Nimoy May Be the Star of the Next Trek Film?

ajs writes "Moriarty, over on Ain't It Cool News is running a column about the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. In it, he discusses some theories about where the movie is going, but doesn't reveal his sources. He claims that Nimoy's Spock, not the younger versions of the original Trek trio, will be the primary star of the film; and that the movie will make some very substantial changes to the Trek lore in a way that is internally consistent with what went before, but opens up many more options for future franchise films or series. If he's right, there are some pretty substantial spoilers in the column." Obviously, as unverifiable speculation this should be taken with a grain of salt. Live long and prosper.

Don't pull a Lucas!

I sure hope they don't pull a George Lucas by changing the past storyline to better align with the future series that have already been produced (eg. TNG, DS9, Voyager).

And with Doohan having passed on, there's already a very essential element missing. You just can't have Spock without Scotty.

Re:Don't pull a Lucas!

And with Doohan having passed on, there's already a very essential element missing. You just can't have Spock without Scotty.

I'd say it's more true that you can't have Spock with out McCoy, since it was their ever-present banter (and to a degree, rivalry since Spock's logic and McCoy's emotionalism often came into conflict usually resolved by Kirk) that was so entertaining.

McCoy: "It's a song, you green-blooded Vulcan. You sing it. The words aren't important. What's important is that you have a good time singing it."

Spock: "Oh. I am sorry, Doctor. Were we having a good time?"

McCoy: "Why you green-blooded, pointy-eared ...!"

Of course, that still leaves you with the same problem. DeForest Kelly is long gone as well.

Re:Don't pull a Lucas!

This is a dynamic I really don't think Paramount will get right without a lot of effort.

{sigh} given Paramount's history with the franchise, I really don't think they'll ever get it right.

-------------

McCoy: Mr Spock, you said a while ago that there were always alternatives.

Spock: Did I? I may have been mistaken.

McCoy: Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.

-------------

Spock: I made an error in my computations.

McCoy: Oh? This could be an historic occasion.

-------------

Kirk: You're suffering from a Vulcan mind-meld, Doctor.

McCoy: That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all those arguments he lost!

-------------

Spock: Your attempt to improve the species through selective breeding.

McCoy: Oh now wait a minute - not our attempt, Mr Spock. A group of ambitious scientists. I'm sure you know the type - devoted to logic, completely unemotional - !

I'm hoping

someone may remake the vaunted 'Spock's Brain' episode into a feature-length film! THERE'S A PLOT!

Hmm.

He's 76 years old. Kind of hard to do action scenes, ain't it? What will he be doing the whole movie? Debating Vulcan philosophy?

Re:Hmm.

I'd watch that.

Re:Hmm.

They could make a movie about Moore's paradox, but I don't think they could.

Re:Hmm.

I once read that Nimoy invented the Vulcan neck pinch early on in ToS because he couldn't be bothered filming all the running around and fighting. Perhaps the older Nimoy will come up with a bone-snapping Eyebrow Raise of Doom.

Re:Hmm.

Hey Wombat,

      As far as I know, this is the scoop on the neck pinch ...

      It was invented for the episode "The Enemy Within" by Leonard Nimoy, who felt that Spock was too dignified to render someone unconscious by striking them over the head with the butt of a phaser.

This comes from Memory Alpha [memory-alpha.org] but I recall reading the same explanation 20+ years ago so I think it's likely the correct one.

The changes the movie will make.

"very substantial changes to the Trek lore in a way that is internally consistent with what went before, but opens up many more options for future franchise films or series"

There will be a tachyon anomaly that will give all the old characters characteristics of the new actors that play them.

Baseless speculation

This is just baseless speculation. It sounds like this guy just pulled the whole thing out of his bunghole. Then again I have to admit I've always hated AICN.

Finally!

An article that is definitely News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.

Cool.

I didn't RTFA, but....

I imagine it opens with Spock living a hermit life in a rude hut on a swamp planet... he will pass on his wisdom to some young padowan. (Maybe I am confusing franchises... let's go for the trifecta in the next sentence.)

