Closet Sci-Fi Geek

Can J.J. Abrams Save Star Trek?

As I’ve already commented here briefly, my answer is no.

Mark A. Altman at the Trek Movie Report thinks differently. As he says in his editorial “Star Trek Lives!“:

Indeed, it was Kirk himself who reminded us that galloping the cosmos is a game for the young and while I don’t envy J.J. Abrams task in re-casting one of the most iconic characters of the 20th century (and certainly most distinctive), I wish him well. After his brilliant work on Alias and Lost, I can’t imagine anyone (other than the Free Enterprise creative team of Mssrs. Burnett and Altman) that could possibly do better justice to the legacy of the original series which is more relevant today than ever.

Well, yes, but Trek isn’t Lost nor is it Alias. I’m going to stick to my original assertion - let Trek die a dignified death, at least for now. Maybe in time, a new generation will be open for a complete reinterpretation of Star Trek (much like Battlestar Galactica). But the franchise is old and tired. To me, the franchise peaked with The Wrath of Khan.

While I’ve enjoyed the spin-off shows, none of them come even vaguely close to the original. Believe it or not, I’d place Deep Space Nine behind TOS as far as quality goes - while there were a lot of boring episodes to begin with, the final war with the Dominion was some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever seen on television. Voyager and the Next Generation are tied for me, and Enterprise - I didn’t watch it past a few episodes.

If someone like me, a fan of Star Trek since high school, can get bored with the franchise, I don’t have high hopes that a mainstream audience will be interested just because J.J. Abrams is at the helm.

Why not put creative energies into creating the next new thing in space epics? Firefly didn’t quite cut it, but Stargate has lasted 10 years and BSG is doing reasonably well. Let’s stop recycling and come up with some new stuff. Or in the least, if you’re going to do a new Trek, do something really out there. Set the series on Klingon or Vulcan. Make the Borg the anti-heroes of the show. Think out of the box, people.

Star Trek: The Original Series - “Errand of Mercy″

Kirk and Spock travel to the planet Organia to convince them to let the Federation take on their planet as a base instead of the Klingons. The episode consists of Kirk arguing a lot with the Organians, who are peace-loving and do not intend (or ultimately need) to fight the Klingons.

This is an important episode, as it is our first introduction to the Klingons. John Colicos of the original Battlestar Galactica plays the lead Klingon. He was sooo good at playing well-mannered bad guys.

Of course, in the original series, the Klingons didn’t have those special ridges on their heads. The discrepancy was joked about in the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” where the DS9 crew travels back into the past and sees the old-style Klingons.

Since that episode, an entire canonical explanation has been developed over the discrepancy, involving a genetic mutation and virus. If you ask me, going to such ridiculous lengths to explain what is obviously a costuming issue is a bit extreme. Though, I suppose it’s just as well. If they hadn’t made up a fictional explanation for it, someone would have tried to go back in and digitally add head ridges onto the old Klingon actors.

The Fog Remake - Horrible!

In watching the DVD extras after the film, I couldn’t help but wonder why the dorky screenwriter, wearing amber-shaded glasses indoors during his interview, got paid some sort of insane 6-figure amount for this botched remake. This has to rank up there with one of the worst remakes ever, built upon one of the worst screenplays ever.

And it’s not even bad in a good way.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the original version of The Fog, but it starred a young Jamie Lee Curtis, and that already gives it a huge thumbs up.

The original was creepy and spooky and left stuff to the imagination in a good way. The remake - starring “Shannon” from Lost (Maggie Grace) and that guy who plays young Clark Kent in Smallvile - was a bloated, over-the-top piece of crap. The story was redone, and not for the better. The acting was just…eeehhh…why is that Maggie Grace a star anyway? A piece of cardboard would have had better delivery than she did in this film.

The end result? It wasn’t scary. Not one bit. Most of the film involved shots of green and white fog rolling around (which was sadly the better part of the film), while our heroine pieces together the story of the origins of the spooky death fog.

We are subjected to endless flashbacks to the original “crime,” which removed any mystery and made the film seem like a bad trip through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

The special effects detracted from - and did not add to - the horror in any way. Modern filmmakers need to learn that a softer touch is often better when it comes to horror. (Try The Sixth Sense. That film scares the crap out of me. That’s because it’s actually kind of realistic. A ghost I can’t see could be standing right behind me as I type this…)

The ending was just the worst - not that this will ruin an already awful film for you - but it was The Fog meets The Shining. In a bad way.

In order to wipe my memory clean of this travesty, I will be renting the original soon and watching it again. If you haven’t seen the remake or the original, save yourself the time and see the 1980 version. It is a zillion times better.