![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2013\/07\/startrekintodarkness-spacesuit.png\" "\\"startrekintodarkness-spacesuit\\"")
<\/a>It was two months ago today that Star Trek into Darkness<\/a><\/i> opened to the general public in Australia and other countries overseas, and this past weekend marked the first time that the film slipped out of the weekly top ten<\/a> at the North American box office. So now seems like as good a time as any to link to a few Star Trek<\/i>-themed things that weren\u2019t online yet when I last wrote about the film.<\/p>\nFirst, over at the Hogwarts Professor website, Elizabeth Baird Hardy has a really interesting post on the lack of literary allusions<\/a> in the J.J. Abrams films:<\/p>\n Though I enjoyed the film very much, I noticed that it was loaded with plenty of wonderful allusions to other pieces of the Star Trek universe, but somewhere along the way, had lost one of the most important features of that universe: its deft use of literary allusions. . . .<\/p>\n Since one of the main reasons I like Star Trek is its use of literature familiar to us in our own century, I was delighted to have the chance to explore the use of historical literature in Star Trek and History<\/a> (this is part of Wiley\u2019s Popular Culture and history series, which also includes Twilight and History<\/i> and Harry Potter and History<\/i>). In addition to noting that Shakespeare is more important than Einstein in the creation of this fictitious future, I really enjoyed analyzing the way in the which Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan<\/i> linked up the protagonist and antagonist with particular literary texts. While in the original series episode that introduced Kahn, \u201cSpace Seed,\u201d he quotes Milton\u2019s Satan and the famous declaration that it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven, in the film, the bitter, revenge-fueled Khan has traded Paradise Lost<\/i> for Moby Dick<\/i>; Admiral James T. Kirk receives a copy of A Tale of Two Cities<\/i> as a birthday gift from his friend Spock at the beginning of the film. These two great books dictate the entire arc of the film with quotations, plot elements, and the pivotal final choices of the main characters. . . .<\/p>\n I hope I am not letting the Tribble out of the bag to reveal that Star Trek into Darkness is a reboot-universe version of the events in Wrath of Khan. . . . While Kirk still loves his antiques, including a hi-fi system that he cranks up when he is entertaining ladies of questionable moral virtues and species, his book is gone. Unless I missed it (possible; those alien girlfriends pretty much steal the scene) I didn\u2019t even see a book under glass (like Picard\u2019s Shakespeare in his office) or on a shelf. Though the film is well done, entertaining, and usually satisfying, I am deeply troubled by the lack of literary allusions. While Kirk has kept his sass, swagger, and little black book, he has lost his tendency to quote literature, no longer telling Sulu to aim for the second star to the right and straight on \u2019til morning or asking for a tall ship and a star to steer her by. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is an excellent point \u2014 especially in light of the fact that the original Kirk was so studious that he was known, in his own Starfleet Academy days, as \u201ca stack of books with legs<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and it underscores yet another way in which the Abrams films have been found lacking when compared to previous versions of this franchise.<\/p>\n It also adds a new wrinkle to the complaint many Star Trek<\/i> fans have made, to the effect that Star Trek into Darkness<\/i> borrowed way too heavily from previous Star Trek<\/i> stories, and from one Star Trek<\/i> story in particular. For a typically thorough (and occasionally NSFW) example of this complaint, see the video below:<\/p>\n