Rating:
4 out of 5
Short version: While hard core Trekkies may have some problems with it, this long time classic Star Trek fan found this reboot fun, fresh & exciting.
Screen Rant reviews Star Trek
Where to start? (This is going to be a long one, folks. If you want to skip the preamble and get right to the review itself click here.)
Some people are Star Wars fanatics, others go nuts over Transformers or X-Men. While I’m a huge Iron Man fan, Star Trek is my true love going back well over 30 years. My favorite of all the shows? The Original Series (aka TOS). You may look at it now and think it looks cheesy (however I highly recommend you check out the digitally remastered version with brand new visual effects on DVD or Blu-ray), but remember the original Star Trek is over 40 years old.
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At the time the other big Sci-Fi TV show was the cheese-fest called Lost in Space – so keep that in mind as a comparison. 
I have Star Trek prop replicas on my bookshelves (some pretty damned nice ones) along with a copy of the original Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph and a set of blueprints of the original U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (which shows the location of a bowling alley on the ship!). I’ve memorized every episode of the original series – I can tell you which one each one is within seconds of any of them starting. And I’ve seen every movie.
Yes, I’m into Trek “canon” – tracking all the little details that tie the whole Star Trek universe together, however I’m also aware (though some fans seem to be in denial about this) that over the course of hundreds of episodes across five different series, Star Trek itself has violated its own canon many times.
Why am I telling you all this? So you have some context for my review of J.J. Abrams’, Roberto Orci’s and Alex Kurtzman’s reboot of the Star Trek universe. However this is not a review just for “Trekkies,” and that’s appropriate because neither is this film just for that group of die hard fans (among which I include myself).
Also, I did read the four part prequel comic that tells the story which leads to the events that take place in the film. If you have a chance I recommend you find it and pick it up at your local comic book store as it really fleshes out the “villain” in the film, Nero.
Some fans may disagree, but this franchise was in desperate need of a reboot, re-imagination, fresh “take” or whatever you’d like to call it. Star Trek, as a brand, was whithering on the vine and was in danger of being put on the shelf for who knows how long – until Paramount might decide enough time had gone by to give it another go. This was due to a number of factors, among which included the subsequent series being taken in directions by Rick Berman (and to some exent, Brannon Braga) that the fans did not agree with. Essentially it was a case of “the fans don’t know what’s good for them – we’ll tell them what they want.”
From this we gained the ignoble death of Captain Kirk in a transition movie with a stupidly weak plot device, Star Trek: Voyager, the Lost in Space of Trek, progressively crappier movies and finally Enterprise: At least an attempt at something fresh in Trek, which unfortunately went off in some half-assed direction – and Manny Coto’s efforts to bring the show back to what it should have been in season 4 were too little, too late.
So… when it was announced that the new film would go back to before the original series crew had met I was both excited at the prospect and terrified of how it might turn out. I mean we’re talking about recasting iconic roles. Bill Shatner? Leonard Nimoy? DeForest Kelly and James Doohan?
Sacrilege!
But I tried to be cautiously optimistic over the course of very early news, pre-production and through the production. I listed this film as my most anticipated of the year…
And I was NOT disappointed.
So finally – the review…
Click here to continue reading our Star Trek review…
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2,444 Comments
Bright Eyes, excellent scenario – an inspired direction to take human/Vulcan relations in. I can’t imagine a better setup for throwing a spanner into new chronological works than introducing the Pon Farr to the Federation on Earth. Loved the “Spock-cicle” and Lawrence Marvick reference as well.
Much as I’d like to see Bruce Dern (or Brad Dourif, for that matter)in a Trek movie, didn’t Stan Ridgway used to be in the band Wall Of Voodoo? Sorry, couldn’t resist that!
Ridgeway is indeed a magnificent bastard, the kind of role that George C Scott, Jack Nicholson, or Robert Duvall would have really sunk their teeth into back in the day.
