This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
What's on channel two?
Plot Overview
“My name is Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the United Federation of Planets,” states a diplomat on a mission to the mistrustful Teenaxi. He offers their big man (Shea Wigham) a gift of peace, part of an old dismantled weapon called the Abronath. Alas, diplomacy fails big time (“Get me out of here”), and Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) is beamed out to return to his rather lackluster duties on The Enterprise scheduled for a refurbishing stop at Yorktown, the Federation's newest, most advanced starbase. While there an alien named Kalara (Lydia Wilson) arrives requesting help to recover her crew from a class ‘M’ planet (“My ship is stranded there”) in an unnavigable nebula. Fortunately, the Enterprise having the Federation's most advanced navigation systems is on station with time to spare, so they depart on this routine mission.
They are waylaid, overwhelmed, and boarded by drone soldiers led by a warlord—“All clear, Krall”—(Idris Elba) looking for booty (“the Abronath.”) The Enterprise gets damaged in the process (“Abandon ship, Mr. Sulu”) and the surviving crew ejects in pods (“We gotta get outa here.”) They end up scattered on the planet below, paired up according to happenstance. Some are injured, some get captured, and Chief Engineer, Lt Comdr Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott (Simon Pegg) finds there a marooned scavenger named Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) living on a wrecked starship. She needs an engineer to “take my house and make it fly.” Whether the crew can reconnect, regroup, and mount an assault on a dastardly Krall with a reconstituted weapon of mass destruction, will depend on their wits, their teamwork, and an engineer working with “horse and buggy” technology.
Ideology
The plot involves one Balthazar Edison, aka Krall, captain of the USS Franklin, the first warp–4 spaceship. It had been lost in space conducting the Magellan Probe. Its “crew has been dead 100 years by now,” but Krall using a psychopathic link technology discovered on-planet has been prolonging his life—anybody care to be a donor? Jaylah escaped as a little girl, commandeered the abandoned Franklin, and rigged up holographic camouflage to hide its presence. She's been living by her wits, off the land ever since. Krall has gone round the bend living in isolation and can't conceive any other life than a soldier's in conflict, his earlier occupation. Diplomatic Kirk tries explaining cooperation to him but to no avail. Krall replies, “Peace ... is not what I was born into.”
If we wish to find a scripture representing this plot, we could turn to, (Eccl. 4:13-14) “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.” Indeed, many movies deal with a know-it-all authority and a wise kid, some of which I've reviewed, so it behooves us to understand this passage.
Solomon with his facility with tongues seems to have commented on the multitude of Bible translations and the difficulty in learning the original tongues (Eccl. 12:12.) The English language in its early vitality gave rise to the King James Version (KJV) whose wise native words have since become poor in currency following the natural course of diminishing usage, while the dominating modern versions of an aged English retain lots of bad speech patterns and habits, as does a king who came out of prison to reign, or in our case a captain coming out of exile to wage war (“This is where the frontier pushes back.”)
Fostering cooperation, Prof. George P. Marsh in an 1859 (pub. 1863) lecture on the English Bible, stated, concerning this same King James Version (KJV), the only English translation then in widespread use:
The dialect of the English Bible is also the dialect of devotion and of religious instruction wherever the English language is spoken, and all denominations substantially agree in their sacred phraseology, with whatever difference in interpretation. There are always possibilities of reconciliation, sympathies even, between men who, in matters of high concernment, habitually use the same words, and appeal to the same formulas; whereas a difference of language and of symbols creates an almost impassable gulf between man and man.
My training is in engineering, so I used a model to help me understand what Marsh meant. I went to a new church meeting at a Grange where every single person—dividing also between husband and wife—was from a different denominational background, but we all used the KJV except for the pastor who didn't want to conform. Through patience we were starting to coalesce until the pastor used his version to set the standard, which tore it. That experience taught me to regard, (Psalm 50:16-17) “But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.” Since the whole psalm is related to this movie, as well as to its practical application, I shall quote most of it here.
Psalm 50
7. Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God.
8. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me.
9. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.
10. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
11. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
12. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.
13. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
14. Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:
15. And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
16. But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?
17. Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.
18. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
19. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
20. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.
21. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
22. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
23. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.
From a textual point of view, modern translations cannot make their publishers any money without the all-important copyright, and they can't get that unless there is major difference between theirs and any other work. Ergo they retranslate everything whether it needs it or not. The ESV goes even further in this pecuniary emphasis by donating part of their proceeds to Christian ministry. God doesn't need the cash flow. He'd rather have spontaneous worship and faithful obedience, which happens better if we're more familiar, through repetition over the years, with the passages in the Bible we have though they be in the old KJV.
In the movie it's the teeny-weeny Teenaxi who have no need to be supplied with weapons, because they've got tooth and claw by the thousands and aren't afraid to use them. Kirk had to be transported out of there. They accused him of having stolen the Abronath when he presented it to them as a found item on loan to be donated.
