Into Dorkness

AUSTIN, TX FANCY BASTARDS: Webcomics Rampage is THIS WEEKEND!

CRUISE FUNDRAISER: 66/100 prints are sold and I only have until Dec 15th (8 days left!) to meet my goal of selling all 100. Help me get on a nerd boat and get some neat art for yourself in the process!

HijiNKS ENSUE JCCC3 Cruise Fundraiser print

ME AND WIL MADE A NEW SHIRT HOLY CRAP I LOVE IT!
UPDATE!!! WE ALSO MADE HOODIES! 

We now live in a world that has a Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer and Benedict Cumberbatch just oozes cheekboney sex all over it. There’s a lot of speculation that he’s playing Khan. He is not. He is playing Gary Mitchell, or a at least a character based on Gary Mitchell. It wouldn’t bother me if they changed the name. The wrath of Gary is not a wrath I could see myself particularly fearing.

J.J. Abrams first Star Trek is a perfect movie. That’s just a fact. A SPACE fact, which is the realest kind of fact. Even the parts that don’t make sense make me exceedingly happy. I was never a doubter as to the potential quality of the sequel. The little 1 min snippet has gotten me ever more not… being… a doubter. I have a giant Trekboner is what I’m saying, and this trailer did nothing to diminish it.

My friend Sam is the one that originally suggested to me that Tumblr, which it’s excess infestation of Cumberkin (people that were born into a human body, but know at heart they were supposed to be born clinging to Benedict Cumberbatch’s torso like a baby marsupial) might have had a hand in the crafting of the trailer. It basically leaves out most of the actual Star Trek in favor of the Sherlock star’s soothing yet wicked voice over and asskicking leapery (or leaping asskickery). I can’t say that he’s wrong, in that this movie appears to have been crafted by and specifically for nerds. SPOILERS: It was. I love it when Hollywood panders to us and gets it totally right.

COMMENTERS: Are you as excited as me for STiD? Check your Trekboner. Hmmm… that’s PRETTY excited, but I might still have you beat. If you want a little extra POTENTIALLY SPOILERY GOODTIMES, you can watch the Japanese version of the trailer.

Don’t forget to check the thumbnail to the right of the main HE comics to see if there’s a new LoFi. I’m updating them more often now.

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67 Comments

  1. One thing that I think is worth keeping in mind is that Peter Weller has been cast in the film, as a villain, and his character remains completely under wraps. They're pushing Cumberbatch hard (and who can blame them? Swoon!), but there could potentially be a bigger bad, played by Weller, waiting in the wings.

    They already used Gary Mitchell in the IDW comics series, which were overseen by Robert Orci. It's possible they'll reuse him, but that might mean they didn't intend to use him in the films.

  2. Hey Joel – I keep getting messages about a cross site scripting XSS attempt on the site.. .Is that a design feature or worrisome?

  3. My feelings on the trailer; I Cumberbatched in pants.

    Thoughts on Benedict's character:
    Human Augment (not Khan) who was at some point imprisoned by Klingons.
    Kirk's older brother who was some how changed by some alien entity, and at some point fights Klingons.
    Gary Mitchell who every one thought was dead but was found by Klingons.
    A human Starfleet officer or colonist who was presumed dead in a Klingon attack but was actually captured and experimented on in an attempt to cure the Klingons of the smooth head thingy that was caused by Human Augment DNA.
    Something else involving Klingons, because seriously we see him kicking the shit out of Klingons in the trailer!

    • Because its the ultimate male power fantasy. Ships were made for ramming, and the enterprise makes for a hell of a penis metaphor, even more so now with those sweet classic car curves.

      RAMMING SPEED!

  4. Why am I the only geek I know not Cumberbatching in my pants? I think this trailer looks like crap and I hate the inception ***WHHHOOOOOAAAAMMMPPP*** over and over and over.

    • I agree, but I'm still curious about the movie. I've seen too many trailers vastly disproportionate to their movies lately to draw conclusions.

