#harve bennet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alexsbrain · 1 year

Text

Deep Space Nine at Thirty

Thirty years ago, on January 3rd, 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted on the airwaves. The show would not only change the Star Trek franchise but along with a few other 90s shows, laid the foundation for serialized storytelling in prime-time television and later streamers. DS9, as the fans call it, has a prescience and was not only relevant when it aired, but much can still be gleaned from the show today.

The idea of having a stationary setting for a Star Trek installation had been floating about since the 80s with producer Harve Bennet’s unsuccessful Starfleet Academy pitch. Since the franchise had done two starship instalments, it seemed the next frontier, but not the final, would see a crew more or less stay put and have the galaxy come to them. A New York city in space.

Originally Brandon Tartikoff, the head of Paramount, pitched the idea. If Star Trek had been a “wagon train to the stars,” what the franchise needed was a Rifleman-type show. A sheriff raising a son in a wild west frontier colony on some distant planet at the far ends of Federation territory. Since this would entail a copious amount of location shooting, the idea was shifted to a space station, but the western motif stuck. Sisko became the mayor, Jake his son. Odo was the Sheriff, O’Brien the Everyman, Dax the Wise ol’ timer, Quark the local barkeep, Kira the Indigenous person, and Bashir was the town doctor.

What fascinated the show's creators, Rick Berman and especially Michael Piller, was this idea of staying put. Instead of solving problems and then leaving to explore some new planet each week, the characters of DS9 would have to face the ramifications of their actions week after week. What Piller described as the difference between “a one-night stand and a relationship.” DS9's ethos would also allow the writers to explore relationships and community in greater depth. The show has been described as a family-oriented Star Trek series. This theme was explored in the previous two outings and subsequent instalments, but not in the same breadth as DS9. As Armin Shimerman (Quark) has said, every Ferengi episode is a “family episode.”

Each character on the show, including the recurring characters, would have to face their family, or in Dax’s case, her previous hosts. Even Gul Dukat, the baddest Cardassian in the whole damn town, would have to half-assedly raise his half-Bajoran daughter.

Unlike the previous two Star Trek shows, the cast of DS9 would boldly go into the exploration of themselves. Sisko says it best in the pilot, “we explore our lives day by day.” Each character on DS9 experiences profound growth and change that they do not resemble the person we first meet. While character growth occurs in the other series, DS9’s episodic serialization and stationary setting forced an introspective aspect on the characters. It was the character show. DS9 was also full of several firsts for the franchise. Like Avery Brooks as the first Black lead, Kira as the first female first officer that wasn’t written off after the pilot, Dax as the first full-time transgender character, and several other notables.

DS9 isn’t just the best Star Trek series, it was some of the best American television of the 1990s. Along with other series like Twin Peaks, Melrose Place, and later seasons of The Larry Sanders Show, DS9 brought continuity to prime-time television through the dreaded ‘S’ word, serialization. Not a new concept, serialization was foreign to most prime-time outings. These shows not only offered nascent serialization but a continuity lacking in other prime-time shows. Despite the continuity of Voyager, writer Ronald D. Moore left the show after a few episodes in season six when he realized the producers weren’t interested in DS9-style continuity.

The characters on 80s American television essentially remained the same. This is especially true of sitcoms where the delicate balance of comedic tensions between personalities must maintain the comedic pecking order. A character learns a lesson, but essentially things are back to normal in the next episode. Norm on Cheers might be victorious one day, but eventually, he has to go back to his barstool to play the loser but is always one level above Cliff Clavin. That’s how the show maintained the comedy. Rose on The Golden Girls will always be Rose.

Characters on The Next Generation grew, but any event was solved by the next episode, and things were back to normal as the Enterprise D was off on a new adventure. On DS9 the characters grew, morphed, changed, and each episode mattered to the episodes after it. They couldn’t warp to some new planet. The crew had to stay on that station dealing with the ramifications of what they did last week or the week before. Unfortunately, the pseudo serialization, or episodic serialization, killed the ratings. If you missed episode three of the season, you might be lost in episode twenty, as happened to this writer.

