Retro Fat: A Word From My Human (March 10, 2014)

Allow Me to Retort*: Trek-volution

(*Title credit to David Beau Paul of loungegeeks.com, oneofus.net, & formerly of spill.com's "The League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen")

While nowadays my Sci-Fi of choice is Doctor Who, I'm very much a life long Trekker. To this day I can still remember watching Encounter at Farpoint with my family when it originally aired in 1987.  Hell, I followed that with Star Trek IV as one of the first films I remember seeing in theater (the other being Tramsformers).  Even my first Cosplay at my first Con was a home made Trek uniform.  As much as I've loved other Sci-Fi franchises that came and went, such as Firefly, and grew up on things like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I was always a big Trekkie. 

Now, in 2009 we had the JJ Abrams directed Star Trek reboot. A big budget Hollywood film that, let's be honest, was more actionary and less visionary. Not for everyone, and I can respect that even though frankly I happily watched it at least six times in theater and at least six more via the home release. Star Trek Into Darkness, was one of the single worst films I've ever seen in my life and elicited my first experience with pure, unfiltered nerd rage. But I've still done my best to respect the opinions of those who enjoyed that film.

But then I noticed something online.  A trend that, small at first, is now starting to get a bit out of hand. And that trend is fan edits from Trekkies who are under the impression that they have the right to decide what kind of Star Trek I should be able to watch. These people, I have to figure, hate change.  They are Trekkies who are living in the mid-2000's, somewhere between roughly Insurrection and Nemesis. Most of all, these are Trekkies who need to learn to shut ... the hell ... up!

As much as I'm a "live and let live" kind of guy, I'm getting real tired of seeing the same complaints over and over again. "Star Trek has lost its vision," "This isn't the Star Trek I grew up with!  How dare they change it!"  Really?  You know who's truly lost the meaning of Gene Roddenberry's vision?  You.  Every single "fan" who complains ad nauseum that the Trek they  enjoyed as a child isn't around anymore, every wannabe movie director who takes footage from new Trek, mixes it with footage from old Trek in such a way that they've clearly done it for the sole purpose of saying "you need to give me what I want and this is how you're going to do it,"  has completely and totally forgotten the message of peace, tolerance, and the acceptance of our differences that the Trek they're so gung-ho to get back was all about.

I'm frankly disgusted by the arrogance of a fan base segment that doesn't seem to be able to comprehend that, if they had their way, Star Trek would have been three seasons on TV with six movies and then we'd never see it again.  This splinter group doesn't seem to understand that, by their own logic, most of the Star Trek that they know and love would never have existed. Because that's what refusing to accept change means. No Enterprise, no Voyager (and by extent Hal-Con would be deprived of one of its favorite guests), no Deep Space Nine, and possibly worst of all, no Next Generation.  When you whine and complain about how your Trek is gone and you want it changed back, that is the logical conclusion to your own argument.  

Fans calling for erasure of Abrams Trek have also forgotten or refused to consider several other details. First, the TNG cast, aside from Patrick Stewart who refuses to age, are simply too old.  The window for continuing Next Gen movies closed a long, long time ago. The only cast member with name value right now is Stewart, and I have trouble believing he can sell a movie by himself. Secondly' and possibly most importantly, old school Trek doesn't make money. For a movie to be considered profitable, it's total gross needs to be at least double it's estimated budget. Let's take a look at the numbers for every Trek film between The Undiscovered Country and the 2009 reimagining. The film's profit margin, in this case, is the number of times greater it was then the budget:

With each successive movie, Paramount lost money and that's a key point that every single Trekkie who calls for the return of "old school" Trek continually ignores.  The Trek they want slowly but surely stopped making money, and no studio is going to support a franchise that doesn't make money.

There's a myth that people who want Abrams Trek erased seem rather set on perpetuating. An oft heard complaint is "Abrams is erasing classic Trek!  He's getting rid of all the things about Star Trek that I enjoyed so he can replace it with his own stuff!"  If someone you know hates Abrams Trek based on this idea, stop listening to their complaints immediately as they are utterly unfamiliar with the product they're lashing out against.  The 2009 Star Trek is a reboot only so far as "reboot" is a buzzword people are familiar with. It doesn't erase or restart anything. In fact, JJ Abrams stops the first movie's story to put in a scene explaining that everything happening does so in a parallel timeline.  I mean, I've heard of closed minded people, but how thick do you have to be to have a movie stop everything to tell you that it isn't erasing any of the material that came before and still insist that it is?

Now with my final point, I need to clarify something. If you're more a fan of Roddenberrry Trek than Abrams Trek, that's fine. I'm not saying you should have to suffer simply because people enjoy Abrams Trek.  There are plenty of people who aren't fans of the new stuff because they believe that Star Trek has lost its vision under JJ Abrams, that it no longer provides the positive and inspiring view of the future that first brought many fans in to begin with. And you know what?  Those people are absolutely right. Star Trek most definitely lost something when JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci took over. As much as Abrams Trek (for at least the first movie) is an entertaining space adventure that's just as entertaining the fifteenth time you see it as it is the first.  However, I'll be truly amazed if it inspires anyone to do anything.  Because Abrams went back to the days of James T. Kirk, the new batch of films won't predict future technology because it has to respect the source material, and therefore can only use stylized versions of things we have now. What it can do, what it does do, is entertain.  Personally, that's all I want.

So in conclusion, if you don't like the Abrams Trek because it doesn't provide the hopeful vision of the future that Trek once had, that's fine.  If you don't like it because it doesn't inspire you, that's fine.  Hell, if you don't like it because you think it's less Trek and more Generic Hollywood Blockbuster #16, or because it insists on retreading old material instead of doing new things with it, that's fine to.  Those are all 100% valid complaints I can support. However, if your sole reason for hating Abrams Trek boils down to "I don't like it because it's different and not what I grew up on," then you take all the DVD/Blu-Rays of the remastered original Trek, the movies, episodes of Star Trek Continues, stop trying to re-edit the 2009 Star Trek so that Captain Picard comes flying through the temporal vortex and blows Nero out of the stars, you sit down in front of your TV with as much of "your" Trek as you can handle and SHUT ... THE HELL ... UP!!

I'm perfectly content to let you enjoy the Trek you want without prejudice, so remember the tolerance Gene Roddenberry made Star Trek about and let me enjoy mine in peace.