    • Yeah. I'm waiting for the full trailer to get excited. It's all action, explosions and reaction shots with an ominous voiceover. I'm hoping for a movie to come out of it.

  5. You know, if Mitchell hadn't been aboard Kirk's Enterprise when he crossed the barrier and gained his powers, I don't think the ship he was on would have fared any better than the one whose wreckage they found in that episode.

    So it's entirely possible that Jim's old friend blasted his way across the Galaxy, and is wreaking havoc on Earth now, primarily because Nero screwed up the timeline and Kirk wasn't where he needed to be to stop this in its tracks…

    Incidentally, speaking as an old-school Trekkie, I have to say there were two things that didn't work for me in the last movie:

    1) It would have been nice if someone had told us *why* Engineering is full of Mario-pipes; and

    2) LENS FLARE!!

    • I don't think I'll ever be able to watch that movie now without Mario music playing in my head.

      What bothered ME, though, was the abusively wide open engineering workshop on a military vessel. Sure, the Constitution-class Enterprise did have really high ceilings in the original, but they seem to have replaced it with a storage facility wrapped by 20 feet of open air nothing. To fit it inside the ship, they had to scale the ship up. Worse, they scaled the Scout-class destroyer Pascal for the same reason!

      I think this may bother me more than the average nerd, but I have taken to space-navy science fiction in the last decade.

      • The Enterprise was not supposed to be a military vessel. It was supposed to be an exploratory vessel. I don't know if they changed its intent in the new universe, but it's not designed like a warship. The Defiant is designed like a warship, for contrast.

        • On the contrary, I believe it was intended as a military vessel, if not a front-line unit. I would call it a Survey Cruiser, but it was pretty well armed, and had some of the best shields in the Federation at the time.

          However, Memory Alpha does call them Heavy Cruisers, or front-line combat cruisers. The cruiser designation implies that they were designed to be as self-reliant as possible, and their relative state of peace at the heart of the Federation of Planets meant that they could send them as heavily armed explorers.

          Anyway, I totally agree with you on the Defiant; compact, loaded to the gills with defensive and offensive technology, and maneuverable.

  6. I was pretty sure he wasn’t Khan (having been repeatedly told he’s not, and also he’s a white dude) until this trailer. Because the whole “I’m back, bitches” thing fits a little too well, and that bit at the end of the Japanese trailer–AUGH. I’m hoping it’s just more intentional misleading, because I won’t be able to deal if that bit turns out to be exactly what it looks like.

    • "I'm hoping it's just more intentional misleading, because I won't be able to deal if that bit turns out to be exactly what it looks like."

      The number of times I yelled "NO!" at the Japanese trailer was ridiculous. I don't know if I can HANDLE it being exactly what it looks like. I think I'll have to see the movie for the first time alone so I can brood about it afterwards without freaking out non-Trek friends (or worse, getting really upset at them if they aren't really upset by the emotion of that scene). I'm just a big ball of emotion right now.

  7. I despised the reboot movie, which turned Star Trek into a formulaic special effect movie. Not only did the reinvent the characters as a high school drama cast, but super weapons destroying planets doesn't fit the tone of overall hope that made Star Trek great.

    I hope that this new installation will be better, but I'm not counting on it.

    • Couldn't disagree more. The movie remade a staggering franchise that was being crushed by it's own history and universe. Of all of the Star Trek movies, when you look at them, only four were really great. (Khan, Journey Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact)

      The others were OK. Some were horrible, but I'll give "looking for God/Santa" a pass. Forgetting the lensflares, The last Star Trek was fantastic for it's formula. We need more formula, because trying to skull fuck the audience works about 1/10 times now. I can't wait to see the 9 minutes in from of the IMAX Hobbit next week. Hopefully it'l tell us who the bad guy is. I truely don't care, who he is in the movie as long as it's fun.

      • "Forgetting the lensflares, The last Star Trek was fantastic for it's formula."

        Of course it was, they ripped it off from Star Wars wholesale.

