blubeetle3 - 06 December 2012 01:55 PM
The villian in the new “J.J. Trek” movie?
GARTH. OF. IZAR.
...Or maybe not. 
You know, I think that could actually be a great idea—I’d pass out from shock if that’s what they did—but I think it could work. “Whom Gods Destroy” is not a very good episode, but I think that’s because it was so badly directed. Stylistically, it was approached almost as if it were a musical comedy instead of a tense “trapped in the asylum when the inmates take charge” horror/adventure plot. The colors were all too bright. The melodramatic moments were allowed to take on near-operatic dimensions. Garth’s madness, instead of being menacing, was allowed to teeter constantly on the edge of ridiculousness—and sometimes fall right in—for no reason that furthered the plot or intensified the drama.
Garth had been everything Kirk is—the finest cadet, the best Captain, a model for all other officers in Star Fleet. He was supposed to have been brilliant and charismatic. He seems to have had all the strengths that made Kirk what he is and yet he loses everything including his sanity. In the episode, we never get a good answer to the question Kirk and Spock ask him, “What went wrong?” I think you could do a whole, very action-packed movie (since this is a new continuity) where Kirk gets to watch whatever it is that goes wrong with Garth as it unfolds. A brilliant Star Fleet captain who everyone has idolized since he was a cadet goes rogue and turns against the Federation. He’s been given the power by well-meaning aliens to assume the identity of anyone he chooses. He already knows exactly how Star Fleet will come after him. Kirk has to figure out how to destroy his idol who’s constantly two steps ahead of him and has the potentially gut-wrenchingly dramatic ability to turn into anyone Kirk cares about or even impersonate Kirk himself.
Then after that, they could make another movie that would be “Whom Gods Destroy” done right—where the asylum becomes this very horrifying place where Kirk is purposefully lured after Garth manages to outwit his keepers. Kirk is trapped there and up against this madman bent of vengeance who is a distorted mirror of everything Kirk hoped to be, is now, and secretly fears that he might become. A real psychological thriller with a touch of every “trapped in the insane asylum” video game that’s ever scared the crap out of you…And it would have a sexy, homicidally insane Orion dancing girl. I don’t think they’ll ever do it…. but it could be good.