I have been told that I resemble a young Robert Duvall. I’m not such a bad guy myself, but I would gladly play one for the chance to act opposite Nimoy, so I guess that I’m a little like Ridgeway in that regard, whatever it takes.
Although Starfleet officers are generally a moral and upstanding bunch, there have always been a few pricks in the mix, and more often than not they have borne the rank of Admiral.
I just thought that a script with characters would tell the story better than a simple matter-of-fact explanation of the scenario. I have no idea how Spock was able to find a suitable Vulcan colony world while being marooned on an ice cube.
Maybe he was just trying to get the Vulcans off of Earth before the blood fever began to set in, so they would only be a danger to each other and not humanity. Don’t forget that the Genesis Planet looked perfectly hospitable at the end of “Wrath of Khan”
So here we are, there were only two known planets with a biosphere conducive to the Vulcan reproductive cycle, and now we’re down to just one, and THAT one is threatened by an impending supernova.
A quickie in the turbolift with Uhura or swatting Kirk around the bridge like a cat toy may provide some temporary relief, but a Vulcan must fight and/or fornicate while breathing VULCAN air to force the Pon Farr into remission for another seven years.
Quite the problem for our green-blooded friends, wouldn’t you say? It certainly gives us an impetus and a sense of urgency to find a solution, and gives us a lot of moral dilemmas along the way.
This is what good Trek is all about.
Another memorable Starfleet swine in a slightly less memorable movie was Anthony Zerbe as Admiral Dougherty in Insurrection, so there’s definitely a precedent for high-ranking wrong-’uns.
@ Big Dentist:
I agree with you, Brad Dourif would make a great Admiral Ridgeway, although I wonder if he doesn’t ‘do creepy’ just a little TOO well? Hahaha, I dunno, I have a hard tome seeing him as admiral, or is it just me? Psych-eval, anyone?
As for the name Ridgeway (esp Stan Ridgeway), I can’t speak for anybody else on this side of the Atlantic, but I believe you may have to explain that as much as what a ’spanner’ is – I know, but we call it a monkey wrench, and the only person with an American accent I ever heard use the term in a movie was not even a human from Earth, but a dashing young Correllian smuggler named Han Solo – “Chewie, you wanna get me the hydro spanner(pipe wrench, get it? Hahaha), please?” (’The Empire Strikes Back’).
When I hear the name Ridgeway, I think if the general who took over (successfully) for Gen MacArthur after President Truman was forced to fire him when he wanted to blow off the UN and use nukes all the way from Pyongyang up into the Chinese interior, from Peking (now Beijing) to Shanghai. Ridgewasy was, as far as I know, a good soldier.
Using the names of real-life decent people for fictonal bad guys is an old trick, like the President of Earth in the excellent series ‘Babylon 5′, being named President Clarke (same spelling as Arthur C Clarke, surely an excellent historical personage), altho’, in all fairness, that has not always been the case -
Like the ST villian KHAN!
~Johnny
@ Big D:
Right you are, mate!
~Johnny
@Kahless – nope. But you’re close, too!
@BE:
It can’t be the air. I’m certain they have copious levels of detail on the composition of Vulcan’s atmosphere, so that could easily be replicated with simple chemistry. The problem we have with Pon Farr is that Star Trek III screwed up the back history. Spock used the analogy of the salmon in “Amok Time” as the need to return “to that one stream” but Saavik clearly helped him on Genesis and he wasn’t on Vulcan. Actually, I find it doubtful that he and T’Pring were both born in the wedding/combat area, so the presumption on which I’d operate is that Vulcans instinct it to return home to mate, but that they simply *must* mate every seven years. I don’t beleive that Pon Farr preculdes mating “in between” as it were, just that they must do so every seven years.
