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• From EvanT on 2011-06-24 at 8:51pm:
  I think it's fair to say that Vulcans already had warp travel during the Awakening. After all this is the time that the Romulans leave Vulcan ("those that marched beneath the raptor's wings"?) and obviously they didn't reach Romulus on sub-light speeds.
  
  It's reasonable to assume that Vulcans suspended their deep space exploration until they could rebuild and 1500 years is what? 30 something generations? (perhaps less) It's not that much time to rebuild a society and restructure it around an entirely new philosophy, working out the problems as they went. And I DO believe that the general tone in Star Trek is that Vulcans take things slow and don't rush (similar to D&D elves) simply because they can afford it due to their lifespans.
• From Mitch89 on 2013-01-04 at 11:38am:
  The parallels to the DS9 two parter "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" is astounding, right down to the actor playing the crazy power hungry leader trying to take control of everything!

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• From Dstyle on 2015-10-28 at 2:14pm:
  One of the things that has always bothered me with Vulcans on this show is how transparently emotional they are. They pay lip service to logic and the suppression of emotions, then they act illogically and emotionally all the damn time. Those tempers flare so easily! So quick to show impatience! I have to ignore it to just enjoy the show, but some times it's harder than other times. I mean, I get it: it's hard to have effective dramatic tension when all the characters are speaking about serious matters with seemingly polite, casual disinterest, but that's how Vulcans need to play it. I'm starting to think playing a Vulcan is far more difficult than most actors realize, and we were all just spoiled by the great performances of Leonard Nimoy. The emotional Vulcan behavior was really starting to bother me during this story line, but I think this episode might perhaps be trying to provide an explanation for that, what with the "getting away from the teachings of Surak" and all. I guess we'll see how it all plays out, eh?

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• From Lee on 2012-04-22 at 7:33pm:
  I really love these 3-parter mini-arcs! I think ENT could've been the best of the Star Trek Series if the first two seasons were replaced with episodes like in this season, and instead of (or in addition to) the Xindi crisis, there should have been the Romulan war.
  After all, this series is before the Federation of planets, so we should see just as much about the Andorians and Vulcans as we see about the Humans! It's really a shame this series was cancelled after only four seasons...
  
  
• From The HMS Obumpresidency on 2023-03-03 at 5:23pm:
  Agreed, Lee! It is amazing how much better this series got in Season 4, it even looks better, look at the colours, and the outside views of the ship are beautiful.

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• From fan ive on 2010-01-01 at 5:47pm:
  so they still use those old wheelchairs from the nineties in the 22. century??
• From joe on 2016-07-11 at 1:22am:
  Archer tells Erickson that he was worried about failing flight training but that his father told him the day before he went to "not fail". How is this possible when it has already been established that Henry Archer dies when Jonathan was 12 years old? Does flight training begin that young?
• From McCoy on 2017-07-31 at 8:36am:
  This is one of the best episodes not only in Ent, but in all of Trek. Erickson is perfect megalomaniac scientist(I know a lot of similar persons) and hiding true motives (plus moral ambivalency - after all redshirt dies) are totally in character here. I had sick fun watching Archer being Archer (I've made my decision and it's only good decision, because I've made it). Poor Trip. I'm starting to really like him:) He deserves better captain!
• From President Obummer on 2020-02-01 at 7:02pm:
  Erickson reminded me of the terraformer guy from DS9

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• From GDorn on 2012-01-13 at 8:12am:
  I found it hard to believe that sickbay isn't stocked with quarantine suits compatible with medical equipment.
• From krs312 on 2012-10-29 at 3:15pm:
  Definitely should have been Q. My wife thought they were until I told her. Almost seems like the episode was written that way but someone changed it to be Organians so they could reference TOS.
• From Rick on 2014-04-08 at 1:19am:
  Why didnt any species in the last 800 years leave a warning beacon about the virus?
• From Mike Chambers on 2014-07-15 at 6:57am:
  When Hoshi broke out... WHY would there even be ANY way to unlock the quarantine chamber from the inside??

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Bob on 2012-03-26 at 11:26am:
  OK... so this annoys me, if you watch Balance of Terror, where the Enterprise fist meets the Romulans, Spock says no human has seen a Romulan, because viewscreens where not availiable during the Earth - Romulan war!!
  
  So...just saying we are not seeing the Roulans now is not enough, because your just ignoring the very reason Spock gave!! Either follow the written history,or dont...on this basis the entire Enterprise series is not canon because they have viewscreens. Also, spock makes it clear the Romulan war is fought with old nuclear(?) technology, not phasers and photon torpedoes....*sigh*
• From Kethinov on 2012-03-26 at 9:56pm:
  Spock's exact line was this: "As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought by our standards today with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other."
  
  He didn't say there were not viewscreens. He said there was no ship-to-ship visual communication. That statement allows for Enterprise's interpretation that the Romulans possessed the capability but refrained from using it to conceal their identities. No continuity error there.
  
  As for "primitive atomic weapons," that one is harder to rationalize. Spock did also say "by our standards today" though which could imply that the phasers and photon torpedos of Ent and TOS may in fact be based on some type of atomic power, with Ent's simply being less advanced.
• From krs321 on 2012-11-02 at 3:29pm:
  Yeah, the only thing that's way off is the use of atomic weapons. There is obviously no way this is reconcilable with any timeline. I don't think the writers even wanted to waste time on it.
  
  I don't recall which, but there is an episode where the Enterprise is damaged by an old nuclear weapon and I'm pretty sure by now we'd have heard if the NX-1 used atomic-based weapons vs antimatter weapons (slash the antimatter-engine powered phase-cannons)
• From Hugo on 2020-05-13 at 5:07pm:
  Go Sato!
  
  The whole plot with the insider spy felt unnecessary...

No fan commentary yet.

No fan commentary yet.

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2010-09-10 at 12:40am:
  Good catch on Bashir's surprise. I also wonder how it came to be that the ridgeless mutants seemed to peak in numbers a 100 years from the divergence, (so much so that they dominated politics and military operations, apparently having shed any shame associated with the deformity) only to pretty much die out about a 120 years later :-)
• From Andrew James on 2010-12-10 at 5:56pm:
  I always felt or more elegant solution to the continuity problem would have been in Tribbles and Tribulation to have Worf appear in TOS style Klingon makeup and simply ignore the problem.
• From peterwolf on 2012-10-03 at 8:00pm:
  Interestingly that nobody wondered about similar solutions of the "Klingon forehead problem" when watching the Undiscovered Country. General Chang has very faint ridges, is bald - very untypical for Klingons - and loves Shakespeare! There must have beeen some human influence and, seemingly, more underlying continuity before this Star Trek Enterprise episode Divergence.
• From TheAnt on 2013-11-06 at 11:34am:
  I am with Andrew James on this matter, TOS were one old show, and things, graphics capabilities, how we perceive what the future might look like, and political correctness have changes everything since then.
  
  And this episode provides one example of the fanboy style written episodes that the entire Enterprise series suffers from.
  Ideas and aliens presented in the 1960 early 1970 style, (the following episode with slave girls provides a striking example).
  Taken together Enterprise is a series obviously written for the hardcore ST fans, that they hoped would attract a larger audience, it is not strange at all that a show like this cannot be a huge resounding success!
  
  Now with that said, I have to agree that this is one of the better episodes, and one that do not have me cringe. I really liked Phlox for example.
  
  But the major problem lies with the Klingons, we have learned to like their cranky ways, but here we get to learn that they at first have done virus testing on POV's.
  It immediately had me started to think and question just about everything really.
  
  Talk about having a skeleton in the closet, with a war atrocity of that magnitude I cannot get that to fit with the idea that the Klingons later would be allowed into the Federation - I would not!
  A final blow perhaps after having similar references in "Storm Front" and "Borderland", ST should also deliver a bit of simple fun to provide good entertainment - also in that respect do these episodes fail.
  So I will not enter any comment for those other, but only pass over them in this mini review.
• From Dstyle on 2015-11-02 at 3:13pm:
  To make a fairly nerdy correction to TheAnt's comments: The Klingon Empire does not join the Federation. They merely make peace and are allies, albeit loose ones at times.

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• From James T. on 2008-09-08 at 5:04pm:
  "Continuity Coto" didn't write this script -- Mike Sussman did. Coto wrote the story for Part II. Just FYI.
• From Nicholas on 2011-11-20 at 10:23am:
  I went into this expecting to dislike it; indeed, I considered skipping the episode on the DVD to get to In a Mirror Darkly.
  
  However, I found it really enjoyable. Look beyond the simple "men are gushing over women" to the sci-fi aspect of the Orion women being able to influence and control them with pheromones. It led to some excellent scenes, particularly the sickbay one - Phlox was great to watch.
  
  I wish they'd played up the disgust of the woman at them a bit more, though - there were a few funny background moments, but nothing much.
  
  The Orion man also had the right blend of menace, sleaze and charm; very well-played.
  
  The joke scene with T'Pol capped it off perfectly, and gave it a real TOS feel.
  
  A pleasant surprise, as far as I'm concerned.

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• From hmad on 2010-07-17 at 8:51am:
  My God, to see this sweet and respected devotion to not only canon but TOS homage not seen since DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations" and done in a way that would make Matt Jeffries and D.C. Fontana jealous of the Mirror Universe in true epicness.
  
  It was the almost flawless run of this fourth season that made me lament (a full three years after the end) that this series had finally, after shedding the burnt out Brannon Braga for Coto, found its legs and teeth. Too late, unlike TOS their would be no revival via the fans, even Trekkies were almost trekked out, or at least needed a siesta.
  
  But man, if only Enterprise was given the three more seasons that other franchises were with the same level of bravado that the 4th season had. In the words of a Klingon warrior, it would have been "glorious....!".
• From Azalea Jane on 2022-01-01 at 6:34am:
  I watched The Tholian Web right before watching this one, so the continuity was cool. So far I've only seen a bit of season 1 of Enterprise, but I decided to treat myself.
  
  I was a little put off by the midriff-baring uniforms on the women. Don't get me wrong -- Hoshi and T'Pol are both gorgeous and fit and this is not lost on me -- it just seems like such gratuitous pandering that it takes me out of the story a little bit. (Do people less confident about their figure have to wear those too?) I also can't forget what a lot of actresses go through to maintain figures like that, just to be able to get work. Jeri Ryan "joking" that she would barely be able to eat while on the cast of Voyager comes to mind. And considering the myriad reports of Rick Berman being a horrible misogynist, it's hard to enjoy those uniforms, gay as I may be.
  
  I'm sure there's an in-universe rationale for the uniforms, but I think it could have been done better. I'd understand if it were in the culture to have uniforms that emphasize certain features, or for crew to have the option to wear "sexy" versions of their uniforms. But if it were me, I'd tone down the women's uniforms and tone up the men's. There is something to be said for subtlety. If "sexy uniform" is an option, I'm sure plenty of the dudes would be into it too! This is himbo erasure! LOL.
  
  Great episode overall, though. Really kept me interested. It's always fun seeing Trek characters out of character. Mirror Archer is unnerving. The sadistic Phlox is downright creepy! And I find the Tholians fascinating. It's always nice when Trek uses non-humanoid aliens. That's pretty rare.

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• From Abigail on 2009-04-20 at 12:28am:
  These two episodes were very intriguing! I loved the continuity with TOS -- the ship (of course), the Tholian web, the gorn (although he looked and acted nothing like the TOS gorn). I also loved the opening credits! It caught me completely off-guard!
  
  I do have one pretty big complaint ... It was very odd that the crew of "our" enterprise never came into play. Despite its intrigue, it felt a bit like a waste because it has nothing at all to do with the rest of the show, plot-wise. I kept waiting for them to bring in "our" characters! Because of this, when it was over, I felt like it needed a part III.
• From peterwolf on 2012-10-04 at 9:54am:
  Two more and mirrored heavy arguments why the 4th Enterprise season was so amazing. The first two seasons I saw only dubbed in German after watching it now on DVD, but I still liked the characters of T'Pol and Captain Archer. For example, characters like Reed you can only really appreciate in the original version. Anyway, the last two seasons of Enterprise were so much better with their continuous plots and unblievable great topics and good stories leading to TOS (like Andorian and Vulcan "history")! In fact, the decent, closer to real life characters were great then, overall much better than Voyager. Sheer madness to cancel this series!
• From Dstyle on 2015-11-04 at 2:44pm:
  I was really disappointed that the two Vulcans who helped T'Pol release Captain Forrest in Part I didn't have evil Mirror-Vulcan goatees, so I'm glad to see Soval was at least sporting one!
• From Luke on 2016-07-27 at 8:37am:
  There is a HUGE continuity problem here - if the ship from our universe was the USS Defiant, and it was build along time before DS9s Defiant, the why wasn't the one from DS9 the -A?
  
  It shouldn't matter that it was the first of class - in fact I don't think they would reuse a name for the lead ship of a class in the same was the lead Sovreign wasn't the Enterprise.
  
  Of course, DS9 was made before ENT, but still it's another small yet irritating continuity problem.
• From Temlakos on 2016-08-15 at 9:47am:
  The numbering of USS Defiant NX-74205 is in no way inconsistent with the numbering of USS Defiant NCC-1764. The only reason for the A, B, and C designations for the Enterprise is that Starfleet honored Captain Kirk by retaining the original NCC number of his ship, and adding A, B, C, etc. for each successive iteration. Consider the real-life naming of multiple ships named Enterprise in the United States Navy. (With another one--USS Enterprise CVN-80, the third Ford class carrier--already in the graving dock, if I am not mistaken.)
• From McCoy on 2017-08-01 at 2:23pm:
  I like everything related to TOS:) Shame that upcoming Discovery doesn't look like true retro sf (looks quite opposite, sadly). However I see one continuity problem here. If they managed to get Defiant, why they didn't improve technology over time? Kirk visited his mirror Enterprise, not some advanced vessel. So Terran Empire just keep building Defiant-era ships with no upgrades over 100 years? Unlikely:)
• From Azalea Jane on 2022-01-06 at 10:16pm:
  Hats off to the production designers. I thought they blended TOS and ENT designs seamlessly. Reminds me a little of the Tribble episode in DS9. Though they didn't recycle footage for this one, they still had to have sets and costumes that bore close enough resemblance to TOS without clashing. For me it really helped bridge the gap between eras a bit. We all just have to collectively pretend that the Duplo-looking controls on the Defiant are more advanced than those on the NX-01!
  
  Hoshi's last-minute coup was quite surprising to me, too! Especially with it ending right there. Mirror Archer was much too much of an egotistical hothead to handle being an emperor! Sato, on the other hand, knows the value of patience and subtlety, and letting your enemies underestimate you while you take advantage of their weaknesses. I agree the Gorn subplot was kind of random. They catch him, then just kill him, and that's it? Oh well. I also thought that gravity trick was pretty clever - I wonder why we don't see that more often!
  
  One could call this two-parter irrelevant because we don't see them interacting with "our" universe characters, however I think it was pretty cool to see the aftermath of what we see in The Tholian Web. It does raise the question of why mirror Terran technology isn't more advanced, but my guess is that Mirror Sato never let the Defiant be studied or reverse-engineered and that it eventually got destroyed when enough of her enemies got wind of it and the threat it posed. It is technology from far in the future with a too-small crew. It's eventually going to be too unwieldy.
  
  I don't think it's an error that we've seen two ships called Defiant. The first Defiant was lost over a hundred years before the second one. There's no chance they'd be confused.

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• From Mike Chambers on 2013-11-25 at 5:46am:
  Factoid: Minister Nathan Samuels who gave that speech at the beginning of the episode played by the same guy who played Tam Elbrun in TNG: Tin Man. Or at least I think it is. It sure looks and sounds like him.

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• From Dstyle on 2015-11-05 at 7:33pm:
  Gannet: "Travis, I'm not a member of Terra Prime. I'm a member of Star Fleet Intelligence."(at this point every single person watching the show realizes that this is true, because there'd be no reason to include it in the script otherwise)
  Travis: "So why don't you tell Captain Archer? One call to your superior and you'd be out of this brig in a second."
  Gannet: "Sure and have the real Terra Prime operative know who I am?"
  Travis: "Or, you know, just tell Archer anyway, because if there is a Terra Prime operative at large on this ship it'd be incredibly irresponsible of you to not do anything about it. Archer doesn't have to let you out or let anyone other than his senior staff know anything, but if what you're saying is true then you're absolutely telling the wrong person right now. I'm sure you must have some sort of protocol you're supposed to follow in situations like this. Didn't they teach you anything at your space-spy training school?"
  Gannet: <flashes a knowing, come-hither look> "Hey, why did you and I break up again?"
  Travis: <rolls eyes, walks out>
  
  
• From Hugo on 2020-05-12 at 8:54pm:
  I was waiting for the mayor from Buffy to bring out his crazy side... !
  
  The lunar mining facility didn't impress me - it looked more like an alien prison camp. At the time of Enterprise it should have been more factory-like and with more machines/robots...
• From Mitch O on 2021-03-19 at 10:40am:
  Bit of a continuity error in this episode. They talk with surprise that Vulcans and Humans can have a child together, but the characters already know this from the season 3 episode E2. Wh

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• From Steve Mohns on 2011-08-10 at 5:48pm:
  Awfully tough on this episode, Eric! I saw it again last night, a number of years after seeing it live, and liked it as much, if not more.
  
