It looks like Star Trek 4 isn’t quite dead yet. Deadline (via io9) reports that Noah Hawley, director of Lucy in the Sky and creator of FX’s Legion is in “final talks” to write and direct the next installment of the franchise.
The last major Star Trek film was 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, directed by Justin Lin, and the road to a continuation of that franchise has been bumpy. Shortly before that film hit theaters, word broke that Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) had signed up for a fourth film, and a fourth film was later announced, with Chris Hemsworth set to reprise his role as George Kirk and with director S.J. Clarkson tapped to direct.
However, development on the film stalled: Pine and Hemsworth dropped out over contract negotiations, Clarkson signed up to direct HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel (which was recently shelved), and Paramount shelved the project at that time. To complicate matters, director Quentin Tarantino approached Paramount with an idea of his own for an R-rated Star Trek film, which is apparently still in development.
Now, it seems as though the project has been resurrected. Hawley will produce the film along with J.J. Abrams (who helmed 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), which will be set in the same “Kelvin Timeline” as those films. It’s not immediately clear if the film will see Pine and his costars from the prior films return, barring another complete reboot of the franchise.
The franchise has been experiencing a bit of a comeback in recent years — on the small screen. CBS All Access launched Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, and is set to release Picard on the service next spring. Other projects, including the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks and a Discovery spinoff featuring Michelle Yeoh, are in the works.
I’m wondering how the tragic death of actor Anton Yelchin will affect future Star Trek installments.
Just so Quentin “Violence Porn” Tarantino is never allowed anywhere near the Star Trek property.
I’m disappointed Clarkson didn’t stay on as director. She would’ve been the first woman to direct a Trek movie. Would’ve been nice to break that barrier.
@1/Terry D: For what it’s worth, Chekov was only in 35 TOS episodes and zero animated episodes, so it’s not like it’s impossible to tell a Trek story without the character. While Yelchin’s loss was tragic, his great talent was largely wasted as Chekov, and so was John Cho’s as Sulu. Maybe leaving out Chekov would give Sulu more to do at last.
@1– They could say the Chekov transferred to the Reliant.
@@.-@ – You beat me to that!
With Chekov gone, they could further tie into the animated series and wink to the fans by including Arex at the navigator station.
@2 – I actually would love to see Tarantino’s take on Trek.
And regarding this news itself, I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m a big fan of Hawley’s work solely from I saw him do, writing and directing, with FX’s recently concluded 3-season series “Legion” which I highly recommend to everyone to check out. It has an amazing visual flair and an excellent soundtrack (composed and song-selection), while being thoughtfully written and wonderfully acted.
“Quentin Tarantino … R-rated Star Trek film, which is apparently still in development.”
Wonderful, a lovely grimdark “No Star System For Old Men” Star Trek, or an ultra-violent “Inglorious Basterds” take on the Romulan Wars? I suppose we might get “Once Upon a Time in Shi Kahr.” which could be good. Probably not, though.
@5/GarretH: Live-action (or CGI) Arex would be cool, but I’d like to see Jaylah from Beyond brought back.
@7/Christopher: Me too. They have no Christine Chapel, so they really need a second ongoing female character.
Totally unrelatedly, I’d like to see more of Sulu’s family.
I would be glad to see more of the Kelvin-timeline, especially beyond the limits of NCC-1701; in fact it might be interesting to move the timeline forward a bit and see Captain Sulu take command of his first ship!
Oh nooo please keep Tarantino far far away from Star Trek.
AL/ I do not like any of the Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies. They had too much action and far too little thought behind them. So, if Paramount doesn’t make another one, my universe won’t collapse in on itself.
@9/ED: Or Captain Uhura?
@11/Paladin Burke: I agree about the action and the lack of thought. But the latest film had competent, likeable characters (which the first two films lacked, IMO) and a likeable universe (which Discovery lacks, IMO). It wasn’t “my” Star Trek, but it was closer to my Star Trek than anything else from the past decade. If the next film continues this trend, I will be fine.
Most Trek movies are more lowbrow, shallow, and action-packed than TV Trek. That’s been true ever since The Wrath of Khan, ever since they decided that TMP’s deliberate, cerebral approach wouldn’t work and Trek movies needed to be more like Star Wars to succeed. It’s not the fault of the Kelvin Timeline, it’s a function of American SF movie-making in general, and the fact that you just can’t develop a universe or an ensemble cast as well in two hours every few years as you can in 40-odd minutes a week for 13-26 weeks a year.
That’s why I’m a little disappointed we haven’t had a Kelvin-set TV series yet. If we did, it could be a chance to enrich and deepen that universe beyond what can be done in movies.
very anxious, chris pine is a wonderful kirk![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
wiredog @@@@@ 6 – Actually, a Tarantino take on the Romulan Wars kind of sounds awesome. Although we’d be going back to the recently post-Enterprise time frame, rather than the Kirk era.
@7/Christopher – I’m with you! Bring back Jaylah as a Starfleet rookie and let’s see her character grow and develop. Chekov can be transferred or on special assignment or not even mentioned (although the latter couldn’t help but be interpreted as a snub to Yelchin), but he’s no more necessary to a Trek story than, really, any other character. Great Trek stories have been told without one or more of the “big 7” and could be done so again (though it’s hard to imagine no Kirk, Spock, or McCoy). I would like to see Kelvin Sulu get further developed, and having Kelvin Uhura develop without any reference to her relationship to Spock in ST4 (assuming the two are still not a couple) would be nice.
It is too bad we are not getting Trek’s first woman feature director. Hopefully, if ST4 does well enough, there will be other opportunities.
Anyone know if ST4 being back on means they will get Hemsworth back in the picture, or has that ship sailed?
@14/Christopher: I learned in the last two years that modern TV series tell long, complicated tales with huge stakes, often about war or conspiracies, that are at the same time personal stories about the main character. I don’t think that’s what the Kelvin Timeline needs right now.
@14/CLB You make good points. However, I prefer my movie science fiction to be “harder” than what appears in the Kelvin Timeline movies. And, yes, I know TOS was not always that “hard” as science fiction goes.
@7: Jaylah would be cool to bring back but I have a good feeling she was a one-shot guest character.
@8: Yes! Christine Chapel would be an ideal character to bring into the fold.
@14: It’s too bad the more cerebral approach to the movies after TMP had been abandoned but TMP was a botched attempt at cerebral. It was overly long, bland, lifeless, and the story wasn’t very original either. Also, even the less cerebral Star Trek’s II through X were still more cerebral than the Kelvin movies. I’m all for going back to that era. I think it would be great if the next movie were actually about exploration and/or featured a non-traditional or misunderstood “villain” or threat as in ST IV: TVH.