This was before DVD box sets. The producers of DS9 were taking a chance with the format, a format that is ubiquitous in the streaming world. In the 90s, it was tantamount to ratings suicide as audiences were accustomed to missing an episode here and there. After all, there was life to live and grass to touch.

I was in grade five when the show debuted. I caught every episode of the first season. In grade six, I started to play baseball and had after-school art programs and rehearsals for plays. These things usually happened on the night DS9 aired. I didn’t always have the spare cash to tape the episodes. However, this was similar to my TNG experience. If I missed an episode, I would catch it on hiatus week or in syndication, no biggie. With DS9, missing an episode was flirting with disaster. I always seemed to miss the important episodes too. I eventually stopped watching the show regularly in the third season. I’d catch the odd episode in later seasons and ask, why are they at war with the Klingons? Why is Weyoun alive? My DS9 love affair, and my Star Trek fandom, were put on hold as I entered mid-adolescence.

By the early aughts, several factors going on in my life drew me back into the warmth of Star Trek fandom. I downloaded the entire run of DS9 and started from the beginning. I still have those files. I sentimentally refuse to delete them despite their lacklustre quality.

Although it took about six years after the show ended, I did catch up. DS9 now holds a special place in my heart. Unlike the perfectly evolved humans on the Enterprise D, the DS9 characters start the show with major character flaws. As the show progresses, they learn and grow. Sisko’s journey is perhaps the most profound, starting out with PTSD caused by the death of his wife, isolated, alone, a single parent, questioning his career and life. Sisko then ends up a demigod destined not only to save the alpha quadrant but the wormhole aliens, aka the Prophets. When asked which is my favourite Star Trek series, I sometimes reply with, “the Sisko is of Bajor.”

Sisko’s salvation partially comes from the community he helps build on the station. As the saying goes, “it takes a community,” and that’s DS9’s legacy. At its core, it’s about friendship, community, and family, not just blood kin but the family we create along with way. When my mental health is at its worst, I turn to Star Trek to buoy my spirits. When I am in deep crisis, survival mode, I turn not to the original series, Enterprise, nor Next Gen but to DS9. It’s the bicycle wheel-shaped space station that gives the most comfort, and the most hope to keep going. To fight and try to overcome.

DS9 also attempted to walk back some of the more overt colonialist and imperialist tropes found in previous Star Trek outings. Not being an American, the original series displays a type of American bravado, melting pot assimilation, and is rife with American imperialism and exceptionalism. In the future, Earth unified into an American type of state, not a Westminster style of government. The United Federation of Planets is described by outsiders as a “homo sapiens-only club,” and its head is a President. Kirk’s main enemies, the Klingons and Romulans, were stand-ins for America’s communist foes, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. One of the main villain species on Next Gen was the Borg, a homogenizing force which threatened occidental ideals of liberalism and the rights of the individual.

Although DS9’s backdrop was the Cardassian occupation of Bajor and is analogous to many atrocious regimes, such as South African apartheid, French Algeria, the Holocaust, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the main villain on DS9 was the Dominion. Created as an anti-federation, a dictatorial colonizing/imperialist regime, it allowed the show to explore the darker side of the Federation by meeting its antithesis.

Star Trek displays an unshakeable Federation exceptionalism that TNG was the first to dissect. Yet internal threats to the Federation on that show were often rouge Starfleet admirals who would be caught by the Enterprise D crew, and all would be well next episode. DS9 dismantles that trope. The Federation, as great as it is, is flawed. When the going gets rough, the smug moral superiority of the Federation gets tossed out the window to achieve its goal.