  I did think that it was a nice tie-in of Star Trek series for the fans, both with surprise roles for Riker and Deanna, whom we'd not have seen for about 9 years, and the fine connection of all three Enterprises and captains saying the opening monologue at the end. (And yes, no Sisko and Janeway because it's the Enterprise) That you didn't like the absence of Romulans or a romance between Tripp and T'Pol, or hearing Archer's speech are all legitimate personal reasons for you to not like the episode, but all three are reasonable choices to have been made and don't make it a bad episode. I'm glad actually, that we didn't see the speech. (They didn't do that great a job of writing the one he gave in the previous episode). This way we can imagine that it was epic. At least this way there was still an opening for an Enterprise movie with the Romulan war. And unrequited love is ultimately more satisfying artistically than a happy ending romance.
  The episode itself had plenty of emotion, as one would hope for in a finale, certainly from T'Pol and Tripp, and though we don't like to see Tripp die, he did so with glory, and it made for a memorable episode.
  Personally, having just watched the finale of Enterprise, TNG, and Voyageur, I rank them Enterprise, Voayeur, and TNG. The latter was way longer than needed for the material in the story (should have been tellable in one episode easily), had a lot of mumbo-jumbo contrivances to make the plot work, featured the Farpoint storyline, a very poor premier episode, and though I hate to say it as a fan of both Stewart and Picard, sub-standard acting by him.
  It is a shame that Enterprise couldn't be kept going more than the 4 seasons. I think it had easily the strongest start of any series since TOS, hitting the ground in full stride unlike all the other series, and had better acting, music, writing than them as well. The only place that it didn't get top marks for me is in the magic of several of the characters in TOS and TNG.
• From Jem5x5 on 2014-01-26 at 8:35am:
  Well, I finally got here, and whilst this episode wasn't as bad as I feared after everything i'd read about it, it was undoubtedly a shockingly poor way to send off Enterprise - what should have been a poignant final story about the ships retirement and mothballing became a cheap backstory for a couple of cameo appearances. Tuckers death seemed really cheap and pointless - in all the previous situations where him and the captain had faced peril, why had his first thought never been "i'll blow myself up!" before? And why did the main protagonists seem to be totally over it 5 minutes later when Archer was waiting to do his speech? I think i'm also going to regard Demons/Terra Prime as the real series finale - the crew and the ship were able to perform heroically one last time, and it paved the way for the foundation of The Federation, so it means an end at an important moment in Trek history. And now, as i'm watching Trek in a rather wonky order, on to DS9!

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• From Lennier on 2009-05-11 at 5:24am:
  I can't for the life of me figure out when Majel Barrett's voice is used for the computer... Does anyone know when her voice comes up?
• From JRPoole on 2009-05-11 at 10:59am:
  For many years, you were in love with an incredibly smart, beautiful woman. She excited you, challenged you, changed the way you thought about the universe and humanity's place in it, and she gave you hope that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to work out in the end. Most people failed to understand your attraction to this woman. Even you had to admit that sometimes she was embarrassingly corny, and it was often hard to tell whether she was taking herself way too seriously or just making a big joke. But you loved her, and you were willing to forgive her flaws. She came back to you in several different guises over the years, most of them a little different and better than before, but in the end she drifted away. Then suddenly, she comes roaring back into your life. She's got a whole new attitude, and she's sleeker and sexier than she's ever been. But something just doesn't feel right, like the love of your life has been replaced by a pod person, and though you know that you should be happy she's back, you can't help but think about how it used to be. That's what J.J. Abrams' newly "rebooted" Star Trek is going to feel like to many longtime fans of the franchise.
  
  Abrams set out to completely re-imagine the entire Trek universe, and he has succeeded. The script of the film gives him a neat little loophole for doing that, since the events of this movie take place in an alternate time line, an entirely separate reality created when the elderly Spock's attempt to prevent the Romulan sun from going supernova fails. This drags our villain, a newly stylized Romulan by the name of Nero, into the past, where he kills James Kirk's father just as the future captain is being born. It seems that Nero now has a bone to pick with Spock, and devotes the next 25 years to finding the young Spock in order to force him to watch as he creates an artificial black hole to destroy the entire planet of Vulcan.
  
  Abrams has done well with all the characters we've come to love. The now fatherless Kirk, played adequately by Chris Pine, is a more interesting and fully realized character than William Shatner's Kirk. Thankfully, Pine's performance doesn't ape Shatner's much-parodied portrayal of Kirk, and we see Kirk as a cocky, two-bit punk on the verge of becoming the alpha male of the galaxy.
  
  Zachary Quinto's Spock, meanwhile, is in some ways the best thing about the new Trek. Abrams explores Spock's childhood, focusing on the tension created by trying to fit in on Vulcan as a half-human, and casts Spock's decision to join Star Fleet as a rebellion against the very Vulcan culture he has consciously decided to uphold. The new movie, in fact, is the best exploration of Vulcan ideaology in any Trek production yet. The new Spock is also in a torrid secret relationship with Zoe Saldano's smoking-hot Uhura, who plays a meatier role here than ever before.
  
  Fans of DeForrest Kelley's crochety Dr. McCoy will be happy to find that Karl Urban's performance is a virtual clone of the original. Simon Pegg does an excellent job with Scotty, and John Cho seems to be playing Sulu as if his character Harold from the Harold and Kumar movies had gotten stoned and decided to join Star Fleet, but it works. Even Anton Yelchin's Chekov (who diehards know shouldn't even be on the Enterprise yet) is a pleasant surprise, complete with the Cold War accent.
  
  Aside from the characters, the trickiest thing about this production was updating the look of Star Trek. This is, after all, a movie set before the original series, whose technology and style already seem dated. This is another front on which Abrams succeeds. The new/old Enterprise captures the look of the original one but looks entirely more viable, and its hot-rod-esque lines manage a look at once futuristic and vintage. The costumes and uniforms here manage to pay homage to the original series as well, making it seem entirely plausible that 60s-styled fashions come back into vogue in the 23rd century. The new Trek also does a good job of acknowledging the original series' inherent campiness without falling victim to it, though there are a couple of scenes that are obviously played for laughs and don't seem to fit with the rest of the film.
  
  Despite its successes, the new Star Trek has some pretty serious flaws. The first is the villain. It's a bit problematic within the established canon of Star Trek to have a Romulan villian, since the original series made it clear that no one from the Federation had ever seen a Romulan, even after fighting a war with them, until Kirk encountered one near the neutral zone. But Enterprise clouded the continuity issue during its troubled run, and this is, after all, a reboot of the franchise taking place in a different reality from the franchise as we know it, so I'm willing to drop the fanboy grudge. But Nero is a pretty flat character, nowhere near as interesting as Trek's greatest villains like the unforgettable Khan. His motivation to kill Spock doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and his plan is nebulous at best. The technobabble and the science behind the science fiction is also pretty weak here, with black hole singularities acting as time travel portals and the vague mumbo jumbo about the supernova-inducing red matter.
  
  The biggest risk that Abrams takes in his new vision of Trek is a huge one: he destroys Vulcan. The entire planet, along with most of its billions of inhabitants, including Spock's human mother, dies, turned into a massive singularity. Here's the ballsy part: in a movie that plays with time lines and alternate realities, he LEAVES IT DESTROYED. In effect, this renders all the previous films and series (with the exception of Enterprise) completely moot. They never happened, not in the time line established by this film anyway. This is a huge decision, as it changes the very fabric of the Trek universe in a way that can never be explained away as some minor inconsistency. Killing Vulcan sends a message that the Trek franchise is poised to boldly go where it's never gone before, but it remains to be seen if that place is worth going.
  
  All in all, the new Star Trek is a success. it's a big, loud, sleek, brand new Star Trek, a bona fide summer blockbuster with all the trimmings. For longtime fans, that's both the good news and the bad news.
  
• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2009-05-11 at 3:19pm:
  What made the previous Original Series episodes, Original Series movies, TNG, and DS9 so meaningful to the hardcore fans was the "commentary" about morality, ideals, and the human experience, not the special effects. This sounds boring, but it is not, because those things made the franchise stand out from other shows and movies, and have kept it around since the late 60's. How many other franchises have lasted so long?
  
  The makers of Star Trek (2009) have decided to do away with all of that "moral stuff" and focus on creating a summer action popcorn movie.
  
  The common belief out there is that today's audiences want to see explosions and action, not meaning. I don't hold this belief, and I think the current generation of movie goers are unfairly stereotyped as having severe ADHD. Give people a chance!
  
  HOWEVER, as a popcorn movie, this is pretty fun to watch. The casting is wonderful, and we get to see them in some funny situations. The soundtrack is also wonderful. These, and other strengths almost make me forget about the "moral stuff," .... almost.
  
  What about the plot? In short, it is pretty pathetic, even for an action movie; lots of clichés and pieces similar to the previous movies (especially Nemesis). I don't want to waste too much space explaining specifically what I found dumb about the plot, but there are some real problems that I think people will be talking about for the next 15 years.
  
  I ended up giving this movie a 5. I'm conflicted, which isn't a good thing. I think they have a chance to do something better in the next movie, they just need to remember Roddenberry’s vision.
  
• From elim on 2009-05-11 at 6:00pm:
  E tu, Kethinov?
  
  I actually am in partial agreement with your “bad idea, good execution” assessment of the movie. It was, indeed a bad idea.
  
  The characters, with the exceptions you gave of Chekov and Sulu, to which I would also add Kirk, were decently to well acted, but they were almost all terribly written. The writers were apparently unaware that frustration and vindictiveness are emotions, so they made all of the Vulcans express those emotions all the time. Then to emphasize Spock’s human lineage and contrast it with the already emotional Vulcans, they made him downright Emo. Kirk on the other hand, seemed incapable of expressing any emotion other than smug, and he came off as a complete asshole throughout the movie and offered no reason for anybody to care about him in the slightest.
  
  Scotty’s acting was fine, but his character was wasted on his pet Ewok. Despite the effort they made to show that Uhura was an expert at xenolinguistics, she only did three things during the entire movie: make out with Spock, take off her clothes, and get accidentally groped by Kirk. The only character who was actually done well was McCoy, and a good part of that was due to the fact that he got to torture the thoroughly unlikable Kirk.
  
  For a movie that tried so hard to be funny, the attempted jokes were groan-inducingly awful. Kirk falling on Uhura’s boobs? Scotty’s pet Ewok sitting on the equipment? Seriously? Then there are all the jibes the human characters make against Spock and Spock makes against the other Vulcans for being so emotional, which really doesn’t work when they have such emotional reactions. Finally most of the “nods to continuity” you mentioned were painfully self-aware meta references to various clichés of the various series that constantly broke the fourth wall.
  
  The action scenes were also uniformly awful, from the flashing-lights-and-jump-cuts direction of the space battles to driving a car into the Great Gaping Chasm of the Iowa Plains (did Nero’s time travel escapades cause the Xindi to attack Earth again?), to the button that retracted the parachute back into its case, to the fact that Sulu and Random Romulan Dude both dropped their guns at the same time, but both just happened to bring archaic weaponry with them just in case. By the time Kirk and Nero had their climactic battle in the Romulan ship that was designed for the sole purpose of being dangerous, I felt like Sigourney Weaver’s character in Galaxy Quest demanding that “whoever wrote this movie should be killed.”
  
  To top it all off, the attempts at tugging the audience’s heartstrings with “intense emotion” fall completely flat (unless you count the burning desire to punch a hole through the screen, but I don’t think that’s what they were going for). The big emotional scene, the destruction of Vulcan, was so utterly contrived and unrealistic it was impossible to take seriously.
  
  Just think of the sequence of events. A supernova destroys Romulus (and all the effort done over the course of the years to make the Romulans one of the more interesting species) Spock tries unsuccessfully to save them. Unfortunately, the few Romulans who survive are really, really stupid so they blame Spock for the supernova and decide to go back in time to suck Vulcan into a black hole. Despite that they are complete imbeciles (and terrible architects) they somehow have enough black-hole-making knowhow that they are able to do this. And why did all this happen? The Romulans motivations don’t make any sense, but the writer’s motivation was clear: it was to teach Spock and Kirk a valuable lesson about the importance of friendship. Also, if Spock’s mother had been standing a few feet to the side, she would have survived.
  
  The treatment Romulans is where the movie gets downright offensive. When the Romulans were first introduced in “Balance of Terror” the best episode of TOS, made especially awesome because of how sympathetic the villains were. Then over the course of the franchise, we get things like “Unification” and “In the Pale Moonlight” and other classics, humanizing the Romulans as a race. How does it all end? The majority of the Romulans die an off-screen death, the rest of them become stupid cartoonish supervillains so the good guys can bond and have a bit of a giggle at the species extinction. They come in with “In a different reality I could have called you ‘friend’,” and go out with Spock: “‘Captain, what are you doing?’ Kirk: ‘Showing a little compassion, may be the only way to earn peace with the Romulans. It's logic, Spock. I thought you'd like that.’ Spock: ‘No, not really. Not this time’.”
  
  The question you asked at the beginning of your review would make for an interesting premise, but this movie, contrary to your claim, does not grapple with the question in the slightest. Kirk is told that in the original reality his father survived, but nobody mentions that he was a wimpy bookworm who got picked on by Finnegan. He never actually learns anything about the “non-traumatized” version of himself and audience members who haven’t seen TOS wouldn’t even know that old timeline Kirk was a different character. The time travel stuff barely gets any attention and it serves two main purposes: to provide an extra cog in the Rube Goldberg Vulcan-Destroying Machine, and to provide a cheap excuse for continuity errors.
  
  This is not a clever examination of the consequences of time travel. It’s a repetition of the half-assed attempts at building a coherent DC Comics Universe. There, because the writers made no attempt at continuity for most of DC’s history, they used a cheap multiverse explanation to cover up their tracks. Thus the golden age characters and the modern characters get their own universes. Adam West’s, Tim Burton’s, Joel Schumacher’s and Chris Nolan’s versions of Batman all get their own universes. The result is that the continuity gets extra convoluted to the point where there is no point thinking about it at all.
  
  Until now, Star Trek never messed things up so badly to the point where stuff like that was necessary to maintain a single continuity. There may have been alternate realities, but it was always clear that we were following a single reality, even if they made occasional slip-ups. This movie turns the entire franchise into an incoherent mess. They should have either made a genuine effort to follow continuity or go the BSG route and make it completely separate without even the pretense that the two realities are connected (frankly I would have preferred a female Spock to Scotty’s pet Ewok).
  
  As it is, the newly introduced continuity is atrocious. But even if we chose to go back to the old continuity, the movie screws that up to, by destroying Romulus in a supernova and making the survivors a bunch of idiots. For those of us who wanted to see a movie dealing with Federation-Romulan relations post-DS9, “Nemesis” was a wasted opportunity, but this movie not only crushed those dreams but salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there again.
  
  Frankly, the only way that I could even tolerate this episode as being part of the same continuity as the rest of Star Trek is if it turned out the whole movie was a Holodeck adventure created by a 12-year-old boy. The whole thing was excruciating and unwatchable.
  
• From Kethinov on 2009-05-11 at 7:19pm:
  Elim, your post is well written and touched me. I feel many aspects of your pain. For a moment you convinced me that the destruction of Romulus was nothing more than a cavalierly conceived of plot device, an egregious insult to one of the founding members of the Star Trek universe. Like Federation replicated Romulan Ale, you had me convinced for a moment. But only for a moment. On further reflection, it occurred to me that the destruction of Romulus didn't phase me because it was actually a pretty smart move.
  
  Suppose the original timeline still exists and the Star Trek narrative returns to it some day. The distinct lack of information this film gives us about the events of that timeline is precisely what could make it a compelling drama again. Consider this: we don't know very much about what led to Romulus' destruction. What if the supernova wasn't a natural phenomenon but was the deployment of a weapon created by an enemy of the empire? That's a pretty good premise for a decent continuation of the 24th century right there.
  
  The potential for drama in that premise is nearly endless. Just as one of the Federation's greatest adversaries is on the verge of making peace, one of the empire's rivals from their warlike past destroys their home world. For all we know, the Romulus star was the only star system in the Romulan Empire destroyed. The empire itself could live on in the remaining colonies and the demeanor of the survivors might be something fierce to contend with.
  
  Thinking up fun premises like that are what give me hope that intelligent storytelling in Star Trek can live on. We may have had an immature action romp this time around, but times change. Maybe Star Trek can get back to its roots some day. Thanks for your comment, Elim!
• From MrVicchio on 2009-05-11 at 8:59pm:
  I'd like to say I have been a fan of this site, and reading the reviews of TNG as my wife and I re-watched them, so after watching Star Trek: Galactic Reset as I liked to refer to it, I came here eager to see your views, and to be honest, I was surprised, pleasantly that you didn't rip it to shreds :)
  
  A friend of mine is all discombobulated over this movie. "They've destroyed START TREK!!!" he goes on and on about. I did mollify him by pointing out that there is precedence in Trek for this sort of time travel alternating of the Trek Universe. My prime example? Tasha Yar. They changed history, and here it happens again.
  
  I was impressed with the new look, they updated the Enterprise in a way I that just made it seem more plausible. Main Engineering is no longer a small but cozy office, but a working space.
  
  Spock and Bones were near as perfect as you could get, Scotty was fun to watch, Kirk was manageable and the others were... well weak. Uhura was a typical black smart female with sexy sass.. gee we haven't seen that a million times before. The original was much more respectfully and earnestly portrayed, I was very disappointed in her.
  
  I get why they killed Vulcan, to give Spock an emotional depth he lacked, I don't know if that will work out, but I'm willing to give them another movie to convince me Trek has been reborn.
  
