Analysis

Analysis

Symbols and Tropes

Hero's Journey

Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or...

Setting

Space, the Final FrontierThe great thing about outer space is that it can be whatever you need it to be. We don't hear much about political boundaries here, or the location of Regula One in relatio...

Point of View

Third-Person OmniscientYou know it, you love it, and it makes the whole "narrative thread" thing just go down a whole lot more smoothly. Yes, it's Third-Person Omniscient: the god-like ability for...

Genre

Science Fiction and AdventureFirst and foremost, Star Trek is science fiction, positing a utopian future where Earth lives in harmony as part of an intergalactic federation of funky aliens (and the...

What's Up With the Title?

This movie's a lot of things, but subtle isn't one of them. It wears everything on its sleeve: emotions, personality…everything but those space eels, which have another home. Accordingly, the tit...

What's Up With the Ending?

We love the ending to this, and not just because it has that great "space, the final frontier" line delivered by Nimoy instead of Shatner for the first time ever. Happy endings are par for the cour...

Shock Rating

PGReal talk: the space eels get to us. Seriously, they crawl into your ear, nestle in your brain, and basically turn you into a drooling robot until they presumably chew their way out of your brain...