24 May - "He'd let you die."

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

dir. J.J. Abrams  (Super 8, 2011)

CAST
Chris Pine (Carriers, 2009)
Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, 2009)
Zoe Saldana (Burning Palms, 2010)
Karl Urban (Priest, 2011)
Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, 2011)
Anton Yelchin (The Beaver, 2011)
Bruce Greenwood (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Simon Pegg (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010)
John Cho (Total Recall, 2012)
Joseph Gatt (Thor, 2011)
Tony Guma (Mission: Impossible III, 2006)

I saw Star Trek 2 on a rainy day in Rome, New York, with my friends from the the 2013 Tuscarora Migration Project as we took a hiatus from kayaking due to inclement weather conditions on Oneida Lake. It was probably the perfect movie to see under such conditions.

Since Star Trek already established our characters back in 2009, now we have the luxury of jumping straight into plot and conflict. Just to be safe, however, the movie opens at a breakneck pace with Kirk and Spock racing like devils through a white-red-yellow alien landscape, being chased by mud-daubed alien primitives. It was a great homage to something that might have happened in so many original series episodes. It also served the purpose of re-establishing our characters, Spock is logical to a fault, Kirk flies by the seat of his pants, and everyone else is just tagging along for the ride.

Unfortunately, we also had to sit through the "development" of Spock and Uhura's romantic relationship, which used Spock's self-sacrifice in the first scene to spin off a whole sub-plot of Uhura and Spock passive-aggressive infighting. This was tedious and otherwise irrelevant to the plot.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan, a genetically-modified superhuman based on the DNA of Ghengis Khan, historical badass. They don't mention that in the movie but they say so in the TV series when the Khan character is first introduced. Our heroes also have to deal with the war-mongering head of Starfleet Command, and in all other ways to save the day.

Problems:

I'm hoping that when Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy's reprisal of future-Spock) referred to Spock defeating Khan only at "a great price," he was alluding to the next sequel, because all in all, it was not very difficult to defeat Khan.

Uh-oh, Dr. McCoy used Khan's blood to cure Kirk's severe radiation poisoning. This means the laws of death no longer apply and it's going to create a slew of plot holes in the future.