A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

I saw Star Trek and enjoyed it very much. If you like cool shit, you'll probably like this movie. Lilek's thoughts on it jibe with mine, more or less.

I had cortezopossum's summary of "they managed to screw up everything, and yet it worked" in mind as I watched, but I don't think any apologies for canon-drift are really necessary. The producers made room for it in-story by not only explicitly ( making Picard age backwards ), but ( also letting Richard Hatch reprise his role as 'Nomad' from the original series. )

I also went in with surrealestate's perception that the movie was cringingly sexist. There is sexism-by-omission, but I want to beg off that charge by the fact that, short of BSG-style gender-flips, the producers didn't have much to work with given the source material. (Now, as dougo sez, they totally could have made at least one of the crew a lady, and made it work. Aw, I am now envisioning a girlie-girl Chekov. So cute. Oh well.) I can grok the negative reading of Uhura, but it's not the one that seemed natural to me as I watched the film. So, the movie didn't really trip my personal feminist barf-o-meter, for whatever that's worth... though I wouldn't have objected to more effort.

(I preëmptively dismiss the claim that any adaptation of Trek has to be sexist in order to stay true to its roots. As commenters to Ms. Estate's post note, the 1960s TV series did a lot to test social boundaries of the day, even though much of it seems pretty backwards to us now.)

BONUS REVIEW! Terminator: Salvation trailer: Boy, when the androids come for real, robophobic shit like this is gonna be unbearably igry. Just saying.

It's interesting to think that there are high school kids today who watch syndicated ST:TNG after school, and they have the same relationship with it that I did when I watched ST:TOS every weekday afternoon, 20 years ago.

Is TOS still in reruns anywhere, I wonder?

There is a Star Trek movie teaser trailer coming out. I'm too lazy to link to it because it's basically nothing, just enough to confirm that the film's in production, and to signal the fanboys to commence the freakout. (Its audio is samples of Apollo mission radio chatter that you can hear in any dime-store trance mix, for pete's sake. OK, and Nimoy. All right, fine: http://www.paramount.com/startrek. Sheesh.)

If JJ Abrams can tell an entire SF story that has a satisfying ending in the length of a single feature film, all shall be forgiven. Until then, I'm skeptical.

Meanwhile I find myself really out of touch regarding movies. I saw a friend complaining in an IM status message that someone named Cloverfield made her feel sick, figuring it was a co-worker who should have stayed home.