Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston

Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston (4/5)

When Ahsoka Tano showed up in Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, few expected much of the character. For older Star Wars fans, she seemed to be shoehorned into the film as an audience surrogate for younger viewers, which isn’t necessarily a problem except that the Star Wars series has had, at best, a mixed record when it comes to appealing to the younger set. But over the course of The Clone Wars TV show, Ahsoka proved herself to be one of the best additions to prequel era Star Wars. In 2016, E.K. Johnston wrote a standalone novel that follows Ahsoka after the close of The Clone Wars series, and the result is a highly enjoyable, if somewhat slight, look at how one of the last remaining Jedi survived Order 66.

Near the start of the novel, Ahsoka is living in obscurity away from the newly established Galactic Empire and anyone she may have known in her past life. Afraid that her Jedi past might be uncovered by the imperials, Ahsoka flees her makeshift lodgings on Empire Day, the one year anniversary of when Palpatine declared himself emperor. (I wonder if they still celebrate Life Day, or if that was outlawed when Palpatine came into power. I’m all for people celebrating Life Day, but I’m not sure it should be a galactic holiday, since it seems kind of religious in nature. I’m for the separation of church and empire). Eventually, Ahsoka finds a new hideout on the farming moon of Raada, tucked away in the Outer Rim.

On Raada, Ahsoka befriends Kaeden Larte and her sister Cietra. The two are orphans who were taken in by a group of farmers. This is actually a nice spin on the family assembled from outcasts trope, which usually form into some sort of gang of thieves like in Oliver Twist. The Lartes and the rest are good people. Ahsoka adopts the name Ashla and works as a mechanic. But just as she’s starting to get used to wearing a new identity with new friends, the Empire arrives on Raada. Soon Ahsoka and her gang of farmers find themselves forming a rebellion after the Empire takes control of farming production and hopes to squeeze more efficiency out of the population. Ahsoka and her allies form a band of guerillas, a development that mirrors her time working for the resistance on Onderon during the Clone Wars, which is even referenced here.

While on Raada, Ahsoka has had to hide her Jedi powers, and when she must finally use them, she decides to flee the moon rather than put her friends at risk. In the second half of the novel, we leave Raada, and Ahsoka even encounters Bail Organa who is in the midst of forming the Rebellion. I almost wish we had stayed on Raada and focused on the rebellion there, but perhaps E.K. Johnston thought this would be too similar to the Onderon arc on The Clone Wars. And while Ahsoka is a fun read and well plotted, it’s a young adult novel and sometimes suffers from the pitfalls of that category. The writing is sometimes prosaic, which is something you generally expect in Star Wars novels, but I’ll admit to cringing a little when a character’s hair was described as “very, very curly.” And you don’t get into quite enough of Ahsoka’s psychology. I wish Johnston had better laid out how Ahsoka reacted to both Order 66 and the Jedi’s betrayal of her.

But perhaps the most interesting moment in Ahsoka occurs towards the end when Ahsoka returns to Raada and rescues Kaeden from the Empire (for the second time!). While being whisked away to safety, Kaeden admits to Ahsoka that she’s in love with her. We never hear Ahsoka’s response, and the moment evaporates without further comment. Still, there’s something joyful about the fact that a female character can express her romantic interest in another female character in a young adult Star Wars novel. I’m of the belief that Johnston is able to slip this moment into the text because the Jedi code of celibacy provides enough room for maneuvering to allow creators and audiences queer these characters. This happened not too long ago when fans insisted that Luke Skywalker was gay.

