Which Star Trek Episode Does a Lady Ask Kirk to Apologize to Her Again
2016 marks the 50th ceremony of the Star Trek franchise — and the release of Star Trek Beyond, the 13th characteristic moving picture in the serial. To celebrate this big yr, and ponder the deeper meanings of Trek's outset half-century, the Entertainment Geekly column has been looking at a dissimilar Star Trek film each week. Last week: The much-despised ode to architectural decadence. This week: Beyond, and something different.
The best Star Expedition movie in 25 years came out this summer. It stars 1 woman, was directed by some other adult female, and lasts less than 4 minutes.
I have no idea why a song called "Sledgehammer" became the tie-in song for Star Trek Beyond. Hell, I can't even remember the final time a big blockbuster movie had a tie-in song — and there's a very throwback-'90s experience to the "Sledgehammer" music video. It's like director Floria Sigismondi took a couple ambient visuals from the motion picture (alien-lady makeup, buzzard attack-bots) and plugged them into her own very woozy hallucinogenic notions of an extraterrestrial space-goddess dancing across star-splattered rock formations and starchilding into cosmic ultrasentience. It'due south our ain modern variant of "Come With Me," the music video where Puff Daddy raps toward Godzilla, which is coincidentally the only halfway entertaining Godzilla movie ever fabricated exterior of Nihon.
The "Sledgehammer" video has no obvious plot, which actually makes it less confusing than Across, a film whose plot depends on a hazily-explained space-tech thing getting passed among at to the lowest degree two never-seen, barely-remarked-upon conflicting races. In the video, Rihanna plays a superpowered god-person — maybe a Q, or a shirt-tail cousin to Trelane, or an Organian in a dancing mood. (If y'all take the music video's canon seriously — no reason not to! — and so Rihanna's control over the Beyond space-swarm would imply that she's the alien whose long-abandoned technology provides bad guy Krall with his military-industrial might.) She's on a purple-toned rocky landscape…
…which uncannily resembles the God Planet at the center of the Universe from The Concluding Borderland…
…and that similarity is no accident! Because — and I swear to god I didn't know this until five seconds agone — "Sledgehammer" was really shot in the verbal same identify where William Shatner filmed the climax of his Star Trek movie. It's the Trona Pinnacles, ane of those beautiful corners of California that looks like the sunblasted hemisphere of a lifeless planet. I have no idea if director Floria Sigismondi knew that — she didn't mention the connection to my colleague Nolan Feeney — and I have no idea if the video's other apparent Trek homages are intentional or non.
But "Sledgehammer" honors some visual cues from Expeditionsouth long past; it is one of the trippiest products the franchise has always produced. By the terminate, Rihanna has ascended to some greater catholic plane, and her face silhouettes outward from a nebular expanse. Information technology reads — to me, at least — as an uncanny riff on the faces on the poster for The Motion Picture, floating in space with light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-lines emanating skywards.
The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier both get a bad rap; I'thou on the record liking them both, and then possibly I'chiliad just grasping at crazy straws hither. But this has been a twelvemonth with lots of loose talk near what Star Trek is, and what Star Trek should be. (Some people like Beyond specifically because it feels so much like Star Trek.) So I'm tickled that Sigismondi's version of Star Trek is either inspired by, or inadvertently akin to, two of the about willfully foreign variations of Star Trek in the franchise's 50-year history.
There'south a bespeak where Rihanna seems to be transubstantiating, her body etched in glowing lights beyond the creation; information technology recalls zero so much as Spock'south tour through Five'ger, with another catholic female person form at the center of it all.
The final shot of "Sledgehammer" finds the Enterprise staring at a planet-sized face of Rihanna. The shot holds for a few long seconds. There's nothing like it in Beyond; Justin Lin's picture show has some gloriously geometric notions virtually outer-space civilization, but it'south not a Giant Floating Caput kind of movie.
Which, fine: In that location'southward always been a tense coolness to the Star Trek movies, a sense that childish things similar Greek God Aliens and Wesley Crusher and The Possibility Of A Story Without Violence ought to be left behind on the small screen. But I'thousand struck that this final shot dares to combine ii different visual ideas from 2 of the least-loved Star Expedition movies. Accept the extreme long shot of the Enterprise from The Motion Moving picture….