  PS Thanks for all the great reviews, and we'll be back here for DS9 when it hits the mail box!
• From Bernard on 2009-05-14 at 7:17pm:
  I'll get my gripes out of the way first. I have never so far commented on other peoples ratings when I have put a comment on here, but who is giving the ratings of 10 for this movie?? Maybe someone that has could post a message here to explain the reasoning? I would never give 10 unless I consider the episode/movie to be almost perfect in most departments (based on the premise that no production is ever totally perfect in every way)
  Okay, onto the gripes. I hate some of the basic flaws displayed in this movie that have already been mentioned in great detail. For example, we have Delta Vega as close to Vulcan as we are to our moon annoyingly just so that Spock can witness the destruction. Couldn't they just have said that he 'felt' all those deaths, after all vulcans are quite apparently sensitive to other beings with mind melds and such. That would not have been such a large leap of common sense for me. I'll leave it right there for the nitpicky stuff, but we can all agree that simple things were done incorrectly and it's not as if the information is hard to come by regarding the trek-verse is it. I also agree with someone above, that the plot is shaky at best, the movie carries itself off at breakneck pace to hide that particular frailty. I think looking for deep meaning in certain areas will give you a headache though.
  
  I have chosen (and had chosen before I even went to see it in case it was awful) to look at this movie in a completely positive light and ignore everything that I dislike.
  
  The characters, the meat of the movie, are excellently fleshed out for me. The central story of Kirk and Spock is really well done. Spock is how I'd always imagined he could have been, well done to Zachary Quinto. Chris Pine could have so easily fallen into the mire that would have been a parody of Shatner, I know some people will not like him. I think he brings some of the Kirk qualities perfectly and the rest I put down to the difference in his upbringing. He is cocky, but also quite disarming too. I loved the interaction between the two characters.
  I thought the other characters were all great too. Chekov was always a bit of a goof in the original series anyway, I didn't have a problem with him. Didn't see too much of Sulu or Scotty (played by the superb Simon Pegg!). I disagree that Uhura doesn't do much, yes she doesn't have the dignified grace of Nichelle Nichols, but Uhura is finally given credit for being a member of the team and is played with a bit more zest. I don't see mimics paying off in the long run anyway... Except, McCoy. I absolutely loved watching Karl Urban as bones from the first moment he got on the screen. He was amazingly close to copying Deforest Kelleys McCoy. I'm glad they didn't all do the same though. Nearly forgot about Captain Pike, Bruce Greenwood is superb. The movie is let down by the villain a bit, when you hire Eric Bana, use him better! but I realise they had to focus on the relationship between the central characters for the movie to work.
  
  I adore the look of the movie, the starships, planets, black holes, uniforms, aliens, everything. The soundtrack is excellent, I keep listening to it on YouTube. The opening sequence is something that I loved too, probably the only scene in the movie when I felt true menace, fear and it was done slightly over the top for me but also the self sacrifice aspect. Surely a true Star Trek scene? The scenes showing Kirks youth, spocks youth and the academy days are so much of what I was looking forward to. I wish they'd spent longer on that. Kobyashi Maru lived up to my expectations though, I loved that scene. I'm starting to put my finger on precisely what is wrong with this movie. Many scenes are very well done, characters are interesting, but plot is gaping.
  
  I think that they have done a clever thing in wiping the slate clean. By changing everything they can go anywhere they like with the next movie (and the one after?). They don't have to get anybody into the right place for certain aspects of continuity, what a relief! They can develop the characters and species etc. in any way they want now because this universe now bears no resemblence to anything else in the Star Trek franchise. I don't care about canon too much anymore since they made 'Enterprise'. In fact I wish they had simply 'remade' Star Trek without any explanation. Why is one needed? To satisfy all the trekkies that care about continuity and so forth? Well in that case mission.... not accomplished! Many are not satisfied with the way it fits into Trek canon.
  
  I did really like this film by the way and I'm not disturbed by the fact that it overrides the trek timeline in the slightest. It is a fun romp of a movie and really it is only the beginning. What follows should be far better now they have set it up. For the next installment, I want them to forget trying to explain anything and just write a damned good story. Let them loose on an interesting premise and watch the characters grow up.
• From Dave E on 2009-05-15 at 9:42pm:
  You wanted to know why someone would post a 10. I am a 10 poster. Here's why. For the entire duration of this movie, I was 100% engaged in what was going on. I laughed, squirmed, and cared deeply about these characters. I was touched by all the references to the old show. It was great seeing Nimoy. I was mad when the movie ended, because I did not want it to stop. A friend of mine compared this to the feeling he got walking out of the theater in 1977 after seeing Star Wars the first time.
  
  A "10" rating does not mean the entire movie has to be perfect. It's not a "Mint" or "NOS" condition rating like collectibles. A "10" rating for a movie means it's on your list of Best Movies Ever. And, for me, this is added to the list, alongside Star Wars, 2001, and a few non-sci fi flicks.
• From Obsidian Disorder on 2009-05-17 at 6:11am:
  The 3 previews before the film were:
  1) The new GI Joe
  2) The new Terminator
  3) The new Transformers
  
  The previews of all looked similar with lots of explosions and large vehicles/robots/ships blowing up/blowing stuff up. Then we had 2 hours of Star Trek that looked the same and shredded most of Trek history. Vulcan Destroyed? So what! We are going in a new direction for a couple of films! No one cares about TOS, TNG, Voyager, DS9! That's for old folks. I guess they plan to milk their all new Trek universe for some big budget summer movies until one tanks at the box office and then leave it dead on the side of the road. I really wanted to like the film, but I found myself horrified by its assault on all Trek that has come before. Hmmm, one positive: I liked Sulus cool sword.
• From elim on 2009-05-18 at 3:17am:
  Okay, I will accept that it’s still possible to redeem the franchise and still count the movie as cannon. The premise you suggested for a 24th century storyline does sound awesome but, as you said about BSG, “I will not gush all over the show over the mere implication of good stories to come.” The prospect that maybe, just maybe, someone competent will take over the franchise and tell a good story doesn’t make up for two hours of product placement, dry humping, contrived plotlines, casual genocide, and really boring fight scenes between two-dimensional heroes and one-dimensional villains. Especially since Obsidian Disorder’s predictions are much more likely to come to pass than any Coto-ification.
  
  If they gave any indication, either in the movie or in interviews or anywhere, that they intended to follow through with the destruction of Romulus by telling what really happened in a future storyline, I’d be more inclined to accept it as a smart move. However, given the commitment J.J. and co. have shown thus far towards developing the Romulans (none whatsoever) it’s hard to view it as anything more a cavalierly conceived of plot device.
  
  Hopefully, they’ll establish some coherent criteria for canonicity amongst the Star Trek novels and comic books, because it’s looking like that’s where all the good stories will come from now.
  
  
• From Krs321 on 2009-05-20 at 5:53pm:
  1. The reason no one freaked out about the Romulans looking like Vulcans is because besides the ears, these Romulans don't look at all like Vulcans like they do in regular canon.
  
  2. No mention here of the what I assume is an Orion chick? Suddenly they're Star Fleet cadets? Maybe she's a half-breed child raised offworld and doesn't have the intoxicating pheromones? And what's with the inclusion of all the other new races? Annoying.
  
  3. I assumed when Spock said that the supernova "treatened the entire Galaxy", he spoke to the political shockwave that the destruction of Romulus would create. Unintented but potentially useful dialogue line.
  
  4. I echo the comments regarding the treatment of the Romulan race character. The most compelling race is whittled down to little more than alien of the week. I guess the fact that the "real" Romulan empire still exists in the Chris Pine timeline means they're still badass, but excrutiating nonetheless.
  
  
  5. The biggeswt problem with the plot for me isn't the time travelling (abused in Stark Trek, especially in films) or the blandness of Nero, it's Starfleet/the Federation/Vulcan's plan of sending an ancient ambassador on a solo mission into Romulan space with the most dangerous substance this side of Omega particles. WTF?
  
  Side-bar stupidity: Regulation whatever that says a Captain can be relieved because of emotional whatever blah blah blah. Please. "well, we can't have Bones declare him unfit for command because that threat is even more overused than time travel, let's invent something especially damning for Vulcans". Groan.
  
  6. Kirk - C: Chris Pine did alright but he was written too smug and fratty. he just wasn't cool at all. The only reason anyone did what he wanted was that he had the balls to speak up when Uhura didn't. Wouldn't call him a leader really. Reflection on how people define leadership today? Hmm..
  
  I thought they botched the Kobayashi Maru test scene by making it silly and slightly obnoxious; although, I guess we that meshes with the fact that this timeline's Kirk is part douche and less clever.
  
  Spock - A-: The writers seemed to be a little off on what vulcans are like but overall it was pretty interesting to see the alternate reality Spock with a little more emotion. Hated that "no, not this time" line. I felt that betrayed the character and the franchise.
  
  Bones - A-: DeForest Kelly created an iconic character and Urban nailed a younger version perfectly without letting it devolve into parody. I gave him an A- because I like my Star Trek traditional and I loved the nods and thought Urban really hit Bones' cadences and inflections perfectly, but some people might think it's boring and safe to go that route.
  
  The "stallion" exchange between he and Spock is a delightful piece of writing.
  
  Scotty - B+: The original Scotty wasn't funny because he was silly, he just had a knack for the right turn of phrase + scottish accent. Pegg is amusing and I'm waiting to see the character evolve, but not if it becomes the designated forced comic relief. The Ewok character was a bad move but can be quietly disavowed in subsequent installments.
  
  Sulu - D: One of my favorite characters from TOS is suddenly without a shoehorned character with no personality. Not much to say here other than he's asian, at the helm, and uses a sword (katana btw, not an epee, so not exactly fencing, are we? Just say you're trained in swordfighting next time or something). Forgot to take off the space-parking break? Hilarious...seriously.
  
  Chekov - C+, I guess: Meh. Chekov's once delightful accent is suddenly a parody. I liked that the writers had him say that he's 17 thus making it somewhat plausible that he's on the ship when everyone else is just graduating the academy. Not a bad character revamp considering the original was pretty fluffy and somewhat annoying.
  
  Uhura - C: Abuse of generic characterization alert. She's got boobs and a sassy attitude...watch out! Why is a newly minted cadet able to speak 3 dialects of Romulan when the currently stationed officer on the newly minted FLAGSHIP unable to even differentiate between Klingon and Romulan? I guess she's a phenom or something but use her appropriately and not try to make her the Megan Fox of this franchise. I actually thought her relationship with Spock had/has potential, but was too heaviy handed. Chris Pine Kirk's writing also had a hand in making her kind of a waste.
  
  
  
  Overall, I actually enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I liked the new visuals, just ease the pacing and cool it on the punching sound effects (every punch sounded like an Ali haymaker! How does anyone still have a face??) I thought it was still "Star Trek" enough, although I'd rather someone other than JJ direct the next installment. I'm willing to see the franchise move in a new direction as long as it makes sense and is done well.
• From Dio on 2009-05-25 at 10:12pm:
  I have not seen many episodes from TOS or anything before TNG Season 1. I've thoroughly examined the entire TNG and a lot of DS9 however. And I understand what makes Star Trek standout - the episodes that examine emotions and relationships. The fighting and aliens are nice but at the end of the day, I remember "The Inner Light", "Tapestry" and "In The Pale Moonlight...".
  
  That's why, as a fan of the Star Trek universe, I didn't like this movie. The action is all well and good but, as stated above, the emotional side of the story was a complete letdown. Even the main plot was confusing and unnecessarily drawn out - I would have loved to see a lot more introduction between the crew members and how they find themselves onboard the Enterprise.
  
  Also, many people who are unfamiliar with Star Trek believe it to be just about guns, aliens and spaceships. This really applies to all sci-fi of course (I'm an even bigger Star Wars fan, sorry!). I saw this movie with some friends who are new to Star Trek, and it certainly reinforced the idea that action is the main reason why people watch Trek. It just gets on my nerves - I wish they could understand the beauty of "All Good Things..." or Q's games with Picard.
  
  Because I don't feel connected to TOS or the characters before TNG, this movie didn't really upset me and I was able to appreciate it for whatever it is. However, if they try something like this with TNG, they better plan it out A LOT better.
• From ek5a on 2009-06-09 at 8:36pm:
  This definitely is an alternate timeline - Simply because Old Spock exists. If the original timeline is destroyed by the events of this film that will old Spock will wink out existence. The fact that he remains at the end of the movie means that events of TOS, TNG, DS9 and the rest continue to exist, with Old Spock disappearing from their timeline at some point and diverging into this new alternate one.
  
  So basically it's a long thread that continues on and a split occurs that continues on a parallel plane from the Kelvin incident. I wish I could draw this.
• From Kethinov on 2009-06-10 at 4:40pm:
  No ek5a, if that reasoning were correct, then all previous uses of time travel would be alternate universes too, which is not the case.
  
  That said, I am fairly convinced this is an alternate universe, but not for that reason. See my article on the subject linked above.
• From Giuseppe on 2009-10-26 at 10:38pm:
  This movie was pretty much what I expected: very good as a summer blockbuster, but mediocre as a Star Trek story. The special effects are great, the action is what you would expect from a movie made in the late 2000s, but the acting isn't all that great, the story is pretty iffy at times and it relies on too many extraordinary coincidences to be believable.
  Basically, if you're interested in two hours of lighthearted fun then this is the movie for you; if, on the other hand, you're looking for a great work of the science fiction genre then you might as well look somewhere else.
  Personally this movie was a fun, if rather shallow, experience. But that's just my two cents.
• From Kirk 377 on 2010-04-22 at 10:32am:
  @kethinov -Maybe traveling back through a black hole to go back in time had something to do with the alternate reality? (I don't know, just a theory) I'm sure it's a alternate universe, because the movie says so. I think Uhuru says it on the bridge once they have figured things out. Plus the release of the Star Trek Online game(I don't know if it's cannon, I read it was set after Nemesis) So don't worry Star Trek has done alternate realities before-just for a standard episode. So why would they throw away everything, if they didnt have to. I love the new movie and also can't wait for whats to come, but I don't wanna give up everything thats been. And who knows Universe B(Star Trek XI) could use things from Universe A(40 years of greatness). They already kept our Spock. Maybe have a TNG character visit Universe B, a universe where they might not even be born! Ah just a little idea, I know it won't happen. but you get the idea. Plus Universe A could have alot left in it. If they do things right than Star Trek XI just raised the bar, by giving us basically 2 different Star Trek's. If Star trek 12 does reset everything, I'm not gonna count it as my version of cannon.
• From Pemmer Harge on 2010-07-16 at 7:45pm:
  Massively superior to any Star Trek since the end of DS9. Indeed I'd go so far as to say it singlehandedly made Trek relevant again. Bravo.
• From wes on 2011-03-21 at 10:04pm:
  I agree that this movie was great as a summer blockbuster. It felt an awful lot like Transformers with all the action.
  
  JJ Abrams said that he wanted to make this Star Trek movie much more like Star Wars because he felt that the pace of Trek was a bit slow. I enjoyed getting to know the little bit about the characters in this setting that I could, but I sure hope there is quite a bit more of what we all knew and loved in the rest of Star Trek in the next film(s) -- commentary on humanity and morals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Star Wars didn't even really deal much with morals and what it means to be human, did it? The original Star Wars trilogy had some good character development, not great character development.
  
  I really hope Abrams decides to get a real good story pinned down for this next film. Have something that makes more sense and that will allow depth for the characters (i.e. The Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath of Khan, DS9 episodes, etc.).
  
  I understand and will defend that this film was a good way to reintroduce the characters and launch into a new wave of films. However, now let's get back to what made Star Trek great.
  
  Kirk annoyed me at times. He's more of a jerk than he is confident and sure of himself. He didn't really show any leader qualities at all.
  
  Quinto did a MARVELOUS job portraying Spock. I'm glad he has signed on for the rest of the films. He should really get to develop his version of Spock a lot more.
  
  Having lived in Russia, I thought Chekov was great. The way he struggles with his accent and even his "Yomayo!" was PERFECT! I got a huge kick out of him.
  
  Zoe Saldana's Uhura really annoyed me. It seemed almost wrong for Uhura to be a major love interest of anyone. She's always had a quiet dignity about her, which was most appreciated. Now she's sassy and has a big role for no apparent reason.
  
  @Kethinov, How can we let Abrams and his writers hear our voice that he should be sure to go back to what made Star Trek great in the beginning -- social commentary? That's what it seems so many of us want to see.
• From Kethinov on 2011-03-22 at 12:35am:
  @wes The best way I know of is simply to be vocal on the internet about how a summer blockbuster is not the best way to ensure Star Trek's long term health either in the creative sense or in the fiscal sense. This movie may have been a success, but it will not sustain a long term rejuvenation of Star Trek as I have previously argued.
  
  Websites like this one do occasionally influence the creative direction of the producers, but only in extremely rare cases in my experience. I can count on one hand the number of times I have directly interacted with a producer or writer from any sci-fi show. Typically TPTB have their own vision and since most of this stuff is subjective anyway they can be difficult to influence.
• From EvanT on 2011-06-25 at 11:14pm:
  "it is not well understood why Spock can't simply go back in time to stop Nero from destroying the Kelvin"
  
  It's never implied that they can control where in time they'll get thrust. But that's hardly the issue. Consider this: N
  
  ero takes his ship and delivers it to the Tal Shiar of the past along with the hunk of red matter and his ship's historical and scientific database --> The Romulans conquer pretty much the whole galaxy in short order.
  
  The villain in this movie is portrayed as ridiculously stupid (you'd imagine he'd have enough time to cool off in 25+ years of waiting and do something constructive with all that technology and fire power), acts in distinctively non-Romulan fashion and he doesn't even act on the immediate threat (or we're not told about it). You know which star will go nova. Go and destroy it now in the past with the red matter so it's never a threat. There! You're wife's now safe. That's the least he could've done.
  