Gender politics aside, Ahsoka is a fleet little novel that benefits from its limited scope. The title may have promised that the book contained the whole of Ahsoka’s history from Episode III to her appearance in (Spoilers!) Star Wars Rebels, but it’s really just one adventure among many. Hopefully this means that we’ll get more stories about what happened to one of the last remaining Jedi in the time of the Galactic Empire.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (4/5)

My beat up, yellowing copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from high school has the title Blade Runner in the familiar font in big, red letters up top. The cover features John Alvin’s instantly recognizable movie poster for the film. The only thing that suggests this book isn’t one of those once common movie to book adaptations are the words “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a novel by Philip K. Dick” timidly flanked by parenthesis. The inside even contains a disclaimer of sorts that reads: “PUBLISHER’s NOTE: In 1968, Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a brilliant SF novel that became the source of the motion picture Blade Runner. Though the novel’s characters and backgrounds differ in some respects from those of the film, readers who enjoy the latter will discover an added dimension when encountering the original work. Del Rey Books is proud to keep this classic novel in print.” It kind of sounds like Del Rey thinks they’re doing PKD a favor and that they’re worried people are going to be pissed when they realize the film is a departure from the novel.

With the exception of the very broad plot outline and a couple of scenes, PKD’s novel bears little resemblance to the cult classic film turned simple classic. As a reader who, like most of the planet, came to the novel through the film, I initially didn’t know what to make of Electric Sheep. At the time, I hadn’t quite gotten into PKD, and I wasn’t used to his writing, including the wild plot detours that only make sense when you realize he had to publish at an incredible rate and even relied on the I Ching to decide where to go next. Revisiting the novel many years later, it’s evident that Electric Sheep is one of PKD’s best and a superb introduction to his work.

Of all the changes between the film and the novel, the one that initially surprised me the most was the fact that the main character, played by Harrison Ford in the movie, Rick Deckard is married. Blade Runner borrows heavily from ‘40s film noir, so Ford’s version of Deckard is a loner with a drinking problem. But the first scene in the novel is Deckard bickering with his wife about which setting they should set their “Penfield mood organ” to. The mood organ functions like futuristic pharmacology, able to alter the user’s mood upon request. The only problem is that Deckard’s wife, Iran, doesn’t want to alter her depressed state. In his usual circular logic, PKD reveals that there’s a setting on the mood organ that makes you amenable to setting a new mood, which Deckard suggests to his wife to no avail.

 

This first scene establishes Deckard’s blase middle class life, which seems at odds with his profession as a bounty hunter of replicants, or “andys” as they’re often referred to. But here Deckard’s just some middle class striver.  When you think of a bounty hunter, the first thing that comes to mind is a rugged, cynical individualist pushing against an irrevocably corrupt world. The world here is corrupt, and Earth itself is on its way to obsolescence after what’s known as World War Terminus (WWT), but Deckard’s still worried about keeping up with the Joneses. Because most animals on Earth have died off, it’s both the duty and a sign of social status for people to keep pets, but not necessarily domesticated ones. Those who can’t afford a real life animal try to blend in by buying electronic facsimiles. As members of the bourgeois, Deckard and his wife own an electronic sheep.

In PKD’s world, working as a bounty hunter isn’t as cool as it seems. When a group of Nexus-6 model androids escape and make their way to Earth from Mars, Deckard is given the assignment to track them down. The Nexus-6 are next level replicants, and by the time that Deckard receives the assignment, the escapees have already put the previous bounty hunter in the hospital. Because he’s not a police officer, exactly, Deckard is paid on commission and hopes that by taking out the rest of the replicants by the end of the day, he will have made enough to put  a down payment on a real, live goat to replace his faulty sheep. In this way, Deckard is kind of like the Willy Loman of bounty hunters.

The rest of the novel follows Deckard over the course of twenty-four hours or so as he hunts down his charges. Each time Deckard encounters an andy, he must administer the Voight-Kampff empathy test, because otherwise the replicants are indistinguishable from humans. The test involves hooking up nodes to measure individual reactions to a series of questions. Because the Nexus-6 are so advanced, Deckard tests out the test on a woman he’s told is a human, Rachael Rosen, at the headquarters of the Nexus-6 manufacturer. While Deckard is able to determine Rachael’s an android, there’s still a fear that one day it might be impossible to tell the difference between human and robot.

