Beyond lacking the old Star Trek magic
The new Star Trek film doesn’t go above and Beyond
Back in the old days of Star Trek — when a flip-open communicator was far-flung future tech and not a charmingly retro cellphone design — a bad storyline could be grumbled over and quickly forgotten. Not happy with Spock’s Brain, or that one where they find “Yangs” and “Kohms” fighting a U.S/Soviet-style Cold War? Just wait for next week’s episode!
But until the next television iteration arrives in 2017, that wait is measured in years — four between the note-perfect 2009 reboot of Star Trek and the almost-perfect Into Darkness, and another three and a bit until this one.
Sorry to say, it’s not been worth the wait this time. Star Trek Beyond marks the passing of the baton from director J.J. Abrams to Justin (Fast & Furious) Lin, who proves thankfully less enamoured of lens flare than his predecessor, but far too into lingering beauty shots of starships and space stations. Blake Lively doesn’t get the kind of coverage the Enterprise does. But I’m going to apportion most of the blame to the new writers, Doug Jung and Simon Pegg (who also stars as Scotty). Their script features an ill-defined villain named Krall (played by Idris Elba under heavy makeup) and an equally vague weapon — hidden somewhere in the nebulous nebula, if I’m not mistaken. In script-ese, Krall is a things-wanter, who wants that thing because it’s a thing-tobe-wanted. In English, he’s an inscrutable bad guy. In Klingon, a petaQ! The story picks up with the Enterprise three years into its five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations. The latest log entry from Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) strikes a saturnine tone, with talk of how hard it is to remain grounded when even the gravity is artificial. In space, every direction is the same, so how do you know if you’re moving forward? (A question the writers should have asked themselves, too.)
And so they stop into the metropolis-sized Starbase Yorktown, which is brand new but somehow already fully occupied: The inhabitants handily include the same-sex partner and daughter of Sulu (John Cho). But before the crew can get into bar fights or start buying Tribbles, they are called into the nearby nebula, where peaceful aliens are under attack.
The nebula is a nasty place, so full of dust that the Enterprise can’t get a cell signal. And then there’s the swarm of ships that attack from all directions, thus explaining why “shooting bees with a phaser” is not a cliché for something easily vanquished. By the time the battle is over, the ship has the same complexion as Tommy Lee Jones.
The crew is scattered, so the plot dodges unevenly and uneasily from group to group. Scotty befriends a tough-as-nails alien named Jaylah (Algerian-born Sofia Boutella). Like all sci-fi aliens, she doesn’t understand the concept of having two names, and calls the engineer MontgomeryScotty.
Meanwhile, Spock (Zachary Quinto) and McCoy (Karl Urban) bicker about the best way to get rescued, while Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu find themselves captured by Krall’s forces, and Kirk and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) try to reunite the crew. There’s an odd poignancy to Chekov: The film includes a note on the passing of Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Mr. Spock, but it had already wrapped when Yelchin died in a bizarre car accident last month, making this the final appearance for the Russian crew member.
The critics’ Prime Directive demands that I not reveal any of Beyond’s surprise plot twists, but they are often so random that I could probably sneak in one or two without even calling attention to them as spoilers.
Suffice to say that Yorktown will have a role to play in the climax, and suffice to ask why a starbase features a giant, glass-enclosed waterway running through it. Is an aquarium in the works for this place?
Also running through the film is a sense of ennui, with Spock considering leaving Starfleet to join his fellows on New Vulcan and Kirk contemplating a desk-bound vice-admiralty posting. Over a birthday Saurian Brandy with the doctor, he questions the very meaning of his role as captain of the Enterprise.
Pity this listlessness seems to have infected the plot and energy level of Beyond as well. But Trekkies and Trekkers can take heart: The new Star Trek TV series is about to start filming in Toronto for a 2017 debut. And Beyond’s sequel (currently called Star Trek 14) is a go.
To boldly go may not always be logical nor even grammatical. But 50 years since that five-year mission began, it certainly feels inevitable.