Because it's Mine, Abrams walked the line

Rating: 10/10 (12 May 2009)

If you are a long time Star Trek fan (let's try 1967 as I watched it with my family as a youngster) I'm sure you had trepidations about the new film as I did. But fear not! for I bring you great tidings of glad joy. For the JJ, whose Alias is Abrams, has brought the Fringe to the Lost! As a died in the wool "Trekkie" (yes TREKKIE, not a hubristic Trekk-er which bears the weight of canon around their necks –not that there's anything wrong with that!) I've found myself more Trekker, who was lost and mired in the semantics, plot devices, and personalities of Star Trek canon.
So naturally when JJ Abrams did a preamble to a new trek preview that included an intonation like (paraphrased here);"I'm not really a Star Trek fan, I'm a Star Wars Fan!" I notably raised my pointy eyebrows and twitched and my rounded ears with a resounding NO! He isn't going to "Battlestar Galactica" Trek is he? Huh??! you might ask? Well I actually am a fan of the TOTALLY different Galactica series that only bared resemblance to the original, in near design and name.
OH NO!, Not TREK! Please don't do that to MY Trek! (yes!, we rabid fans are possessive, and love to take ownership of something that belongs to everyone else too) However like Johnny Cash, the "Bad Robots" Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman walked the line with all Canon(s) firing! The thing about canons is, once they've fired, the cannonball is gone, and so it is with the canon of the new Trek.
Or put another way, how do you jettison the weight of the future, when it hasn't been written yet?
** Note this might be a spoiler for some**
The answer is simple, the long held Trek tradition of TIMELINES! The tradition has always been, we must restore the Original timeline! But what if you didn't? You would get the opportunity to (as has been euphemistically constantly referred to as..) reboot, the series. (Oh I get it, Bad Robots reboot everything!) The Goal, of course, is to grow NEW trek fans, something that has been waning for years.
As a teacher I took the opportunity to talk to students whom I know would otherwise dislike anything Trek to see if it worked.
I like this quote from one of my students, it truly sums up the sentiments of most that I spoke with, He said; "I thought it was going to be lame, but it wasn't it was really good!" And in case you haven't figured it out, an old dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie liked it too.
Oh yeah, I could complain about the fact that in effort to make the ship look my gritty they made the engineering section look like "suds your duds" but I won't (oh I guess I just did! Well pour a little trekker in me!) But the pluses of Star Trek SO outweigh the minuses that I am anxiously awaiting the sequel.
You see Star Treks mission is, and always has been, to take us "Where no man has gone before"!
Mission Accomplished JJ!