Mass hysteria and fear, brought on by the Dominion and Changeling infiltrators, are akin to the Red Scare and McCarthyism, and with great prescience, the War on Terror. Not only does DS9 tackle, in a historical context, nationalism, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and exceptionalism, but contains a universality that projects the show’s themes into the future. Most recently, the Iranian government and the Ferengi has a lot in common. Protests over the reach of the state on women’s dress and bodies mirror the Ferengi’s attitudes towards women. Ferengi women are not allowed to fully participate in society and must remain unclothed. Eventually, this injustice is corrected in the show when Quark’s mother Ishka leads a suffragette/feminist movement.

DS9 also tackled an often-taboo topic in the Star Trek universe. Namely faith and religion. Not only would Bajoran faith dominate throughout the show, but the show's writers never gave concrete answers to several posed questions about faith. One reading of the show could be of a human, Sisko, reconnecting with or finding their faith.

Whether they are wormhole aliens or the Prophets to you, January 3rd is a sacred day, Ha’mara. Ha’mara is the anniversary of when the prophets delivered the Emissary, the Sisko, to the Bajoran people and Star Trek fandom, and this is the thirtieth anniversary. Although I won’t be fasting, I am trying to show my festive gratitude to DS9 through this post.

There is no shortage of modern-day analogies which DS9 did not explore. One of its main failings, as showrunner Ira Steven Behr has stated, is the lack of Queer representation. Dax is transgendered, having been “both a man and a woman.” Yet this wasn't explored fully or brought into the light save for one episode, Rejoined, in season four, and an awkward kiss in season seven. Actor Andrew Robinson has stated on many occasions that he played his character Garak as bisexual and was attracted to Doctor Bashir. However, the Queer community would have to wait until the Berman era of Star Trek ended to see themselves not cloaked behind metaphor.

DS9 is neatly packaged in 90s aesthetics. The colour palette, production design, casting, acting, and story structure, but that is also part of its charm. It cannot be divorced visually from its time, yet its stories and themes transcend the decade. DS9 showcases humanity at its best and its worst. Perhaps it is that humility, the acceptance of our failures and our collective desire to do better which makes the show so endearing.

During DS9's first run, not only were fans not amused by the stationary aspect of the show, but they were also equally appalled by its darkness and its probing of the failings of the Federation. As several fans have pointed out, DS9 is the lefthanded red-headed stepchild of the franchise and fans like me, although in love with the show, got lost by its episodic serialization. It took the last thirty years after it first aired to achieve a super status in Star Trek fandom. Now regarded in the community as the best series out of the lot, paradoxically it is still not necessarily a fan favourite. DS9’s frank and sobering look at humanity is its power, and no other series, save for perhaps Discovery and Picard, dare to look so closely at our collective failings.

Star Trek is by definition idealistic and utopian. Earth has evolved into a paradise and made peace with many alien races, cofounding the Federation. A galactic idealist state. DS9 challenged that utopianism and in self-referential glory, attempted to dismantle Star Trek exceptionalism itself. In that process, the show stands alone, with perhaps Discovery carrying on the torch. Thirty years after its premiere, it still has a lasting impact on viewers. As Sisko tells Kira in season two, “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise…but…out [here those] problems haven’t been solved yet.” As we claw our way through the twenty-first century, DS9’s message, its warning, stands as a rallying cry to keep on fighting, to solve that which has not been solved and to continue to explore our lives "day by day."

#deep space nine #star trek #paramount

9 notes · View notes

loveisliquor · 11 months

Text

Kind of want to make a bonnie bennet but need help with the fc-- suggestions, anyone?

so far i'm thinking india amarteifi*o coco jo*nes lori harv*y

helppp this poor libra!!

1 note · View note

prettywitchiusaka · 1 year

Video

youtube

I think this video sums up exactly my problem with a lot of recent adaptations; they keep hiring writers who don’t know or care about the source material, so the works suffers as a result.

Look, I’m not asking you to be a huge fan if you’re hired to write a property you’ve never looked into before, all I ask is you do the bare minimum and do your damn homework and not crap on people for liking something!

