Robert Orci out as Director of Star Trek 3: The Reboot Series

As a long time Star Trek fan, I was never enamored of the reboots done by JJ Abrams and his team. They’re not complete disasters, though Into Darkness is close to being as bad as The Final Frontier. Each film had moments, but the whole alternate universe Trek still bothers me (I admit I like franchises that continue to keep continuity in play).

But while both Abrams films made money, they were never huge successes, as in the billions that the studios like to crow about. And it seems pretty obvious that all the behind-the-scene shenanigans going on with the third film in the new series indicates that to get a good film out by 2016 –Star Trek’s 50^th Anniversary- is proving more difficult than it should. 

With Abrams committed to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, finding a replacement director was paramount (no pun intended). When writer Robert Orci –who helped pen the two newest films- was handed the director chair, some fans felt this was a sign that the franchise was going to continue being mediocre at best and at worst, just another reboot of an old TOS episode. 

Now, according to Deadline, Orci is out and the hunt is on for a replacement, though no reason was given for his departure. But, BadassDigest is suggesting that Paramount executives are not pleased with the script, which is said to be about “the Enterprise, the Vulcans and a new alien race competing to get a time travel device. The Vulcans want to go back and stop the destruction of their planet, and the time travel schtick is what would allow Chris Pine and William Shatner to share the screen.” 

It would seem, if this was the plan, this plot would negate the entire first two films in the rebooted series, which just seems stupid (yeah, I found the idea dumb originally, but this now seems to be even dumber idea).

With Orci out as director and with a script that apparently will either be junked or reworked, this puts Paramount in a squeeze to have the film ready for 2016. Deadline is suggesting that Edgar Wright is on the shortlist of possible directors, but that’s not anywhere near official. And while Wright, who left Marvel’s Ant Man over creative differences as well, might be a good choice (and is long-time friends with Scotty actor Simon Pegg) he is known as director who generally appears to not like interference from executives. And Paramount does nothing but interfere once they realized that Star Trek could be broadened beyond the niche group of fans that have loved it for forty-eight years.  

Review: Star Trek: New Voyages: Mind-Sifter

Mind-Sifter is the latest episode of Star Trek: New Voyages (or Phase II now), made in New York by a dedicated crew of actors, writers and technicians all headed by super-fan James Cawley. 

Like most fan produced Star Trek shows (including Star Trek: Hidden Frontier in which I worked on), there are some good elements and bad ones. New Voyages has a step-up on most other shows as Cawley has recreated the bridge of Enterprise and other sets to lend a more realistic approach than HF, which relied on green screen, computer generated sets. 

Mind-Sifter has a teleplay by Rick Chambers, and is based on a story by Shirley Maiewski, a longtime fan as well, her original short story, in which this episode is based on, was first published in the fanzine Showcase #2 in 1975 and was later reprinted, in an edited version which she did not authorize, in one of two volumes of fan-produced short stories published by Bantam in the 1976 and 1978 called The New Voyages.

In her original story, Captain Kirk is tortured (offscreen, the story starts in the aftermath) by Klingons to get information about time travel and then stranded on 1950s Earth, where he ends up mostly amnesiac and unresponsive in a mental hospital, with some brutal orderlies and a caring nurse who falls in love with him. Eventually he gets rescued by McCoy, Chekov and Spock.

In the filmed version, Captain Kirk (Brian Gross) has vanished on a mission, captured by the Klingons, who torture him to get information on the Gateway (featured in TOS episode The City on the Edge of Forever, one of many nods for the fans) so they can obtain time travel. Eventually the Klingon’s mind-sifter works out the location of the planet on which the Gateway is, and Kor (Clay Sayre) and his cohorts arrive there only to discover the Gateway will not communicate with them. However, it will talk to Kirk, who asks it to reveal Earth’s history. But like many villains, Kor’s posturing distracts him enough that Kirk is able to break away from his captives and jump through the portal, which dumps him somewhere in upper New York in 1958 and where he becomes mostly amnesiac and unresponsive in a mental hospital. While there are “brutal orderlies”, the nurse has become a Doctor, Jan Hamlin (Rivkah Raven Wood, AKA to Hidden Frontier fans as Rebecca Wood). 

