It’s unfortunate that the path of events in the past led to what could have been Star Trek’s demise, but the planets aligned properly and the franchise found its way into the hands of JJ Abrams and his crew to do what seemed to be impossible. This is the same team that put together Alias and Lost, and they were given the task of bringing Star Trek back to the big screen. This was not trivial, lots of care had to be taken to ensure that it appealed to many people, and didn’t piss off the old school fans. Did they do it? Read on.

I’ve been a Trek fan practically since I was born. It became a part of my life in such strange ways. It sparked my interest in astronomy, the Star Trek Technical Manual, while fictional (and I knew it), made me curious about technology. Seeing the list of ships in Starfleet gave a sense of scope to a show that, had it not had as good of a creative team behind it, could have fallen into obscurity. Over the years we saw Star Trek brought to life on the big screen, brought back to the small screen, and unfortunately had been put on life support. Bones couldn’t save it.

With time came the inability for the original cast to reprise their roles. Unfortunately, Deforest Kelly (McCoy) and James Doohan (Scotty) had passed away, Kirk’s character was killed in Generations, and so the chances of seeing the original crew with the original cast had become impossible. There was only one way to solve this problem which was to recast the characters.

It was a shame that Trek faded the way it did. It’s a show that had the elements of perfection inside it, but the ingredients alone can’t make it awesome, you need someone to take them and put them together properly. JJ’s team did just that.

Star Trek’s premise is one that  isn’t new to fans: vengeance and time travel. I was very dubious about this since to me, every time travel movie or episode can always be fixed by simply going back even further, and preventing what caused the changes in the timeline to occur. It was very difficult for me to finally come to terms with enjoying First Contact for that very reason since the Borg didn’t have to go to Earth to go back in time. Still, I was able to shove that logical part of my brain into the closet for a while and enjoy the film for what it was.

The writing team did a wonderful job of not screwing up the ‘canon’ of Star Trek by making this timeline their own. Star Trek, from now on, lives in this timeline. And yet, the timeline itself seems to bow to destiny as the bridge crew finds their way together again. This comes at great expense; the ripples of which will not be known unless the writing team decides to tell us how this affects the Federation in future installments.

The bottom line is that the movie is damn fun. There are so many familiarities to the original show, and it’s still written so that people watching the movie who have never seen a single episode will still enjoy these characters. Chris Pine does a great job as Kirk, but he’s not our Kirk, nor should he be. Pine takes the essence of the character and makes Kirk his own. Zachary Quinto does a phenomenal job as Spock. It was almost as if Quinto was destined to do this role. Karl Urban’s portrayal of McCoy is lovely. DeForest Kelly was so damn good as McCoy in the original show, you’d think that nobody could ever equal him, but Urban hits a bullseye in bringing the anxiety of McCoy’s character to life.

I was very happy with the rest of the supporting cast as well. Zoë Saldana finally takes Uhura’s character, who’s been mostly neglected over the years, and breathes life into her. Simon Pegg does a brilliant job as Scotty. He nails it as much as Urban nailed McCoy’s character.

Leonard Nimoy, the man who brought the original Spock to life, plays a big part in this film. He’s the glue between the original timeline and the new one. It was such a treat to see him on screen for what may be one last time. You never know if characters will ever come back in sequels. His character is a victim of bad timing, but he handles it with logic and finesse. His character comes full circle in this film.

The movie’s action is about on par with Star Trek II where most of the film focuses on character development. The opening to the film, showing the attack on the U.S.S. Kelvin was just beautifully done. Later, the film does a decent job of showing how Kirk and Spock deal with issues growing up, and eventually meet at Starfleet. Kirk’s decision to join Starfleet overnight seemed a little fast, as does his promotion later in the film. In fact, there are just a few too many things that are convenient. I’m one of those people that like an airtight script, and certain things can pull me out of a film fast since I’m paying close attention to it. Another thing that pulled me out of the film were the product placements which seemed out of place for a world 250 years into the future.

