First review of Star Trek footage....MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!

[Dr Mordrid]

From The Empire blog....

Star Trek Footage Revealed

Posted on Tuesday November 11, 2008, 13:30 by James Dyer



Empire was privileged to be at a world first screening of footage from Star Trek this morning and any reservations we may have harboured over JJ Abrams’ reimagining of the franchise have been well and truly beamed away. What we saw was a medley of action, excitement, humour and a true reverence for the franchise that should both appease fans and suck in newcomers.

Abrams himself appeared to introduce four separate clips from the film, clearly a little apprehensive about airing his footage for the first time and so many months away from its May 2009 release.

“The thing about Star Trek is that I was never really a huge fan. When I was asked to do Star Trek, though, I found myself saying ‘yes’. I just thought it was the right thing. There have been 10 movies and about a million series but when the first series came out I always felt it was someone else’s show. I appreciated there was a promise of adventure but quite frankly that’s always what I felt it was: a promise of adventure. It might have been the resources they had doing a TV show – you know, a big adventure going to a cardboard planet, you know? So, the idea of doing this movie where it could feel legitimate and real despite all the stuff that non-fans might thing was silly, was really the challenge.

“I’ve seen Galaxy Quest, I’ve seen all the parodies but the key to doing this and making it feel real was a great cast. The cast is amazing and I’m going to show you a scene now where we meet Kirk as a young man. This shows how Kirk ends up joining this group called Starfleet.”

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Clip 1

The first clip begins in Iowa, on Earth. We see an American bar, much like one in the 20th century, except for the outfits and the occasional alien patron. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura weaves through the throng and goes up to the bar. She orders a round, including a fire tea, Budweiser classics and some Cardassian sunrises. In a sly nod to Abrams’ other work, the bartender recommends the Slusho mixer as well. Just as she finishes the order, a clearly intoxicated man two seats down says he’ll pick up the tab. She rebuffs him and the two engage in a lively bout of verbal sparring until he introduces himself “it’s Jim, Jim Kirk.”

Uhura, it seems, is studying Xeno linguistics and Kirk’s grasp of the subject indicates he’s more than what he seems. Uhura: “I’m impressed, for a moment I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.” Kirk: “not only.” A group of burly Starfleet cadets (including a surly looking Sulu) intervene to ask if the drunk ‘townie’ is making a nuisance of himself. Uhura says he is but she can handle herself. Unfortunately the cadets have something to prove and, after being summarily dismissed by an unimpressed Kirk, the leader lays him out.

What follows is a sizeable ruckus as Kirk fends off all four before being pounded nearly senseless on top of a table. As Sulu and the others continue to throw punches a shrill whistle penetrates the brawl. It’s Captain Pike, he glares at the wayward cadets before telling them to get out.

Cut to: Pike and Kirk sitting at a table, Kirk mopping the blood from his nose. Pike reads Kirk the riot act for wasting his life and being the only “genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest.” Pike served with Kirk’s father aboard the USS Kelvin and suggests that joining Starfleet academy would be a better use of Kirk’s time than brawling. “You understand what the federation is. It’s important, it’s a peace-keeping armada.” Kirk, he says, could be an officer in four years and have his own ship in eight. “Are we done?” the youth shoots back. “I’m done,” says Pike, and tells Kirk where the shuttle for recruits is leaving. “Your father was captain of a starship for 12 minutes. He saved 800 lives including your mother’s and yours. I dare you to do better.”

Cut to: Kirk on his motorbike driving to the shipyard where the Enterprise is being constructed (yes, on Earth).

Cut to: Kirk on his bike the next day arriving at the shuttledock. He throws the keys to his bike to an admiring tech and board the shuttle. Catching Pike’s eye he says “Four years? I’ll do it in three.”


Clip 2

Abrams came back out to introduce the second clip, saying: “So Kirk joins Starfleet and immediately he’s there he gets in trouble. They all get assigned to ships but Kirk does not. However Bones finds out that a loophole where, if you’re treating a patient, the doctor’s allowed to bring the patient on board. So he injects Kirk to give him symptoms and make him look sick. This is the sequence where he first gets brought on board the Enterprise.”

