forgotten that the final frontier was dangerous territory, and that it was no fun at all if the good guys were always the most powerful kid on the block. What Q reminds Picard so brazenly in "Q Who?" is that -- in his words -- "it's not safe out here." "There are terrors," he concludes" to "freeze your soul."

"It's not for the timid."

In very deliberately putting these lines into Q's sarcastic mouth (and also by explicitly asserting the smug, sometimes arrogant nature of characters like Riker and Picard...), Maurice Hurley successfully addressed one of the core drawbacks of The Next Generation. In the process, Hurley also gave the franchise an indisputably classic villain.

From the iconic cube design of the Borg ship, to the relatively fresh (for Trek) notion of a hive intelligence, the Borg represented a whole new direction for the franchise. The Borg had no individual leader; no "agenda" except technological and biological consumption, and they simply could not be reasoned with or talked to. Enlightenment, diplomacy, and mediation -- Picard's specific portfolio -- were no good against them. How do you reason with someone who doesn't acknowledge your existence?

Inevitably, the franchise blew it with the Borg and tried to shoe-horn the novel alien threat into a more mainstream, conventional form. "Descent" made the Borg mad-dog individuals instead of a cerebral, calculating hive mind. And 1996's (admittedly spectacular) First Contact introduced the ridiculous idea of a Borg Queen...as individual leader of the Collective(!?) Then, in Voyager, Captain Janeway -- a character I genuinely like -- began to outsmart and outfight the technologically-superior Borg almost every week (even without Starfleet behind her...), and the Borg lost even more of their initial power.

But for "Q Who?" none of that matters. Star Trek was dangerous again, and the audience felt invested in the crew's plight. Thanks to a good script, a powerful foe, and Ron Jones' militant, pushing soundtrack, the episode's sense of fear is palpable. For once, our heroes are out of their depth,and there's a feeling of unpredictability...that all the crew's assumptions (and our assumptions about Star Trek) are really and truly out the window.

"Q Who?" features some great creepy moments. When Riker, Worf and Data beam aboard the Borg ship and are confronted with "frozen" Borg, the tension begins to rise. There's a feeling here that the quiescent drones could come to life any second...and do our crewmembers real physical damage. And the moment in Engineering when a pale-as-a-ghost Borg drone turns from a panel and dispassionately (perhaps malevolently...) eyes Geordi (and us, in the audience) is positively chill-inducing. There's no humanity there. No mercy, no empathy.

Star Trek's finest quality, in some sense, is the diversity or individuality of the characters. Data is an Android, Worf a Klingon, Troi a half-Betazed, Geordi is blind, and so on. But each one of these unique personalities "contributes" to Starfleet in a powerful, individual and unique way. The great menace represented by the Borg is that, as a hive mind, they possess no sense of individuality. And worse, they want to rob you of yours. In the colorful, diverse world of Star Trek, that's a fate worse than death. Identity is a core concept of Star Trek and the Borg chillingly act as identity robbers.

Finally, "Q Who?" ends with Picard's realization that the Borg are now aware of the Federation; that they "will be coming." This admission -- played against the backdrop of endless stars in Ten Forward -- evokes shivers and a remarkable sense of anticipation and foreboding.

It's just the kick in the butt that the Enterprise D and Star Trek: The Next Generation needed going into its third and best season.

A July 4th Refresher, Part 2

CULT TV FLASHBACK: Star Trek: The Animated Series: "Yesteryear"

The blockbuster J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film (2009) is not the first (or only...) Trek installment over the years to alter the franchise time line in some fashion (or, more accurately, create a separate or alternate time line). In fact, this kind of temporal tweaking was occurring in the series as early as 1973. September 15, 1973, to be precise.

That's the air date of story-editor D.C. Fontana's "Yesteryear." It was the second episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series broadcast on CBS in most U.S. cities, and -- not entirely unlike the popular Abrams' film this summer -- it was heavily Spock-centric in nature.

"My ideas were these," Fontana told me in an interview for Filmfax in 2001: "Can we see Vulcan? What kind of story can I tell there? And can I involve Spock?" In answering those questions, Fontana created what is undeniably the most popular episode of the animated series, and one that is also regarded as "canon" by most Star Trek fans.

"Yesteryear" opens at the planet of the Guardian of Forever (as seen in "City on the Edge of Forever.") A group of Federation scientists stand watch at the mysterious time portal as Kirk and Spock return from a visit to Orion's past.

