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It starts with Klingons cos you’ve gotta put them in somewhere and there’s no room in the rest of the film so that’s where they are, in the first seven minutes, and
ZOOM IN
…the Enterprise is flying at warp 10 out of Klingon space, chased by three birds of prey, each one captained by Kang, Koloth and Kur [sic for all 3], and they’re almost out of petrol and their ship’s taken a pummelling and
INT. ENTERPRISE BRIDGE
…it looks like this is it, this is the end before it’s even begun, and the computer confirms it, saying hull integrity at 0%, and Sulu saying, Captain, one more hit and we’re dust, and Kirk looks at Spock and Spock looks at Kirk and McCoy sandwiches himself between both of them and
ZOOM OUT
…the three Klingon ships hang back and wait for the moment to stretch and then when it’s stretched to breaking point, Kang says fire and a torpedo leaves the ship and heads in a zig zag line to the hull of the Enterprise which still has zero integrity and
CLOSE UP – KIRK’S FACE
Kirk waits until the torpedo is almost on top of them or under them then clenches his fist and says
now, Spock!
but it’s no good, Spock is the science officer not the gunner, so
Kirk has to say now, you, and point to
the extra who could be a star in 5 years, but right now is
nothing compared to Chris Pine so
the extra doesn’t speak, he fires
and the deflector shield activates and sends some
green energy at the torpedo and
thanks to Kip Pardue and his 20 years of Physics study
the torpedo is picked up and redirected back at
the Klingon bird of prey and before Kang can
charge up his own deflector shield
the torpedo hits their hull and the ship flips sideways
knocking the other two ships into another part of space
with a planet nearby so there’s some visual
frame of reference and
they don’t explode, cos those guys are canon and
canon never dies, it just sits in the corner
and waits like an elderly racist
for nothing to change
cos if anything changes, we’re all
doomed and
CUT TO – ENTERPRISE BRIDGE
Kirk is looking at the three Klingon ships on the viewscreen and
Spock is standing behind him like a bully’s sidekick and
CLOSE UP – McCoy’s FACE
McCoy is not there anymore, he’s back in Sickbay, watching re-runs of old Trek, specifically the ones where he beamed down in the Spock-Kirk-McCoy triumvirate and scanned shit and the scene with Khan where he told him to cut his throat or don’t cos he’s got some medical exams to mark, and he thinks to himself, man, I’m so happy I am where I am now and not where I was in the 60’s cos back then I had to say I was an escalator but now things are more regular and sanitised and without personality so we can all speak like the guys who grew up on the Paramount lot and became the keymasters somehow, and at least this way I can have enough time to go to the gym and learn Cantonese and watch that thing with the horse and the Russian girl, if I still have the link, do I? I can’t remember, I think I saved it, I hope I did cos it was a bitch to search for and if I have to go through that again I probably just won’t bother, ah well, there’s always the ‘Asian mum fucks son’ vid that Checkov linked me to
CUT TO –
Uhura lies on her bed with an English to Romulan dictionary and the dread image in her head of one day actually bumping into a Romulan and attempting to translate whatever bigoted shit he or she is coming out with even though she doesn’t really know anything of the language, yup, she lied on her entrance exams, everyone did, cos Romulan words are fucking tough to say and it would take at least 5 years to get to intermediate and Starfleet was only a 3 year course so realistically no one could have enough time to get to that level, but that was okay, they had the universal translator anyway, and that never fails, never, it never fails, never ever never…
There’s a knock on the door and one of the writers [young, male] comes in and gives her the new version of the script.
Uhura reads the scene she’s in, puts the script down, mutters something in Spanish then takes off her skirt and t-shirt.
‘Stretch, Uhura…’ says the director.
‘Why?’
‘You’re tired, it’s been a long day…’
‘Jesus…’
Uhura stretches her arms.
‘Legs are feeling tight too…’
‘Seriously?’
‘Don’t wanna get cramp…’
‘But I’ve got no knickers on.’
‘It’s neo-realism.’
‘Isn’t this a kids film?’
‘Stretch them out…all the way…’
‘[Spanish]’
‘That’s it…’
Uhura stretches out like a starfish.
The cameraman, the director, the writer and the all-male crew linger for a few minutes then
CUT TO –
Kirk sits in the Captain’s room and looks at the data
data that is implied and unexplained
and Spock knocks on the door and
whoosh
door opens
and Spock walks in and says
it’s already twenty minutes in
Jim
and no zoomy camera work since the Klingon
scene which btw
I’ve decided to write a report on
yup, it’s already done, look
Spock hands Kirk the report and we see a bit of it over the shoulder:
Klingons are chavs, we should draw a line around their space and build a wall, ignore all e-mails and ambassadors, order heeled boots to counter their own heeled boots, I don’t believe they are really that tall, and they’re not that…
Kirk nods and says, hey, Starfleet says there’s not much going on right now so we can just kind of drift for a while, go to that sex planet or something, what do you think?