@17: I’m pretty confident Hemsworth won’t be brought on for this new incarnation for the 4th Kelvin film. Hawley is writing an original story so it’s likely it’s abandoning the concept for the previous incarnation of the film. Also, a big holdup with Hemsworth was money, a pretty significant factor in moving any movie forward, so eliminating him from appearing therefore removes this issue and keeps the budget down in one fell swoop.
@19/Paladin: I love hard SF too (and write it), but the original Trek movies had just as much nonsense science as Kelvin — the Genesis wave, a 20-minute trip to the center of the galaxy, an exploding planet’s “shock wave” propagating as a flat ripple and being felt parsecs away, “trilithium” blowing up stars (with the same issue of instantaneous effects at a distance), the Nexus, magic fountain-of-youth ring radiation, thalarons, lapel-pin-sized transporters. Like I said, it’s not a Kelvin issue, it’s a movies-in-general issue. The only problem with Kelvin is that so far it exists exclusively in movies, and Trek works better on TV than in movies.
@20/Garrett: Lots of one-shot guest characters have become regulars when they proved popular enough. It’s more a question of whether Sofia Boutella would still be available and affordable.
A Muslim helmswoman wearing a headscarf would be the perfect Chekov replacement in this day and age.
@20/GarretH: A story about exploration would be wonderful! (I say that every time.)
@21/Christopher: And the TV show had energy beings, body switches, splitting people into opposite halves, another trip to the center of the galaxy, technology that could shrink a starship and everybody on it, aliens who could give humans the power to create things out of thin air, …
@22/MaGnUs: Cool idea! Let’s have Jaylah, Christine Chapel, and a Muslim woman with a headscarf. Together with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and Sulu, that would bring the total of recurring characters up to nine (not unusual for Star Trek) with almost 50% women (never done before).
@23/Jana: The thing about Trek is, you have to grade its science on a curve. Until fairly recently, most SF in TV and movies has had incredibly bad, incompetent, idiotic science. The fact that Star Trek even acknowledged that the speed of light was a thing and warp drive was needed to get around it — or the fact that it knew what the word “galaxy” meant — put it enormously beyond its contemporaries and most of its successors in terms of scientific literacy. ST was one of the only SFTV shows that bothered to consult with scientific advisors, so that its concessions and inaccuracies could be forgiven as conscious poetic license rather than the gross ignorance displayed by most shows and movies. Early TNG was actually very good at plausible science by TV standards.
These days, though, Trek barely bothers with science, even at a time when a fair number of movies are embracing hard science and the occasional show like The Expanse does so too. And that’s a regrettable reversal.
@21 CLB/ When I was in college in the early 1980’s, we use to call Star Trek’s imaginary scientific explanations of how things worked “treknobabble”.
@21/CLN: “It’s more a question of whether Sofia Boutella would still be available and affordable.”
True, but also a question of whether she would also be interested. If the role is too small or irrelevant she might decline any offer. Like Michael Dorn who wears extensive prosthetics to portray Worf and had reservations about being on Star Trek: Picard for a glorified cameo, I think Sofia might have a similar hesitation if there’s no real meat to any potential part as opposed to her role in Star Trek: Beyond.
My skepticism is also fed on the fact that Alice Eve had an important and significant part in Star Trek Into Darkness and at the end of it her character of Carol Marcus was clearly set up to come back and yet she was nowhere to be seen in the next entry in the series.
@24 when the poured liquor spiraled into Detective Miller’s glass accurately reflecting the local spin, it warmed my heart in a way I had not felt since Classic Trek.
@25/Paladin: Funny, I always figured that the word “technobabble” was coined specifically in reference to ST:TNG in the late ’80s, since I never heard it before then — but according to Google’s Ngram viewer, the word first showed up in writing around 1980. You learn something new every day.
@26/GarretH: I wouldn’t suggest bringing back Jaylah if it were merely for a background role. My thinking is that she was a breakout character and would add some much-needed gender balance (ish) to the cast, so there’d be an incentive to give her a significant part in the story.
The reason Carol didn’t come back is partly because the production team changed between movies, which is also the case here, so it follows that the new team might not want to bring back old characters either. On the other hand, I think Carol’s omission was partly because her presence in STID didn’t really leave the best impression with audiences (I think it’s remembered more for her gratuitous underwear scene than anything else) so maybe the Beyond filmmakers didn’t want to remind audiences of it. Conversely, Jaylah did leave a strongly positive impression, so it’s conceivable that even a new team might want to bring her back.
Perhaps, the gulf between scientifically educated persons and the general public is far wider today than it was when TOS was airing on TV back when I was kid in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I am in my late 50’s, and I have noticed most people under 40, who I have encountered, know how to operate our wonderful technologies, but really do not understand how those technologies work.* Moreover, they do not even care to understand how those technologies work. It might as well be magic to them! Perhaps, Hollywood picked up on this and has realized that making scientifically literate movies is not worth the effort, if 90% of the audience does not understand the underlying science?
This includes cars, computers, strength training equipment, scanners, cell phones, GPSs, light bulbs (incandescent and otherwise), air conditioners . . . .
@29/ Oops! The last sentence should begin with an *.
Yes, I used to think Star Trek was stronger on television, that all the hooey that comes with blockbuster movies would remain in the theaters. Then I saw Discovery…
@29/Paladin: “Perhaps, Hollywood picked up on this and has realized that making scientifically literate movies is not worth the effort, if 90% of the audience does not understand the underlying science?”
You have it backward. There are far, far more movies with good science in recent years than at any other point in my life — movies like Gravity, Interstellar, Europa Report, The Martian, Life, etc. Of course there are still plenty with bad science, but there have been more with good science in the past five years than in the previous several decades. Even Avengers: Endgame, for all its fanciful aspects, used a scientifically valid model of time travel creating parallel timelines, rather than the pure fantasy model of “erasing” history used by so many prior time-travel movies.
There’s actually a group that was founded a while back that works with Hollywood to provide scientific advice to filmmakers, and I think that’s the reason we’ve begun to see better science in feature films. But it’s still only some feature films, of course, because creators are individuals and there are many different ways to approach telling a story.
I must concur with the criticism of “The Motion Picture” – it lacked all the color of the original series, both literally and figuratively. Science fiction and fantasy fandom has demonstrated that intelligent and thoughtful storytelling can succeed, but it still has to be good storytelling.
I also wonder what effects the attempts to broaden the market for SF&F beyond its niche have had.
I hope they reconsider the way they make Star Trek movies going forward. I mean, do they really need to be blockbuster shoot-em-up action extravaganzas in the JJ Abrams mold? This past decade has also seen slower paced, more grounded, survival/exploration sci-fi adventures in Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian, all three of which made more at the box office than any single Kelvin Trek movie by the way. So it’s not like a Star Trek movie heavy on mystery, suspense and exploration is beyond the realm of possibility. The audience is still there.