However, something strange has occurred in their absence. The scientists don't appear to remember Spock at all. A baffled Captain Kirk hails the Enterprise, and Scotty has no memory of the half-Vulcan science-officer either. "Something appears to have changed in the time line as we know it," Spock suggests.

Indeed, this is an accurate supposition, and the first officer of the starship Enterprise in this "new" time line is now an Andorian, Mr. Thelin. Upon returning to the starship, Spock also learns that in this universe, he died at age seven, during a dangerous Vulcan rite of "maturity" called the Kahs-wan. Equally as troubling, Spock's death at a young age caused the dissolution of Sarek and Amanda's marriage, and Amanda was subsequently killed in a shuttle accident on her way home to Earth.

Again, I thought reflexively of the new Star Trek film, which also makes Amanda a casualty in an alternate time line.

Kirk and Spock soon realize that, in their original timeline, Spock must have actually traveled back in Vulcan history and saved his younger self from dying on Vulcan's Forge during the Kahs-wan, a ritual involving 10 days in the desert without food, water, or weapons. However, when the Federation scientists "replayed" that part of Vulcan history (some twenty-to-thirty years prior...), Spock was unavailable -- in Orion's past with Kirk -- and therefore unable to return to Vulcan and save his younger self. Got that?

In hopes of restoring himself and the timeline, Spock masquerades as Sarek's (Mark Lenard's) cousin "Selik," and returns to Vulcan in the past, near the city of ShiKahr.

There, he comes to the assistance of his younger self as the seven-year old Spock and his pet sehlat, I-Chaya, are attacked by a Vulcan dragon called a le-matya. Fans of Godzilla will recognize the roar of the le-matya as being that of their favorite Toho monster, by the way...

Unfortunately, I-Chaya is poisoned by the dragon and young Spock seeks help from a local healer, braving Vulcan's Forge and thereby passing the Vulcan rite of adulthood. For his beloved pet, however, it is too late, and the healer offers Spock a choice. The sehlat's life can be prolonged for a time -- but the animal will feel terrible pain, or the healer can release the beloved pet from all his suffering...and end his life now.

Young Spock makes the decision to end his pet's suffering, and in doing so decides that the path of his own life will follow in the Vulcan way: logic and the total repression of all emotion.

When elder Spock returns to the present on the Planet of the Guardian of Forever, he informs a waiting Kirk that the timeline has indeed been altered (or a new one created...). "One small thing was changed...a pet died," Spock informs his Captain. "Times change..." he concludes later, and in a way, that could be a tag-line for the new Star Trek too.

"Yesteryear" has always been one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series, in part because of the difficult but valuable message about pets, and caring for pets. When young Spock asks whether it is right to mourn the loss of his pet, his older self notes with compassion that "every life comes to an end when the time demands it," and thus there is no need to be sad about it. What is sad, Spock insists, is a life that has not been lived well.

Frankly, I'm amazed that a pet's (on-screen...) death made it past the censors and onto network television, on Saturday mornings, no less, in the 1970s. Filmation's Lou Scheimer, producer of the Star Trek cartoon, told me in an interview in 2001 that "a pet's death had never been done on a children's program, and it was touching and provocative. Dorothy was instrumental in making it so creative."

When I interviewed Fontana, she told me that there was indeed a "worry about the death of the sehlat," but that "Gene Roddenberry told the networks" that she -- Fontana -- would "take care of it," in a way that acceptable. It was a story, that Fontana put "so much" of herself into...and it certainly shows, even today. If you've ever lost a beloved pet -- or worse, had to make the choice of life for death for a beloved pet -- you will find yourself quite moved by the last act of "Yesteryear."

Watching this episode again last night brought me right back to a terrible Thursday in April 2003, and the death of my first cat, Lulu. Our doctor offered us a similar choice: a short-term respite (through a difficult blood transfusion), or a merciful "passing" right there...and thus an end to suffering. We chose the latter option and it was - and remains - devastating, but I've always believed we made the right choice for her; the same choice Spock makes for his pet in this Star Trek episode. Maybe Vulcans and humans are quite alike after all...