Hopefully it will not be a musical Aaaahhh [youtube.com]!

Although if Captain Kirk shows up, even properly aged, he can sing amusing songs [youtube.com], now and then.

well

You can't exactly expect someone who isn't Roddenberry to be Roddenberry. Abrams will have his 5 minutes of fame here; but I really don't see his movie being a box office hit. Maybe it will have a strong opening day due to nostalgia; but other than that, it will flop if he's really changing things. I have over a year to tie the noose. Who else wants to be in the lynch mob?

Departing from canon -- good thing.

I'm fine with JJ blowing the canon open. Caveat: I'm not a Trek fan.

I appreciate that die hard fans will be upset by that, however my feeling is that Star Trek has basically had about 12 plot lines that have essentially been recycled in various guises throughout all the seasons. They've finally flogged that deceased horse one too many times.

The fundamental issues I see is the utopian nature of the universe Roddenberry created. Ignoring the probability or possibility of human nature being so utterly warped into an utopia (I personally can't suspend my disbelief that far), as a basis for a TV or movie it's all very nice and all, but it makes for dull writing and little drama.

You're left with creating drama by have characters behave out of character by alien possession or secret starfleet order etc etc etc. Or time travel (which is a clichéd story, almost always in any medium - paradox, protect timeline, yawn blah blah, seen it a thousand times)

No, Star Trek needs its ass kicked. I'm not entirely sure that JJ Abrams is the best guy to do that, but he's probably better than anyone who's been in charge of that franchise for the past 20 years.

ATTN: Moderators

PP is not a troll, he's right.

Star Trek has been out of new plot ideas since about season 4 of TNG. It was apparent when they made DS9 into a Babylon-5 ripoff, it was obvious all throughout Voyager and and it should have been apparent to even to a retarded 3-hour-old tribble after the Nazi episode of Enterprise. Departure from canon = good.

Sincerely, a former Trek fan.

Oh good grief no.

This has to mean there's more time travel. They should have renamed the franchise "Time Trek". Let me guess, old Spock travels the to past, ie the era in which the film is set, and does something that (supposedly) ties up assorted loose plot ends. Sigh.

(Mind, I've got nothing against a good time travel yarn. Operative word being "good".)

Nimoy may be the star...

...wasn't he always?

Burying Itself In Its Own Plot

Frankly, the biggest problem the Star Trek franchise has is its own fans.

There's a big difference between being respectful of a story and hamstringing yourself to meet some fanboy's idea of "canon." There are long and drawn-out discussions all the time in Trek fandom about how this one inconsequential element of some story doesn't mesh with years of backstory which is itself internally inconsistent. They can't seem to let go of these whiny nitpicks.

Look at the new Battlestar Galactica -- Ronald D. Moore took the old BSG "canon" and completely ignored it. He realized that from a storytelling standpoint it would be too limiting to bother sticking with the old story -- after the destruction of nearly every human being, going to a "casino planet" is a betrayal of what could be an incredible storyline. RDM took the essence of what BSG was -- humanity is on the run against an insidious and implacable enemy and reduced it to its essentials. The result is infinitely better than what came before.

I hope J.J. Abrams has the pure chutzpah to do just that with Star Trek. Reinvent the franchise. Give it new life. Change things around and craft a story that can attract a new generation of fans rather than appealing to the people who spend all their life studying the minutiae of the shows.

At its core, Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower in space -- a valiant young captain and his intrepid crew going out an exploring a new frontier. The new film should be true to that spirit, but if J.J. Abrams just sticks to what comes before, he's passing up on an artistic opportunity.

I've been a fan of Star Trek all my life, but the franchise grew stale and repetitive. This is the chance to give it new life, and in order to do that J.J. Abrams will have to royally piss off a lot of Star Trek fans who indignantly demand that the series match their vision of what Star Trek should be. If he does it right, a whole lot of Trekkers will be calling for his head, but the franchise will (dare I say it), live long and prosper after years of neglect.

