Pants Fight! Street Cinema from Rapid City

West River neighbor Bill Fleming recommends the following video, in which I find mirthful metaphor for the partisan combat between Mr. Powers and myself. I hope the metaphor does not extend to the fate of the bearded combatant.



Mr. Fleming promotes this film as proud poppa: his offspring Bonny (cinematography) and Dylan (bearded dude) joined Kasey Reub (Son of Cancer Man) to film this minor local masterpiece. Beats most of what's on KELO!

I'd check for the logical sequel—Underpants Fight!—but I'm afraid of what Google might throw at me.

BP Oil, Theology, Avatar, and Connecting Everything

I just heard on NPR that BP reports capturing 10,000 barrels of oil a day from the containment cap placed on its big Gulf of Mexico leak. BP chief Tony Hayward says that's about half the total daily leakage. Remember when BP (and the government) said the leak was 5000 barrels a day?

The BP spill is rightly capturing a lot of attention among the folks I read. Larry Kurtz pointed out the If It Was My Home graphic that maps the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill on top of any location you choose. Pastors Hickey and Fountain take note and recommend the faithful pray for the folks in Louisiana... and for some divine inspiration for the engineers who have to solve this problem.

The stern Displaced Plainsman (who matches Hickey's hirsuteness, if not theology) seconds some broader theological observations on the BP mess from Biloxi native Russell D. Moore. Moore likens this ecological disaster to Roe v. Wade as a paradigm-busting call to action for all Christians:

For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.

We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin.

Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people” [Russell D. Moore, "Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience," Moore to the Point, 2010.06.01].

Moore says this oil spill is a threat not just to his hometown or other coastal residents but to our overall national security, due to a dependence on the Gulf ecosystems that exceeds most folks' understanding. In case you still think this catastrophe only affects shrimpers and swimmers, consider this small example: BP's oil may significantly harm Minnesota's venerable state bird, the common loon. Loons hatch up north, then fly south to spend their first year in the Gulf of Mexico. Young loons and oil don't mix well.

Moore's politics on abortion make me queasy... and I'm sure he'd feel the same about mine. But he sees no reason we can't all get along and try saving the planet from industrial destruction. In fact, Moore believes Christianity calls us all to fight pollution, to protect not just cute critters but also communities and culture:

As I’ve seen the people I love, who led me to Christ, literally heaving in tears, I’ve wondered how many other communities have faced death like this, while I ignored even the chance to pray. The protection of the creation isn’t just about seagulls and turtles and dolphins. That would be enough to prompt us to action, since God’s glory is in seagulls and turtles and dolphins (Gen. 6-9; Isa. 65).

Pollution kills people. Pollution dislocates families. Pollution defiles the icon of God’s Trinitarian joy, the creation of his theater (Ps. 19; Rom. 1) [Moore, 2010].

Alas, my deficiency of divinity leaves me turning to secular culture for understanding. Friday night my wife and I got our first look at Avatar, a movie about a community uprooted by careless industrial development. (I think the movie also said some Gaia-stuff about the interconnection of all creation... though I wonder if that includes a connection between human and Na'vi.)

Two lines stick in my head. First, the hero tells Eywa there's no green left back on Earth. Then, at the end, the hero says of us, "the aliens went back to their dying home."

The Soviets destroyed the Aral Sea. We're one-upping them in the Gulf of Mexico... and making me think we really could make a dying world with no green.

Says BP's Hayward:

We are going to stop the leak. We're going to clean up the oil, we're going to remediate any environmental damage and we are going to return the Gulf coast to the position it was in prior to this event. That's an absolute commitment, we will be there long after the media has gone, making good on our promises [BP chief exec Tony Hayward, quoted by David Stringer, "BP chief won't quit over Gulf of Mexico spill," AP via Google, 2010.06.06].

Prayers are in order, for Hayward and his engineers to succeed in fulfilling their obligations, and for the communities threatened by this ecological disaster to persevere. Also in order: personal and political action to reform our environmental laws and energy policy, kick our fossil fuel habit, and stop wrecking our planet.

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, superimposed over the Aral Sea.
Image retrieved 2010.06.06 by ifitwasmyhome.com.

