I was hoping that with the reboot they would be revisiting TOS stories with a few twists and surprises in them or perhaps combine elements of a couple episodes in an original story. That doesn't appear to be happening though.
I'll wait until it comes out on DVD or goes to HBO
I think they are to some degree. Not get all
about this but:
Within the new timeline are call backs to the original timeline. I think I wrote about this is the Into Darkness thread when that came out, but it seems to me that the writers are doing it to give long time fans a little shoutout, but I am taking it as a push for a deeper meaning that fate is fate no matter the time line. In the first reboot movie, Captain Pike is disabled from the waste down and ends the movie in a wheel chair which is a call back to why Kirk got the Enterprise to begin with in the real timeline. The crew is still all together which while necessary for the reboot to not be too far off the deepend is still a nod to fate always bringing this special group together.
In the second movie, we have to deal with the timeline completely backwards because the incident with Khan first came in the midst of their original 5 year mission and then Wrath of Khan was much much later in their story line, but the new timeline crushed the story into a new reason for happening, but the main players - mainly Khan - were still there. However, the reboot kept Khan alive, similarly to Kirk's first encounter with him when they put them on Ceti Alpha. Of course you have Kirk dying in the dylithium crystal/core chamber lilke Spock did, and their conversation was roughly similar to the conversation they shared in Wrath of Khan. Even Carol Marcus becomes a part of the crew not unsimilar to the original series - and in the one scene where Carol is talking about her nurse friend that Kirk slept with, and i forgot the name, but that character was in the oringal TV series on the Enterprise.
And then in this 3rd movie we have a call back to the original timeline's 3rd movie (don't want to spoil it but it's fairly obvious what it is). For the original timeline you have to take the 3rd and 4th movies as one long story. The beginning of 3 and the end of 4 are the same basic scene for a reason. It took those two movies for Kirk to fully appreciate, once again, what he had and what his true calling was - to be the Captain of a starship. And that same journey through two movies in the original timeline is the same journey that Kirk takes in this one movie. He isn't Admiral material in the original timeline and he won't be in this one either.
There are a myriad of other instances, small and big, that you can fit into this overreaching view that the reboot is trying to teach within this universe that certain things are simply fated to happen, perhaps in different order, but they end up being roughly the same thing. I would have to spoil too much in the new movie yet and write way too long of a post to detail them all, but if you look at all of the reboot movies this way, they feel slightly different.
I've been a fan of this story since I was a kid. I wasn't happy that they were doing this and it's well documented here that I was strongly against the second reboot doing anything with Khan at all. But I think now that they have executed it as close to perfectly as you can. I really enjoy the new cast and hope they manage to keep this going. To me the only character that is maybe too far off from the original is Uhura, but just because she was never a focal point in the original series like she is now, but it's a minor quibble because Zoe is doing a really good job with it.
They have already managed to reference all of this, tribbles, the mudd incident, a green chick, and a host of other things that ties the original timeline into this new one. I'm ok with it and like I said, I really enjoyed this movie. Again, too, the score is amazing. Might be the best soundtrack to an action/sci-fi type movie I can recall in some time.
One final point - someone mentioned that Star Trek was always more about exploration and bigger things that just battles. I agree. And Roddenburry was very clear that he always saw this universe as that. I think they've managed to keep a good mix of that original concept while still giving current moviegoers the aciton they want. In the first, the action was backdrop to the crew coming to know and trust each other; in the second the entirety of the problem that developed was between Starfleet's true mission to be explorers and the attempted movement to weaponize them into a military unit, and in this one, the journey Kirk took to understand his place a little more clearly all fit into that original ideal of what Starfleet is. Maybe the writing could be better. But I think they are doing fine.
And having said all that - Wrath of Khan is still the best scifi movie ever made and still a top 10 movie all time. I will never stop believing that.
