TAS, TMP and TNG built on what TOS had done while adding new elements to what existed. You can quibble on whether you liked it or not. DS9 added to what came before in its own way. Same as before. Even VOY and ENT tried to build on what came before even though overall I think they failed miserably.
But JJ hasn't added anything but perhaps extra adrenalin. He actually subtracts any measure of substance. His effort makes ENT (a show I disdain overall) look like freaking rocket science in comparison.
Trek XI plays to the general mindset that better Trek over the years has sought to refute.
I regard ST-11 not as a continuation of the Star Trek movies, but another instance of Hollywood turing back to an old TV series, like
Land of the Lost, Charlie's Angels, Starsky and Hutch and on and on. Fitting these shows into a commercially viable (and usually formulaic) form is the order of the day, continuity with the source material is way down the list of priorities. Usually these remakes are not very good and I didn't expect this movie to be very good, either.
And it wasn't. The character development, such as it was, was rushed and superficial. The plot, which could have been an interesting "origins" story, was just a "special guest villain" set-up to arrive as quickly as possible at having the series characters in their iconic positions. It was OK for what it was, I guess, a loud action flick with lots of nifty explosions and effects, but I don't really like that kind of movie. Actually, I think about 90% of movies that come out today are crap. The new movie, like most movies, was not made for people like me, and that's no surprise.
I only really liked the first two Trek movies, to tell the truth. I still love TOS, though. Aside from breaking the ground, there are some very high quality episodes, the high-water marks of all of Trek, IMO. There are also some pretty bad episodes. But the reasons I have such a fondness for TOS aren't really objective. I can't divorce my opinion of the series from my feelings as I grew up with the show, in the pre-home video, five channels of tv days when I would wait all week till Saturday or Sunday afternoon in front of the big Zenith to catch the weekly "Star Track" (as many kids called it). When I would think about this show as I drew pictures of Enterprises and tried to piece together the "world" behind the series.
So, Trek has moved on and left me and my non-remastered TOS DVDs behind. But really, that's about as predictable as anything in the world, and it doesn't bother me at all. I guess a question now could be: Will people 30 years from now hold ST 11 in the same kind of regard as I and many others hold TOS? Nobody can say, of course, but my guess is "no." You can only be original once, and there is too much competition for ST 11 to be "special" the way TOS was.
--Justin