Another intriguing aspect of "Yesteryear," especially in light of the new film, is a scene involving young Spock being bullied by other Vulcan children about his human half. Although in the cartoon (again, a Saturday morning show...) nobody calls Amanda "a whore," the insults are still pretty harsh. One child tells Spock that Sarek brought shame to Vulcan by marrying a human. Another tells Spock that he can never be a "real Vulcan." This scene -- with different costumes and sets -- is played out almost exactly -- quite faithfully, really -- in the Abrams film. (And indeed, it was a moment mentioned in passing by Amanda as early as the Fontana live-action episode "Journey to Babel.")

Another reason to admire "Yesteryear" is the scope of the story. Before Abrams' film, this cartoon segment probably represented the best view of Vulcan we were afforded in Trek history. In "Yesteryear," we see the interior of Sarek and Amanda's home, the deserts of Vulcan's Forge, and a futuristic metropolis (not to mention some hover cars). These things were possible only because of animation...a live-action series of 1973 could simply never have afforded so many varied sets, props or locations.

In light of the newest chapter of the Star Trek story, "Yesteryear" looks even more fascinating -- to a coin a phrase -- than ever. In it, we see how a time line is changed permanently (if only in regards to a pet's destiny...), get more than a passing glimpse of Vulcan, and once more delve into the difficult choices Spock made in childhood: the selection between Vulcan or human philosophy. All in all, this may be Star Trek: The Animated Series' finest hour.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Star Trek (2009)

Long story not so short: Star Trek is in good hands.

Different hands, to be certain. But good hands nonetheless.

The J.J. Abrams big-budget film, which opened last weekend, accomplishes the very mission many industry insiders and long-time Star Trek fans had judged impossible just half-a-decade ago, during the Berman Era doldrums of Nemesis and the TV series, Enterprise. It actually welcomes new fans -- and general audiences -- into the Trekkie fold with a well-dramatized, beautifully-cast, emotionally resonant tale of Kirk and Spock's youthful beginnings.

This movie is that rarest of birds, a blockbuster summer movie that lives up to the hype. It is fast, fun and frenetic, the very qualities you would desire and seek in an epic space saga.

Penned by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the new movie genuflects appropriately to Star Trek''s storied tradition with the presence of the franchise's elder statesman, Leonard Nimoy, in a significant (and touching...) role. Simultaneously, however, the movie adopts a warp speed trajectory straight for the unknown, essentially re-booting the franchise and the beloved core characters with new and therefore unpredictable destinies

Call this delicate (and dangerous...) dance The Abrams Maneuver: a deft strategy that permits this cinematic enterprise to operate on two levels at once, appealing both to the hardcore aficionados on the basis of knowledge and nostalgia, and to the unconverted masses on the basis of the new cast's pure charm, the dazzling visualizations, and some rock 'em, sock 'em action scenes...the likes of which previous Treks could never have imagined, let alone afforded to execute.

This radical Abrams Maneuver -- creating an alternate timeline while maintaining the beloved characters and core spirit of Trek -- was no doubt deemed necessary because, to utilize a metaphor from author David Gerrold in his Encounter at Farpoint novelization of 1987, commanding the U.S.S.Enterprise has become rather like "making love in a fish bowl." Everyone has an opinion of your performance, and there isn't much room to maneuver.

Ditto for the franchise itself.

In other words, forty-five long years of accumulated continuity, arcane rules and byzantine history had effectively hobbled creativity (and more importantly, spontaneity...) to the point where Star Trek had dropped out of warp and was suffering from a terminal case of "replicative fading" (a cloning disease named in the Next Gen episode "Up The Long Ladder").

Voyager, Enterprise, Insurrection and Nemesis all seemed like tired copies of a tired copy of a...well, you get the picture.

The glory days of Star Trek were over, and the once-widely beloved mythos became the sole purview of nostalgic thirty-five year olds (me! me!). But even for many aging fanboys and fangirls, the thrill was gone...or at least slipping away.

I'm a huge Star Trek fan, but dammit Jim, I'm not a masochist! So I was outta there by the time Voyager reached Earth. I watched a few episodes of Enterprise, but didn't really need Star Trek as the visual equivalent of Sominex, and moved on. Whenever people I trusted insisted "it's getting better, really," I checked back in, and you know what? it wasn't getting any better. It was still deadly dull, stodgy, predictable and uninspired.

But with The Abrams' Maneuver...no more.

Star Trek is back.