 

Meanwhile, after several weeks of not being able to find Kirk (and they assume him dead), Admiral Withrow (Robert Withrow) arrives to promote Spock (Brandon Stacy) to Captain and send him and the Enterprise crew on a mission in the opposite direction of where Kirk vanished. While Spock follows orders, this sends a wave of uneasiness to the crew, who feel the need to mourn the loss of Kirk. In particular, Doctor McCoy (Jeff Bond), who (apparently after years of knowing him) is surprised at Spock’s detachment from crew. Of course, with Spock, all is not as it seems, as we learn towards the end of the episode that he and Kirk do have a deep connection that allows the Vulcan to figure out the complicated plot.

What works here is the acting, something that can be surprising in these fan-produced shows which usually cast non-actors. Brian Gross, who takes over for creator James Cawley as Kirk, is splendid. At the risk of starting a flame war, Gross is so much better than Cawley (who finances this series through his stage work as an Elvis Presley impersonator, and who seems to be playing Elvis, playing William Shatner, playing James T. Kirk. His scene chewing performances has always distracted me). He brings a much more subtle approach to the character; it’s not so much an impersonation of Shatner, but more of an alternate universe version of him without all the silly theatrics and body motions.  

Along with the ever talented Wood, who can take the weakest script and make it shine, they create a believable doctor/patient act –even if there star-crossed love match is just a reworking of the Kirk-Edith Keeler romance from City. 

However, it’s Brandon Stacy who gets to really shine as Spock. New Voyages has gone through a number of actors who’ve played the classic characters, but Stacy is the strongest one yet to play the Vulcan. His Spock is logical, emotionless, but shrewd. You see the wheels spinning in his arguments with Doctor McCoy on leadership and loyalty. The watcher is compelled to try and figure out what Spock knows –because you know that despite following orders, he clearly is still searching for Kirk. 

While I like Jeff Bond, who takes over the role of McCoy in this story, much better than the previous actor, his take on the “old country doctor” motif is more than original actor DeForest Kelly ever played him. Plus, I don’t buy into the whole notion that McCoy needs to be Spock’s conscious. If this series is set sometime beyond TOS three year run, the working relationship should have evolved, which means McCoy should’ve trusted Spock.

Issues:

The episode is overlong, in the end –it runs over 65 minutes. A good 10 to 15 minutes could’ve been excised and the story would not have suffered.

The whole Klingons want time travel knowledge subplot seems to go nowhere –it’s never clearly explained why they want it (for a Klingon, I think, would time travel be considered cheating? Is it time travel honorable?)

Had this been produced as a real episode of TOS, Doctor Jan Hamlin would’ve remained a nurse, as she was in the short story. While I have no issue with this bend to feminism, it shows that Cawley -who seems to want to his Trek very close to the original in so many ways- is willing to admit that it's 2014 and not 1969.

There is some horrible, over the top dialogue given by Spock on how everyone (the Klingons and humans) should be able to get along. It’s completely out of place here and comes off more eye roll inducing than anywhere near inspiring. 

Nice to see a Native American on the bridge of the Enterprise.

The CGI effects are top-notch, so is the cinematography and location work. 

 

James Cawley’s cameo is funny, but also self-aware (“I hate that guy”). It should’ve been edited out.

This episode, apparently, began production back in June of 2011. There are two clips (both released in February of 2012), on Youtube which show some scenes, but obviously they were re-filmed over the last few years with different actors. This is, of course, the nature of these fan productions. People come and go when time allows (no one gets paid, except the big name actors that have been drawn to the show) and the scenes that make up an episode are filmed out of order and sometimes there could be months between filming one scene that leads into the next. I’m sure it’s a logistical nightmare to keep things straight.