…and combine the floating godface over the Trona Pinnacles from The Final Frontier…
And voila: Find Rihanna's Star Trek!
At present, I accept no idea how much Rihanna actually knows most Star Trek, nor do I remotely intendance. It's ever suspicious when a famous person self-describes as a nerd for anything — but maybe the central sin of modern fandom is the idea that fandom is something y'all have to qualify for.
And fact that Rihanna calls out "La Forge" every bit her favorite character feels personal and truthful, insofar equally it's completely at odds with Paramount's official messaging effectually their corner of Star Trek franchise. Paramount loves that you love Star Trek, simply doesn't actually admit anything that happened in the 40 years between the Telly show getting canceled and the first J.J. Abrams movie. I quote from an official printing release that arrived in my inbox a couple weeks ago: Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Bad Robot announce a 4th 'Star Trek' Flick. I know this is pedantic, but: The fourth Star Trek film is 30 years old, and it's a damn masterpiece, so possibly some attention should be paid, oh ye Writers of Official Studio Press Releases.
I'm not going to make the example that, like, "Sledgehammer" exemplifies some bold new accept on the franchise'south iconography. There's a cynical read on this video: A studio wants to reach out to some not-nerd dude demographics; a vocaliser willing to plug a vocal about Sledgehammers into the finish credits of a space action motion picture; a music video director thrilled to shoot on-location using IMAX cameras.
But in that location'south no reason to exist precious about whatever Star Trek is supposed to mean. Here'southward a franchise born out of candy-colored Pop Art imagery and lysergic cheap-puppet visions of life beyond the cosmos — and, fifty years deep into its existence, one of the most prominent visual concepts in its latest $185-million incarnation is putting Kirk on a motorcycle. Perchance we need Rihanna'south swooning saturnine telekinesis; mayhap Sigismondi could do a whole lot more with a feature film budget; perchance nosotros need a Star Trek moving-picture show daring plenty to exist silly; maybe Beyond could've used a Behemothic Floating Head.
The all-time part of Beyond is the get-go human action. Substantially a prologue, it finds Captain Kirk and his coiffure far on the outer reaches of space. They're three years into the five-year mission. Maybe we can credit co-writer Simon Pegg for that fleck of metatextual cleverness: The original Trek ended at the 3-yr mark, and even factoring in alternate-reality chrono-twists, it still feels like Beyond could be the premiere of a never-filmed 4th season.
Kirk is bored; things are getting "episodic." The coiffure is passing the time: Collecting artifacts from distant planets; falling into bed with each other. Starfleet used to vibe naval, until Next Generation reimagined its Enterprise as a family-friendly work environment, half-Googleplex and half-Bounding main Org. In Beyond, serving on a Starfleet ship most closely resembles a lengthy study-abroad session, with Chekov the prototypical nerdy-teen who goes to higher and rediscovers himself equally a baby-faced Don Juan.
The exception is Kirk. He's feeling a bit listless. He's getting older; Beyond starts with McCoy insisting on celebrating his birthday. We've been hither before — McCoy demands that Kirk celebrate turning 50 in The Wrath of Khan — only there's some true resonance to the referentiality. This Kirk was born the day his father died; he's now older than his father ever was. In existent life, Pine is a few years older than onscreen father Chris Hemsworth — and Pine is the exact same age that William Shatner was when Shatner started playing Kirk dorsum in 1966. "To perfect eyesight and a full head of pilus!" toasts McCoy — a line that I choose to believe is a deeply embedded nudge-nudge to the original Kirk, shown here with a convincing haircut:
In Beyond, Kirk is wondering: But why the hell is he doing this? He never really wanted to bring together Starfleet, like his dad; he just signed up on a cartel. At that place's a clever new idea here, and I remember the reference to Wrath of Khan is of import. That Kirk was having a midlife crisis; nowadays, nobody waits until 50 to accept a midlife crunch.
