Star Trek fans disagree

Fans disagree on what the new Trek movie should be about

There is no shortage of opinions online, when it comes to the new Star Trek movies’ preliminary plans. As for deciding what the movie should be about, I read in one of the forums, as one surfer exclaimed, “Fans really don’t know what they need, if Star Trek were left to the Trekkies to make money for the franchise, it would be gone within a year”.

Sadly, I think there is some truth to that statement. There seems to be many passionate, yet diverse suggestions circulating on the web. Some of the forums on the subject are so heated that there should be some censorship for young readers. I am kind of taken back by all of the negativity. After all, one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover… especially when the book hasn’t been written yet!

It is ironic that Star Trek is all about an "evolved sensibility", yet all the fans gripe and whine so. Rodenberry predicts that we all learn to get along and work together to rid ourselves of things like famine and war etc., but the fans are quick to argue angrily about trivial issues—jumping to conclusions and it goes round and round. It’s an interesting observation.

I have to admit, I was kind of upset at first with the thought of a so-called “re-imagination” of my beloved Star Trek. I am not usually in favor of such films.

Like the Hulk for instance, while it was probably closer to what Stan Lee originally had in mind (more like a comic book), I was disappointed that they strayed so far away from the Bixby series. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for up-to-date cinematics—I even sort of liked the new movie, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Though I’m sure it was just right for other Hulk fans. Not everyone can be pleased, but there was some entertainment value in it for me.

So anyway, it was a little unsettling for me when I heard they are going to retool Star Trek—at first. However, like I said earlier, Star Trek is always redefining itself anyway. As long as they stay in the same realm and don’t get too contradictive or totally undermining of all previous Star Trek, it should be fine as long as it is a good story.

Regardless, there really are some things that they need to rethink. In reality, we have technologies today that were considered futuristic in Kirk’s time (like ion propulsion) and other technologies that weren’t even conceived, let alone considered in the original Star Trek universe. Some things are being developed right now that would make one think that Kirk’s time would be much more advanced with. For instance, the colored wooden blocks they used for data storage are far surpassed today with flash drives that fit inside a wrist watch or a credit card. There are even data storage cards that you can find in Wal-Mart today that are smaller than my thumbnail. Heck, they used those blocks on Star Trek like we used to use the 5 ¼ floppy disks.

And then there are technologies that we are no where near—like the transporters that we likely will not have yet by Kirk’s time. I hate to be pessimistic (not usually my style), but ST: ENT is way more advanced than we will be at that time… unless we actually meet the Vulcan’s sometime soon. ;-) Among the biggest hurdles would be warp drive, interstellar communication, transporters, and gravimetric plating—not that we shouldn’t keep having fun imagining them in Star Trek. In fact, we could go even further with some things and even some new things not considered in Star Trek. For example, we will likely develop personal cloaking technology by then (that is underway right now for the military). We may even have holodecks by then (or something very close), which was not available on ST: ENT.

I personally would like to see a movie put out that has the ideals and hope of Star Trek but more that of a realistic vision of our future in space. There are too many space movies that depict grim views of our future in space. I want to see some of the visions of our futurists put into film. Moon and Mars bases and other inter-solar planetoid exploration would be interesting. Maybe a movie about what the implications might really be if we discover an Earth-like planet, or even one with intelligent life. The movie Contact was so close until the end—when it got weird.