The new Star Trek of 2009 has injected much-needed youth, vigor, inspiration and spontaneity into the franchise's faltering heartbeat. The Next Gen era of all Starfleet officers getting along, not eating red meat, wasting time on the holodeck and endlessly sitting around discussing tertiary domains of subspace and reversing the polarity of the deflector array is -- at long last, history.

Instead, the characters we see on screen in J.J. Abrams' Trek are recognizably and gloriously human once more, as they were in the landmark, still classic Original Series. These men and women fumble, get drunk, bump their heads, weep, fall in love, make impulsive mistakes, and -- in the finest tradition of Star Trek -- do their ingenious, inventive best for a cause greater than mere self-interest.

The Future Begins

The new Star Trek depicts the story of a very angry Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana) who -- after the destruction of Romulus in a cosmic disaster (a supernova) -- inadvertently travels back in time 130 years and sets out to destroy the young Federation, starting with charter members Vulcan and Earth.

Nero's accidental temporal journey brings him back to the year (and moment, actually...) of Jim Kirk's birth aboard the Federation starship U.S.S. Kelvin.

When Kirk's heroic father is killed aboard the Kelvin, events diverge from the "prime" time line we remember from the Original Series. Without a father to guide him, Kirk (Chris Pine) grows up to become aimless and rebellious, the "mid-west's only genius level repeat offender," as Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) calls him. Kirk's story is cross-cut effectively with the development of the young half Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto), who is torn between his human and alien natures. Both men are brilliant, but both are also incomplete...

Eventually Kirk and Spock find their way to the Enterprise bridge and -- despite their vastly-different natures -- battle Nero for the survival of the Federation. Another visitor from the future, elderly Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) helps to nudge fate back in the right direction, doing everything in his power to bring the hot-headed young Kirk and the repressed, logical Spock to an awareness that they need one another to be successful, to be complete. This is where the script works at its symbolic best. Kirk, lacking a father, needs the advice of a tempering, prudent man like Spock. And Spock, now absent his human mother, requires the inspiration and human unpredictability of the tenacious Kirk.

I have considerable reservations about many specific elements of this Star Trek story (which I will explain below, in detail), but as is the case for many Star Trek episodes and films of years past, the movie is ultimately more than the sum of its individual (and sometimes faulty...) parts.

Overall, this Star Trek is emotionally satisfying and enormously affecting (particularly Elder Spock's heartfelt, nostalgic send-off to the Enterprise). And the new cast seamlessly (and I mean seamlessly) takes over from the Original Series cast, and the performers are all so likeable, game, and enthusiastic that you feel a surge of good will towards them.

So yes, if you're wondering, lightning has been captured in a bottle again: there's a familiar joie de vivre about and amongst this group of performers that frankly hasn't existed in Star Trek since The Undiscovered Country's send-off in 1991. This chemistry, this joy, this exuberant sense of fun, glosses over many of the movie's largest problems. Just as in the old days, you're swept away by the colorful, well-drawn characters and their extraordinary travails, even if the individual journey raises a few questions.

This is Not Your Father's Star Trek?

The new Star Trek movie boasts a 96% percent critical "approval" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is practically unheard of. And indeed, I also approve of it.

However, it isn't nitpicking or being contrarian to point out that major elements of the Orci/Kurtzman script are, quite frankly, a mess. I'm not talking about specific lines of dialogue or even character motivations...but rather breathtaking gaps of situational logic that you could fly a space armada through.

First and foremost, let us discuss the nature of Nero's weapon of choice, the red matter. It can generate huge, destructive black holes in space. Fine, I accept that. I can even accept that starships can safely travel through said black holes and move back and forward through time. No problem.

But why must Nero go to all the trouble of dropping red matter into the core of a planet like Vulcan or Earth with that lovely but not terribly-effective drill device?

The drill not only wastes time and is highly ineffective (as we see in the movie's finale), but it is also...entirely unnecessary. Just eject that little red matter blob in orbit, Nero, and planetary destruction will surely ensue.

Black holes are so powerful that nothing, not even light can escape their crushing force. So even if you dropped a black hole near our moon, we'd be in some deep bantha poo doo (sorry, wrong franchise...). Putting the red matter at the Earth's core, or Vulcan's core, just seems like gilding the lily to me.

And actually, I'm a bit concerned that at the end of the film, a black hole has been formed relatively close to Earth (in our solar system, if I'm not mistaken). That's...uh...asking for trouble. (We know this too, because McCoy gives a very convincing lecture, early in the film, about the hazards of space flight under even normal conditions.)

