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Beyond the Great Barrier
Dec. 7th, 2012 03:58 pmNew Trek teaser trailer out, slightly less incoherent than the ’09 movie’s trailer, though still doesn’t say much. New villain is apparently going to be Gary Mitchel, not Khan. I’ve got… mixed feelings about that.
I mean, god-like entities have a long and honourable history in Star Trek – though the last time a ‘God’ appeared in a Trek movie it… wasn’t that good. One thing they tend to not be, though, is the main villain of the piece. The Organians and the Metron just wanted everyone to get off their lawn and stop fighting, Q’s generally setting a test of some kind, the Prophets and the Caretaker had their own agendas. Apollo wanted worshipers, the Day of the Dove whirly thing wanted to incite conflict. They weren’t rampaging monsters. That’s not just because of budget issues – it’s also because the stories they were in were about the characters, not the monsters. You can’t tell a satisfying story about stopping a hostile being with god-like powers without it, well, ending in a deus ex machina. You can tell an interesting story about negotiating with a powerful being, or convincing it to leave, or denying it what it wants from you, because that’s a story that’s about decisions being made by the heroes, not just the story ending at an arbitrary point once the McGuffin is in place.
Now, granted, Gary Mitchel in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was just a hostile god – at the end of the story. But most of the story was the lead-up to that, it was about Kirk having to decide whether to trust his old friend was still human or to act as if he had become a threat to the crew. Based on the trailer, it looks like the movie skips right to the end of the story and expands the least interesting part at the expense of the part that’s actually a story, not just a fight.
My other concern – they already referenced Delta Vega in the ’09 film! You can’t do a winking in-joke reference to “Where No Man…”, then remake it a few years later as part of the same continuity!
I mean, god-like entities have a long and honourable history in Star Trek – though the last time a ‘God’ appeared in a Trek movie it… wasn’t that good. One thing they tend to not be, though, is the main villain of the piece. The Organians and the Metron just wanted everyone to get off their lawn and stop fighting, Q’s generally setting a test of some kind, the Prophets and the Caretaker had their own agendas. Apollo wanted worshipers, the Day of the Dove whirly thing wanted to incite conflict. They weren’t rampaging monsters. That’s not just because of budget issues – it’s also because the stories they were in were about the characters, not the monsters. You can’t tell a satisfying story about stopping a hostile being with god-like powers without it, well, ending in a deus ex machina. You can tell an interesting story about negotiating with a powerful being, or convincing it to leave, or denying it what it wants from you, because that’s a story that’s about decisions being made by the heroes, not just the story ending at an arbitrary point once the McGuffin is in place.
Now, granted, Gary Mitchel in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was just a hostile god – at the end of the story. But most of the story was the lead-up to that, it was about Kirk having to decide whether to trust his old friend was still human or to act as if he had become a threat to the crew. Based on the trailer, it looks like the movie skips right to the end of the story and expands the least interesting part at the expense of the part that’s actually a story, not just a fight.
My other concern – they already referenced Delta Vega in the ’09 film! You can’t do a winking in-joke reference to “Where No Man…”, then remake it a few years later as part of the same continuity!