Space the final frontier

I meant to do this the last week but I will today. I bought the star trek(2009) dvd when it first dropped because I was a fan of the original show, TNG, watched DS9 and Voyager from time to time, I never really had time to get into Enterprise though. For those who don't know the original show is of course Star Trek, TNG stands for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and DS9 stands for Deep Space 9 there have of course been at least 8 movies, 20+ years of conventions(I have never been to one) lunchroom and internet wars about which ships are better trek or wars(wars usually wins unfortunately applying the laws of astrophysics as you knew them at the time versus saying to hell with it I'll make my own kinda put you at a slight disadvantage) and so much merch that you could bury yourself 20 times over in it.

Just like Star Wars, Star Trek gave it's fans a glimpse at interactions with worlds and species that amazed us all and had us wishing we were born just a little bit later. It made being a geek kinda cool, looking up at the stars day dreaming not so much a waste of time but a ponderance of things to come. It backed us off from the narcissistic view that in this vast universe of ours this is the only place that life could be done right.

So the 2009 movie what did it do right, pretty much everything because most of us have seen the majority of the back story for star trek most of the original show, probably all of the movies to try to recreate all of that would have been a failure. A twist, one that was introduced in a star trek movie(as well as used various times in the shows, the time paradox) allowed J. J. Abrams to say okay I admit it all happened before but I want to make slight and subtle changes. Changes that were pretty much all for the better.

Things we had all heard about but never seen the Kobayashi Me rue the infamous test that only James Tyberius Kirk had ever won(and if you watched the special features you see exactly how he got the cheat to work), we all know he cheated, we all know Spock knew he cheated but just never saw the actual test. We also got to see how Bones got his nickname, Uhura's xenolinguistic skills, Chekov's brilliance. Oh wait I do have to make a minor complaint I did not here "Captain I'm giving her all she's got" everything else about Simon Pegg's Scottie revival was fine but just like Bone's "Spock are you out of your Vulcan mind" before he miraculously figures out a way to put the ship back together better then it was before they were in trouble Scotttie always sounds like Captain Pessimism and then makes the old girl fly faster then she was ever meant to. Even if I didn't do a movie review previously the movie was great if you were a fan go buy it if you weren't originally a fan go rent it then go buy it(yes you will like it).

As for the DVD (I got the special collectors edition) I loved the extra's seeing not only how the writers, producers and director thought about trying to tackle this Beloved piece of movie and TV history(if you think star wars fans are cultish check out trekkies, I mean trekkers, I mean star trek fans). Galaxy quest which was a movie basically making fun of the phenomenon that was star trek was a hit mainly because well it said what we all did about star trek in a way that was comical not insulting.  Granted it would have been nice to hear how the Red shirt felt about you know being a red shirt.

For those who do not know until The next Generation when they switched the command tunics from gold to red(security is now gold, and medical is blue) Command (captain, first officer, usually most of the bridge crew) wore gold tunics, Science officers/medical(just what it says) wore blue, and cannon fodder, engineering, and communications staff wore red.  I must be playing right, there was no such thing as cannon fodder in star trek, yes there was go watch any episode of the original show if you left the ship wearing a red shirt you were not coming back. That was it, you were dead okay wait if you were Uhura or Scottie you would make it back but anybody else nope sorry the lesson to be learned by everyone else by your death was greatly appreciated but you weren't gonna make it. Hell if there was a space battle on the ship you weren't gonna make it. If you were an extra on a star trek episode after season one and they handed you your costume and the tunic was red you knew it was a one time deal, just forget it find the exact time in the show when you were gonna get you 2 minutes of fame tell ya fam and prepare to head into the ether.

And (you have to hurry up and watch for Captain Gung ho cause seriously if you didn't know dude was about to die well your clueless) the scale of the ship and the ships in the universe were there this time. I think that was another small failing with the original show, it always made the ship look so small. Star Wars everything was on a grand scale, and star trek was more demure. Now while it may have been the bad guys ship at least it looked like a monster, it appeared menacing like you were going to have to claw tooth and nail to beat it. And while like everyone else I slightly disagree with it seeming to be built on planet(really JJ we couldn't have it built in space?) the fact that along with the technology of today it seems that they have pushed it forward again. I mean if you look back most of the gadgets they had in the original star trek series we now make use of. I guess that is of course the difference between science fiction and science fantasy can you actually go on to create the devices they are using. For most of star trek yes, for star wars not so much(yet I ain giving up on getting my lightsaber).

And the extras on the DVD are really on point it gives you a look into exactly what the project meant to all involved. And seeing some of the original characters was great, I am still griping about my lack of Klingons(they are in a few deleted scenes but you never see their faces) I am sure they will be in the second movie though.