Some might ask, “Why do the Kelvin movies if they start with Kirk’s birth, and you just watched Prodigy?”
Because, in the timeline of Trek, 2009’s Star Trek is actually a direct sequel to Nemesis. Between the Dominion War and Nemesis, things have warmed up with the Romulans. As a consequence, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock is a factor. The supernova that destroys Remus and Romulus will affect Picard and even the latter seasons of Discovery. But Spock’s journey includes getting flung back in time to the 2250s in a timeline created by an enemy getting flung back further. So an altered Kirk’s story is also the end of “Prime” Spock’s journey.
Most of the characters are recognizable from their Prime Timeline counterparts. Karl Urban and Simon Pegg are pitch perfect as Scotty. John Cho gives Sulu the fifty years of gravitas George Takei originally worked to imbue him with. And Chekov, played by the late Anton Yelchin (an actual Russian), gives his character a likeable spin. The story of Spock is said to be identical to the original canon up until he reaches the Academy and meets Kirk. This makes him familiar, as does Leonard Nimoy coaching Zachary Quinto in the part. (Quinto likewise talked with Ethan Peck for his Discovery/Strange New Worlds version of the character.)
Uhura has somewhat changed. Zoe Saldana has all the confidence of Nichelle Nichols, but is not a musician. And you can tell. Nichols would sing at the drop of a hat. Saldana’s Uhura is more of a technician and could more believably take command of the Enterprise in a pinch. (That was a function of 1960s racism and sexism. One assumes Gene Roddenberry’s ghost got a smile at least at Saldana’s version.)
The most changed is Kirk. He is at the epicenter of the timeline split, and it costs him his father. On Strange New Worlds, Jim and Sam Kirk argue over impressing their old man. Without that Starfleet presence in his life, Kirk becomes a juvenile delinquent, more Gary Mitchell than Shatner’s more disciplined Kirk. Chris Pine was definitely the right actor for the part (as was Paul Wesley for the Prime version.) Pine has to play a Kirk with none of the background of the original, yet still suggest this is the same guy who lectured his senior staff “risk is our business.”
This particular arc of Trek plays out over three movies. While the cast is clamoring for a fourth (and Paramount is inexplicably doing an origin story no one asked for instead), 2016’s Star Trek Beyond leaves this cast in a good place to stop. The universe is bending back toward the Prime timeline. A better move would be Section 31 reviving him as threatened in Picard when/if Legacy is greenlit.
Star Trek (2009)
This is where the timeline splits. Later, it would be where Prodigy ends and Picard begins. A giant Romulan ship comes out of a “lightning storm in space,” destroying the USS Kelvin. Lt. George Kirk assumes command in the Kelvin‘s final minutes and sacrifices himself to save 800 lives, including his newborn son, James Tiberius Kirk. (We also learn that’s George’s father’s name, and both men hate it. Jim is named for his maternal grandfather.)
Years later, a delinquent Kirk starts a brawl at a bar near the Riverside, Iowa shipyard by hitting on Uhura then telling four large security types, “Well, go get some more guys, and it’ll be a fair fight, Cupcake.” Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) breaks up the fight and convinces Kirk to join Starfleet. Ever cocky, Kirk informs Pike, “Four years? I’ll do it in three.” He proceeds to cheat on the Kobayashi Maru. As in the prime timeline, he hacks the simulator so he could save the ship. Only this time, he’s brough up on charges. However, his forty lashes with a wet noodle will have to wait. Someone’s attacking Vulcan.
McCoy, a fellow cadet here, sneaks Kirk aboard the Enterprise, which warps in to find the fleet destroyed and that same ship that destroyed the Kelvin now drilling a hole in Vulcan. Pike goes to negotiate with the attackers while leaving Spock in command and Kirk as first officer. Kirk and Sulu are sent to destroy the drill, along with the chief engineer, an adrenaline junkie named Olsen. Olsen is an idiot, pulling his chute at the last second, but getting sucked into the drill’s plasma stream. Now Kirk and Sulu are reduced to fists and Sulu’s sword to disable the drill crew and confiscating their weapons to wreck the drill. Too late. The ship, the Narada, (a simple mining vessel, Nero informs Pike) drops a probe with red matter. The core of Vulcan ignites it, triggering a black hole.