@32/CLB: I saw Interstellar for the first time last week. I thought it was a good science fiction film, and I do like that the screenwriters took the time to explain the science behind the wormhole and the black hole. However, some of the science concerning the agricultural blight and global warming (?) seemed wonky to me. Btw I do not deny existence of global warming. Also, I saw Ad Astra last month, and I thought from a scientific perspective it was better than Interstellar–except for the space surfing scene a la Dark Star.
Interstellar was good SF right up until the point where they enter the spacewarp thing. Then it gets wonky. A shame.
The Martian wasn’t perfect, and at points it’s clearly trying to dumb down the explanations for even the densest viewer, but it’s relatively hard science. Andy Weir explicitly admitted that even the book isn’t quite rigorous in certain places, but he made clear where those were. (Story always comes first.)
@34/Dawes: I’m all for returning the Star Trek film franchise to harder science and more cerebral adventures, but your noted examples of such successful films that out-performed any of the Kelvin movies all had one thing which the latter lacked, the so-called “A-List” stars. So you have to factor that in to the successful box office figures of the movies you cited. Therefore from the studio perspective, they probably feel more confident going the shoot ‘em up route if they are lacking those big name actors. Now maybe make Leonardo DiCaprio the new Captain Kirk or Jennifer Lawrence the sexy Romulan villain and the studio might just feel more inclined on a slower Star Trek movie.
@34/Dawes: I agree with your take on ST movies in general. Personally, I would like to see a ST movie with a lot more science and less treknobabble. Science fiction films can be such a powerful and entertaining way to introduce children and adults to the wonders of science.
I am lawyer, and I have the same problem with most movies and TV shows about lawyers. The law and its procedures are sacrificed for dramatic purposes. I have seen many, many lawyer movies and only one stands out for me as being legally plausible: Anatomy of a Murder. This makes me sad.
@35/Paladin: Like I said, with movies and TV, you have to grade on a curve. All the movies I cited have some implausibilities, but the fact that they mostly tried to be plausible puts them far beyond the typical sci-fi movie that just makes up total nonsense.
I haven’t seen Ad Astra, but I read a review saying that its science was pretty bad overall: https://gizmodo.com/what-ad-astra-gets-wrong-about-space-travel-astronomy-1838363861
#37. I don’t believe in “star power.” Not anymore. Ad Astra had Brad Pitt and still underperformed. Ditto with First Man and Ryan Gosling. No, what those other movies I cited had was a great “hook” to get people interested. The Martian was based on a best-selling novel with a strong, simple concept. Gravity had photorealistic effects not like any other movie at the time. Same with Interstellar and its wondrous black hole. Plus all three of them had the surviving out there on the edge angle, which is always compelling. So I think novelties and fresh concepts will beat an A-lister almost every time.
I haven’t seen Ad Astra yet, but from the looks of the trailer it has… Brad Pitt on a space adventure? Okay. Searching for his father? Meeeh, a little tired.
#38. Oh, I love Anatomy of a Murder. Beyond the legal details, the pacing is wonderful. Such a cool, relaxing jazz record of a film.
@39/CLB: I stand corrected on my assessment of Ad Astra’s scientific accuracy. Now, I am even sadder than @35!
I’m glad there will be another movie. I enjoy the cast of the Kelvin timeline movies very much they inhabit the characters well but the stories themselves fall short. I hope the new one has a much stronger story. I hope they say Chekhov has transferred to anew ship rather than kill him off. Anton sadly died the character doesn’t need too.
@31/Dawes: “I used to think Star Trek was stronger on television, that all the hooey that comes with blockbuster movies would remain in the theaters. Then I saw Discovery…”
I think Star Trek is strongest when it tells small, thoughtful parables about believable characters. That used to mean “on television”, but it no longer does.
@40/Dawes: “I haven’t seen Ad Astra yet, but from the looks of the trailer it has… Brad Pitt on a space adventure? Okay. Searching for his father? Meeeh, a little tired.”
I usually dislike daddy issue stories, but I liked Ad Astra. I found that it transcended this tired trope by making the father a man who had turned away from humanity in search of nonexisting aliens, and the son an estranged character who, in the end, returns to Earth and other people. I’ve seen it called “Heart of Darkness in space”, and that isn’t the worst description.
They have no Christine Chapel, so they really need a second ongoing female character.
@8/JanaJansen: Although not technically onscreen, Chapel does have a presence in the Kelvin films. McCoy calls for her asking her to prepare some cortisone, using her name. And midway through Into Darkness, she’s referenced by Carol Marcus. Chapel was apparently not only friends with Carol, but also one of Kirk’s offscreen “conquests” that he couldn’t remember.
@44/Eduardo: I know, and it was terrible. They basically implied that Kirk had molested her. “She transferred to the outer frontier. She’s much happier now.” Yuck. They could bring her back and have him apologise.
I support this decision wholeheartedly. I loved every moment of Legion, it was all so bizarre and weird. Hopefully he’ll work Jemaine Clement into it somehow. I miss Oliver.
@45/Jana: “They basically implied that Kirk had molested her.”
I don’t see any indication of that in the dialogue. I just got the sense that they had a passing fling that he barely even remembered. What led into it was Carol saying that Kirk was “much cleverer than your reputation suggests,” citing Chapel as her source for Kirk’s “reputation.” That implies that Chapel saw him as unintelligent or shallow, not predatory.
I didn’t see it as a case of molestation either (or any other form of abuse).
I got the impression that Kirk had a fling with her, but ended up passing her the mistaken impression that it could have been something more, hence the hurt feelings when that didn’t happen. Even in Wrath of Khan, that version of Carol was truthful and clear about Kirk’s inability to settle down and commit to anything longterm given his yearning for space exploration.
@47-48: That’s really interesting that your interpretation of the scene is so different from mine. I hardly remember the rest of the film, but that scene has always stuck in my head because I hated it so much. Now I wonder if anyone else interpreted it the way I did, and if the viewer’s gender has anything to do with it.
@49/JanaJansen: Perhaps gender has an influence on interpretation of a scene but maybe more so, personal experience colors how we view a scene. I’m pretty sure that is the case for me. Not that I’m saying you’ve had a similar interaction with someone as Kirk and Chapel have!
I can understand how a female viewer could read that scene as implying that Kirk acted abusively toward Chapel, because that’s a far more common experience for women than most men realize. But that’s why I doubt the scriptwriters intended it to imply anything of the sort. When men think of having a bad dating experience, they think of it in terms of the other person being unlikeable or unreliable — whereas a bad dating experience for a woman unfortunately has a good chance of including assault or abuse. (Like the saying goes, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while women are afraid men will kill them.) So the male scriptwriters probably intended nothing more untoward than Kirk being a self-absorbed jerk, and didn’t realize what the lines might imply to female viewers.
