Star Trick

We hobnobbed at the Cedar Rapids Galaxy 16 long enuff to take in the Neo-Retro Star Trek this weekend. All the logical paradoxes came perilously close to snuffing the film out of existence before I had a snowball's chance of engulfing all my popcorn.

There is an interesting bit of wit at the end when Spock (the real Spock, Leonard Nimoy) tells Spock (the young upstart, Whatisname) that he (Nimoy, in character) will forego the usual Vulcan benediction and simply wish the kid (the actor, playing Neo-Spock), "Good luck" rather than "Live Long & Prosper." Too subtle by half, soitenly, but those of us who caught the drift enjoyed the pie-in-the-face moment.

Iowa has no canyons like that one, not even Ledges State Park near Boone, which is, in any case, filled with geological puzzles like thin brown Cretaceous coal seams and sandstone vortices viewed end-wise. Iowa is much too wooded in its river valleys to pass for the bastard child of Nebraska out of Arizona, even with the computer-generated corn.

I kept waiting for some kind of Back To The Future plot twist that would save Vulcan. Never happened. Vulcan is annihilated. Majel Barrett is whirling in her urn. Yeah, that was a spoiler, but then, this plot has more gratuitous twists than a butter churn; connect any two dots, then ask yourself, did it matter? No? Yes, matter it did not.

I'm not sure these characters can support a sequel, frankly. Nyota Uhura played hot? Zoe Saldana should jump to the X-Women franchise as a cat.

Kirk's sudden rise to the top is about as solid as foam on near-beer — however, the young Young Kirk is a scene-stealer. He belongs in a Final Fantasy XII movie franchise, between two viera kits.

Uhura's roommate, the green Orion sorority sistah (probably Kappa Kappa Gamma, if I remember the angle right), is positive proof this Saturday Night Special was made by two postgraduate vomit cometeers with no personal recollection of the old Roddenberry magick.