The New Star Trek Movie

I remember (this will surely date me) when the original Star Trek TV show came out. My friends and I had seen the trailers for weeks, read the articles in TV Guide and the newspaper and could not wait. I believe I was in the seventh or eighth grade (I could go research and figure it out exactly but I'm not going to take the time; this isn't a legal deposition, after all).

I was already a big fan of science fiction and fantasy. For years I'd watched those weird movies on Saturday afternoon which today are mocked and ridiculed on things like Mystery Science Theater. The Giant Behemoth. Godzilla. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Blob. It Came from Outer Space. The Creature from Black Lagoon. All in black and white and cornball as can be. The special effects were ridiculous. The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were better, but they worked more on suggestion and less on actual special effects.

But as we had nothing else to compare them to, they worked. Books, of course were better and I was already a voracious reader of Andre Norton, Heinlein, Asimov...

The night of Star Trek's premiere, one of my friends hosted a special Star Trek party, and we all went over and watched it. In color. When it was over, everyone just sat where they were. Awed. That was SO COOL!!

I loved Spock. I think we all did. I loved Kirk in a kind of amused and tolerating way. McCoy for some reason was my favorite. I couldn't stand Nurse Whatsherface (with the crush on Spock and the basket hairdo) or Chekov, but Sulu was cool. That first season was just awesome. I audio taped the episodes and played them back repeatedly "watching" the show again through my ears alone. I memorized a lot of lines. ("Captain! Lt Sulu is on deck 4 attacking crewmen with a sword!").

The second season was good too, but then it began to get silly. I only watched the final season off and on and was put off every time I did. The movies resurrected to some degree the original tone and quality and I enjoyed all of them. The characters were by then old friends.

Maybe that's why The Next Generation just never clicked with me. (Or maybe because I'm of the Last Generation...) I liked Pikard and Data, but everyone else drove me up the wall, particularly Capt. Riker. I liked the third series, the one with the woman captain, even less. So I approach the notion of a new movie, with new actors playing my old favorites, telling the story of their youths before the Enterprise with some trepidation.

Today I found the trailer they've just put online. And... it looks pretty good! Simon Pegg as Scotty, though? He'll probably be fun, but ... And the guy they got to play a young Spock looks pretty... baby-faced, I guess and one thing I never thought of Spock as being was baby-faced, not even when he was a baby. And the young Kirk, is, well, not Kirk but... A sexy romance between Kirk and Uhura? That doesn't seem right... But I admit those are the usual sorts of objections from ancient fans like myself -- we only like old things! LOL. Maybe. Because despite all that, I'm intrigued.

Anyway, here it is, for those of you interested in this sort of thing.

The Daily Mail Online article ("Star Trek gets a sexy makeover in new film with love scenes, motorbikes and hunky stars") with still pictures and a bigger sized video if you scroll down is here. I don't know how long it will be up.

Just the video, but much smaller, is here.

Enjoy!

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