I was a bit upset that there was no special fanfare when they showed the Enterprise in spacedock the first time. We didn’t need a four-minute intro to it like in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but in this movie it was more like “there’s the Enterprise. Cool, huh?” Cut. Whoa, wait, this is the Enterprise! You have to give the old girl more respect than that.

Other minor gripes with the film were the constant and overdone lens flares in the shots. Even JJ said it was overdone, and it became distracting at times. I also had a hard time with the look of the engine room of the Enterprise. The engine room of the Enterprise from Star Trek: TMP and on seemed quite logical: a large plasma magnetic field conduit to which the warp engines were fed. This Titanic-type look really pulled me out of the movie because I couldn’t see how so many damn pipes could have worked in a ship that ran on matter/anti-matter.

Overall, I loved the movie. I think that the franchise is finally back on track. The movie killed at the box office opening weekend, showing that not only did it appeal to the hardcore fans, but brought in other people to see it. It’s a shame that we’ll have to wait two or three years for the next installment. In fact, it would be sweet to see Trek back on TV with this crew. The stigma of going to the big screen first is that now they have big screen salaries to pay everyone. Still, I hope the team learns from the mistakes of the past and doesn’t kill the franchise again.

Star Trek lost its way over the years, and now JJ Abrams and his crew are re-energizing the franchise for audiences both old and new.

If you’ve never seen an episode of Star Trek, or feel the need to brush up on your history, here’s a list of episodes I think would be useful.

“The Cage” / “The Menagerie” – “The Cage” was Star Trek’s original pilot which was deemed “too intellectual” by NBC. It is, in fact a decent story but has several dull spots. Spock behaves nothing like he does in later episodes. Pike is an OK captain, but lacks the swagger that James Kirk had. There’s no McCoy, no Scotty. The sets are rather dull compared to the rest of the series and the dialog is flat. “The Menagerie” is a two-part episode which takes footage from “The Cage” and uses them as historical flashbacks during a trial in which Spock is accused of mutiny when he hijack the Enterprise to take his former captain Pike, who is now critically injured, back to Talos which is currently under Federation quarrantine.

“Amok Time” – So far, we’ve known Vulcans to be “walking calculators”. What we don’t know is that every seven years they need to return to Vulcan to mate. Like salmon. It’s a great episode displaying the friendship between Kirk and Spock, and gives a lot of Spock’s personal backstory.

“Journey to Babel” – the Enterprise is transporting ambassadors from several systems to Babel to decide if Coridan should be admitted to the Federation. What we find out is that the Vulcan ambassador is Spock’s father Sarek who brought his wife Amanda with him on the trip. Another great Spock episode which would give some insight to Spock’s family for the upcoming movie.

“Space Seed” – the Enterprise comes across a DY-100 transport ship in the middle of nowhere, filled with exiled generically engineered “supermen” from Earth’s 1990′s. Their leader is Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban. This episode was the forebearer to “Star Trek II”, arguably the best Star Trek movie made, and one of the best science fiction movies.

“The Counter-Clock Incident” (animated) – Similar in plot to “Journey to Babel”, this episode shows that Robert April was the first captain of the Enterprise. Not required viewing, but interesting.

Other episodes worth viewing, but have little or no relevance to the movie itself:

“Where No Man Has Gone Before” (only tie-in to the film is a reference to Delta Vega)

“The Corbomite Maneuver”

“The City on the Edge of Forever”

“The Doomsday Machine”

“Balance of Terror”

“Mirror, Mirror”

“The Trouble with Tribbles”

“The Ultimate Computer”

“The Enterprise Incident”

“For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky” (good McCoy episode)

Movies

Star Trek II, III, and IV work as a trilogy, so it’s best to watch them together.

Star Trek web sites

Memory Alpha

Trekmovie.com

StarTrekMovie.com