From a physiological standpoint, Pon Farr is a rather riduculous notion. The seven year piece is fine and well supported, but no biological system can comprehend a galactic scale on a subliminal level. It’s a somewhat proven fact that some people can sense direction based on “attuning” with magnetic fields. I recall reading about how they become very disoriented during an MRI. Anyway, this subset of the human population knows where they are, but not with GPS accuracy. Vulcans have superior intellectual capacity, and “super-human” strength, but for a Vulcan colony to succeed, one must presuppose that they are not bound to Vulcan for Pon Farr.
However, your comment about “Vulcan mushrooms” is proably spot on. Trace elements common in the Vulcan environment would need to be substituted in an artificial manner. But, realistically, 10,000 Vulcans could have an entire city to themselves in Arizona and most people wouldn’t notice. I do like the idea, but it’d need to be refined, slightly.
And @ Johnny,
Paramount/CBS do not accept unsolicited scripts of any kind. If BE presented his script to them using different names and situations and they made a Star Trek movie based on it, he could sue. For that reason, anything you submit is returned unopened. Contracted writers are allowed to submit, but you must be a member of the Writer’s Guild of America *AND* invited to present, usually via an agent.
None of this precludes us from enjoing a good discussion about it on this board, however.
Cheers, all.
~Doc
I just think that Abrams and Co. will not want to do the “humans as the enemy” thing this early in the reboot.
It has been done to some extent in the past and is not really new ground.
However, I think BE’s idea is sound. Let’s just all colloborate and write some fan fiction.
I’ll write the Orion Slave girl planet part -
Fade In:
A dark and seedy bar location. Alien music is played. Neon lights blaze unreadable words. All manner of species populate the bar. Think Mos Eisly Cantina scene but darker and with a “gentlemen’s club” feel.
In walk our three heroes; Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
McCoy looks mildly (but only mildly) disgusted. Spock seems oddly curious. Kirk is completely in his element.
McCoy to Kirk: “You always take me to the best places Jim.”
Kirk in response: “Your welcome.” McCoy shoots him an unwelcome glance.
Spock: “I find it facinating that your “repretable” source would choose this location to meet us in.”
Kirk: “It’s called a cover Spock. She’s Orion. This is what they . . . do.”
It’s at this point the camera pans to a stage-like area where we see multiple Orion women engaged in . . .
Now we all can use our imaginations for what comes next.
Please forgive any misspelling I might have let slip through.
Who’s up next?
Steve, not to question your knowledge of things biological for one second, but you’re talking about an alien species with telepathic abilities, so its collective perception of physical space might be different from ours. Mind you, I do remember saying in a post a while back that your idea about Spock sensing the destruction of Vulcan was a bit too much like Obi-Wan and Alderaan, so what do I know…
In answer to your question about what kind of sequel we’d all like to see, I’ve been thinking about that ever since I saw the movie, and I have to say Bright Eyes’s scenario is the best starting point I’ve heard yet by a long way.
It just occurred to me, BE: would the Pike in this timeline necessarily have encountered the Talosians at all? Great point about our true strength being our lack of fatal weaknesses compared with other ostensibly superior species though. How about Ed Harris as Ridgeway?
Johnny, I had no idea “spanner” wasn’t a universal term, if you’ll pardon the pun (Star Wars notwithstanding)! Brad Dourif came to mind when you mentioned Bruce Dern in terms of a similar “twitchy” quality, but I was thinking of him more in an alien role a la his thoroughly bizarre Piter De Vries in Dune. Wall Of Voodoo were from your very own LA, incidentally! Early `80s stuff – check out “Mexican Radio”.
Fury2701, like it!
Spock was from a very aristocratic and traditional family, hence all the ceremony and ritual combat.
Unbeknownst to Outworlders the Vulcans maintained a network of red light districts, tryst hotels, and fight clubs for the relief of the average workaday Vulcan. Hence Ridgeway’s quote “What ELSE did you do underground?”
Spock may have been born on Vulcan, but he was re-born on Genisis, that is why Savvik was able to “help” him.
