765874 - Unification

 download, 765874 - Unification (2024) film

Whatever it was I just watched, it had more power than anything Trek has done in the last fifteen years! But I don't now what I just watched - was this a proof of concept for a CGI Kirk and Spock? A top of the range expensive fan film? A vanity project for Shatner? I really have no idea, I just saw the news story on TrekMovie.com and thought it looked interesting. The only real disappointment is that it isn't a genuine Trek production! And maybe the fact it gets a little too fan-fiction in bringing back these various characters (including a surprise one-episode wonder from 'DSC' in Yor, the time travelling Starfleet officer who I always thought looked like an Yridian). It's also clear that this is 'fake' in the way that characters don't quite move one hundred percent realistically, and the shots from a distance have an unreality about them. It also suggests they can't yet have these CG recreations speak as no one says anything, not even a croaked, "Jim..." But as a proof of concept it was amazing to see James T. Kirk, and in three different stages of his life. Not only that, but to bring back Robin Curtis as Saavik was amazing, although I didn't understand who the hooded Vulcan with her was meant to be (her son?). I thought at first it was meant to be Spock and I was slightly put off by his emotional demeanour (typical of modern depictions of Vulcans, it has to be said!), and that he didn't actually look like Spock. But now I'm not so sure as Kirk ends the short with a visit to the bedside of the presumably dying Spock, again presumably in the Kelvin Timeline.

It was simply magnificent: touching, with a grandeur and majestic quality befitting of bringing back two legends one last time. I know 'Picard' Season 3 gave us the additional canon that Kirk's body had been retrieved from Veridian III, and there did seem some connection to that here when 'Yeoman Colt' (how is she alive and still young? So many questions...), is shown with modern Starfleet displays like that in 'Picard,' but the mechanics of it all and getting us to this point didn't seem to matter as it had that mystical, heavenly impression sometimes seen in 'TOS' films like 'Star Trek III' and 'Star Trek V.' I was very impressed, although at the same time, as much as I'd love this to have been part of a new Trek film, I also don't like the idea of artificial recreations (or really any recreations, recasting included), to continue their story - I feel they should be left to lie in peace, especially Kirk and Spock, who have both died in Trek. But I can't argue with the quality on display here, even Michael Giacchino's music, which I don't always appreciate, was suitably sensitive rather than over the top bombast, and this was a triumph! I'm not sure what the title refers to, I assumed it was a future Stardate, and obviously the Unification is that between two old friends separated by death, and about to be separated again. Beautiful.

*****