Bones and Kirk come out of a turbolift and Kirk does not look at all good. They stagger into the medical bay, Kirk complaining all the way.

Cut to: The bridge where Captain Pike asks the “Russian whizkid” at the helm what his name is. It’s Ensign Chekov. Cue a comedy sequence where Chekov attempts to enter an authorization code into the computer, announcing “nine, five, wictor, wictor, two” in a perfect Walther Koenig exaggerated Russian accent and being denied. Chekov goes on to address the ship over the comm., stating that anomaly has been detected in the neutral zone, a lightning storm in space. A distress signal from the Vulcan (“wulcan”) high command has caused the Enterprise to go and investigate.

Cut to: Sick bay, Kirk hears the transmission and panics. “lightning storm?” He gets up but he’s had a reaction to the injection and his hands have swollen up. “Good God, man!” says Bones in a spot-on DeForest Kelley. Despite this, Kirk runs form the sick bay pursued by the anxious doctor. “We’re flying into a trap!” “Dammit, Jim, stand still!”. The pair run through the corridors before locating Uhura, who is more preoccupied with the size of Kirk’s swollen hands. As he tries to explain, his toungue goes numb, leading to much slurring and misunderstanding. While it sounds daft here, the comedy in the scene is pulled off well, showing that JJ has nailed the sense of humour he promised to bring to the film.

Cut to: the interior of Nero’s ship: dark, red and menacing. An officer reports: “Nero, seven federation ships are on their way.”

Cut to: Vulcan. A beam, emitted from Nero’s ship, bores into the planet’s surface. A lone figure looks out and survey’s the attack. It’s Winona Ryder as Spock’s mother.

Cut to: Exasperated, Kirk runs onto the bridge and shouts that they need to stop the ship as it’s a trap. “Vulcan is not experiencing a natural disaster, it’s being attacked by Romulans.” Pike all but has him dragged off the bridge and Spock’s instant animosity (it almost comes to blows between the two) indicates that, at this point at least, these two do not get on at all. Kirk ultimately breaks through though and explains that the same anomaly was spotted years before on the day of his birth, before a Romulan ship attacked the USS Kelvin. He goes on to say that the night before, 47 (yes forty seven!) Klingon Warbirds were destroyed by a single Romulan vessel. Uhura backs Kirk up and Pike gives the order: “shields up, red alert!”

The ship comes out of warp amid a sea of debris: there are broken hulls as far as the eye can see. This is what remains of the other ships sent on the ‘rescue mission’ To Vulcan.

[Dr Mordrid]

Continued....

Clip 3

Abrams: “So, Kirk later pisses of Spock and gets marooned. He lands on this planet and ends up meeting the older Spock. The two of them go to meet another character. A character played by Simon Pegg.” Pegg then came up to introduce this clip amid much gushing over his part in the film.

Kirk, along with Nimoy’s Spock are walking through an engineering structure in winter gear with snow still clinging to their garments. They walk up to a small alien standing next to a human. It’s Scotty.

Pegg’s begins to complain in his Scottish accent (flawless to the extent that it’s infinitely more believable than James Doohan’s atrocious burr ever was). Nimoy raises a Spock eyebrow “fascinating. You’re Montgomery Scott.” It turns out that Scotty has been in exile down here since he experimented with transporter technology and dematerialised the admiral’s dog. Pegg is clearly the bulk of the comic relief in the film but pulls it off without being ridiculous or embarrassing, which is no mean feat given the character’s heritage. “The Enterprise? I’d like to get my hands on her ample nacelles, if you’ll pardon the engineering parlance.”

Spock and Kirk need to be beamed on board the Enterprise, it seems, while it’s still at warp – an impossibility, they’re told. “the notion of transwarp beaming is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet while wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.” Scotty, however, invented the technique, only his present self has yet to make the necessary discovery. Spock helpfully fills in the gaps by providing the future Scotty’s formula.

Spock reveals to Kirk that he won’t be going with him. “that is not my destiny.” He instructs Kirk to never tell the younger Spock of his existence and that Kirk must expose the younger Spock (currently in command of the Enterprise) as being emotionally compromised so that he can assume command of the ship.

