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How Can That Be James T. Kirk? He Doesn’t Have a Toupee And Isn’t Canadian

So what do you think of the new trailer for the Star Trek movie from J.J. Abrams and his posse (writers Orci and Kurzman, producer Lindelof, composer Giacchino — you can’t say the guy doesn’t provide job security)?

It really does look like Star Trek as produced by the cast and crew of Felicity (and I’m being generous here; I could have said Smallville), but, after all, it’s only a trailer. And anything that re-establishes Kirk as a cool character is OK with me. It’s been diluted by the movies and the reruns, but Kirk was much cooler than most TV heroes, and still is. He managed to combine several types that are usually kept separate on TV: the socially-conscious sensitive guy, the ladies’ man, and the action hero. (I guess you could say that The Fonz was the same combination, but did you ever believe him as a socially-conscious voice of morality? I didn’t.) Today’s heroes tend to be either sensitive nice guys or macho sexist pigs, but never both at the same time, and action heroes like Jack Bauer don’t have much time for romance. Kirk is what you’d get if you took James Bond, the most popular fictional hero at the time, and added a dose of political correctness. (’60s political correctness, I mean. What was PC then isn’t always PC now.) And while it’s easy to make fun of Shatner, you have to be a good actor to pull that off.

If the new movie can come close to that combination, it’ll be fun. If it just gives us another broody smirky whiny hero, then we can worry.

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