Is this another flame bait thread?
I have to tell you that this newest movie did not change my opinion in the slightest about "classic" TOS TREK. TOS was a pioneer in dramatic science fiction television, and the fact that the industry saw fit to spin off a cartoon from it, six major feature films from it, and four other TV shows from it, should be indisputable testimonial of the remarkable accomplishment that this ground-breaking franchise is to this day. Of course, all TREK is not pure sci fi. There were elements of conventional drama and fantasy mixed in, and it was all built on an action-adventure backdrop.
The new TREK, or JJTREK, or whatever you want to call it, is first and foremost a flashy action-adventure flick that only passingly resembles the hourlong dramas of TOS. It looks like a video game, so it is a propos for its target audience: Generation Y, the Britney Spears generation. It's not really about sci fi either, in fact the franchise has proven itself over the last 25+ years to be an exercise in concept erosion. Where TOS was targeted at Vietnam War era Baby Boomers in a time of great national and world upheaval, the movies and TNG were targeted more to Gen X and had less of a sense of direction or history. It was sad, but the concept erosion started back then. By DS9, TREK was doing something that Roddenberry clearly would've objected to: making TREK into a war show. Granted, DS9 wasn't RAT PATROL or M*A*S*H in outer space, but its anti-septic, cloak-and-dagger concept of warfare seem to underscore how little the show's makers knew or understood about war. People like Berman would obviously be quick to point out that Vietnam was a long time ago, and Gen X wouldn't understand. The truth is, Berman didn't understand... or care...
It is a matter of record that Berman disparaged TOS as 60's kitsch. Once dismissing it as a "Kennedy camelot". (CINEFANTASTIQUE magazine, early 1990's) And therein lies the rub: the real issue here is that Berman was a studio executive who had TNG handed to him. He never had to create anything. He simply took over a spin-off series in a billion-dollar franchise. He and his minions on TNG and DS9 simply superimposed their own notions and politics over their work, effectively causing the franchise to change significantly. It was still a kind of watered-down mix of drama and sci fi, and it still had some appeal to the Baby Boomers, but it was increasingly about the post-Cold War state-of-mind of Gen X. Troi's appearance as the cat-suited busty eye-candy-on-the-Bridge did not lie; the tradition started with Sirtis was no accident. We're talking here about a show that made its debut just a few years after hardcore pornography-on-video permeated American households everywhere through those new gadgets called VCR's and DVD players. This trend continued all the way through ENT, and by that time it was painfully obvious to the by-now "older" TOS and even TNG fans what had happened.
There really doesn't seem to be that much of a leap, conceptually speaking, from ENT to the funky-looking JJprise. Looks to me like the Bermanian evolution of TREK is now complete. He set out to repudiate the original, and now he got his wish. JJTREK is a perfect reflection of its target demographic, many of whom were born either in the waning days of the Cold War or after the Berlin Wall fell. They grew up in a world where Neil Armstrong is just some name in a history book, the Soviet Union is just another fallen dictatorship, and the notion of a Prime Directive has taken a back seat to politicians talking out of both sides of their mouths about "nation building". Isn't it more fun to go out and get a body piercing, have a few beers, and piss off the balcony when nobody's looking?
The bottom line is this: if you're a fan of TOS, and all its lore, then JJTREK isn't for you and it isn't even relevant for that matter. JJ & Co. are just the latest incarnation of what Berman and Co. set out to do over 20 years ago. Tracy Torme, a writer for TNG during its first year, said it best when he mused that maybe the audience will look at TNG and TOS and think "the Beatles was just Paul McCartney's band before Wings" to which he added "I kind of doubt it".
So, why get all excited about this?