Harve Bennet and didn’t know anything about Star Trek when he became the producer for Star Treks Two through Five, but he still watched every episode of TOS to get an idea for what the show was. Why isn’t this a requirement for writers working on a show or film about an existing IP?

#Prettywitch Rants #prettywitch's philosophies on writing #genre fiction #seriously #what's wrong with these people #they feel the nee #to talk down to others?#fandom nonsense #sjw nonsense

1 note · View note

kairoscelrosis · 3 years

Text

64 notes · View notes

nerds-yearbook · 3 years

Text

The Year 2285 is very important in the original Star Trek timeline as it sees the return of Khan, the death and resurrection of Spock and the destruction of the USS ENTERPRISE (NCC-1701). ("Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", and "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock", flm)

12 notes · View notes

ichayalovesyou · 3 years

Text

The Search For Spock (live reaction)

Harve Bennet & Leonard Nimoy, you KNOW this is the gayest one!

“It seems I have left the noblest part of myself back there” 😭

Oh wow this happens like RIGHT after WoK, okay. Yikes Klingons!! Ohhhh it’s a WARG! Cool!!

Oh my god it’s Sulu’s ship!!! The Excelsior!!! We love that!

So are you just expecting me to be okay after Bones broke into Spock’s room? And is literally begging Jim for help and talking about Mount Seleya??? I’m supposed to be OKAY?? 😭😭😭

Oh look Saavik plucked their eyebrows in true Vulcan style lol. I think they sense it’s Spock (or at least a Vulcan) through the k’war’ma’khon and that’s why they said “or who”

Sarek is pissed! He does care even if he’s not a great dad. KATRA! Time to get fucking saaaaaaaaaaad!!! Don’t you EVER tell me Shatner can’t act ever again after this scene holy craaaaaaaaap. 😭😭😭 Jim I cannot believe you left Bones alone go get him (and SPOCK more or less) and save the dayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

“As surely as if it were my very own” IM FINE! Oh my god McCoy/De’s Nimoy impression is on par! Also loving the weird Han Solo McCoy vibes of him trying to get Spock’s Katra to Vulcan, the Spones is STRONG with this one.

Shut up I LOVE SULU SO MUCH!!!!! Amazing outfit! Amazing one-liner! Amazing jailbreak!!!!! Also awwww Bones and Jimmmmmm! Uhura’s sass is beautiful! Get in the closet punk! I love you!!! 😍😍😍😍😍😍 I LOVE HERRRRR YOU GUYS!!!!!

I love that as they’ve gotten older, Bones has gotten even more southern, and Scotty has gotten even more Scottish lmao. Thing Jim is willing to give up for Spock #1: his captaincy/career

BABEY SPOCK HOLY FUCK, me too helmsman lady. Also Saavik isn’t it worth mentioning you’re in a FUCKING BLIZZARD?? And Spock could die of exposure?!

Woah, Bones sounded JUST LIKE SPOCK (I know it was literally voice over) but still, I’m shook too Kirk! Meeee tooo! Also damn Saavik you just roasted the living shit out of David and I do NOT blame you! 😂

Yo like, POOR SAAVIK! That whole situation with Spock is rough for everyone involved actually holy shit. Saavik has to do something messed up, and Genesis Spock has like, no idea what’s going on. I know they had to like, do it, or he’d literally die, but still 😬 I also figure that the Pon Farr was triggered early because of the rapid/warped aging process considering the vast majority of vulcans don’t hit adulthood/Pon Farr until there 30s (like Spock was in Amok Time)

OH MY GOD DAVID’S DEATH WAS SO MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT JIM OH MY GODDDD 😭. Also it’s fucked up to say he sacrificed his son for Spock (Sarek is such a fucking asshole to talk about the way he does, jeezus) I mean it is kind of what happened but Jim couldn’t have known, he just couldn’t have. God that is so SO fucked up.