Mundt on Movies: No Friend of Free Expression

SDSU historian John Miller called in to Dakota Midday's conversation with Chuck Raasch about the Dust Bowl yesterday with an interesting story about Karl E. Mundt. Miller recalled that Mundt devoted his first floor speech in the U.S. House of Representatives to decrying a movie, The Plow that Broke the Plains. Mundt felt the movie cast South Dakota in a bad light. He said in 1939 that the Dust Bowl was over, South Dakota was green again, and the film was an inaccurate insult to our state. He worked to get the film pulled from distribution and trumpeted his success in suppressing the film as a big reason to re-elect him in 1940. The public didn't see the film again until 1961.

Now the documentary did include some inaccuracies and apparent skullduggery (or is that skull-movery?). But to bury a film and celebrate that censorship as a victory makes me queasy. Combine denying history with Mundt's Red-hunting and "loyal support" of Joe McCarthy, and you get a picture of a South Dakota politician who'd have fit right into today's media climate... on Fox News.

Senator Mundt also went ape twenty years later over North by Northwest, perceiving some insult in the climactic chase scene on Mount Rushmore and argued the film should be "recalled and corrrected."

I’ve said good things about Madison icon Karl E. Mundt. He’s one of Madison High School’s most prominent alumni and an important part of South Dakota history. He was a good speech teacher and debate coach and helped start the National Forensic League, which is near and dear to my heart. But his support of censorship as a politician call into question his commitment to the First Amendment.

Of course, thank to the Internet, now we can all watch The Plow that Broke the Plains. Here's to you, Senator.

Roemen Listens to Goeman, Installs Green Box Movies

When Sunshine Foods shut down Mr. Movies to make way for expanding its liquor selection, local insurance agent and eager reader Rod Goeman suggested the grocery store could at least install a Redbox DVD rental machine to make up for the lost entertainment choices.

I walk into Sunshine yesterday for milk, and what do I find?
A big green DVD rental box! Instead of going with Illinois-based Redbox like Hy-Vee in Sioux Falls (and 22,000 other locations nationwide), Roemen went with Brandon-based Prairie Video, which has over 120 machines in seven states, including the Sunshines in Tea, Lennox, and Sioux Falls.

DVDs for $1 per day. No late fee; you just pay another buck for each day you keep it. Forget that video under the couch for a month, and you've just paid $30 for one movie.

So on the good side, Roemen has restored a little of the movie selection his booze crowded out. He's also doing business with a South Dakota company On the bad side, movies from a tin box can't replace the selection of a full movie store. And we've replaced an independent entrepreneur and six jobs with a green box. One step up, two steps back.

"The Age of Stupid" Plays Saturday at Brookings Public Library

No, it's not a movie about Finals Week.

Dakota Grassroots Democracy, South Dakota Resources Coalition, and the SDSU Sierra Club are hosting a showing of The Age of Stupid on Saturday, December 12, at 1 p.m. at the Brookings Public Library. Pete Postlethwaite plays an archivist paging through the records of our destroyed civilization and wondering what went wrong.

Part documentary, part speculative fiction, the film is likely scarier than 2012, as the "villain" is not some unstoppable cosmic force, but our own inability to choose science and responsibility over arrogance and wishful thinking.

After the film, Pete Carrels of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign will anchor an open discussion session about the film and what's happening in Washington and Copenhagen to keep The Age of Stupid from making the leap from cinema to history. Bring your questions!

Julie & Julia: Manhood, Blogging, and the Modern Psyche

Some grandparental babysitting allowed us a date night last night. We saw Julie & Julia, which has been lingering unloved at Madison's movie house for a week and a half. This is not because it is an unlovable movie. But a conversation with cinema management noted that in general, the local movie audience is the junior high kids. Nearly every other demographic in Madison chooses the bar as its primary out-of-the-house entertainment. And we know how that turns out. Sigh.

No 3300-word review this time (the film is good, but it's not Star Trek ;-) ). But I do want to join Dr. Blanchard and Mr. Rosenthal in praising Julie & Julia. Per the title, it is really two films: one great movie (Julia) with a whole 'nother passable movie (Julie) woven into it.

The great movie is the story of Julia Child and her husband Paul. It is blissful filmmaking, with as much joie de vivre as joie de cuisine. We see two rich characters, Julia and Paul, utterly self-assured and utterly in love. Their setbacks and disappointments never become fodder for emotional crises or meltdowns or marital spats... yet we feel their struggles and occasional sadness all the more poignantly in the shared resolve and unflagging commitment to each other with which Julia and Paul face them.

