Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI?

GiggidyGiggidy writes "Our friends at IMDB.com are reporting that Matt Damon has been cast to play a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek Movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Is this the end of the Star Trek series we fans know and love, or the beginning of something bigger and better for the series?"

Comments

Now, get Sinise.

[krell]

I just read a few weeks ago about Damon being discussed as Kirk for JMS's now-gone Star Trek project. I thought it sounded like a good idea, and (for better or worse) the Shat himself approved of the choice.

Now they need to sign Gary Sinise as McCoy. Hopefully, they can keep Affleck out. He has the superficial look and the emotionless demeanor necessary for Spock, but brings nothing else.

New Voyages

[Rob T Firefly]

I've already got my personally accepted spinoff continuation of the original "Star Trek," and it's written, produced, and acted by real fans with talent. Those guys produce winning, pro-grade Star Trek while Paramount has displayed a complete lack of knowing what the hell to do with it.

Re:I liked DS9.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you shitting me?

An ongoing story arc and significant character development was precisely what happened to DS9 toward the end!

Their 'ongoing story arc' was actually "lets write some different aliens into the war so we can drag it on.. while we're at it, let's make them really powerful yet totally unknown!" Which, to me, screams 'plot device'.

And the 'significant character development' was just the writers getting more and more obvious about the (previously) subtle character archetypes: Cisco as the religious Savior figure, Du'Kat (sp) as the religious Evil figure.. I would call it character un-development.

I prefer the early seasons, when there was friction between characters. The slow sanding away of that tension was the good character development. As it goes on, we see more stereotypical roles from the cast.

I mean, seriously, Kira had more venom for the Federation in the first season than she had for the Dominion after they took over DS9.

Re:Oh, Yes!

[Decaff]

Just tack 50 years onto the end of the Voyager series, and go with that. Heck, go back to the Delta Quadrant with a new super-duper engine.

Why not make a series where a crew get to go out of the galaxy. In the Star Trek Universe our galaxy was seeded with life that would generally turn out humanoid. That saves on special effects, but now that is not a problem.

Here is my idea: Star Trek: Magellan - named for the great traveller. Set decades after Voyager; a colony fleet is sent to the Large Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy of our own. Take a vast and fast carrier ship (The Magellan), running on autopilot for, say 50 years. The crew wake up, ready to explore and terraform and colonise. The crew is interesting. Holograms now have sentient rights, and there are borg members (like the Klingons in TNG, they are no longer enemies). Communication with our galaxy is slow and difficult. They meet real aliens, not just humanoids with different foreheads.....

I want Ben Affleck

[Ranger]

No, Dammit! I want Ben Affleck. He is every bit as bad an actor as William Shatner. Let's see who do I want for Spock? Hmmm. Here is the cast I want.

Kirk - Ben Affleck
Spock - Tom Cruise
McCoy - Matthew McConaughey
Scotty - Hugh Jackman
Uhura - Halle Berry
Yeoman Rand - Tricia Helfer
Nurse Chapel - Pamela Anderson
Checkov - Wil Wheaton
Sulu - Daniel Dae Kim

Re:Oh, Yes!

[seminumerical]

Personally I am tired of the ST Universe. I want Science Fiction, emphasis on science. Phasers are just blasters from 40s or 50s pulp fiction, warp speed is a tired imitation of the WW2 Navy movies, where the captain had to think hard about the fuel/delta t trade off where the drag is proportional to velocity cubed. Warp is not Science fiction, it is elves in middle earth fantasy. I am tired of "subspace" communication (someone just heard the word in his linear algebra course before he dropped out and became a screen writer), tired of every planet being "class M", having a gravity of 10 m/s/s and a breathable atmosphere. I am especially tired of low budget aliens. Makeup does not make an alien, any more than assigning them the characteristics of some earth culture makes them alien. We've had Viking/Moslem warrior aliens, Seidenstraße aliens, Greek mythology aliens (and also vomitous magical "Q" aliens that remove the need for any coherent SF) ... Aieee!!! ...

Remember when science fiction was fun and the characters two dimensional? Remember when they travelled at sub light speeds around the solar system where there was no artificial gravity? Clarke's 2001, A Fall of Moondust, Rendezvous with Rama, Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" and many more. We have the technology to make a coherent near future SF TV series, using the actual properties of our planets, with Lagrange colonies, pioneer colonies, mining operations on Mercury, slow freighters and liners using economy orbits and fast (expensively anti-matter powered) "Federation" ships busy about the system.

How many of us learned the basic (incorrect) properties of the planets from those books? Now let's do it again with Mercury's real day, and a non-tropical Venus. Settle the moons and adventure in space.

It is not for us. It is for that Aspergers 14 year old guy who is awkward with girls but knows the ABCs of Relativity; the one in the generation coming up fast behind us. Let us relive SF through his (yes his) eyes.

There can still be a 7 of 9 character so that he will have an imaginative, once removed from reality, sex life.