Things Jim is gives up to save Spock #2.5: The Enterprise, oh wow... there she goes. 😥

Thank god Vulcans are strong oh my god, I can’t imagine how panicked Jim must feel hearing Spock fucking scream like that oh my god oh my godddddd. Oh, Jim found David... this movie is so SAD holy crap. But also “it’s seems I’ve got all his marbles” is hilarious and on brand thing for Bones to say.

This fight choreo is very... James Kirk. But honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way! 🤣

SAVE YOUR HUSBAND!!!!!

Literally one of the most romantic, dramatic fucking scene EVER! If Spock was a woman they would’ve been RAVING about how this and WoK are the greatest love story of all time. But they didn’t but I CAN! I LOVE IT AND THEM AND ITS GAY AND I LOVE IT! 😍🏳️‍🌈

“Goodbye David.” 💔

Bones, this movie is wrecking me and youre making it worse ohhhhh my godddd 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

This is the Sponesiest McSpirkiest movie ever MADE “I choose the danger” Bones you are killing meeeeeeee, that desperate “please I love you both” sideeye from Jim ohhhh pleassssssse 😭

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!! 😍😍😍😍😍🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈😁😁🤩

#Star Trek #the search for spock #star trek iii: the search for spock #spirk #mcspirk #spones #mckirk #liveblogging #tos liveblog

65 notes · View notes

starkiddreamcasting · 3 years

Note

maybe dreamcasting Curtains the musical?

It's the Starkid dreamcast for Curtains, Broadway's musical murder mystery! Sorry for the delay but I hope you all enjoy this dreamcast (it took a couple tries for me to be happy with it).

1. Robert Manion as Lt. Frank Cioffi 2. Kim Whalen as Nikki Harris 3. Jaime Lyn Beatty as Carmen Bernstein 4. Rachel Soglin as Georgia Hendricks 5. Curt Mega as Aaron Fox 6. Lauren Lopez as Bambi Bennet 7. Joe Walker as Christopher Belling 8. Jeff Blim as Daryl Grady 9. James Tolbert as Bobby Pepper 10. Chris Allen as Sydney Bernstein 11. Nick Gage as Johnny Harmon 12. Dylan Saunders as Oscar Shapiro 13. Lily Marks as Jessica Cranshaw 14. AJ Holmes as Sasha Iljinsky 15. Brian Holden as Randy Dexter/Lt. Frank Cioffi (u/s) 16. Joey Richter as Ronnie Driscoll/Aaron Fox (u/s)/Christopher Belling (u/s) 17. Mariah Rose Faith as Mona Page 18. Meredith Stepien as Majorie Cook/Georgia Hendricks (u/s) 19. Tiffany Williams as Arlene Barucca/Nikki Harris (u/s) 20. Brian Rosenthal as Roy Stetson/Bobby Pepper (u/s) 21. Jon Matteson as Detective O'Farrell/Daryl Grady (u/s) 22. Brant Cox as Brick Havermale/Bobby Pepper (u/s) 23. Jamie Burns as Jan Settler/Carmen Bernstein (u/s)/Georgia Hendricks (u/s) 24. Jim Povolo as Harv Fremont/Daryl Grady (u/s)/Sydney Bernstein (u/s)/Johnny Harmon (u/s)/Oscar Shapiro (u/s) 25. Alex Paul as Connie Subbotin/Nikki Harris (u/s) 26. Denise Donovan as Roberta Wooster/Bambi Bennet (u/s) 27. Alle-Faye Monka as Peg Prentice/Bambi Bennet (u/s) 28. Tyler Brunsman as Russ Coachen/Aaron Fox (u/s) 29. Clark Baxtresser as Swing/Lt. Frank Cioffi (u/s)/Christopher Belling (u/s) 30. Julia Albain as Swing 31. Lauren Walker as Swing/Carmen Bernstein (u/s) 32. Nico Ager as Swing/Sydney Burnstein (u/s)/Johnny Harmon (u/s)/Oscar Shapiro (u/s)

Make sure to leave any show suggestions or any questions on my casting choices so I can explain them.