Deckard’s encounter with Rachael is taken nearly straight from the page to the screen, but the rest of the novel goes its own course. Because this is a PKD novel, there are a number of strange twists that don’t quite make sense when you think back on them. [Spoilers to follow in the rest of this paragraph.] At one point while trying to retire one of the androids, Deckard is picked up by police who are convinced he’s on a killing spree trying to kill actual humans. But these officers take Deckard to a police station he’s never heard of before. He eventually comes to the conclusion that either this is a mock station staffed by androids or the he himself is an android with fake memories. The police chief confirms that the entire building has been put together by androids as a sort of shadow precinct. The fact that a faux-police department is operating in San Francisco seems like a pretty big deal, but it’s never really mentioned again. PKD’s known for including irregular moments in his narratives that don’t quite make sense within the whole. These moments are like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit without bashing them into place. This might upset newcomers to PKD, but for those on PKD’s wavelength, there’s something attractive to how his worlds fall apart. These moments of oneiric psychedelia unbalance the reader.

If there’s one theme that runs throughout the novel, it’s the concept of “empathy.” Humans and androids are differentiated by an empathy test. Most of the androids reveal a streak of cruelty at one point or another. The leader of the escaped androids, Roy Baty (spelled with one “t” in the novel), holds up with two fellow escapees in the apartment of J. R. Isidore who, like many, has suffered mental damage from radiation fallout. Baty and the others are cruel to Isidore, even though he’s clearly estranged from others because of his disability and suffering from loneliness. When they come across a rare living spider they torture it by tearing its legs off. The Voight-Kampff test questions often focus on harm done to animals, an especially egregious act in a world where few animals still live.

But of course there are exceptions. One of the androids Deckard must retire, Luba Luft, hides in plain sight as an opera singer, and he eventually finds her and kills her at an art museum. Before killing Luft, Deckard in an act of kindness buys her a book of Edvard Munch reproductions, and she confesses to Deckard that she never much liked androids. Luft’s love of art seems to make her different. Another bounty hunter, Phil Resch, forms a mirror image of Luft. [Spoilers for the rest of the paragraph.] At first, Deckard believes Resch might be an android with implanted memories, but it becomes clear he’s merely a vicious human whose job has eaten away at his sympathy for others. The encounter with Resch makes Deckard want to give up his life of killing lifelike humans for fear that he will wind up like this man.

Electric Sheep asks us to see what makes us human as relative. It suggests that what makes us unique is our ability to empathize with others, but this is not an constant trait. Our sense of empathy must be sustained. In Electric Sheep followers of the religion Mercerism connect to one another using “empathy boxes” where they can experience being the leader of this sect, Wilbur Mercer, as he ascends a mountain and his hit by rocks flung by unseen assailants. It may very well be that Mercer is a fraud, as is suggested in the novel, but the empathy boxes still function. As in Luft’s reproductions of Edvard Munch’s paintings, Mercerism is a facsimile that paradoxically sustains our authentic humanity.

PKD was a prolific writer, and Electric Sheep serves as a good introduction to his work because it catalogs some of his obsessions. It asks us to question reality and asks, What makes us human? Although overshadowed by Blade Runner, Electric Sheep shares only the most basic plotline with the film. They’re separate works of art that deserve to be taken on their own. Rereading Electric Sheep many years since I first came to it, I was surprised to see how much of the novel still resonates. Today, we live in a world where there’s a shortage of empathy. It’s not the whimper of a dystopia PKD paints, but our society has been hardened by hardship and uncertainty. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? asks us to question the world we live in and to extend empathy to our neighbors.

Dark Disciple

Dark Disciple by Christie Golden and Katie Lucas (4/5)

Without appearing in any of the feature films, Asajj Ventress has become one of the more fascinating and nuanced characters in the prequel era. Originally developed by the Lucas brain trust for Attack of the Clones, Ventress would go on to appear in the original 2D Clone Wars series and a number of comics during Star Wars’s days at Dark Horse. Throughout The Clone Wars she became a more rounded character, especially after a story arc finding her abandoning her apprenticeship with Count Dooku to strike out on her own. Star Wars is a world of light and dark, but it has always managed to find the complexity these two poles. And it’s that in-between space that Ventress best represents.

