Waaaaayyyy BEYOND!

This is my formal review of, or reaction to, Star Trek Beyond. I will attempt to not spoil anything for people who may want to go see it, and I do recommend going to see it! But it's really just my musings, more than a movie review, about life and Star Trek and how the two have intertwined and changed over the past fifty years.

I was nine years old when "Where No Man Has Gone Before" lit up our living room in glorious black-and-white. (It was broadcast in color, but we were slightly behind the times in those days! In fact, I never did see my beloved characters in color until Star Trek: the Motion Picture!)

My Grandmother declared it a load of crock from the get-go. My dad and I were in love with it instantly. Grandpa loved it, too, but Grandpa never said boo to Grandma. With 20/20 hindsight, I realize now that we didn't see the broadcasts when the rest of North America did, since we saw them in the production order. The rest of NA saw "The Man Trap" first - we saw that third. From my DVD collection, I see that it was indeed third in the production order. I saw Where No Man Has Gone Before, followed by The Corbomite Manoeuvre, then The Man Trap. And that's the order I recommend to anyone who hasn't see the original series. It's a logical progression (pun intended.)

But I digress. From nine years old to fifty-nine, Star Trek has been a staple in my life. The appeal has been it's positive outcome for humanity: it depicts a future where humans made it out of the business of killing each other off, and into the business of helping each other out, and helping out thousands of other races throughout the galaxy.

As simple as that. "I don't like bullies," says Captain Archer. "We contaminated this culture, we've got to fix this," says Kirk. "Starfleet was founded on the principle of seeking out new life - well there it sits!" says Picard. And hundreds and hundreds more of equally generous, firm, solid principles expressed as lines in a tv show or in movies that say simply, these are our best qualities as human beings. This is how we would like to be.

Beyond has all that, and a lot more. My brain is well adapted to the original tv series, but is easily overwhelmed by all the action in today's sci-fi movies. Ever since Industrial Light and Magic, action movies are work for me to watch. And while I was very impressed by the reclining seats in the IMAX theatre and the fact that I wasn't a cripple by the end of the movie, I most certainly could not follow the action. And I was very glad that Boyfriend was there to explain to me what had happened!

My friend S, for example, bemoaned the fact that the villain played by Idris Elba, had so much makeup on at first, which they finally did away with later, and wondered why they put so much on at first. I barely understood that it had happened at all. Boyfriend explained. So, perhaps now I should say SPOILER ALERT:

Krall, played by Idris Elba, has learned how to absorb the life-force from his victims. At the beginning of the movie, he's been "eating" aliens, so he looks like the aliens he's been eating. As he eats more humans, he goes back to looking more human. 

Okay, so I didn't get that, nor did I notice it happening. I will, of course, go back and see it again on the big screen, at least once more, probably more than once. And I'll watch it many times on tv until I am as familiar with it as I am with the tv shows. But for now it is exciting to muse over what I missed!

I love that Uhura has a larger role to play. Mattel, by the was, has in theory made some 50th anniversary Star Trek dolls. There's a Kirk, a Spock, and an Uhura. I was thrilled to hear it, and I went to the Barbie exhibit on Peel St. in Montreal and I saw them. They didn't do an original cast, they did the reboot series - it's Zoe Saldana as Uhura. I love Zoe, but I wanted a Nichelle Nichols Uhura!

Anyway, Uhura plays a big part in working out who and what Krall is, which I will not spoil for you. And I like that, I've always liked the character of Uhura, and I like that the reboot is making an effort to put more into her character, as well as the other characters.

And that brings me to a sad point. This should have been a triumph for Anton Yelchin, Mr. Chekov. For those of you who don't know, Yelchin was killed in a freak accident, the victim of a faulty transmission in his jeep, which pinned and killed him after filming had finished. He was central to the whole film, it would have been his finest hour, he would have been celebrated, perhaps the reboot series would have gone on to make him captain of his own ship...now a talented actor is dead, ironically because of faulty engineering. 

Bad enough that Leonard Nimoy passed away this past year, but to lose a main character like that of the new films...I did indeed have a hard time putting off my disbelief and immersing myself totally in the moment. I am angry that north american car makers are not as careful as the engineers of star trek when they build cars, that they would let their cars go out on the roads and wait for them to kill talented people before issuing recalls to fix the problems. This is not star trek, and it is not the world I want to live in. I would like it to be better.

Back to Beyond. Captain Kirk overcomes his demons, Spock overcomes his. There is witty repartee, though you may need to be younger than me to catch it!

And you don't need to have fifty years of history to understand it. You don't need to have seen the other movies to follow it. I've got all that, and I still got all the aliens mixed up and Boyfriend had to keep explaining to me "no, that was the other one," etc.

But I do recommend it, it's fun, like an amusement park ride, and it will keep you guessing!