Eleven years after the big screen incarnation sputtered to a halt with the rather ordinary Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and four years after the TV cycle burned itself out with the tedious Enterprise (2001-2005), the seemingly exhausted Star Trek franchise was unexpectedly given a successful reboot by director JJ Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. And make no mistake, this really was a genuine reboot, using that old genre standby of the time paradox to jettison ten films and three sequel TV shows worth of continuity (Enterprise just about survives the cull) and free any future sequels from forty years of often frankly baffling baggage.
Essentially an origins story it follows the gathering of the familiar characters from the original TV show as they come together aboard the newly commissioned Enterprise for the first time (die-hard fans squealed loudly about Chekov’s presence when he was a latecomer in the small screen incarnation). Orci and Kurtzman (who had already overseen the rebirth of another franchise property with Michael Bay’s take on Transformers (2007)) take the opportunity to add a few new wrinkles to the established characters and relationships (when they first get together Kirk is the first officer, Spock the captain and despite the womanising Kirk’s best efforts it’s the latter who is having the romantic dalliance with Uhura), using the convenience of the time paradox created by renegade Romulan terrorists to give much-loved and perhaps overly familiar characters a new lease of life.
Spock and Kirk can now bond more quickly and more deeply due to their new roles as rebels (Spock struggling with the human side of his nature and turning his back on a prestigious place in the Vulcan Science Academy in favour of a Starfleet commission while Kirk joins a long line of contemporary young action movie heroes in kicking against the reputation of a lost father he looks up to but whose achievements but feels he can’t match). As befits an “origins” story perhaps, several of the supporting cast get less to do but still manage to appear more useful and necessary than they did in the original series. Uhura’s linguistic skills give her the chance here to do more than just answer the phone while McCoy, Chekov (the film’s nicely judged comedy relief), Sulu and Scotty all get to do something meaningful that affects the course of the action rather than just turn up to press a few buttons and say “aye aye captain” as was all to often the way in the TV series. A nice fan-friendly touch sees the new crew initially serving under Captain Christopher Pike, played here by Bruce Greenwood but first seen in the two parter The Menagerie Part 1 (17 November 1966) and The Menagerie Part 2 (24 November 1966) (in footage culled from the unbroadcast pilot The Cage) and played by Jeffrey Hunter, Greenwood final scenes in a wheelchair foreshadowing the disabled version played by Hunter.
Performances are all spot-on: Chris Pine channels William Shatner brilliantly (his body language is wonderful – look for his Shatneresque pose in the final moments), Karl Urban and Simon Pegg effortlessly replicate the vocal mannerisms of McCoy and Scotty respectively and Zoe Saldana (a more charismatic and vibrant Uhura than we’ve been used to), John Cho (Sulu) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) flesh out the supporting cast such that one can only hope they’ll get more spotlight time in any sequels. The show is stolen by Zachary Quinto as Spock, a respectful and perfectly judged performance that takes enough from Leonard Nimoy to make Spock instantly recognisable while leaving enough room for Quinto (the villainous Sylar from TV’s Heroes (2006-)) bringing his own nuances to the role. Nimoy himself, looking impossibly old, turns up as “our” Spock, falling back through time to meet his younger self, and is commanding and compelling as ever, and it’s only fitting that the film ends with Nimoy voicing the famous “Space, the final frontier” speech from the TV show.
Less well served is Eric Bana in a rather thankless villain role. Like too many of the bad guys from the big screen versions (Khan and the Borg excepted), he’s rather dull and his motivations a tad obscure. His surprisingly few on-screen moments hint at what could have been but in fairness the villain was present simply to propel the plot along and give space and opportunity for the young leads to establish themselves in familiar roles.
The science is as wonky as you’d expect from Star Trek (Orci and Kurtzman have some strange ideas about what black holes are and the Enterprise’s climactic escape defies just about every known law of physics – the original Scotty would never have approved…) but no-one, least of all the writers, were going to that bothered with delivering a credible physics treatise. Unlike a good many of the later Trek films, there’s a marked lack of technobabble and portentousness, Abrams instead having fun with cutting edge visual effects to stage some genuinely exciting action set pieces.
The Star Trek franchise was sorely in need of a transfusion of fresh blood and although this first entry in what eventually became a rejuvenated series tends to spend a bit too much time on “getting-to-know-you” stuff and squanders a very good actor in a dull villain role it clearly gave the series exactly the kick start it needed. Like the James Bond series, it took a seemingly well past its prime 60s favourite and dragged it into the twenty-first century and proved that the old dog was as full of life as it ever was.
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