16 notes · View notes

thebreakfastgenie · 5 years

Conversation

Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennet: Okay! Here’s our script for “the Search for Spock.” We’re feeling pretty good about it. :)

Gene Roddenberry: Interesting! I see you’ve worked very hard on this. But here’s something to consider. What if you forget about all this “searching” for “Spock” nonsense and make a completely different movie. Maybe with time travel. You could keep Spock central to the story. For example, he could, perhaps, kill John F. Kennedy.

#star trek

5 notes · View notes

shepgeek · 5 years

Text

To Boldly Go

When the great film trilogies are listed, the back-to-back run of Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home are rarely mentioned. For starters any franchise from the 1980s, where roman numerals were thrown about merrily, will bear suspicion of artistic scepticism. Indeed, it wasn’t until JJ Abrams’ reboot that the idea would even be considered that any film from this franchise might be taken seriously as a piece of cinema rather than a routine trip for Paramount to milk their cash cow. Star Trek was considered niche entertainment for nerds with occasional nostalgic crossover appeal; something to be acknowledged as popular to a degree but rarely held up as anything like the best of what the medium has to offer. In these three films, however, there can be found huge creativity, bold authorial choices, and a keen sense of storytelling momentum based around a compelling and hugely resonant central theme. Within the genre, the films could hardly be more different from each other: Wrath of Khan is a peerless adventure, blending themes of obsession and revenge with adventure and duty, heavily inspired by the swashbuckling tales of 18th century naval adventures. The Voyage Home, on the other hand, is a prime example of the 1980s fish-out-of-water comedy subgenre. Bridging them is the film considered the least of the three but, whilst it is perhaps the most conservative in terms of scale, the propensity for The Search for Spock to be dismissed as “an odd numbered one” masks the moments where it comprehensively masters what the entire franchise was all about. With its operatic brio and earnest embrace of famous science fiction tropes, director Leonard Nimoy’s The Search for Spock is an underrated film in an underrated trilogy and, 35 years on, hiding within it is a 20-minute sequence which, for this writer, remains the defining moment within the entire franchise.

Within the film it is quickly established that the crew have a chance to do right by their fallen comrade, but have been ordered in no uncertain terms to keep away from his resting place. For Kirk, permission is not a luxury he has ever particularly sought and, from the moment he growls “The word is no: I am therefore going anyway”, the film releases the melancholy of its mournful opening act. Sporting a magnificently implausible leather collar, not enough is made of just how good Shatner is in these films. His impudent charisma led us to genuine heartbreak in the previous chapter and he sustains Kirk’s unimpeachable authority with effortless ease. We can see our hero struggling, failing, learning but never yielding, but to see his plan through he needs his crew, leading to why the scene that follows soars: it is the definitive instance of the Enterprise crew working as one. The dramatic stakes are unusually low in this film: there is no universe to save this time, just one man. The gentle inversion of Spock’s “needs of the many” axiom is honest and maybe a little unsubtle but certainly compelling, and a theme throughout the film of what we do for those who matter the most to us is precisely what elevates this franchise above its peers. Those who dismiss Star Trek as frivolous miss this central pull: each crew is always based around this core camaraderie, an ensemble of characters whose loyalty inspires. The Search for Spock is dramatically least compelling of the trilogy but emotionally the most resonant.

The crew plot to steal back their battered starship in what becomes, atypically for the franchise, a set piece. This segment has the feel of a caper to it and eschews visual fireworks for a steady and patient escalation of the stakes and an intensifying focus on the faces of the actors to build the drama: we know what this crew is risking here and we become desperate for them to succeed. On paper what follows is simply some light levels of banter, a few sweaty brows and the Enterprise reversing out of a garage and yet it is imbued with such an epic scale for these characters that it swells the heart. The heist itself has a giddy sense of fun to it, of propulsive excitement: composer James Horner uses an eclectic percussive string instrument (a cimbalom) to set this feeling, but it builds slowly and steadily. The choice to gradually intensify the scope throughout a longer set piece was not out of character for the time and, one suspects, borne from budgetary restrictions, but certainly it would be unimaginable to find such patience in a modern blockbuster, and even the most recent and honest tribute Star Trek Beyond overflows with startling visuals during its own action beats.

