Of "Star Trek", Risks & Rewrites

 Star Trek.

OK, chances are you're sighing and thinking, "This topic again?"
Well, yes, but I want you to hear me out and see where I'm going.

Back in 2020 I was talking about the film franchise with my Tante Kim and explaining that the problem with the current crop of films from JJ Abrams was that unlike the first six Star Trek films, with the exception of the 2009 film, none of them really take any risks, especially Star Trek Into Darkness.

Let's look over the films of The Original Series crew and examine the risks that each one took. I'll try to be brief.

"Hey, that Star Wars film made a lot of money. Let's cancel our plans to do another TV series and just make a movie instead. And let's make it like 2001: A Space Odyssey instead of the huge blockbuster that people saw over and over!"

"Let's take the most popular character on the show and kill him!"

"OK, so we're bringing back the most popular character that we killed in the last film. But how about we destroy the iconic starship synonymous with this series."

"People really love this sci-fi series set hundreds of years in the future. What if we have most of the film take place in the present day?"

"You know how the main actor in this series has a huge-I mean HUGE-ego? Let's let him direct!"

"What would it be like if the Berlin Wall fell in space?"

I'd say that with the exception of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the risks paid off. Sure not every film can be The Wrath of Khan but few films can and at least they tried to tell their own story.

If only Star Trek Into Darkness had tried that. I remember the scuttlebutt was that they were going to use Khan as the villain and I remember hoping that it wasn't true. There were rumors that Benedict Cumberbatch wasn't going to be playing Khan but actually Gary Mitchell and that this second film of the Abrams-verse was going to be a big screen production of the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before.

But it turned out that he was Khan and the film more or less became Star Trek Into References and with each minute that passed, I grew more frustrated and irritated.
The only interesting thing they did was when they tried to recreate the sacrifice Spock had to make in Wrath of Khan but this time it's Kirk who gives his life to save the ship.

I actually remember sitting there thinking, OK, if this is the direction they're going in, it could actually turn things around. I still don't think it's a good film but it's setting up a lot of cool things.

Well all that vanished the moment they revealed that Khan's blood had healing properties and that they could use it to bring Kirk back to life ten minutes later.
You can understand why as the film was approaching the end I extended a middle finger towards the screen.

I remember leaving the theater and thinking that if they had killed Kirk, it would have been quite surprising and admittedly a huge risk. I also began thinking about what I would have done if I had been writing this movie.

I'm not going to do a rewrite of the whole movie because...well that would just take way too much time. Instead, the film ends with Spock being promoted to Captain, the Enterprise is currently undergoing repairs in spacedock but there's no sense of optimism. Things are...a bit gloomy to say the least.

Cut to a lab somewhere deep within Starfleet headquarters (Or maybe it's one that Starfleet doesn't know about?) where Carol Marcus enters. She asks one of the scientists if they have the precise transporter coordinates. The scientist answers that they do. Carol nods and gives the command, "Energize".

Onto a table in the center of the room, the body of recently deceased James T. Kirk materializes. Carol looks at everyone in the room and says, "I'm going to tell you again, you're to discuss what happens here with no one. This includes anyone with a higher rank, be it a Captain, Admiral or Commodore. Is that clear?"

There aren't a lot of other people in this room, probably ten at best but they all nod quietly, knowing that breathing a word of this will be dangerous.

"Good," Carol says. "With that out of the way, let's begin Project: Genesis."

Cut to black, end the film there.

Granted, not long ago I called the film Star Trek Into References and having Carol bring the Genesis project into this is just doing more of the same stuff we saw before. At the same time, this would have made me a bit more excited for a sequel, wondering what they were going to do with a resurrected Kirk and what conflicts it could lead to.

I actually did enjoy Star Trek: Beyond but at the same time, I felt once again we had a villain bent on revenge. Remember how Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home had no real villain, no battles, no one died, the only time a phaser was used was on a doorknob? 
Why not try something like that.
I always felt that Star Trek was not an action series but an adventure series.

Let's have some good adventures again.

Until next time, Live Long and Prosper.