Why did they feel the need to make Kirk a jerk, anyway? In the reboot, he’s both a prodigy and an obnoxious twerp. Original Kirk was talented, but likeable – and his personal charisma and ability to inspire respect were precisely where his gifts lay. This Kirk seems to specialize in annoying and offending; I don’t find him a plausible leader at all.
The Kelvin films haven’t been all that profitable, and I think that’s at least one reason why.
#52. My guess is they were trying to go with the Han Solo angle – the selfish loner who grows up, something something – even though Solo was never THAT much of a testosterone injected jerk. Sometimes I wonder if those two Abrams movies were ghost-directed by John McEnroe.
@52/melendwyr: The idea, I think, was to give Kirk an arc over the trilogy, as he grew into the mature, heroic captain we know. In the first movie, he’s an immature hothead fresh out of the Academy; in the second, he’s still a hothead but he learns from his mistakes and is tempered into a better captain; and when we jump forward three years in Beyond (or actually more like four years, since there was a year-long jump before the closing scene of STID), he’s finally become the James Kirk we know from TOS. Although the arc could’ve advanced more smoothly if he’d been further along in the second film. They did start him out a bit too far from the maturity he needed.
Also, I guess it was about making his life different due to the timeline change. Because he never knew his father, he turned out very differently and was lost until he gained a new father figure in Pike. Basically, Kirk’s more dissolute, delinquent youth is part of the damage done by Nero, and the first movie is about how that damage is healed, how Kirk is set back onto the right path through the connections he forms with Pike, Uhura, and both Spocks.
On the other hand, I think part of it is just that Kirk has gained a pop-culture reputation as a womanizing maverick, which isn’t valid but is what people expect of the character. So the reboot version played into that, though at least they provided a reason for it.
@54/Christopher: That Kirk became a jerk because he grew up without his father was one of the things that angered me about the first film. Apparently having a mother isn’t enough. They really could have used some female scriptwriters (or more sensitive male ones).
Even conceding for argument’s sake the importance of male role models, I’d think Kirk would have found one. Certainly in Star Trek’s future, where one of the conceits is that we understand human psychology (and physiology, and nutritional needs, etc.) much better than today.
I think the key problem is that, as ChristopherLBennett suggests above, the writers tried to make Kirk a dramatic character when he’s an iconic one. Spock and McCoy, the same – Spock does have a dramatic arc where he changes and grows, but it happens very slowly indeed, and he remains very much the same person throughout the Original Series.
@56/melendwyr: I prefer that. People in real life stay much the same throughout their lives, so why should fictional characters change all the time?
Kirk changes somewhat during the original series. He starts out as a soldier who tends to favour military solutions, and by the time of the third season he says that he sees himself as an explorer now. That’s about the amount of change I’d expect from a thirty-year-old.
But young people change much more, so a young Kirk should be different. They didn’t have to make him an antisocial asshole, though. I would have enjoyed seeing the eager and serious, but awkward young Kirk hinted at in “Shore Leave”. The Autobiography of James T. Kirk portrays him like that and gives him his share of stupid mistakes. I didn’t like everything in that book, but I loved its portrayal of Kirk’s early years.
@57/Jana: Generally, a standalone story like a movie or a novel should depict the most important, transformative event in a character’s life, the one that’s most worth telling a story about. So one generally expects a character to change more in a movie, while in an ongoing series there’s more of a need for status quo, or for more gradual change.
Which does lead to some conflicts when doing an ongoing series of movies, because there’s a tendency to go for the illusion of change rather than the real thing — e.g. destroying a starship in one movie and replacing it with a new one in the next, or giving Data an emotion chip in one movie and then basically ignoring it 2-3 movies later. Generally permanent changes in Trek movies never stick unless they’re in the last movie in a series; Spock’s emotional awakening in TMP is the one real exception, the one continuity change that never got reversed. (I don’t count things like the destruction of Vulcan in ST ’09, because that was our first story with these versions of the characters, so it wasn’t a change in something from previous installments of their continuity.)
Star Trek II has an arc for Kirk, but it’s about him returning to who he originally was.
@58/Christopher: That may be why characters from TV shows feel more real to me than characters from films. If you only witness the most transformative event in a person’s life, you don’t really know them.
@59/melendwyr: I always had problems with Star Trek II because the Kirk in it was so unlike the Kirk from the TV show. He was much more recognisable in Star Trek III.
@@@@@ 17 writermpoteet
both them breaking up and getting back together happened off screen so if you can assume the first, you might as well be able to assume the latter too, even if you don’t like it. Context is everything, btw: as the reason for their break up was just the fact Spock was leaving starfleet, and he changed his mind and they were back together in the end, it would be lame if their relationship wasn’t mentioned at all. It isn’t like they didn’t love each other anymore.
I want to see Uhura getting developed more too and I don’t think ditching an important relationship that features her, and her private life, would achieve that. It’s like asking the writers to develop Mccoy more by ignoring his friendship with Kirk. I wish some people would just stop undermining strong female characters just because they are in love and human. That is sexist.
People like me who enjoy these movies just hope to see a good movie. Who knows if it’s with whole cast but if it’s a sequel of those 3, I hope the new director will do something new while respecting what came before. I don’t know how many of those who are fans of the movies still care about a sequel but I, for one, would appreciate it if the new director could further develop the characters and relationships as they were established in the first movies.
It’s such a great cast, it’s a pity to waste them.
Seeing Uhura’s family and something on her background would be a nice development. Worked for Spock and Kirk.
63. Dawes
Of course, that isn’t mutually exclusive with the continuation and development of her relationship, is it? Uhura isn’t the protagonist and as you need a pretext to see her family, a good one could be if she and Spock were getting married and she needed to introduce him to them. A romantic relationship isn’t less a legitimate way to further develop characters than other kinds of relationships that trek fans obvioustly have no issues for. It’s all about the writing. It’s weird (and a bit suspect) when the same people who lobby for more Mccoy/Spock stuff or original trio will harpy on the little screentime that is given to Spock’s relationship with Uhura, as if her relationship must be less important than the bros. If anything, the problem is Kirk and his relationships not Uhura. Just scale back his screentime a bit and you will surely have time to do more with the other characters.
@64/LiTsJ: When we first saw Spock’s parents in “Journey to Babel”, the pretext was that they visited the Enterprise. Same with Riker’s father and Worf’s adopted parents in TNG. In the last film we saw Sulu’s husband and daughter because they were on the same space station as the Enterprise. They could do something similar with Uhura’s family.
