Debates like this make me want to... well, see icon (Star Trek ramble/rant)
http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=92334&page=32
I really need to not read threads like these, especially all 32 pages' worth.
To me, nearly all the best episodes and movies of Star Trek (and a fair number of the not-so-great ones too) were a variation on one or more of the following themes: seeking out new life/civilizations, exploring unexplored frontiers with a sense of wonder at the universe, and people - be they humans, Klingons, or androids - trying to better themselves and their society. You've got to have your spaceship chases and battle scenes and alien fistfights/sex, but at its core those themes were there too. Yes, you have a few episodes that don't follow that formula, but I believe they're the exception rather than the rule. A TV series can afford to step off the path every now and then - but if every episode deviated from those core concepts, it wouldn't have been Trek.
Contrary to some of the assertions I see in that message thread, a story does not have to be a Nobel Prize-worthy dissertation, or inspire its viewers to do such writing, to be "thought-provoking." And to say that Star Trek's "simplistic" lessons were hardly noteworthy? If what Trek did was so un-noteworthy, why are we still discussing it 40 years later, let alone making new series and movies out of it?
People of all shapes and species and colors getting along peacefully may seem a "DUH" concept. But you know what? Back in the civil-rights-movement-charged '60s, things that don't faze many of us now, like having a black woman on the bridge of a starship (let alone kissing a white man), were groundbreaking. And two generations after Star Trek first aired, lessons like 'can't we just get along' have still hardly become universally accepted - one need look no further than today's headlines. Sometimes - I'd even venture to say often - the most thought-provoking stories are the simplest ones. Sometimes the simplest lessons are the ones that most bear repeating. If you can do so in an entertaining manner, so much the better.
I did like a lot about this latest Trek movie. But at its core, it still didn't feel entirely like Trek to me, for reasons that had little or nothing to do with things like "canon" alterations, or technobabble nitpicking. I personally didn't see much of the examples I cited above. But I'm not trying to argue whether the aforementioned themes were present in the movie or not. If you saw them, then I accept that, and I won't tell you you were wrong for seeing them. That isn't my point here.
If you did see deeper themes in the movie, fine. If Star Trek to you is about just fun entertainment, then fine. If you don't have any particular affinity for the reasons I mentioned above, then that's fine too - but don't tell me that I'm wrong for having those reasons. I'm tired of arrogant fanboy assertions like on this message board, that those who aren't fawning at JJ's feet are only disappointed because of some "misplaced" or "exaggerated" nostalgia of what Trek really was prior to JJ's addition.
Yes, Trek's primary goal - like any series or movie - was to entertain. If Trek had always been just entertainment without a secondary theme underlying it, though, we wouldn't still be talking about it decades later. And to me personally, it wouldn't have been as entertaining if it didn't make me think a little bit. Give me a story like "Measure of a Man" over Independence Day any time of the week.