The latest Star Trek film boldly replicates the mood of the original TV show - with some character development thrown in for good measure.
For those of us growing up in the looming, monopolistic shadow of Doordarshan in the early and mid-1980s, Sunday mornings were a dull time — or at least it seems in hindsight that they should have been. Actually, there was an hour or two of post-breakfast anticipation until the TV screen resolved itself into a black background representing the vastness of outer space, with tiny white dots speckled across it. The theme music we had been waiting for would begin and our eyes would strain to identify which of those little dots would turn into the familiar, comforting shape of the Starship Enterprise as it hurtled towards us from the depths of the screen. “Space: the final frontier…” began the sonorous voiceover.
Most of us watched Star Trek on black-and-white TV sets, so we didn’t know that Captain Kirk’s shirt was yellow and Mr Spock’s was blue; these things we found out later. Nor did we know about the show’s history: that it hadn’t been particularly successful in its initial, three-year run on American television in the 1960s but had developed a staggeringly large following in subsequent years — a following that led to Trekkie conferences, a series of feature films (in which the characters looked older and wore more sophisticated uniforms) and new, more intelligently scripted TV shows featuring different characters (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation, which substituted the iconic line “…where no man has gone before” with the more politically correct “…where no one has gone before”). When popular demand or sentiment led to a reappearance of one of the older characters, the results were uh-oh — William Shatner, the original show’s lithe Kirk, was embarrassingly corpulent in his much-hyped guest role in Star Trek: Generations, made nearly 30 years after he first played the Enterprise’s skipper.
Given the torturous and expectation-laden history of the Star Trek franchise, it’s a minor miracle that a new film has taken on the task of returning us to Kirk and crew as we remember them from the original show, and to have them played by youngsters who closely resemble the prototypes. This doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea in theory, but the new movie (titled, simply, Star Trek, though the tagline “The future begins” has become an unofficial subtitle) pulls it off. Riding on a complicated plot involving the opening up of a time continuum (don’t worry, it isn’t necessary to understand all the high-sounding tech-jargon), it begins with the birth of James T Kirk and follows him through the years, to his decision to join the space academy and his acquaintance with his future first officer, the half-Vulcan Spock.
For boys of a certain age and temperament watching the original TV series, the cucumber-cool Spock — briskly efficient in a crisis, invulnerable to cheap human emotion — was more fascinating than the relentless skirt-chaser and macho man Kirk, the same way Jughead was always cooler than Archie. But at any rate, it was the contrast between their personalities — the friendship, the friction, the banter — that drove the show. And one of the areas where the new film scores is in its depiction of the grudging, competitive, even resentful dawn of the Kirk-Spock relationship.
This is where prequels play a special role in epic sagas. Done well, they can provide a tantalisingly off-kilter view of character development and personal destiny; of how a person got from point A to point B, and what was gained (or lost) along the way. Watching the trajectory of Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker’s slide into darkness in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith is doubly poignant because the viewer already knows — from having seen the original trilogy — that Anakin will become the evil lord Darth Vader, and that he will find redemption in the end. The story wouldn’t have been so compelling if it had been told in chronological order. Similarly, the new Star Trek adds depth and dimension to both its protagonists. Chris Pine’s outstanding performance as Kirk gives us a barroom brawler from the American Midwest whose cocky exterior conceals an intelligent young man born to be a leader (but who has to be given a nudge in the ribs every now and again), while Zachary Quinto’s Spock is a vulnerable misfit who must learn to balance his human and Vulcan sides. These are two young men with chips on their shoulders, and the different ways in which they learn to shoulder their responsibilities — and adjust to circumstances — adds up to a very satisfying climax.
Admirably, the script and the performances don’t compromise on the tone of the original show. There’s no denying that this film looks very different from the original series (which didn’t have access to sophisticated special effects; as a viewer, you knew the characters were in trouble of some kind if the sets began shaking and people started falling all over each other), but it captures something of the old spirit, which is no mean task in this day and age. There are nifty inside-references, such as the throwaway line about Dr McKoy’s “bones”, and some corny humour. And you don’t need to be a hard-core Trekkie to feel a frisson of excitement when Kirk and McCoy catch their first glimpse of the Enterprise as their shuttle prepares to dock on the giant starship. Or when the “older Spock”, played by the wonderful Leonard Nimoy (who has spent a lifetime in this role), makes a short but crucial appearance.
The one element this Sunday-DD nostalgist thought was missing from the film? The music score of the original show, sans any orchestral frills. The end credits just felt wrong without it.
