Treknobabble is a continuing series of columns written by uber-Trekkie Reed Farrington in anticipation of the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

Who is Christopher Pine? I thought I would answer that question by doing some Internet detective work. Maybe I can make an educated guess as to how well I think Mr. Pine will do in capturing the essence of Captain Kirk. (Oh, in case you didn’t know, he’s the actor portraying Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie coming out next summer.)

His father, Robert Pine, was a guest star on a first season episode of Enterprise and a third season episode of Star Trek: Voyager. And guess what? His father was in a 1973 movie, Incident on a Dark Street, with William Shatner! Someone should really update IMDb with a photo of Robert Pine. Oh, his dad has his own web page. I never made the connection before, but I actually know who Robert Pine is. He’s a character actor who’s been acting for decades and he’s still getting roles. And his son does look like him! And if heredity works as it should and Christopher Pine is back in Star Trek sequels, then he’ll be wearing a toupee like Shatner wears!

His mom, Gwynne Gilford, is also an actress, and I’m guessing that his parents met doing the television series CHiPs.

His sister, Katherine, did some acting in the late 90’s, one of the gigs being coincidentally, CHiPs ’99.

Holy crap! His uncle, Phillip Pine, played Col. Green in the original series Star Trek episode The Savage Curtain! (That’s the episode with Abraham Lincoln.) Hollywood is so incestuous! Phillip Pine also guest starred on Shatner’s mid-70’s series Barbary Coast. (I’m still waiting for Barbary Coast to come out on DVD.)

He has blue eyes. Can’t find what color Shatner’s eyes are. I don’t think they’re blue. To preserve Star Trek continuity, Chris Pine had better be wearing contact lenses to match Shatner’s eye color! (I’m kidding.) He’s also near-sighted. Rather than dealing with having his eyes dry out and turn red wearing contact lenses, his character in The Princess Diaries 2 wore glasses. I suspect with a budget of 200 million, the Star Trek producers found a way to make sure that Chris’ contact lenses and eyes were kept moist.

I think Chris Pine looks more like Matt Damon than Shatner. That’s funny because Damon’s name was bandied about originally to star as Kirk.

He had been reading meditation books. He was doing some boxing and weight training prior to signing up for Star Trek. I imagine young Kirk would be participating in these activities.

In an interview for The Princess Diaries 2 in which Chris rides a horse, he admitted that he was not good at horseback riding at all. Shatner is an excellent horseman and this was taken advantage of in Star Trek: Generations. Recall the scene where Kirk sidesteps his horse to get closer to Picard. I’m guessing we won’t see horses in the new Star Trek movie.

Chris Pine’s filmography is rather sparse. He has no television credits listed. Oh, wait, he has guest starred on Six Feet Under and CSI:Miami and a bunch of other series. I don’t think I’ve seen him act in anything. Wait, he guest starred on American Dreams. I think I saw every episode of that, so I must have seen him. Non-starring new faces rarely make an impact on me. I guess the most notable movie he has done is Smokin’ Aces, but I don’t know how much screen time he has or how much dialogue he delivers, so I don’t know if the movie is worth renting to evaluate his acting chops.

Two people at UGO have saved me the trouble of going through Chris’ previous acting performances. (They’ve also saved me the embarrassment of renting Just My Luck with Lindsay Lohan and The Princess Diaries 2 with Anne Hathaway.) They set up a Chris Pine Festival for themselves to evaluate if Chris is Kirk-Worthy, and they concluded with a split-decision. I recommend you go to their site to see their opinions and specific comments for each movie. Keep in mind that I have no idea of their reliability when it comes to evaluating acting skills. But it can’t be any worse than mine.

Chris obtained a degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley, so his career path to become an actor seems reasonable. And he did study acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and at the University of Leeds in the UK.

It appears Chris has done some stagework like Shatner and started acting with theatre roles. But I don’t know what roles he has played. For all I know, his most demanding role could have been playing Shrub #2 in Monty Python’s Spamalot.

During an interview at the Sundance Festival in January of 2008, Chris said, “I think the biggest mistake I could ever do would be to try to re-create what Mr. Shatner did.” So I’m almost sure Chris Pine will not be imitating the Shatnerian pregnant pauses in his line delivery to avoid his performance from becoming a parody. Shatner has said, and I would tend to believe this (although Shatner does lie quite a bit for understandable entertainment reasons), that this style of line delivery developed as a result of trying to remember his lines while speaking. I suppose that a person could develop this way of speaking with age, so we shouldn’t let the lack of pregnant pauses in Chris Pine’s performance bother us.

When asked by IGN UK in March 2008 about who his inspiration was for Kirk, Pine answered, “I’ve always loved that quality about (Han Solo) in Star Wars, this sense of absolute grumpy manner: the accidental hero. Not to say that I modeled my version of James T Kirk on anything in particular but I think I definitely have wanted to bring that kind of Harrison Ford humour to Kirk.” Now for those who think Han Solo is the wrong role model, I would remind you that not much is known about young Kirk that is canon. We know he was a bookworm at Starfleet Academy, so the idea of young Kirk being a reluctant hero is not without merit. There have been non-canon books written about young Kirk and they have suggested that Kirk was not always the hero-type we see in the Original Series. I wonder if Chris is aware of the humour Shatner brought to Kirk.

With principal photography over, I would have expected some comments about the acting from the cast and crew if there was anything worth commenting on. I wouldn’t expect a gag order to prevent acting critiques from leaking. But when the publicity bandwagon starts rolling, I suspect everyone will be praising the actors whether they deserve the praise or not.

I remember back in the early 80’s when talk of a new Star Trek television series resulted in the majority of Internet commentators saying that recasting the roles of Kirk and company would be a disaster, and that it was best to create brand new characters. History has shown that Roddenberry heeded this advice and created The Next Generation with eventual great success. Has enough time passed that people are now comfortable with the idea of different actors portraying Kirk and company? Perhaps the age of the surviving original actors has enabled people to accept that we can never have the original actors in an adventure by themselves again.

Personally, I think the characters of Kirk and company are archetypal, and that actors in every generation should be able to attempt these roles. With Spock, I would think the notion of playing a being who hides his emotions would be a challenging acting exercise. And though one might think playing Kirk would seem to be a one-dimensional portrayal of a hero, Kirk has added complexity that should not be overlooked. The responsibility in determining the life and death of his crewmembers has always been a burden that Kirk has not carried lightly. Kirk loves women, but he is married to the Enterprise. He does not shy away from a fight, but his boldness is tempered by compassion. But these characteristics may not be fully formed in young Kirk.

So what do I make of Chris Pine? Well, I lied in my opening paragraph. I never intended to make a preliminary judgement. I think everyone should be given a chance at whatever task they wish, regardless of past experience. Besides, J.J. Abrams does have an eye for talent. It doesn’t appear that Chris is a Trekkie, but I’m not going to hold that against him.