Of course, we can’t let Mattie go posting a Star Wars piece without countering with a Trek post. This scene from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is one of my favorite Trek battles of all time. It exemplifies everything which made the Trek movies of the 80’s great: a sense of tension and atmosphere, similar to naval warfare. The opening minutes of the scene, with the forlorn faces of nameless crew personnel listening as Kirk gives terse orders and Spock counting down from the audio feed of the bridge. The audio-only transmissions between Kirk and Chang, an invisible enemy tearing apart the ship while it helplessly drifted along.

Star Trek VI was actually the first Trek film I ever saw. My parents rented it from the video store because they knew that I was a big fan of Star Trek. For my birthday the previous year, they had bought me a huge toy Enterprise-D, which made tinny little phaser and photon torpedo firing sounds. When I saw Star Trek VI and the battle between the Enterprise-A and the cloaked Bird of Prey, I was put on the edge of my seat. It was a spectacle I had never seen before.

For me, the standard by which the new Star Trek movie will be judged by will be the Nicholas Meyer Trek films. Massive starships like the Enterprise don’t zoom through space, the glide. Though I’ve only seen glimpses from the trailers, I’m hoping the space battles of the film are closer to the Meyer style of battle than, say, the Star Wars or Babylon 5 style, where capital ships rip through space with agility that doesn’t typically behoove objects of that size.

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