Over the next several days members of the USS Tiburon will be submitting reviews on their opinions of the newest Star Trek movies, Star Trek Into Darkness.
These of course are the opinions of the members themselves and do not represent anyone or anything else.
Submitted by Nicholas Villarreal (member since 6/12)
J.J. Abrams promised us that the first Star Trek film was “not your daddy’s Trek”. With Star Trek Into Darkness, we actually got quite a few references both to previous Trek adventures as well as allusions to other science fiction properties. However, it still makes for quite the interesting story. We get to see some civilian locations close up, the grey military Starfleet dress uniforms came back (and had more screen time than the regular uniforms, as far as I could tell), and the plot actually came together quite well. The fact that Starfleet hadn’t sent ships on five-year missions since the Kelvin incident was definitely an interesting fact. The changes in the Enterprise interior (especially in Engineering) were a nice little change, reflecting upgrades that happened during the year. Random bits of mythology in conversation were kind of fun, including a remark McCoy makes about delivering Gorn babies (well, guess the video game that just released isn’t canonical at all). We also saw some species that were only in the Animated Series, like Caitians. Overall, it was a fun film that was high-paced action. It could have used a little bit more of the intellectual bent that we got from every other Trek escapade, both on TV and in the previous films (even the 2009 film had plenty of gravitas), but lest we forget, some of the best episodes in Star Trek’s history were all action with very little except a skilled enemy. The only down side is that many of the allusions to other works was a bit on the nose, so that if there were allusions that were clever and concealed, they were a little hard to find.
Overall, if you’re a Trek fan, see the film. If you’re a science fiction fan, see the film. If you’re an action film fan, see the film. You may want to avoid it if you’re an Original Series purist, but then again, you probably skipped the first film, so there you go.