7 Reasons Why ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ Is A Beginner’s Guide To Star Trek [Spoiler Alert]

Everyday science, familiar plotlines, and an absence of jargon make this the most accessible Star Trek yet.

Star Trek is hardly beginner-friendly. Five television series, 12 movies, and a nerd following that defines nerd followings present a serious obstacle to the casual moviegoer. J.J. Abram’s 2009 reboot of the series was an attempt to make Star Trek more accessible, but it’s the second movie of the reboot, Into Darkness, where he succeeded.

I didn’t get a chance to see it just yet but it’s still high on my list. You wouldn’t notice by my online activities but I’ve always been a huge Star Trek fan as well, seen all the movies watched all the TV shows (except the Deep Space 9 yawn). It just wasn’t the “event” that Star Wars was when a new movie came out.

Watching Shatner and Nimoy on reruns as a kid, I’d think this is just like cowboys and indians in space. It’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto but on starships instead of horses. And The Next Generation was space junk with a moral dilemma and a moral compass.

Anyways, JJ Abraham’s 2009 re-imaging was quite good. I’ve only seen it once, a rare happening with sci-fi I bond to, but I was fairly impressed. I figured it would be a shitty-writing’ visually-CGI’ed master piece.

My excited-odometer is at about 90 for Into Darkness. I only skimmed the above POPSCI article so as not to taint my experience but I’m suspicious of this line…

Set in 2259, Into Darkness revolves around a terror attack and the subsequent manhunt.

The Star Trek: Enterprise series with Scott Bakula seemed to take too many plots straight from current affairs and I’d hate to find that the current movie is a Zero Dark Thirty … in space.

I’ll leave you with another review…

Star Trek Into Darkness: Impressive but imperfect

No one is in danger of winning any Oscars, but it’s a serviceable plot that gives the characters a good backdrop for plenty of great action and character moments. When the film veers into familiar Star Trek territory, however, things start to feel a little forced and gratuitous.

Me: I'm going check if I can see a connection at your office.

Him: I'm from Missouri and I don't believe you're going to be able to do that.

“You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander. I am here to put you back on schedule.”

From the greatest superhero fare and new kid’s stories to out-of-this-world science fiction tales, it’s a great time to discover comic books with the Gold and Silver titles available for Free Comic Book Day 2013!

“Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, farm boy.”

A night of Star Girls Burlesque to benefit Zachary Story

But don’t stop there, move along to: maythe4th.starwars.com.

And here’s your blue milk for today: 66 Behind the Scenes Pics from the Empire Strikes Back.

May the Force be with you.

Obama’s hokey Jedi religion makes more sense than you think

President Obama drew a lot of criticism from sci-fi fans last week, when he conflated Star Trek and Star Wars in referencing a “Jedi mind-meld” during a press conference on the looming sequester. The gaffe quickly spawned a satirical #ObamaSciFiQuotes hashtag on Twitter, while the White House seized upon the opportunity to appropriate the sound bite for its own Twitter campaign. Both fan bases searched for explanations for Obama’s apparent misstep, with some speculating that the President may have been confused by two forthcoming J.J. Abrams films, but according to MIT’s Chris Peterson, his blunder may have been more calculated — and contextually appropriate — than it seemed.

Doesn’t matter much to me if this was a calculated sound bite or not, the mere fact that our president and White House reference Sci-fi is pretty cool.

“These sound bites - too accurate for republicans. Only democratic stormtroopers are so precise.”