  Where's the delicious Romulan guile, duplicity and industriousness?
  
  Nope, we're treated instead to an unrealistic and monolithic slab of idiocy. And I might buy it if Nero was alone on the ship. But he had an entire crew with him. Where they ALL morons? No one had a more romulan-like idea on how to use their ship?
  
  But enough of that. All in all, it's sad that the premise had potential and the film was really well-made for an action movie. And it had enough effects and action scenes to please the general audience. But no, we just had to have a plot no longer than a single paragraph.
  
  In short: WASTED POTENTIAL
  
  I'm waiting for the second movie and I sincerely hope it won't be the final nail on the coffin and it won't completely alienate the fan base (and in the mean time, we're still waiting even for a rumour of a new TV show).
• From Cory on 2011-08-27 at 5:46pm:
  I'm sorry the more and more I read about these negative reviews of this movie, the more angry I get. Now listen, I've been watching Star Trek since I was born, literally, I was raised on the Trek Movies, in fact I know them more then I even know Disney!
  
  Now this movie was by no stretch of the imagination perfect, but a lot of things a lot of you bash the movie for just don't make any sense to me.
  
  First the Romulans being one dimensional cartoony villains. What do you expect people? These were miners, a ship full of minors, I'm not expecting General Chang Hamlet quoting here, they were simple minors who witnessed the destruction of there home world, and Romulans are established as emotional as it is, so of course they would try to blame Spock, of course they would be savages, insanity isn't supposed to make sense, honestly what do you expect here?
  
  How can people bash any of the minor characters, in TOS the only characters that were given ANY arcs were Spock, Bones and Kirk, this movie at least gave EVERYBODY some relevance and allowed them to do stuff.
  
  Guys, this next one is simple, Star Trek established thousands of times a multiverse exists. See TNG Parallels to confirm this, this is just a whole new universe they are asking us to follow, a perfect way to introduce a reboot by star trek standards.
  
  How can people bash this movie for not having moral implications but defend movies like Voyage Home? Voyage Home at the time was created EXACTLY for this reason, to bring in more of a main stream audience to Star Trek, and the plot was laughable, but that isn't the issue, the reason Voyage Home was so good was because it was a good movie first, entertaining, funny, and had you invested for most of it, just like this one.
  
  This movie did everything it needed to do, it gave us die hard trek fans something to fan-gasm about with all of the inside references only we can pick up, it gave us a great action popcorn flick which brought star trek into 21st century households, making it relevant again, and its not NEARLY as insulting as all of you make it out to be. Any nitpicks can be made about every, single, trek film, period.
• From Gul Darhe'el on 2012-01-27 at 4:49pm:
  If one’s expectation for any production named “Star Trek” is to be defined by work done prior that had the same label, then by all rights this movie should not be called “Star Trek”. “Star Cowboys”, “Extreme Galaxy Protectors”, or “Fast Times in the Milky Way” would seem more appropriate titles to this film. How could anyone give this movie the same name as a series that produced episodes like “Tapestry” or “The Visitor”? It is akin to labeling an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians as “Shakespearian”. For that reason, I think all the debate over whether or not this belongs in the established canon or is an alternate universe is pointless because this movie is simply not Star Trek. It is special effect drenched, soul-less fluff that will be forgotten as quickly as it was watched. The studio may get one or two more sequels out of this before its thrown in the scrap bin with the likes of Thor, Captain America, Transformers, or any of the other short term franchises built around CGI instead of real story-telling. The tragedy is younger generations that this movie was specifically made to target will associate this with Star Trek instead of TNG, DS9, Voyager, or even Enterprise.
• From jonnyskillz on 2012-02-24 at 8:12am:
  What about the erroneous use of the uniform emblem? It's used on the uss Kelvin and two decades later at Starfleet academy. The emblem on Starfleet uniforms (of the period before w.o.k.) is supposed to be referential to ones assigned starship. Ie t.o.s. doomsday machine or ent. In a mirror darkly II. It's possibly reconciled if the uss Kelvin were assigned the enterprise emblem (as no enterprise was commissioned at the time). So with the tragic and sudden destruction of the Kelvin, maybe as a tribute, Starfleet adopted the "enterprise" emblem fleet-wide. In the prime or original timeline, Starfleet adopted fleet-wide use of it to honor the enterprise's heroics with the resolution of the v'ger incident in t.m.p. also, didn't spocks mom die at birth as mentioned in part v (t.f.f.)? Other than that, I found jj abrams trek acceptable and even enjoyable.
• From neoteotihuacan on 2012-03-30 at 5:25am:
  @kethinov Thank you for this site. Its awesome.
  I was thinking that the world can use a Star Trek review site and, upon discovering you (through the Google) you follow through quite well.
  
  Now, about Star Trek 11...I feel I must take issue with some of the criticisms floating around the page here.
  
  - The Romulan ship could be designed anyway that it needed to be...I agree, it is odd (and remarkably, probably purposefully, reminiscent of the Romulan ship in Nemesis, as they are the same species/same time period, so the ship styles would naturally be related). But, importantly, spaceships even in reality have unique design requirements that are very different than craft that are meant to traverse atmospheres. That, combined with a fictional alien race (with its own fictional, alien mindsets) makes it plausible in my mind that an alien ship can be any shape or color it wants to be without any explanation whatsoever. Really, the thing I find most baffling in the universe of Star Trek (and all sci-fi, for that matter) is the covergent evolution of spacecraft design...I mean, does every single species in the galaxy build their starships with a bridge, for example? THAT seems odd to me.
  
  - Concerning your criticism that no one was surprised that Romulans and Vulcans favor, that would be because Earth already met the Romulans in war between 2156-2160.Its true, in canon, that no one human had seen a Romulan until Kirk's time. However, it is safe to assume that Humanity knew somethings about Romulans through intelligence gathering, and through their Vulcan friends.
  
  - As far as Spock's line about the supernova threatening the entire galaxy...I am willing to bet he meant that politically.
  
  - Delta Vega. Ya, they screwed that up. The TOS crew already encountered a Delta Vega, near the galactic barrier, which is NOT in the Vulcan system. But, let's say that there are 2 planetary bodies called Delta Vega. Why would the Vulcans name a moon in their system in a human language? Why not name it a Vulcan name? I thought this was kinda odd. This is a case of the writers not paying enough attention...and they have no excuse really, I mean the internet is right here.
  
  - Delta Vega is too close to Vulcan to NOT be destroyed. There can be no explaining this away. It is an oversight of the laws of physics suspended to show the audience a heartwrenching shot in the movie. And it was heartwrenching...at the time I was watching it I just couldn't believe the writers were that brave.
  
  - As far as the beaming stuff works...we can give fictional Scotty and fictional Spock the benefit of the doubt on that one, right? The Star Trek universe is filled with lots of technology that escapes explanation.
  
  - Agreed on the time of travel between Vulcan and Earth...obviously cut down to move the story along. Although, when they dropped out of warp...man was that a shot! Crazy stuff...
  
  - "The physics behind the portrayal of black holes in this film are a bit fuzzy at times"...to this I say, the physics of Star Trek in general is fuzzy at times!!
  
  
  Like many of you that have commented, I am torn by this movie. I loved watching it! It was really exciting; a great popcorn flick. Afterward, non-trek-types would discuss the movie and its fictional implications and, generally, are interested when I present them with back story. This 3rd Generation of Star Trek, as kethinov classifies it, has reignited the franchise to a degree. And this is worth celebrating.
  
  However, the movie does trample a bit on Roddenberry's golden rules. It stays true excellently to form for some characters, and poorly reinvents others (quite disappointed in Uhura's changes). Quinto's Spock is soooo awesome. Seriously. It does mention the point of Star Trek nriefly, in a bar with Pike and Kirk, but does not put this to the forefront as a good episode might. And the villains are terribly two-dimensional, a fault not just of this film but of almost every Star Trek film (all but I and IV have villains!! And only General Chang did not suck!). It is possible, in Star Trek to put together a great villain...Gul Dukat comes to mind. So, this isn't J.J. Abrams & Crew's fault; they were simply following form.
  
  While I look forward to more of this 3rd generation of Trek, I know that it will not be perfect. If a writer does happen to grace these comments and then goes on to write the next movie or TV series, then please let me say only two things that will put you on the right path to proper Trekdom:
  
  1) Star Trek is about the future of Humanity...it is a vessel to discuss current issues we currently face. It is not about 2D villains. Please reconsider the villain in the Star Trek universe. Its very outdated.
  
  2) Please research everything. Continuity is a pet peeve, I imagine, but it is held in high regard by Trek fans. I suppose it helps us to suspend disbelief. The internet is alive with Trek resources. THIS site is an excellent resource. So is the sprawling memory-alpha site. Google it, and you will please the fans.
  
  Thanks kethinov. The site is very great! Keep up the good work.
• From Glenn239 on 2012-10-19 at 3:12pm:
  QUOTE: I'll get my gripes out of the way first. I have never so far commented on other peoples ratings when I have put a comment on here, but who is giving the ratings of 10 for this movie??
  
  No problem, Bernard. I’ll tell you why I gave this one a ‘10’.
  
  The TNG movies were unmitigated dross from start to finish. VII was the worst pile of junk I’ve ever seen, and the others were not much better. The last good Trek movie was VI, arguably the best ST movie made and the posterchild for the argument that old age, and only old age , finished off the “Kirk” team.
  
  Now, just as Picard and his band of merry morons appear to have ‘double tapped’ the whole franchise out of existence with their painfully bad characters in painfully bad plots, along comes J.J. Abrams. He examined these unqualified atrocities against mankind and decides to ‘punt’ - rebooting the franchise from its original strength, as if Captain Shorty “Surrenderpants” Picard and his Care Bear friends never existed, (which, with a handy asteroid or two on some hometowns in the 2nd film, might even be arranged).
  
  I never cared for Roddenberry’s pompous vision of humanity, and therefore I do not respond to Star Trek’s fantastically tiresome lectures about what the human race shall become. J.J. Abrams got rid of all that pie-in-the-sky TNG ‘huggypants’ stuff and went back to basics. The plot of XI? Terrible. The action sequences? An unending blizzard of over-the-top, completely implausible sequences, (what, the 23rd century cop doesn’t know there’s a cliff coming and so will chase kiddie Kirk right off it? And what cliff like that is in Iowa? C’mon). But all that – beside the point.
  
  I gave this movie a ‘10’ because the rebooted characters are fantastic. The rebooted premise is fantastic. TNG has been expurgated from the face of the franchise. Most importantly, IT HAS BROUGHT THE STAR TREK BACK FROM THE DEAD. It made it cool again. The movie rocked with energy. Kids who walked out of “Nemisis” saying things like, “I wish the bad guy had phasered Riker’s smuggy face off” walked out of this movie saying things like, “That was COOL! When will the next one come out?” If that fact of revitalization, rebirth, of the series, if that alone doesn’t rate this movie at least and ‘8’ or a ‘10’, then one must care not whether the Star Trek franchise lives or dies.
  
• From Bernard on 2012-11-18 at 1:58pm:
  Thank you for your replies Glenn239 and Dave E
  
  These posters made responses to my question, "who is giving this movie 10 ratings?"
  
  So far the reasons seem to be as follows:
  
  1. Because it was better than TNG movies
  
  Well watching paint dry is better than a couple of the TNG movies so to me that's not much of a reason. Besides which I would like to think that you would rate this movie based on its own merits, not the problems of its predecessors.
  
  2. It's a non-stop action piece
  
  Does that mean that the three Bayformers movies are 10/10 movies? No? Didn't think so.
  
  3. The characters are fantastic
  
  I will concede this one, this movie is primarily about how characters deal with situations and how they react to them. But for me, the way you then get a 10/10 movie is to add those characters to a super plot!
  
  4. Fully engaged in what was going on.
  
  Yep, this movie does that. It moves at break neck pace to try to make you forget that it has a terrible plot and everything is horrendously contrived.
  
  
  I would like to mention that I do give this movie its due... it is a fantastic reboot, it is a fantastic summer action blockbuster with action aplenty. It has fantastic characters that you care about deeply after only meeting them briefly. It has emotionally charged and impactful scenes. It pays homage to what went before repeatedly. I do like it a lot! I therefore gave it a strong 8/10
  
  But I cannot give it a 10 because other films have all of these things AND more. Just look at Undiscovered Country or Wrath of Khan. That is why I wanted others to comment to see why exactly they had given it a 10. It seems they are very easily pleased! You guys must give a lot of movies 10's if those are the things you require to but it on your best ever list.
  
  It would be a boring place if we all agreed all the time though wouldn't it. :)
  
  As an aside, just quickly, because I like to look at numbers. Up above the fans ratings show a fan average rating of 6.53. To me, this is skewed by the number of raters that have chosen not to accept this movie as canon by giving it 0. Let's say we ignore all those 0's and also ignore an equal amount of 10's (so now 23 scores of 10). Now the fan rating average would be 7.71. A figure that I believe to be more in keeping with the actual level of this film.
• From k2spitfire88 on 2013-01-16 at 12:53am:
  One of the things I think are consistently overlooked in this movie is something I think is worth examining, that the Star Trek XI did, without being "In your face" about it, so to speak. That is, it addressed the issue of "Nature vs. Nurture". Which is more important to who you are? I think this movie looked at this in a very interesting way. Will Spock continue to embrace logic as he has in the past, attempting to be Vulcan as Vulcan as possible, ignoring his human heritage as much as possible, or will he embrace his human side, now that his mother is destroyed? I think there are some key character questions like this worth exploring. It may not be out in the front like some of the other movies, but they are there if you look for them, I think.
• From DK on 2013-04-25 at 2:12am:
  Wow, a lot to comment on for an old Trekkie like me.  Being an old Trekkie it's not hard to figure where I come down.  I can't imagine there are very many (any?) Trek fans over the age of 45 who appreciated the reboot vision this movie gave (for any of a number of reasons).  I understand why it was done; make a movie that appeals to as wide a range of moviegoers as possible.  
  
  Why make a movie?  Profit is usually highest on the list and the formula is clear.  The action aspect of this movie has been covered extensively elsewhere in this discussion.  I would add however that in this movie we see Kirk getting his ass kicked in the bar, then twice by Spock and also it is Sulu who saves Kirk in the fight on the drill (then it is Chekov who saves them both); even the villain in the movie gets a turn at Kirk.  I liked how Kirk use to win all the fights.  Hell, even Jean Luc won his share of fights.  This difference typifies my take on the rest of the film.
  
  Why wear uniforms and follow a command type structure if this is how everyone is going to act?  I'm not sure I have the writing skills to adequately describe my feelings about this one but was there any respect for the command structure followed by anyone at anytime?  I understand the need to not follow orders or question your superiors when the situation calls for it but shouldn't there be some structure and rules of conduct actually followed by a crew?  Which brings up Uhura.
  
  It's not Kirk, Spock and McCoy any longer.  Take out McCoy and add Uhura plus Kirk and Spock are now equals.  It seems it is now Spock's job to break Kirk like a horse.  Once again, I understand why this was done.  The formula now days must include a strong, sexy female character and we cannot have a solo leader without someone to question him and challenge his authority.  For better or worse, days of yeoman Rand are over.  And can you imagine the criticism TPTB would  have had to endure if they had Uhura just sitting there answering the phone for Kirk?  No, the wider audience now demands that she (or some other woman in the same mold) be front, center and in your face irrespective of previous character history.  Which also relates by the way to Kirk now being the ass-kickee rather than the ass-kicker and getting punked for his maneuver during the Kobayashi Maru simulation; it just doesn't fit with the standard of the day or, more to the point the  money making formula of the day. 
  
   The focus used to always be on how events and situations affect Kirk and to a lesser extent some of the others; you use to always be able to depend upon Kirk killing the bad guy and getting the girl in the end.  Add up all the other changes to the formula including all the continuity history and it's just easier to throw the baby out with the bath water and start over.
  
  But for the record.  Had I had the opportunityk to make the cash from this movie I'd have sold out too.  Hell, I'd have Uhura taking over the whole damn ship and running things her way if I thought I could appeal to just one more demographic (somehow this is likely to happen in the next movie or two anyway).
  
  For those of you who take issue with the tone of my words; your time is coming.  The times are changing on you too.  One day you will wake up to someone perverting something you are familiar and happy with to fit the times or turn a buck. May you have more grace than I.
  
  So, given the realities that must be followed if we are to get fresh Trek stories with Kirk as a character, is it better to have a perverted Trek or no Trek at all?  For me, I will watch the shows as long as I don't have to pay for them.
• From Moi on 2013-05-25 at 4:51pm:
  The worst plot hole is that Nero hangs around the worm hole exit for close to twenty years waiting for Spock but at no time in those twenty years does he take his advanced mining ship back to Romulus to warn them of the impending disaster and save his family.
• From Aki on 2013-11-22 at 6:16pm:
  In my opinion this movie is non canon due to Starfleet tactical mistakes.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Bernard on 2013-05-17 at 11:05am:
  Unfortunately I don't forgive some of the things that you do in order to give the film a pretty high rating. The fact that this film contained more than one moment that made me face palm myself and also a moment that made me laugh out loud when it was supposed to be a moment of drama says it all.
  
  Shamelessly ripping off some parts of Star Trek II, this film does so with a heavy handedness that is obscene whilst seemingly patting itself on the back for tweaking some of the nuances slightly such as reversing characters. The writers seem to think this is clever... it is not.
  