And also, you're telling me that a 24th century Romulan can't just upfit photon torpedoes with the red matter and blast away at Earth or Vulcan from a safe distance, rather than going to all the trouble of deploying that unwieldy drill and being tethered to it? If you believe that, Harry Mudd has some happy pills he'd like to sell you too...

Basically, the red matter threat is inconsistent and poorly-thought out. It is made to seem so all-powerful that it can destroy planets and cause time travel(!), but if that were indeed the case, you wouldn't have to delicately send particles down that drill's esophagus to a planet core, right?

That's not even the worst offense, however.

During his mind-meld with Kirk, Ambassador Spock notes that the safety of the "galaxy" was threatened by "a supernova." Huh? A supernova is dangerous indeed...to a solar system. Maybe two solar systems, tops, on a really bad day. But an entire galaxy? I don't think so. The Enterprise escaped from a supernova by going to warp speed in "All Our Yesterdays" and the galaxy was never imperiled, just the local star group.

This is another classic mistake, and what I find ironic (and yet oddly poetic...) about it is that derisive Star Trek fans have ridiculed series like Battlestar Galactica (original) and Space:1999 for forty years based on the fact that those series occasionally made such basic errors in astronomical nomenclature (confusing solar systems and galaxies.) At most, a supernova could have threatened Romulus. But it's a novice mistake to indicate it could do harm to a galaxy. This is science fiction, and again, some flights of fancy are permissible, expected and desired. But so basic an error in science (about something we already know about), is troubling.

Another novice mistake: Spock actually sees Vulcan implode from the night sky of Delta Vega (a world now oddly transformed into an ice planet, though it was just kind of...craggy...in "Where No Man Has Gone Before.") Just think about this for a minute. Would we be able to see in our night sky a planetary implosion in another solar system? Of course not.

Why, Spock isn't even using binoculars when he sees the catastrophe! Rather, Vulcan is apparently no further away from Delta Vega than we are from our moon. Before you suggest Delta Vega must actually be a Vulcan moon...it is established in Star Trek lore that Vulcan has no moons. Additionally, Star Trek lore establishes that Delta Vega is near the edge of the galaxy, and so remote a planet that Starfleet only visits the lithium-cracking station there once every quarter century. So how did Delta Vega move to within eye-shot of Vulcan?

Orci and Kurtzman's "re-boot" (set off by Nero's arrival) didn't change planetary orbits or positions. There's no way Spock could watch Vulcan's destruction from Delta Vega. Again, you suspect that these writers don't really understand the vast distance involved in outer space....that every planet isn't merely a stone's throw from another. The writers could have saved themselves a lot of heartache if they hadn't named this planet Delta Vega, which already has an established nature, geography and location in Star Trek history.

These days, especially with J.J.'s terse advice to "purists" to "stay home" and not see the movie, it's convenient and easy to deride criticism like mine as coming from an anal-retentive fanatic who lives in his parent's basement and catalogues crew member serial numbers.

On the contrary, I'm merely extrapolating from the ground rules the writers have established. Their screenplay makes it explicit that the time scape has changed as a result of Nero's intervention. Unless Nero is moving planets, or has changed the nature of "supernovas," "black holes" and other such objects (like planets...) these changes are inconsistent and impossible. Plainly, they're sloppy, easily-avoided mistakes.

However, my admiration for past Star Trek doesn't preclude me from stating the obvious here: this isn't the first time in history Star Trek has made stupid technical or plot blunders.

In The Wrath of Khan, U.S.S. Reliant visits the wrong planet by accident, and ends up finding the evil Khan. (Oh, you wanted Ceti Alpha 6! Oopsy!) And in Generations, the Nexus threat is every bit as ridiculous and inconsistent as the Red Matter is here. I mean, if Soran wanted to get inside the Nexus Ribbon, why didn't he just steal a thruster suit and fly in all by himself (instead of, say, destroying an ENTIRE planet and killing billions of people)? And Star Trek VI tells us Excelsior is carrying equipment to catalog gaseous anomalies, but in the film's last act, the Enteprise is miraculously carrying the same equipment for the same mission! Convenient!

So see, I really am being objective here. The new Star Trek makes the same dumb errors that the old Star Treks often did. That doesn't make the mistakes excusable in either scenario. All instances represent...sloppy writing. But by the same token, these mistakes certainly don't disqualify the films from being good, either.