Much has been and should be said about Meryl Streep's incarnation of Julia Child. As much can be said about Stanley Tucci's great performance as Paul Child. Tucci takes a role that could so easily be phoned in—"Meryl's got the big role; no one's paying attention to anything else on screen"—and inhabits the man and the moment as studiously and confidently as his co-star. Paul Child served his country in the OSS in China during World War II, only to face McCarthyite questioning of his patriotism (and his sexuality) and the concomitant decline of his career. In the midst of such setbacks, Tucci shows a man who maintains his sense of self-worth and his unwavering and very open devotion to a wife whose ambitions and expansive character might have overwhelmed a lesser man. In his portrayal of Paul Child, Tucci offers a primer in manhood, not to mention fine acting.

I vote Oscar for Streep... but only on the condition of an Oscar for Tucci.

The passable movie was the story of Julie, the modern girl who finds meaning and her fifteen minutes of fame by cooking and blogging her way through Julia Child's recipes. I found this strand of the film tolerable, even better than some of the reviews I'd read suggested, until director Nora Ephron gave us the little marital spat where Julie's hubby got sick of Julie's self-absorption (not to mention having to wait so long to eat dinner) and went and slept in his office for a whole night. At that moment, their story seemed so... small.

The Julie strand can't help but pale next to the Julia strand. Julia and Paul, after successful and adventurous careers in espionage, face down sexism and McCarthyism. Julie's public service job is portrayed as an exercise in powerlessness from which she craves escape. Julia bangs out great bulky book drafts with typewriter and carbon paper and struggles with a lazy co-author, skeptical publishers, and the sheer bulk of recipes she wants to share for eight years before her book hits the public eye. Julia taps out daily thoughts, following the template of a book already written, and hits "Publish" to reach the masses effortlessly. Julia and Paul make Julie and her husband (name already forgotten), Julie's blogging (a "gimmick," says NYT's A.O. Scott), and her emotional journey seem trivial.

(Blogging as trivial exercise in narcissism—should I be nervous? ;-) )

Some reviewers have faulted Ephron for trying to shoehorn these two uneven stories into one film... but maybe that was Ephron's intention. Perhaps she wanted that glaring imbalance to shine through. Perhaps we can read Julie & Julia from a "Greatest Generation" perspective. Maybe our grandparents lived bigger lives. They could be sexy without stripping off their shirts (compare the scene where Paul sweeps Julia away for a postprandial coupling with Julie and hubby trundling through the apartment for sex: no skin in the former, but Julie is obligatorily stripped to impractically skimpy bra and panties for public viewing). We complicate our modern lives with unnecessary internal conflict and whining (Paul never whines) when we could be living and loving on a grander scale.

I could quibble with the title—why on earth does the lesser character get top billing?—but even there, I can see intention by the director to highlight and critique our modern generation's egocentrism.

Julie & Julia is a good, conversation-worthy film, deftly capturing and contrasting two generations of Americans. Don't let the unbalanced strands fool you: paralleling the lives of Julia and Paul Child with the lives of two modern somewhat-counterparts does not degrade the greater story. Consider the Julie story a soft undertone, a counterpoint to the overarching symphony that is Julia's life.

---------------------------------------
Tangential Addendum 23:02 CDT: At age 85, Judith Jones, the editor at Knopf who gave Julia Child's book its big break and its title, is still editing. Three years ago, she also got into the cattle business. She now raises a herd of 20 cattle near her summer home in Vermont. Her beef is all grass-fed, which has a flavor, she says, she hadn't experienced since her 20s, in Paris. Her stepdaughter and partner in small-scale ranching, Bronwyn Dunne, sees the importance of growing food locally:

“Supporting a local economy is beneficial to everybody,” she said. It also resonates beyond the quaint trendiness of the farmers’ market: “It may be the future of food security in the world” [Christine Muhlke, "Raising Steaks," New York Times, 2009.09.24].

"Food Inc." Plays Milbank -- Roadtrip!

Flying Tomato checks in on the South Dakota Blogosphere Open House guest list and notes that she and some fellow travelers will be making quite the day of it on July 25. After driving up from Vermillion to enjoy hot dogs, conversation, and kayaking here on Lake Herman, Rebecca plans to journey onward to Milbank to see Food Inc., a new film from Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser examining the domiantion of America's food chain by a handful of corporations and the harm the profiteering ag-industrial complex does to man, beast, and earth. Given our shared concerns about Monsanto and other monsters in the food machine, Food Inc. should be right up our alley.

