Star Trek Movie

Spoiler alert! Do not read this unless you have seen the new Star Trek movie.

I hate time travel. Until now.

Let me explain why.

Most time travel movies change the movie history or real history. Usually, time travel saves the day and everything goes to exactly as it was before or better. I can't think of any time travel movie where things were worse at the end of the movie.

But Star Trek did something that has not only never been done before, but could not have ever been done before. First, Star Trek completely wiped out its own legacy. Everything that happened in the numerous movies and television series (except Enterprise) was wiped out. But even that is not enough to reduce my hatred of time travel. Indeed, wiping out its own history is really just a marketing tactic, though brilliantly done.

The reason Star Trek was revolutionary and why I enjoyed the time travel aspect of this movie is because we now get to live an alternate future. No other movie can do that. We grew up with Star Trek and lived with it through more than 30 years. We know the characters and the stories because we lived them too. We know who dies, how they die, and when they die. We explored the universe with Kirk, Picard, Janeway (boo) and we experienced Star Trek for 30 plus years. It is as much a part of our lives as anything else in our culture. But now all of that is gone.

The true brilliance of purging its own history though is that we get to re-live those decades all over again and things may not (probably will not) ever be the same. Will Kirk ever have trouble with tribbles? Will Kirk ever know, need, or use the Corbomite maneuver? Will Picard ever meet Q? Will Janeway ever stop crying? Only time will tell. Maybe that stuff happens differently now or never at all. The point is we get to wonder as though we are or were actual participants in those events and in the time travel that purged those events. We are Spock -- sort of.

The bottom line is that new Star Trek movie was incredible in its use of time travel. Only Star Trek could wipe out OUR decades of experiences and OUR decades of knowledge and allow us to re-live a different history. No other film could even try to do that.

This movie brilliantly reinvented Star Trek and paved the way for another 30 years of Star Trek. Star Trek will live long and prosper.