251

This is my two hundred and fifty-first post, by the way. Kind of an odd anniversary, but I like odd anniversaries.

But I was really interested in the new Star Trek XI movie, which will apparently be produced, written and directed by the people who bring us Lost. I'm not sure what to think of that. They also brought us Mission: Impossible, and I didn't really like either of the M:I movies, and I'm not sure that anything we've seen on Lost really suits the world of Star Trek. But I'm happy to withhold judgment and see how they do.

But so far I'm not inordinately pleased. I'm not sure I care to see the life and times of the Old Show regulars before there was an old show. This is an invitation to the most dreaded words in all of fandom, the retcon and the reboot. Retcon stands for "retroactive continuity" and is what happens when the objective facts of a series do not change, but their interpretation does. The "dream season" in Dalls is a classic retcon. The death of Superman required the writers to retcon vulnerabilities into him that didn't exist originally. If they make Mr. Sulu gay in the movie, it will be a retcon, though a harmless one. A reboot is more extensive and odious; it amounts to re-launching a series and paying no attention to any of the existing material. Cynics can, and do, argue that the third season of Lost amounted to a reboot, because all of a sudden we were dealing with situations, people, and shit in a general sense that we'd never seen before - and none of the situations, people and shit we were used to were still around.

Frankly, I don't want to see a reboot of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. If they're going to do that, I'd just as soon they made up new characters. And I'm not sure I'm even in the mood for an awful lot of retconning either. I watched the "Under Construction" trailer and I have to say, I liked it - it makes a nice connection between the American space program of the 1960s and Starfleet of the 23rd Century, and I like the timeless nature of the ironworkers who hammer the freakin' thing together. And the ship looks pretty much like the original-release Enterprise. But - uhoh! - what's this??

It's built on Earth? Last time I checked, it was built at the San Francisco Shipyards in orbit around Earth, not on Earth (though I personally prefer the Utopia Planitia Shipyards, if only because the geographical names on Mars seem exceedingly cool to me). Second, what's with the enormous and obviously freewheeling turbine blades in the warp nacelles? What's there in space to either drive or be driven by a turbine? And why do they look so much like spinner hubcabs on a tacky SUV?

Oh, I'm doing it already, aren't I? My geek nature is showing. Sorry about that. Happy 251, ya geek.