Re:Burying Itself In Its Own Plot

Having read that pitch, it seems that Straczynski returned the favor (from Ron Moore and the DS9 staff stealing the Babylon 5 premise) and ripped off Ron Moore's BSG reimagining. The document is dated 2004, one year after the BSG miniseries and the same year BSG started running on Sky in the UK, and among other things, it suggests making Scotty a woman!

A reboot for the best

Startrek has a problem. Wait, before you gather your torches and pitchforks hear me out.
The problem is: Startrek is really old. That is not said that it is bad - I quite enjoyed TOS when it ran on TV, and I rather liked most of the "sequels" (like TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc.) to a certain degree. I loved the movies. But Startrek, or rather the Startrek universe has become the equivalent of really old code. The kind of code that was written when C was at it's peak and because the application was good and functional it just has been extended and rewritten over the time. And now you are standing in from of 50k lines of code, some in C, some in C++, some ported from C to C++, all written by several dozens of different editors (with different styles and paradigms) with over the last two decades. And someone had the bright idea to use assembler to squeeze some out some MS from an inner loop. Short, a demonic cross between a patchwork quilt made from used yarn and spaghetti-code. And now you are supposed to implement that new shining feature - without breaking anything.
The Startrek universe is riddled with minor and major plotholes and inconsistencies. Of course, many of the got patched and re-patched when the popped up, but every time a new story is added to the canon some more or less obscure fact will exist to prove the inverse. Of course, the tools to patch them up exist - including the dreaded RETCON - but still there is too much too contradictory information.
So what would you, the programmer do, if faced with the demonic code mentioned earlier and the prospect of managing it for the next forseeable future. Use the well-know way and write on or be bold and pull the plug and start from (almost) scratch?

Re:A reboot for the best

After navigating your somewhat tortuous text, much of which involves a series of unconnected programming metaphors, I'm left to ask the following:

Are you, perchance, a Perl programmer?

WhoCares?

Honestly, and I've been following this kind of crap my whole life (30 + yrs.), so please don't take this the wrong way. But we, as a few of the better minds around, should have something better to do with our time. Do what we can with the limited resources we have to make this a better world. Don't screw around with this garbage YET AGAIN. We've been over this fantasy shit over and over and over. We have more important and complex issues to occupy ourselves. /plea

spock == olivaw

Does this mean that Spock will become the new R. Daneel Olivaw? babysitting the galaxy until in grows up enough to get by without him?

I thought Nimoy would have made a great Magneto

Better than that Gandalf guy, though he wasn't bad.

Also, I'm not a big trekkie, but I thought Nimoy had a literally emmy-level performance in that episode of STTNG, where he played an aged Spock on the planet of the Romulans. I suppose he probably never even got considered though.

    - Alaska Jack

Am I the only one...

who had trouble parsing this sentence?

"Moriarty, over on Ain't It Cool News is running a column about the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie

It took me three times to get it.

Been there, done that, it didn't work

They've already done a Trek where they used the "but its not the same timeline" excuse to muck up the history. It was called "Enterprise", and it tanked. I saw nothing in TFA that would indicate this idea would do any better. Yes, Paramount needs to attract new fans. But they need to do so without pissing off the old ones.

Instead of trying to redo the same old story with whats left of a aging and thinning available cast, they should take a hint from "The Next Generation" and move further in to the future with a new series and new characters.

Or give us a movie based on DS9 ;-)

Christ! Let it die with dignity

before it becomes as idiotic as episodes I - III or even Dragon Ball Z ...*shudders*

The idea to duplicate the original cast was here

On these boards. Abrams or writers are reading here.

A new market...

I fear that we'll soon have a market for "Kirk shot first!" T-shirts.

logical?

Since the existing Star Treks are not internally consistent it is not logical to propose that a new one can be.

I'm waiting for...

The part where Sylar eats his brain and takes his powers!