Unfortunately, this new Star Trek doesn't inherit a more noble quality of the original: a sense of the universal human condition. In previous Star Treks, the scripts always remembered Earth history and great literature, often drawing parallels between events of the 24th century and our long recorded past as a species. Khan quoted Melville in Wrath of Khan. Chang quoted Shakespeare (in the original Klingon...) in Undiscovered Country. Spock even quoted John Masefield ("All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by") in the much-maligned Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. These moments in the franchise were not elitist; were not simple affectations for the intelligentsia. They represented an explicit connection to the past that reminded viewers that no matter how far we travel into the final frontier...we take our history and legacy along with us.

By contrast, this new Star Trek pulls all of its vital quotations from Star Trek history (even Spock's Sherlock Holmes quote from The Undiscovered Country...which isn't attributed here), instead of from the wide, majestic history of human literature and myth. As a result, an important Trek idea is all but lost here. The film refers to franchise history and legacy, but nothing outside it, which makes it feel a bit insular.

Also, I must wonder why we couldn't have seen a five minute scene (or hell, a one minute scene...) involving Kirk in a history class at Starfleet Academy, listening to some instructor report about the peaceful, pioneering spirit of Starfleet. Or IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) for that matter.

Or even how the troubled Earth outgrew its "infancy" and had matured to join an interstellar community. Something -- even a token mention -- would have sufficed to remind us that Star Trek is about a future of growth and evolution.

Again, some people may state that my complaint is nitpicking, but the essence of Star Trek is optimism, the hope for a better tomorrow, and the belief that we can outgrow our violent infancy to achieve amazing things. This Star Trek has its moments of optimism, to be certain. I enjoyed seeing a man of Middle Eastern descent, Captain Robau (Faran Tahir), command a starship, for instance. But again, I believe that if we'd had one little, tiny moment in which Kirk was in class -- kind of being an arrogant prick while an instructor discussed Starfleet philosophy -- his spontaneous idea to asist Nero and the Narada at the film's climax would have been more dramatically resonant. We would have known, as viewers, that the philosophy of Starfleet had "sunk in." That Kirk had embraced it.

The destruction of the planet Vulcan is another sticking point, honestly. I understand why it was considered necessary from a structural and dramatic standpoint. The destruction of Vulcan dramatically establishes the seriousness of the red matter/Nero threat, and it also "shocks and awes" the audience into realizing that the future in this alternate universe is indeed going to be rather different from the voyages we are already familiar with. Yes, I get it.

But still...six billion Vulcans die in the incident. And make no mistake, Vulcan too has been a symbol of optimism and brotherhood in Star Trek for almost fifty years. The Vulcans on Star Trek are equals to humans (and Earth) in importance, even though they are so very different from us in their nature. Indeed, their differences show us up a bit. As Amanda declares in "Journey to Babel," the Vulcan way is "better" than ours. The Vulcans were the living embodment of pacificism; of diversity; of the creed that we need not be carried away by violence or anger or any other primitive human emotion. Now they are reduced to an asterisk in history.

From a practical standpoint, the destruction of Vulcan and the genocide of the Vulcan race also seemingly closes off as many story avenues as it opens up for future writers. Now there shall be no Kolinahr ritual for Spock (and importantly, no failure of the Kolinahr); there shall be no Mount Seleya and "Fal Tor Pan," and no "Amok Time" return to Vulcan for Spock's Pon Farr. More importantly, every time Bones decides to say "are you out of your Vulcan mind" or quip about "green blooded hobgoblins" in future Treks, isn't he going to feel at least a sliver of shame, given that, in Spock's own words, the Vulcans are now an endangered species? The fact that six billion Vulcans are dead sort of takes the air out of McCoy's insults. Spock can just turn to him and say, "It is unfortunate, doctor, you find genocide a source of comedy." That ought to shut Bones up.

The loss of Vulcan to the Star Trek universe carries grave dramatic repercussions, and I'm not entirely convinced that the shock and awe in this particular story was worth the destruction of so major and rich a source of lore and mythology in Star Trek canon. When you couple the destruction of Vulcan with the writers' stated desire to destroy the Enterprise in this movie as well, you start to wonder about their emotional maturity and stability. You know, guys Khan just wanted to take over the Enterprise in "Space Seed" and he was pretty damn threatening. Janice Lester switched bodies with Kirk, and that was pretty scary in "Turnabout Intruder." One episode, saw the crew face a personal apocalypse when they began to age rapidly ("The Deadly Years.") A little more cleverness would be welcome here; not necessarily more grand gestures like destroying whole planets.

