A long term StarTrek Fan's review

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2009)

I have been anticipating this film more than any other in the last year and a half. A film about Kirk, Spock and the rest during their academy days? This was mooted ages ago but instead we got Nemesis which while very well produced, was less than satisfactory. In fact it looked like that film almost "killed the franchise". That being the case, and the fact that J.J. Abrams was producer on Lost and Cloverfield made me a little uncertain as to what I'd see. I've been a fan of Trek ever since I watched it in the 60s, so I'm hard to please.
What makes or breaks a Star Trek film is the script, always - how it treats the characters, how it hangs together in the Star Trek universe both in background details and also in continuity. This is why The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home are overall good films, and The Final Frontier and Insurrection are not. The former seem to fit well in the Star Trek universe, the latter don't. This film however is well written, even if the plot does depend upon apparent chance and coincidence to a huge degree.
When they started making more than one series of Star Trek, there was a tradition of including a character from the previous series, or a recent film. They've done that in this too, and for me that helped make it "Trek". I also loved the inclusion of green women and Captain Pike, who were both in the pilot to the original series. :) A real test of whether or not Star Trek is a "modern mythology" like comics is whether or not it survives a change of actors. There was a long tradition in the TV series and films that original actors always played their characters whenever possible. In this film however (with one exception) that isn't the case. How much were the character of Kirk, Spock and McCoy derived from the character of Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley? It'd be tempting as a fan to believe that all of it was. The actors of the new film however do such a good job that the characters are still recognizable.
When McCoy says "I'm a Doctor, not a physicist!" (as you know he will) it's right rather than parody or pastiche. I found myself guessing how the characters would react or talk (based on my experience of the series and films) and most times I was right, so I'm satisfied with their portrayal in the film (even if Checkov was left with "the comm" more than once - gasp).
The problem that Abrams had of course was how to do a "prequel" without running into all manner of problems with continuity? Enterprise faced the same problem and the solution there was to introduce a "time war" in which future agents interfered in past events and thus changed the time line to various alternate presents. While that sounds like a cop-out it actually had many precedents in the TV shows, including the original series. Most of the time however, the result was use of the "reset button" in which the original time-line is restored. Well, without going into spoilers too much for this film, time travel is involved, but this time the "reset button" isn't used. What we end up with is actually predictable - pretty much the same line-up of the original series of characters in the original series (nurse Chapel is mentioned but not seen), but not exactly the same temperaments of history (which can be blamed on the root event of the film). And because this is an alternate time-line we're now in, future writers are free to write whatever adventures and developments they like.
This is a "reboot" rather than a "reset" button, and this is quite clear in the credits with one character having "prime" appended to their name. There's already a sequel in the works, though I could even believe a new TV series could be launched by the film too - otherwise why use the original theme at the end (a very nice touch)? Wishful thinking perhaps. :) So for me, a very long term fan, they got this film right, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it does make my complete collection of "Star Trek fact files" obsolete.