WOW! To make a long story short, JJ Abrams resuscitation of the Star Trek franchise is a hit! Take that, Rick Berman!
I just got my DVD, and couldn’t wait to plug it in. I ended up watching it on the computer because our Home Theater System chose this moment and this movie for the DVD player to stop working! But, that’s another story for another day.
OK – now for the long story. I’ve been a fan of Star Trek since it first appeared in the 60’s. So much so, in fact, that in the 90’s I jumped at the chance to work for Paramount Digital Entertainment (PDE) as a paid host for their Star Trek chat rooms. If you ever came to the Lounge or the Academy back in the day, and were greeted at the door by a grumpy Klingon named BaT’aL, hey – we’re old friends!
When Gene (Roddenberry) died, I sat back and watched his second in command, Rick Berman, take the helm and try to reshape Trek in his own image. STNG was great, DS9 even better, but Voyager, not so much, and Berman’s fully entitled baby, Enterprise (note that the words Star Trek are conspicuous by their absence) absolutely sucked. I could make this even longer with specifics, but best to just let dead Romulans lie.
Gene and Majel (Barrett) were out of the picture, and the weasels in suits (Viacom) who now owned and controlled Paramount under Berman’s inept hand pretty much killed the franchise.
But if there’s any one thing you must learn in the Star Trek Universe, it is that no one (and nothing) is ever really dead. I give you James Tiberius Kirk, Spock, and Curzon/Jadzia/Ezry Dax to support my case.
Enter JJ Abrams, and the long waited prequel to the storied franchise. (By the way, a prequel is something Trek fans asked Berman for, for years, but little Ricky was like Ford – he had a better idea – NOT!)
Star Trek is definitely firing on all thrusters! Abrams got everything right in this story that has it all. The cast is sublime. Chris Pine has James Tiberius Kirk nailed. The well travelled Ben Cross makes an appearance as Sarek – Spock’s father, and Wynona Rider does well as Amanda, Spock’s Mother. Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov, played respectively by Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Anton Yeltin) are spectacular in their first run as the heroic Crew of the Enterprise. And even before you knew it was him, it was obvious that Karl Urban was born to be the inimitable ‘Bones’ McCoy. Even this younger iteration of the venerable Doc is a crotchety old duff!
Additionally, Bruce Greenwood gives life to the Christopher Pike (second captain of the Enterprise. Robert April was the first. Apart from Berman’s diseased fantasy, there is no Jason Archer in the Center Chair on board Big-E.) and Leonard Nimoy makes an appearance as a character called ‘Spock Prime’. Tyler Perry is even here as the Academy admiral who pins Kirk’s medal of meritorious commendation on him for having beaten the enigmatic Kobyashi Maru 'no win scenario".
This story has it all. Time Travel. Alternate Universe. Romance between the younger Spock and Uhura. Humor (Pike asks Sulu if he forgot to release the parking brake when the ship fails to go into warp the first time), and of course, lots and lots of action and great special effects. And before you die hard's get too upset with deviations from known Trek lore and start arming quantum torpedoes, the movie itself admits that they have wandered into an alternate time line.
This is the movie we wanted when we got Nemesis. This is a movie that will welcome you to the world of Trek if you’re new to it, and welcome you back if you’re an old-timer like me.
This one was worth the wait. I give it Five Bars Gold-pressed Latinum out of Five.
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