Review of Star Trek: Beyond (spoilers!)

Review:

STAR TREK: BEYOND

(or, as I call it, Fear of a Black Galaxy)

The nice thing about going into a movie with low expectations is that doing so dramatically increases your chances of having a good experience, and Star Trek: Beyond proved no exception. In many ways I think it is the strongest of the three JJ Abrams reboots, working out some of the kinks and improving on the weaknesses of the previous two, all while keeping the stuff that worked. I have only one large objection, which I can’t reveal without mentioning --

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

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Ok, as always, let’s start with the good. Aside from a somewhat slow start, the pacing was excellent, and the action beautifully choreographed (the upside of the “Fast and Furious” guy being your director). There were some lovely tiny details here and there, like the many “swarms” we saw re-iterated on the planet (birds in the distance at one point, bees in a cave) as a reflection of the swam-attack of the enemy ships.

The acting was sharp – the actors played their characters to the fullest (except, well, Zoe Saldana as Uhura who to be fair has next to nothing to work with, since Uhura is kind of a non character and always was). Special props to Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote the script. The tone struck a really excellent balance, tense and dramatic when it needed to be, humor injected where needed.

The abysmal treatment of female characters from the first two films (esp. Into Darkness) got a bit of a face-lift, as in this film all of the women (including, inexplicably, Uhura) do plenty of ass-kicking. I’ll refer you to Sophia McDougal’s famous essay “I hate strong female characters” for how this still isn’t as good as female characters who are complex…but hey, baby steps.

What I loved most was how the series continues to really, really respect Trek continuity for those of us mega-fans, in particular:

* The use of the Captain Archer-era ship, complete with references to phase-cannons and the regenerative armor thingie. Different bridge set, but I’m not gonna nit pick quite to that level.

* The reference to the conflict with the Xindii  (which, since I don’t recall ever really blossoming into a war that involved any other Starfleet ship than the Enterprise, strongly suggests that the villain was actually one of Archer’s marines at one point)

* “Commodore Paris” is a nice reminder that Tom Paris’ family has been in the admiralty for generations…and that somewhere he’s got South Asian heritage, which is kinda neat.

* Sulu and his husband, with toddler Remora. Nuff said.

Now, on to the core message of the film, which is both its strength and its most grievous flaw:

Yes, I really like how, in all three films (especially #2 and now #3), we get the message that the biggest threat to the Federation is its own tendency towards xenophobia and militarism. This is definitely the a Trek for our own era, and the fact that Abrams & co. have the balls to keep putting out this message in a time when mainstream culture is all “oooh, fear the foreign terrorists, feeeearrrrr the foreign terrrorissttssss!” … it’s a tiny bit reassuring to have our best nature played to, and that’s always what I loved most about Trek (major exceptions being Enterprise’s Xindii War saga and Star Trek: Nemesis, which were just War on Terror propaganda dressed in Starfleet clothing).

But for that very reason, I wanted to tear my goddamn hair out (what little remains) when (ok, huuuuugge spoiler) the evil alien villain is revealed as….a human, and not just any human, but a black guy! A “primitive” throwback black guy from an era defined by violence and conflict who now rages against the perceived weakness he sees in the “civilized” society which has left him behind, both metaphorically and physically (the “take care of our veterans or they’ll go freaking nuts on you” message was extremely well timed, given the Dallas sniper attacks…heyyy, and that guy was a black veteran, too…) It’s up to the heroic civilized white guys to stop the savage black dude from killing everyone, and they do, hooray!

You can tell me I’m reading too much into this, but seriously, the final scenes…did NOBODY spot check this and say, “ummm…this imagery here…white dude in a freaking alabaster space station where every object is white, allied with an alien girl who is literally chalk-white, struggling to stop this black guy and his weapon, which is a black cloud?  I mean, might people get the wrong idea?”  There are SO many ways this could have been softened or complicated a bit. It just drove a stake through so much of what was good about this film.

(I fully expect a protest meme now, “STARFLEET lives matter!”)

And for that matter…why the hell did Evil Savage Black Dude (henceforth referred to as ESBD) even need his Evil Black Bioweapon to begin with? He has this unstoppable armada of swarm-ships that seem immune to any weapons Starfleet has. Why not just freaking conquer the Federation with them? Why base your whole strategy on a bioweapon that requires insane difficulty to sneak into the ventilation system of a starbase? Ok, so it turns out the whole fleet can be disabled by hip hop music (the white dudes coopting the black man’s music as their own, don’t get me started), but no one knew that at the time…did ESBD figure sooner or later someone would figure it out, so he’d better have a backup plan?

And by the way, just what WAS this plan? It seemed to run along the lines of, “The Federation has grown weak and too focused on peace and cooperation – what humans need is to grow through conflict and war – so I’m going to blow up a space station and…and…um…”  Just what the fark was supposed to happen next? Did he plan to use his drone ships to go to war with the rest of the Federation, and, win or lose, humans would grow from the conflict...and then become a better (ie, more warlike) species? I guess, maybe…the reasoning wasn’t super clear. Then again, you could just say, aww, it doesn’t have to make sense, he’s just batshit insane. But then, so too were his other two crewmates (presumably these were the ones who killed chalk-girl’s family and the female refugee-spy who, OMG, how the freak did nobody suspect she was a spy until the whole ship was blowing up? Maybe ESBD was right and the Federation HAD grown too soft and trusting. Also, ick on the “refugees are all fifth columnists” message)

By the way, why did ESBD's crew go all "donner party" on each other?  Why did it matter that the Federation didn't come to rescue them? It didn't seem all that difficult for Scotty and Jada to get the Franklin spaceborne again, and lest you think it was because they had centuries-better technology, they didn't -- they didn't have any new tech to bring to bear, except maybe the stuff Jada had kit bashed together...which was from the drone armada, which ESBD and his crew had access to all along! That means, even if we accept the premise that only Scotty, who is a super tech genius, would have been able to get the Franklin spaceworthy again, those drone ships were TOTALLY spaceworthy. Why not go back home in THEM?  Do they not have warp drive or something? (Actually, that might explain why they had to wait for the Federation to expand out and reach them first, which would make the whole "the frontier pushes back" speech make more sense...did that explanation end up on the cutting room floor?)

Annnyway, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, the play was fine. Seriously, had they only tweaked the “color scheme” a bit, as it were, the movie would have really worked for me. We’ll call it a “B-,” marked down from an “A-.”

- W

PS – So “Parkman” from Heroes  has now appeared in both the rebooted Star Wars and Star Trek (here he seemed ready to boldly explode out of his uniform…I guess obesity has not been conquered in the 23rd century?) …someone spot check me here, as I’m too lazy to do it on my own…have any other actors done double-duty in  both ST and SW? The “Breen suits” don’t count. :)

PPS - Am I totally tripping, or were the starbase personnel wearing uniforms from GalaxyQuest???