"I loved playing the first 10 minutes of this movie greatly," Chris Pine told me, virtually Beyond. "Information technology'south a willfully dissimilar free energy than Kirk has been in the past." Nosotros met Pino's Kirk as an angry fellow, recall. "He was louder, maybe at times more abrasive. He'south emotional, he's volatile, he's a raging adolescent kid, who's pissed off at the system that killed his male parent, pissed off at his begetter for dying, using all this rage as fuel, to make him as expert of a Starfleet captain — or fifty-fifty better! — than his begetter."
In Across, that aroused young man has gone. "He's quieter. He's more subdued. He all the same has his sense of humor. Only there's a mundanity to it, an everydayness to it." Pine told me that he could relate to this new Kirk — at least, to the Kirk we see at the start of the film. "Information technology's merely the kickoff ten minutes," he said.
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What happens later on those first 10 minutes? The Enterprise visits Yorktown, a nifty infinite-sphere with skyscrapers pointed upwards and downward and inwards and outwards. On the Yorktown, Sulu meets his family, and gives his husband a hearty thoughtful rub on the back. At long final, confirmation: Sulu is married, and the spark is gone. It'south probably too much to wait that Sulu would kiss his husband (a kissing scene was filmed, withal, but and then cut, co-ordinate to John Cho); physical sexuality has been pretty well banished from this version of Star Trek. Pine has never had a love interest. Uhura and Spock are trapped in the late stage of a bad romance: They are that higher couple who could never quite interruption upward.
Actually, these new Treks mostly care for sexiness as a sight gag: Kirk'due south cat-lady strippers from Into Darkness, a shirtless Chekov kicked into the Enterprise corridor for a walk of shame, the lingerie-clad Orion woman from Expedition '09. Maybe that'south why Beyond casts Idris Elba — acclaimed actor and forefront exemplar of contemporary sexual charisma — as a face-shifting roach-monster with a placeless accent and a slipstream motivation.
Elba is playing Balthazar Edison, a hero of the Federation, someone who fought in the early on Romulan wars earlier launching bravely into the far reaches of infinite in the first era of Starfleet'south adventures beyond the stars. At the hazard of playing Monday Morning Quarterback on a picture that anybody openly insists was rushed into production with a apace-written script: Everything about Elba in Beyond is backwards. It'southward the Cumberkhan problem all over again, actually. The villain in Beyond is constructed around a Big Twist — the monster was human being all forth! — when the picture show would be vastly more than interesting if it showed you all the cards at the start.
Imagine if we got to meet Elba equally a great mythic hero of the Federation, a swaggering inspiration to all who followed him: Imagine if Elba got to play Kirk'south Kirk. (The tie-in viral videos practically write themselves; they could be shot similar the original Star Trek series, with Captain Edison beaming downward to San Fernando-looking planets to fight cadger-men and osculation space-gals with prosthetic foreheads.) Across buries that possibility, and backloads all of Elba'south motivation to the final act, by which time his plan only actually makes sense as a suicide mission.
Was this ever the plan? The trailers for Beyond promised something unusual: Cut to Elba, as Krall, declaring that "This is where the Frontier pushes dorsum." When I talked to Simon Pegg a few months agone, he explained, "We've moved on a lilliputian scrap since the '60s. It's enabled us to enquire certain questions that might not take been asked then. Is the Federation a good thought or not? Is it just colonialism?"
That is a skillful question — and information technology echoes one of the best throwaways lines from The Undiscovered Country. It'due south in that great dinner scene between the Enterprise and the Klingons. Chekov claims that the Federation believes "all planets accept a sovereign claim to inalienable man rights."
"If simply you could hear yourselves!" says Azetbur, an intelligent young Klingon woman. "'Man rights.' Why, the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than than a 'homo sapiens' only club."
From what we see, in that location are an awful lot of humans in the Federation, and in Starfleet. At that place are probably reasons for this in the canon, and we all know that it'south merely because it would take too damned long to requite every actor wacky forehead ridges. But why is Starfleet and so overrun with humans? And why does Starfleet refer to outer space as the "frontier," when we can clearly see that most of the alien civilizations Starfleet "discovers" take been living happily for hundreds of thousands — if not millions or billions — of years? These are questions nosotros aren't supposed to ask about Star Trek, which makes them the most interesting questions to enquire.
