Star Trek Meets Mission: Impossible:

Why I just Can't Accept this New Mission

Like everyone a few years ago, I was excited to hear about plans for an upcoming Star Trek movie, especially one set in the original series in Kirk and Spock's Starfleet academy days.

Then I actually saw it. Now, I like JJ Abrams, esp. shows like Lost and in particular Fringe (if you haven't seen Fringe yet, get the DVDs or watch it on Netflix--but you need to watch them in order). However I'm not sure Abrams was the right guy to reboot an almost sacred icon like Star Trek.

To begin with, Abrams is on record as saying he wasn't a fan of the show (though supposedly his associates, writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof are/were). It shows. No fan of the series (or any of its franchises) would blow up Vulcan. I mean, c'mon, it's Vulcan, the home of Surak, T'Pol, Tuvock, T'Pau, Sarek and Spock for the Great Bird's sake! So how do you blow up Vulcan? Andor or Tellar, maybe, even though both, with Earth and Vulcan were founding charter members of the Federation. But Vulcan?

Which brings up another question. I kept waiting through the whole film for Starfleet Temporal Investigations to show up and prevent the corruption of the timeline. But where was Starfleet Temporal Investigations to prevent the corruption of the timeline? Apparently the new film features Section 31, the secretive clandestine black-ops division of Starfleet, but neither this film nor the prequel features the Temporal Investigations Division.  In the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise (which I really liked despite many of its continuity problems with the original series) agent Daniels travels back to Capt. Jonathon Archer's Enterprise to prevent the corruption of the timeline. And in the season five Deep Space: Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations Temporal Investigations agents Dulmar and Lucsly visit DS-9 to make certain Sisko and crew did nothing to alter history when they were unwittingly transported back in time to Deep Space Station K-7 by Klingon agent Arn Darvin (using the Bajoran Orb of Time which they were transporting from Cardassia to Bajor) so Darvin could complete his original mission (foiled some 70 years earlier in TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles by none other than Enterprise captain James Kirk) of sabotaging a shipment of grain destined for Sherman's Planet and this time also assassinating Kirk.

The re-imaged Star Trek felt like nothing so much as Star Trek meets Mission: Impossible, and not the sixties TV series starring Peter Graves, the recent Tom Cruise adrenaline-laced movie adaptations, also directed by Abrams and written by Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof. I liked the Mission: Impossible films, but they aren't Star Trek.

NBC originally wanted series creator the late Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991; nicknamed the Great Bird of the Galaxy by cast, crew and fans) to simply do a monster of the week show in which the people on the spaceship would defeat the monster. To his credit Roddenberry had bigger ideas in mind for his show and stuck to his guns. Star Trek, as envisioned by Roddenberry was thus never about defeating the monster of the week, less still about blowing up planets or crashing starships (though the TOS and STNG movies blew up and crashed two Enterprises as well as blowing a large chunk out of the Klingon moon Praxis). No, Star Trek as envisioned by Gene, was about ideas.

Roddenberry's overarching vision was one of a future for mankind in which we didn't destroy ourselves or our planet (though we came close during the Eugenics Wars which produced the genetically-altered supermen and dictators Khan Noonien Singh and his peers which was followed by a WWIII). No, in Roddenberry's idealized future, Earth eventually solved most of its problems (war; disease; overpopulation; prejudice; etc.) to take its place among the stars as a founding member of the United Federation of Planets, all of this made possible when Dr. Zefram Cochrane discovered warp drive, thus precipitating First Contact with a Vulcan probe ship.

The Enterprise itself was crewed by a diverse mixture of men and women of several Old Earth nationalities--African communications officer Lt. (later, Capt.) Nyota Uhura (played by Nichel Nichols); African and specialist in Vulcan medicine Dr. Jabilo Geoffrey M'Benga (played by Booker Bradshaw); Asian helmsman Lt. (later Capt.) Hikaru Sulu (played by George Takei); Russian navigator Ensign (later Capt.) Pavel Checkov (played by Walter Koeing); Americans Capt. (later Adm.) James T. Kirk, of Iowa (played by the Canadian William Shatner) and Georgian Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy (played by the late Deforest Kelley), Head Nurse (later Dr.) Christine Chapel (played by Majel Barrett) and psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (played by Sally Kellerman); and Scottish Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (played by the late Canadian James Doohan). Just to name a few. Such an international, interracial crew was radical for 1966/1967. It was also important; on one occasion, Nichel Nichols met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who praised her work in Star Trek. When Ms. Nichols informed Dr. King that she was thinking of leaving the show, he effectively told her she could not leave the show, as her role as a black woman officer of a starship crew on a popular American TV program was an important role model for African-Americans as well as an important stride forward in the Civil Rights Movement. Nichols thus opted to remain on the show, later reflecting "How do you say no to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?" (The first interracial kiss on TV was also seen in Star Trek.)