Bring back the TNG universe in a series

I'm sick and tired of the maintainers of the Star Trek franchise trying to recapture the Original Series style and universe. That series failed for a reason. It had such a good movie run due to Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly, as well as the epic nature of the stories. In the latter respect, the movies were successful because in style and substance they were the opposite of the failed series.

Star Trek: TNG was by far the most expansive and interesting universe, and has always been far and away the fan favorite. I don't mean by self-styled critics who ramble on about emotional dynamics and relationships. Star Trek: TNG was popular because first and foremost because of Patrick Stewart, but second because it, like the Original Series movies, cast the ordinary in the extraordinary.

Teenage boys and middle aged men and women did not watch Star Trek: TNG for character development and intricate relationships. They watched it because it rose above the trash on the rest of television, because it had ethics and virtue and told us what was right and what was wrong, and set things right by the end of every hour. Star Trek: TNG was a Greek morality play in a fantastically imaginative, yet intimately believable universe.

It was NOT Dawson's Creek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space. It NOT not a campy western in space.

Until the caretakers of the franchise look back and understand this, they will continue to fail to recapture that success.

Re:Bring back the TNG universe in a series

It NOT not a campy western in space.

Hey screw you, Firefly was bitchin cool.
Can I get a second?

but I agree with everything else you said.

Re:Bring back the TNG universe in a series

I'm sick and tired of the maintainers of the Star Trek franchise trying to recapture the Original Series style and universe. That series failed for a reason. It had such a good movie run due to Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly, as well as the epic nature of the stories. In the latter respect, the movies were successful because in style and substance they were the opposite of the failed series.

That's a pretty distorted view of history. Star Trek failed for the same reasons many TV shows fail. Some of them air in the wrong time slot, some of them fail to find sponsors, some of them are gutted by shortsighted producers ... Star Trek arguably experienced all of the above. The difference is that most canceled shows don't continue to maintain and grow a fan base for years after the show stops airing. The phenomenal success of Star Trek happened long before TNG -- and I daresay long before you were born, judging by the assumptions you make. People were paying good money to go to Star Trek conventions throughout the 1970s. They put a cartoon on Saturday mornings. I knew more than one kid who would watch the reruns religiously, trying to write down a copy of every Captain's Log that came out of Kirk's mouth. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" only happened because Paramount had a brand-new Star Trek TV show featuring the original cast in the works, when somebody realized they stood to make a lot more money by releasing it to theaters instead. People lined up around the block to see "Star Trek: TMP" -- a movie based on a show that hadn't aired in 10 years.

That said, TNG may have been a decent show, but like you say yourself -- it was mainly popular because it rose above the level of most of the crap on TV. That doesn't make it good Trek. The original Enterprise didn't need no damn social worker ... one drunken country doctor was good enough for them, 'nuff said.

Please let it not be Kirk/Spock

I don't even watch Trek anymore but I swear to God, if they make this movie all Kirk/Spock I'm going to beat Abrams to death with his own severed limbs.

Meh.

Live long, and milk a series for all it's worth. I lost interest after First Contact.

darn

i was hoping for "the rock" dwayne johnson to play spock

they both got that eyebrow raise

"DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE SPOCK IS COOKING?"

the vulcan nerve pinch could segue into a chokeslam and a powerbomb followed by a pummeling by a folding chair

Reboot

A reboot isn't really needed. What should be done is to get together a large amount of people who worked on Star Trek in the past and put together a large fan forum online. Then go about examining every Star Trek TV episode, movie and book to classify what is cannon and what isn't. If a TV episode or movie could be minorly cut to make it cannon, then do so, if it steps too far outside the redefined cannon for the series then it would be considered to have happened in an alternate universe or to be just non-cannon Star Trek entertainment. From then on, all books, movie/TV scripts or comics would have to go through a process to see if they fit into the cannon of the Star Trek universe. One of the things they could look at is if it boxes the universe in too much and prevents people from writing other stories.

