Star Trek Beyond: The Trekkening

Hello, dear readers. It feels strange to be back in the driver’s (poster’s?) seat after a month away, but I am glad that the reason for my return is Star Trek Beyond.

#aesthetic

Despite its flaws, I dearly loved the first Star Trek reboot film. It wasn’t particularly Star Trek-y, and it was full of weird nonsense science, but it had heart. Then they made Star Trek Into Darkness, which, well… the nicest thing I can say about that was they could only go up from there. (I actually had to go back and reread reviews of STID to remember what happened besides like, sexist racist garbage.) The first trailer for Star Trek Beyond didn’t really reassure me that the people behind the movie knew anything about the franchise, but I figured maybe it would at least be a return to the original: a space action movie that accidentally had Star Trek characters as its cast. Instead I am delighted to report that the actual movie was probably the Star Trek-iest thing Hollywood has gotten close to in quite some time.

Major spoilers for Star Trek Beyond after the jump.

So, They’re Messing with Star Trek. I Don’t Like It.

Via Capitol Secrets

Look, I try to be flexible. Things change, I can change, new things can come to be. I love Star Trek, but that thing is now nearing its 50^th anniversary. Star Trek can change, too—spinning through many incarnations, hopping between mediums, swapping out cast members, and stepping on and off the Enterprise, the franchise has always committed to flexibility.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like Star Trek Beyond. Here’s the trailer:

I don’t think that’s a trailer for an awful movie. It could really be a lot of fun, with the dirtbikes and the Beastie Boys and the whole spacey Justin Lin action-comedy thing it’s doing. But that ain’t Star Trek, cats and kittens. Not without a little more; there’s a major piece missing still.

I Grieve with Thee: A Tribute to Intersectional Feminist & Geek Icon Leonard Nimoy

Star Trek is probably one of the first nerdy shows that I ever experienced. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t watching the Star Trek original series (TOS). I remember, specifically, asking my father why Spock wasn’t captain instead of Kirk. It was probably very obvious from my father’s perspective that I had a little bit of a crush on the dashing and mysterious Vulcan as a child. But mostly I remember when I was a little older, sitting at the dinner table with my mother, and she would tell me all she knew about Star Trek. Like me, my mother was fascinated with the Vulcans, and Spock in particular. She told me about little details she loved seeing in the TV shows and the movies, and she would tell me about the stories in the Trek novels she had read that expanded on Spock’s past and on Vulcan culture. My mom recently passed away this past October after a terrible battle with breast cancer. She was a big nerd like me and she is probably at least partly the reason I am taking the recent death of Leonard Nimoy so hard.

It seems silly, I guess, to truly grieve over the death of a man that I have never, and will never, know. But when I heard about Leonard Nimoy’s passing at work, I felt nearly overwhelmed with grief. His character had felt like a part of my family. Star Trek and Spock were some of the primary ways that I developed a relationship with my mother, and I recently started re-watching TOS in order to feel some connection with my mother again. So for me, his death is extremely personal.

My personal feelings aside, that is the not the only reason I want to honor Leonard Nimoy today. There are many celebrities out there that we, as geeks, love, but sadly we know the celebrities we love are not always the best people.Though I don’t know if Nimoy was perfect (none of us are, really) in many ways Leonard Nimoy was probably one of best examples of an intersectional feminist in our geek culture. It’s his great advocacy for all human rights that I want to honor today.

Not Very Logical: Vulcan Society is Sexist, Racist, & Probably Homophobic Too

I’m on something of a Trek kick right now, and I have a lot of feelings about Vulcans. While in the Star Trek universe Earth is supposed to be a utopia where everyone is equal, other species in the Federation are extremely far from a utopia. Though Vulcans are humanity’s biggest allies in the Federation and profess a philosophy of stoicism and logic, I have found them a bit illogical. Mostly because I don’t think a society with such extreme prejudices is logical.

pic via driverlayer

So let’s talk about everything that is wrong with Vulcan society, and thus everything that is wrong with our own.

In Brightest Day: Homesickness

A common theme that pops up in fiction is the idea of homesickness. It’s a feeling that we’ve all probably felt at some point. When I went to college, I spent two weeks hiding in my bed and going to class, nothing more. I did the same thing when I moved from my small town to the big city of Pittsburgh.

When I think about how I dealt with my homesickness, I realize that homesickness can be considered a form of temporary depression. But for the heroes of works of fiction, it seems to be more of a driving force to succeed.

Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon)

Those of us here at LGG&F worked tirelessly to compile and vote on the Top 10 canon and Top 10 fanon pairings in Geekdom. You have no idea how hard it was to come to a consensus on what was actually canon or not!