Star Trek as the bold, exciting and culturally relevant form of entertainment that it could once claim to be.

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2009)

Star Trek; it goes without saying that even the slightest mumble of its title is sure to evoke multitudes of images concocted into the mind of anyone with the slightest interest in popular culture. As a form of entertainment, art and cult-culture obsession for fans all over the world, the franchise as it stands represents many things and stands as a modern-day phenomenon not just for the stereotypical "nerds" usually associated with the series, but to casual fans of TV and movies in general. With so many instalments inherent to the canon of Trek's universe however, the task of building a brand new feature set to welcome in newcomers as well as serve to the long-time admirers, is a task that eventually killed off what was once a dominant feature on household television sets for the best part of two decades.
For Star Trek, the adage that familiarity breeds contempt eventually began to ring louder than captain Jean Luc Picard's monologues and the ho-humming of the tired Enterprise and its tepid crew. The stories and settings were the same old hogwash recycled and rebranded—there was a lack of imaginative adventure, and a certain amount of the magic that propelled the original series into the culturally significant icon that it had become, had all but died. So it is with the dawning of a new age of the franchise—after a brief four year absence from screens large and small—that those central ideas inherent to the soul of Star Trek and its ability to entertain whilst maintaining a culturally relevant stance that is both progressive and deeply rooted in humanity; that those ideas must be firmly established in a movie that also walks the often dauntingly fine line between polarising esoteric fan-pandering and daring, new and refreshing up-hauling.
And yet, faced with a task that—like Spock's infallibly complex algorithms—is more or less designed without hope of a one-hundred-percent positive outcome, writers Orci and Kurtzman actually pull it off. Sure, the entire premise of the feature is based upon the fact that all history as has been documented by the TV shows is now negated because of time-travel complications and paradoxes which makes the entire procedure one that can be appreciated "as is" for both new and old fans alike—but the delicacy and amount of detail that is packed in amongst the loosely connected timelines if formidable and works as a singular entity in itself. The result is a time-travel science-fiction story with Romulans and other assorted deformed-forehead aliens that doesn't feel like one, and for all the right reasons.
Even with paradoxes, multiple realities and distorted timelines however, some things never change. Thankfully, one of these constants resides within the realm of character for Star Trek which sets about building upon established character traits and relationships known for forty years without succumbing to mere parody. For all intents and purposes, Star Trek as it is portrayed here is essentially a story built as a testament to the legacy of esteemed rebel and starship captain James T. Kirk played by a young, energetic and charismatic Chris Pine. The character is defined here with shades of his former self kept in check consistently with a new-found sense of renegade rebellion and an unflinching, steel-fisted approach to any embodiment of authority. Pine does well to avoid making Kirk a caricature of William Shatner's interpretation from the sixties without diverting away from the same sense of charisma, charm and initiative integral to his rather iconic screen-presence.
If Star Trek gets its fast-paced sense of power and hard-assed action from Kirk however, it is somewhat ironic then that much of the movie's heart comes from Spock, the pointy-eared, "heartless" Vulcan. Conflicted by his Vulcan and Human ancestry which clash at every opportunity between logic and emotion, Spock provides the feature with its most focused source of internal struggle infamously depicted in a few of the TV series' episodes and previous movies. It is this dynamic, coupled with a surprising but perfectly restrained, eloquent and fitting romance subplot that propels Spock beyond Kirk's straight-to-the-point image into a persona that is engulfed by multi-layered moral and interpersonal complexities resulting from emotional confliction.
When all the space-dust has settled however—when the last photons are fired, characters are dealt their hands and lives are altered forever, the overwhelming feeling left in Star Trek's wake is one of hope. Ask any fan from the sixties to the naughties and they will more or likely sum up their love for Star Trek in all its bloated entirety as such; hope for the future. While Abrams' vision here at times tends to go off on darker angles that contradict the safe-play nature of Gene Roddenberry's original, such key themes as hope for a brighter future and a better humanity along tow with an overwhelmingly abundant mass of characterisation and compelling drama allows Star Trek to be Star Trek without feeling as tired as it did just half a decade ago. For some viewers, the now infamous "Space, the Final Frontier" monologue that brings this instalment of Star Trek to a close will function as a device for relief that somehow, somewhere there remains a bridge to their beloved Star Trek of yesteryear. Yet for others, this iconic refrain will be given new light when spoken by Leonard Nimoy as the Enterprise readies itself for new worlds and new civilisations—for many it will signal the return of Star Trek as the bold, exciting and culturally relevant form of entertainment that it could once claim to be. Indeed, the Enterprise and its crew are back, and while they may be venturing into dauntingly unexplored territory for the second time—it's been a long time since that closing line rang as true and as resonating as it does today: "To boldly go, where no one has gone before."

An edited to 1000 words review by Jamie Robert Ward. For the full review, visit http://www.invocus.net