Not Likely

This article is not only unsourced, it's unsourceable - the man begins his speculation with "I think..." and goes on with his reckless speculation without even a slight intimation that any of this originated with someone working for Abrams. My friends, Moriarty has just served us up a heaping spoonful of bullshit, so I hope no one reading is willing to swallow.

That said, Moriarty's speculation also appears to be unlikely. Abrams is a big fan of using flashbacks as a narrative device, and it would not be unheard of to have an aged Spock telling the story of how he and a young James T. Kirk met so many years ago. Such a premise would allow Leonard Nimoy to play a substantial role in the film, and would also explain why William Shatner has not been asked to reprise his role as Kirk (Kirk's character having died in Generations).

"Dark" Star Trek Not Realistic.

A lot of people writing on this board want Star Trek to become more dark, the characters less gung ho and somehow, that will make them "more realistic". That's patently absurd.

Let's understand this, guys that get to command state of the art "ships-of-the-line" are better than the rest of us average joes, just as much as guys that make it through Annapolis, then, work their way through years of active duty, to command an aircraft carrier or a ballistic missile submarine, are better than the rest of us. The whole point of the existence of military culture is to vett through thousands of young men to ultimately produce a handful of people that know how to take a state of the art system costing billions of dollars into battle. We expect these people to be gung-ho, idealistic, and confident, and our expectations of the bridge staff of one of 13 ships of the line in the Federation should be more, not less. After all, if you figure that the likes of NCC-1701 had only 400 or so crewman, out of a Federation population of tens of billions, you would expect that every man or woman on that ship would be of first rate education, character, and quality.

Roddenberry, for all of his other faults, nailed this exactly right on the head. Writers that want to have officers dragged down by "personal issues", filling people with all manner of dark character conflicts, really, are just catering to the masses. Yes Virginia, not everyone has mommy issues, and those that don't, get picked for the big jobs that you don't.

As I've said before...

Star Trek died for me anyway with Cochrane's initial encounter with the Vulcans at the end of First Contact. That was the whole point at least that part of the film; the music for that movie is very funerary in tone, if you listen to it...it was one last look back, before the end, and it was a suitably poignant and respectful way to end the franchise as a whole, I thought.

I did not see Transformers, and I do not support the resurrection of certain things when there is no creative purpose for it, and the only reason is to cynically make money. Star Trek is dead; may it rest in peace.

"Reboots" are lame

All a "reboot" says is that a producer is too gutless to create and popularize their own fictional creation, so they take the shortcut of starting with the good name and recognizable parts of someone else's creation. I wish people who doesn't want to follow what has come before show some cajones and create their own thing from scratch.

Bah.

After Firefly, Serenity several seasons of BSG, Star Trek just seems a bit 'quaint.'

Just wait for movie tech

They should just wait a few more years for the tech to move forward some, then they can fully animate the actors and use the old series guys all they want (see the Beowulf trailer for an example of where this process stands, still a bit creepy looking but they're getting close).

Working Title

Geezers in Space.

I wish they had a female captain.

As best as I remember,
the original Trek pilot had a female captain.
So, how about Halle Berry in that role?

Nimoy can still play Spock ...

... as long as Majel Barrett still plays Nurse Chapel!

(He took her job as first officer, so it's only fair.)

Re:Time travel, eh?

Abrams is simply doing a retread and once the dust settles people will go back to being tired of Roddenberry's creation.

This is a complete retread, why bother? There is so much left unexplored in the Trek Universe, now if he was giving me the story of Kirk's younger brother, who rebelled and became a smuggler, then we might have something. Tell me the story of the people who aren't military officers, much loved by their quadrant spanning government.

Hmmm...

I find this choice of lead actor to be highly illogical.

Re:Time travel, eh?

The speculated plot from the article does sound a heck of a lot like First Contact... so much so that I would be very surprised if it's correct. Abrams can come up with something a bit more original than that... can't he?

Re:SPOILER: Spock Dies!

It's a plot, Jim, but not as we know it.