Boldly Going

Comment, Journal

Boldly Going

Last night I went to see the new Star Trek movie with my brother Andrew up at Clydebank cinema. After buying our tickets from a machine in the foyer, due to the tills being closed, we went curiously unchallenged from that point on. Even stopping to buy some popcorn and asking the guy who served us which screen the movie was on didn’t make him ask to see our tickets.

This was possibly because there were only about six people in there, including ourselves. They’d probably be happy with folk wandering in off the streets in the hope of making some cash from the treats and sweets. Personally I kind of liked it being a near private screening, with infuriating inconsiderate teenagers putting me off going to the cinema most of the time.

The movie itself was great, I thought. It could have been paced better in places, but still – as an attempt to reboot the franchise it was certainly successful in my eyes. It was well cast, visually stunning, and in well trodden territory as far as Trek lore goes, especially in using time travel as a plot device and in glossing over plot holes without a second thought.

It sounds like I’m being negative, there, but it’s par for the course with Star Trek. My favourite movie is First Contact and that movie commits one of the biggest plot holes in the history of science fiction while the popcorn is still warm. The Borg arrive to assimilate Earth, take a bit of a kicking, and after the exchange of many a photon torpedo decide; “Screw this – plan B… let’s travel back in time and assimilate Earth before they have the technology to defend themselves.”

Really. I mean, they’re a collective – they have a hive mind – and yet not one of them figured out that Plan B would make a better Plan A than driving their cube into  a shit storm?

Anyway, that’s all in an alternate future at this point, with the fresh new crew of the Enterprise yet to shoot to kill at anything other than Romulans thus far. I’m looking forward to the next few movies where they’ll hopefully take on the Klingons, as well as seeking out strange new worlds and civilisations to open fire upon.

Rob