STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, a review (part one)

I have finally come around watching Star Trek: Into Darkness. The trailer didn't really inspire me with confidence, to say the least. Right off the bat, I thought the plot line was too similar to the previous Star Trek movie: Big Bad Destroys Everything. While I was somewhat wrong on that count, I wasn't that off the mark either. So here it is (SPOILERS):

After a disastrous mission (which is actually successful) where Kirk and crew gang-bang the Prime Directive several times before Tuesday, Kirk is demoted and Captain Pike returns to command the Enterprise. So far, so good. However a mysterious individual named John Harrison commits acts of terrorism. Not against Earth, mind you, or the Federation but against Starfleet Command itself. Later, Harrison goes Godfather III on Starfleet's high command and attempts to assassinate the entire Chiefs of Staff. This is where Captain Pike bites the dust and Kirk once against ascends to the center seat of the Enterprise (similarities between this James T. Kirk and his parallel counterpart of the Mirror-Universe are purely coincidental).

Worse still, the terrorist takes refuge on Kronos, the Klingon homeworld. Admiral Alexander Marcus, survivor of Joey Zasa's hit (sorry, read that John Harrison's) orders Kirk and crew to fly to Kronos and assassinate Harrison without waking up the Klingons. Admiral Marcus believes that war between the Klingons and the Federation is inevitable, so....he orders a special op mission featuring his flagship going deep within Klingon territory to nuke an island where Harrison is and hopes the Klingons will not notice. But of course, trusty technobabble explains why the Enterprise would not get noticed so everything's up and dandy.

Oh, about those special weapons the ship has to carry out? Well, it turns out that they're Khan's people. In the most undramatic reveal of the entire film, John Harrison is actually Khan (presumably Noonian Singh, though it is never mentioned on screen) awake after 300 years of slumber. He really shouldn't have bothered.

Let's get to the point before boredom ensues: all of this was a smokescreen. Everything was Marcus' idea all along and the Insane Starfleet Admiral (yet again) wishes to start that Klingon-Federation War so he can try out his new toy: a dreadnought (actually the Enterprise, only a lot BIGGER).

So Kirk and Khan must team-up to stop all this. And this is where I stopped watching.

For those of you who don't know me very well: I actually stopped watching something Star Trek before the end. To put that into perspective, here's other Star Trek stuff I watched through and through.

1. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (twice!!! and bought the DVD too)
2. The complete seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager
3. Star Trek Generation (the first Trek film I saw in a movie theater)
4. Star Trek Insurrection
5. Star Trek Nemesis

As you can see, I'm not the sort of person who turn down his nose at Trek, even when it is absolute crap. So, for me to stop watching Into Darkness is akin to the Pope stopping right in the middle of a Mass and say out loud "who gives a shit about that, let's go watch the game". 

Tune in tomorrow where I carry on with this bit...