  There is a mish-mash of ideas that often culminate in a confused plot. Admiral Marcus is a good example. This guy poses more menace than Harrison and seems to be building to be the films major villain... but then he's not. Again, that's not clever and wastes time that could have been spent fleshing out Harrison's motivations and giving the brilliant Cumberbatch more screen time.
  
  Some of the moments that were intended to grab you emotionally just fell flat. The scene where Harrison attacks Starfleet HQ for example just comes across as corny and the less said about the scene in engineering near the end the better. This is the type of thing that boosted up my opinion of 2009 (Vulcan being destroyed, George Kirk's sacrifice).
  
  Into Darkness does do some of the things 2009 did equally well though. From the phenomenally sublime look, feel and effects of the movie to the raging soundtrack. From the stellar moments involving the Enterprise and also other fantastic set piece visuals this film feels even more spectacular than it's predeccesor. The character interaction between Kirk and Spock is also done consistantly throughout the film and it tells a good story between the two. So well done for that writers, but when I'm picking the bones trying to find good things to say it is not a good sign.
  
  I can't be bothered to explain the lazy writing in this movie that causes me to make it a 0 rating (incidentally, I didn't give Star Trek 2009 a 0). But it has to have zero from me. It is ridiculous in parts, enjoyable but ridiculous. I felt like I was watching somebodies parody of Star Trek at points with Bones appearing simply to serve up gruff one liners, bizarre re-enactments of well loved scenes from STII, and lazy rehashing of a well loved adversary. I think most older Star Trek fans will surely only watch this movie to enjoy some of the better moments whilst laughing at it in equal measure.
  
  When I commented on Star Trek 2009 I said it would be ok if they followed it by writing an ORIGINAL story that focused on building on the great foundation they had laid. Instead we get lazy writing that borders on parody whilst hammering us with visual after visual that whilst they may blow our mind are actually quite boring (anyone else get bored halfway through the scene where Harrison and Kirk are flying through space in space suits? That's boring to me, I don't want to watch a computer game... but unfortunately... the masses do and that's who they're trying to satisfy now and because it's working so well that's all we're going to get.
• From Selador on 2013-05-18 at 5:53pm:
  This is a hideous, hideous film. It is epitomized by the scene where Spock punches the "bad guy" in the face, over and over and over again. It is violent, mindless and is everything Star Trek is supposed to not be.
  
  The characterisation is awful. Neo-Kirk in horrible and unlovable, there wasn't a single scene where Spock wasn't emotional, Bones is an idiot and if it wasn't for Simon Pegg's brilliance the Scotty character wouldn't make any sense at all.
  
  Throught the film there's an undertone of righteous, violent indignation. Neo-Kirk is constantly on the verge of beating people to a bloody pulp because he is idiotically convinced that he is the "good guy" and that everyone who disagrees with him deserves nothing but to be contemptibly and repeatedly punched in the face. Everything he does seems to me to be justifying American imperialism - he feels it's fine to intervene and that the moral code doesn't apply to his actions since he is infallibly correct. Never before have I had this feeling when watching Star Trek - and I've seen all the films and series'.
  
  I feel there's no need to go into detail about why the plot doesn't make sense since it's so obvious.
  
  This film put me in a bad mood for about a week, I would recommend and anyone who actually likes Star Trek to avoid it at all costs, despite Kethinov's absurdly generous review. If you've seen the South Park episode where indecent things are done to Indiana Jones you will understand what watching this film is like.
  
  Now, back to lovely DS9...
• From dario on 2013-05-19 at 7:21am:
  one problem you forgot to mention was the klingons had bumpy heads. while during this time their heads were smooth.
• From Kethinov on 2013-05-19 at 12:58pm:
  Enterprise's resolution of the Klingon forehead problem established that while it would take generations for the Augment DNA to no longer suppress Klingon forehead ridges, that some Klingon families may resort to plastic surgery in the mean time. As such, there is no reason to fault this film for displaying Klingons with ridges, just as there's no reason to fault Star Trek I: The Motion Picture for the same reason.
• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2013-05-19 at 8:07pm:
  I literally just saw it about an hour ago, so I haven't formulated all my thoughts, but here's what I think so far:
  
  I enjoyed the film a lot more than the previous one. Here's some reasons why:
  
  -More homage is paid to the Enterprise itself. Let's face it, the Enterprise is the main character of the franchise. I was happy to see some wide shots of the ship while it was being still underwater and in the space dock. I don't seem to remember seeing the ship more than 2 seconds in the previous movie.
  
  -This movie has more of that idealistic morality we Trekkers love. Throughout the film, the crew was trying to do the "right thing," like stopping a volcano, not participating in secret weapons, etc. I didn't sense any of that in the previous film.
  
  -The part where new Spock contacts old Spock established that this Khan was pretty much the same Khan as before. Not some new Khan that was raised differently because of the new timeline. For some reason, I enjoy knowing this.
  
  -There's no car going off a cliff.
  
  -There's no cave where people bump into each other.
  
  -It was cool to see the Klingon moon half destroyed, consistent with Star Trek VI.
  
  That being said, the movie did some things it didn't need to do:
  
  -The chemistry between Kirk and Spock doesn't seem to be there. They mention to each other they are close friends, but I just don't feel it. If anything, they seem like adversaries.
  
  -Reproducing scenes from the Wrath of Khan was a bad choice. When Spock screamed “Kahn!” I instantly thought of the Darth Vader “nooooo!” part in Star Wars Episode III. I'm telling you right now, that part is going to be controversial for decades to come. The whole Kirk death scene itself had only about 10% of the emotion that the original Spock death scene. Once again, it's because the Kirk/Spock relationship doesn't seem to be there.
  
  -The fistfight on top of the vehicles was ridiculous. Why is Spock the only one beaming down? How can they not get sucked off from the wind resistance? I can only imagine how many scenes like this Abrams is going to insert into Star Wars.
  
  -Why remake the Klingon look? That face looked worse than the makeup job of the TNG era Klingons.
  
  Problems:
  -From what I remember, in the scene where Pike is dressing down Kirk for letting the natives see the ship, he was also mad about them trying to freeze the volcano. Why? Starfleet rescues civilizations all the time. For example, in TOS they were once trying to stop an asteroid from hitting a planet full of Indians. I know, it's a different timeline, but that aspect of Starfleet's mission should still be there.
  
  -I was confused about why they needed Khan to come back to the ship alive in order to resurrect Kirk. All they needed to do is transfuse blood from one of Khan's frozen men.
  
  Overall, I'm giving the film 6 out of 10. The best thing it did was make me forget about the first movie.
• From Wes on 2013-05-19 at 8:56pm:
  Kirk and Bones swam back to the ship. Spock was in the volcano.
  
  I liked it much better than the first one as an adventure and the plot twists. This was entertaining. And it seems they are trying to be more entertaining than anything. Although, there were good classic Star Trek elements in this one.
  
  The time to travel to "Kronos" was dumb. And what's with changing the spelling of the name of the Klingon home world to Kronos!? And yes, the rehash of Wrath of Khan elements was a little annoying (i.e. someone dying in engineering, yelling "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" and others).
• From Wes on 2013-05-19 at 10:59pm:
  Oh, I forgot.
  
  I look at the title as more of a preface to where this franchise is headed--war with the Klingons and a more militarized Starfleet. I do look for superhuman Kirk going to war with the Klingons in the next movie. Get ready for a rehash of General Chang ;)
• From Jem Hadar on 2013-05-22 at 2:29am:
  I don't understand people who freak out over this film so much. It is a GREAT movie- this is a new generation of Star Trek, modernized- and I think some people are too stuck in the past. Yeah, it could have tackled "the issues" more- but that's not what this film was trying to do. I think the next movie in the series will have a more 'humanitarian' outlook, but for what this film was going for, it did a great job. I loved all the references to past Trek. The Nimoy cameo was fun, though the problem you pointed out was a sound one.
  
  I loved the new Klingon look- the effects were top notch too. Cumberbatch did an excellent job as Khan. Scotty had some great scenes; it was nice to see him have an even bigger role this time around. The new Carol Marcus was really hot too, which was great. I will say, though, that the Spock "KHAN!" scream had me laughing, which I don't think was the intention.
  
  I think the title of the film was perfect, and a good indicator of where the series is going.
• From OmicronThetaDeltaPhi on 2013-05-30 at 8:31am:
  Well, Jem Hadar, if expecting the franchise to retain at least an inkling of the optimism and moral values it held dear for 40 years is "being stuck in the past", then I am proud to declare myself as one of those who are stuck in the past.
  
  I'm really sad to see how the Star Trek franchise has transformed into a mindless sci-fi action franchise. And for what? In order to make it "more popular". As if popularity has ever been a measure of quality.
  
  Into Darkness indeed.
• From Abigail on 2013-06-04 at 7:44pm:
  My main thought about the movie (and this is not especially deep or thoughtful) was that 99% of the plot happened in the first hour and fifteen minutes. Then I watched people jump around on rooftops, fire phasers, and punch each other for the next forty-five minutes. Sorry, but that got pretty boring. That's not really "Star Trek" to me; I need some substance!
  
  I do give them credit for the great special effects, though. I saw it in 3D, which made it particularly fun to view.
• From Pete Oliva on 2013-09-16 at 3:08am:
  It just always bugged me how Khan's ethinc background changed. I know the new actor is British, but still, for continuity's sake, it stinks. His ethnicity wouldn't have been altered by the timeline fork.
• From Rob UK on 2013-09-17 at 8:13am:
  Well where to start??
  
  I just watched this for the third time to try and make some sense of it and do you know what i just realised? Obviously you all don't so here goes.
  
  This is the plot and storyline from that ultra cheesy movie of the 90's The Demolition Man with Stallone (whole Enterprise), except shot in a I-phone store and some cgi thrown in, let me explain.
  
  Future benevolent society ruler afraid of the unknown wakes up cryo frozen 'weapon' to use their powers for his own gain, everything backfires and our hero must save the day joining forces with the 'bad guys' to defeat the real enemy the benevolent leader! lame on so many levels, not even starting on all the swearing, the emotions from Spock acknowledging that his human side even affects him, i could go on and on, this is not the Star Trek standards I have come to expect by a long way, it is a nice cgi movie which I was amazed to find the second half was not directed by Michael Bay.
  
  So am i right in thinking (judging by what we have seen so far) that this is the remake of Star Trek II, the last movie ingeniously titled 09(instantly dating it lol,imagine Star Trek the Movie was called Star Trek 1980, it certainly would not still be being watched now) was the new version of Star Trek the Movie and they are now just gonna churn out a remake of each movie rather than advanced the Star trek universe we have been drip fed the evolution of over the last 30 years? very lame, don't think i'll even torrent them lol.
  
  What happens after the Dominion war, Cisco's evolution to join the profits how did this affect B'jor and the whole sector, what about the Mirror mirror lot who seemed to have almost found a permanent way through to our side, trade with the ferengi?????? Holograms rights????? Lame Lame lame lame so dissapointed
• From Rob UK on 2013-09-19 at 6:04am:
  I think we should all start a fan petition to get some directors and some backing on the continuation of 'our' Star Trek Universe, they could run in parallel just like alternate universes reality theory. One could continue in the world we know and love and the other could churn out sci fi cgi flicks and dumbed down action orientated remakes for the ADHD generation.
• From BrentNorth on 2013-12-15 at 3:41am:
  There is a potentially decent Star Trek film lurking somewhere here, trying to get out, a post-modern story about terrorism and militarism. But it is overwhelmed but the brutally clumsy attempts at Wrath of Khan nostalgia.
  
  Star Trek is supposed to be about new frontiers of exploration and thought, not cheap imitations of what has already been done. For that reason, I am at least partly of a mind to rank Star Trek V: The Final Frontier above Into Darkness. V may be a terrible film, but its concept is at least worthwhile in theory.
  
  On a specific note, the portions of this film that relate to "Khan" constitute an unforgivable sin in my book (and were completely unnecessary). I have rarely if ever watched anything so excruciatingly cringe worthy. Whoever was responsible for the creative decisions behind those parts should have his/her Star Trek license immediately and permanently revoked.
• From Rob UK on 2014-02-17 at 8:48pm:
  I have always loved my Trek fix ever since i was a kid, i am oddly amused at how mentally affected i am that 'they' (the Star Trek PTB)are not continuing the tale telling in regards to the STU as of Stardate 2373 when Voyager got home and after DS9 kicked Dominion ass, so much to work with (please see my above rantings on Cisco the profit and more lol).
  
  It is the same type of mind torment all the original fans must have went through between the end of TOS and the Star Trek movies of the 80's, anyway we eventually arrive to my point in writing
  
  http://www.startrekcontinues.com/episodes/
  
  If you are a fan of TOS and you never wanted it to end with Turnabout Intruder s03e24 then you would be crazy not to follow the link i just posted (webmaster permitting of course), I only just found the show a couple of weeks back and they've got my interest hanging on for ep3 coming soon.
• From Kevin on 2014-06-07 at 2:27am:
  I tried to like it, and honestly bit here and there were good. Good visuals and music and pacing. But the story and all of the silly moments and things that made no sense took over and I realized it was simply a crappy big budged action movie, with no care taken to make a quality movie.
  None of these complaints have ANYTHING to do with liking or not liking old star trek.
  
  It was simply a lame, and lazily written movie, that nobody read the scrip and thought, wow this does not make sense.
  
  There are literally about 4 dozen really noticeable plot issues. Things that just do not add up. It was as if they were trying make scenes simply to get to the next action part.
  
  Really squandered their chance to make a quality lasting movie. Instead they took the easy, lazy and silly way out. A comic book parody of Star Trke, and a really not well thought out movie on its own.
  
  Bad not only as star trek, but bad as a movie in general.
• From Kelly on 2014-06-07 at 11:07pm:
  Really not sure what to say. I get why some like it sort of. But to me as a woman, in my 30's it felt like I was totally the wrong audience. It was very juvenile feeling many times. The plot was not so much confusing, but silly and nonsensical. It seemed okay when I watched it, but later as I thought about it, so much made no sense. Decent acting and filming and all the technical stuff, but it needs someone to double check the science and the script. I rolled my eyes many times.It made me crinnge. I laughed at stuff that was supposed to be serious. That stuff with Spock and Uhura was beyond embarrassing, as was him yelling "Khan". Kirk is not a captain, but a teenager jock in space. Really a bit insulting to me as an adult.
• From Bronn on 2014-11-26 at 6:46pm:
  This film has many, many problems, which led to me scoring it a 2 (ST[2009] received a 6, Nemesis received a 1, and Final Frontier a 0, just for comparison). Before explaining the flaws that destroy this film, I'll start with what works well.
  
  1) The visual effects are pretty stunning, and the visual style is actually an improvement on the flaws of the previous film. It has a futuristic style without the antiseptic look of the 2009 film (the same kind of problem the Star Wars prequels had, in which CG backgrounds had an unsettling fakeness about them) so it was easier to immerse. JJ Abrams also stopped with the lens flare nonsense.
  
  2) The basic premise actually works for me. I don't mind Khan re-entering as a villain, and I don't mind that there's actually a secondary villain who is trying to steal control of Starfleet for the military-industrial complex. As a pair of plot devices, they work fine, and would have provided a fine story. Unfortunately, they failed to properly realize either plot.
  
  3) The acting from the main cast is spot on. Chris Pine is extremely talented and believable, and I am a big fan of Quinto's abilities. Simon Pegg is nearly a show-stealer as Scotty, just as he was in the 2009 version. I also have no problems with Zoe Saldana as Uhura, even if she's a big intrusive at times.
  
  Okay, now onto the problems.
  
  The biggest failing of this film is the writing. The characters aren't believably written. We accepted the original Kirk and Spock as great friends because we saw that actively develop during their adventures together. We saw Spock nearly emotional at Kirk's fake death in "The Amok Time," and we realized there was an emotional bond there. However, at the end of Star Trek: 2009, this Kirk and Spock were closer to adversaries than friends-which is fine. They didn't HAVE to be friends, since this is a new universe; the writers could do whatever they wanted with this relationship. If they wanted to show them becoming friends, it would be something we could follow during the subsequent films.
  
  That's not what happened, though. We're simply (and CONSTANTLY) told that these two are friends. I would accept that they've had plenty of off-screen adventures in which they've become close, even though it removes that interesting character development, except for what happens in the plot. It's clear that Spock and Kirk are very different people who don't even know each other that well. Kirk lies to Starfleet about their mission, and is surprised that Spock was completely truthful. How does he know so little about his friend that he simply assumes Spock will lie to keep him out of trouble? And if they're so close, why did Spock not anticipate Kirk's obfuscation? They have so little in common. It's like the writers simply went from "Well duh, they're Kirk and Spock, they HAVE to be best friends," and didn't bother actually portraying that.
  
  Furthermore, Kirk's lie irritates me. It starts with ending the previous film with him as captain of the Enterprise when he's clearly got no experience or maturity and hasn't earned that post yet. I kept imagining Picard locking the door to his office and telling Chris Pine that "The first duty of any starfleet officer is to the truth!" It's not like violating the Prime Directive is automatic dismissal from Starfleet, since Picard and the original Kirk did so several times when they felt they had a moral imperative to act. Saving an entire civilization from catastrophic destruction should not be hard to justify. But Kirk just lied about it, and behaves like a spoiled brat when his lie is called out and he gets in trouble for it. Again, he thinks that saving Spock's life is sufficient to get Spock to lie on his behalf, even if lying (and especially a dishonorable cover-your-ass lie) goes against Spock's nature. It was very early on that this mischaracterization grated on me, and it continued through the rest of the film.
  
