American Blog

There is some excitement on the horizon for fans of the Star Trek genre. Having endured the fiasco that was Star Trek: Enterprise, and most notably the experience of Scott Bakula as her Captain, there is real hope for what will be happening. After decades of movies and television show expanding on the travels of the original crew, the extended series is getting back to basics.

I mean the real basic beginnings of the series. There are plans now to have the next movie in the series go where we have not seen before. The first missions of Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura and the rest. Yes, we will finally get to see how the most famous crew of Starfleet came together. Few things have been more debated, queried, and speculated over.

Who was the captain they served under, how did they perform. How did Kirk get into the computers to reprogram the Kobiashi Maru? What was Commander Pike actually like, before we see him in the Glass Menagerie? Why was Kirk not with Spock on the Enterprise with Pike? And so many other questions. (Especially why did the Klingons look the way they did, which they don’t like to talk about).

These questions and far many more are about to be answered as the final crew for the Enterprise that we all love is being selected now. Already I can say that Mr. Simon Pegg – of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead fame – has been selected as Mr. Scott, engineer extraordinaire. And as the memorable and Errol Flynn-esque Mr. Sulu we have Mr. John Cho – of the Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The director is reported to be J.J. Abrams who brought us Mission Impossible 3 – which I though was well paced thought the plot, was a bit weak.

But who will be the other characters in this film?? Do they fit? Well they are Zoe Saldana as Uhura and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov. For Spock we have Zachary Quinto , with Chris Pine trying to fill the shoes of William Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk. So far there are no comments on who could be ‘Bones’ McCoy or Captain Pike. But we do know the villain of the fill will be Eric Bana of The Hulk infamy.

I like Simon Pegg; he is funny and does comedy well. Mr. Cho is basically unknown to me, but looks like he could fill the role, but I hope he gets help in pulling of the distinctive voice of Mr. George Takei. I have no idea who any of the other actors are besides Mr. Bana. That could either be very good, or horribly bad. Especially when you factor in Mr. Bana.

I hated him in the Hulk. He was a poor imitation of Mr. Bill Bixby, and just didn’t make me believe in the character. The plot sucked, as did the script and especially the directing, so perhaps it was not his fault. But he was the face of the movie, so he gets at least a portion of the blame. Thus I feel dubious about his portrayal as the key bad guy in this movie that could revive the franchise and start a new series of adventures on the small or big screen.

Now considering the number of barely-knowns in this film (at least to me), the potential limits of the villain, and the missing key characters, not to mention the unknown chemistry among the 3 critical figures of McCoy, Spock and Kirk, there are big questions if this will be good or not.

Perhaps you are for familiar with these actors and their ability. Is Mr. Quinto a good choice for Spock? Can Mr. Pine pull of the Shatner-esque Kirk? What do you think?

Of course, ultimately we will all know in the not too far off future, because the film is expected to be released Christmas of 2008.