Boldly Go Where Many Have Gone Before

Last night Mrs. Lawhawk and I went to see the new Star Trek movie, and it was quite a blast. Everything about the new movie was at once both familiar and new. JJ Abrams managed to convey both what we knew and liked about the old Star Trek characters while infusing them with new energy, motivations, and direction.

As many other reviewers note, the movie is gorgeously produced and there's an ethereal character to the bridge of the Enterprise and many of its passageways. It's a different story in the engineering compartments, where you see the gritty underbelly of what powers a starship, and it isn't as antiseptic as we've seen in any of the prior incarnations of the Star Trek franchise.

The special effects don't get in the way of telling the story, as they can often do.

Casting a movie like this is particularly tough since these are roles that people have grown up with for 40 years. Yet, Abrams and his crew did an admirable job in picking folks who show the beginnings of a camaraderie that made watching Star Trek fun. We never got to see the full backstory of how Kirk and Spock met until now, and it isn't as peaceful and friendly as it would later become.

Zachary Quinto (who plays the sociopathic super-villian Sylar on Heroes) does an admirable job trying mesh the human and Vulcan heritage all while dealing with a calamity of a galactic scale and a threat that seeks to destroy him personally and psychically.

Chris Pine as Kirk shows us the boyish charm, ego, and charisma that we saw with William Shatner during the original series. We also see that he never played by the rules, even as a kid.

Time does play a role in the relationship between Kirk and Spock, along with the main storyline here, which also enables Abrams to create an alternative storyline from which he can now take this new crew wherever he may boldly want to go.

Throw in Bones McCoy and you've got a doctor and not a physicist, damnit. That's as it should be, and McCoy literally carries Kirk into prominence on board the Enterprise that is captained at the time by Capt. Pike (another homage to the original series).

What's nice is that many of the supporting characters on the bridge of the Enterprise get more to do than simply stand around and push a few buttons. Uhura has a surprising love interest, Sulu gets to show that he really knows how to fence, Checkov is a boy-wonder who manages to save the day for Kirk and Sulu, and Scotty shows that he's a mad genius when it comes to all things engineering (both now and into the future). Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, does so with a whimsy and humor that is particularly attractive and timely in the movie since it is a homage and nod to the original series.

This is a reboot, and a successful one at that. Expect to see this new crew set sail again sometime soon.