You can call me a Trekkie. I grew up constantly watching repeats of the original Star Trek. I loved the Next Generation. Deep Space Nine. Voyager. Most of the movies, especially The Wrath Of Khan. I’ve moved on from reading the books, but, when they first started being published, I read them religiously, either buying them or getting them at the library. Over time, I probably purchased or borrowed 60-70 Star Trek books, most of them revolving around either the original Trek universe or pre-Kirk times. I still have a few around, though I donated most to the local libraries here in Wake County when I moved about 6 years ago or in Brielle, NJ, when my parents cleaned everything out to move to their smaller retirement house.
But, now we get to the reboot. I enjoyed the way JJ Abrams made it happen by splitting off to a new time line (though, if we look at the original timeline, there is no way in hell children and babies, as well as pregnant women, would be on a starship traveling into the far reaches of dangerous space, which was the whole point of the original program, per the books….yeah, geek mode on). Here’s: the problem:
..the whole thing breaks down when you realize that Kirk hadn’t even gone through the full course for Star Fleet Academy, and was still essentially a “young adult”, when he’s given command of a starship, the equivalent of giving a 1st year Annapolis cadet command of a carrier.
That’s the comment I left over at the UK Independent for their film review of Into Darkness (via BenK’s news dump). I can’t get beyond that part. Kirk had barely started as a cadet when they had this call up for everyone to get on a ship and go fight. He hadn’t graduated. He hadn’t even commanded a shuttle. Maybe he has the mental ability to do the job, and demonstrated that, I guess, but was there no one else in the chain of command to take over the Enterprise than a kid who had no experience, and surely hadn’t had time to “learn why things work on a starship”? Does anyone think that Star Fleet Command would hand over the US Navy equivalent of a carrier to Kirk once the emergency was over, promoting him to captain? Or would they have assigned someone who had been around for awhile, and perhaps fast tracked Kirk, once he frigging graduated, to becoming a command officer, sticking him on a small ship as a 2nd or 3rd officer to learn under someone who has, you know, experience?
It makes no sense, and, yeah, I know, movie. But, there’s pushing the boundaries of believability and then there’s flying several galaxies beyond. So, yeah, I have no intention of seeing the movie, nor renting it on DVD.
