It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that I saw the new Star Trek film twice opening weekend; once on a regular screen and once on an IMAX screen. (The IMAX screen is worth the couple of extra bucks IMHO. 
After seeing it the first time, I knew I really liked it even though I felt unsettled by it.
I got home after the first viewing and began to hunt for other people’s reactions, especially hardcore fans. I was so surprised to find so much resistance to the film. I kept seeing all this language calling it a “reboot” While, I guess there is a certain truth to this idea of a “reboot,” that idea was established as a possibility well within the first season of TOS.
In the episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever” the Enterprise and her crew experience the same kind of issue that makes the “reboot” possible in the new Star Trek. In the TOS episode, the Enterprise is orbiting a planet that is emitting waves of time distortion and causing turbulence for the ship. After Sulu is injured on the bridge, Bones revives him with a substance call Cordresine. But just after, during a final wave of turbulence, Bones accidentally injects himself with the remaining Cordresine and becomes temporarily mad and escapes to the planet’s surface. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty and other crew, beam down to retrieve him.
On the planet’s surface, they find a large donut-shaped architectural object planted vertically in the ground. Spock determines this object is at the center of the time distortions. After making condescending remarks to Spoke about his primitive knowledge of science, it announces to them that it is the Guardian of Forever. It is a portal through time.
Meanwhile Bones come out from hiding and leaps through the portal to evade being captured. Immediately thereafter, all contact is lost with the Enterprise. The Guardian tells Kirk and crew that time has changed and that all they knew and all their futures are gone – changed.
By going into the Earth’s past, Bones becomes a random element of change and alters the course of human history. Of course, in this episode, Kirk and Spock also leap through the portal to rescue Bones and prevent him from changing the past. Of course they are successful and manage to restore their timeline. But had they not been successful, the result would have been exactly what happened in the Star Trek movie; an altered future.
In using the actual mythology of TOS, the creators of the latest film have managed truly to stick with the Star Trek universe as it was created by Roddenberry and managed to clear the slate for new stories. I think fans, if they believe in the mythology of TOS, must accept, logically if you will, that the events of the new movie are within the consistency of what has been possible all along.
It just so happens that each time the Enterprise and her crew have tinkered with time travel it’s always gone right. Now, we’ve seen a story about what happens when time travel fails. Stories that glorify warring/fighting easily demonstrate the high price to pay for war. We see the what the ugly side of fighting and warring is: death and destruction. Time travel stories in the Star Trek universe, always show the whimsical side of the notion of time travel. But we’ve never been forced to face up to the science-fiction reality of tinkering with time; until now.
oyr2tE Excellent article, I will take note. Many thanks for the story!
I read a article under the same title some time ago, but this articles quality is much, much better. How you do this?
Nice post, thanks for writing!
For awhile,I believed i was concerned Star Trek was a dying franchise. Then JJ Abrams came along. Nice touch. The scene with kid Kirk was a bit too quirky in the film, even if it was popular in the movie trailer. Star Trek XI breathed new life into this favorite Roddenberry world. I’d like to see all of this Enterprise cast come back for additional outings. I spent my youth with the first series. Heck, my dad got us a color Television just so we could watch Star Trek every single Friday afternoon. Right now, I’m stuck on these new characters. In MHO, they’ve breathed life into their characters and made them their very own. I, for one, am eager for more.