Significantly, the Enterprise's original First Officer was a woman, Number One, played by Majel Barret (she later married Gene Roddenberry) however NBC thought late 1960s audiences couldn't relate to a woman in a position of authority hence had Roddenberry recast a man (Leonard Nimoy) in the role and Barrett became Nurse Christine Chapel.

Of course we can't forget the Enterprise's Vulcan First Officer, Cmdr., later Capt. Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy), the son of Vulcan Ambassador Sarek (played by the late Mark Lenard of Here Come the Brides fame) and his first wife the human Amanda Grayson (played by the late Jane Wyman, of Father Knows Best fame; Sarek's second wife was also a human woman). So the Enterprise not only had an interracial, international crew of men and women, it also had an inter-species crew. Yet Again, the Great Bird was ahead of his time.

To write scripts Gene Roddenberry hired not only talented new writers such as Dorothy C. "D. C." Fontana ("Journey to Babel"; "Friday's Child"; "The Enterprise Incident"; etc.) and David Gerrold ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), but noted science-fiction authors such as Theodore Sturgeon ("Amock Time"),  Harlan Ellison ("City on the Edge of Forever") and Jerome Bixby ("Mirror, Mirror").

Original Star Trek played with serious ideas such as the view that just being different or physically unattractive doesn't make you a monster. It'd be difficult to find a more physically different, unattractive creature than the "Monster of M113," the so-called "salt vampire" from TOS's second pilot "The Man Trap" (NBC thought the first pilot, "The Cage," was too intellectual for average viewers hence requested a second pilot, which resulted in "The Man Trap"). The shape-shifting salt vampire doesn't kill for sport or pleasure, but needs the salt in human bodies to survive (the stakes are heightened for the creature as it is also the last of it's species), but unfortunately it kills it's victim when it sucks out the victim's salt. And the Horta of Janus VI from season one's "Devil in the Dark" isn't a murderer but a creature protecting her offspring (silicon eggs) from destruction by the human miners of the planet.

The original series also examined such complex ideas as the nature of reality, as in the original series pilot "The Cage," in which Enterprise Capt. Chris Pike (Kirk succeeded him) is taken captive by the Talosians of Talos IV who can alter his perception of reality to make him see and hear what they wish him to. Unbeknownst to Pike their race is dying and the Talosians need him to mate with the woman Vina and repopulate their world. To make this pleasant for the pair they give the aged and deformed Vina the appearance of herself as a beautiful young woman (before her ship crashed on Talos IV decades ago and she became horribly disfigured) and create beautiful settings for them. 

Other themes dealt with in Star Trek TOS were the right of self-government of all sentient species and the principle that the Federation didn't have the right to interfere with the natural evolution of a less technologically advanced civilization's society (occasionally Kirk felt compelled to violate the Prime Directive, but only due to extenuating circumstances). Only if they were capable of warp drive would the Federation establish diplomatic relations with a world or a species. The dangers of an over-reliance on technology were addressed in the second season episode "The Ultimate Computer." In this episode eminent computer scientist Dr. Richard Daystrom's M-5 Duotronic Computer, meant to replace a starships crew, essentially goes insane, as Daystrom (played brilliantly by actor William Marshall) used his own personality engrams as a model for the computer's personality, which included his psychological problems. The M-5 is uploaded to the Enterprise (which only has a skeleton crew to monitor the computer's performance) and during a series of wargames designed to test the computer's capabilities it begins actually firing on a freighter and then attacking manned starships. Kirk had protested all along that starships needed crews because the crews needed to be there, that people needed the stimulation and challenge of crewing starships and exploring the galaxy rather than turn such tasks over to computers. This episode also examined the possible ramifications of artificial intelligence gone awry, as the M-5 essentially goes insane and starts attacking live targets (TNG would examine artificial intelligence in even more depth through its android character Lt. Cmdr. Data and his twin Lore, as would STV, with its holographic ship's Doctor.) 

So Star Trek TOS examined racism, religion and spirituality, the Cold War, a blind faith in science without wisdom, the tendency of power to corrupt and the misuse of power, artificial intelligence, our quest for knowledge, the nature of reality, the nature of good and evil, human nature, and a whole host of other deep topics, yet all within an adventurous, exciting, futuristic, science-fiction setting.

