Star Trek

Star Trek (J. J. Abrams, dir; 127 mins; 2009)

As every nerd knows, the problem with prequels is that we already know the story they must eventually arrive at far too well. OK, I admit, main stream movies are predictable anyway but most people are able to ignore that. The prequel format makes the known end unavoidable. Fortunately, Star Trek belongs to science (however bad) fiction, so the filmmakers can trot out the notion of time travel to thwart the story we think we know or, at least, to engender some suspense.

My lovely, intelligent wife was watching this film with me (to humor me) and she immediately declared the time travel notion a cheat. She was done. I finished watching the film later. To my great surprise, the young Kirk said exactly the same thing to the old (the credits call him Prime) Spock. Old Spock is explaining matters (Romulans, red matter, black holes, time travel, destroyed worlds, 2 Spocks, etc.) to him when Kirk says, “You know, going back in time, changing history... that's cheating.” I stopped the DVD and went to get my wife. Who knew she was not only in touch with the universe but also channeling science fiction premises and heroes?

Old Spock’s justification (for which my wife didn’t stay around) was that he had learned this from an old friend. We nerds would know—but the filmmakers had an earlier scene catching everyone else up to speed—that Spock is talking about the infamous Kobayashi Maru test, a no-win computer simulation for training prospective starship captains. Kirk, of course, is the only person to ever “pass” the test, and he did so by “cheating,” as the Young Spock says at Kirk’s academic hearing. Kirk reprogrammed the computer program so that he could win. Old Spock is now trying to do the same thing to the film’s reality, a slightly more ambitious project than changing a computer simulation.

I’m willing to accept the premise without yelling “foul.” After all, that premise—a change in some significant part of “reality”—is near the sine qua non of science fiction, fantasy, and religion. Further, it’s a neat way to deal with the problems of the prequel. I do, however, have some aesthetic problems in this case. Most simply, the filmmakers didn’t maximize this idea. They never explored how “reality” was significantly changed by time travel (OK, the Vulcan world is destroyed, but that remains largely unexplored too). They simply used the idea to arrive at the right people in the right places on the bridge of the Enterprise. In fact, the filmmakers used the premise to bring hopelessly opposed characters—a prig and a jerk—together (a deus ex machina) instead of bringing them together through a development of storyline, characters, or values. The characters are so poorly developed that they had to bring Old Spock on screen to solemnly intone the lessons I wish they had developed in the story.

My wife was right. It is a cheat. It’s not the time travel premise; it’s the story they cheated on. Sorry, Old Spock.