My mind is at ease
By MotherFraker

While I have been a vocal, though hopefully not shrill, proponant of rebooting, a few things seem pretty clear to me from the words of Kurtzman and Orci.

1. They are real fans. Rather than just yap about how TREK is part of American mythology and be done with a sop to the fans, they really know the difference between how novels fit (or don't) into cannon and what really 'counts' as TREK. That tells me they aren't BSing about knowing and loving this lore. They love this like we do. And that if they are BSing, they've done so much research they know the minefileds, and I'm comfortable with them giving this a whack. (Could they do worse than Logan?)

2. Also, they talk about not violating what's come before, which again could be a sop to hair-trigger internet bashers, but I don't think it is. What most of this interview was about was MI3, and how they slipped into a universe they did not create and were able to integrate their ideas about character and drama and have it fit into what had come before. They gave Ethan Hunt a personal side never seen, but it worked. The result: what many (including this writer) think is by far the best MI movie yet.

3. They reference origins. There are only two main patches of undiscovered country in TREK today: the span between ENTERPRISE and TOS and between TOS era movies and TNG. I really doubt they're eager to lay their dramatic microscope on the orgins of Captain Picard. This might not be a STARFLEET ACADEMY story, but it's definately a TOS origin story. Speaking as someone who tells stories for a living, studies how they're constructed, listens to writers a lot, something in the way they answered suggests they might have Kirk and Spock, but in smaller roles than we all now suspect. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be supporting players in service of main characters wholly created by Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci. That's just a hunch.

4. This one is most important, and hopeful, to me: They respect but are not bound by what is often misunderstood as cannon. Quite a bit of the bashing ENTERPRISE got was because it didn't comport with the origins of the Federation/Starfleet as laid down by non-cannonal sources, i.e. novels and reference books. The Encyclopedia nor Chronology count as cannon. Only what was on screen, or can reasonably inferred from being on screen, count (an item agreed upon by both the authors of the Chronology and Encyclopedia). If the inferrence as put down in those sources is later contradicted by something onscreen, out the written sources go. I'm glad to see they seem to be taking this track.

I, for one, am now very interested in coming TREK like I haven't been for a long time.

Now, if they only hadn't seemed so proud of their work on ZORRO 2...