Rebooting a sci-fi classic

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2011)

Having first watched 'Star Trek' as a child in the early seventies then watching the films and various new series I was unsure about having a different cast play the original characters after all William Shatner IS James T. Kirk! This film manages to get around that by being set before he is made captain of the Enterprise... in fact the opening scene takes place just before he is born. In that opening scene is father sacrifices himself so that the crew of his ship, including his pregnant wife can escape after an attack by a giant Romulan ship. The Young James Kirk grows up to be a bit of a tearaway but is persuaded to join Star Fleet by Captain Pike. At the end of his time at Star Fleet Academy he is in trouble for cheating in a test but an incident on Vulcan means that everybody including the cadets must head there straight away. Once they arrive they find the rest of the fleet has been destroyed and Vulcan is under attack from the Romulans. Once they have finished there the Romulans set off towards their next target: Earth. Pike has been captured so it is up to Kirk, Spock and the other characters we know from the original series to prevent a catastrophic attack on Earth.
I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed this; I suspect this is because the cast don't seem to be trying to imitate the original cast too closely. There is also a lot more humour than I expected and also a few shocks... I certainly didn't expect to see the destruction of Vulcan or the tragic loss of somebody close to Spock. The story itself was pretty good and the use of time-travelling Romulans to create an alternate time line means that any future instalments in the franchise won't be bound by what we know happened from the original series. The cast did a decent job, especially Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock; the rest of the crew may have been there but it was essentially the story of how Kirk and Spock became close despite their very different personalities. The bad guys were suitably villainous even if they didn't look like most Romulans that we have seen before and the action and special effects were impressive enough to keep this viewer gripped. I started watching the as a sceptic but now look forward to seeing further adventures with this cast.