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Here's a question: Why does Quondam Spock stay in the past?
Expedition '09 requires all the usual leaps in time travel logic. Spock has some blood-red matter chosen, well, "Red Matter," capable of creating continuum-puncturing blackness holes through which spaceships tin travel uninjured. Pointless to nitpick this; in my favorite Star Trek movie, fourth dimension travel is achieved past flying into the sun at top speed and withstanding an Easter Isle CGI-Head dream sequence. The actions of Spock and Nero launch a new branch off the bully Lifetree of Infinite-Time, creating a new alternating reality where Kirk had no male parent but at least his eyes were blue.
The movie doesn't dawdle too much on the great questions of time travel, because secretly, Trek '09 doesn't really consider Spock a fourth dimension traveler at all. This is a new universe, with familiar-looking characters who are yet completely dissimilar people. When I spoke to Pegg, he stressed that was the estimation framed by himself and Across co-writer Doug Jung. "We're not governed past what happened in the original timeline," he said. "We discussed the potential fate of everybody being completely open. Information technology's not similar they have to survive. This isn't that universe. Their life experiences might be slightly different…[information technology] might not be the same sperm that fertilized the aforementioned egg."
Of course, part of the intriguing tension of the new Expedition films is that their universe is never entirely dissimilar. In fact, these "new" characters often seem to exist trapped on destiny's rail; Kirk and Spock are inevitably friends (even though they initially detest each other). They must inevitably fight a madman named Khan. If they inevitably watch ane Enterprise get destroyed, they volition inevitably find a shiny new Enterprise-A waiting for them in spacedock. Spock and Uhura might date, Sulu might have a husband, Chekov might be flirting with half the ladies onboard the Enterprise, only you could make the argument that all of that could accept happened on the original series. Uhura would occasionally flirt with Spock; Sulu doesn't really have onscreen love interests; who knows what Chekov does subsequently hours?
Similar: It doesn't require too much imagination to get dorsum to the original series and imagine that Koenig's Chekov is handsome young cad, that Takei'south Sulu is a absurd professional who doesn't talk about his family, that Spock and Uhura are casual co-workers-with-benefits. (Think: The Final Frontier implicitly establishes that Uhura and Scotty take been/always shall be shore leave sweethearts.) It's true that we don't see that stuff on the original series.
But when y'all watch all of the Star Trek movies in quick succession, you lot may notice just how little we really encounter of these characters — and, maybe, how niggling we understand the galaxy effectually them. In Wrath of Khan, Starfleet is clearly a military endeavour; the scientists amalgam the Genesis Projection don't quite trust that Kirk and his boyfriend Admirals have good intentions. In Search for Spock, Starfleet is a corroded bureaucracy, with an extremely Kremlin-y trend to imprison crumbling heroes for acting unmutual. Starfleet is uniquely terrible at defending World, nominally the governmental eye of the whole milky way; possibly Starfleet isn't all it's cracked upwardly to be? Some people flipped out over the idea of the nefarious false-flag Starfleet plot in Into Darkness — but at that place's a military conspiracy in The Undiscovered Country, and in Insurrection, the Federation Council officially signs off on a plan to forcibly relocate an alien race.
And and then it'south worth asking a question that the movies never bother to answer: Why doesn't Old Spock get home?
I suppose one respond is: "There'due south no way for him to go back." Simply that's a bit of a cheat, given that everything is inevitably possible in the Star Trek universe, given that Spock literally died and and then literally came back to life thanks to a radical confluence of a protomatter-infused rapid-growth organic matrix and psionic soul-transference and Vulcan mysticism and the curious decision to fire a torpedo coffin straight at a planet created yesterday. Spock was doing important work, before he traveled through the Red Affair wormhole. He had spent decades trying to repair relations with the Romulan Empire. Of course, he left his original timeline correct after Romulus was destroyed — a natural disaster that must have sewn disarray throughout the quadrant.
