It just doesn’t sound very good at all, IMHO. I really hope this is BS.
There’s more, and none of it sounds much better.
Another Trek movie with time travel?
/rolleyes
How about we have one of these things without time travel?
That petition in the OP’s sig is incredibly silly.
Not nearly as silly as the premise of this film.
Kirk appears BEFORE his birth?
Doesn’t sound so bad to me. Certainly, doesn’t sound any worse than anything else they’ve done with Star Trek in the last ten-fifteen years. Mind, I’m more interested in this as a J.J. Abrams movie than I am as a Star Trek movie, so that probably skews things.
We’ll see how it goes. The time-hopping angle is problematic, but I’m sure there are ways to make it work, scriptwise. I tend to doubt that J.J. Abrams and company are the right crew to steer that course though. This material seems to go out of its way to invite comparison with the two-parter episode “The Menagerie” with which it shares so many elements, and it’ll be interesting to see how thoroughly the scriptwriters can ignore that aspect.
The hell of it is, I suspect that most fans of the original show are on the same page as any potential new viewers-- they would probably be happy with a clean break. Here’s a new cast of actors in those original roles! Let them fly and be free! Instead there’s this continued obsession with timelines and continuity. I’m not objecting to writers acknowledging the rich history of Star Trek, but that’s the point-- it’s a rich history. I think it’s possible to present those classic characters in entirely new situations and adventures. The various novels did a good job of that, surprisingly often, if my memory isn’t completely warped. Which is a definite possibility-- I admit that I enjoyed “Ishmael” by Barbara Hambly.
This new movie should be like, “Here we are at the beginning of the franchise! Strange new worlds and civilizations lie ahead! Warp speed!” Instead we have rumors of Spock giving his past self a mind meld, which is totally incestuous no matter how you slice it. Seriously, that’s just wrong. On a purely practical level, wouldn’t you get a lot of feedback in that situation? Spock, you don’t need to explore the inside of your own head. You should already know what’s in there.
Back when they first announced the premise of Star Trek: Voyager, I came up with a model of future Trek series, which predicted a continued retreat from any actual exploration. Voyager was actually running away from the unknown, which was a further step beyond DS9’s premise of sitting still and letting adventures show up. Based on this model I predicted that the next Star Trek series would involve the Federation hiding away from everyone else inside a planetoid or something, doing all that it could to avoid discovery. As it turned out, I didn’t take the model far enough. Instead, Star Trek: Enterprise took Voyager’s time-travel episodes as its keynote, such that the main obsession was preventing the continuity of the other series from being erased. Now this new movie takes it up another notch, with individual characters chasing incarnations of themselves through time to ensure that nothing ever actually happens.
I have enough Trekkie in me to be delighted purely by a big-screen take on Original Series designs. Five minutes’ worth of the Matt Jeffries Enterprise swooping through space blasting things to hell with photon torpedos will make it all worthwhile for me. The big question for me is: amid all this time-hopping, will they give me those five minutes? Will there be any actual exploration outside of Kirk’s room at the Academy?
Also, speaking of TOS designs: Does anyone else wonder how they will manage to drabben up the Star Trek universe of this era? As we all know by now, there can be no color in the future-- this is one thing TOS and TNG got wrong, and badly so. Fortunately the other series and film franchises have long since rectified this error. My prediction? Khaki. They’ll take the gold uniform tunic from the first two pilots and reinvision it as some sort of mustard-khaki shade. Blue tunics will be significantly less blue. There will be no redshirts. There’ll probably be a lot more black and grey worked in somehow.
The rumor I’ve heard is that the Old Spoc/Young Spock minmeld is simply a device to cause Young Spock to forget Old Spock was there.
But, it is just a rumor. Another rumor is that not only will Old Spock be time traveling, he will be dimension hopping as well, and we might see an alternate universe where the Enterprise is a warship.
But, too early to tell. Someone will leak a script sooner or later, despite the precautions (it is said that Abrams will not even allow the chain-smoking Winona Ryder to step out back of the studio for a cig, lest someone snap pics of her and see her costume, etc.).
