STAR TREK

Review by Kelly Parks

STAR TREK - 2009 Paramount Rated: USA: PG-13 Now with Honest Trailer

Don't you hate reset button episodes? For those who don't know, in sci-fi TV series when things happen that radically change the plot (the deaths of major characters, the revelation of secret identities, etc.) you immediately begin to suspect you’re watching a reset button episode, i.e. an episode where something magical or time travelish will happen to erase all the radical changes and put things back the way they were.

OUT WITH THE OLD

This is not a reset button episode.

STAR TREK was written by the writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (THE ISLAND, TRANSFORMERS, FRINGE [TV]) and directed by J.J. Abrams (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, LOST [TV], ALIAS [TV]).

The story begins with the Federation starship Kelvin encountering a huge alien vessel. Captain Robau (Faran Tahir: IRON MAN) goes over to talk to Nero (Eric Bana: HULK), the Romulan commander of the huge alien vessel, and that doesn’t go well. This leaves George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) briefly in charge and he does what he must to save his pregnant wife and about-to-be-born son, James.

In other words in the first few minutes of the movie, stuff happens that violates the long established Star Trek mythology chain of events.

We jump to a few years later and see the very troubled James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine: CARRIERS) growing up in Iowa, getting drunk, showing great interest in cadet Uhura (Zoe Saldana: VANTAGE POINT), and getting into fights with Starfleet cadets. A good talking to from Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood: DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, BELOW, THE CORE, I, ROBOT) results in young Kirk joining Starfleet.

IN WITH THE NEW HMM... LOOKS KINDA ... BUSY.

Meanwhile on planet Vulcan, a young Spock (Zachary Quinto: 24 [TV], HEROES [TV]) makes a difficult career choice and unlike in the original series (and somewhat inexplicably), his father Sarek (Ben Cross: EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING, SPECIES: THE AWAKENING) is fine with it.

Now before you get the idea that I'm being a nit-picky trekkie let me just state that I really liked the clever way the writers found to erase the Star Trek history as we know it and open up the new crew to all kinds of new story possibilities, unbound by the previous Star Trek timeline.

In fact, I liked a lot of things about the movie. The story moves fast, there's never a slow spot or dull moment, and we find out a lot of interesting details about the personal relationships between the characters.

NIT-PICKY? US? SERIOUSLY: WAS THE BAR REALLY SET THAT HIGH?

And I do mean all the characters, because we also meet Scotty (Simon Pegg: SHAUN OF THE DEAD, LAND OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ), Sulu (John Cho: EVOLUTION) and Checkov (Anton Yelchin: ALONG CAME A SPIDER). It bothered me a bit that only Simon Pegg as Scotty seems age appropriate.* Everyone else looks too young to be playing these parts, especially Chris Pine as Kirk.

But what about the science, you ask?

Before I get into that, there are two things I'd like to mention. First, none of the Star Trek series and certainly none of the movies have been known for paying a lot of attention to their science details (some have at least made an effort – Next Generation had a science advisor in later seasons). Second, although this movie had the classic “sound in space” error during space battles, they did have a couple scenes where unlucky crewmen were sucked into space and those scenes were silent like they should be so kudos for that.

HONESTLY. WAS THE BAR REALLY THAT HIGH?

So with those caveats, let's talk about J.J. Abrams’

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
Without going into too much detail (to avoid spoilers) let me just say that if you had a mini-blackhole and you wanted to use it to destroy a planet, you do NOT need to drill a hole to the center of the planet first. All you’d have to do is release it in the general direction of the planet and let nature take its course. The tiny singularity (which, depending on how tiny, wouldn’t exist for long thanks to Hawking radiation) would pass right through the unlucky planet and absorb it in seconds.

Continued at Science Moment/StarTrek.

And by the way, Delta Vega is not in the same solar system as Vulcan. Everyone knows Delta Vega is near the edge of the galaxy. It's the uninhabited planet where Kirk tried to strand Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", after Mitchell acquired God-like powers from his encounter with the Galaxy's edge.

Okay, I guess I am a nit-picky trekkie.

STAR TREK gets three shriek girls. I wish I liked it more but here we are.

This review copyright 2009 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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