In 1933 the Sinaitic Ms. would be published, being the second most important manuscript used in more modern bible versions. It was discovered by Constantin Tischendorf at St. Catherine's Monastery, but the abbot only loaned it to him; he wanted it back. Tischendorf treacherously forged the abbot's signature to an agreement ceding it to the Russian Czar as a gift, who later sold it to the London Museum when he was strapped for cash. And so it has passed into scholars' hands and into our modern versions through an act of theft and treason. Intros to post-1933 bibles, which say they use the "best manuscripts" or "original manuscripts" are using code words for including the Sinaitic Ms.
In Cpt. Kirk's Log, Stardate 2263.2, he writes that, “prolonged cohabitation has definitely had effects on the interpersonal dynamics, some experiences for the better and some for the worse.” A hallway scene shows men leaving their female companion's cabins in various moods. It seems to condone sexual sin. The word fornication used in the KJV would be applicable. Webster defines, “fornication : human sexual intercourse other than between a man and his wife.” It is expressly forbidden in the (KJV) Bible. Modern English Bibles almost universally substitute the relative phrase “sexual immorality” in the prohibition(s). That's subject to a lot of interpretation.
In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul says he's, (2Cor. 4:2) “... not handling the word of God deceitfully.” An example of deceit can be found when, (Gen. 34:13) “And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father deceitfully, and said, because he had defiled Dinah their sister.” They told them they were allowed to intermarry but used it as a ruse to gain an advantage, because actually they weren't amenable to it. Paul's answer in addressing some questions of the Corinthians appears to have been in the present tense, regarding an existing marriage of a Christian to an unbeliever, but he allows for such to apply to developing composites as well, (1Cor. 3:21-22) “For all things are yours; Whether … the world, or … things present, or things to come; all are your's.” Paul wasn't being deceitful, so after he tells them in first Corinthians a mixed marriage is permissible, he's not going to tell them in second Corinthians it's not. Modern bibles don't use a specific plural ‘ye’ in, (2Cor. 6:14) “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: ...” so it is co-opted for a singular application prohibiting individual (mixed) marriages rather than go to his following rhetorical questions and match (singular) case with, (2Cor. 6:15) “what part has he that believeth with an infidel?” If a couple is well enough acquainted to consider marriage, then they can ask themselves the question of how that would affect their individual Christian commitments and act accordingly, rather then accept some kind of group prohibition that doesn't even apply.
In this “Star Trek Beyond” movie, one alien deceives Kirk by pulling the wool over his eyes. And a slander occurs when Krall bad-mouths Starfleet for not responding to his distress call, when communication from that nebula was impossible as was navigation into it before the Enterprise. In our textual application, serious questions are posed, per the Psalm, whether we can allow these modern version translations to represent the word of God. In the movie Bones spoke in behalf of the fair sex when he told Spock (“You old romantic”) that when a woman breaks up with you and says, “It's not you, it's me” … it's you.
Production Values
This third installment of the rebooted series, “” (2016) was directed by Justin Lin. Simon Pegg (who also plays Scotty again) co-wrote its screenplay, along with Doug Jung, Roberto Orci (uncredited), Patrick McKay (uncredited), & John D. Payne (uncredited), based on Gene Roddenberry's TV series “Star Trek.” Actors Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho & Anton Yelchin reprised their parts from the previous two movies. Idris Elba and Sofia Boutella joined the cast.
Chris Pine plays a smooth version of Kirk, with Zachary Quinto as a credible Spock, but their friendship together isn't featured so much in this film. Karl Urban's Bones shares scenes with both Kirk and Spock. Sofia Boutella's character Jaylah—named for Jennifer Lawrence & inspired by her “Winter's Bone” character Ree Dolly—is hot. She steals the show. Uhura is an exotic temptress trying her wiles on Spock. Pegg does Scotty up fine and provides some comic relief.
MPAA rated it PG–13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence. Michael Giacchino made one awesome soundtrack! The exquisite Yorktown set piece is unexcelled in space sci-fi.
There's a pun in play on the formulaic adventure beyond, “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Feminists not realizing the expression was derived from a nautical poem about where “no seaman had yet gone” got their knickers in a twist over gender inclusion. Here it's delivered as, “where no one has gone before.” The context of the frontier pushing back has a resourceful engineer beaming a jamming signal on VHF, 57.47 MHz plum in the middle of the assignment for US TV channel two (54–60 MHz.) We may reckon that earth broadcasts will have reached far into space by the 24th century. The reason why there is no TV channel one is that between the time of consideration and implementation, those frequencies were re-purposed for the six meter ham band (50–54 MHz.) Hams, in the early days especially, were by choice exclusively male. So where no [channel] one has gone before would be where no man has gone.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
This “Star Trek Beyond” was a sight for sore eyes reuniting with familiar characters if not familiar actors, with action galore and CGI to bust the seams. I could almost expect someone to turn on his TV set out there and pick up a distant “Star Trek” episode from earth, there was so much homage paid.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall product rating: Five stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print, software.
Marsh, George P. “Revision inexpedient at the present time.”
Lectures on the English
Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
——available to read
or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, Mass.: MERRIAM-WEBSTER. 1984. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org