JJ Abrams may not be willing to let Star Trek fans see any of them, but he’s confirmed to MTV that his Trek movie will indeed have gadgets.
Producer Bryan Burk says,
“there’s all the gadgets you could want. No replicators, since they originated in Next Generation.”
That is of course, completely wrong. They weren’t called “replicators” until Star Trek: The Next Generation but similar devices, sort of generic food slots, appeared in the original Trek series. Memorably, in the episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” they accidentally dispensed a coffee cup full of pink, purring fuzz. There are references to a similar device in Star Trek: Enterprise. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. Curse of the Trek nerd.
In general though, I’m not sure they should really tout all the cool devices they’ll have. An over-obsession with gadgets and technology played a big part in ruining the more recent Trek incarnations like Voyager and Enterprise. Luckily, JJ Abrams seems to have it all in the proper perspective. He says,
“It’s one thing in ‘Star Trek’ to get all excited and freak out about communicators, but to them, it’s like it’s the new iPhone, these are just the tool they’re using.”
That doesn’t mean they’ve taken the task of portraying iconic Star Trek imagery lightly. Abrams says they discussed it endlessly, asking questions like:
“If you do the bridge of the Enterprise, what does it look like? Does Uhura has the piece in her, or does she not? And if she does, what does it look like? If they have tricorders, what do they look like? Phasers, how do you go from stun to kill, and does anything happen? What does the whole fleet look like? I’m telling you, every day, we were figuring this out, how do we take what we know and love and ‘Star Trek’ and apply it to a modern audience.”