        It looks like a great sci-fi movie, but it's Star Trek in name only. Roddenberry didn't create the franchise to showcase ship battles and punching.

        • That is true. They're describing this new movie as an "intense action thriller" which just doesn't gel. People don't seem to get that Star Trek was never an "action" franchise.

        • I agree with you and Jay.

          It was a mind-blowing sci-fi action flick, but the original series was written by a highly acclaimed novelist. For him, the shiny technology and REALLY short skirts were lovely window dressings for an examination of the things around us, what really matters in life, and all that jazz, and Roddenberry had the literary dilithium balls to make it more poetic than pretentious. It wasn't a perfect series, but it had the action for those who wanted it, and something deeper for those who could appreciate it.

          The new Abrams film didn't completely fail in this regard, but I saw too many "popular movie" tropes to really appreciate it as part of Roddenberry's legacy. I consider it to be about as canon as the Young Jedi series.

          PS: I'll admit that the previous movies and TOS also indulged in tropes from their eras, but they were especially subdued on the big screen. I think someone needs to hold an intervention with Abrams on all those lens flairs.

      • It was a terrible, terrible movie. It's plot made no sense. Nothing in it made any sense. It was a "look at all the shiny things" movie, plus explosions. It's cast did a bang up job, but that job was to distract you from the fact that they were doing things no sane person would ever do anywhere or when. Hopefully with the reboot out of the way we can say "ok, we all did a lot of stupid shit last movie in the interests of getting this thing rolling, but that's all behind us now, lets just concentrate on all behaving like real people would this time."

        • it suffered in the editor's booth i think. if you pay hawkishly close attention a LOT of the supposed plot holes are in fact not holes, but the details that render them non-holes happen lightning fast.

      • The IMAX Hobbit 7 minutes aren't really going to tell you anything, other than Kirk going out of his way to break the Prime Directive, possibly.
        And how annoying 3D IMAX can be, IMO when there's TOO MUCH CRAP popping into my field of vision.
        And Karl Urban is DeForest Kelly reincarnated.

  8. Was I the only one who thought for the first 10 seconds that the person narrating the trailer was Patrick Stewart?

    …Probably.

  9. I thought the 2009 movie was great, but it certainly had its problems. The two things that bothered me the most weren't the plot holes though, they were the ludicrously unimaginatively named "Red Matter" and the phasers. PHASERS ARE BEAMS. BEAMS! NOT LITTLE BLASTER SHOTS!
    It's an odd thing to fixate on, but given a choice I always go for continuous beam weapons.

    Also, does the blonde woman look like she could possibly be Elizabeth Dehner or Carol Marcus to anyone else?

    • Actually, in the first season the SFX guys didn't seem to have made up their minds whether the ship's phasers were blue coruscating beams or blips of light. They settled on beams eventually, when they needed to use the blips for photon torpedoes instead.

      And I can buy phasers in the new timeline not working exactly like the old ones – after all, in this timeline, they've undergone 25 years of design work with the knowledge that somebody out there was tough enough to make Klingons look like Ewoks, and had a mad-on for Starfleet…

      • But beeeeeeaaaaaams *sniffle.*

        Ah yes, I do remember the phasers being inconsistent in TOS. They also couldn't decide whether the transporter beam should be blue or yellow.

        I just love beam weapons though. I know it's crazy but not having beams was a big letdown for me! Not enough to spoil my enjoyment of course.

  10. I felt like after Enterprise the Star Trek franchise should have just remained in books and no more tv shows or movies for awhile.

  11. I'm with all the people who think this isn't what Star Trek was meant to be.

    If the Star Wars Prequels and the New Star Trek swapped plots, I think I'd be deliriously happy with both of them. As it stands, though…I'll give the new movie a shot, but I am seriously missing Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley.

  12. I am so excited for the new movie that I am attempting to keep myself 99.9% movie-info free, just so I can be surprised. I didn't read the comments to this entry. I know Cumberbatch is in it, but I (so far) refuse to watch the trailer even.

