As openings to a saga go, the beginning of 2009’s Star Trek is up there with the best for emotional wrench. James T Kirk’s dear old dad, George, is forced to sacrifice himself to save the lives of the crew members of the USS Kelvin, as well as his pregnant wife and unborn son, by piloting the 23rd-century Federation starship on a collision course with a marauding Romulan ship.
We then see how this single incident completely altered the timeline of the younger Kirk’s life. Where Spock’s future bezzie mate always had his maverick side and a natural inclination not to play by the rules, Chris Pine’s version of the future starship captain is now reimagined as a cosmic take on James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, stealing his stepdad’s 1965 Corvette Stingray, getting into bar fights and generally making a nuisance of himself. Thus, JJ Abrams’ zippy reboot intelligently rebuilt Kirk for a new generation, giving Pine the chance to make the part his own.
The opening has been given extra significance over the past few years because the actor who played George for those fleeting, fiery moments on board the Kelvin has since become one of Hollywood’s most recognisable faces. Not so long ago, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor was one of the least interesting members of Marvel’s Avengers, but the searingly funny Thor: Ragnarok and the events of Avengers: Infinity War have completely turned matters on their head. So it is hardly surprising that Paramount has for some time now been concocting a plan to try to bring old George Kirk back in some form – to meet his kid and help the studio bask in the reflected glow of Hemsworth’s recently boosted star wattage.
A reminder that this pitch remains on the table for Star Trek’s next adventure came recently when the internet went into a brief tizzy over comments from actor Jennifer Morrison, who suggested at a convention in Calgary that gorgeous George might not have been burnt to a frazzle by Romulan space cannons after all. Morrison has since clarified her comments to confirm that she knows nothing whatsoever about the plot of the mooted Star Trek 4. But with Star Trek Beyond writer (and face of Scotty) Simon Pegg having confirmed reports this week that a pair of follow-ups to the 2016 film are currently in the pipeline, now seems like the right time to ponder where the saga might boldly go next.
The elephant in the room here is Quentin Tarantino’s ongoing pitch for an R-rated Trek episode, also confirmed by Pegg.
How will Paramount reconcile the two movies? Well, why even bother to try? The 2009 Star Trek has already established the principle of alternative timelines (via Spock Prime’s time-travelling antics) and shown it can be used to explain shifts in tone, pacing and characterisation from the original series of films. If Star Trek producers really want to, they could use the same trick to explain both George Kirk’s survival and the (presumably radical) reframing of the crew of the Starship Enterprise required for the separate Tarantino project.
The first new Star Trek movie might centre on a space-time anomaly that sees the universe trying to reset itself, briefly bringing together various timelines and alternate realities before settling on a single future. (Surely something like this can be found in The Theory of Everything if we look hard enough?) Hence, the James T Kirk of the current movie timeline might be able to meet the George Kirk of the old-school Star Trek timeline, where the latter never encountered the Romulan ship and died a ripe old age after helping his son emerge as a well-rounded young man, etc etc. A pathos-drenched finale, mirroring the dramatic death scene of Spock in 1982’s Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (“I have ... and always shall be ... your dad...”) might see father and son forced apart once again as the multiple timelines are fused into a single existence – wiping George once again from the picture!
Quite what remarkable event might have had to take place to shift the current Star Trek movieverse into territory where it makes sense as a Tarantino movie is open to question. Perhaps Kirk experienced a slacker, cinefile youth after the attack on the Romulan ship, briefly working in the 23rd-century equivalent of a rundown video store and developing an obsession with kitschy 1960s Hollywood space flicks. Perhaps he learned everything he needs to know about surviving in the vast reaches of space from repeat viewing’s of 1975’s The Girl from Starship Venus (AKA The Sexplorer), reputedly one of QT’s fave grindhouse romps.
Who knows, and who cares? We all want to know what the Kill Bill film-maker will do with Star Trek, and it’s clear the saga has the tools to let him loose on Kirk, Spock et al without messing up the main narrative. Now Paramount just has to make this happen, because if studio execs fail to seize this opportunity they deserve to be fed to the Klingons.