As far as I can tell from Magnolia Pictures, the Mill 3 in Milbank is the only screen in South Dakota daring to display this documentary. That's some hard driving for one Saturday, but to see this documentary here in a state so dominated by big ag interests might be well worth the drive. (Click the "Larger Map" link below to see my proposed leisurely route!)


View Larger Map

So whether you'd like to caravan with Rebecca from the SD Blog picnic or just need an excuse for a lovely road trip through the Prairie Coteau to Milbank, consider seeing Food Inc.

(Alas, I'll probably stay home and wait for the DVD: I'll have a fire pit to clean!)

Update 2009.07.17 08:35 CDT: Kelly Fuller notes that Food Inc. will play all week at the Mill, July 24–30. She also notes we actually beat Minnesota to landing this film. Whoo-hoo!

Star Trek: Abrams Delivers -- Now Bring Back the Show!

Among the reasons I love my wife (if love needs reasons): she thinks driving to Brookings to see Star Trek is a cool way to celebrate our anniversary. (Long Harpersesque post ahead: love does that to a guy!)

* * *

I was as excited to see the new Star Trek movie this week as I was to see the first Kirk-Spock-McCoy-Enterprise film 30 years ago.

The future is always beginning: visions 30 years apart.

The trailers (lines, visuals, and music) for the new film gave me goosebumps and rang in my brain all winter. I read with interest yet restraint the local reviews—interest because this is my mythos, restraint because I didn't want to get too many spoiler details. But, just like Bob Ellis, I loved Star Trek before it was movies. Space! Starships! Aliens! Phaser battles! What more could a five-year-old want? KSFY reruns at 4 p.m. were a childhood joy. (Nothing better has ever been on in that time slot.) In every incarnation—TV and movies, Kirk, Picard, Sisko (not so much), Janeway, Archer—I revel in the characters, the quotes, the cool details we get to add to this hopeful imaginary world (a world yet to be!).

So I felt all five-year-old happy-jumpy as we headed for the Cinema 5 on Tuesday. (I actually feel and act like a five-year-old quite often—just ask my wife.) And I suffered only one disappointment: that there was not more. Director J. J. Abrams has made a good movie, and good Star Trek, good enough that I want him to bring the TV show back.

* * *

Why did I like this movie? (This is your one and only spoiler warning: if you still haven't seen the movie, stop reading now.)

The opening. Rule Number 1 of directing: grab your audience, get them invested in the show right away. Abrams does that with a great cinematic short story, a teaser that could stand on its own as a work of art. We see the USS Kelvin, a Federation starship that looks like a real ship: busy, bustling, packed with crew members, rich computer data displays (we're running a starship here: Abrams recognizes that we need a heck of a lot more data than a nice view out the window), and a massive, steamy, pipey bowels that shout, "This is not a soundstage; this is a big dang ship."

We then see that big dang ship dwarfed by a menacing, tentacled ship that shouts, "We are the bad guys and you are toast." Usually Star Trek shows us our starships up close, big and beautiful. Seeing the Kelvin as a fly-speck facing this fearsome marauder reminds us of how tiny we are and the courage it takes for us to face the universe and all its dangers.

If Fastidious thinks Captain Picard is hot, Captain Robau must turn her warp core to protoplasm. Expect a flood of fanfic featuring Captain Robau, Star Trek's own Chuck Norris!

In maybe 60 seconds of screen time, Captain Richard Robau faces down this evil and takes his place as a new icon of Trek studliness. First Officer George Kirk then takes the big chair for his fabled 12 minutes and sacrifices his ship and his life to save his crew, his wife, and his newborn son. In a moment that seems to reference the calls from Flight 93, Kirk stays in touch with his wife from the doomed Kelvin via communicator. In the face of death, he hears his son's first cries. He tells his wife to name him after her father. He tells his wife he loves her.

A movie usually doesn't get me to tear up until the end. The spectacle and storytelling of these first few minutes watered me up before the opening title. The opening scene gives us profound bravery and loss. It gives us memorable characters. And it assures us that, yes, the director gets the Star Trek ethos.

