May 21, 2009 08:00 AM
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Wed Feb 10
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Remember when we all guessed that Star Trek's little-dead-Corvette-scene, with Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", was a poke at William Shatner's refusal to pronounce the word sabotage correctly? Turns out J.J. Abrams isn't that clever. Surprised? Me neither. Find out what else was merely a "happy coincidence" on the Star Trek set.
In an interview with MTV, director J.J. Abrams explained that all the in-jokes we thought we were catching were actually just us projecting onto the screen:
Yes, I have heard that theory," laughed Abrams. "It was so funny when I heard it. I wish I could say it was done on purpose, but it was not. I just dig the song."
So what else did we over-analyze? How about the theory that throwing a 1966 Corvette ('66 being the year Trek was first broadcast) off a cliff was a symbolic gesture, demonstrating the writers decision to cast off the canon in favor of their own alternate reality?
Nope:
"I'm not sure if it was a '66," Abrams said of the Corvette. "But that was also the year that I was born, so I wouldn't want to do that to the year, for personal reasons. No, the idea was to show the renegade, young Kirk and have a wildly anachronistic scene where you had an earthbound, almost back-looking scene combined with a forward-looking futuristic scene technologically. It had nothing to do with that kind of metaphor."
Call me crazy but I feel like in a movie of this magnitude nothing is overlooked from dates to song choices? Is he back-peddling or did someone else on the crew pull a fast one on the "I'm not a Trek fan" Abrams.
One interesting point Abrams made was to defend the technological advancements made to the Enterprise bridge, which completely eclipse the twinkle lights and cardboard look of the 1960s original. According to Abrams, there was a trans-temporal technology transfer taking place, when the Kelvin took readings from the Romulan ship - both giving Starfleet a kick in the pants, and allowing the Federation to upgrade its current technology. Thus giving us the shiny "Apple store" Enterprise.
For more answers to Trek, like how the crew of the Kelvin knew who the Romulans were check out the report at MTV. Hint... it rhymes with bime bavel.
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
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