Or they could all go camping together…
The relationship between Spock and Uhura was one of the most intriguing things about stxi because it created something new. The sequels didn’t develop it enough IMHO and it isn’t resolved. It’s lame that writers don’t seem to be able to advance a romance without an obligatory breakup in the sequel; it wouldn’t hurt if st4 developed their relationship without relationship drama for a change. They can acknowledge the fact they are item without making it a big deal in the story too. The comics seem to handle their relationship just fine, I don’t think it has to be so hard for the movies. It’s a non-issue.
65. Jana Jensen
fair enough. Keeping it realistic, though, if they are in space fighting against a villain and trying to save the galaxy, chances are there is no time to talk about their family or background in depth outside of maybe some small reference. This has nothing to do with the relationships the characters have on the ship with their fellow crew mates, and I don’t think those are less important character development than seeing how their parents look, tbh. Let Uhura have her relationship developed more, since it’s about her too and her personal life and who she is outside her ship job, and add even more personal details to her character and the others to make us know them more.
We didn’t see that much of Kirk’s family either, tbh, and he’s one of the main guys.
@61/LiTsJ: I agree, as far as it goes, that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with developing a female character by having her in a relationship; if anything, I think showing that Uhura was able to win Spock’s affections and his trust and respect just made her more impressive.
The problem, though, is that he’s her superior officer in the chain of command. He’s her boss. So in those terms, a romantic relationship doesn’t seem appropriate.
@67/LiTsJ: I agree that the relationships among the crew are at least as important as their family and background. I’ve always loved the board games and songs and chats and whatnot in the TV shows. It would be nice to see more of this crew in their spare time, too. Does this version of Uhura love music as much as TOS Uhura?
On a side note, like GarretH in comment #20, I wish that there won’t be a villain this time. Not that I’m particularly hopeful.
68 ChristopherLBennett
A pretentious concern to have now when they are together since years and that issue was never raised. After all, even in tos Kirk was meant to marry two officers of different ranks. What might seem inappropriate to you, isn’t necessarily valid for characters that exist according to the rules of their own fictional reality.
I never found their relationship inappropriate, anyway, but if you want to still nitpick.. let’s talk about how redundant it is to single Spock and Uhura out after watching how obvioustly advantaged Kirk was thank to his connection to Pike, or the fact that it only was thank to his best friend sneaking him aboard the best ship that this guy got on the Enterprise, in the first place. He didn’t deserve the ship more than Spock. Even when Kirk lied in his mission report, it was Spock who got transfered to another ship so that Pike could keep his ‘son’ Kirk as his first officer. Spock being in a relationship with Uhura isn’t less appropriate than Kirk commanding both his best friends, btw. Maybe they should forbid any kind of relationships, romantic or platonic, but I wonder how realistic that will be for people who spend 5 years in space with no other connection but their crew mates. If Kirk can keep his best friend from the academy and also have his other best friend as his first officer, Spock and Uhura might as well be allowed to continue their relationship too.
69 JanaJansen
We didn’t even see Spock playing his vulcan lyre or chess either (he surely plays with Uhura and Kirk). I too wish we could see more of the crew on their spare time, but I know you can develop the characters more in a TV show than a movie. A movie is everything condensed in a little screentime. I think they could improve things a bit if they had a more, real, ensemble focus. It is in the little things.
I’d rather them develop the characters more than the villain but I won’t hold my breath for that. It could be nice if st4 doesn’t have another villain who wants revenge.
@70/LiTsJ: Yep, that film had a ton of problems.
@71/LiTsJ: … among them the villain who wanted revenge. That’s such a lame, trivial plot, and they keep going back to it. At least in the last film, the villain also wanted to destroy the disgustingly peaceful future society. I see that as a small improvement.
Adding for @ChristopherLBennett
btw, showing that Spock was able to win Uhura’s affections made him more impressive TOO, don’t you think? ;) Mccoy and Kirk thought that. Why Spock or anyone would want to be with her isn’t surprising; it is seeing someone like Uhura love Spock for who he is, and the fact they make a relationship work in spite of his ‘alieness’. The guy they least expected to have a relationship is the one who has one, and the obstacles they face as a couple are less about Spock not being completely human like her (or him being her superior), than they really are about the repercussions of the Vulcan diaspora. If Earth had been the planet Nero destroyed, Uhura&co would’ve had the same issues Spock had. I wonder if tptb realized how innovative their treatment of “the alien” really is in this regard.
@JanaJansen Krall seemed to be a half written villain. I think it’s the fact he was just another pissed human guy, instead of being someone who maybe hated starfleet because he wanted to protect his people who couldn’t afford any external interference in their alien society. I like the whole ‘starfleet isn’t good for everyone’, I just think it could’ve been a better executed plot device than what we ultimately got.
@70/LiTsJ: As for Tomlinson and Martine in “Balance of Terror,” they were enlisted specialists, not officers (Memory Alpha is in error in calling Tomlinson a lieutenant), so maybe that makes a difference. Still, it was the 1960s, and bosses taking sexual interest in their female underlings was expected, and it was assumed that women in the workforce were just looking for husbands anyway. These days, we have a very different view of the appropriateness of relationships between employer and employee, and modern fiction should follow suit.
I don’t know why you bring up Kirk and Pike, since that’s not a sexual relationship so there’s no harassment concern.
“btw, showing that Spock was able to win Uhura’s affections made him more impressive TOO, don’t you think?”
Not really, because it’s always been a given that Spock is a hit with the ladies, both onscreen and in real life. Just watch “The Man Trap” or “Charlie X” and it’s obvious that Uhura’s interested in him, plus there’s Chapel, Leila Kalomi, etc. swooning over him. It was actually part of Roddenberry’s behind-the-scenes notes — fortunately never made explicit text — that Vulcan males had an overwhelming hypnotic effect on humanoid females, and that Spock had to struggle not to take advantage of it. And female fans went crazy over Spock, with Nimoy getting more fan mail than the rest of the cast combined.
So Spock doesn’t need any help proving to audiences that he’s impressive. A massive amount of screen time over the decades has already been devoted to showing how impressive Spock is. Uhura, on the other hand, has gotten relatively little character development, so a story that portrays her impressively is good to have.
75 ChristopherLBennett
It’s fictional characters who live according to different rules concerning what is appropriate or not for them, and we have canon’s support that such relationships are ok already. It isn’t the first time ‘astronauts’ are decipted forming this kind of relationships, and it won’t be the last because it isn’t realistic or healthy to expect people to spend so much time together in relative isolation and never develop bonds. There is no sexual harassment here, by the way, so I don’t get what you are trying to project on these characters.
Kirk is Uhura’s boss. I see Spock and Uhura more as co-workers with different roles on the ship. It’s Kirk who has the last word and real power on them. I’ll bring pike/kirk and the other friendships up because you don’t seem to realize there are double standards in your argument. Sexual or not, singling spock/uhura out for what the guys get a pass for is hypocritical. If there is any conflict, it’s for the captain because he has all their lives and careers in his hands. He could be accused of being partial, and that’s valid for his friends too not just a girlfriend. Maybe the captain should be a robot that is completely asexual and devoid of any feeling. Maybe they should all be robots, problem solved.