The characters. Star Trek is about teamwork. The Enterprise saves the universe time and time again not just because Captain James T. Kirk is the bravest space cowboy in the Alpha Quadrant, but because he commands the best darn crew in Starfleet. Of course, representing this teamwork cinematically is a challenge: how do you tell a good focused story and still capture the characters and the meaningful contributions of even seven principals?

Yet Abrams succeeds, more so than Dr. Schaff gives him credit:

• Where Schaff sees a discordantly flippant young Kirk, I see a logical change in a young man deprived in this new timeline (more on that below) of his father and only recently redirected to his destiny by a new father figure, Captain Christopher Pike. We also get to see Kirk get knocked around more and look more terrified (running from ice monsters) than the Shatner incarnation ever did.
• 
  

  Spock throttles Kirk... and can you blame him?
  Dr. Schaff is also bothered by Spock's much more obvious human side. But the more human Spock makes sense as a younger Vulcan still dealing with his mixed heritage (see also Spock's human behavior serving under Pike in "The Menagerie"). His romantic involvement with Uhura mirrors his respected father's affair with human Amanda. His antagonism with Kirk makes logical and emotional sense. Kirk cheated and beat the Kobayashi Maru, a test Spock designed to be unbeatable. With his Vulcan mental powers, he may have sensed that Kirk lusted after Uhura. Kirk represents a vigorous challenge to Spock's Vulcan ideals and human ambitions. It's no wonder Spock would take a moment mid-crisis to order still-suspended cadet Kirk "Out of the chair." And yet they develop a friendship in which Spock can accept Kirk's rightful place in that captain's chair. Their relationship and our understanding of it is richer for what Abrams gives us in this film.
• Uhura is a passionate and talented woman liberated of the restrictions of male-dominated 1960's television production. That she's an expert in xenolinguistics makes a lot more sense than her waiting until Star Trek VI to learn Klingon. We see her overcome her clear distaste for Kirk to provide key information that supports him over Spock and helps save the ship as it races into battle. Character and conflict! (And dear Fastidious, while I shared your misgivings from the trailer about her bra, Uhura was arguably less sexualized in this film than the Orion slave girl, Zarabeth and her leather lingerie, and other bombshells from the original series... and let's not even mention Uhura's own embarrassing strip tease in Star Trek V. If there is a feminist critique to be made, it lies not in anything new but in Abrams's adherence to those darn miniskirts.)
• Chekov is the eager young ensign whose Russian accent is still so thick the computer can't understand him (funny, but wait—what happened to the universal translator?). He's Mr. Can-Do: in a thunderbolt of inspiration, he races to the transporter room to solve the gravimetric fluctuation problem and saves Kirk and Sulu.
• Scotty is funny, brilliant, and great under pressure. After six months living on rations on Hoth—oops! I mean, the Delta Vega ice station—it's no wonder he loves the Enterprise ("I like this ship! It's exciting!"). But that love won't stop him from blasting the warp cores into space to save his crew.
• Sulu, the best swordsman in Starfleet, trades in the rapier for the folding katana sword (scha-winnggg indeed!). Alongside samurai charisma, he also gets comedy, forgetting to pull the Enterprise parking brake at Spacedock.
• McCoy, as Dr. Blanchard rightly notes, is superb. He is perhaps the wartiest of the crew. We learn he joined Starfleet not out of a sense of duty to the Federation or humanity, but because he had nowhere else to go after a bad divorce. Yet McCoy recognizes Kirk's abilities and is instrumental in making sure Kirk makes it to his date with destiny... and the captain's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Places to go, things to do, cosmos to save!

Running. Let me put it bluntly: people haul ass in this movie. People move as if the fate of the universe hangs in the balance... and it does! Ships haul, too. When ships warp out, boom! they are gone. No more majestic, streaking stars: starships roar like Jimmy's stepdad's Corvette (just ten billion times faster) through violent subspace distortions. When they throw on the brakes, they blast right into the middle of the battlefield... or the clouds of Titan! Our filmmaking technology has advanced beyond the practical restrictions of static soundstage shots and toilsome stop-action shots of static models. In our stories, we can better capture the movement of people—sorry, how Earth-centric of me—of beings, of characters on the big canvas of the galaxy.

