A treat for the real fans

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2009)

This movie was non-stop action and you didn't have to be a fan to enjoy it. The most enjoyable parts for me were the nods to the fans. We get an Orion Slave Girl, classic McCoy one-liners, a view at young Spock's travails on Vulcan (the best stuff on that subject since the animated series) and we get Leonard Nimoy. The story wasn't all that impressive and we don't get any in-your-face "Wow man, that concept blows my mind" moments. The mind-blowing part is wondering how this same and yet different crew will handle all that is to come in this new universe.
The best nod to the fans for me, was making this a new universe. It means that everything you saw before isn't getting messed with. All those episodes you enjoyed? They happened, Ambassador Spock is proof. We've seen alternate realities in Star Trek before and we've also seen broken time-lines that needed to be fixed. Why this is an alternate reality rather than a broken time-line isn't clear, Spock could explain it, but it was clearly stated that this was an alternate reality. That means that this Kirk and the Kirk we knew could have separate dealings with the same mirror universe Kirk! Cool huh?