Star Trek

Here we go. This is where I add my voice to the growing chorus of admiration for J.J. Abrams and his new Star Trek movie.

I was all keen to hate it too. Star Trek movies have a history of being bloated gabfests or extended TV episodes filmed in 35mm, but this wasn’t. It’s actually really good.

And I hate to admit it, but therein lies the rub. The reason it’s really good is that it’s not really a Star Trek film at all. It’s more like a Star Wars film. (Original trilogy of course, not the later ones. Which ironically were more like Star Trek films. But I digress…)

It’s fun, it’s action packed, it doesn’t pay too much attention to previous canon or scientific principles, and there wasn’t even one scene where Starfleet suits sit around a conference table crapping on about how to deal diplomatically with those darn Romulans.

Rather, we get the classic original series approach of tooling around in starships, shooting first and asking questions later.

The ships are shiny and new, Kirk’s a young punk, Spock’s not quite as emotionless as we remember, Uhura’s sexy as hell and Simon Pegg as Scotty is just hilarious.

The series needed a serious reboot, and this was it. It’s a great universe with great stories to tell, but the stiff stylings of previous cinematic outings weren’t doing its longevity any favours at all.

What J.J. has given us here is most definitely Star Trek, Jim, but not as we know it. And it’s about goddamn time.

4.5 out of 5

New Star Trek Pics!

Some new images from J.J.Abrams' re-imagining/reboot of Star Trek are up at trekmovie.com.

Here is a mere sample:

On the bridge, Chris Pine doing his best Shatner as Kirk, Karl Urban as McCoy and Zachary Quinto as Spock.


Da Crew. Note Simon Pegg in the back as Scotty.


And the winner for inspired casting and make-up goes to . . . Eric Bana as bad-guy Romulan Nero.


All signs are positive, but a quick note to Abrams and Co:

"Don't fuck it up. We're watching you."

Actuaries Gone Wild

It's been a whole year since the last one, and so this week it was time once again for our annual actuarial company dinner.

The venue this year was the Rendezvous Hotel in Flinders Street, which featured lots of alcohol, some passable food, and a waiting staff whose command of English was roughly comparable to John Howard's command of Klingon.

"Can I get a beer?"

blank stare

"Beer"

blank stare

"HIq?"

nervous sideways glance

"Oh, never mind."

For some reason the entertainment (once again provided by those "fortunate" enough to have completed their actuarial training since the last dinner) sat at the let's-get-the-crowd-involved end of the spectrum, rather than the more palatable (for the audience, at least) let's-put-on-some-silly-costumes-and-do-a-skit end.

And so it came to pass that the people at our table had to construct a story and improvise a play using some found objects, including two small suction cups, a bottle of liquid paper, a roll of yarn and a hot pink fright wig.

The details are too tedious to recount, so I'll leave it there.

Anyway, thank God there was beer.

At least, there was once I found a waiter who spoke Klingon.

Space Classics

Hamer Hall, Melbourne.

Saturday night saw a performance by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra of their Space Classics programme, celebrating the music of Space . . . mainly space movies.

There were nerds dressed as stormtroopers, and one as Darth Vader, wandering around the foyer when we arrived. And that was a portent of things to come.

After opening with Thus Spake Zarathustra from 2001, we went straight into the theme from Star Wars, from whence it more or less turned into the John Williams variety hour.

However, Williams' bombastic brass (Close Encounters, E.T., Superman and yet more Star Wars) was occasionally interrupted for selections from Holst's beautiful Planets suite, some themes from Star Trek (although not Voyager, much to my wife's dismay) and an awkward bit of audience participation on Thunderbirds are Go!!

It was all highly entertaining, and it is great to see this sort of music played live by a world-class orchestra.

Even the Star Wars theme, which we think we know so well, is revealed in all its complex glory when detached from the images of that Star Destroyer and R2D2 and C-3PO running through the halls.

Magical stuff, although we could have done without the stormtroopers standing in front of the stage eyeballing the audience at the end.

That was just a bit weird.

Star Trek the Sitcom

In a similar vein to the Office / Battlestar Galactica mashup, here's Star Trek TNG as a sitcom.



Priceless.

Star Trek Rebooted

The cast of the eleventh Star Trek movie has been announced. And as is often the case with these nerdy sorts of things, the announcements have been spread out over a couple of months.

Presumably this is because if they were done all at once, the chaos resulting from millions of simultaneous worldwide geekgasms would cause the universe to implode.

The other possibility is that the extreme level of interest in this project, particularly following director J.J. Abrams' success with Alias and Lost, has meant that every tiny little detail is pored over in great detail. So it just seems like it's taken ages.

This is a prequel to the original series, and reportedly a complete reboot of the canon. The nerds are understandably wary about this, and gathering in jittery packs around the net, eyes darting nervously around them as they discuss precisely what this might mean. Abrams seems determined to do things his own way, so it could mean anything.

As if to make his mark clearly, Abrams has, in a marked deviation from previous Star Trek incarnations, not filled the cast with a bunch of complete unknowns.

We have Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) as Spock, John Cho (Harold of Harold and Kumar) as Sulu, Karl Urban as Dr McCoy and the brilliant Simon Pegg as Scotty. Supporting players include Eric Bana, the marvellous Bruce Greenwood and Winona Ryder as Spock's mum.

Leonard Nimoy has scored a cameo as Old Spock, but it's yet to be confirmed if Shatner will be joining him. While it would be good to see Shatner in there, it could be awkward. Kirk's heroic death in Generations doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for a credible cameo.

They better give him something, though. Otherwise he'll parachute onto the set claiming he Fell.

Through.

A wormhole.

I'm optimistic that it'll turn out well. Abrams is a good director and it's got a strong cast, so signs are positive.

But it's a long time until the planned release date of 11 January 2009, so anything could happen.

SciFi v Fantasy

One of my favourite nerdy podcasts recently gave some nice definitions for Science Fiction and Fantasy:

• Science Fiction concerns the human consequences of science and technology.

• Fantasy concerns the creation of alternate universes separate from our own.

The point was that the dipshits getting dressed up for conventions are Fantasy fans trying to immerse themselves in their alternate worlds.

I quite like these definitions; mainly because they put Star Wars, for all its abuse of SciFi tropes, clearly in the realm of Fantasy.

Most literary SciFi and Fantasy from the mid-20th century would fit snugly into one or other of these categories, but your modern genre piece can be a little harder to define. Star Trek sits somewhere in between, being an alternate universe filled with the consequences of scientific and technological development. Same with Stargate. And Battlestar Galactica.

Based on these definitions, I think the purest modern SciFi is Firefly. It's the only one set squarely in our universe, in our potential future, arising from our technological advances. And there aren't any aliens with crinkly foreheads.

But apparently the number of browncoats seen at recent conventions really blows the "Fantasy fans are the kooks" argument out of the water.