Your spoilery reactions, please give them to me, part 1: Star Trek

Ok, so I saw Star Trek last night, and of course I have reactions. I also want to hear all of yours - links please! Links to reviews you've read! Everything!



I had stayed as spoiler-free in the lead-up as I could, so apart from the casting decisions and the trailers, I knew nothing at all. It's also been a while since I steeped myself in Trek lore hardcore, despite growing up with "Trekkie" practically counting as the family religion, so I wasn't up on the details of the main Original Series character backstories. So I didn't know it was an Alternate Universe (or more accurately, Alternate Reality) reboot for sure until I saw Vulcan blow up. Whoa, was I not prepared for that!

I still kept kind of wondering if they were going to go back and "fix" the timeline somehow... and then found myself really hoping that they wouldn't. I realized, they'd done a good job of making me care about these characters *as they are now*, in this AU/AR, that I was willing to allow the tragedy of Vulcan to stand in order to get to see where these characters go, what their journey is.

Thinking back on it, both during the movie and afterwards, I'm really glad they decided on a massive reboot in this manner. Now they don't have the original continuity to hold to, live up to, etc. - it's the ultimate live-action fanfic, really: What happens if Kirk had grown up a little tougher, if Spock got to prove himself to his father early (in TOS they're estranged for *years*), etc. I do grieve for Vulcan, though, even though this is clearly an alternate continuity and in the universe old-Spock is from, Vulcan is still there. I have a pretty huge soft spot for Vulcan.

The only thing that really sucked, cesperanza said better than me: WTF was up with the lack of women?. I know this is recapitulating original Trek, and that we weren't gonna suddenly have any major new female characters, that there would still be minidresses for Uhura, etc. But really, couldn't the movie have kept Bechdel's Law just a little? The conversation while undressing in Uhura and the Orion girl's room, with Kirk under the bed, may briefly not be about a man, but it's too infused with sex to count.

So overall, definitely liked it. Definitely looking forward to the next installment. And I'm hoping that fandom works out good shorthand conventions for keeping track of it all, too. I'm thinking "old continuity"/"new continuity" but there's probably something a lot better.

Also, your Star Trek icons, I can haz them? Now that I'm a paid Dreamwidth user, I want to use my icon slots! (I'd have gone for a seed account if I, yaknow, had a job, but long-term loyal paid users will help DW in the long run so I don't feel too sad.)