For fans of Ventress, it was a pleasant surprise to see the novel, Dark Disciple, take the focus off of Obi-Wan and Anakin to explore the character of Ventress. Taken from unfinished Clone Wars storylines, Dark Disciple showcases what that series did best: explore the moral Catch 22 of war. Believing the toll of the Clone War has become too great, the Jedi Council decides, with some desperation, that it would be better to assassinate Count Dooku rather than let the war linger. Mace Windu is the chief proponent of this plan, but he manages to get the rest of the counsel to go along. Obi-Wan recommends that Quinlan Vos, a rebellious and unorthodox Jedi, carry out the assassination plot.

Vos knows he won’t be able to take out a Sith Lord by himself, so he’s told to recruit Asajj Ventress as an aid. The fact that she had previously attempted to kill her former master makes her an ideal ally. Knowing that Ventress would never trust the Jedi, Vos goes undercover as a fellow bounty hunter. He arranges a “chance” encounter with Ventress by going after the same bounty as her, and in the tradition of Marvel comics, after they squabble with one another, they soon become partners, Vos’s exuberant personality complementing Ventress’s guarded, no nonsense approach to everything.

For a time, Dark Disciple follows the time-honored narrative of the undercover cop ingratiating himself with criminals, but [spoilers] that thankfully doesn’t last too long. There are plenty of twists and turns throughout the novel, and you can tell it had been expertly plotted before being transformed from a series of 22 minute episodes into a book. I also won’t spoil anything else for you. The person who developed the original story was none other than Katie Lucas, daughter of the Maker himself, George. Here she’s helped by author Christie Golden. In a postscript, Katie Lucas writes about how she was drawn to Ventress because she’s a strong female character. I also feel as if the inclusion of Ventress and Ahsoka in the series speaks to the necessity of including female creators and artists in the world of Star Wars. Would these character be as rounded and complex if someone like Katie Lucas wasn’t there to influence the creative process?

What drew me to The Clone Wars cartoon was how it handled some of the moral entanglements hinted at in the prequel films. For all their flaws, the prequels had some legitimately interesting ideas that were, unfortunately, poorly executed. The idea that you could win a war and still lose seems particularly relevant today considering America has been waging a seemingly endless war on terror for fifteen years, and yet somehow global acts of terrorism have actually increased. But there are other ways to lose a war. Dark Disciple, and much of The Clone Wars, suggests that we lose by blurring the line between the “good” and “bad” guys. By engaging in assassination, the Jedi Council have lost their purity. But this isn’t an easy decision. You could see how the Jedi might come to the conclusion that engaging in what’s considered an immoral act, even during wartime, would be their best option, even if it is ultimately an abandonment of their principles. And in the process they have sacrificed the welfare of Quinlan Vos, who must struggle with the Dark Side during his mission.

Not everything about Dark Disciple is completely successful. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit older and more cynical, but at times it seems as if the romance between Vos and Ventress seems driven more by the plot than by the characters. But because the novel focuses on secondary and tertiary characters, there can be real consequences. Dark Disciples feels like more than just another adventure in the life of these characters. And the novel reminds us that even in a world with a light side and a dark side, it’s not always easy to know which side you’re on. Like Star Wars itself, this is a lesson that is both of our time and timeless.

Broken Age

Broken Age (4/5)

Since its announcement, Broken Age has become a talking point in how games, films, music, and other projects are financed today through crowdfunding.  At first, Broken Age appeared to showcase the incredible potential of asking fans to pony up for a project that might not have the kind of audience necessary to garner the approval of the bean counters.  Initially, Tim Schafer and his Double Fine Studios asked for $400,000 on Kickstarter in order to make their new adventure game.  They ended up pulling in nearly three and a half million dollars.  This was a massive haul, and the initial success helped establish Kickstarter as a legitimate platform for crowdfunding.  Of course, not just any video game developer could pull in seven digits through crowdfunding.  Tim Schafer’s time in the nineties knocking out stone cold classic adventure games such as the first two Monkey Island games and Day of the Tentacle likely helped.

