Star Trek Movie

The events of this new film are set when Nero and Spock are sucked into a black hole that takes them back to over a century ago. When a supernova threatens the existence of the entire galaxy, Nero and his crew set out to obtain enough matter that will help create what is called ‘red matter’ that will contain the supernova. However, the plot unfolds as Romulus, Nero’s home world is destroyed and he blames Spock together with Vulcan for the death of his family and destruction of Romulus. Vowing vengeance, he sets out to wreck havoc on the entire galaxy. Before he can prevent Spock from releasing the red matter into the star about to go up in a supernova, he is too late and he and Spock get sucked into the black hole that has come up as a result of the explosion and they find themselves over 100 years in the past.

Familiar faces from the previous sequel have appeared, starting with Leonard Nimoy who still acts as Spock, Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk and Christopher Pike being played by Bruce Greenwood. Others also continue to feature in the film and make it more of a continuation of what happened the last time in Nemesis.

The movie however takes a new twist that unfolds and makes this film different from the last ones. Starting with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986 then to Star Trek: Generations in 1994 and coming to the 1996 Star Trek: First Contact, this new Star Trek takes its characters to the past. In the other films, the time travel ability was used as a device. In the new future, there is no return to the future and instead, an alternative timeline has made the series to play out differently.

The film also does not introduce klingons in the plot. It is assumed that they have been over used in the previous sequels and introducing them again as enemies would only hurt the plot.  The plot, internal logic and its characters made the premiere to the movie a blast. Repeated viewings will likely continue to have the same impact and appeal.

It takes a certain mix of optimism and frustration to contemplate the possibility of space travel. To dream of navigating the cosmos is to assume that man has the resources and the know-how to propel himself into the heavens, but also some compelling reasons to exchange his home planet for the cold vast unknown.

It was these seemingly contradictory impulses that shaped “Star Trek,” the supremely influential science-fiction television series whose three-season run yielded 40 years of sequels and spinoffs including a new feature film about the origins of Kirk and Spock that opened on Friday. Yes, the series is at heart a geeky space epic, but it is also one with a political and historical context.

When it was created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966, “Star Trek” was meant to expand the notions of what a unified world could achieve — a mission that was deeply complicated by the turmoil of the era. And the newest incarnation of “Star Trek” arrives at a moment when the country again finds itself teetering between limitless potential and peril, yearning to boldly go in all directions but potentially stuck in neutral.

Obama - Star Trek

Photo courtesy of Henry Jenkins

The original “Star Trek” imagined the futuristic fulfillment of John F. Kennedy’s inspirational oratory, in which his New Frontier became “the final frontier.” The budget surpluses and budding space program of the early 1960s gave rise, in the 23rd century, to the utopian United Federation of Planets. On the Starship Enterprise, men and women, blacks and whites, Americans, Russians and Asians — with names like Uhura, Chekov and Sulu — worked side by side, reflecting Mr. Roddenberry’s belief that “when human beings get over the silly little problems of racism and war, then we can tackle the big problems of exploring the universe,” said David Gerrold, a writer for the original “Star Trek” series.

But events during its brief original run — the race riots of Newark and Detroit; the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and the nation’s ever-deepening commitment to the Vietnam War — inevitably affected the tone of the show. By the second season, episodes like “A Private Little War” (in which Captain Kirk attempts to balance an arms race between two extraterrestrial tribes) were commenting on America’s intervention in Indochina.

As Richard M. Nixon was entering the Oval Office on an anodyne platform of peace, “Star Trek” was blunter with its audience. In the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” that aired in January 1969, Kirk was giving dire warnings to aliens — and by extension, to viewers — that they would “end up dead if you don’t stop hating.”

Forty years later, as “Star Trek” is returning to its past so is America: the country is again gripped by anxieties about entanglements abroad, compounded by the fear that the economy could collapse at warp speed. A cautious optimism has emerged in the afterglow of the election of President Obama (whose Vulcan-like composure has invited frequent comparisons to Mr. Spock), but a surge of foreign violence, a swine flu outbreak or any number of other events could easily dampen that mood.

Under President Obama, “we’re starting the era of the 1960s in 1967,” said H. Bruce Franklin, a professor of English and American studies at Rutgers University who was the guest curator of the National Air and Space Museum’s “Star Trek and the Sixties” exhibition in the early 1990s. “Culturally we’re reinventing the ’60s, but economically we’re reinventing the ’30s.”

In recent decades, Mr. Franklin said, “Star Trek” ceded its position as America’s dominant science-fiction mythology to “Star Wars” — both the Reagan-era missile defense program and the George Lucas movies (which in turn were influenced by Depression-era serials and World War II dogfights).

Roberto Orci, who wrote the new “Star Trek” movie with Alex Kurtzman, acknowledged that its retro vision of an Earth at peace was meant as a tonic for an era when people wonder if perpetual war is becoming the norm. “We’re smack-dab in the middle of that very debate,” he said, pointing to the growing American military presence in Afghanistan and an increasingly worrisome situation in Pakistan. “It couldn’t be more stark now.”

The new film has plenty of modern-day angst to address too: the efficacy of torture is touched upon (though only the film’s villains employ it); an entire planet central to “Star Trek” lore is destroyed, intended by the writers as an amplified metaphor for the 9/11 attacks.

And a scene in which an aged version of Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) converses with his younger self (played by Zachary Quinto) becomes a platform for the regret that the grown-up children of the 1960s feel for letting down the youth of today, just as they might have felt they were let down by their leaders. “It’s kind of a baby boomer apology for where we are,” Mr. Orci said. “Not that I’m asking for the baby boomers to apologize.”

But at least one person closely identified with “Star Trek” argues that for all the ways in which the franchise has been affected by current events, its optimistic vision has persisted .

“A lot of science-fiction is nihilistic and dark and dreadful about the future, and ‘Star Trek’ is the opposite,” Mr. Nimoy said. “We need that kind of hope, we need that kind of confidence in the future. I think that’s what ‘Star Trek’ offers. I have to believe that — I’m the glass-half-full kind of guy.”

Many of us made up languages when we were kids in order to talk around the adults without them knowing what we were saying. This was great fun and would often drive the adults crazy. Other made up languages came out of Hollywood.

One such language is Klingon. This language was created during the long running Star Trek TV show. Most people do not realize the language was first created by “Scotty” for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture movie. “Scotty” was the engineer on the show. Klingons had always spoken English before this. He created a few words and basic sounds. The language was fully developed into a fully-fledged language after the movie by Marc Okrand.

Star Trek fans have kept this language alive and it is spoken by fans around the world.

Klingon Hello Kitty With Dalek

Many languages around the world have slowly died. The writer of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien understood this and tried through his writing to help people understand how language is important.

He created several languages for the cultures portrayed in his books. The elves, for example, had their own distinct language. (I wonder, could Spanish have been a made up language?)

Language is important and we need to understand and try and preserve as many as we can. When they die they take history with them.

So the next time you hear someone speaking in Klingon don’t laugh. We should all encourage the expanse of language in our world. We should never let a language die.
Roj (Peace in Klingon)

By: Tony Hendriks

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