Comic #41 : "Star Trek Into Farceness"

I saw Star Trek Into Darkness a couple of weeks ago in IMAX 3D and it was a great rollercoaster ride, very entertaining with great visuals. I definitely recommend that anyone goes and sees it at the cinema, particularly on the large IMAX screens.

However, that is with one caveat: switch off your brain and any logical reasoning you have. The plot makes little sense and breaks down under even the slightest piece of scrutiny.

People are commending JJ Abrams for making Star Trek cool, and appeal to the masses - and I agree, to an extent - that increasing the people who can enjoy something is a good thing. Unfortunately, while he has improved on the aspects where Star Trek films were lacking in the past, he has also dropped the things that Star Trek used to do well.

Star Trek (usually) has a certain degree of internal logical consistency. While it was far, far removed from "real science" / "real world" it did try to maintain a common set of rules so things made sense. The new films have totally disregarded this.

Take, for example, the end of the previous movie: Kirk, who has not even completed his training, is not only promoted to captain but is given the flag ship of the fleet. All of the other trainees are promoted to senior positions as well. It's not that this does not make "Star Trek sense" - this does not make any sense at all.

And what about Scotty's trans-warp-transporter-beaming formula that can beam things huge distances across the galaxy... now that's been invented why are we still pissing about in star ships? The new film continues this trend, and while it doesn't have anything quite as bad as the "Kirk promoted to captain" logic fail, the plot flaws are far more numerous.

While the new films will be a lot more successful, they are just essentially a Star Trek themed summer blockbuster. Now, that means they will appeal to a large set of people, and they will make a lot of money - which is what the studios are ultimately interested in - but they won't add value to the franchise, and they are not 'high quality movies'.