The pace of the escape is determined in part by the choices made by previous directors Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer, as Trek had already decided that, instead of the buzzing, kinetic spitfire battles of the Star Wars films, these ships of the line would be enormous stately galleons. Harder to manoeuvre, they add an epic scale to even the smallest of lines: “One quarter impulse power” is followed soon after by an “Aye Sir”: this is, after all, the finest crew in the fleet. There are other advantages as ILM’s gorgeous models have aged exceptionally well, bringing a physicality that later CGI struggles to recapture, whilst the elegant iconography of the famous ship is amplified by Nimoy’s of framing it from differing scales.

As the heist develops it allows the crew to quietly shine. Long reconciled to be left supporting the core leads from the side-lines, Nimoy recognised that the whole film would greatly benefit from using his castmates to add shading around the edges, and he spends snippets of time on the Enterprise crew, implying in his director commentary that he had to defend this choice, one assumes, to Shatner. Whilst Kirk remains his old gung-ho self (only a single punch of a security guard is needed) Nimoy gives Sulu, donning what appears to be a cape, a moment of nonchalant badassery, notably showing us Kirk’s reaction of impressed surprise. The message is simple- nobody messes with our heroes and McCoy repeats this to Uhura in a similarly authoritative beat moments later. The caper crackles with its own history and our heroes (and the script) are visibly enjoying themselves here: McCoy’s smile as his friends break him from his jail is magical, whilst the dialogue is peppered with jokes and callbacks to the Kobayashi Maru, or Spock’s revenge on McCoy “for all those arguments he lost”. The final flourish is the addition of an antagonist: the film sets up the USS Excelsior as a new and improved Federation prototype (an idea which is immediately offensive) and their priggish, pompous captain is instantly hissable. Nimoy knew better than anyone that TV sets were awash with talented actors who had more depth to be exploited, casting Taxi’s Christopher Lloyd as his villain and using Hillstreet Blues actor James Sikking here. Sikking does an incredible job with a small part, immediately making Captain Styles a startlingly slappable presence. After being bruisingly insensitive to Scotty (writer Harve Bennet’s lists Scotty’s reply as his favourite line in the film), when we see Styles aboard his titanic ship he is blithely filing his nails and taking a no-look grab of what appears to be a redundant space cane. Styles is not the only example of how the storytelling detail and colour in this section, with a janitor looking on agog as the Enterprise makes her exit, building a sense of scale, opportunistic adventure and disbelief that Kirk, the Federation’s greatest hero, was going rogue. Styles’ final decision, calling out Kirk (by name, not rank) gives the scene’s final punchline a pleasing rush of schadenfreude.

The final ingredient to this section cannot be overestimated as James Horner’s score develops cues from his Wrath of Khan score (namely Battle in Mutara Nebula & Genesis Countdown- two of the finest cues in 20th century film composition) to lend colossal weight to the enormity of these actions for our heroes. A 91-piece orchestra escalates his two primary themes to a gloriously triumphant conclusion, as Horner deploys the French horns blasting at the limits of their range, a joyous trademark of that composer and an enormous final flourish as the Enterprise finally clears her docks.

Throughout this short set piece, we see Star Trek in a perfect microcosm. Everything that it remains most loved for is perfectly conveyed in this sequence by the script, the direction, the performances, the editing and the composition via an emotional core of considerable heft. When Kirk smiles to say “May the wind be at our backs” and Alexander Courage’s famous fanfare salutes them back, the loyalty and camaraderie of this family is cemented.

It ends as Kirk takes his Captain’s chair; unwavering, resolute and with his crew at his back as the bridge lighting shifts, purposefully.

“Aye Sir.

Warp Speed.”

#startrek

0 notes