It's only a movie.

Rating: 2/10 (12 March 2010)

Oh heck. Here we go: another review, with another opening disclaimer, to whit: I Am Not A Trekkie.
But (and it's a big but) I've been watching Star Trek off and on, small screen and large, for 40 years. Often it has entertained. Sometimes it has intrigued. And occasionally it has transcended both budget and genre with work amongst the most dazzlingly original ever to emerge from a TV or movie studio anywhere.
And then there's this movie.
It's slick, it's noisy, it's pretty much incoherent from beginning to end and it has as much to do with the provenance and traditions of Star Trek as it has to do with science fiction.
In other words: nothing at all.
For a couple of hours of passable entertainment value, it's OK though: the editing's good, the production values high, and both script and casting are not without felicities.
But a Star Trek opus it certainly ain't -- not in the sense of boldly going somewhere, of exploring new worlds, of confronting the vastness of space from the perspective of ordinary mortals.
That's because there's no humanity in this Star Trek. At all. Every character could as well be a Romulean. Or even, a dustbin.
Sure, it was always bound to excite passion amongst Trekkies, and that passion is admirable: compare the 'for' and 'against' reviews on here and the most articulate, well-ordered and well-founded are those to whom the movie rates less than zero.
For those of us who aren't Trekkies, however, there's neither pride nor passion.
Just the thought that Star Trek, at its best, really was so uniquely brilliant that nothing can destroy its memory or its reputation.
So although this latest effort, such as it is, may well destroy the franchise, that really doesn't matter.
This Star Trek is just a movie, as glossy, shallow and self-serving as the world from which it has sprung.
The real Star Trek sprang from a quite different world, and if you weren't around then, when traffic stopped and we stood in the streets to watch the live transmission of men landing on the Moon, when Star Trek truly was of its time, well. . .
Tempus fugit.
Sadly.