Spock and Captain Kirk interrogate Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness
Almost fifty years after Gene Roddenberry conceived the original television series, the American institution of Star Trek thrives. Paramount Pictures pumped an astronomical $190 million into the newest film, Star Trek Into Darkness. In an era when dull action movies dominate the box office, it’s nice to see a studio take care of a franchise that celebrates science, exploration and the unity of humankind.
Unfortunately, those values must have gotten lost somewhere in the giant bales of money. Into Darkness is so crowded with laser fights and space crashes that there’s little room for the things that make Star Trek worth preserving. The director, J.J. Abrams, has turned a franchise about ideas into one about glossy special effects and explosive action scenes.
The plot is hardly worth explaining, serving only as an empty bookshelf to stack special effects sequences on. A villain from the old series, the genetically enhanced Khan, is terrorizing Starfleet in an effort to free his fellow supermen, who have been cryogenically frozen for centuries. After he escapes to enemy territory, the crew of the Enterprise sets out to capture him, tiptoeing to avoid starting a war with the bellicose Klingons.
Into Darkness is, at least, a well-made action film. The space chases and fistfights are riveting, seamed together with a witty script, flawless special effects and Abrams’ good sense of pacing. The cast is successful at channeling the personalities of Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban) and Scotty (Simon Pegg). Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan as an icy villain, with an arrogant stare and a disturbingly precise British accent — much different from the hotheaded performance by Ricardo Montalban in the original series.
Abrams succeeded in making a funny, exciting action flick, but he ignored the opportunities available in the rich Star Trek universe. Many scenes are set in 23rd-century London and San Francisco, a bonanza for Trek fans who hunger for depictions of post-warp drive human society. Yet all Abrams offers are the typical backgrounds of glass and steel scrapers seen in dozens of movies about the future. He could have delved farther into the relationships between the humans and the Klingons, but all that’s exchanged between them are laser beams. Instead of exploring the friendships among the Enterprise crew, he only tosses in a few token catch phrases.
The worst crime occurs near the end, when Abrams plagiarizes a touching scene from Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan almost in its entirety. Was this supposed to be a remake? There are enough differences for it to avoid that epithet, but it has hardly more originality than if it were one.
I’m not a Catholic, but I wonder: When the hand of destiny falls on a new Pope, how does he get ready for the job? Is there any kind of papal training that occurs? How does someone prepare to lead a church that traces its history back for nearly 2000 years and has 1.2 billion members?
Today we leave beautiful Antigua and head back to Columbus and its wintry reality.
We’ve missed massive ice storms that knocked out power for days, requiring our fellow Columbusites to live in hotels under tough conditions. We’ve dodged huge snow blasts that have paralyzed traffic and left our friends reporting fender benders and complaining about bad snow removal. And today we received word that we have missed an enormous “wintery mix” weather front that combines snow and sleet and ice, produced snowflakes as large as a man’s hand, and left the roads of Columbus in miserable shape.
Today we took a cab to St. John’s, the main town in Antigua, to roam around and do some shopping. It’s like most of the other main towns we’ve seen in the Caribbean, with a weird mix of high-end shops that sell watches and jewelry and expensive liquor duty-free next to beat-up but colorful bars, restaurants, and tiny stalls selling scarves and cheap t-shirts and handmade goods.
For about a half hour the day before yesterday, on a bright, sunny afternoon, I watched this sailboat skim across the surface of the bay, pulling along a small craft behind. It was the kind of lazy, simple time that makes vacations so special, and it made me realize, yet again, that some day I would like to learn to sail.
We’re staying in a small cottage here in Antigua, with one large bedroom, a bathroom, and a big front porch with a hammock and a “plunge pool.”
In my view, the most important issue confronting our country is our federal deficit and national debt — the latter of which has passed the $16 trillion mark. I care about other issues, of course, but I view our debt as the most fundamental issue of all because it involves basic concepts of national sovereignty. Our debt is so large, and has existed for so long, that we tend to think of it as a kind of abstraction . . . but every dollar of that debt is a real obligation of our country, reflected in an instrument sold by the U.S. treasury to a willing buyer who will be paid a specified interest rate. With each additional bit of borrowing, we give those people from whom we are borrowing leverage that may allow them to dictate terms — at first, the terms of the debt instruments, by insisting on higher interest payments, and then eventually the terms of how our government operates, by dictating whether we need to adopt austerity measures in how our country operates if we hope to obtain additional loans. At that point, our national sovereignty is at stake.
I don’t think President Obama places a high priority on grappling with our deficit and debt problems. He’s talked about them, but his actions speak louder than his words. He continues to propose budgets that would result in trillion-dollar debts for years into the future, and continues to propose the creation of new federal agencies and federal programs as the solution for every problem. He hasn’t used the bully pulpit of the presidency to encourage Congress to act. I’ve seen nothing from President Obama to indicate that his performance over the next four years on this crucial issue of national sovereignty would be any different than his performance over the past four years.
I loathe media hounds, and I groan whenever there is a suggestion of an “October surprise” that is supposed to change the direction of the presidential race. The “surprises” are never about anything recent or anything substantive; that fact is not surprising, because the meaningful records and activities of modern presidential candidates are closely scrutinized and and highly publicized. Instead, the “surprises” typically involve a claim about matters that happened years or even decades ago, often about a personal matter that has nothing to do with the issues of the day. The disclosures of such antique personal matters are always justified on the ground that they purportedly reveal something about the candidate’s character — but we all know, really, that the person making the disclosure just craves the spotlight and yearns for the public attention that apparently is the only thing that can give their pathetic lives meaning.
Okay, there was some discussion on foreign policy topics, but President Obama took every opportunity to turn to domestic issues, and Mitt Romney was perfectly comfortable going to domestic issues, too. President Obama’s phrase of the night was “we need to do some nation-building at home” — something he mentioned multiple times. He also spoke, frequently, of women’s rights and education.
Ohio State is undefeated, but I doubt if any Ohio State fan feels real good about that. Last week the Buckeyes gave up 49 points, and almost 500 yards of offense, to Indiana. The defense fell apart at the end of the game, giving up 21 fourth-quarter points and two late touchdowns that turns a comfortable win into a 52-49, recover-the-onside-kick-or-die nailbiter. The indiana debacle is just the worst performance of an Ohio State defense that has given up a lot of points and a lot of big plays. Is it the defensive scheme? Injuries? Poor tackling techniques? Players who aren’t playing up to their capabilities? Bad angles and coverage breakdowns? This defense is so bad right now that it is undoubtedly all of those things — and probably a few more besides.
Today’s opponent, Purdue, is a bit of a cipher. The Boilermakers looked good in their early games and lost a tight one to Notre Dame, but have been blown out in their last two games, against Michigan and Wisconsin. In those games the Boilermakers have struggled to run the ball and put up points and have been gashed on defense — particularly on the ground. When the Boilermakers have the ball, will the Buckeyes defense look better against what appears to be a weak offense, or will the Boilermaker offense feast on the offerings of a feeble Ohio State unit that will feature the team’s fullback playing middle linebacker?
I know many conservatives have been slavering for this match-up, and I imagine many Democrats are hoping that Biden can right the ship after President Obama’s underwhelming performance during the first presidential debate. The 
