It’s the future Jim, but not as we know it…..

And to be honest, that’s just what Star Trek needed. Its easy to get complacent, to take Star Trek for granted. 5 separate series, 28 seasons, some 500 episodes… did you know that if you wanted to watch it all, it’d take you 28 days? Without Sleep? After all, with that sort of overload, its difficult to gear up enthusiasm for more of it. 

And the last 20 years, it seems like it had just been a conveyor belt. An hour of new Star Trek every week, at least. Some of it has been exemplary – and there’s a good few there - but most of it technobabble filled drivel about the cracks in the event horizons of  black hole, dilthium crystals, and repolarizing the warp core ; designed only to fill the gap between ad breaks and fill up schedules.

For every “Chain of Command” or “Best of Both Worlds”, there’s always been a “Threshold” or a j"Tuvix" ust around the corner. For every “Wrath of Kahn”, there’s always been a “Nemesis”. And never was a film ever so aptly named – for the film of the same name was the Nemesis that killed the franchise. The Golden goose had been sucked dry.

What was needed was a rethink. A Restart. To look at Star trek anew and make it anew. And that’s what JJ Abrahams has done here, with tremendous success.And first off, what you need to know is that everything – everything you already know about Star Trek is open to change. Things are not what they used to be.

The events long after the last film Star Trek: Nemesis have seen their adversarial, ambitious enemies the Romulans make peace with the federation, and the peace envoy Ambassador Spock is charged with helping save the planet Romulus from destruction.

But when disaster strikes, it sets in place a chain of events that sees an a sinister Romulan called Nero, blinded by fury and grief, out to avenge the loss of everything he held dear, no matter the cost, and to hell with consequences. Billions may die, and it would never be enough to satiate hisincandescent rage.

Some people just want to see the whole world burn. And when Nero is thrown back a century and a half in time by a black hole, it changes everything we already know. It’s the future Jim, but not as we know it… its now been changed irrevocably by the events of Nero in our current timeline throwing up a whole new, changed universe ; and he, when pitted against a technologically inferior enemy, finds out that the Federation are no match.

But he hadn’t counted on the usual crew of Captain Kirk, the half human Spock, and the jaded Dr. McCoy, here thrust unexpectadly into their first mission fresh out of training school, with the whole galaxy at stake.

So the usual mix of time travel, meglomaniac villains and spaceships then? Oh, not at all. Its much more than that. It’s the best blockbuster of the summer, the best since Iron Man – and make no bones about it. Fun rather than funny, serious without being brooding, complex without being baffling, thrilling without being  overkill. It’s a perfect summer blockbuster, only its Star Trek, Jim.It moves quick and fast, almost too quick in fact – these characters spend so much of their time responding to calamity, you almost never get to know them.

The casting is first rate, where Chris Pine makes an excellent Kirk – cocky, arrogant, self assured and risktaking, and Zachary Quinto IS Spock. But not the wizened, mature Spock of later years, but an impeteous, brash Spock battling his human emotions and often failing. Particualr praise must lie with the sadly underused Karl Urban here, who nails not just Dr. MccCoy but DeForest kelly also in a note perfect performance. However, Simon Pegg may be brilliant as Scotty, but his accent is more Ewan Bremners drawl – Anton Yelchkin as Chekov is terribly miscast, and Ben Cross as Sarek is devoid of the subtlelty and doubt that was brilliant portreayed by mark Lenard in the originals – instead replaced with a blank featureless logic that borders on non existant. Special note must also go the the expansive and impressive effects work too, which heightens the film.

So it is a success? Yes. It is Star Trek? Hell, yes. But its not the Star Trek we know. Is it perfect? Far from it. The “Red Matter” mcguffin is a illogical plot device which suspends disbelief, and the coincidences are a little bit convienient on occasion. And there’s at least one sequence – with the Cloverfield Monster – which is shoehorned in and serves no purpose.

Despite all the tiny little injokes which appeal to the fans and make them howl with laughter and recognition, it can’t just be a fanboy film.There’s many a moment that jars with the kind of person who goes to conventions and speaks Klingon, and even with the casual fan ….but you can’t serve those people alone. You have to serve everyone. And this is the first Star Trek film that breaks out of geekdom and is for everyone. As radical reinventions go, it’s a complete success. It’s the Casino Royale of  Trek – a restart and a rebuilding of a franchise from scratch.

It’s a cliché but its true - Star Trek will live long and prosper. Space is the final frontier, once again…

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!