Kirk and Spock argue over what to do next, and Spock kicks him off the ship, not the most mature move for a Vulan. But on a frozen planetoid, after escaping the local wildlife, Kirk runs into… Spock (Leonard Nimoy). The original Spock, who explains about the Romulan star exploding and his failure to stop it as the population evacuates. (No word on the Remans, but later Treks suggest the Romulan approach to Remus’s own predicament was, “Screw them guys. They turned the Senate to powder and killed Data in a bad movie.”) They find the Starfleet outpost on the planet and meet Scotty. Spock shows Scotty his own theory of transwarp beaming. (His initial attempt resulted in the death of Jonathan Archer’s prize beagle.) At Prime Spock’s urging, Kirk boards the Enterprise at warp and provokes Spock into losing his cool. As he is first officer, he’s now in command. They decide to go after the Romulan captain, Nero, before he can do to Earth what he just did to Vulcan. They intercept and beam aboard, Spock to find the red matter, Kirk to rescue Pike. Nero remembers Shatner Kirk and decides that history doesn’t need to happen, but Kirk manages to fight his way out and grab Pike. Spock, meanwhile, learns his older self has come back in time and finds the older Spock’s spaceship. And the red matter. They escape to the Enterprise while Nero is imploded along with his ship and the last of the red matter. In recognition for his ingenuity, Kirk is named captain, relieving Admiral Pike and naming Spock his first officer.
It’s not a bad return. The cast are all terrific as younger versions of the originals with Nimoy attached to shepherd them along. Nero is kind of an idiot as far as Trek villains go. Deciding he’s going to destroy Vulcan because the Romulan star went supernova. And he first greets Pike with “Hi, Christopher.” His first response to George Kirk’s captain is to simply impale him. The Enterprise is strange. The bridge looks like an Apple Store with lots of lens flares. (BTW, those don’t make a return until the end of Discovery, season 2.) Greenwood makes a great Pike, the writing and his performance later informing Anson Mount’s take on the character. He’s everybody’s uncle – No nonsense, but fatherly just the same. The writers could have done better with McCoy. As it is, they spend the entire movie giving Urban little more than exasperated quips. It gets to be a bit much when the McCoy we know (and we’re not given any reason to believe he’s all that different) should be on board with the plan. Pine, however, is given the thankless job of replacing William Shatner as Kirk. His had to be the most changed character because so much of Kirk is Shatner. Anyone else would be doing an imitation. Fortunately, Pine takes the altered experiences of Starfleet’s greatest captain (pause while some of you tell me that’s Picard/Sisko/Janeway/Archer/Pike/Seven of Nine/Bradward Boimler from your cousin’s sister’s roommate’s fanfic) and plays this less disciplined, more rule-breaking version as a “cheeky bugger.”
Star Trek Into Darkness
Sigh. They spent so much of the leadup trying to convince us this was not a remake of The Wrath of Khan that no one was surprised it was a remake of The Wrath of Khan. We open with a sequence that could have been an episode of a rebooted TOS in and of itself. A primitive civilization is threatened by a volcano, and Kirk aims to stop it. To distract the tribe, he and McCoy steal a holy relic. Meanwhile, Spock is nearly killed while setting off a cold fusion device to seal up the volcano. (OK, science nerds, pause to break down everything wrong with that last sentence. I’d do it, but I want to finish this article before I finish watching Picard.)
The story proper begins with a couple in London watching their sick little girl. They meet a mysterious stranger who informs them he could help the girl. We see this guy using his own blood, and the girl recovers from her unnamed illness. So what’s the cost? The husband, a Starfleet officer, blows up his workplace, which turns out to be Section 31.
Meanwhile, Kirk is demoted but then rescued by Pike who resumes command of the Enterprise and names Kirk first officer. At an emergency meeting under Admiral Marcus, the mysterious benefactor, John Harrison, shows up to riddle the place with bullets. Pike is killed, and Kirk wants revenge. Marcus indulges him and says, “Just go to the Klingon homeworld and fire these 78 torpedoes at where Harrison is hiding.” When Starfleet refuses to let Scotty know what’s in the torpedoes, he quits.