Actually, if y'all think about it, Spock must have left the original timeline at a miserable betoken in history; information technology doesn't take much imagination to consider remnants of the Romulan Empire going rogue across the Neutral Zone, nor to imagine that the weakened Starfleet of Insurrection and Nemesis — recovering from war with the Rule and the Borg — wouldn't necessarily be prepared for such wild incursions. Is it possible Spock didn't want to get back? Is it possible that, having establish himself in some far-flung simulacrum variation of his own youth, he preferred the 23rd Century? Do Vulcans feel nostalgic? What about half-Vulcans who plainly don't care anymore nigh the Temporal Prime Directive? Did Spock merely wish he could get back to when things were simpler? Did he give up on his own future?
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Beyond asks none of these questions, mayhap because they're besides complicated. The film makes time for a fullhearted tribute to Spock, and to Nimoy — even if that tribute forcefully requires y'all not to overthink annihilation likewise much. Spock finds a moving picture of the original Enterprise coiffure in their cinematic red uniforms — a nice moment, albeit a reminder that Ambassador Spock abased his entire history to hang out on New Vulcan and bring transwarp technology to the Federation several decades early.
It'southward hard not to talk about Beyond in meta-franchise terms — difficult not to treat Kirk'south existential crisis equally the crisis of a bored Star Trek fan, or a listless Star Expedition creator — because there's not much to Across, actually. Information technology's an okay movie with a thoughtful prologue, a cool space colony, and 1 cool action scene, and I tin can't quite go over the fact that zero interesting happens in the pic. True radical change is flirted with, and abased; an Enterprise is destroyed, and a new Enterprise appears in record fourth dimension. (In the '80s, it took a whole movie to resurrect people, a whole picture show to build a new Enterprise.)
Information technology'south stunning to realize that this is the third straight Star Trek film that ends exactly the same way: Glamorous exterior shot of the Enterprise going to warp, while a narrator restates the "These are the Voyages" speech. In Trek '09, the ship was setting off on its five-year mission. In Into Darkness, the transport was… well, actually setting off on its five-year mission. And in Beyond, they're setting off for a new corner of space, across the Whatever Nebula, with the promise of wilder adventures still to come. It'southward prissy that Beyond lets the whole Enterprise crew jump into the narration — only information technology reminds yous that all 3 of these strange reboot films always experience like they end correct when the characters are getting to the good stuff. Accept they found new life or new civilizations notwithstanding? Is in that location anything left to observe?
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Across opened last week with a $59.6 million opening. Hither's a fun game: Try to run across how many unlike opposing interpretations yous tin create out of that information. Similar:
1. That's an impressive opening. It was a crowded weekend at the box function — the meridian v films all grossed more than $twenty meg — and the culture was dominated by extra-cinematic events like the RNC and Comic-Con. $59.6 million is also more than than Nemesis grossed in its unabridged run — proof that this new Star Trek franchise has ascended into the modern blockbuster echelon.
2. It'southward a problematic opening. That's a significant decline from Trek '09 (which made $75 million in its opening weekend) and continues a downwardly tendency already present with Into Darkness. Perchance people didn't similar Trek '09 as much as Paramount thought they did — and Into Darkness surely didn't assistance matters.
iii. It'due south a healthy opening for a series that has been, and maybe always will be, a middle-form financial earner. No sequel number means anything anymore, but consider that the tertiary Captain America movie (actually the 13th Avengers movie) grossed more than in its opening weekend than this third Star Expedition film (actually the 13th Star Expedition movie) volition likely gross in its entire domestic run. This would be helpful data if Hollywood was equipped to make mid-upkeep blockbusters — if, say, Paramount were interested in making a $50 million Star Trek film with just one or two action scenes, a latter-day Voyage Dwelling. But the latest reports are that Beyond cost $185 1000000. Past comparison: The Conjuring 2 cost $40 million, and its opening weekend was but a bit less than the Beyond debut.
iv. Simply the motion-picture show'south opening clearly proves that the fan base of operations is strong. Paramount spent the last couple months repositioning this rebooted series toward forever Trekkers, with a fan event in May and a fan-friendly Comic-Con world premiere. Subsequently Into Darkness, the fandom was upset; at present, they are happy.