  This poor characterization was even more deeply demonstrated during the mission to Qo'nos. Kirk asks Spock and Uhura, very frankly, if their personal issues are going to get in the way of the mission. They promise him that it won't, and he believes them because they're professionals, Starfleet officers, and one is a Vulcan to boot. I expect them, on a mission which is supposed to be serious (in which they could easily be killed) to actually get past personal issues, which were frankly fairly petty. I mean, Uhura's whining about the Vulcan she's dating refusing to share his feelings...seriously! And it happens almost as soon as the mission starts. I mean, not only is unprofessional, it's a bit childish. It makes me think of Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined), in which there were deeply flawed individuals who sometimes had severe personal conflicts, even open hatred, with people they worked with, but they were able to get past personal issues in life-or-death situations. Here we have Spock, of all people, drawn into an argument with his girlfriend on a life-or-death mission. It doesn't help reassure me that this junior crew, with an immature captain, is somehow still professional enough to get the job done.
  
  I've rambled about the characters so much that I won't get into the plot very much, but let me say this: Why is it that the climax of the film has two starships blasting each other right next to the moon? I mean, are those the only two ships in starfleet? Why weren't other ships all over the place since they were literally minutes away from star fleet headquarters? They were closer to Starfleet headquarters than the freaking SHIPYARDS at Utopia Planetia. Yet somehow, nobody intervened, and both ships were completely at liberty to blast each without talking to anyone else. If nothing else, wouldn't Starfleet wonder why Marcus killed everyone on the Enterprise rather than have them face the law? Wouldn't other ships arrive to see if they could assist in the situation? Why is Spock able to send a subspace message to future Spock, but incapable of sending a message asking for help from other people in the vicinity of earth? I honestly don't know why this fight had to be near earth, except that they wanted Khan to threaten to destroy Starfleet headquarters at the end of it-would have made more sense if they'd been fighting near Qo'nos or anywhere OUTSIDE of the Federation, when these logical failures would not have existed.
• From Axel on 2015-07-13 at 5:10am:
  I wish it could just be a thing that all Star Trek movies have their own canon separate from the TV series. I mean, going all the way back to Star Trek I, The Motion Picture. For whatever reason, Star Trek films always seem to fail to capture what the TV shows got right. Maybe it's the fact that the films have to appeal to a wider audience. But the transition to the big screen has always been bad for Star Trek, IMO.
  
  So obviously, I'm not a fan of most Star Trek films and this is one of the worst ever created. By now we've established that the Prime Directive exists solely for the purpose of being violated. We have JJ Abrams pretty much lifting portions of Wrath of Khan's script and not even trying to hide it. We have a ridiculously convoluted timeline in which Old Spock is warning Young Spock about Khan and who knows what else. We have Young Spock going over the deep end with his emotion time and time again. We have utter nonsense like this superblood and the ability of people to transport from one planet to another (maybe someone hacked the Iconians' program centuries before it was discovered?). But mainly what we have is something so far removed from the original concept of Star Trek that it barely justifies staying in the franchise. What was wrong with having the crew explore the galaxy and encounter some entirely new phenomenon or species that they must work together to address? I mean, it worked for three decades worth of TV shows now, didn't it?
  
  I just couldn't enjoy it, despite the noble intentions behind the reboot and the stunning visual presentation. Then again, stunning CGI is no longer that big a deal in modern sci-fi, so oh well. The 2009 film was pretty good, but this just took a turn for the worse. Maybe we'll all live long enough to see the TNG reboot in 2037 and they will learn some lessons from this.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-07-19 at 1:56am:
  I’m not even getting into a detailed critique or bring up any specific issues. The whole thing just makes me sad.
  
  @ Selador – I should’ve taken your advice and not watched this horrendous thing. @Jem Hadar, if being “modernized” means lacking any discernible moral center, then human civilization is in big trouble.
  
  @Rob, yeah, I’d like to join your petition to continue into the future in the prime universe as well. In fact, I’d like not to even acknowledge this gawdawful new universe – meaning I want a prime universe where Romulus still exists (instead of having been needlessly and causally destroyed offstage)! I want this whole Nero idiocy to have happened in an entirely separate universe (not just an altered timeline). Maybe we can have a "reset" movie, where the JJ Abrams fiascos turn out to be a bad holonovel series by someone or other...
  
  However, this is highly unlikely to happen. Given that the rebooted franchise has made more money than all of the offerings of our old beloved one, I doubt very seriously that anyone is going to heed our “petition” or our sentiments.
  
  We have to accept that Star Trek, for better or worse, is now just another mindless action franchise meant only to churn out summer blockbusters. Gone is any attempt at philosophical depth. The old, cerebral and idealistic Star Trek I loved is now a thing of the past... something for Blue Ray box sets and Netflix streaming sessions, to be indulged in occasionally, like an old, worn copy of War and Peace.
  
  The final frontier is closed. It’s over.
  
• From Axel on 2018-07-02 at 2:22am:
  Despite their rebooted makeup/costume design making them appear more badass, the Klingons once again get completely smoked. This movie further supports my theory that the Klingons are the most overrated villains in all of Star Trek, supposedly a race of fierce warriors but in reality getting conveniently destroyed whenever they face humans. At least the Borg and Jem'Hadar win sometimes.
  
  To me, this movie, like all of Abrams' ST movies, is a compromise. It collects all the names and labels familiar to old-school Trekkies-Kirk, Spock, Bones, Enterprise, Khan Singh-and throws them into the kind of visually thrilling, action-oriented movie that is typical of modern science-fiction. So, as a result, it did great at the box office. What it doesn't do is what Star Trek originally did: explore the galaxy while at the same time, exploring humanity, our issues and our ethical and moral dilemmas. It's not a thinking Trekkie's movie. It's a movie to watch and go "whoa, look how amazing that crash into San Francisco was!"
  
  I'm not saying this as the bitter Trekkie. It's not like Star Trek movies were solid gold and Abrams ruined it. We all know that at least two of the TOS movies and two of the TNG movies were crap. And maybe this movie succeeded in connecting a new generation to the Star Trek tradition. But it just seemed underwhelming to me. Visually spectacular, but...then again, if a movie's greatest strength is its visuals and not its story, then you can honestly enjoy it just as much by watching a few highlights on YouTube.
  
  I didn't mind that it seemed a repeat of Wrath of Khan. In today's cinema, the thing to do seems to be to recreate classics but with better visuals to indulge the nostalgia of an older audience while thrilling a new one. just look at Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It may be lazy story writing, but it's modern movie-making.
  
  As for the characters, the main problem for me was Spock and Kirk. After watching the 2009 film, I thought that in this Star Trek universe, these two were going to have a relationship that more closely resembled rivals or adversaries that grudgingly respected each other. But this movie, out of nowhere, seems to manufacture this close bond between the two mirroring TOS. It's just not plausible given what we've seen so far. Far more believable in this series so far has been the Bones-Kirk relationship, which does an excellent job of imitating its TOS counterpart and to me, has been one of the more enjoyable aspects of these new films.
  
  Overall, I disagree with fellow Trekkies that this is the worst of all time, but it's certainly toward the bottom. It offers more than ST V: Final Frontier, or Nemesis. But, it's still little more than a dazzling 21st century copy of Wrath of Khan with timeline issues and no substance.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From jules4me on 2016-07-24 at 5:42am:
  CONS: The shaky and spinning style of camera work during action/fight scenes was annoying (lazy directing so they don't have to choreograph fight scenes as much). Because we don't get a full picture of the motives and true identity behind the antagonist until the end (which made for a confusing storyline), I had a hard time caring about him by the climax. It's important to be able to get into the backstory of the bad dudes & get into their shoes a bit. The pace of the story didn't flow as smoothly as I'd liked. And what was the deal with Dungeness crab head-chick giving in to threats so easily for something so important? I hope she gets demoted for that (or maybe serve up a few of her crab head-legs for an appetizer).
  
  Lastly, my son asked me after the movie just how did prime Spock get a hold of a picture of the prime crew (which he left for new/young Spock), since that universe didn't exist anymore. I said the only way that could've happened was that when prime Spock got caught by Nero, one of his henchmen was nice enough to grab prime Spock's satchel of mementos & nick-nacks from his ship and gave it to prime Spock before stranding him on the icy moon and imploding Vulcan (it's my silly theory).
  
  PROS: I did really like how they showed the warp field around the ship. They have the humorous banter down by this 3rd installment. Nice focus on the Spock-Bones rapport building. Not a lot of pros off the top of my head, but there it is.
• From JD on 2016-07-24 at 7:43am:
  I saw it last night and largely agree with you, mate. Wasn't exactly thought provoking high brow science fiction. I noticed the possible plot hole with the language too. Also, why did Jaylor need to hide the Franklin so carefully? Krill knew where it was, he parked it there! It would draw more attention to it by hiding it.
  
  Saying that, it was fun to watch in the theatre with a beer and some pop corn.
  
  I give them a pass on the advanced star Base stuff. Previous productions would have done it if they'd had the special effects and imagination to come up with it.
• From Jake on 2016-07-26 at 10:34pm:
  The Beastie Boys were the heroes of the space battle. Enough said
• From Kelly on 2016-08-07 at 10:54pm:
  Honestly I feel like I was ripped off. I think they found a formula to draw people in during the summer, a lot of action, shakey cameras, and not much story.
  Kinda sad how they rely on the love of the older stuff to draw people.
  
  Well after this one...no more..I learned my lesson!!
• From Rob Uk on 2016-09-15 at 11:40pm:
  hahaha it's all about the 'member berries, do you remember Stromtroppers and Chewbacca and kirk and Spock?
  
  Yeah i love 'member berries, 'member berries make the bland retelling of the now taste a little sweeter, but, you gotta 'member the 'member berries or the sickly sweet nostalgia and retelling of stories that didn't need retold won't work on you, so if you can't get nostalgic about old pop culture icons without being offended about it all being unecessarily remade in the first place then it all falls flat.
  
  I am nostalgic and offended so i am doubly pissed off.
  
  The last sci fi story we have had from 'popular culture' which was even close to original was The Matrix and that in itself ripped off about 20 other storties of a similar fashion (Mostly the final Red Dwarf book The Last Human pub 1995) but at least they done it in original style.
  
  Really sick of the shite Hollywood is churning out this decade
• From Kevin on 2016-11-26 at 9:25pm:
  I really disliked the first two "Nu Trek" movies. This one, I TRULY tried to give it a chance, and found the first maybe hour and 15 minutes to be fairly good. I liked the acting, the story, mostly everything. It was like they were listening to fans, and tried to not make it utterly dumb. No lens flares, the camera was not shaking constantly and they focused on objects and people for more than a half second or lass, as in the previous movies.
  Then came the motorcycle scene and the silly as hell beastie boys music, that seemed out of place, juvenile, and completely pointless. Then came all the fighting towards the end, and all the good they did, was erased.
  
  It had so much potential to be fairly good, but it ruined things, to satisfy the "typical movie goer"
• From John H Adams on 2017-09-22 at 10:28pm:
  Hire a very well paid actor that will be completely covered up. How logical is that?
  Redo the ships interior then immediately destroy it. How logical is that?
  Assume that everybody must be a big fan of the Beastie Boys. How logical is that?
  Have an impossibly young Captain entertaining becoming an Admiral due to boredom? It doesn't work that way.
  Assume that trekkies yearn for Fast and Furious in Space? Probably an illogical assumption.
  This movie would have barely passed for an hour long made for tv show. If I was not a real Trekkie, I may have wanted my money back.
  You can't do stupid stuff just because it has the Star Trek label on it.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Kail on 2017-09-26 at 10:00pm:
  "It is established in TOS: Turnabout Intruder that women cannot be captains in Starfleet. This was a difficult thing to suspend disbelief on at the time, but since women were shown to be captains not much later during the TOS films, it was assumed this sexism existed prior to the late 23rd century only. Star Trek: Enterprise further complicated this by depicting female captains in the 22nd century, narrowing the window of time for this sexist period in Star Trek's history to only the 23rd century. With Star Trek: Discovery, the issue is complicated even further by depicting a female captain (Georgiou) grooming a female subordinate (Burnham) to rise to the captaincy only a decade prior to TOS: Turnabout Intruder. This narrows the window of this sexist period of Star Trek's history to only a small number of years, making the episode even more difficult to rationalize."
  
  I have ALWAYS taken Lester's comment "Your world of Starship Captains doesn't allow women" as Kirk's obsession with becoming a Captain left no room for her, not that female Captains are not allowed.
• From KosstAmojan on 2017-09-28 at 12:23am:
  You're konwn as a reviewer not only of Star Trek series but also of some other SF series. Did you also planning reviewing of The Orville?
• From Kethinov on 2017-09-28 at 3:48am:
  I have been struggling with that question. I was leaning towards not reviewing it assuming it would be strictly parody, as I have no interest in reviewing things that feel like Galaxy Quest. But having seen some early episodes of The Orville, I'm starting to think it might be worth reviewing, as it's not strictly parody.
  
  FWIW, I am also planning to review The Expanse, Killjoys, Dark Matter, the Star Wars films, Stargate, Babylon 5, Extant, and update several of the old reviews with expanded content. So stay tuned for, uhh... years to come. As this will take time haha. This site will also be relaunching with the brand new design I've been promising Real Soon Now™?. It's close to being finished, but not quite there yet...
• From KosstAmojan on 2017-09-29 at 1:43am:
  Wow! Just wow. Nice to read :).
• From John C on 2017-10-02 at 2:08pm:
  Just to say..glad to see you keeping up with it all! Been looking at your reviews since we started watching TNG two or three years a go and now we're half way through Voyager. We had a peep at this episode also, my son liked it "because it was modern".
• From Claus on 2017-10-02 at 6:25pm:
  Fantastic! This is the first time in history, that I have seen a Star Trek episode when it was brand new. TOS was never broadcasted in Denmark, and the other shows were broadcasted (or sold on DVD's) with years of delay.
  
  Star Trek Discovery looks amazing, and I really like the new darker tone. As one could expect, the pilot has a lot of action. And although it looks great, it is also a little bit boring. I would rather have all the characters introduced first in a slower paced episode. But is is certainly a very promising start.
  
  It is very clear that Kethinov LOVES continuity. Over the last 2 years I have seen/revisited all episodes in all the Star Trek series (TOS and DS9 for the first time). And after each episode I read all the comments in here. Often I agreed, but also many times an episode gets a much too low ranking, just because of some continuity problems.
  
  As for this new series, no one can expect that designs on spaceships, uniforms, weapons etc. would be consistent with the older series. Also, no one can expect that younger viewers have seen TOS. So I think it is very natural to update all of this and not take into account how klingons looked like 50 years ago when the budget was very limited. Furthermore, who really cares what Spock said back then about female captains or mutiny...
  In short, I think most of the issues in your "list of problems" should be rephrased "design and reboot updates".
• From kevin on 2017-10-03 at 12:52am:
  Some good, but overall was a bit hard to watch with how it was filmed. Odd camera angles, lens flares that were not even from the lens, and a lot of zooming in and out. Need to watch a few more to decide. Right now "The ORVILLE" seems to be closer to real Star Trek.
• From Kethinov on 2017-10-03 at 3:10pm:
  Claus, I strongly disagree that continuity problems should be papered over as "design and reboot updates." In fact, I just finished an entire article outlining why it is terrible storytelling to ask your audience to treat aesthetic canon as disposable here: http://kethinov.com/startrek_selectivenostalgia.php
• From Claus on 2017-10-04 at 3:01pm:
  Kethinov, I have read your article, and it's very well written. However, it is also a bit disturbing how seriously you view things. I think it's possible to be a Star Trek fan without being a fanatic. In the end it's all about entertainment, it's not a religion (even though many trekkies might see Star Trek as a kind of a religion).
  
  You are right about that there are too many remakes out there (especially regarding movies). But not all remakes are bad. I love it when somebody dares to break convention and try out a whole new path. Just look at the very much alternative X-Men series Legion. Incredible! Or Twin Peaks The Return. I salute you Lynch.
  
  In my mind nothing is sacred. To say otherwise is to restrict the creativity of the artists.
  
• From Kethinov on 2017-10-05 at 2:16pm:
  This disregard for aesthetic canon is bad storytelling, not "religion" or "fanaticism." If you think about it beyond the surface for just a few minutes, it's easy to see why.
  
  What if each season on Discovery they "updated" the uniforms with a new design? What if they redesigned the interior sets? Or the exterior design of the ship? What if they totally overhauled the makeup for Saru? What if these changes persisted in flashbacks?
  
  Wouldn't it eventually get to the point where your "nothing is sacred" attitude about aesthetic canon would reach its breaking point?
• From Claus on 2017-10-06 at 8:40am:
  Well, we can discuss from now on and forever, but I don't think that will change anything. The main reason is, that I simply don't buy the concept of an "aesthetic canon". It's good fun to watch how the older series looked like, but that's it. I'm not attached to it. So if anyone wants to bring things closer to how it "should have looked", then go for it.
  
  Example: I'm a HUGE Game of Thrones fan. And of course I noticed that the look of the Children of the Forest was changed significantly from season 4 to season 6. I was like, ok, that is also a good interpretation. They looked good before, and now they look even better (but in a very different way).
  
  We are all glad that we now actually have a new Star Trek show. So let's enjoy what we have, instead of being upset about what we don't have.
  
• From Kethinov on 2017-10-06 at 2:34pm:
  That's a pretty good analogy, because visually rebooting the children of the forest in Game of Thrones is another good illustration of this kind of shoddy storytelling, and you're right that your indifference to it (whereas it bothered me and plenty of others) captures the core our disagreement pretty well. Where I'd quibble with you there is the visual changes there were pretty subtle. Nothing like the total overhaul we're seeing today on Star Trek.
  