Meanwhile, a new science officer, Carol Wallace, comes aboard and is very interested in those torpedoes. Her real name is Carol Marcus, and she believes her daddy, the admiral, is up to no good. Just shy of Qo’noS, the Enterprise is knocked out of warp. They use Harry Mudd’s captured ship and head to a remote Klingon city to go after Harrison. Angry as Kirk is, he takes him into custody. Their new prisoner has them check the torpedoes. One of them has a person in cryo inside. This is when Harrison reveals himself to be Khan. The Enterprise heads back when Marcus shows up with the Enterprise from Hell and tries to destroy the ship. Kirk and Khan team up to board the other ship, the Vengeance, where they discover Scotty has stowed away and embarked on a covert sabotage campaign. But Khan is Khan, and he turns on them all for the opportunity to kill Admiral Marcus. He sends Kirk, Scotty, and a kidnapped Carol back to the Enterprise, but the ship is damaged and falling toward Earth. Kirk saves the ship by going into the the Room of Radiation. He saves the ship, but dies. I think it only fair to warn you Kelvin Spock screams “Khaaaan!”
Meanwhile, Khan takes the Vengeance and 9/11s San Francisco (crushing Alcatraz prison in the process. No word on whether the Lakota Nation, National Park Service, or California Tourism Board also screamed “Khaaaan!“) Miraculously, as seen on his own face, Khan survives. He knocks over a couple of skyscrapers and misses Starfleet Command, but he survives. An enraged Spock (and that trope needs to be retired, like, during the last movie) finds him and proceeds to beat the hell out of our favorite Augment. Uhura stops him with moments to spare as they need Khan’s blood to save Kirk. They do, then pack Khan back into his cryotube, and send him off to Ceti Alpha VI, or wherever, without his… beloved wife!
The problems with this movie are 1.) it’s a pointless remake, 2.) Abrams focuses more on blowing something up in almost every scene, and 3.) like Star Wars, he barely explains anything. Spock loses his cool so much in this one. Yes, the bond between Kirk and Spock has clearly grown, but they start out the movie at odds. This is not Spock grieving for his mother and his homeworld. There’s also a scene where Carol decides to change her clothes and tells Kirk to turn around. It’s a dumb scene meant to imply David Marcus is conceived in this movie when there’s virtually no chemistry between the pair beyond a captain impressed with one of his science officers. It’s just a gratuitous tits-and-ass scene.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance is terrific, and if they’d left the character as John Harrison or, as Karl Urban said to throw off the rumor mill, Gary Mitchell, this movie might have worked better. But The Wrath of Khan, like First Contact, is best left alone. Darkness ranks low on many lists. I used to rate The Motion Picture below it for its pacing and lack of action, but I’ve come to appreciate that it was a product of the 1970s released a couple of years too late to resonate with most fans. Perhaps the biggest problem is the cast. This new TOS cast has gelled nicely, but not enough to warrant revisiting one of the most iconic moments in Trek history.
That’s not a problem in….
Star Trek Beyond
This time, Justin Lin directs and co-writes the script with cast member and Trek nerd Simon Pegg. What we get is an Enterprise crew with some mileage on them. We also get a reference to every single Trek movie, including the 2009 reboot and Into Darkness.
And Galaxy Quest.
Kirk, on a diplomatic mission as a disinterested third party, tries to present a weapon as a gesture of peace from one alien race to another. The recipients are suspicious and don’t want it. They attack Kirk en masse. Oh, and did I mention they’re only six inches tall? Kirk is beamed back aboard and complains, “I ripped my shirt again.” McCoy, who is funnier in this one, slaps Kirk on the back and diagnoses the captain’s condition with, “Jim, you look like hell!” They put in at Yorktown, a massive city in space that looks almost like a Christmas snow globe. While there, Spock gets some bad news about his Prime self, and Kirk puts in for a promotion. Before either can discuss the changes coming, a distress call interrupts them. An alien ship arrives at Yorktown, its captain pleading her crew is trapped in the soupy, rock-strewn Necro Nebula. Kirk volunteers his crew to rescue them. Except it’s a trap. The Enterprise enters the nebula and is dismantled in space by a swarm of small drones. The aliens responsible board the ship looking for the weapon Kirk tried to give to his diminutive attackers. Kirk realizes what they’re after and hands it off to a crew member before everyone abandons ship. The crew is scattered. Sulu and Uhura are captured. Spock and McCoy land in the middle of nowhere with Spock functionally impaled. Scotty crashes alone and almost falls off a cliff. Kirk and Chekov end up in the wilderness.
