A nerdy moment

A short column in the New York Times has an interesting take on Star Trek and the new movie.

I am a huge fan of the original series. It used to repeat every afternoon on one of the local UHF stations when I was growing up. My mom watched it. At first I hated it for that hour when she would make me stop watching PBS or Happy Days and turn it to Star Trek. But somehow it finally won me over. When we got a VCR, we taped the episodes off of tv, and I watched those tapes for years to come until they wore out and you could barely see or hear the show through the fuzz. This, coupled with growing up with Star Wars, is probably what turned me into a sci-fi nerd.

I liked Next Generation, but never watched it religiously. Never even seen Voyager or Deep Space Nine, and only watched the first episode of Enterprise. I have seen all the movies (except for the first one--I don't know why). And I still love II through IV (though the fifth one is ridiculous). Steven Lloyd Wilson has excellent recaps of the whole movie franchise over on Pajiba.

When there was news that a new movie was coming out, I was excited. The first trailer (sometime last year) got me pumped. But as time went on, I have become less and less interested, and even worried. I actually have a theory that J. J. Abrams is not as great as everyone thinks he is (detailed at another time), and I'm worried that he is going to fuck this up. It seems to screw with the mythology. It seems to be a little too action-packed. And what I don't understand is how if all this crazy stuff happened when they were young, how could anything that happened afterward ever surprise, intrigue or scare them? And Abrams cast Tyler Perry, which is pretty near a dealbreaker for me. At this point, the only reason for me to see it is that Simon Pegg is in it.

But it has been getting decent reviews. Pretty good reviews, in fact. (And Maureen Dowd has a typically amusing political take on the whole thing.) The only one that gives me pause is the on in The New Yorker, where Lane points out that this movie doesn't have the social subtext of the series and the movies. And though the movie might be enjoyable, and the New York Times article above points out how a prequel fits in with the postmodern kitschiness and pastische of the original, I think The New Yorker nails my reservations about much of the whole venture.

But who am I kidding? Of course I'll see it. And then we'll see how I feel.