  What's happening on Star Trek would be closer to if Game of Thrones suddenly totally reimagined the dragons to look more like European dragons (with four legs and wings) than the present Chinese-like dragons for no reason, or recast an actor to someone who looks totally different, e.g. what happened Daario Naharis. Sometimes this stuff is unavoidable (e.g. if actors become unavailable), but they could've at least recast him to a similar looking actor. They didn't even try.
  
  Those things are all good illustrations of bad storytelling because this is a visual medium, not a novel series. Good stories on visual mediums take visual continuity seriously. And a lot of people value it. Their anger at this is valid, and you should not go around telling people to stop caring about aesthetic canon simply because you don't see why it matters to so many.
  
  You said you shrugged when Game of Thrones made those minor visual tweaks, as if that sufficiently answers the question I asked you about when you'd reach a breaking point if the changes became more frequent and with greater magnitude. But that doesn't really answer my question. So I encourage you to reconsider the question, and take it more seriously this time:
  
  What if each season on Discovery they "updated" the uniforms with a new design? What if they redesigned the interior sets? Or the exterior design of the ship? What if they totally overhauled the makeup for Saru? What if these changes persisted in flashbacks?
  
  Wouldn't it eventually get to the point where your "nothing is sacred" attitude about aesthetic canon would reach its breaking point?
  
  Or, put another way:
  
  What if each season on Game of Thrones they replaced all the actors? Changed the anatomy of the dragons? Totally overhauled the makeup for the White Walkers? What if these changes persisted in flashbacks?
  
  Wouldn't it eventually get to the point where your "nothing is sacred" attitude about aesthetic canon would reach its breaking point?
  
  You tried to indirectly answer "no," but that's hard to believe. Most people have a breaking point with this stuff. Many Star Trek fans have reached theirs. And justifiably so.
• From Claus on 2017-10-06 at 10:07pm:
  Sorry I didn't answer your questions. I just thought they were meant as rhetorical. Because, it goes without saying, that everybody has a breaking point to what they can accept. I'm just more flexible than you.
  
  If Discovery updated the uniforms, interior sets and exterior design each season, I would properly frown upon that. But if it was done nicely, I could certainly live with it. And as for Saru, they are very welcome to change his make-up. His current face does not really look alive. It should be improved.
  
  If the look of the dragons and the Others (White Walkers) in GoT were changed to the better, I also wouldn't mind. I think my breaking point would be if the dragons were changed so they looked like the fellbeasts from LOTR (the Nazgûl dragons). Or if Tyrion was replaced by a non-dwarf. :-)
  
  However, I don't think it's fair to compare changes BETWEEN tv series 50 years apart (from TOS to Discovery) to changes WITHIN a single tv series (from Discovery season 1 to the next season). It is obvious that the show runners have more freedom of creativity when a whole new show is being produced, than when producing the next season of an existing tv series.
  
  Finally, I would like to point out that the attitude of "nothing is sacred" is quite common in my country. I have never met anybody who would be upset by things from your "list of problems". We prefer to just enjoy the show and to shrug off inconsistencies.
  
  Apparently, you are also able to shrug off things, since you gave the first two episodes very high rankings at 8 and 9 respectively. That's kind of admirable. If it were me, and I was very annoyed by something in an episode, I would punish it by a low ranking ;-)
  
• From Kethinov on 2017-10-07 at 12:46am:
  It's important to note that the high ratings Discovery's pilot received here are not a tacit approval of how they're handling aesthetic canon. A good reviewer will separate critiques of the premise from critiques of the execution. Discovery is getting high ratings here because while the premise (with regards to setting and aesthetic canon) is bad, the story is good. Good reviewers should always give a good grade to a good story, even if it's just a well executed bad idea.
  
  Meanwhile, the critique of the premise as articulated in the separate article still stands. Throwing out two generations of painstakingly maintained aesthetic canon will serve only to damage the long term health of the broader Star Trek franchise for no real gain.
  
  Future generations who watch Star Trek in chronological order will be subjected to unnecessarily painful transitions, going from Enterprise, to Discovery, to TOS. Before Discovery aired, the transition from Enterprise to TOS was relatively smooth, due to context clues about the upcoming change in industrial design aesthetics that were foreshadowed in various episodes, most notably when Ent: In A Mirror, Darkly foreshadowed the transition by having 22nd century characters interact with (accurately portrayed) 23rd century technology and comment on the differences.
  
  Likewise in the Star Wars franchise, you can watch the prequels, then Rogue One, and then the original trilogy and it works incredibly well because the producers carefully managed the aesthetic transitions between episode 3, Rogue One, and episode 4. Three generations of Star Wars films can be watched in rapid succession, but they feel aesthetically consistent. What a remarkable achievement!
  
  That's an ideal Star Trek should've aspired to. But Discovery takes Star Trek in the opposite direction because the producers were too lazy to do this right like the Star Wars folks did with Rogue One, or even like Gene Roddenberry did with the original series films and TNG by setting them further in the future each time he wanted to update the look. The producers of each of the five previous series understood this and worked hard to integrate visually into their predecessors' aesthetic canon. After fifty years of doing it right, Discovery comes along and demolishes all that hard work in a single episode for absolutely no coherent reason whatsoever.
  
  I think that sad and unnecessary decision has irrevocably damaged the Star Trek franchise's future. And I don't think history or future generations will look kindly on it whether Discovery's actual story turns out to be good or not.
• From McCoy on 2017-10-25 at 2:25pm:
  I've watched first 4 episodes and I'm done... Sorry.
  Wasn't expecting much after trailers but this is... Wow... I must admit, Discovery is better than Abrams reboots but it's still bad.
  I agree completely with every complain about continuity/design errors. I've studied literary theory and I know what a consequence in fictional worlds is. You can't "redesign" C3PO, because "hey, he looks and walks silly, nowadays nobody will take this kind of robot design serious". It's a matter of consequence inside fictional world. If they wanted "updated" visual style, they've should move timeline 10 years after Voyager and no one would complain. But nooo... Let's make prequel... Oh my...
  But even in after-Voy times nothing justify new look of Klingons. If you think Klingons looks not enough "alien", then make new aliens instead of messing with existing ones.
  And honestly, it's a boring show. I don't see much problems or curious sf ideas. Just generic shooting in space plus "modern" dark themes and killing characters to force tension.
  Don't want to spoil, but there is also a "mushroom" concept. And it's stupid as hell. Worse sf than legendary Threshold. I though for a moment they're kidding. Is this suppose to be a parody?
  What I like? Burnham, Georgiou, Saru and Lorca are well played. But it's not enough. Good actor won't save the show, if he won't get good scenario and dialogues.
• From Inga on 2017-12-26 at 1:06am:
  First of all, I want to mention that the 60s sexism is in no way a piece of continuity worth preserving (just like I never understood the need to justify the lack of Klingon ridges in the 23rd century in-canon). In addition to that, as Kail, the first commentator said, it is arguable whether it really was the case at all. When you really think about it, the male-female dynamic in the entire show is pretty archaic because of the times the series was filmed. Should the creators of any TOS prequel try to emulate the 60s gender roles as well?
  I also disagree that Discovery had to be present in the pilot. The format of this show is a bit different, which makes a later introduction seem a bit more organic.
  Other than that, I’m very glad you’re reviewing this show as well! I used to read your reviews a lot when I first discovered Star Trek (which was pretty late in my life, I have to admit) and I found them very helpful!
  I’d also add McCoy’s comment about Klingons. Not only are the new designs unnecessary, they kinda make Klingons less likable. It has already been established that all humanoid species come from the same ancestor, so there is no need to make them look more alien. The make-up is so heavy that their faces look contorted and the female Klingon’s lips don’t always move in full (a part of her lower lip always sags).
  As for their language, although I usually love it when aliens speak their own language, the actors were speaking sooooo agonizingly slowly… There is no way an actual species would all speak at such slow pace. Most native speakers of any language speak faster due to language economy – the desire to convey as much info with as little vocalization, which is the reason why we shorten our words.
  
• From Graham Bessellieu on 2019-07-14 at 7:02am:
  Overall, I found this DIS pilot lacking character development. While I'm not as concerned about "aesthetic canon" as Kethinov, the high-tech display does make it a stretch to imagine it pre-TOS. It feels more a re-imagining of the ST universe, (peppered with nostalgia). The showcased performances felt contrived and flat.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Mike Chambers on 2017-09-25 at 2:57pm:
  Here I am the morning after Discovery debuts, thinking "I wonder if there's a review on kethinov.com yet", and of course there is! You're definitely on top of things.
  
  I've had my worries about how this show would turn out for multiple reasons, and I'm happy to report that so far, my fears have largely been allayed! I am extremely impressed with the first two episodes. It feels very much like Star Trek, but perhaps with a bit of a darker tone than previous series. I may be disappointed in the future if it turns out that the entire series is this dark, as Star Trek is supposed to be optimistic overall.
  
  There is excellent drama here, and they have done a fantastic job so far with building these characters. I'm looking forward to seeing how their situations evolve from this point, and I am now officially excited to see future episodes.
  
  My only real problem is political in nature. They appear to be using the Klingons as an allegory for nationalists, but are mishandling it. They seem to be ascribing a bit of a racial purist motive to it, rather than the cultural and civic nationalism ideals to which the vast majority of nationalists actually adhere to. It's annoying, but this is a product of the entertainment industry, after all. It would be asking a bit much for them to understand the country outside of their bubble, so I'm not letting it ruin my experience.
  
  I have thoroughly enjoyed Discovery so far, and I want more!
• From Rick on 2017-09-25 at 9:56pm:
  Star Trek being all about war is not Star Trek to me. It appears that this series will be about as far from Roddenberry's vision as possible, as all new productions since Enterprise have been. I understand that these type of stories are the modern tv way, but that way is not for me and apparently Star Trek no longer is either.
• From Matthew on 2017-09-26 at 7:16pm:
  I found this gripping, particularly the last act of this part which sums up both my excitement and concern for how this series could go.
  
  It features principle and bravery plus the protagonists' plan not going their way with (crucially) very real consequences - that feels quite liberating in that it opens up a rich seam of story-telling. Even 'In the Pale Moonlight' (DS9) doesn't quite go that far (though that's a great episode and I bet the writers took some inspiration from that great 'It's a FAAAAKE' moment!) That could be the foundation of a great series. On the other hand, I worry slightly about the world-building and tone being undermined by aesthetic choices about it being a 'darker' show. That crass scene with the judges' faces in shadow was seriously grating and I'm glad it didn't just bother me.
  
  We'll see how it evolves - I'll definitely be watching (and I'm glad that we don't have to pay 6 dollars a month on top of Netflix to get it in the UK - my other big worry is that the economics don't work out for CBS and that it dies a death nothing to do with its creative merits!)
• From Graham Bessellieu on 2019-07-14 at 7:50am:
  All about flash; lacks the heart of the best of Trek.
• From Mike Chambers on 2020-08-22 at 2:01am:
  I happened to be browsing this site again three years after I made that comment up above, and I think I need to officially retract everything I said about Discovery.
  
  I couldn't make it past around halfway through the first season. The depressing darkness and violence just never let up, and I ended up not really caring about the characters.
  
  I agree with Rick and Graham. This is not Star Trek as it should be. The Star Trek we've all come to love. Some might say that things can change. Yeah? I guess, but if this is how it's going to be, CBS can count me out as a continuing fan.
  
  Picard isn't good either, and a lot of the reasons overlap. Kurtzman's gotta go.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-09-06 at 4:25am:
  It's weird having it stated/assumed that Burnham somehow started this war. No she didn't. T'Kuvma was determined to start a conflict. He damaged that relay to lure the Federation out to the beacon and attack them. I don't think Burnham's "shoot first" strategy would have worked either; that would have just convinced T'Kuvma even more that the Federation was out for them. The Klingons were going to start shooting either way. No, I think that, short of the Shenzhou high-tailing it out of there immediately, there was nothing that was going to prevent a conflict. Burnham is just a scapegoat. Moreover, despite various comments I've read that accuse her of this, Burnham isn't responsible for Georgiou's death; Georgiou is. As the captain, she made the call to take Burnham's advice of attempting to capture T'Kuvma. She knew the risk and took it.
  
  Life in prison seems super harsh! I could understand being dishonorably discharged, and perhaps face some other consequence, but life in prison?? That's for premeditated murder or something. Burnham didn't murder anyone; she accidentally killed the torchbearer and then she killed T'Kuvma in battle. Mutiny isn't a life offense. Neither is a Vulcan neck pinch. You'd think that, 250ish years into humanity's future, we would have moved beyond such blatantly punitive "justice". Life in prison or quarantine should really be reserved only for people who truly cannot be rehabilitated or reintegrated into civil society without posing a danger. Well, maybe subsequent episodes will help this make sense more. So far I've only watched these two. (And yeah, the shadowy courtroom was cheesy as hell.)
  
  I thought the connection to Sarek was interesting. In 2256, Sarek would have been 91 and Spock 26. I agree the thousand-lightyear telepathic phone call was stretching it, but I suppose stranger things have happened in Trek.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Claus on 2017-10-02 at 7:49pm:
  Amazing episode! Much better than the double pilot.
  
  Discovery looks fantastic, and we get to see a lot of different areas on the ship without any rush. The episode builds up to a story arc which seems very interesting so far. It reveals things little by little, but at the same time we don't know whether the explanations we get are true or not. It feels more like a sci-fi thriller than of old school Star Trek. And perhaps this is the new way to go.
  
  As for the monster scenes aboard the Glenn. Yes, we have seen these kind of "boarding incidents" many times before. But I felt the whole episode was very exhilarating and a little creepy in a good way.
  
• From Matthew on 2017-10-02 at 9:41pm:
  Great review, loved the Expanse references. I feel a bit kinder towards them on the 'problems' especially on design - there are some real buttons on the engineering consoles and there are bits that look like the Enterprise-A if not original Enterprise, but let them have some leeway on continuity with 60s set design (like we would the dodgier bits of 60s writing - no female captains!) I also can forgive the Spock mutiny thing. Yes Burnham is guilty, but it's going a bit far to say there was a mutiny on board since she never had full control of the ship, or at least we never properly found out.
  
  Some things had me groaning, namely Monster of the Week (double groan for it surviving til next week) and the general horror vibe (never something Trek does very well). But I find many reasons to be cheerful
  1) Sonequa Martin-Green is doing a great job
  2) Her character is intriguing as is the interpersonal conflict (very anti-Roddenberry) her backstory generates with most everyone - individual reactions to her in this episode helped us get to know other characters really quickly
  3) Saru's threat ganglia are great just for the name
  4) Tilly - fun, vulnerable, potential both to be kickass and have mismatch buddy comedy with her roommate while offering her a redemptive connect with your humanity arc
  5) We haven't even met Clem Fandango yet (Google it, then watch all of Toast of London immediately)
  6) Lorca is verging crazy in a fun 'which way will he go' way. Those fortune cookies make him seem a bit like Harvey Dent before the fall, and I guarantee the foreshadowed affair with Tory from BSG will not go well. (Given her absence from the credits, perhaps most of all for her.) I'll be disappointed if he is just a bit unorthodox / freewheeling since I strongly suspect that...
  7) ...the Section 31 angle will be massive - those mysterious black badges and the 'whatever it takes' brief given to Lorca. That is usually good news for quality as it has been a good story firewall, enabling Trek to get into entertainingly shady areas and still do optimism, all in one show; with fruitful clashes of ends justifies the means vs do what is right, to paraphrase Sloane.
• From JD on 2017-10-03 at 7:39am:
  I really enjoyed this episode, thought it was much better that the prologue episodes.
  I think discovery is definitely a Section 31 ship and Lorca is an agent.
  I didn't mind the Alien sequence on the Glenn, I thought it was well done and the "Helical injuries" were creepy too.
  I don't think Lorca is crazy as such, he's just given a free reign to do whatever he likes to win the war.
  I think there were some references to Iconian technology and it will be interesting if the research completely fails or disappears inside Section 31.
• From Connor on 2017-10-04 at 12:22pm:
  "Landry refers to Burnham as "Starfleet's first mutineer," but Spock states in TOS: The Tholian Web that there is no record of a mutiny on a starship before."
  
  That's true, but Spock himself led two mutinies in TOS; the problem therefore seems to arise from the fact that TOS did a poor job keeping track of its own continuity.
  
  If we're to ignore his error and assume that he was speaking factually, it may be possible that Burnham's mutiny is removed from records at a later point. Perhaps this will be dealt with in the show (though, I doubt it will). Spock was after all specific in that there are no "records" of a mutiny, not that there has never been one.
• From Coihue on 2017-10-09 at 3:49pm:
  Well, starting from the dreamy angles in the first episodes, and this kind of new travel technology. I will asume that all of this will end up in a time travel reboot. Micheal will not start the war, she will not mutiny, and maybe shecan also save her parents avoiding end up being Spock's sister.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Shani on 2017-10-09 at 11:12am:
  I don't like replicators were around during the TOS era. How are they replicating food and uniforms?
• From Shodanbot on 2017-10-09 at 11:03pm:
  Landry's death was very silly and forced. Especially given her interactions with Michael up to that point, as I got the impression she was to be this series "Worf". But it is how forced and unnecessary this death was that I found difficult to over-look. Couldn't they have used the transporter to "harvest" a claw from the beast? Cruel and very out of place at Starfleet, but I don't see any reason a transporter couldn't do it. Landry would've avoid getting within mauling distance with the beast with a quick transport.
  
