A Well Done Re-Imagining Of The Star Trek Franchise

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2010)

When I first heard about this project, I must confess that I had my doubts. It seemed as if the Star Trek franchise had been worked to death and had run out of steam and would perhaps be better left as a memory. Why bother essentially re-making the original with all of the same characters. I must confess that I was wrong. This was very well done. Thanks to the presence of all the old characters (and I even appreciated the re-appearance of the old style uniforms from the original TV series) this had a very familiar feel to it, but the story that was developed (having to do with a Romulan who comes from the future to avenge what he perceives to be the Federation's responsibility for the destruction of Romulus) provided enough of a "tweak" on the characters (the time travel having altered the original timeline, of course) that while familiar this had as well a definite air of originality to it. The actors were well chosen for the roles. As the leads, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto (as Kirk and Spock respectively) put their own stamps on the characters, but again still came across as the Kirk and Spock that fans of the old series remember. Even the lesser characters (McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura - they were all there) came across as "the same but different," if that makes any sense. The story was well-paced and interesting. There was at times a bit of a "Star Wars" feel to this as opposed to a "Star Trek" feel, but that was presumably a reflection of the desire to appeal to a modern audience (and the earlier feature films of the franchise also fell into that tendency as well.) One thing that was lacking was any significant moral or philosophical reflection, which was often a feature of both ST and ST:TNG. This movie instead went for action, and did that well.
Even given the differences in the timeline explained by the opening time travel, there were some things about the story that made little sense to me. Chekov was a 17 year old ensign? (He wasn't even around in the first season of the original TV series!) This meant that he was a commissioned officer while Kirk was still a cadet. And, of course, Kirk - as a cadet - goes immediately to First Officer and then Captain of the Enterprise? That stretched credibility a bit for me. There was also the problem that the story seemed to suggest that Star Fleet recruited its cadets (or at least lifted them into space) from Iowa? Nothing against Iowa, but ...
In any event, the presence of Leonard Nimoy as the older Spock from the future was a nice connecting point, although one hopes that Nimoy disappears in the sequel. Nothing against him, but if this is a going to be a restart of the franchise, it's time to let the new group get on with it. Also at the end of the movie, it would have been a better choice to have the closing narration ("Space, the final frontier ...") read by either (1) William Shatner, thus making a final connection, or, even better (2) Chris Pine as the new Kirk, rather than by Nimoy. However, on the subject of the ending, it was nice to hear the original theme music used so proudly. Good movie. It will be interesting to see if the sequel measures up and if this marks the re-ignition of the franchise. 7/10