    Also? I have made that delta shield snowflake (minus the central one).

  13. I don't understand why so many people have problems with the moneyless society in Trek. They just have a different culture and different values than most of us today. The moneyless society in Trek is no more ridiculous than societies of luddites or monastic orders.

    • I consider myself to be fairly virtuous, and an advocate for making people happy, and even I wouldn't want to work as a waiter in a cafe in a moneyless economy.

      • But you weren't raised in a society in which the importance of public service and helping the community are highly valued and taught to you from childhood. There are societies on earth today where people have lives that we may consider tedious or extreme. There are societies that promote asceticism, in which people are taught from childhood to restrict worldly pleasures as much as possible.

        In fact, the Federation doesn't have to promote even half the amount of altruism that those societies believe in. Being a waiter could simply be like an apprenticeship. If you want to learn from a great chef, then you go and work as a waiter for them. Plus considering the level of tech available on earth, restaurants wouldn't need human waiters, everything could be automated, they'd only need chefs to do the cooking.

  14. I really enjoy the new Star Trek! While I agree with those that say it's not in keeping with Roddenberry's vision, I think that's irrelevant. Agreed: the last movie was a fun romp, and a great sci-fi action flick, but, as a Roddenberry Star Trek movie per se, well, it really wasn't. I think, though, that the new movies have to enjoyed as entities unto themselves — at least, that's how I've been approaching them. The two series are trying to do two very different things. Roddenberry's Star Trek had it's run, and it was brilliant, but as the finale of TNG reminds us, all good things…

    • Agreed…remember that there is now a TrekPrime universe, and a TrekAbrams-verse, and they're now divergent.
      If you really want to decry where canon has gone in the crapper, look at what CBS has allowed to happen with the novels, or Star Trek: Online. Since Paramount owns the movies, and I seriously doubt you'll ever see a TrekPrime movie with anyone from the series' again, you get what you get now.

  15. I liked the old 2009 star trek movie….but I don't think it deserves to be called Star Trek, most of it was just young dudes getting into fights.

    To me Star Trek is what made Star Trek Great, the story telling, the truth of discovery "not sitting in one spot" and using a whole galaxy as your canvas for adventure.

    To me They should have made a TV series with the same cast after the 2009 movie before jumping into the 2nd movie. Star Trek should not be a movie unless people have seen the series to understand the subtle nuances it displays.

    I just hope that Star Trek:Renegades will show what a splice between the new Star Trek and the Old Star Trek can do.

    • "To me They should have made a TV series with the same cast after the 2009 movie before jumping into the 2nd movie."

      This is why you will not be allowed near major Studio ever. And I wouldn't pin your hopes on Star Trek Renegades. It looked like a sequel to Galaxy Quest…minus the funny.

    • Exactly! Can you imagine what ST:TOS would have been like if it had always featured a young Shatner punching people? Or some convoluted duel between Kirk and Spock? Outrageous!

  16. Not to mention .. did they cure gay in 23rd century?

    Or are they just all assigned to hair dressing and wedding planing, somewhere off Enterprise? So many questions.

    • Hey, the Star Wars universe took it to a new level and eliminated sex entirely. Every once in a while a character will get pregnant, or will have had a baby (or two) in the intervening year(s).
      But even the books never have a line like "and then they walked into their bedroom and you hear Barry White playing," or "'it sure was great having adult intimate relations with you the other night.'" Babies just… happen.

  17. At the same Comicon where I found Joel's booth/this comic, I heard a panel from Canadian scifi author Robert J. Sawyer.
    He had an interesting take on Star Trek 2009. He pointed out that great scifi always has a theme – that's the point of the medium, to communicate a moral issue that is harder to highlight in the real world.
    He then asked us what the theme was of ST 2009. After some cricket chirping, he suggested "duties of children to their parents and parents to their children," but admitted that even that was a thin one. Whereas older Trek shows/movies changed minds with themes about War or Racism, this one was mostly just exciting and shiny.

    I still adore the new Trek, but that made me think about it differently.

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