Why no one should direct the next Star Trek movie

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For the last week, the internet has lost its mind over District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp stating he doesn't want to helm the next Star Trek movie. I, for one, am glad. Not because I don't like Blomkamp's work, but because no one should direct the next Star Trek movie. There shouldn't be a next Star Trek movie, period.

Star Trek belongs on television. Including the new JJ Abrams Star Trek.

TV Guide just anointed Star Trek as the greatest sci-fi show of all time. George Lucas has gone on record saying that without Star Trek, Star Wars never happens.

At the end of the nostalgia-obsessed Star Trek Into Darkness -- about which I have very strong feelings -- The Chris Pine/Zach Quinto versions of Kirk and Spock are about to embark on the infamous Five-Year Mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before.

That mission should happen -- with the cinematic Abrams cast -- on television. The why is obvious -- blockbusters are typically callow, shallow spectacles of anti-intellectual cotton candy. Star Trek is the opposite of that. As to how we get Trek back home to the small screen, read on.

Dragon*Con 2011: A n00b's Tale, Part IV

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[When last we left our plucky D*C n00b, he was recovering from an unexpected Jedi-themed dance party. The infodump expands to the penultimate day of the con.]

SUNDAY

Again, my day began around 8:30 am as I snuck away from my hibernating roommates to scrounge breakfast at Peachtree Center. I think I stupidly drew from the Dairy Queen well, which is always a mistake. Nonetheless, I hit the panel scene about 9:30 and called an audible, electing to abandon my plans for the Skeptic Track's "Secular Plan to Take Over America" - I didn't want to brave the zealot crowd - so I snuck into the line for the other zealot crowd magnet, the Star Wars track. Specifically, the "Truth and Mythology of Star Wars" headlined by Timothy Zahn and Gary Kurtz.

Takeaway: I now know where the Star Wars franchise went wrong.

Nerd Word of the Day: Retcon

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Retcon (v.) - Short for "retroactive continuity," it is the geek-slang term for the rewriting of backstory or fictional history to accommodate a new chapter in an ongoing franchise. This is a pretty common practice in comic books (and, quite frankly, soap operas) where characters are revealed to have very different pasts than previously assumed. For example, at various points Spider-man was said to have received his powers from either a radioactive spider-bite, because he was a totem warrior of a spider-god, or because he was a clone of the original Spider-man. (Currently, I think we've doubled back to option 1, radioactive spider-bite, but don't quote me.) Of late, George Lucas has cornered the market on cinematic retcons with all his Star Wars prequel nonsense rewriting Jedi history.

I bring it up because: The summer movie season has a lot of retcons going for it, either from Wolverine's rewriting of X-men movie history to Terminator: Salvation's resetting the date of Judgement Day--again--and ignoring pretty much everything that happened in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which was just cancelled). Retcons should not be confused with reboots, which is when a franchise just chucks everything and starts over, much like Batman Begins basically ignored the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher lineage of batfilms. Thankfully.

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