Spock: “To stop Nero, you alone must take command of your ship.”
Kirk: “How? Over your dead body?”
Spock: “Preferably not.”
Kirk steps into the transporter along with Scotty.
Kirk: “coming back in time, changing history, it’s cheating.”
Spock: “A trick I learned from an old friend.”

As the computer begins to energise, Spock raises his hand in salute. “Live long and prosper.”

Clip 4 Abrams: “The last scene is a scene earlier in the movie. The tether that comes down from Nero’s space ship drills into the planet and a bomb gets dropped into the planet to destroy it. This is a sequence where the good guys are space jumping down onto the drill to destroy it.”

Transporters are being jammed and so three crew members are instructed by Pike to jump from a shuttle and freefall to the platform. Kirk, Sulu and… Engineer Olsen are ordered to go. You can see where this is going, can’t you? Pike will pilot the shuttle and leaves Spock in command of the Enterprise, Kirk is shockingly promoted to first officer amid much protestation from the Vulcan.

Spock: “Captain, please, I apologise. The complexities of human pranks escape me.”
Pike: “It’s not a prank Spock, and I’m not the captain. You are.”

The three jumpers suit up in armoured suits before loading onto the chuttle.

Cut to: Bones amid a devastated sick bay, who is promoted to chief medical officer after his superior is killed in the attack.

Cut to: the shuttle.

Kirk to Engineer Olsen “You’ve got the charges?”
Olsen ( who is English): “Oh yeah, I can’t wait to kick some Roluman arse.” The man's even wearing a red shirt for God's sake!. You can all but see death leaning over his shoulder.

The shuttle departs and the three are jostled around in their seats.

Kirk to Sulu: “What kind of combat training do you have?”
Sulu: “Fencing.”

The three jump from the shuttle, being reminded that they can’t be beamed back until the drill is shut down. We see the three bodies free-falling through the atmosphere towards the platform, the huge drill arm flying past them as they plummet towards their destination. As they reach a certain height, Sulu and Kirk hit their chutes but Olsen decides to get in closer. He finally pulls the cord but it’s too late, he bounces off the platform, slides over the edge and is swung straight into the drilling beam and disintegrated.

Kirk hits the platform and nearly meets the same end before hitting a button on his harness. Instead of ejecting, the chute is sucked back into the pack on his back. Several Romulans emerge from hatches on the platform and a melee ensues, Kirk using his helmet as a makeshift bludgeon to keep them at bay.

Sulu is the next to land but his chute becomes caught and he can’t get free. He pulls out a steel handle, which extends into a katana blade. He cuts himself free and enters the fray. Far from the Sulu we remember, John Cho’s character is a fighter and lays into the Romulans, flourishing his blade and executing a series of kicks and somersaults.

Kirk isn’t faring so well and is hanging on to the edge of the platform while a Romulan tries to kick him off. Dispatching his own assailant by pushing him into a gout of flame, Sulu impales Kirk’s attacker and pulls him back onto the platform. That old bar room brawl has now definitively been put behind them.

Exclaiming that Olsen had the charges, Kirk picks up a discarded Romulan disruptor rifle and begins to unload it into the drill until the machine shudders to a standstill.

Cut to: Nero, seeing the drill has stopped, nevertheless orders the “red matter” dropped into the hole.

Cut to: The Enterprise. Chekov reports that nero is creating a singularity – a black hole – in the heart of Vulcan, which will destroy the planet. Spock jumps up and orders a planetwide evacuation before heading to the turbolift. The Vulcan council, including his parents, must be saved and Spock is going to get them.

Cut to: The platform, Sulu is swept over the edge and Kirk jumps after them. The Enterprise cannot lock onto the pair as they plummet towards the surface. On board the Enterprise, Chekov runs down to the transporter room and struggles to get a lock. Unsurprisingly he manages it with mere nanoseconds to spare, the pair dematerialising metres from the ground and appearing in a heap on the transporter room floor.

Sulu: “Thanks.”
Kirk: “No problem.”

And that was it. Four clips, some great sequences and action the likes of which the Trek franchise hasn’t seen since First Contact. There are a lot of Trek fans out there with reservations about Abrams’ vision for this film but this is one Trekkie who can’t wait to see the finished film.

Set course for May, Warp 9! Set phasers to thrill! ... or something.