Episode: 355
Title: HPR0355: Star Trek
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0355/hpr0355.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 17:07:18

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Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio, I'll be your host for today, DeepGeek.
Today on Hacker Public Radio I want to review a science fiction movie I saw recently, the new Star Trek,
it's also known as Star Trek Zero, which is based on the original Star Trek episodes from back in the 60s.
I remember a fun memories of my teenage years growing up and watching the reruns of the original Star Trek with William Shatner,
and Leonard Nimoy as Spock and as Kirk and Spock respectively.
And I have my friends who are in my generation also grew up with it.
So we heard about the new movie coming out and my friends and I all decided to see it.
And most of us felt a little bit of trepidation about going to it because it was weird to see the promotional material about so much.
The actors looked so young to us that it was like, what's this going to be?
Is it going to be like a Harry Potter version of Star Trek?
Is it going to be like, you know, the baby characters of the Warner Bros. cartoons?
We didn't know what to expect and also sometimes, you know, Hollywood comes out with a remake of something and the remake can be worse than the original,
as many people think with such classics as the day the Earth stood still.
The original sometimes, sometimes the new and improved isn't that improved as they say.
But I got to say they really did a freaking great job on this movie.
You know, we went in there and watched it and this movie starts with the birth of James T. Kirk.
And he loses his father in minutes in the beginning.
And also it covers the childhood of Spock and shows you snippets of them growing up, which is really interesting.
The conflict is as youthful people.
And also introduces Captain Pike, which many of you remember was a character from the pilot for the original Star Trek.
It was going to the planet, confined to a wheelchair, going to a planet.
This is, I'm talking about the pilot for the original Star Trek series, not the movie I'm reviewing.
Going to a planet with aliens with very psychic powers and conflict hallucinations on their captives.
So, before it was going to be like a remake of that pilot and we have a very mistaken.
It was actually before Christopher Pike, before Captain Christopher Pike was disabled.
And it actually shows how he got to be, at least partially, how he got to be disabled.
Because Christopher Pike is the original captain of the Enterprise, just like in the series.
Interestingly enough, because in the series, you know, the pilot was had Christopher Pike as Captain.
And then it was William Shatner, who became Kirk, which is what everyone knew once the show was over the ground as the first captain of the USS Enterprise.
So, we saw this movie and it's stored with this.
And, you know, I've been doing a little web browsing before.
I began recording this, and I'm not scripting this by the way, guys.
You guys know my penchant scripted programs.
I'm doing this off the cuff, as they say.
Some bloggers have said that this was really good.
I caught this on Google, so I can't quote a blogger.
But, where some people refer to the original Star Trek series as Space Opera,
this movie is more like Space Rock and Roll.
Indeed, they build up a rebel without a cause attitude in the character of James Kirk that is unbelievable, going back to his childhood.
I mean, you know, I mean, after, you know, the first scene after he's, after his baby scene featuring him,
is actually a chase scene where he's a minor driving a car,
and they have the beastie boys playing in the background and the cops chasing him.
It's very exciting stuff.
So, you know, you saw this movie and it was about how it was pinning the original characterizations for what will be a series of movies.
That much is very obvious when you watch it. You're very aware of it.
They kept the melodrama, they kept the real soap operiness down to a minimum.
They built up, like I said, the rebel without a cause attitude in James Kirk.
They then built up the logic as much in Spock I found.
Although, you know, I guess they were trying to make, emphasize more of the human half of the Spock character.
Me and my friends were concerned about the appearance of Leonard Nimoy as Spock, the original Spock.
And, you know, there's actually some weirdness because to avoid being anchored to the plots of the old Star Trek's,
the people who are king of this franchise decided to have a time traveling twist to this.
So, in actuality, you have the same characters, but they're in an ultimate universe because of a time shift.
But I can't say any more than that without giving away the plot to you.
So, I'm going to refrain myself from going into deep, deep details.
But Leonard Nimoy actually appears as Spock, the original Spock who came back in time.
And he makes a great entrance and is integral to the plot. It's fantastic stuff.
And throughout the movie, you meet the characters, you meet the new Chekhov, the new Sulu, the new Bones.
You find how they all got their nicknames with their real skills or character development for a movie.
You know, I'm a book guy. I'm not a video guy.
And to see, I really felt like I didn't have a feeling of learning this much about people's characters since I read the Charles P. Snow novels,
which my public library at my last abode had almost all of them.
Really, I really felt that I've learned more about the characters than I did when I watched the original Star Trek when I was a kid.
So, that was fascinating.
So, you know, I bet you guys can tell by now I'm giving this a positive review.
If you want to go see this, you know, listen to a guy who knew about what it was like to be the first episodes, the first TV episodes.
Yeah, it does justice to it.
They bring in a lot of the good parts of the old series, but they still keep it fresh and new and exciting.
So, I can hardly recommend you guys chase down this movie.
So, let's talk to you a little bit about some of the things about this movie.
First of all, the director of J.J. Abrams, Abrams already slated for the next Star Trek in two years.
So, you might want to know we're going to have the same director.
And the movie features the actor Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, the actor Zach Riquinto as Spock,
Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime as he's called in the cast.
Eric Vanna as Nero, Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike,
Carl Irwin as Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy, Zoe Saldana as Naota O'Huro, Simon Pegas Scottie,
and John Cho as Ikara Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov.
Now, J.J. Abrams has directed a lot of things, but some of the things I'm interested is that he has directed
or has been as the executive producer of several episodes of Fringe lost some big TV series I see here.
Bruce Greenwood, you might recognize from the science fiction movie I Robot,
which featured Will Smith.
I Robot 2 was one of those movies where, wow, how are they going to do this one?
And it came out very good.
So, Bruce Greenwood was the director of the robot company in I Robot.
Simon Pegg, one of the interesting things is Sky's character is Simon Pegg,
who was Nicholas Angel and Hot Fuzz, which I've seen as a comedy featuring
British actors several times.
John Cho, I know of as Harold, as in Harold and Kumar, go to White Castle.
So, I don't know why I've heard this, I don't know what to expect, I mean,
because I think of him as a comedian, but he really made a good Sulu.
So, and that wraps up my review of the new movie Star Trek.
If you want to drop me any correspondence and your feedback, I'm Deep Geek.
My email address is DG at DeepGeek.us.
That's Delta Golf at Delta Echo Papa Golf.
Echo kilo.uniform Sierra, and I hope you've enjoyed this review.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