‘I advise against sex planets, Captain.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Disease, extroverts, melodrama.’
You’re right, let’s skip it. Explore something instead.’
Spock leaves the room, excited that his good friend Jim was finally listening to him and maybe if it continued this way he could tell him about his plans to cancel movie night and head to that nebula with all the signals that spun in circles instead of rectangles and
Hi Spock
He turned and oh look, it’s Uhura, my ex, wow she looks old, he thought but he didn’t say it cos she was quite fierce and it didn’t matter much anyway as she wouldn’t be in the plot for long, not if she wasn’t fucking him on the side, so he could just say hi back and…
The ship shook violently.
Spock asked if they were being attacked and Uhura said no, the ship’s just turning round, probably heading back towards the sex planet they just passed, and hey, wasn’t it my job to ask questions and your job to know answers?
Spock blanked her and ran to the bridge via engineering and there was Scotty,
oh hi, Scotty, how’s the warp core
and by the time he makes it to the bridge things are back in present tense and Kirk is slouching in his chair, flicking through pics of Winona Ryder on the viewscreen, stopping on one where you can almost see her nipple but not quite and
Captain, what are you doing?
says Spock
but there’s no time to answer as the Enterprise is suddenly attacked by little bits of metal which rough it up without hurting the warp core and drag it over to a nearby planet where gravity is insanely strong and before you can say Malcolm McDowell, the ship is crashing on the surface and the surviving crew are stumbling out of the wreckage with a few paper cuts and looking around and saying, what is this place, is that oxygen, are those rocks, and Spock says, yes to all three, but apart from that, this is completely alien and like nothing any of us have ever seen before, except maybe Sulu, he was in an episode of Voyager once, isn’t that right, Sulu?
Who’s that?
What?
That girl?
Girl? says Kirk, turning fast.
That girl…kinda hard to see, but it looks like she’s been spray-painted white. Oh, shit, she’s leaping this way, hitting people…
Well, that’s just typical, says McCoy, crawling out of sickbay
clutching the nurse doll they gave him to save cash on extras
that’s just fucking typical
but the spray painted lady doesn’t care, she’s still leaping around, punching people, punching rocks, trying to escape from the fucker with the camera who keeps ducking down and pointing it at her tits, and then she runs into Kirk who backhands her into Alice Eve
‘oh hi, Alice Eve,’ says Kirk, ‘how’s botany?’
‘hey, asshole, I’m not a bota-…’
but before she can finish Alice Eve is knocked off the side of a cliff by
the spray painted lady and
Kirk watches her fall and shakes his cheeks a little to show that
someone he once saw naked is dead and
he’s gonna avenge her death by
either fighting or fucking her killer and then
hatching a plot and
getting promoted and
calling Spock human and
giving McCoy a handjob and
hitting people in make-up and
and
and
chasing Idris Elba around an exploding space station before he can activate the giant fans to suck the particles out of the solar system which won’t affect Earth but might cause a bit of smog on the Klingon colony nearby, which could lead to cancer late in life for any Klingons who aren’t killed in battle or mining accidents or
CUT TO – PRISONER OF IDRIS ELBA CAMP
Idris Elba sits in a chair, reading scripts for better films, having just enough makeup slapped on to make his name in the credits irrelevant.
F Murray Abraham is sitting next to him, muttering ‘I told you so.’
‘Relax, F, I’m only doing it for my kids.’
But F can’t relax because he was Salieri once and Salieri wouldn’t have relaxed, he would’ve put on a mask and felt at least five different things in the same scene before getting on his horse and riding to Tom Hulce’s house and forcing Tom Hulce to put on the costume again, and if he said no, if that little fucker said no, he’d…
‘Look, you’re treading on my dreams, F
so fuck off’
says Idris Elba, now in character and ready to give his speech to Kirk about the giant fans and the particle sucking and how inefficient Klingon social welfare is and it isn’t his fault, he has to do this, it’s the only plot they could think of that has an endgame, and there’s no way they can let this thing run any further than one movie, that wouldn’t make sense
so that’s what I want to say, Kirk, okay
push the frontier and the frontier pushes back
yeah I said frontier
I’ve been studying your language and your history for years
JUMP CUT – THE PAST
Idris Elba in a huge library, looking at a book, surrounding by other books, repeating the phrase ‘the hotel is opposite the bank’ over and over.