The title and credits. The mark of an attentive artist is that he paints the edges of his canvas. For directors, the edge of the canvas is the credits. Abrams paints to that edge in a way that shows his deft combination of respect for the past and embrace of the new future. The title shot—almost black and white, with a big metal (duranium?) block carving of the Starfleet emblem and Trekkie font, feels distinctly retro. The closing credits offer the classic voiceover ("These are the voyages...") by Nimoy. But they go further, offering what none of the previous movies have dared: they return to that wordless soprano solo and theme of the original series. But that siren song plays over brilliant CGI images of strange new worlds whoosing into view. Ah, more movement!

Hmmm... homage, continuity, and creativity. Symbolic of our next issue:
The continuity... and disruptions thereof. Can James T. Kirk drive a car? Compare the well-known Corvette-off-the-cliff scene with this clip from the original series. Star Trek fans freak out over apparent inconsistencies like this, not to mention the fact that young Jim had a cliff to drive off in the first place. Where did he find a canyon like that in Iowa? (Ah, but watch closely: he drives by Iowa farm fields, and that canyon is actually a quarry, surely mining starship materials for the Riverside shipyard—perfectly consistent!)

Star Trek directors and writers face a unique challenge in maintaining continuity with the storytelling that has preceded them in the fictional universe of the Enterprise and the Federation, a universe arguably more richly populated and detailed than any other literary opus. But Star Trek isn't Lord of the Rings, with Tolkein working individually to craft the map, the language, and the story into a unified vision. Star Trek is a grand narrative enterprise shaped by thousands of writers, directors, set designers, actors, and others who were often just trying to do their jobs, not create a coherent fictional universe. How much loyalty does a new practitioner of the Star Trek art owe to a canon shaped as much by diverse minds, studio budgets, commercial demands, and limited 20^th-century filmmaking technology as by any overarching artistic vision?

Abrams isn't the only one making new Star Trek.

Responses to that challenge vary widely. Consider Phase II/New Voyages, an independent fan-film effort that began in 2003. The five episodes Phase II has released online so far strive for continuity not just with the story but with the look and feel of the original Star Trek series. Even while reaching out to capture elements of the later series and movies, Phase II situates itself as an immediate continuation of the original series, as if NBC had renewed the show for a fourth season... and as if a couple of Macs with special effects software had dropped through a time warp into the Desilu/Paramount studios in 1969. (I consider Phase II a smashing success: see in particular their "World Enough and Time," an episode as dramatically sound as the best Star Trek episodes, and nominated for a Hugo Award.)

Watching Phase II helped prepare me for a discontinuity that I once would have thought inconceivable: actors other than Shatner, Nimoy, et al. playing these mythic characters. When DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Mark Lenard died, I had the sad feeling that we would never again see a new story with Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, or Sarek. Phase II helped me realize that no one actor owns the characters of the Star Trek universe, any more than Sean Connery owns the role of James Bond. I love the Connery Bond, but there are good Bond stories that we cannot tell with Connery but can with Brosnan and Craig. Similarly with William Shatner: he was a great Captain Kirk. We could still use him to tell fascinating Trek stories on the screen: stories of an old Kirk on an alternate timeline or an Emperor Tiberius from the Mirror universe. But as the Abrams movie shows us, there are still great Trek stories to be told of the early Enterprise, and for that, we need a young Kirk.

And then there's time travel. With one deft sci-fi conceit, bad guys come from the future and change the course of history 25 years prior to the main canonical events of the original series. Kirk more flippant? Different computer technology? No planet Vulcan for the events of "Amok Time"? No problem: this is a new timeline. Abrams and other Star Trek creators are as free now (maybe freer) to play with these characters and their universe as Branagh was to set his Hamlet in the 19th century. Nitpicking over stardates, clutches, and details of Vulcan culture can be fun sport, but it can also stand in the way of telling an entertaining, inspiring story.

Enterprise bridge, 2009: I wish my office looked this good.

For all this freedom, Abrams still shows remarkable fidelity to the letter and spirit of Star Trek. We still have phasers, transporter beams, and warp drive; they all just look more vivid, more real—a remarkable achievement for imaginary devices (and think for a moment: how many other literary works have created imaginary devices that everybody recognizes?). We still get Vulcan neck pinches, mind melds, and Spock's cocked eyebrow. Starfleet Academy is still in San Francisco. Kirk is still a cad, eying every lady who walks by. Spock is still a child of two worlds, struggling with his identity. Captain Pike is still alive (and that last shot with Pike in a wheelchair, recovering from his ordeal, is a clear nod to Pike's fate in the original timeline). And mankind's greatest hope is still a starship named Enterprise and a brave, smart crew to fly her through the galaxy. That's more continuity than Deep Space Nine gave us. That's all the continuity I need.

