Star Trek: The Original Series is one of my favorite TV series...and the only one of the franchise that I cared for. (I had wanted to like Star Trek: TNG, but in the second episode, a kind of take off on Journey To Babel, Picard is kidnapped from the ship. While he's gone, two groups of alien diplomats hunt each other with intent to kill. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that one alien has succeeded in killing the other and eating him! This would be a disastrous thing if it were to happen in real life! But here it was treated as comic relief. Picard returns to the ship, finds out what happened, and tells Ryker casually to deal with it.) So I stopped watching it after that.) [edit: Title was "The Lonely Among Us." 7th ep filmed...but I'm sure I saw it right after the first ep aired]
So, Kirk, to me, is William Shatner, and Spock is Leonard Nimoy, and Scotty is James Doohan, and so on and so on.
When the first Star Trek "reboot" movie came out, I didn't go to see it. I didn't really want to see Into Darkness, either, but my mom wanted to see it and I took her.
And I actually enjoyed it, for the most part. Chris Pine looks like a young William Shatner, except with blue instead of hazel eyes (in fact, most of the actors had brilliant blue eyes...I wonder if they were wearing contacts). The back-and-forth between Kirk and Spock was great and had perfect timing.
Uhuru being turned into Spock's girlfriend? Um...Spock...with no emotions until Pon-farr?
The one scene that really irritated me was when Uhuru, Spock and Kirk are heading down to Kronos. Uhuru is upset with Spock because when he goes down into the volcano at the beginning of the movie to set off a cryo-bomb to freeze the lava and save a planet, he had dared to not think about her! (He's trying to save a planet, but he's supposed to stop and tell her he loves her and he's sorry if he dies because he knows how upset she'll be?)
Of course the scene is important because Spock talks about not fearing death, which is mirrored at the end of the movie - or rather the penultimate scenes, where Kirk is dying and he asks Spock how to not be afraid. (I can't imagine WIlliam Shatner's Kirk ever confessing to being afraid of dying...but Pine did it well.)
Some of the movie was silly...things set up just to make it easy to cause problems.
In the "teaser" at the beginning of the movie, the Enterprise crew is investigating a primitive planet. So why why why does the Enterprise have to be under the ocean to avoid detection???? Made no sense. Although I suppose it was to show that yes the Enterprise could enter a planet's atmosphere without being burned to a cinder... (it would have made sense if it was just the saucer portion, I suppose - which is detachable...but the whole ship????)
Another example, it would take more than a day to get from Earth to Kronos, the Klingon home world. At the end of the movie, Kahn's ship has been decimated by torpedoes, yet it's apparently functional enough to get him back to earth - and able to withstand an entry into Earth's atmosphere!!!!!
And all of a sudden the Enterprise is there too, apparently having following Kahn's ship.
So that was a bit of a puzzlement.
But it gives Zachary Quinto's Spock a chance to kick butt. (And for Uhuru to beam down - and for another blooper - Scotty is able to stun Kahn when they are on the ship, but Uhuru shoots him four times and he's hardly effected?)
Cumberbatch makes a delightful villain - loved the voice - but he overacts a couple of times. And what is it with a Britisher playing Noonien Singh? Shouldn't it have been an Oriental of some kind, or at least a Mexican actor in homage to Ricardo Montalban?
Simon Pegg as Scotty was okay...but didn't really suit the role. They actually had an actual Russian playing Checkov...but since when does Checkov know anything about engines? Of course it was necessary for Scotty to be off the ship so that he could do.. well, I won't spoil what he does...
Loved the guy playing Dr. McCoy, too. Did a very good DeForest Kelly.
Sulu also gets a few scenes, but of course most of the film is given over to Kirk and Spock.
The music was pretty good...especially at the very end where they reprised the original Star Trek theme...although without the female vocalist's ululating voice which I think they should have had.
So, I think I'll have to get the first film....
This is an interesting take on the movie from the blog, Soul of Star Trek, which I found pretty interesting.
http://soulofstartrek.blogspot.com/
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