While Spock and McCoy try to regroup, Kirk and Chekov learn their alien captain is one of those who destroyed the ship trying to find the weapon. They kill her by flipping the Enterprise‘s saucer on top of her and flee. Meanwhile, Scotty has befriended a refugee from the planet’s malevolent masters. Her name is Jaylah, and she has been hiding out aboard a crashed starship, the USS Franklin, a warp-four NX-class ship predating Archer’s Enterprise. Scotty learns the ship can be repaired (with some help) and that Jaylah has developed a taste for hip-hop. Soon, Kirk and Chekov blunder into one of Jaylah’s traps and agree to get the Franklin spaceborne again.
Meanwhile, Uhura and Sulu sneak out to see who’s holding them hostage. Turns out it’s an alien named Krall who hates the Federation. He has half of a weapon that can accomplish this, but Kirk has hidden the other half. He also has implants that let him drain people for their life energy and demonstrates for Uhura and Sulu on two of their fellow crew members. He starts draining Sulu to force the crew to give up the other half of the device. The ensign hiding it surrenders it, and is dissolved by the weapon for her trouble.
Krall is ready to unleash the weapon on Yorktown, but Kirk has rescued Spock and McCoy by the Franklin‘s pre-Enterprise transporter. They launch an assault on Krall’s encampment and beam everyone out. (In groups of twenty.) With a crew, they get the Franklin flying again, but Krall is already launching his attack. Spock and McCoy hijack one of Krall’s drones and determine he’s using a radio signal to control the swarm. Scotty realizes blasting a signal will cause the drones to collide with each other. They set up a signal, and Jaylah selects the Beatie Boys’ “Sabotage” to wreck the swarm. It still reaches Yorktown, but they have the frequency and broadcast it back at the Franklin, leaving only Spock and McCoy’s drone and Krall’s. Krall gets inside Yorktown and attempts to release the weapon into the air system. Kirk goes after him and sends Krall and the weapon into space. The punchline? Krall is the original captain of the Franklin and decided the Federation betrayed him when they crashed inside the nebula.
Had this been the second Kelvin movie, the series would have probably continued. But Into Darkness so damaged the franchise’s viability in film that a fourth movie was canceled (and then greenlit. Then canceled.) It’s been eight years, and there have been five Trek series on Paramount+ and Netflix. Captain Pike is now the franchise’s standard bearer with Legacy, a Seven of Nine-led series, totally not in development even though Terry Matalas is showing the cast scenes he’s written.
The one sour note comes from some off-screen controversy. Simon Pegg and Justin Lin decided Trek needed a gay character, and they wanted it to be a main cast member. They opted for Sulu in honor of George Takei. However, Takei was not happy. He said Gene Roddenberry wrote him straight, and Takei played him straight. Awkward, but they get an A for effort. Discovery had a better time of it introducing Stametz and Culber as a couple. And with a couple of exceptions, Discovery‘s LBGTQ characters reveal their identities the same way Sulu revealed his love of botany and Riker his jazz fetish. It’s natural and focuses on the characters.
But Pegg and Lin manage a nod to every Trek movie to date and even Galaxy Quest. The small aliens attacking Kirk call back the rock scene from GQ (in which Tim Allen also manages to rip his shirt, but it’s funnier when Kirk moans about it.) The cast is just hitting its stride. It also works the death of Leonard Nimoy into the story, but as poignantly, Anton Yelchin is not with us when the movie debuted, killed in a car accident just before release. But Prime Spock’s death starts a trend that carries forward into the Nu Trek shows. Trek acknowledges different actors played these characters, and Kelvin Spock is gifted a photo from his counterpart’s effects: In reality, a publicity photo of the TOS crew (minus Captain Sulu) from Star Trek VI. Discovery would use Jeffrey Hunter’s performance in a “Previously on Star Trek” open while Strange New Worlds would flash the early Discovery Klingons on screen even though the makeup team went back to legacy Trek’s design. Klingons are white and brown lumpy heads, our fine foreheaded friends, not deathly pale onion heads, dammit!
And Pine gets to play a smart Kirk. In Into Darkness, he’s not really that smart nor is Spock very Vulcan-like. And the scenes with Spock and McCoy wandering the wilderness are what Star Trek is all about. If we get a fourth movie, we may see Alice Eve or Sofia Boutella (Jaylah) return in place of the late Anton Yelchin’s Chekov.