* * *

As I said at the top, my only disappointment with the Abrams Star Trek is that there is not more. I want to explore every corner of this gleaming new ship and every strange new world of the galaxy it will sail. I want to learn more about these characters and how they confront the challenges of their world. An experience that rich cannot come from a handful of movies stretched out over a decade or two. The full panorama of the future I crave can come only from a television series.

The Star Trek movies have delivered some fine moments. Kirk's eulogy for Spock in The Wrath of Khan, with that pause before the last word, redeems William Shatner for any bad acting or singing, past, present, or future. For all its flaws, The Undiscovered Country was a fine coda to the original series and the Cold War, complete with Klingons, battles, and Shakespeare.

But Trek movies are not free to explore the smaller, more personal details of the Star Trek universe. To sell the movie to the studios and the box office, the fate of the Earth or universe must hang in the balance. Ships and planets have to blow up. Trek movies must aspire to blockbuster status, so they can't be quiet, gentle stories that focus on the characters.

Raise a family, learn to play the Ressikan flute... not in the movies.

Some of the best Star Trek TV episodes, like "Amok Time," "The Inner Light," and "Data's Day," would never have made the big screen. Yet episodes like those give time for us to see the small things happen that make the characters who they are. "Amok Time" told us about Vulcan biology and courtship and gave Nurse Chapel time to show her love for Spock with soup. "The Inner Light" shows us Captain Picard living the last decades of a doomed planet in 20 minutes and ends with his playing a sad flute solo. "Data's Day" takes us to Chief O'Brien's wedding, reveals Dr. Crusher's secret past as the "Dancing Doctor," and shares some insights about being an android. All fun television, all good storytelling, but none of it big enough for the big screen.

Directors and writers only have time to tell us those stories in the 23-show run of a TV series, hopefully renewed for several seasons. And only a TV series can provide us fans with the experience of living and growing with the characters. Think how different another great Abrams endeavor, Lost, would be if instead of 120 episodes over six years, it were only six two-hour films spread over a decade. A purely cinematic Lost, like a purely cinematic Star Trek, could still be great, but it would be different, and much of the lore would be lost.

Various aspects of the new Star Trek story cry out for the treatment that TV could offer but the big screen likely cannot. Consider the destruction of Vulcan. A founding planet of the Federation is gone. A race of six billion wise and decent beings who were mankind's first alien contact and best ally is now reduced to an endangered species of maybe ten thousand. This single plot point offers rich material for some valuable storytelling:

1. How does Spock (young and old versions) deal with the loss of his homeworld and his mother? How does Sarek?
2. How will the decimation of their race affect Vulcans' position in the Federation?
3. How will the old Spock deal with his responsibility for triggering this entirely new timeline?
4. How will Chekov's guilt over not being able to rescue Spock's mother with the transporter affect his relationship with Spock?
5. Will Spock's loss drive him closer to Uhura or make him resist personal commitments?
6. How will young Spock's interaction with old Spock (Spock Prime, as the convention is developing) affect his personal development?

These topics all offer interesting narrative possibilities. But as even the current movie demonstrated, Trek films don't have time for such personal storytelling. We get a little: Kirk provokes Spock's emotions over the loss of his world to prove Spock unfit for command and win the captain's chair (an arguably heartless personal gambit that deserves a whole conversation and episode of its own), but by the end of the film, we get a cheery announcement that Spock Prime has identified a suitable homeworld where the Vulcan survivors can start rebuilding, and poof! We're off to the ship for more adventures. I want those adventures... but I also want to hear more about the aftermath of this genocide a thousand times worse than Earth's 20^th-century Holocaust. That's a story that could resonate, a story from which we all could learn. But I don't think Hollywood movies can tell it.

"Live long and prosper"—Spock Prime blesses young Kirk, Nimoy blesses the next next generation.

So Mr. Abrams, think about it. You've done good work in both TV and film. You know the strengths and limitations of each. And you and your writers have a pile of amazing stories to tell. How will you do it? I hope you'll bring us another big screen Trek spectacular (my wife and I have many anniversaries to come!), but I also hope you'll find a way to tell the small personal stories that make Star Trek such a rich and inspiring universe.