And on Second Review ...

The official version of the trailer for the new Star Trek movie came out this week:

New Trailer

My first impressions so far (if you haven't seen it, SPOILER SPACE AHEAD):

You've been warned ...


1. I was almost tempted, upon seeing the new version of the Enterprise for the first time, to say "meh" (Kidding!) Seriously, I was almost tempted to put the photo up with an LOL caption on it titled "Epic Fail". It looks like the designer did a mashup of the movie Enterprise and the Enterprise-D from Next Generation, and then badly Photoshopped the secondary hull to draw attention away from the mashup.

Don't get me started on the warp engines, which have a distinct 50s-retro tailfin look to them. At least the designer didn't crib completely from a previous design (as what happened with the NX-01 from Enterprise). No, wait, what am I saying???

I'm hoping that during the course of the movie, everything below the saucer gets critically damaged so that by the end of the movie, it gets replaced with something that more closely matches the starship we grew up with. Or maybe it is an alternate timeline movie like we've been led to believe.

2. The scene in the hangar bay really had a Starship Troopers vibe to it.

3. Visually exciting (almost Speed Racer-ish) in intensity. But is there a story to it? In doing Speed Racer, you could see that the Wachowski's not only knew their story material, they RESPECTED it. I am hoping and praying that JJ Abrams knows enough, even if this is a reboot, to do the same.

4. Simon Pegg as Scotty: I'm wondering if his version of Scotty had already had Aldeberian whiskey (the infamous drink immortalized in the words "it's green" when asked what it was) in the trailer scene? He certainly seemed like he had a pretty good caffeine buzz or hyperactive streak going .....

5. Is it just me, but by presenting us with a much younger Kirk with a slightly different origin story, I think they've already sacrificed some interesting plot points from the original. In TOS, Kirk was a young starship captain (the youngest captain to command a starship, on record), but at least he had risen through the ranks and, when he was younger, survived two incidents (counting Tarsus Four and the cloud being that decimated the starship Farragut). See the TOS episodes "The Conscience of the King" and "Obsession" to know what I'm talking about.

In the new movie, he seems almost way too young to be a cadet, let alone captaining a starship, and there's no sense of how he got from being a deliquent to that captain. It's almost like he survives the Kobayashi Maru "no-win scenario" test and, as a reward, gets told he's getting a starship.

I wonder how they're going to explain the age differential, let alone the scene where Kirk sees the Enterprise being built prior to entering Starfleet?

6. One thing they did get right: casting Zach Quinto as Spock. The look is right, and the delivery is right. The guy appears to be channeling Leonard Nimoy. It's eerie.

I've heard since then that the idea of the movie is that the original Trek timeline as we know it has been demolished, due to the use of time-travel and history being changed, and that what we will get is a timeline that is "close to the original as possible", but not quite.

Didn't Berman and Braga try this with Enterprise and fail miserably? Just wondering.

Anyway, it's just a few thoughts moving forward. I suspect that more will come out the closer we get to the release date, and I'll be standing in line at the local theater come May when it comes out.

Just please change the ship so that it's closer to the original. That's all. Kthxbye.

Work

Today was my first experience with manufacturing work: a local temp firm held a cattle call for the local Energizer battery factory, and I made the cut to start tomorrow morning on 1st shift. Yes, I'm glad, because it's work, even though it's part-time and temporary (in other words, it will last as long as the work is there). I do hope to find something better for the long-term, and I am still looking, but at least the job drought is broken.

My initial impressions:

1)Discomfort: We stood outside in the cold, damp, and drizzly air and froze outside the employee entrance to the plant for about 20 minutes, because they started the orientation 12 minutes late.
2)Fear: like it or not, it's manufacturing work, and despite the facility's near-perfect safety record, there are a lot of ways to get hurt there. And there's a little bit of fear of failure, too: I don't want to fail, but I've never done manufacturing work before; I'll do the best I can with it, but I'm not sure how well I'll do.

It is a bit of a rude shock going from white-collar down to blue, and Lauren is sorry that I have to take work that isn't that desirable. But at this point, we don't have much of a choice: starting this month, it's costing us an extra $600.00 a month to put me on Lauren's health insurance. While it's very good coverage, the expense is really eating a chunk out of our monthly finances for now, and anything that can help toward that is welcome. Still, it's not the ideal job, and because it's temp work, it probably pays nowhere near what I'm used to making.

But at least it's something until something better comes along.