A few days ago I picked up a copy of Empire magazine. It had a picture of the upcoming Star Trek film on it’s front cover, so I thought it might be worth a look. I am, after all, something of a trekkie. However, I just got round to reading the article within, and was filled with a mixture of despair, disappointment and horror. The franchise I grew up with, the characters I loved as a child, are gone; they have been replaced with dramatis personae that, although they hare the names of the originals, bear no resemblance to them. JJ Abram’s, it seems, has stolen Star Trek from it’s fans: he has pissed all over gene Roddenberry’s vision, claimed it as his own creation and replaced it with something which is something more akin to batman. Since when, for smeg’s sake, would spock have a relationship with uhura?

I’m not against reboots: after all, Casino Royale rebooted the bond franchise, and the last three films have been the best ever, thanks largely to Daniel Craig. But bond is a unique sort of franchise: it is ancient in Hollywood terms, and has often changed itself. Unlike trek, it has no cannon to adhere to, other than a few set pieces and lines which are easy(ish) to include. In a way it is more like it’s own genre, and different films of the same genre can be taken in completely different directions. Granted, sometimes they can stray too far, as they did with moonraker, and bond is not a genre in the strictest sense, but the bond franchise is nevertheless very flexible. Trek is different. It has a massive cannon held semi-sacred by it’s fans, but which Abrams has almost totally done away with. It is as if Peter Jackson had taken the hobbit, stripped it of all the little details Tolkien worked so hard to define, and turned it into a sloppy romance on the same lines as twilight and all the other sloppy teenage shit currently in our cinemas. It is a complete insult to star trek fans. I understand why they had to do this reboot: it was either that or the death of the franchise. But I loved star trek as it was, conforming to the original rules, the original forma, the original cannon. Frankly, part of me would have preferred them to let it die than have to see the great Kirk and Spock changed so drastically. Mind you, this tension between what is cannon and what is possible with reboots strikes me as interesting vis-a-vis postmodernism and fan studies, so I think I’ll look further into it,)