If you are trying to bring up #metoo to criticize a fictional couple that has nothing to do with it (and possibly accuse the writers of saying that ‘sexual harassment is ok’), not only you get no points here but you are triviliazing a serious thing. Those who dislike the romance might want to find more convincing excuses to get rid of the only relationship with a woman that they have there. The only relationship some of you want to see developed is the original trio with the white guys (in all its unprofessional glory), I get it. Let’s move on.
@76/LiTsJ: They were much more professional in the original series …
Personally, I don’t care whether their relationship is being developed or not. They are so unlike their counterparts from the universe next door that it’s a completely different relationship anyway.
I agree that Krall was a half written villain. But at least he had an agenda besides revenge.
@@@@@ 77 JanaJansen: Tos versions of Kirk&Co were older and created in a more conservative time but they weren’t more professional. The funny thing is, I’m convinced that fans wouldn’t have loved them much if they really were professional, all the time.
It’s true you didn’t see Uhura into a relationship with any of the leads there, but that had a whole lot to do with the fact she was black and the leads were white. The white female characters (Rand, Chapel..) also didn’t have important relationships with the leads because they were still just women, and tptb thought the guys were less ‘cool’ if they had a real girlfriend.
If some only care about the original trio relationship it’s fine, no need make up pedantic excuses why only Uhura’s relationship has to be the problem though.
Sexual harassment on the work place is a serious issue, let’s not put everything and everyone in the same box though (eg there are many people who have unproblematic romantic relationships with their superiors or co-workers), and especially let’s not use these things as an excuse to criticize writers for a fictional romance whose only real fault is the fact it wasn’t in the original thing and some fans are tremendously attached to old school relationships (with men only).
#64. No offense, but I’d rather see Uhura’s background or family put front and center in a science fiction plot – cloning, alien intrigue, language translation, etc. That’s all the pretext I need for a Star Trek story. I have nothing against them getting married, but one of those wedding gifts better be a tracking necklace or a cloaking device or a Genesis torpedo or something. A MacGuffin is the best way to say ‘I love you’ to the audience. ;-)
Just to clarify, I actually like the Spock-Uhura relationship; as I said already, I think it helps portray Uhura as an impressive and important character (alongside her role as a challenger and gadfly to Kirk — the moment we realize in the first film that he’s finally earned his captaincy is when he earns Uhura’s acceptance thereof). I just think it glosses over the reasons why a superior-subordinate romance is a bad idea on general principles.
79. Dawe: wasn’t her father in starfleet too? I’m sure I’m remembering something from novels or comics, therefore not canon, but it would be nice to see him or her mother as long as: 1) it isn’t a repeat of the Marcus family drama from st: id 2) none of them are red angels or section 31.
If they ever showed Africa I bet it would look like Wakanda.
80. ChristopherLBennett: Spock seems to trust and respect his partner more than many humans would. When Uhura was risking her life with the klingons in st:id he absolutely kept his cool more than Kirk himself! He was scared too, you could see it on his face (subtly played by Quinto), but he still respected her decision without interfering with her duty.
” I just think it glosses over the reasons why a superior-subordinate romance is a bad idea”
it doesn’t necessarily gloss over it if it just isn’t something the characters may need to address in their context. It’s the future, maybe ours are old preconceptions that are completely superfluous for the characters because sexual harassment, for example, may not even be a conceivable thing anymore for many reasons.
While their relationship seems private for the most part, they also openly reveal their connection to the crew and no one says a negative thing and they even show support for them when the occasion arises. Unless you think kirk and the others give them a pass, my guess is that it’s just a normal acceptable thing for them. I’ll concede that I find it a bit more problematic for Kirk if he’s the one who falls in love with a subordinate but maybe that’s ok too. Like I said before, after all he is allowed to keep his best friends with him. Love is love, whether romantic or platonic it affects people and their judgment, but is it realistic to expect a captain to be forever alone?
@81/LiTsJ: “If they ever showed Africa I bet it would look like Wakanda.”
I’d like that. I didn’t like it when Picard’s home looked like something from 1900 in “Family”, and then they did the same thing to Kirk’s home in the 2009 film. Showing us a beautiful, prosperous, technologically advanced Africa would be a Star Trek-worthy statement all by itself.
@75/Christopher: “As for Tomlinson and Martine in “Balance of Terror,” they were enlisted specialists, not officers (Memory Alpha is in error in calling Tomlinson a lieutenant), so maybe that makes a difference.
Are you sure that Tomlinson isn’t a lieutenant? He wears a lieutenant’s uniform. Okay, they never call him that – Scotty calls him “Specialist” once. The only other time “Specialist” is used as a job title is in “The Lights of Zetar”: “With us is specialist Lieutenant Mira Romaine”. So the two don’t seem to be incompatible.
“Still, it was the 1960s, and bosses taking sexual interest in their female underlings was expected, and it was assumed that women in the workforce were just looking for husbands anyway.”
Uh, I don’t think that’s true at all. From what I’ve seen and heard in my own family, I think it was like this: Bosses were not expected to take sexual interest in their female employees (I’m not a native speaker of English, but isn’t “underlings” somewhat pejorative?). It happened, but it wasn’t expected. And unless both parties were single and consented, it was considered very bad behaviour by many. Also, it was not assumed that women in the workforce were only looking for husbands. It was assumed (again, by many, not by all), that women would eventually marry and have children and leave the workforce, but until then, they were supposed to be self-sufficient. And even that wasn’t true for all professions – it was perfectly acceptable to be a teacher and have a family, for example. Saying that a woman only worked to find a husband was almost an insult; it implied that she didn’t do her work well.
Also, while Star Trek was produced in the 1960s, it did not portray the 1960s. It portrayed a future that was different. We see very few housewives in Star Trek. We see lots of secretaries, sure, but also doctors, scientists, and lawyers (well, one lawyer). We see working couples like the Wallaces in “The Deadly Years”, or Kang and Mara. Amanda may be portrayed like a classical housewife, but we also learn that she’s a teacher before we ever see her. There’s the occasional slip, like McCoy’s “She’s a woman. All woman. One day she’ll find the right man and off she’ll go, out of the service” about Palamas in “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, but even there, the woman in question dumps her celestial lover after Kirk appeals to her duty. And as for bosses being expected to take sexual interest in their employees, there’s that scene in “The Naked Time” where Kirk complains that he isn’t “permitted” to notice his “beautiful yeoman”.
