John, you're a treasure!
The ONLY thing I knew about ST before seeing the film with Meryl, and I mean the ONLY thing, was that the Kirk / Spock combo initiated the genre of slash fiction writing and set off slash fics on a long and enduring and ever-inventive (and pornish, as Ms Proulx would say) path through the fandoms. (I didn't even know who K&S were, just their names). Those music vids were the perfect light-hearted intro to the two and the dynamics of their relationship. I mean, the
subtext of the dynamics, of course.
And as for the whole "Pon Farr" thing - with actual canon plot lines like that, how could anyone *not* expect slash fiction not to follow happily where canon opened the door?
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I liked the current film very much, it was entertaining and fast-paced and fun and with riveting actors. I had fun till the end although the actual plot lost me about 2/3rds into the story, because of the ease with which the past could be changed without seemingly impacting the future. I couldn't follow what was going on with all the time-travelling. Wouldn't there be repercussions and utter chaos to follow if characters kept going back and forth in time and altering their life and its events? Wouldn't the whole fabric of being or whatever be ripped asunder?
When the "old" Spock in this film meets the new one and says that it would be self-serving to tell him to "live long and prosper", I realized that in fact, the old one has no idea what will happen to the new. Fundamental things have now changed in his past that are certain to mean the new Spock won't follow/can't follow the original and same path in life. The new one might take a step out the door, have a meteor land on his head and be killed tomorrow. The old one is standing right there and yet he doesn't know if he'll be standing right there. And yet they are the same person.
Same issue goes for planets being destroyed or not being destroyed at any point in time, and the engineer who was told his own invention of moving people from one place to the other many years before he apparently came up with the ide a- because they didn't have time to wait. Only certain thing is that he'll never come up with the idea on his own in
this reality *now*, so everything has changed about his life too.
I don't understand how the film intended this whole changing the past/changing the future premise to work and yet for there to be coherent storylines of the characters, timelines and plots. Are they all disintegrating into multiple alternate reality alternate timeline fragments of themselves,- who can nevertheless meet up and talk without any repercussions?
Perhaps all that is to be addressed in the sure-to-be sequel?
PS: I didn't know the old Kirk and Spock but I sure liked the two new ones, and I bet there'll hardly be less slash written about *them*. Just a hunch.