zombie84 said:
I don't buy any of that. There's plenty to think about in ST, as it deals with time travel, alternate universes, and it plays with the established timeline so you don't know how the future will truely unfold and how character dynamics will play out. TOS didn't have every episode filled with endless pondering, lots of time the main focus was just on action and adventure and humor. A good example are two of the best episodes from season two and the series period, The Trouble with Tribbles and The Doomsday Machine. Great episodes, classic Trek. Theres some interesting ideas in there, but the episodes are really just about characters, the plot, and humor (in the case of tribbles) and action (in the case of doomsday), you aren't going to have a lot to think about after those episodes are over any more than with the new film, its mostly whats there on the surface with a couple interesting ideas for the plot. Its just solid entertainment, and before the 1990s Star Trek series screwed things up a bit people used to remember what the original series was actually like--it varied from episode to episode. And so should the films. In some ways, ST encapsulates all the qualities of the original, because it had time travel and sci-fi ideas like alternate universes, it had some inter-planetary relationships between cultures, some element of mystery, it had humour and some cheesiness, it had tragedy and pathos, it had sexiness, it had space scenes, planet scenes and fighting on the Enterprise, and it had action. Thats pretty much every thing that was in the original series, and it balanced it all to pretty close preportions. It could have used a bit more intellectualism, and the original series actually had more romance than the new film, but I think it captured the spirit of the original astoundingly well.
Couldn't agree more. I think the idea that the new film is somehow "not Star Trek" is based on this weird myth that Trek is a deeply thoughtful franchise.
People who found flaws in the time-travel obviously never watched ANY Trek before this, bacause none of it makes much sense. And the idea that the science isn't HARD ("Red matter?! Egads!") enough is confusing coming from a franchise that many of the great episodes dealt with outwitting a trickster god.
It was a fun action romp with some sci fi, some lovin, some big ideas, and some silly bits... as you said, like the show and the good movies.
Frankly, as a TNG kid, I stand that REAL Trek has to have show tunes.