But the studio ran into trouble when it realized that as their funding increased, so did their ambition.  Realizing that they would run out of money before finishing the game, Schafer decided to release Broken Age in two acts.  The internet did what the internet does best and started grumbling.  Unfortunately, the second act was release over a year after the appearance of the first.  And to add insult to injury, Schafer made it clear that, unlike the Telltale adventure games, Broken Age was never developed to be played in two halves and that those who have already played act one should go right back to the beginning following the release of Act 2.  For some, these delays and miscalculations have impacted their experience playing the game, but if you can put the game’s funding strategy aside and just play the damn thing, I think you’ll find a visionary experience that could have only come from the mind of Tim Schafer.

As its name implies, Broken Age is split into two halves: in one we follow Vella Tartine who lives in a fantasy world where maidens are sacrificed to monsters and people live on clouds; in the other we follow Shay Volta who lives in a spaceship where his every waking moment is monitored and controlled by the ship.  The player can switch back and forth between characters, so when a puzzle trips you up while playing Vella, you can play Shay for a while in order to give yourself some intellectual distance.  The game starts you off playing Vella, and I pretty much ran right through her entire story for the first half before shifting to Shaw.  But the second act is more difficult, and I appreciated the ability to switch between the characters.  There are also a handful of moments in the second half where it’s necessary to switch between characters in order to gather the right information in order to solve certain puzzles.  (It doesn’t go as far as the indie adventure game Resonance where switching between characters was an integral means of solving puzzles).

Vella lives in the small town of Sugar Bunting, which used to be called Steel Bunting and was once a warrior town but now has become a town of bakers.  Vella has been chosen to take part in “The Maiden’s Feast” in which a handful of select young women are offered up to a giant monster known as the Mog Chothra.  While most of Vella’s family—with the exception of her grandfather—tacitly accept the necessity of The Maiden’s Feast as a means to stave off Mog Chothra, Vella herself comes to doubt whether this ritual is the only way to save her town.  

Vella begrudgingly accepts her own sacrifice until she’s finally faced with Mog Chothra himself and decides to escape near certain death.  This sends Vella on an extended quest to once and for all defeat Mog Chothra.  In order to kill Mog Chothra, Vella visits several other towns that have their own version of The Maiden’s Feast.  Perhaps the most imaginative locale in the game is Meriloft, a town nestled in the clouds and ruled by a buffoonish cult leader named Harm’ny Lightbeard.  The clouds are awash in the colors of a summer sunset while the rest of the town is composed of pastels.  

Shay’s side of the narrative has sci-fi trappings.  You begin his story by completing what at first appear to be dangerous missions on other planets, such as rescuing people from an avalanche, but you quickly discover that these are fully controlled playtime scenarios that occur on ship.  The avalanche, for instance, is made out of ice cream, and Shay must eat enough of it so that his robotic friends made out of yarn are freed.  Shay’s every waking moment is monitored by mom, an A.I. that encourages him to participate in his playtime activities, eat regular meals, and keep a regular bedtime.  However, a secret stowaway eventually punctures this numbing routine.

Both Shay and Vella’s stories share thematic connections.  They are both teenagers trapped in a world where their destiny appears to be out of their control, but they are determined to break away from cultural strictures.  It is important for the story that the two main characters are teenagers, a period in your life when you are capable or even encouraged to question and buck social bonds.  Eventually, as you might assume, the connection between Shay and Vella become less metaphorical and more real, but you could imagine a nice little game where the parallel adventures never intersect.

Perhaps Broken Age’s greatest strength is its unique aesthetics.  The world looks as if it is built from intricately cut construction paper.  The children’s book imagery gives the game a sense of instant nostalgia, and it’s hard to overstate how beautiful the game is.  And like a great children’s book, you could imagine pulling this game out now and again just to flip through some of the images.  There’s something tactile about the look of Broken Age, as if you could touch your computer screen and feel something other than a flat surface.  Broken Age is a kind of artisan video game, something only possible thanks to the internet’s ability to reach niche audiences.

