Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Rating: 1/10 (19 May 2013)

Paramount Pictures, director JJ Abrams and writers, Orci, Lindelof, and Kurtzman have once again proved that they figure Trekkies will go see anything as long as it's got the name "Star Trek" on it.
If you set out to write a prequel to an existing work, then there can be nothing in the prequel which prevents the original from happening. It's simple, logical, cause-and-effect.
Yet the 2009 movie contained story elements which effectively precluded at least one of my favorite episodes of TOS, "Journey to Babel". I'd hoped they'd learned how to write by now, but "Into Darkness" creates new paradoxes that mean that several other episodes cannot now occur (and more than just one particular episode, and its movie sequel, which have been mentioned in several other reviews).
The claim that Abrams' version of Star Trek represents an "alternate universe" is nothing but a cheap cop-out explanation, made up after the fact, in an attempt to excuse extremely sloppy writing. "Alternate universe"? Well, maybe there's an alternate universe "me" who'll go see the next Star Trek movie. The "me" in this universe isn't going to be fooled a third time.