Trek Writers On Character Development
2 min readNow that the younger versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy have been introduced, those characters will begin to evolve and become more like the ones familiar to fans.
The characters in Star Trek XI weren’t quite what fans expected, but that was due to their youth. “Well, Spock, he’s pretty emotional in this one,” said Roberto Orci. “That’s because he’s younger.”
As for Kirk? “Well he’s known as this bookworm on legs who really understood the chain of command,” said Orci. “Well, He’s not quite there yet.”
In Star Trek 2, the characters will get “closer to what you know,” said Orci. “It was all about earning what you know and earning the fact that hopefully when you’ve seen them now, they’ve been through a couple of adventures, but they don’t know each other completely either. So there is still discovery, but there is also a little more familiarity and so hopefully, like the first one, it’ll feel like Trek but it will also uncover new ground.”
The writers, fans of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, were especially drawn to the relationship between Kirk and Spock. For Star Trek IX, said Kurtzman, “Our first instinct was that Kirk and Spock should not get along.”
“There was a moment, where right after Vulcan was destroyed, we knew there would be a big fight scene between Kirk and Spock over how to proceed,” said Kurtzman. Trying to pen that scene gave the writers insight into why they cared so much about the characters.
“It was getting really heated and suddenly we realized that this was ‘the scene,'” said Kurtzman. “That was the moment in some ways we realized that we were kind of writing about oddly our partnership because Kirk and Spock had been such an inspiration to us. And so that was a nice moment of “Oh wow, this is…” feeling and now we realized why we were so connected to the material. And that was a great moment of revelation.”
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I hope they write a “Star Trek” film that focuses more on the merits of humanity being examined and less on eye candy. While I really want the Prime Universe to be explored once again, I think I can get over my anger about the JJ-verse if the second one is done right. I understand that it’s just an alternate universe, that idea has been explored before. But alternate or not, they have to do it right, and so far, they have missed the ball!
The sequel could start to make up for things however. Part of me wants it to. I’d love to be invested in new “Star Trek” again. Articles like this give me hope that it just might.
Translation:
“We rewrote an entire timeline to turn Kirk into a space-born Hollywood-cliche Rebel Without A Cause (With a Heart of Gold) so we could later get him closer to what you know.”
I couldn’t agree more. Spock would never have had kirk thrown out an airlock in an escape pod – I don’t care how emotional. The enterprise has had killers and god knows what occupy the big before, but a starfleet cadet gets the airlock? He lands on a random planet and runs for his life into the first cave he sees and finds his best friend from the future and Scotty happens to be on the same planet… not buying that at all… (It feels like an insult to my intelligence) – also, I never understood how this futuristic Starship has all this plumbing, manual weapons loading and is so primitive in so many ways…. Not real big on the retro look of the warp engines either… – on the other hand – I loved the kirk bar scene and the kobayashi maru. Though the Spock I know and love would have been “fascinated” his security on the simulation could have been broken by a human cadet and not angered… Spock was a very patient man….
I could rant forever…
Live long and prosper and may the next trek not be offensive…
I think it’s real important for the fans to just let the series reboot and judge each new installment on its merits as entertainment. That’s what it is. Not a doctoral thesis on alternate universes or the holy dogma of the original trek timeline. While I agree the whole cowinkidink of Kirk’s landing on the same planet with Spock and Scotty was a stetch it was still incredibly entertaining. This is Trek for a new generation. Let them have it, and I’ll gladly go along for the ride.