One thing I should have added in my last post was the Jewish connection with Spock. I had know for a while that both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were Jewish. But what I found out a few days ago was where the Vulcan salute came from. I was curious and did a search on YouTube. I could tell you about it, but Nimoy does a much better job:
First, thanks to those who told me how much they liked my review. 🙂
I have thought of other things that I wanted to add to it:
Random thought: Was anyone else surprised that Winona Ryder was in it? And that she played Spock’s mom? Assuming that you did not know who was in the movie prior to seeing it, that is ;). That surprised me when I was watching the credits and thought “She was in this?”
More on Roman history: And while watching the TOS episode “Amok Time” (the one where Spock returns to Vulcan and first does the Vulcan salute), I suddenly remembered the relationship of Vulcan (the Roman god of fire) and Spock’s home planet (D’oh!). It’s because the planet is volcanic (ah, the wonders of Roman mythology on the English language!), and therefore hot and the air is thin. And then I remember the scenes in the movie seeing the outside shots of Vulcan. I knew there had to be something connecting the two! My mind just went blank when writing my earlier review.
And to talk about something not directly related to the movie, here’s a connection with TNG: Back in 1976, BBC aired a 12 part television series called “I, Claudius” about the goings-on of the Julio-Claudian household from Claudius’ point of view (like a soap opera, but with more literal knife stabbing and poisoning and it’s pretty close to being historically accurate). Claudius was one of the family members and would later become emperor. It had a big cast, among them Patrick Stewart who play Sejanus, the captain of the Praetorian Guard (the emperor’s elite bodyguards) under Emperor Tiberius, and who is believed to have tried to become emperor by killing off people.
Eleven years later Stewart would become Captian Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) , a much more noble man.
I hope to write a review of that BBC series. I’ve seen it a few times and love it.
I’m a casual Star Trek fan. I don’t own any ST memorabilia, VHS tapes, DVDs, soundtracks, or anything like that. I just enjoy watching the show. And I was looking forward to seeing the new one that was released a couple weeks ago. The last one I saw in theaters was First Contact. I heard so many bad things about the last two that I did not bother.
I watched it a few days ago and it still is running through my head. This new one really kicks! Oh my gosh! It throws you into the action right away and doesn’t let go until the credits. I think I blinked 3 times, maybe 4.
PROS
First, the cast was great. The main characters look and act the way you expect them to be. You didn’t need to try and keep track of who was supposed to be who. That was awesome! Except for Nero. I’m no expert but I don’t remember ever seeing bald Romulans. That took a little while to figure out and remember.
Leonard Nimoy is in it as an older Spock! And I’m not giving away anything with that. He appears in the trailer.
Time travel. Always love time travel stories. There have been some complaints that it using time travel has been used to much in sci fi. But then again so has using aliens and traveling around in space :P. I say, if it’s used wisely, go for it! And I had no trouble with it.
Roman history. Having been a huge history fan and currently writing a time travel story taking place at different times of the Roman Republic and Empire, I was enjoying spotting the ancient Roman references. I had never really paid attention to them before in Star Trek, until I began to study more about Roman culture and history while writing my time travel story.
No secret that the T in Kirk’s middle name stands for Tiberius. Tiberius was one of the big Julio-Claudian emporers of Rome, sandwiched in-between Augustus Caesar and Caligula. Then there’s the villain of the movie, Nero, who shares the same name as one of the other Julio-Claudian Roman emperors.
And then there’s Spock’s race, Vulcan. In Roman mythology, Vulcan was the god of fire and blacksmiths and walked with a limp because his mother, Juno, thought he was an ugly baby and threw him off of Mount Olympus (that’s gotta hurt!). After falling for a day and a night, he landed in the water, breaking his leg. I have not figured out any connection with Spock’s race and the Roman god though :/
Then there are the Romulans. They have two home planets Romulus and Remus, which are also the same names of the twin founders of Rome. The Romulan form of government is modeled after the Roman Republic (which existed between the Roman Kingdom and Roman Empire)
Sherlock Holmes. For the second time (or would it be the first? hmmm… ) Spock quotes the great detective “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Being a long time Sherlockian, I was sitting there lip syncing the quote :D. The first time was Star Trek VI “The Undiscovered Country” where Spock credits a ancestor of his. The quote is originally from one of four Holmes novels, “The Sign of Four”, and one of the best of the 56 stories (To see the quote in action, watch this it’s 6:18 of the way through, though I recommend the whole video. The amazing Jeremy Brett plays Holmes, with Edward Hardwicke as Watson). For more Sherlock Holmes/Star Trek connections check this page out.
Lack of nude scenes/unnecessary language
The trailer made it seem like there was a heavy making out scene between Kirk and another woman. Turned out that he was wearing shorts and the girls was green (classic TOS green skin) and wearing a bikini. (gasp!) No nudity? What was Abrams thinking?? (and yes, I am being sarcastic 😉 )
And I didn’t realize it until after it was over, but there was only a couple bad words in it. Kudos for that as well!
CONS
There isn’t a whole lot of negative things I can say about the movie. Other than there being bald Romulans. And I’m not to crazy about the Spock/Uhura matchup. Also Chekov had blond curly hair which was different. But the personality and accent was good. Funny scene when he’s trying to give the computer a command and the computer does not understand because of his thick Russian accent :D.
Favorite scenes
Just about every scene with Scotty was great. James Doohan would have liked him.
Leonard Nimoy is awesome (as always) as Spock! In this case he’s referred to in the credits as Spock Prime. And wow to young Spock meeting older Spock. In fandom, that would definitely be a squee! moment.
New, unknown crew member? You know what that means!
Nice fight scene on the drill with Kirk and Sulu versus the two Romulans. And the diving was pretty cool.
A tear for the destruction of Vulcan :'(
And just about everything was great. As I said earlier, I barely blinked. It moves along at a good pace. I’m getting the DVD for sure!