I can't write here, in my capacity as an honest, objective reviewer, that all these flaws -- the inconsistent red matter threat, the technical inaccuracies, the lack of several important Star Trek ingredients -- don't matter. Indeed, they do matter, very much. The most difficult part for me is that all of these problems could have been rectified with just one more polish of the script.

On the other hand, I can also tell you that I sat through five of the most dreadful, brain-dead theatrical trailers I've ever seen in my life, waiting for Star Trek to start (for Year One, GI Joe, Night at the Museum 2, Inglorious Basterds, and Transformers 2, respectively). I'm afraid my IQ dropped several points just being exposed to them. If that's the state of the competition, and of movie making in 2009, then Star Trek even without Shakespeare is still...Shakespeare.

You've no doubt read several other reviews of Star Trek by now, in which new cast members are alternately lauded or derided (some people like Karl Urban, some don't; some people approve of Chris Pine; others not so much, etc.) I thought everybody did a terrific job. This is a talented bunch, and I'm ready to see this fantastic cast engage in a sequel. Down to a person, I found this new crew impressive and charismatic.

Who Was That Pointy Eared Bastard?
Okay, I've shared with you -- at some length, actually -- my reservations about this bold new Star Trek. I haven't pulled my punches, either.

Now, I want to write about the reasons Star Trek is still a good film (perhaps even a great film).

First, I must praise the writers, Orci and Kurtzman, whom I was just cursing out and damning a moment ago. Overall, they have done a fine job of incorporating myriad elements of Star Trek lore both famous and obscure, and blending them all into a strong and cohesive narrative.

Here you will find mentions of figures like Admiral Komack and Admiral Archer. Here you will witness Kirk's mythic third go at the Kobayashi Maru "no win scenario" test, and Spock's much-discussed but never seen confrontation at the Vulcan Science Academy. Amanda spoke of other boys teasing Spock in "Journey to Babel," and again, we finally get to see for ourselves the bullying in live-action here. And It's not just the obvious stuff the script gets right, like Kirk bedding down a green Orion Slave Girl. Instead, I believe the writers did a fine, thorough job of extrapolating from Trek history some interesting and unique twists. I very much liked, for example, their origin for the nickname "Bones."

Another case in point: Uhura. In this film, Spock and Uhura share a romantic relationship, and though some people complained about it, I felt this was easily a relationship that could have blossomed between those characters (and I found it much more believable in nature than the Scotty/Uhura romance of Star Trek V, for instance).

To buttress this belief, I go back to three specific instances in which Spock and Uhura shared something more than mere "official" business in The Original Series. In "The Man Trap," Uhura and Spock bantered about Vulcan and the lack of moons, as well as Uhura's boredom with constantly opening hailing frequencies. In "Charlie X," Uhura teased Spock with a flirtatious song (in which she commented on his devil ears and devil eyes...). And, in some other episode that I can't remember now (D'oh! Is it "Who Mourns for Adonais?"), Spock revealed a special confidence and tenderness towards Uhura in a tense moment, noting that if anybody could accomplish something difficult, she could.

Given such interactions in the Original Series, a romance between Spock and Uhura is not that much of a jump. And, in fact, it's delightful. You see, this is where Orci and Kurtzman are far cleverer than the hacks who wrote the recent Star Trek movies: they don't just blindly rinse and repeat old chestnuts hoping to elicit the same reflexive responses (Spock died in Star Trek II, so Data should die in Star Trek: Nemesis, etc.). On the contrary, it's clear they've pondered Star Trek lore a great deal and considered, in Spock's words, that there are always...possibilities. This film absolutely dwells and revels in those possibilities. What if Spock and Uhura got together? What if Chekov wasn't just a young apprentice to Spock, but a genius in his own right? What if the seeds of Scotty's weight problem began with his hunger on Delta Vega? (Kidding about that last one...).

Also, I believe a very strong case could be made that, overall, Star Trek is really and truly the story of Mr. Spock and his life-time journey towards enlightenment. Spock began life as a derided outsider in two worlds. On the original five year mission, he found a place of acceptance and friendship on the Enterprise, but still longed to prove himself as a Vulcan. After his encounter with V'Ger, Spock came to a point of new understanding, an epiphany that logic was "not enough" and that without emotions, people can be "barren," and "cold." By the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he had gone far enough to realize that logic was the "beginning of wisdom, not the end."

