Star Trek has often been very popular over the last 58 years. It just never was cool in the sense that a young mass audience would understand. It wasn’t even as “cool” as Star Wars. At least until 2009, when filmmaker JJ Abrams, with the help of screenwriter Roberto Orci and later Trek series boss Alex Kurtzman, was tasked with jazzing up the stagnating franchise with a mainstream makeover to make it fast, sexy and shiny.
A revolutionary jolt was definitely the right impulse, because with the series Star Trek: Enterprise and the film Star Trek – Nemesis, we had recently maneuvered ourselves into an all-time low. But did you then take the right course?
Star Trek: Lens Flares and Mucki-Romulans
The result Star Trek came on May 8, 2009 and in the end it wasn’t as bad as many hardcore trekkies had feared. The film offered an entertaining if flashy sci-fi adventure with model versions of iconic characters fighting a nasty space villain with a doomsday machine.
As a bonus, a cameo appearance by a popular OG cast member was sprinkled onto the whole thing and boom: 366 million at the box office – the most financially successful Star Trek film of all time up to that point. So you seem to have done something right, right? However, you haven’t necessarily learned the right things from success.
The alternate Kelvin timeline of the Star Trek universe
The Kelvin timeline, which deviates from the rest of the canon of the Star Trek narrative, is created at the beginning of the film when the vengeful Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) travels back in time with his crew and destroys the USS Kelvin – the spaceship on which George Kirk ( Chris Hemsworth), the father of the future Enterprise captain, serves.
Nero had to watch his home planet Romulus being destroyed by a supernova before Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was able to prevent a major catastrophe with the help of red matter. Nero and Spock are then catapulted into the past, where the Romulans are in a mood for revenge.
Paramount
Star Trek
In the alternate timeline, the iconic crew of the USS Enterprise is thrown together a little differently. For example, the rebellious James T. Kirk (Chris Wood) first has to be motivated to join Starfleet by Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood); Logic lover Spock (Zachary Quinto) is a closeted choleric who maintains a secret relationship with the linguistic genius Uhura (Zoe Saldana); Chekov (Anton Yelchin) shines as an over-ambitious bridge twink and Pille (Karl Urban) basically plays the grumpy TV doctor Dr. House at its best.
Star Trek for Dummies?The problem with breaking characters down to their most well-known features is, of course, that a lot of nuance gets lost. Was Captain Kirk really just a daredevil who seduces green women and screws with space villains? If you add elements that are generally known about Star Trek such as beams, phasers, time travel and “Fascinating!” without the delicious bacon that made Star Trek interesting, you end up with a pretty low-calorie sci-fi rip-off.
Of course, earlier Star Trek was rarely above telling a world-saving story (especially in the Picard film era) in which a villain with a doomsday weapon had to be stopped. Only it wasn’t about the entire galaxy, which is stupidly threatened by a single supernova (!). Instead, there were varied, imaginative stories about horny space probes, time travel to the 80s to kidnap whales that talk to aliens, and supposed gods at the center of the universe. Make Star Trek weird again!
Two illnesses that Star Trek still suffers from today Two wrong conclusions were drawn from the success of Star Trek 2009: 1. Boiling emotions on the bridge are well received and 2. the higher the stakes, the better. These two problems run through the current era of Kurtzman-led Star Trek series on Paramount+.
Instead of focusing primarily on competent people in their space job and letting the sci-fi ideas speak for themselves, the private and emotional lives of the crew members must constantly be in the foreground. The crew is always a family, it’s all very Star Wars, especially in Star Trek: Discovery. Star Trek was a comfort watch for many because it was “just” about problem solving. There can be something very comforting about it, especially when it comes to switching off after an emotionally charged day.
Paramount
Paramoun
When the entire galaxy or even the universe is constantly at stake, the cosmos eventually feels incredibly small. And since when did saving a single settlement on any moon stop being heroic? It’s the filmmakers’ challenge to shoot it in a way that makes us care about this moon. Putting the entire Milky Way at risk is too anonymous, too lazy, too big.
Do it like this!
However, one cannot deny that the 2009 cast develops quite good chemistry with each other. Even though there’s more screaming at each other on the bridge than perhaps there should be, and the story really doesn’t add up to much. At least the first film didn’t overdo it like the unnecessarily dark sequel Star Trek Into Darkness did. And with Star Trek Beyond they had more or less found themselves as a film series.
At least in theory, Star Trek still works best where it started: on television and in series form. Where else can you find time and space for wonderfully whimsical technobabble and the nerdy sci-fi trivia that makes the discourse surrounding the franchise so multidimensional?
It just doesn’t always have to be the highest possible effort or the greatest possible emotional display with an over-orchestrated soundtrack in every damn scene. Sometimes all it takes is the wonder and weirdness of space and one person doing their job.
For sci-fi fans to read further:
Where to stream Star Trek (2009)?
Anyone who would like to see for themselves the strengths and weaknesses of the 2009 Star Trek film by the patron saint of mediocrity JJ Abrams can find it streaming on Paramount+ or Sky Go and WOW.