Sir Rhosis
Wasn’t there a voyager episode with the same premise - 7-9 kept time hopping to save Voyager and crew?
I hope these rumors are just that - rumors to keep the real story under wraps - but they do a dis-service - as every new set I hear gets me that much less excited about the whole thing.
Ship’s Lawyer Denny Crane. Denny Crane.
Victoria Beckham as Old Spice.
You can’t have Star Trek without redshirts. How else will you know that the main cast is theoretically in peril even though there is no question that they’ll emerge from the plot unscathed?
Guy: I changed my mind. I wanna go back.
Alexander: After the fuss you made about getting left behind?
Guy: Yeah, but that’s when I thought I was the crewman that stays on the ship, and something is up there, and it kills me. But now I’m thinking I’m the guy who gets killed by some monster five minutes after we land on the planet.
Jason: You’re not gonna die on the planet, Guy.
Guy: I’m not? Then what’s my last name?
Jason: It’s, uh, uh - -I don’t know.
Guy: Nobody knows. Do you know why? Because my character isn’t important enough for a last name, because I’m gonna die five minutes in.
Gwen: Guy, you have a last name.
Guy: DO I? DO I? For all you know, I’m “Crewman Number Six”! Mommy… mommy…
Alexander: Are we there yet?
As for the plot rumors, I’d tend to believe that it is a deliberate misinformation campaign designed to muddy the waters rather than credible plot leaks. I’m not all that much of a fan of J.J. Abrams/Bad Robot productions–which tend to start off with a lot of bombast and promise but seem to end up kind of tinny and lost near the middle, and then coming apart like a Blind Faith jam session where Ginger Baker is too drunk to keep time and Eric Clapton is aching for a heroin fix–but the plot fragments as described sound entirely unfilmable as a ~2 hour film. It may turn out to be an origin story, and those are rarely all that great, if only because they have to follow a fairly standard framework which delays actually getting into a real story. An half an hour or so of expository framing really tends to kill momentum (see Batman Begins for a serviceable movie otherwise dragged down by having to spend time retelling an origin that makes little sense.)
Of course, there’s really little point (creatively) in “reviving” the franchise at all, except to extract a little more milk from the udder before the cow withers and dies. It’s just safer for Paramount to “reimage” an existing franchise rather than risk creating an entirely new story.
Stranger
Oh come on, they solved that problem decades ago. You know they’re in danger because Worf fires and misses.
By the way Tuckerfan, if I may hijack briefly: what’s the deal with the movie boycott? Is it for real, or is it satirizing something else?
I apologize for my obtuseness, but I often have difficulty discerning subtle humor.
I don’t think all of these are rumors.
FACT: Old Spock is in it.
FACT: Old Spock meets Young Spock (Zachary Quinto has talked about him and Nimoy working together)
FACT: Ben Cross and Winona Ryder have been cast as Spock’s parents, Amanda and Sarek.
FACT: Somebody and somebody have been cast as Kirk’s parents, George Samuel and Winona Kirk.
FACT: Different actors cast as youngish Kirk, Bones, Scotty, etc.
FACT: Some kid as has been cast as 9-year-old “Jimmy” Kirk. Another kid cast as Jimmy’s brother, George Samuel “Sam” Kirk, Jr.
FACT: Eric Bana has been cast as a Romulan bad guy.
Etc., etc.
Ergo: Old Spock is time-traveling to different periods in Kirk’s life for some reason to do with the Romulans. Rumor has it, and it sounds… uh, logical, that they are trying to kill Kirk.
Sir Rhosis
I’m looking forward to the rumored spinoff: Trek Babies!
This is exactly right; the obsession with over 40-years worth of continuity is a real burden for the series…
Although secrecy is tight on the Star Trek set, it’s an open secret that Jennifer Morrison is, indeed, playing Winona Kirk, and Chris Hensworth is playing George Kirk.
Quixotic but real. Given that this movie appears to suck, then it’d be nice to get some good out of it.