“Not really, because it’s always been a given that Spock is a hit with the ladies, both onscreen and in real life. Just watch “The Man Trap” or “Charlie X” and it’s obvious that Uhura’s interested in him, plus there’s Chapel, Leila Kalomi, etc. swooning over him. It was actually part of Roddenberry’s behind-the-scenes notes — fortunately never made explicit text — that Vulcan males had an overwhelming hypnotic effect on humanoid females, and that Spock had to struggle not to take advantage of it.”
Well, that sounds like Roddenberry. But did he come up with that before or after Nimoy started getting all the fan mail?
“And female fans went crazy over Spock, with Nimoy getting more fan mail than the rest of the cast combined.”
Again, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the way you phrased that, but perhaps it’s just my bad English. However, it was my understanding that Spock’s popularity came as a surprise. I don’t think that “it’s always been a given that Spock is a hit with the ladies”. And I had the impression that many female fans liked Spock because of his loneliness, his status as an outsider. (I’m not talking about myself – I’ve always liked Kirk best.) “Being a hit with the ladies” doesn’t quite capture this aspect. (And why do people always say “ladies” when it’s about sex?)
By the way, one of the many things that baffle me about the 2009 film is how they changed both Kirk and Spock and yet insisted on keeping their close friendship. In the original series, that friendship is so endearing because Spock is this brilliant, lonely outsider, and Kirk is this charming guy who has many friends and gets along with people easily. The fact that he becomes best friends with Spock, of all people, helps to show his depths and is a compliment to both characters. They say several times that Kirk is also lonely, but that’s a different kind of loneliness, one that comes with the job, and Spock helps to alleviate that, too. So those two need each other and are good for each other, and that’s very sweet.
In the 2009 film, it’s Kirk who is the outsider… and Spock is in a happy relationship. This Spock doesn’t need this Kirk, and it’s never been clear to me why they become friends at all. Except because the older Spock tells them to. So basically the story needs a deus ex machina to set up a friendship that makes no sense in the context of the story. They’re only friends because the audience expects “Kirk” and “Spock” to be friends.
Perhaps the best way to clear this mess would be to kill Kirk and give his job to Spock, with Sulu and Uhura as first and second officer. Not that I expect them to do that.
83. JanaJansen: the time was more conservative, even if they were way more problematic behind the scenes. We also have to define what it means ‘conservative’ there. It wasn’t about respecting women for sure, the opposite. Women were sexualized all the time, it’s just the relationships with them were minimized compared to, for example, the friendships between the male leads because they were hypocritically prudish and saw women as just sexual objects. Love interests were fine but they couldn’t have a mature, ongoing, relationship with a woman. If Kirk or Spock had a girlfriend, she would get perceived as an annoying distraction. It was sexism and a myopic perception of women that made them avoid ongoing romantic relationships. And yes, it was sexism that made the original trio the only relationship tos could really make front and center. But don’t tell some fans that because they don’t want to hear it, especially not when they want to idealize tos and preserve that kind dynamic in perpetuity (e.g., perceiving kelvin Uhura and her relationship as a threat to put aside or you can’t give Mccoy and the bromance its due screentime and focus)
Overall, while there are sexist scenes in kelvin trek too, the relationships in new trek are more diverse and realistic to me; the female character has more equality and agengy. It’s obvious that the writers are different. Uhura is in a relationship but she isn’t portrayed as just a forgettable, disposable, sexual object whose love might make the lead less ‘cool’. She is loved by one of the smartest guys of the ship and it’s obvious their relationship is based mainly on love and respect. Some fans may be still biased in their perception of some things, but the romance was as much a legitimate, important, part of the story and the characters as the bromance with the guys were. These are writers who not only don’t think their male characters are less cool if they are in love, they actually think that having important relationships with good female characters makes them more cool. Just look at the relationships jj&Co have with their own significant others, a lot of them work with their wife and created successful business with their help.
“However, it was my understanding that Spock’s popularity came as a surprise. I don’t think that “it’s always been a given that Spock is a hit with the ladies”.
They didn’t expect Spock to be popular. It actually was a problem for them because they wanted Kirk to be the most popular character, and it’s Kirk who has to be the ladies man. Though, to be fair, Roddenberry didn’t want Spock to be single, necessarily.
However, context matters still and this is another aspect that JJ improved or modernized a bit. In the 60s, Spock was still many stereotypes such as the sad lonely biracial kid and the nerdy friend of hero (or the characters we call ‘sidekick’). This kind of character had to be ‘alone forever’ so that his friend, the hero, is everything they have (and the hero is more important because of that too). Nowadays, however, people don’t necessarily see nerdy guys that way anymore. Just because someone is a scientist or introvert, it doesn’t mean they must fail at relationships or be ‘outsiders’. And mixed people certaintly find new Spock more relatable because he wants to embrace both parts of his mixed heritage, instead of having to pretent he’s just vulcan. Being an outsider, itself, isn’t necessarily dependant on someone’s ability to still cultivate different kinds of relationships and thus love and get loved back. Spock is an outsider because he’s too vulcan to humans and too human to vulcans. He will never have it ‘easy’. He also has to deal with a lot of trauma and conflict. However, he survives that and he still manages to find his place in the world. He isn’t stuck in his problems, he evolves and improves. This is hopeful.
I understand some fans want Spock to still be an outsider who only needs Kirk but I don’t think it’s a flaw of JJ’s trek that he ISN’T. They made Spock more a co-protagonist with Kirk so he has a life outside of Kirk. Without that, they wouldn’t really be equals and their friendship would, honestly, always be unbalanced because Spock would be stuck in his sidekick role no matter what. They don’t have a co-dependant relationship and I consider it a good thing that also allows characters who aren’t Kirk to get a bit more development.
In tos, Kirk could never really encourage Spock to accept himself (hence why it took Spock years, in spite of all the time he spent with kirk&co) because his story as the main guy still needed Spock to be the alien because he, Kirk, was the human. I’m not sure this can still work in modern trek though, so I’m not surprised they changed it a bit. I find it important that Spock doesn’t need Kirk to understand humans or accept his feelings. Spock is half human himself, he had a human mother, he now has a human girlfriend. He needs his own integrity as someone who was born both human and vulcan. His dynamic with Kirk is more balanced because of that, because the hero isn’t really his savior too.
Fans of Spock also proved to be a more diverse group because many of those who relate to him were actually happy to see him into a relationship, and they didn’t think it’s mutually exclusive with him being himself. On the contrary, they thought it was a refreshing portrayal of the ‘nerdy guy’.
