"Are you out of your Vulcan mind?"

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2010)

I can't tell you how many times I've mulled over various iterations of the above quote from the movie. I don't know if it's ever been used before, but I've never heard it and it was one of the genuinely fun moments of the picture for me.
With that out of the way, I have to say right out of the gate that time travel stories make my head hurt. Not that I can't follow them; that I can do just fine. It's just that later on, I start to think about all the ramifications of the story line I've just seen and it all starts to unravel. I've already read enough of other viewer's comments on this board to find fault with the whole concept of Prod Nero's (Eric Bana) revenge motive, so I won't go there. Suffice it to say that this 'prequel' to the Star Trek mythos might have been better served with an entirely different plot.
But since they went in that direction, I'm generally OK with it. The first half of the film is what got me excited, the whole back story about the origins of the characters and how they came together. The neat hook early on was when Captain Robau turned over the Enterprise during the initial attack to First Officer George Kirk, and one might have gotten the idea that it was James T; that was interesting. Seeing Kirk and Spock develop from their youth through Starfleet Academy was also cool, even if compacted for the sake of the film's run time. Where the film lost a little momentum for me was when young Kirk landed on the Ice Planet Hoth and the symbiosis with the Star Wars universe kicked into high gear. I can't really fault the film makers for taking advantage of the technology available today, but the connection was more than transparent. Once again, generally OK for the sake of a Trekkie reboot.
The disconnect for an old fart like myself, and perhaps a good deal more ST fans out there who were there at the beginning is how to reconcile today's advances in technology and story telling skill with the scope of the original series. I mean really, how do you expect Kirk, Spock and all the rest of the characters to boldly go where no man has gone before when they've already been there and done that. Granted, there were a lot of suspenseful TOS episodes that challenged your perceptions, but the Enterprise crew also wound up having trouble with Tribbles. So I guess you have to take it all in stride and not take it all too seriously or you can really twist yourself into a Laurentian quark.
So if they decide to take this prequel series on a new five year exploration to seek new life and new civilizations, I'll probably find myself along for the ride at some point. Say, wouldn't it be cool if the USS Enterprise explored an alternate reality that resulted in the creation of Gene Roddenberry? That would probably drive me right out of my Vulcan mind.