JUMP CUT – NOW, IDRIS IN DRAG
Believe it,
for years my friend, so I know everything about you and
I’m using your own words
cos all aliens fret over what the humans are doing
not their own culture
or their own values
it’s all about you, I don’t know why
maybe cos your TV shows were too damn good in the late 90’s
maybe it’s cos of Tony Soprano
and Star Wars
I don’t know
man
sorry, I shouldn’t have said that
the other ‘star’ show, I mean
it’s not the same thing
the science don’t make sense, aliens have no definable culture etc etc
but yeah
I’m representing the frontier
I’m pushing back
via a POW camp and
yeah
stop exploring our space, taking our oil, building English centres
You’re a twat
I hate you
now go mingle with the other POWs while I
bury F Murray Abraham
behind my trailer
you got a shovel?
CUT TO – MONTAGE
Kirk and Spock walking around the POW camp, plotting a way out, fighting aggressive aliens, nodding at the rest of the crew, Kirk growling at the spray painted alien woman, drawing lines in the sand, pointing at rocks, Kirk fighting the spray-painted woman, talking to the spray-painted woman, drinking with the spray-painted woman, fucking the spray-painted woman behind the rocks, McCoy arguing with Spock, McCoy fucking Spock, Spock fucking Uhura, Uhura fisting Spock, Sulu fisting Kirk, Scotty reading a book, Chekov saying montages are a Russian thing and being correct for once, Kirk tied up by the other aliens, Kirk standing on a rock on trial for the rape of the spray painted alien woman, it was consensual, consensual, I swear, one of the aliens using a little rock as a hammer, Kirk locked in a cage with a sign around his neck that says ‘rapist’, Spock creeping up on the guards, neck-pinching them, breaking Kirk out, running behind some rocks, saying it’s okay, they’re clear, McCoy joining them, Kirk, McCoy and Spock fucking each other behind the rocks, McCoy calling himself an escalator, the three of them smoking, Kirk and Spock sitting on rocks, Kirk and Spock plotting a way out of this mess, the prisoners sitting in a circle watching Caligula, Kirk walking into the circle and not apologising, Kirk saying he’s the only way out of this thing, the Spray painted woman insisting on justice, Kirk challenging justice, Spray painted alien woman saying she’s gay so it wasn’t consensual, Spock pushing her off a cliff, Spock saying it’s for the greater good, the female members of the camp staring in silence, Spock pushing a few more women off the cliff, the female members of the camp staring in terrified silence, Spock dragging another woman to the edge of the cliff, Kirk telling him to stop, this is not justice, Spock reluctantly agreeing, McCoy slapping them both on the shoulder and saying, good men, behind the rocks, five minutes, Kirk and Spock laughing, Kirk and Spock and McCoy smoking cigarettes behind the rocks, the three of them singing Viking songs, Sulu and Uhura and Chekov approaching them and saying, guys, we’re not comfortable with the morality of this film, Kirk telling them to trust him, Sulu shrugging, Uhura glaring, Chekov saying that trust is a Russian thing and if they don’t do it then they’ll be stuck in this montage forever, so let’s forget about Kirk raping people and Spock pushing women off a cliff cos all that shit will reset at the end of the film so basically it never happened and if it did happen then it happened for a reason and if it didn’t happen for a reason then we can say we’re morally complex and if people still don’t like it then they can go fuck themselves.
The Montage ends
CUT TO –
Kirk and Spock walk around the camp and nod at whoever’s left after their rampage. They see a female in a Captain’s uniform.
What’s your name, lady?’ asks Kirk.
‘Janeway.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get out of here, Janeway?’
Janeway nods and stares at the camera. ‘I’ve been in bigger holes.’
‘For example?’
‘Borg. Little guy from Seinfeld. Head chef dating a two year old alien girl.’
Kirk walks on and meets a guy with no hair called Sisko.
‘Hey man, I really don’t know if we’re gonna get out of this…’
Sisko stares at the camera and says, slowly, ‘you’ve gotta have faith.’
‘Faith in what?’
‘I don’t know. Wormhole spirits. Picard’s over there.’
Kirk walks to Picard and asks him if they should just let Idris Elba turn on his big particle fans and see what happens.
‘When I was a schoolboy, there was something I was taught. Everything is linked. When the first link is broken, we’re all damaged. When we’re all damaged, it’s really bad. When it’s really bad, it means the chain is broken. Who broke the chain? I don’t know. F Murray Abraham? Perhaps. No one’s seen him in days. Where are we again? Is Ian here?’
