TREK TALK with Bob Orci: Looking Ahead to the Star Trek Sequel

thinking its cool to say "First!" is lame.

More than any other hit film in recent memory, Star Trek's script seemed to be a slave to the "rule of cool" over logical story structure at every turn.

--It's cool that the villain is the one who killed Kirk's father, even though it makes for a 20+ year gap that can only be filled with the most vague, tortured explanations.

--It's cool that they drill into the core of the planets and then form a black hole within them, even though a black hole on the surface of a planet would do just as well, one would think.

--It's cool that the villain Nero has a Kahn-like obsession with Spock, even though all Spock ever did was try his hardest to save the guy's entire race of people and fail. And now Nero's now back in time with plenty of notice and opportunity to avert that disaster in the first place, so his people haven't even died, yet he's still pissed beyond reason.

--It's cool that Kirk is made Captain, even though it was apparently on a whim and means there was no other command structure in place on the ship... Just Admiral Pike and a bunch of students. Out of the entire planet's military service (which, thanks to transporters are all as easy to round up as if they were in the next room) there were absolutely no officers of any kind available anywhere to man the Enterprise. Or every single one of them was skipped over by a guy who hadn't graduated yet and wasn't even assigned to the ship.

You can just go through the entire script this way. None of it makes a lick of sense, but the film itself is pulled off with such energy and charm that you're willing to go along with it.

Still, my biggest request for the sequel is that they actually write something that doesn't make my brain feel like it has to more than "turned off" to be enjoyed, it has to be bludgeoned to death.