  Oh well. Whatever. They needed the beast alive and in one piece to get the plot moving, and added a bit of silly blood letting to keep the peanut gallery from falling asleep. I wonder if the star trek universe's 23rd century has an equivalent of The Darwin Awards?
  
  Another bit of an annoyance for me, and to be fair a pedantic one at that, is "Xeno-Anthropologist". Just what is a Xeno-Anthropologist?
• From matzieq on 2017-10-10 at 8:46am:
  I just can't get used to the new look of the klingons, if only they had hair, or ANYTHING that made them look like klingons! Also, the need to constantly read subtitles while they bark at each other unintelligibly is so annoying... even though I'm used to reading subtitles since English is not my first language. And every time someone says "T'Kuvma" I want to reply "Gesundheit!"
• From Rob UK on 2017-10-15 at 11:08pm:
  Ahhhhhh man we've been all waiting so long.
  
  I do not know about you folks but I thought they were going to give us a TV series with the new adventures of new Spock n Kirk n crew down the new old timeline, so I already have sand in my vag before we start but here we go.
  
  I am trying my best to ignore all the things I am not liking about this new show and failing miserably, it is taking me multiple sittings just to get through a single episode, I put it on with the best intentions and then twenty minutes later find myself in the mancave pottering about as I am clearly bored out of my gourd.
  
  So I am trying my best to be ignoring all cannon foe-pars, ignoring all timeline blunders and everything like the redesign of things and species that really didn't have the gaps in their chronology to fit like the Klingons going from how they look in the OS to Next Gen (we had a explanation for that) to squeezing how they all look in this into that between the Eugenics experiments that make them all look as they do in Next gen.
  
  Deep breaths
  
  So even when I do all that and make myself sit down and leave the bong alone long enough to actually get through an episode in it's entirety in one attention span (I can sit through ten episode off the belt of any previous Star Trek in any order and hardly blink) I sadly come to the same conclusion of
  
  WORST STAR TREK EVER
  
  and I definitely include the animated series in that statement.
  
  I am still going to keep watching and hoping it improves as I am a bloody Star Trek fan, speaking of that
  
  Absolutely loving every second of The Orville, surely it can't just be me, are you Trek-heads on board?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Rob UK on 2017-10-18 at 8:19am:
  Talk about mudding the waters of continuity.
  
  I apologise i couldn't resist the pun
  
  We all know the spore drive has to fail so embarrassingly that it is bad luck to even talk about it, it's like watching paint dry waiting for the cliffhanger/impending disaster to happen, this is why we have never bloody heard of it before, well unless you are a fan of the real Paul Stamets like myself, if you don't know google Paul Stamets Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World and educate yourself
  
  Still struggling to watch an episode in one take
• From Matthew Kay on 2017-10-18 at 8:52pm:
  My main beef with this show is that everything happens so damned fast. Like the Kelvin films, it feels like it's been scripted by someone who watches TV on fast forward, despite the streaming format allowing for more in depth exposition.
  
  As Eric has said I think, the 'show don't tell' principle is one of the consequent problems. Like the Saru scene where he admits to jealousy - we have just been handed that bit of character exposition on a plate. We don't deserve it yet and it feels unreal.
  
  Likewise the progress of the spore drive / tardigrade storyline. Over in a blink. No up front discussion of the glaringly obvious moral issues, but suddenly Saru's conscience is on full show at the end and the whole thing is resolved in two minutes behind Lorca's back. And of course by an unexplained Burnham shortcut - basically magic, which is becoming too common and an unwelcome part of the show's makeup. It's not inconsistent since she's always like that - it just undermines suspension of disbelief. Tory from BSG is wasted in a similar display of implausible fast-forward plotting.
  
  I'm aware that the fact these guys are at war is a massive narrative factor. But we don't know them any other way. When Sisko or even Sloane act ruthless and ends-justify-the-means in DS9 you know the character through long burn earlier development or because there's a long and meaningful section of dialogue. Even the interplay between Sisko and Garak in that one episode is about 10 minutes longer than the genuine character development time we've had on this whole series. (The glib BS you get when characters like Lorca and Stamets are grandstanding is just superficial nonsense, not plausible character time.)
  
  Discovery people - please stop trying to skip to the end, build your characters, build your world, earn your payoffs!
  
  One last thing - I feel like this time period has been done to death. It's full of hokey continuity built on 60s/70s terrible production values and now pretty backward social values. Leave it alone'
• From Kethinov on 2017-10-18 at 9:06pm:
  Well said, Matthew. I completely agree.
• From BSHBen on 2017-10-19 at 8:20pm:
  Kethinov - thanks for continuing to post your detailed reviews! I'm still on the fence about the show, as I think are many people. I wish it would slow down and better earn its character and plot development. So far it has established the groundwork to make Stamets, Burnham, Lorca, and particularly Saru all multifaceted and memorable characters, but I'm worried that it won't deliver properly upon the setup. We'll see. There's plenty of potential here and "Choose Your Pain" is my favorite episode so far.

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Coihue on 2017-10-30 at 4:55pm:
  Hey, there is the time travel. As I said in the previous episode, they will reset time till the time previous Georgiu's death. They can not be able to stop the war, but everything else will be reset.
  
  Also, there was a Q homage when Mudd says "Mon capitain!"
• From Matthew on 2017-10-30 at 10:00pm:
  There were fun bits here but I think you're being very kind Eric! The extent to which they hid Stamets setting things up (which could have been some fun interactions with characters other than Burnham) bothered me too. The Cornwell angle not so much since I think it's a justifiable (in fact good) command decision from Lorca even if for the wrong reason - they can afford to lose her more than the Discovery. And he has asked Saru to inform Starfleet so any negative consequences will be deferred until Cornwell comes back (if she does).
  
  I hope this really is the end of Mudd, since I didn't find him hilarious at all. The character talks like he's stuck in a tediously self regarding, totes not amazeballs, sarcastic social media feed. I'm getting the feeling that the whole writer's room has a bit much of that, and a banterish style that is either snarky or plays to the echo chamber. His violence towards Lorca is justified in character terms because of Lorca keeping him locked up but that stops making sense, and becomes tonally really odd, when presented in ha ha comedy montage. Fishing for laughs out of someone dying in different ways is, in my book, not really Trek. (Trek can and should do comedy - though it tends to work better when the characters are really established, like that DS9 baseball one - Take Me Out To The Holosuite? - that should really be lousy filler but is actually great.)
  
  Oh and 4D race we've never heard of and no-one seems that curious about? How the jiggins did that get through script review? Must have been someone who watched Interstellar and thought the Tesseract bit was really good but needed more Deus Ex Machina factor.
  
  Lethe was v good though - especially the properly grownup acting, writing and subject matter in the Cornwell / Lorca scenes. More please!
• From Inga on 2017-12-26 at 2:12am:
  I would also like to add the rushed (and forced at this point) romance between Tyler and Burham. Just like someone said in one of the comments - the writers should really learn to take their time with character development.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From ismellofhockey on 2017-11-07 at 11:00pm:
  It's unfortunate that Trek shows have often done away with facts from previous episodes, sometimes even within the same series. It's annoying, I don't understand why they aren't more big picture focused, but that's how it's always been.
  
  What I dislike most about Discovery so far is the ultra fast paced plot, which you point out. Oh look! The tower sonar was fixed just in time for Discovery to beam them up! How convenient! How lazy! Had the show actually taken time to exploit its various devices, we would have had the chance to build an emotional bond with the admiral as she was tortured by the Klingons. We could have developed a stronger enmity towards Mudd during Lethe's incarceration. We could get a feel for what Stamets is actually going through. But nope! Who needs character development anyway? The answer to that being: not Saru... please stop trying.
  
  I'm also disappointed that the show doesn't deal with more philosophical concepts like what humanity's morals and values look like in the 23rd century. TOS showed us a female second in command, a black woman on the bridge, a Russian and a Japanese at the helm. There was a vision of the future that inspired, promising better things to come. TNG built on that with an unabashedly atheistic captain, the prime directive (introduced in TOS), Barclay's holosuite problems...etc. It would have been nice to delve deeper into this topic, or at least renew it. You can still have grey characters in a society whose values and morals have progressed far beyond where we are today. Stamets's augmenting and inability to ask for his doctor/lover's help could be a door towards this, but seeing how little anything gets developed in this show, I'm not holding my breath.
  
  Still, this episode was perhaps the most beautiful visually so far, and losing the Gagarin was a great opening.
• From tigertooth on 2017-11-20 at 2:04pm:
  Note: if you've watched 1x08 but not 1x09, this message contains a minor spoiler, but one you'd probably guess. If you've seen 1x09, you're good.
  
  I didn't understand the Klingon part at all. Who killed L'Rell's people? I assume it was Kol - who else would it be? But if he killed her people and left them there for her to find them, that's a pretty clear message, right? "I know your game. You're screwed."
  
  But then L'Rell goes to the bridge and tries to play it cool. What? She knows Kol killed her people, and he intentionally let her know that he did. How do you bluff your way past that?
  
  And why would Kol leave the Admiral there in the dead body room? A Starfleet Admiral is valuable property! You don't just leave her lying around, and if you just told a traitor that you figured them out and they're screwed, you don't let the traitor grab this Admiral and take her hostage (which would have been the only logical thing for L'Rell to do... but she didn't)
  
  On top of that, you've got Burnham and Tyler reacting to Saru nonsensically.
  
  I can take a lot of science fiction wackiness, but when your characters act in ways that make no sense, you lose me.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Matthew on 2017-11-15 at 7:25pm:
  I am feeling much better after this one - it's starting to come together, after a rather abrupt start.
  
  The cliffhanger is more meaningful where you consider where they probably are - i.e. the mirror universe, as covered around the web. I am completely convinced Lorca is actually Mirror Lorca, and that this will make sense of a number of things, like his sleeping with a phaser (consistent with the mirror universe love of shipboard assassination), praising the warrior aspect over science and exploration (his valedictory speech on the bridge was a weird bit in this episode, even taking the fact they're at war into account) and the fact that Cornwell finds him a stranger to her (with some unexplained scars).
  
  I've found myself thinking back to stuff he says in previous episodes in this context. What really strikes me is his attitude to Burnham. You can see that he's overridden the spore drive in a screengrab of his captain's chair console from this episode, so he clearly wants to get to one of the alternate dimensions that he talks Stamets through. But he clearly also wants Burnham, above all, to come with him. Nothing else explains his extraordinarily protective attitude to her in this episode - if he just wanted her on his team to help win the war, then her going over to the ship of the dead would just be her fulfilling that mission. But he doesn't want her there, he wants her safe until they jump dimensions. Also go back to the episode where he gets her on board and she's saying "I'm Starfleet, you can't break my principles" and he says "I know who you are, Michael Burnham" - my take is that while she obviously takes it as a figurative character assessment, he's being completely literal. He does know Burnham, very well, from the Mirror timeline. Tyler too, possibly, though who knows. A lot of his other random man management can be put down to him just being a bit of a do-whatever-it-takes merchant.
  
  My guess is that they have jumped to the Mirror universe but he's been out of stream for a while so is genuinely confused by what he's seeing when he gets there, rather than just putting it on.
  
  Maybe we are in for some juicy flashbacks with what actually happened with Lorca and the Buran - could have been Mirror Lorca engineering Prime Lorca's death then passing himself off as surviving Prime Lorca. BSG Razer style full episode flashback, anyone? Chance to bring BSG Tory back from the dead (also dead suspicious on the Mirror Universe front - would redeem her ridiculous death slightly if she was an aggressive xenophobic Terran Empire type). Also it would pay BSG back for giving us more Ro Laren!
  
  The whole Tyler/Voq thing is coming good, fingers crossed. L'Rell is just a fantastic actress and great character. Tyler appears totally confused and to have a split personality. I am inclined to think the nightmare flashback is not quite what it appears. Wild guess - L'Rell snatched Tyler and somehow implanted Voq's consciousness into him, which is now warring with the native mind. The flashbacks could imply an actual physical transformation (instead of torture) but I don't really see how that would pass the inevitable medical scans.
  
  Also let's not forget those weird black badges. I'm still hoping that's Section 31 though their role in this - who knows. Put themselves there to monitor Lorca given immense potential of the ship's technology; or even they are actually behind getting him from the Mirror universe because they saw the Federation might otherwise lose the war?
  
  Anyway - however these are resolved there is plenty to look forward to next season. There was some better character stuff in the later part of these episodes, particularly this one and Lethe. And I hope they keep variety - it's all a bit frenetic, and while the planet one before this was flawed in some ways I enjoyed the change of pace and tone.
  
• From tigertooth on 2017-11-21 at 3:05am:
  The "just one more jump" thing was painfully bad. So, so obvious - almost a parody. And they didn't even have a particularly good reason for it. Lorca didn't insist on it. They could have just used warp, but no -- we'll just do this incredibly dangerous thing ONE more time.
  
  Lorca was trying to unlock the secret of the cloak, not merely destroy the Ship of the Dead. If he beams a bomb over, that takes care of the one ship, but not all the others in the Klingon fleet. So that worked for me.
  
  Did they show how Burnham got onto the bridge? It seemed implausible that she could get on the bridge undetected and set up the machine. Then again, that huge bridge is quite unlike the small, simple bridges we're used to seeing on Klingon ships.
  
  So the Klingon ship cloaks and prepares to warp away. Then Burnham shows up and the entire bridge forgets that there's a Starfleet vessel popping from place to place all around them. Seems that would raise some alarms, but instead the entire bridge crew ignores their sensors and turns into the thunderdome. Ridiculous.
  
  I didn't like the "Tyler is the Manchurian Candidate" idea, but assuming that Voq is indeed related, I might come around on it.
  
  I hope they can start making the characters, especially the Klingons, act in ways that show some common sense.
• From T. Buchholz on 2017-11-28 at 7:39pm:
  Hi there Mr Kethinov! Have you considered reviewing The Orville? I think it captures the spirit of classic Trek quite well though it can be a bit silly at times. is there any particular reason not to review it other than time constraints?
• From Kethinvo on 2017-11-28 at 9:54pm:
  Time constraints is the only reason.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Abigail on 2018-01-11 at 7:11pm:
  I feel like Star Trek has overdone parallel universes in which we all have an evil duplicate. Much like time loops, I am no longer interested. Give me something new, people!
• From Dstyle on 2018-01-18 at 12:50am:
  As soon as I realized this was going to be a mirror universe episode I had a similar reaction to Abigail's, but that was quickly replaced by a surprising giddiness. Sure, Trek has done it to death, but I just can't help but LOVE mirror universe episodes. Long live the Emperor!
• From Rob UK on 2018-01-18 at 6:49am:
  I am amazed they wasted 10 episodes to set up a Mirror Mirror story line in a weak attempt to do the Joss Weddon style with the series long evolving story line and character arcs, you know unlike Star Trek of old they and their world will change drastically and evolve or devolve due to events that happen in their lives and world.
  
  Star Trek usually wraps up a Mirror Mirror story line with 2 episodes, 1 in the early seasons to set up a ripple effect in the Mirror Mirror and then another episode in the later seasons to fix or make worse those ripples.
  
  I have hung in there watching diligently but i sadly have zero emotional or human connection to any characters in this Trek Verse except the nerdy awkward girl as she is the only close to believable character in the whole bloody show, I was very surprised and could not believe how I felt zero about the doctor getting his neck snapped, I didn't even enjoy the surprise violence as it was tee'd up so much you knew the character had to act in an extreme manner to allow the story arc to continue down it's very obvious and so far predictable path.
  
  Then we have the multi verse Stamets's having their own battle between themselves that everything hangs in the balance with in all parallel worlds, if evil versions of Stamets prevail doom doom doom, but which Stamets do we currently have on the ship, is he good or bad the suspense is definitely not killing me
  
  yawn yawn yawn but for some reason i am hanging in there still watching.
  
  On a happy note i am genuinely looking forward to the return of The Orville
• From Dstyle on 2018-01-18 at 4:29pm:
  Rob UK: I assume the "good Stamets vs evil Stamets" faceoff you're referring to occurs in a future episode? It certainly didn't occur in this one. I personally am not too upset by minor spoilers, but perhaps you should confine the discussion of plot points from future episodes to the comments of those particular episodes.
• From Kethinov on 2018-01-19 at 7:46am:
  I have no plans to enforce a no spoilers policy in the comments section. That said, I don't think Rob's comment is necessarily a spoiler unless he is aware of plot points beyond 1x11 that I am not aware of. There is some pretty obvious hint dropping starting with 1x05 about the mirror universe and a probable confrontation between Stamets and mirror Stamets which this episode all but confirms.
• From Rob UK on 2018-01-19 at 8:42pm:
  Sorry folks i definitely had no spoilers at all, it was purely my own speculations based on watching, i thought everyone here was kinda thinking down the same or similar paths based on Kethinov's reviews and the fan comments.
  
  I never read ahead if stuff gets leaked about anything, i don't even like to watch movie trailers and i always read the book before the movie comes out, my genuine apologies if anything i wrote felt like spoilers i was just having a mad midnight ramble about my thoughts on the show like most of my comments on here, check about my other commenst I am always Rob UK and I have been posting on here for about 3 or 4 years now and i have never ever spoilered, my comments are usually so off topic i am sure Kethinov only posts them because of their weird occasional comic value and you can definitely tell i love the Trek.
  
  I'm gonna have a re-read of my post, i might be onto something if it seemed like a spoiler :D it was about 4am when i posted and all i remember is ranting about not being upset when the doctor got killed
• From Dstyle on 2018-02-02 at 6:15pm:
  Fair enough. :)

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Inga on 2018-02-14 at 12:17pm:
  I think mirror Saru saved Burnham's life because she showed him kindness.