"Your father was the captain of the Enterprise for 12 minutes and he saved 800 lives. I dare you to do better"
Last time we saw James T. Kirk on the big screen, he was a highly respected captain-turned-admiral-turned-captain for the galactic Federation—a near legendary figure with a curious speaking cadence and a penchant for derring-do. Oh, sure, he was a little unorthodox at times, but he was a hero, through-and-through.
One might chalk it up to good parenting.
Little did/does he know that, years before/after, a ticked off Romulan evildoer actually killed his father before the elder/younger Kirk even had a chance to meet his newly born son, thus taking away half of the "good parenting" equation and sending Kirk's past/future trajectory into an entirely different space quadrant.
Yes, it's confusing. But this is science fiction—one of the few genres where the past can be present, the future past and the present all mixed up. The upshot is that this movie's Kirk—a swaggering force of nature with charm to spare and some seriously bad intentions—is a ne'er-do-well Iowan who seemingly couldn't care less about the future. This Kirk has one eye on trouble and the other on the shortest skirts he can track down. This Kirk thinks nothing of picking a fight with a handful of fledgling Federation soldiers.
"Get two more guys, and then it'll be an even fight," he brags.
OK, so this new/old Kirk may actually act a lot like the old/new Kirk. But we can't really compare them because the space-time continuum is ripped and, for all we know, Kirk might bypass Starfleet altogether and get a really good job as a bouncer and—
Well, let's not go talking all kinds of crazy here. No matter how tattered the continuum may be, Kirk is still destined to become captain of the new/old NCC-1701, aka the Starship Enterprise, aka the snazziest set of space wheels in the whole known galaxy. He's still destined to hook up with Spock, Bones and the rest of sci-fi's most famous space crew. He's still destined to lead hordes of red-shirted yeomen to their appropriately noble deaths, to fire phasers first and ask questions later, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
But the certainty of Kirk's future/past doesn't erase the uncertainty surrounding him in the present. That ripped continuum thing has got everybody walking around like cats on a hot tin roof. It seems that much of what we thought we knew about the Star Trek universe is no longer applicable. (Dedicated Trekkers will tell you, for instance, that the Federation didn't find out about Romulans until after Kirk was comfortably ensconced as captain.)
Kirk was supposed to have had a long, fulfilling relationship with his father. So if Kirk doesn't have a pops, what other big changes could be in store for us? Will Spock break out into song—"Feelings," perhaps?
[Note: The following sections include spoilers.]
Kirk doesn't start out as much of a hero. His father, on the other hand, was the real deal. He was a starship captain for just 12 minutes before he died. But in that time—consumed as it was with trying to fight off a Romulan super destroyer—he managed to save most of his ship's crew. Captain Christopher Pike encourages Kirk to follow his father's legacy. "He saved 800 lives. Including your mother's. And yours," Pike says. "I dare you to do better."
Kirk never met a dare he didn't like, and so he begins the periodically disrupted process of making something of himself. He starts to unveil all the attributes we've come to expect from the guy—loyalty, bravery and the ability to take a punch—along with a few more overlooked traits: compassion, intellect and, believe it or not, the ability to follow an order. (Sort of.) When Kirk runs into an aged, future/past version of Spock, the older Vulcan tells Kirk to take over the ship from the younger Spock, all the while keeping the existence of the older Spock a secret from the younger Spock. Kirk agrees.
Spock shows his own bevy of good points. Along with his oft-displayed logic and common sense, the pointy-eared one risks his life to try to save his parents, along with a handful of Vulcan leaders, from a planetary catastrophe.
Both Kirk's and Spock's good points cut both ways, of course, and there are lessons in that, too: Kirk does follow the older Spock's orders, but in so doing, he purposefully hurts Spock by questioning whether he ever loved his mother. Spock responds—in a frightening display of emotion—by nearly coming unhinged. Note to future Starfleet recruits: Never make Spock mad.
Forget the Prime Directive, the crew of the Starship Enterprise spent much of its original three TV seasons debunking the universe's misguided faiths. And it wasn't to defend Christianity, either. Indeed, Star Trek was launched at the behest of a man (Gene Roddenberry) who once said, "Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."
This reboot, though, is about as faith-free as anything has ever been in the Star Trek franchise. On this voyage, director J.J. Abrams steers well clear of spirituality as he heads straight for the galactic amusement park.