5. Simply that doesn't matter, because the whole point of Trek '09 and Into Darkness was to pivot Star Trek forward from the fandom-chock-full Adjacent Generation era — to create a global blockbuster franchise. Maybe Beyond will open up large in China in September — and perhaps "Hoping for a large Chinese box office" is just a trendy euphemism for "box part disappointment."
6. No matter how hard it tries, Star Trek will never beat Star Wars. Not fifty-fifty close; non in this generation, nor in the side by side one.
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Whatever: There will be some other Star Trek movie. Maybe it volition exist skillful. (If they're looking for a director, I hear Floria Sigismondi is available!)
Last weekend, while Beyond was doing pocket-size box part, there was a 50th Ceremony celebration of the franchise at Comic-Con. Future Trek showrunner Bryan Fuller hosted a console of only luminaries. Voyager star Jeri Ryan provided some food-for-thought interpretations of the Borg. ("They certainly weren't exclusionary," she pointed out.) Brent Spiner did an impression of Patrick Stewart, which averages out to Data doing an impression of Jean-Luc Picard. Michael Dorn nerded out about Captain Kirk. Scott Bakula, clearly just happy to exist invited to the political party, delightfully suggested that the earth would be amend if everyone took a cue from 1 of the cheesiest scenes in Star Trek: Enterprise. "Nosotros could go around rubbing gel on each other," he explained, which in the context of this miserable year sounds like a tantalizing utopia.
William Shatner was there, tireless. At i point, someone in the audience asked him what was going through his mind, during the celebrated filming of "Plato's Stepchildren," when he had to kiss Nichelle Nichols — the first televised interracial kiss on any TV show.
So what was going through Shatner's listen?
"Warm moist lips, slowly coming towards me," said Shatner. "You know what I mean, Jeri? It was wonderful, are you kidding me? Beautiful woman. That was what was going through our mind."
At that indicate, Fuller leapt in to underscore the historic importance of that moment — and to connect "Plato's Stepchildren" to the greater saga of Star Trek as a diversity-centric forebear of a progressive futurity. This is what we all tend to talk almost when we talk about Star Trek: The ideas, the philosophy, the notionally scientific discipline-fictional hope for a better tomorrow. But in that location was some truth in Shatner's unreconstructed-horndog act, too.
There's a stifling effect to the core aesthetic of Star Trek: The essential staginess of people-on-a-bridge-staring-at-a-view-screen, but also the greater existential idea of a guild beyond recognizable desire. The well-nigh interesting Star Trek movies attack that aesthetic; think of Nicholas Meyer, who made Starfleet into the navy and decided Kirk was Captain Ahab. Or, sometimes, they ignore it, as in the demi-Christian Peachy Man philosi-pulp of the goofy Final Frontier, or the cryptic money-mad kid-fascism of Into Darkness.
This is why everyone is so excited almost Fuller. He is ane of the rare creators who seems capable of balancing tremendous intellectual seriousness with high-military camp pulp thrills — and the rare fanboy equipped to honor traditions while also challenging them. People used to sift through Thomas Harris' Hannibal books for homophobic undertones and transphobic ubertones — only Fuller'south Hannibal managed to award its source material while landing on the idea of Harris' protagonist and antagonist becoming lovesick postal service-sexual murder husbands.
This is why we're all stoked for Fuller's Expedition — and why a few people think there's a puckish self-sensation that the new TV show abbreviates to STD. Did Trek always vest on the small screen? Are these films a weird hiccup in the space-fourth dimension continuum — visions of an expensive Mirror Universe where everything looks more than expensive, and there are never whatever unhappy endings?
Maybe that's why I like "Sledgehammer" so much. It is a vision of far-out femininity at the outer edge of the cosmos, beyond coherence, across plot, beyond canon, beyond sense. It is boldly going for something. And it turns out Across is a identify we've all gone earlier.
Source: https://ew.com/article/2016/07/29/star-trek-beyond-rihanna-geekly/
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