A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Directed by Nicholas Meyer Screenplay by: Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer (uncredited), based on a story by Harve Bennett & Jack B. Sowards Based on the “Star Trek” television series created by Gene Roddenberry Starring:  William Shatner ,  Leonard Nimoy ,  DeForest Kelley , James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Kirstie Alley, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick,  Ricardo Montalban In June of 1982, less than three years after the premiere of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Paramount Pictures released director Nicholas Meyer’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Executive-produced and co-written by Harve Bennett, “Star Trek II” was more of a swashbuckling space opera than Robert Wise’s leisurely-paced and effects-heavy mish-mash of “2001”-style science fiction and producer Gene Roddenberry’s New Age-flavored humanism. In the 23rd Century….. Years after the Starship...

When director J.J. Abrams and his collaborators Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, and Roberto Orci decided to set 2009's  Star Trek  in an alternate timeline apart from  The Original Series  and its spinoffs, they did it to achieve creative freedom. Abrams and his creative team knew that simply inserting a young cast into the established Trek universe would not work.  Star Trek's  lore is nearly a half-century old, and the franchise's loyal fans wouldn't have accepted a reboot that attempted to inject the new cast into the 1966-69 William Shatner-Leonard Nimoy-DeForest Kelley troika's adventures. The effect, I think, would have been too jarring. Star Trek 's time travel-created alternate timeline thus gave Abrams & Co. the necessary flexibility to reinvigorate Gene Roddenberry's old series. As Abrams pointed out in an interview:  "The idea, now that we are in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the past -...