Star Trek

[mousepod]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

I'm okay with that. Honestly, one of the things I hated most about Enterprise was how much, "Ooooh, THAT'S the backstory x, y, and z for that person or invention or treaty," stuff. I find that after a while, I don't give a crap about back story. So I'm pretty okay with just scrapping it all and starting new. Same characters, new adventures, screw the obsessive continuity hawks.

It's okay to be okay with it. And I don't think a prequel needs to adhere to some canonical backstory, either.

But to go back to my comic book analogy: The Flash was cool because he could run really fast. The Green Lantern was an interesting hero because all of his power was in his ring. When they brought out new versions of those heroes - with different 'real' names and everything - it was okay because they still retained the stuff that made them popular.

I would argue that this particular Enterprise crew is popular not because of any super powers, but because of the adventures they had together and the relationship they had with each other. I liked Shatner's Kirk and Nimoy's Spock because of the relationship they had with each other. So that was the bait that brought me to the theater on opening weekend.

And it turns out it's not those guys. Not even those characters. And it's okay that you're okay with that. But the "alternate timeline" stuff is hackneyed and easy. Not clever.

It's as if Marvel took an issue of the old comic "What If?" ("What if Spider-Man had joined The Fantastic Four?" "What if Conan The Barbarian walked the earth today?") and decided to make it a series of its own, but didn't tell anyone until halfway through the comic.