What I find amazing (and touching...) about the new Star Trek is that Orci and Kurtzman have given us Spock's final chapter at the same time they have provided us his first chapter, thus wackily making their one-of-a-kind film a prequel and a sequel simultaneously. Miraculously, they pull it off too, with Spock confiding in his younger self that in the future he should just do..."what feels right."

Indeed, I can see plainly why Leonard Nimoy returned for Star Trek for this opportunity. Ambassador Spock serves an important role in the story, and his long journey towards "complete personhood" (with nudges from a fella named Jim Kirk...) reaches a logical conclusion and destination. I found it shocking and sad how wavering and weak Nimoy's voice has grown, but I nonetheless felt all his scenes granted the film a real sense of heart. To see Old Spock sending off the Enterprise on its maiden voyage was, well...overwhelming to me. A beautiful, beautiful moment. I also loved the fact that Spock gets to put into words what his friendship with Jim Kirk has meant to his life. I could not imagine a better ending for Leonard Nimoy's Spock than this one. This aspect of the film is superb.

I also rather enjoyed the fact that this Star Trek found time for a few goofy moments, such as Kirk's "inflated" hands (an allergic reaction to a vaccination) and Scotty's watery ride through an engineering tube. Goofy humor has been part and parcel of Star Trek since the very beginning; since episodes like "I Mudd," "A Piece of the Action" and "The Trouble with Tribbles." I liked that this Star Trek felt confident enough to get silly. It's a good signal that the makers of the movie understand just how multi-faceted the franchise can be.

Finally, I loved that the fate of the galaxy and the future -- as usual -- seemed to depend entirely on Kirk getting Spock emotionally riled up at the right (or wrong...) moment. Again, that's very true to the series and its history (think "Thgis Side of Paradise") but not so similar to what came before that it feels hackneyed. I could go on and on about the fun moments I enjoyed here: the pit-bull nature of Kirk (never surrender, never say die), the moment Sulu forgot an important launch procedure, the portentous first view of the gorgeous new Enterprise in space...etc.

Again, I feel strongly that the overall joyful aura of the film outweighs the specific and numerous deficits.

His Pattern Indicates Two-Dimensional Thinking

Last thing: Do you remember how in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock informed Kirk that Khan's battle strategy indicated "two-dimensional thinking?"

Alas, the same could be said of the Star Trek franchise's approach to depicting space battles over the years. How come the Enterprise always encountered Klingon Birds of Prey right-side up? How did various ships know which way they should position themselves to align with other traveling ships? Why did they always come at each other face to face, like lumbering elephants, or jousting knights?

Well, J.J. Abrams gets that problematic trope out of the way in this film's first scene, showing us, for perhaps the first time in Star Trek history, a legitimately three-dimensional playing field, one in which starships approach, retreat and combat one another using the full-scope of the interplanetary arena. This is an arena where Abrams has improved the franchise with his aesthetic approach, and it's fair in my review to note that fact too.

Even better (and compensating for some of the script's scientific errors), Abrams remembers that there is no sound in space and occasionally adopts a perspective outside the hulls of the warring vessels. He lets the sound go silent (save for the roaring, martial soundtrack...) and we achieve a strange sense of distance from the attack; standing back and marveling at the epic quality of the scene. It's amazing and inspiring, actually, and lends credence to the opinion that this is the best visualized Star Trek yet forged.

I absolutely hate the use to which the Romulan drill is put, but that "space jump" scene is another fantastic bit of action filmmaking...better than anything I've seen for some time. Kathryn, who is a little less jaded than I am, told me she jumped out of her seat a few times during that tense sequence alone.

And I guess, at long last, that brings me back to my opening point. Star Trek is in good hands. J.J. Abrams, Orci and Kurtz seem to have recognized the very qualities that Star Trek requires to "live long and prosper" at this juncture in pop culture history. Those qualities are: (in random order): vigor, excitement spontaneity, camaraderie, humor and a sense of fun...all writ large. This movie is not without significant flaws, but all in all, it's quite a proper shakedown.

How do I know? Well, I walked out of Star Trek yesterday -- and for the first time in a very long while -- I felt...young.