Like Schafer’s earlier creations, the world of Broken Age is dotted with quirky tertiary characters, and the story is aided by a fine cast of voice actors, including household names like Elijah Wood, Wil Wheaton, and Jack Black.  Throughout the game you will encounter Harm’ny, a cult leader who lives on a cloud, Curtis, a hipster lumberjack, and a set of talking utensils (it kind of makes sense in the context of the game).  In fact, I enjoyed the characters so much that one criticism of the game is that I wish I could have spent more time with these people.

***Warning: Ahead there be spoilers.  I can’t really discuss the second half of the game without revealing some major twists in the story.  Since discovering each new wrinkle in the game’s world is one of the more enjoyable aspects of Broken Age, I would recommend that if you haven’t played the game, turn back now.***

When images of Broken Age were first released, they immediately brought to mind The Longest Journey, a seminal adventure game in which the protagonists flits between a fantasy world of magic and a Blade Runner inspired megalopolis.  These two halves of the game are parallel worlds whose destiny are intertwined, even if few are conscious of this connection.  But this is not the case in Broken Age.  In fact, not only do Shaw and Vella live in the same universe, they live on the same world.

It turns out that Shay is not floating through space.  In fact, his “spaceship” happens to be the same Mog Chothra going from town to town abducting maidens, and an elaborate system has been developed in order to keep up the illusion of space travel.  Shay and his family come from beyond the Plague Dam, a giant wall separating modern cities of Shay and his people from the agrarian world of Vella and her people.  In a twist that never quite makes sense, Shay’s mother is not actually an A.I., but a flesh and blood parent who was merely using the ship’s system to watch over her son while she maintains the ship.  He also has a father, but he doesn’t appear until Act 2.

Shay and his family were actually being manipulated by the Thrush, an advanced race of beings who have genetically modified themselves.  But, in a plot point that appears to be borrowed from Dark City, the Thrush need to diversify their gene pool so they abduct young women from what they call “the badlands,” and it turns out that young children have a certain amount of purity that allows them to make the right picks.  (This was Shay’s job, but don’t worry, the Maidens aren’t dead.  They’re just locked up on the ship/Mog Chothra).  

The twists on top of twists makes for a somewhat convoluted second half, but there’s something admirable about taking Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and doubling down on it.  In Act two, Shay and Vella switch places, so while Shay discovers Meriloft and its quirky denizens, Vella explores Shay’s damages ship.  Both Shay and Vella seem oddly at ease with this change of scenery.  Shay doesn’t seem perplexed by people living on clouds and advanced technology doesn’t seem to phase Vella.  Both are decidedly non-nonplussed.  Not addressing Shay and Vella’s unusual situation in Act 2 is something of a missed opportunity.

Broken Age’s second half doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its first, but it’s still a wonderful experience.  Because of the layers of twists, not everything gets explained.  The game repeatedly insinuates that there’s a special connection between Shay and Vella, but this is never fully spelled out.  The game also ends after the worlds of Shay and Vella are quite literally bridged, which makes me wonder how their societies will handle knowledge of each other.  The world of Broken Age is so rich with possibilities that I would love to see a sequel.  But even if we only get one Broken Age, it still stands out a unique visual and emotional experience.

Star Trek into Darkness

Star Trek into Darkness (3/5)

My first introduction to the world of Star Trek was not the original series but the second television show, Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I may have seen reruns of the original series before I sat down with my family to watch the pilot episode of TNG, but if so it has been lost to memory.  I do remember watching reruns of TOS after familiarizing myself with TNG and trying to wrap my head around the fact that these two shows were supposed to comprise the same fictional universe.  As I got older, I eventually came to understand the shared philosophy between each iteration of Star Trek: a secular humanist view of the future.  Star Trek exists in a world where the limitless optimism of the 1960s never died.  I continued watching Star Trek shows and movies for years after my first introduction, but eventually I bailed sometime in the middle of Voyager’s run (my zeal for Star Trek had its limits).  Still, the first three television shows found a unique way of exploring and commenting on creator Gene Roddenberry’s image of the future: TOS presented us with the dangers and surprises of exploration; TNG constructed a lived in image of different worlds attempting to share what sometimes seemed like a small galaxy; and DS9, freed from Roddenberry’s creative vision, actually started to question some of the mid-century zeal for the future that characterized the first two shows. 