An original series theme which goes along (at least marginally) with the new film Into Darkness has to do with the ethics of genetic manipulation of human DNA. In TOS first season episode "Space Seed" Kirk discovers the two hundred year-old Earth sleeper ship  SS Botany Bay adrift in space with several people aboard in suspended animation in stasis chambers. Upon reviving these people, Kirk discovers that he's just revived late 20th century Indian Sikh and genetic superman and exiled dictator Khan Noonien Singh (played to the hilt by the late Ricardo Montalban), who promptly repays Kirk by seducing ship's historian Lt. Marla McGivers and persuading her to help him take over the Enterprise, resulting in McGiver's' court-marshal and voluntary exile with Khan (as his wife) and his people on the barren world of Ceti Alpha VI. In the Harve Bennett sequel film Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan we get to see Khan exact his revenge on Kirk, who is dealing with the problems of growing older and feeling like he's an anachronism. In the film we also meet Kirk's former flame Dr. Carol Marcus and illegitimate son Dr. David Marcus who resents his absentee father and Starfleet, which he views as a dangerous paramilitary organization out to co-opt their Genesis Project Device (which creates "life from lifelessness") to use as a weapon--which Khan, not Kirk, ultimately does. Wrath of Khan also explored the themes of death and loss, as Kirk has to admit the possibility every starship captain my face of the no-win scenario (we learn that Kirk never had to face a no-win situation; as a brash young cadet Kirk reprogrammed the Kobayashi Maru simulation so he couldn't lose) and the loss of his best friend and second officer Captain Spock, who sacrifices his life to save the Enterprise.

All of these themes and more made Star Trek what it was/is. I'm just not sure JJ Abrams gets that, what with all the chases, explosions, and romances. I'm sorry, I just don't buy the Spock-Uhura romance. Vulcans certainly have romances however as Vulcans they suppress their emotions. And granted that Spock's father Sarek married a human woman, in the original series (Sarek's reasoning is that "it seemed logical" at the time) and early films Spock suffered much psychological and mental anguish over trying to reconcile his human and Vulcan natures, even going so far in Star Trek: The Motion Picture as to undergo the Vulcan rite of Kohlinar in an effort to once and for all purge himself of the last vestiges of his emotions and human nature. And he rebuffed Nurse Chapel's affection for him for the three seasons of TOS. So I just don't buy that he has a romance with (a junior officer, no less!) Nyota Uhura.

Then there's the new Enterprise. I was hoping in the first film to see the original series Enterprise in all her graceful glory, not the clunky new design they came up with. Who told them this new version is graceful? It isn't. Matt Jeffries (1921-2003), TOS art director who created the original Enterprise is probably rolling over in his grave. 

And from what I've heard about the new film--I haven't seen it--it bears only a marginal resemblance to either TOS episode "Space Seed" or the feature film sequel "Wrath of Khan." As Hollywood.com blogger Christian Blauvelt has stated, JJ Abrams has "assimilated the franchise into something worse than the Borg Collective." Says critic Joel Rubinoff  the new film is "a cosmic disconnect for those who, because our brains can’t be recalibrated to a setting of 'stupid,' resent the film cribbing key plot elements and iconic moments from previous Trek films in a way that feels cheap, gaudy and opportunistic." If this is true, then I couldn't agree more.

I wish JJ Abrams had talked to Harve Bennett (1930-) who produced Wrath of Khan and its sequel The Search for Spock because Bennett got it. Bennett understood what made Star Trek Star Trek. Abrams just doesn't. Heck, he could've talked to the legendary Dorothy "D. C." Fontana (1939-), script supervisor and writer of several TOS and TNG classic episodes. Or any of the folks involved with the various franchises. But he chose not to. He apparently wants to reinvent the wheel, only in this case, without ever seeing one.

For these reasons and others I haven't seen Stark Trek: Into Darkness and probably won't until the DVD release. I simply can't accept this new mission.

My one consolation came in reading a section of the book Star Trek: USS Enterprise Haynes Manual, (for which Michael Okuda, graphic designer and technical consultant on the various TNG-era franchises and author of several books like the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and the Star Trek Chronology, served as technical consultant) which provides schematics and technical data for the various Starship Enterprises from STE and TOS through the feature films and TNG. In a brief section on the re-imaged Abrams Enterprise the authors Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley state that in the new films Spock didn't create an alternate time-line merely a divergent timeline, thus the original series timeline is apparently still in place. I can live with that.  

Live long, and prosper.