Over the weekend I was discussing two recent films written (in part) by Damon Lindelof, Prometheus and Star Trek Into Darkness, and the weakness both flicks share: an excess of fan service. Mr. Plinkett—the Red Letter Media auteur who so famously and ably deconstructed the many plot problems with the Star Wars prequels—noticed the same problem with Star Trek Into Darkness. He catalogued the problems in a NSFWish video I'm putting below the jump.
I think Plinkett is more or less right here (I don't think the "evil admiral" trope is so much "fan service" or a reference to previous Trek products as it is "lazy, unimaginative screenwriting," but that's a quibble). Letting the writers off the hook strikes me as a mistake, however. Especially since one of them, Lindelof, was involved in another high-profile prequel-sequel-thingamajig that suffered similar problems.
Prometheus, which Lindelof cowrote, shared many of the issues Star Trek Into Darkness experienced. STID crammed a bunch of references to previous Star Trek films/episodes into this film—Kahn! Tribbles! Nurse Chapel (again!)!—in a way that didn't really make any sense. Similarly, Prometheus crammed in a bunch of references to Alien—Weyland-Yutani! Evil Androids! Xenomorphs!—that didn't really need to be there. I called Prometheus a "bait and switch" last year, which feels more or less right: we were promised an Alien prequel and instead given a film that superficially referenced the Alien series without actually explaining anything. If anything, it horribly muddled the timeline of the original series. A reference is not the same thing as an idea.
Focusing our scorn on Lindelof allows the real culprit to escape, however. Really, we fanboys only have ourselves to blame. We demand cultural products that feel new even though they're sloppy retreads. We delight in catching subtle hints—"Ooh, Carol Marcus, I remember her!"—more than we enjoy puzzling out brand new experiences. As a result, our creative class feeds us the same dreck over and over again: "Ugh, fine, here is your acid-blooded alien."
Sequels and spinoffs and prequels proliferate because new ideas are hard to sell to the masses. Before we get worked up at JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof, maybe we should remember they aren't working in a vacuum.