I started this review with this brief sketch of my relationship to Star Trek because no one goes into a long running series like this unencumbered.  Even those who have never seen an episode of any of the many series have an image (right or wrong) of what Star Trek stands for.  But you should know that I have an emotional, intellectual, and personal connection to the franchise, and this of course colors how I watched this movie.  When J.J. Abrams first decided to reboot the series, I wasn’t sure what to think.  I was cautiously optimistic that he would be able to capture some of the fun of the original, but I in no way expected him to mimic the same pop-philosophy that had always characterized the series and made its way, in abbreviated form, into the movies.  (I can’t imagine that Abrams is much of a Herman Melville fan, for instance).  Keeping my expectations in check helped me to really enjoy 2008’s Star Trek.  Abrams transformed the movie into a series of sometimes enjoyable, sometimes dumb, and sometimes exhausting action set pieces, but he also managed to capture the relationship between the principal characters surprisingly well. 

But where Star Trek had the benefit of low expectations, Star Trek into Darkness had the burden of showing where Abrams could take this series and the anticipatory build up of five years, a long time in-between movies.  While it’s no unmitigated disaster, Star Trek into Darkness is a mixed bag.  It suffers from the usual problems that plague J.J. Abrams work, like the fact that it works when the gears are moving and the audience has little time to reflect on what’s happening, but it starts to flail when things turn serious.

Typical of a J.J. Abrams joint, STiD begins in media res, with Kirk and McCoy fleeing a group of natives after stealing a religious artifact.  They hope to lure the island community, a burgeoning society of sentient beings, away from an active volcano long enough so that Spock can set a cold fusion bomb that will deactivate the volcano, allowing the natives to live long enough to enter the Bronze Age.  Kirk soon has to decide whether he should leave Spock to die in the volcano or if he should reveal the Enterprise to the natives and beam Spock out of danger.  Obviously, Kirk decides on the latter, and in doing so he breaks the Prime Directive, a central tenant of Starfleet that says explorers should not interfere with the development of alien civilizations.  Kirk leaves all of this out of his official report, but Spock doesn’t, which leads to Kirk’s mentor and senior officer, Captain Pike, dressing him down and relieving him of command of the Enterprise. 

Shortly after Pike has taken command of the Enterprise, a mysterious terrorist played by Benedict Cumberbatch blows up a building used by Starfleet and later attacks a meeting of senior Starfleet officers who have convened to decide how best to tackle this act of terrorism.  In the attack, Pike is killed, sending Kirk into revenge mode.  It’s discovered that the terrorist, John Harrison, has fled to the Klingon home world, a warrior race that is on the brink of war with the Federation. So Captain Marcus, played by Robocop himself, Peter Weller, tasks Kirk and the enterprise with tracking Harrison’s location and killing him with a long range torpedo. 

 

The clear modern analogy is drone strikes, a policy where we often ignore the sovereign space of other nations in order assassinate individuals suspected of terrorism, even if they are also American citizens.  The crew of the Enterprise is naturally uncomfortable with the idea of assassinating a Federation citizen without a trial.  Spock makes his disagreement with the assignment clear and Scotty goes so far as to stay behind rather than to be implicated in the assassination.

It’s obvious that this plot is attempting to address criticism that Abrams’s Star Trek is just dumb fun without any of the original show’s notions of philosophy. The use of science fiction to comment on contemporary politics was integral to what made the original series so memorable.  Gene Roddenberry wanted to do more than entertain; he wanted comment on the civil rights movements of the 60s.  In the end, Kirk decides to push aside his desire for revenge and captures Harrison.  I have to commend Abrams and his screenwriters for not only addressing moral quandaries surrounding terrorism, but also for clearly coming down against drone strikes.  It’s common for large blockbusters to throw in an allusion to terrorism now and then to give themselves an easy sense of gravitas, but for every film that handles the issue with intelligence (Batman Begins), there are many more films that drop the ball (The Dark Knight Rises).  In fact, I would argue that STiD is better at handling the themes of terrorism, revenge, and justice than more overtly “real world” movies like Zero Dark Thirty.  And while we will never know for certain, the film’s condemnation of assassinating our enemies would have been embraced by Roddenberry himself, who always came off as a bit of 60s radical.