Tl; dr: in kelvin trek, it isn’t really that Kirk is useless as much as maybe the characters simply have a life outside of him. Because they made Spock more a co-protagonist than a sidekick, they needed to make the characters more equals before they even began to create a friendship between them. Kirk interacts with Uhura, but Spock is her boyfriend. Kirk has his relationship with Mccoy since the academy, and Spock has Uhura. Kirk is human but so is Spock still, and he doesn’t need Kirk to be his human teacher nor he needs external influences such as alien spores in order to show his feelings or get in touch with his human side. Vulcans do have feelings too, anyway, so this dichotomy about Spock’s sides where only his human one gives him feelings is outdated.
The only mistake writers really made, and I agree with you about this point, was trying to make Kirk and Spock best friends forever asap to placate old school fans. This shows that even though the writers wanted to do their own thing, they still feel the pressure of the original thing (they did the same in beyond where for all their claims to be innovative with the relationships, the one that got more screebtime was really just Spock and Mccoy and for no other reason than the fact they had a dynamic in old trek). The Kirk/Spock relationship had a generally more realistic set up at first, and it was interesting they started as two people who disliked each other and are polar opposites, but may also have things in common. It’s good that Kirk has to earn the trust of the characters too. Some fans don’t like conflict, they thought it was insulting to the original but I thought it just was a different set up because the characters are different people because of their own experiences.
@83/Jana: “Specalist” is a Naval enlisted rating. And Scott explicitly referred to him as “Specialist Tomlinson” in dialogue, not “Lieutenant Tomlinson.” James Blish’s adaptation calls the couple “Specialist (phaser) Robert Tomlinson and Spec. 2nd Cl. (phaser) Angela Martine,” presumably reflecting how they were labeled in the script. They’re clearly enlisted ratings — “Specialist” being the general rating and “(phaser)” being the service rating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_ratings#Rating_structure
As for Tomlinson’s stripe, it was the early first season and there were still inconsistencies with how rank stripes were assigned; plus sometimes they just put a guest star in whatever uniform was available.
In the “Zetar” log entry, Kirk was presumably saying that Lt. Romaine was a mission specialist assigned to the ship for the Memory Alpha mission. It’s a different usage of the word.
As for 1960s attitudes toward workplace romance, maybe I overstated; the point is simply that such a relationship (if agreeable to both parties) would not have been seen as objectionable, whereas these days we’re more sensitive to the risks of harassment and abuse and thus tend to have policies against workplace relationships with people under one’s direct authority.
“Also, while Star Trek was produced in the 1960s, it did not portray the 1960s.”
In theory, no, but in practice, its writers were still operating within a 1960s set of assumptions about gender and relationships, and that shaped how they imagined the future. They put women on a military vessel, which was futuristic, but they limited them to the conventional feminine roles of secretary, switchboard operator, nurse, and the like, and they tended to define female characters more as romantic interests than anything else. The 1960s gender values were very much in view, despite the attempts to portray a future society.
We all have blind spots about our own cultural preconceptions. I try to create the most plausible and progressive future I can in my own work, but I’m sure the next generation of readers will find some of my attitudes quaint and dated despite my best efforts. We don’t tend to realize what assumptions we’re making until they’re challenged. So even the best attempt at futurism is still going to have some baggage of the era of its origin.
“However, it was my understanding that Spock’s popularity came as a surprise. I don’t think that “it’s always been a given that Spock is a hit with the ladies””
I wasn’t talking about 1966, but about 2009. I was responding to the question of whether Uhura’s interest in Spock in the 2009 movie made Spock “more impressive,” as if it were somehow a new thing for Spock to be attractive to women. I’m saying that, no, that was already a very solidly established reality decades earlier.
85 ChristopherLBennett:
“I wasn’t talking about 1966, but about 2009. I was responding to the question of whether Uhura’s interest in Spock in the 2009 movie made Spock “more impressive,” as if it were somehow a new thing for Spock to be attractive to women. I’m saying that, no, that was already a very solidly established reality decades earlier.”
Yeah, but I think you missed my point there. I was talking about the context of the story and how the writers see it.
Spock always was a sex symbol (lol) but st09 is the first that portrays him into a working (for the most part) romantic relationship with an ‘impressive’ female character. That subverted some tropes such as : the fact the hero doesn’t get the girl because she prefers the nerdy guy, the fact the alien nerdy guy doesn’t have to fail at relationships to be an outsider or different, the fact he doesn’t have to be unattainable to be ‘alien’. The fact he isn’t just Kirk’s sidekick. Spock is a co-protagonist and they are more equal.
Spock also has something Kirk and Mccoy might want to have but don’t have even if they are the human guys and thus not ‘tainted’ by Spock’s diversity or complexity. Look at the scene where Kirk saw Spock and Uhura kissing: he didn’t see it coming! For Kirk, that’s not a matter of “Uhura must be special if Spock is with her” it’s more like “Spock must be better than I thought if SHE is with him” (because Kirk was attracted to her too). In beyond, Mccoy takes for granted that Uhura had broken up with Spock because it’s probably easier for him to imagine why she wouldn’t want to be with him, than imagine Spock not wanting to be with her. Why people would want to be with Uhura is not a question for the characters, the question is more why she is with him.
If you read interviews by the creative team it’s Uhura they saw as the prize not Spock; this is radical because 1) the fans think that Spock is a prize so who gets him is special. Here it’s the woman who makes the guy more special as he needs to deserve her affection. 2) it’s a woc and they rarely are the prize. The fact Uhura prefers Spock, that he wins her affection, is bigger for them than the fact Uhura wins Spock’s affection because for them, the question isn’t why Spock is with Uhura. It’s why Uhura chooses to be with Spock. He needs to make an effort too to deserve her affection because Uhura can leave him, no matter how iconic or popular Spock is for fans.
Uhura is no Chapel. She doesn’t want to ‘win’ Spock or save him. He may seem cold at times but it’s all appearance, it’s obvious she has him wrapped around her finger. He also really admired and trusted her beyond the fact she’s his girlfriend. Look how fast he told Pike that it would be wise to listen to her because she’s unmatched in xenolinguism. He took Kirk’s theory into consideration only after it was revealed that it was Uhura who intercepted and translated the transmission that gave Kirk a clue.
For fans Spock might be the prize but in the story as the characters live it? That’s absolutely Uhura. Spock is the guy that manages to get her affection to the surprise of the other characters (mainly Kirk and Mccoy) . Their relationship shows the other characters that Spock isn’t like they think he is and there are unexpected sides of him.
Your assertion about Uhura is correct but so is mine in context of the story and how the writers saw it. For them, Uhura made Spock more ‘impressive’ too. That’s why they deliberately made Kirk attracted to her too only to reveal her boyfriend was Spock the whole time. I honestly even got the impression they wanted to ‘vindicate’ both Spock and Uhura as characters, for different reasons.
Great news! I’m more excited in the possibility of more movies in the Kelvinverse than I’m for Picard and Discovery!!! I’d love to see the kelvinverse take on the TNG crew as well!