Kirk walks away and sees Scott Bakula sitting on his own in a corner…or near a rock, there are no corners, not really…he walks up to him and says, Vulcan jumpsuit woman, where is she?
‘Erotic thrillers.’
‘Titles.’
‘Fatal lust. Passion Cop. Fuck City.’
‘Spock…’
‘Got ’em, Jim.’
CUT TO –
The writing room door is coming off its hinges as Idris Elba bangs it down with a big branch stolen from a nearby playground and the writers are huddling together under the desk with the crayons on and they’re trying to stay positive, trying to paint things in a flowery way, but it’s tough cos they’ve grown up in safe places and no one’s ever broken a door before
not even their cousins who grew up in Oakland
but this Elba guy
he was nuts and
his accent was weird and
for some reason he
wasn’t buying this giant particle fan storyline they’d stolen
from one of the other Trek films
or the POW camp thing
probably cos it made no real sense
why didn’t he just kill them
instead of filming them fuck each other and push women
off a cliff?
The door gave way and Idris Elba strode in asking them 1] if they’d found a way to cut down the make-up time yet and 2] why they hated women
and one of the writers remembers the scene from
a Seth Green movie where Seth had somehow found the courage to stand up to the guys pointing guns at him and
keeping the image of Seth Green in his head he
stands up and jabs a finger into Idris Elba’s chest and says
man
you’re right
they hate women
I tried to stop the cliff scene but
they hate women
so does Seth Green
have you seen Idle Hands
I have five kids to feed
look into your heart
we’ll give you a pay rise
We’ll…
CUT TO –
Idris Elba puts the shovel down and lights a cigarette.
A man in a suit appears from behind Elba’s trailer and asks how the film is going and if the particle fan scene has been shot yet and Idris Elba says nothing, just smokes the cigarette and stares at the grave he’s dug.
‘Err…Idris?’ The man in the suit looks at the shovel. ‘Are you okay?
Idris finishes his cigarette and stubs it out on the dirt.
‘Star Trek 4…at least 50% female writing team…got it?’
‘Huh?’
‘And find a role for my friend.’
‘Err…’
‘He’s an actor too.’
‘I don’t…’
‘Iranian.’
‘Shit.’
CUT TO –
Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew have escaped the camp and are waiting for the shuttle bus to come and take them to Idris Elba’s space station so Kirk can shoot him 16 times and say, it’s fine, I feared for my life, he was still moving after 15, I’m the captain, you can’t touch me, but the shuttle bus isn’t coming and the crew is starting to get restless as they haven’t done anything for twelve minutes and the camera guy hasn’t said cut and the scene is this close to becoming a painting and no one wants to watch sci fi paintings, but
what can they do
the shuttle bus isn’t there
and without a bus they can’t move anywhere
and no
the enterprise is just a prop
it doesn’t actually move
so if the shuttle bus doesn’t come soon then they’ll just have to do what they do best
which is general misogyny and
violence and
fucking behind the rocks
‘Hey Captain,’ says Uhura, throwing a pebble at Chekov’s head, ‘how did you beat the Kobimaru test?’
‘The what?’
‘The Kobimaru test…’
‘Oh that.’
‘Yeah, how did you beat it?’
‘No idea.’ Kirk looks at the man in glasses sitting behind him, holding a script with the words ‘Prometheus 2’ written on it. ‘Damon?’
‘Don’t know, don’t care.’
‘There’s your answer, kids.’ Kirk looks around. ‘Hey, where did that spray-painted bint get to?’
‘God,’ says Uhura, turning to Sulu. ‘This movie’s disgusting.’
‘Yup.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘Not really. No one even knows I’m here.’
‘Chekov?’
‘Three months filming, four lines.’
‘Don’t worry,’ says Kirk, leaning over and stroking her shoulder. ‘When the shuttle bus gets here we can go in the back, put a curtain up and…’
‘God…’
‘You too Chekov.’
‘I hate rocks,’ says McCoy, looking at rocks.
The whole lot of them go back to sitting and waiting and sweating. Spock checks under his armpits and mumbles something.
Minutes pass.
There’s a whistling sound.
It gets louder and louder
and louder
until
Alice Eve’s body drops onto the ground in front of them
followed by Winona Ryder’s
both bloodless
and naked.
‘Mummy,’ says Spock, blank as a Romanian.
CUT TO –
Michael Dorn sits with his mobile phone on the table in front of him, surrounded by an apartment that is as bland as it is rectangular, mumbling almost inaudibly, ‘they’re gonna call, they’re gonna call, they’re gonna call…’
Outside it’s raining.