 

It’s too bad, then, that the moment Kirk captures the terrorist, Harrison, the movie begins to fall apart. Fair warning: from here on out there are heavy spoilers.  I avoided all spoilers before seeing the film, but I had heard the internet whisperings that Cumberbatch would be playing Kahn, the most notorious Star Trek villain.  Well, he is Kahn.  How a Mexican pretending to be Indian in the original Star Trek universe becomes a Brit in this universe, I’ll never know (perhaps they’ll explain this discrepancy in the sequel).  Perhaps one of the most potentially exciting aspects of the first Star Trek was that Abrams and company had come up with a way of starting fresh without completely overwriting the long history of the series.  All they had to do was construct an entirely new parallel universe.  But it seems wrong headed for Abram to give himself all of this freedom, to tell the audience that we are now entering a world where anything can happen—we are not bound to continuity; this is my playground now—and then go ahead and retread characters and events from the old universe.  There are so many possibilities in the world of Star Trek. Why give us more of the same?

But wait, it gets worse.  Perhaps the most inexplicable moment in the entire film is a restaging of a famous scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but this time the characters are flipped.  Fans of the Star Trek series will almost immediately guess what scene I’m referring to: the death of Spock.  But here it is Kirk who sacrifices his life and restores power to the Enterprise.  At best, this comes across as mistaken fan service, cosplay on the big screen.  Abrams understands, rightly, that the death of Spock still has a strong emotional pull for geekdom.  So he thinks that restaging it will conjure up the same sort of emotional memories.  Instead, the scene plays out as rote.  I felt like I had to endure the death of Kirk in order for the real film to resume.  At its worst, this scene plays out as cynical miscalculation.  Abrams, unable to conjure up something new, tosses out pre-masticated remains for the public.  In my review of Super 8 (a film that has some fine moments), I said that Abrams was like a piano prodigy who can recreate the notes of a piece of music perfectly, but somehow the results are devoid of emotion.  I can think of no finer example of this than STiD’s death of Kirk. 

I don’t think Abrams understands what a disservice the death of Kirk did not only to his audience, but also to himself.  Star Trek II is such a taught, well crafted piece of entertainment that to intentionally draw comparisons between it and STiD causes the latter to suffer.  But it also shows how little Abrams understood what made the death of Spock work.  Star Trek II smartly drew on the fact that the characters were getting older for dramatic weight.  Early in the film, McCoy gives Kirk his birthday presents, including a pair of archaic looking spectacles.  Death is becoming real to these characters.  Sure, there’s element of survivor’s guilt—that these characters have survived trouncing through the galaxy while others haven’t.  But it’s also the sense that age and death catches up with us all.  This dread hangs over much of the film.  But STiD takes place when Kirk and Spock are just beginning to understand each other.  They don’t have the same history, and as young men death is not yet real to them.  In order to understand this, a director has to know not only how to stage action, which Abrams does well, but he must also know how to weave thematic weight into his narrative, which Abrams has yet to learn.

 

But despite my rant, the movie is rather enjoyable until about two-thirds of the way through.  It’s not a complete loss.  The greatest boon this new series of movies has going for it are the actors.  Abrams must get credit for assembling a great group of young actors who manage to fit their roles well.  This is especially surprising, because the single greatest aspect of the original Star Trek was the relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.  It was easy to ignore the chintzy 1960s special effects when these three characters and the actors who portrayed them were on the screen.  (I still wish that Karl Urban could get more screen time as McCoy in the new series).  I sincerely hope that this crew has plenty of adventures left, and I think that one day Abrams might even become a great director of blockbuster entertainments.  Until then, I’m happy for someone else to take over for the next installment.