Going backwards, timidly

Rating: 4/10 (8 September 2009)

I was never too much into 'Star Trek', the famous 1960s sci-fi television series characterised, with hindsight, by its liberal optimism. These days, the name is a brand that has been applied to various additional series and countless movies, the latest of which purports to tell us the story of the early days of the original series' characters. And it starts charmlessly, with product placement interspersing an utterly generic story – while the actors chosen to play the roles look the parts, the tale of wannabe captain James T. Kirk could have come from any movie about a young hotshot in any context. There's a silly time-travel plot as well that I couldn't make much of. Things get a little better when Leonard Nimoy (who originally played Spock, the series' defining character) turns up in a cameo, and Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty the engineer, at least attacks the role with gusto. But if you're not a fan already, it's hard to imagine you'll find much to appeal to you in a film that does what you might have expected it too, but absolutely nothing more.