Do they still have sandwiches there?

[sovay]

Man. You adapt one gesture from the Kohanim and the next thing you know, six billion of your people are dead and the rest in galactic diaspora. But why did you have to pick on us?

. . . by which you may understand that I just got back from Star Trek (2009) and I have an extraordinarily bad heachache, so this is not going to be a review. On the whole, my reaction is positive. Simon Pegg as Scotty: awesome. John Cho as Sulu: very awesome. Anton Yelchin as Chekov: adorable. It is quite likely I prefer Chris Pine to William Shatner. I do not prefer Zachary Quinto to Leonard Nimoy, but I did not expect to. And I really do not prefer Karl Urban to DeForest Kelley, which is unfortunate—McCoy is traditionally my favorite of the three principals, as problematic as he is, but there were places in this film he actively annoyed me. I would have liked more for Zoe Saldaña to do, because xenolinguistics: awesome. I have a wholly unwarranted fondness for Bruce Greenwood based on I'm Not There and having seen Chariots of Fire last summer, I am pleased to find Ben Cross still working; I can't explain anything to do with Spock's mother, at all. Any further discussion should probably go in the comments, if there's anyone left who hasn't talked the movie out weeks ago. It did make me want to rewatch the original series.

I wish the Omni theater at the Museum of Science still had Leonard Nimoy's voice.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Aside from the film's predilection for hiding mothers once their "use" has expired: I suppose we keep Sarek due to his sporadic appearances on TNG, but really, since we're to have a separate timeline, there should be no claim. It would've been much cooler to keep them both or to have just Amanda, even on the obvious level of having a point of difference to the Prime timeline. And yes, I wanted much, much more about identities from this film, alas. (Why can't Kirk have said at the end that his mother is proud of him? I assume she was absent during his childhood because she was in space.)

Sorry! "Cultural importance of maintaining one's own history" was meant to apply both to Vulcan and to what little I know of (some) Jewish practice today. I felt that diaspora is the more obvious superficial similarity, in a way, but that it doesn't hold as much importance: other human cultures have undergone significant diasporas, too, yet I find it difficult to draw relationships between those cultures and Vulcan.

And, um, sorry again, since there's no way all of that should have been smushed into a few short phrases.

[sovay]

Aside from the film's predilection for hiding mothers once their "use" has expired

Not to mention Nero's wife, who doesn't even get to be a mother before she dies . . .

(I also walked out thinking about the future of Romulan-Vulcan relations in this timeline. I'm not sure I was supposed to do that, either.)

And yes, I wanted much, much more about identities from this film, alas.

I suppose that's what fanfic is for. But I'd rather get it from the source material.

(Why can't Kirk have said at the end that his mother is proud of him? I assume she was absent during his childhood because she was in space.)

Yes, which I almost consider a plot hole—since she's on board the Kelvin in the first place and later offplanet for most of her son's life, I assume she's in Starfleet, so why is Kirk so messed up over his father? George Kirk may have died heroically, but his wife evidently wasn't the kind to sit at home for the rest of her life and polish her husband's memory. Even if she's, I don't know, an engineer or an advocate rather than a starship's second officer, her career should inform some of her son's ambiguity about Starfleet. Instead it's all his father's ghost and Captain Pike (and I liked Pike). She doesn't even send a card for his graduation? Can we get a deleted scene here?

"Cultural importance of maintaining one's own history" was meant to apply both to Vulcan and to what little I know of (some) Jewish practice today. felt that diaspora is the more obvious superficial similarity, in a way, but that it doesn't hold as much importance: other human cultures have undergone significant diasporas, too, yet I find it difficult to draw relationships between those cultures and Vulcan.

Gotcha! That makes sense. Thanks.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I also walked out thinking about the future of Romulan-Vulcan relations in this timeline.

Yeah--a very small part of me wonders whether some imperfectly socialized Vulcan would find it logical to kidnap random Romulans in order to broaden the gene pool. :(

Indeed, one'd imagine that having a mother in Starfleet (which I also assumed) would be harder to live up to, in a way: she's continuing to do cool stuff, relative to an earthbound kid, even if she's not bridge or command staff, whereas George's arc, however fiery, is finite. I wanted Pike to acknowledge something--I liked him, too. heh.