Robert Duvall: “I love the smell of photons in the morning…”
Those Vulcans are a bunch of dark horses…
Well, I must admit that I just have a problem with Pon Farr on a galactic scale (and really always have) but I also have a strong suspense of disbelief so I can go with it for a two-hour movie.
The second movie will need to follow the first second movie (gotta love time-loop nouns) because I remember when TWOK opened wondering, “Where the hell is Kirk and who is that woman in the chair?” TUC also had a nice opening with its literal “bang” so props to it, and I find it more than coincidental that Nick Meyer directed them both. What I’d like to see is a movie that opens with some kind of major confrontation (already in progress) between the Enterprise and a Romulan vessel. Pretty much a long version of “Balance of Terror” with a “Run Silent, Run Deep” element to it. I’ll take a go at crafting a draft after I get up tomorrow afternoon. Engineering unquestionably will not be a brewery. And for what it’s worth, “I’m a doctor, not a director.”
~Doc
@ All:
VERY interesting postS!
I especially liked the info about Vulcan dives, interesting that such an incredibly mentally disciplined culture would very wisely choose to have such safety valves – oh, that there was more of that kind of thinking in the US!!!
I wouldn’t mind getting a lapdance from T’Pol! I’ll tell ya that…
Big D, I did not know that about ‘Wall of Voodoo’, though I have heard the single ‘Mexican Radio’! Please forgive me for making such a paternalistic assumption of something being from your culture when it was clearly ours, I just never heard of Wall of Voodoo before (music is not my forte).
I stand by the whole spanner/monkey wrench thing, though, HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Also, I LOVE your idea about Ed Harris as Admiral Ridgeway! He would make a very believable, yet abusively malevolent, Starfleet admiral in charge of SFI. He (Harris) is an excellent man, I consider he and his cute, scrappy wife, Amy Maddigan, one of Hollywood’s most role-model couples, even over Matthew Broderick & Sarah Jessica Parker. As a heavy who is the good guy we love to hate, he’d be perfect, even over Dern. Still say he’d be good too, just the same.
@ Fury – you never did say, what about Stansfield for Ridgeway’s first name?
I think that’s everything; now whose up for a green Orion girl’s lap dance? I got twenty credits that aren’t goin’ anywhere! Hahahaha!
For what it is worth, particularly considering that the man who originally initiated the process (admittedly in another timeline) is Ambassador Spock (Spock Prime), the whole issue of Vulcan/Romulan Reunification could be jump-started 100 or more years ahead of schedule…might be a satisfying conclusion, don’t you think? And who better than Ambassador Spock?
~Johnny
PS, Fury: As far as your spelling, the only thing you messed up was a common mistake, which admittedly drives me nuts, very minor – the confusing of the possesive ‘your’ with the contraction for ‘you are’, or you’re; after that, you only misspelled the derivative of reputation, ‘reputable’, but compared to some of the texting shorthand I’ve seen online, hell, what’s that? Just wanted to be a prick, can’t help it, sorry!
Personally, I like the idea of those three in an Orion jiggle-joint cantina – stuff they could only talk about in the TOS episodes, like in ‘The Cage’, where we first saw Vina as an Orion dancer, or at the end of ‘Devil in the Dark’, after the crew’s ingestion of therigan derivative (McCoy: “Oh, I know the place! I know the place!” Kirk, to Bones & Scotty: “You gentlemen, in your current state? Forget it!”).
L8r!
Just FYI – “Devil in the Dark” was about the Horta. I believe you’re referring to “Wolf in the Fold” where Scotty’s convited of murder. Just a suspicion.
~Doc
@ Steve:
You are absolutely right! Thanx, Paisan, for once again being my memory check.
I always confuse those two, the titles are just similar enough to do that to me.
As I recall, Scotty was not quite convicted of murder (”REDRUM! REDRUM!” – sorry, couldn’t help m’self, must’ve been the Nicholson mention, lol!) in ‘Wolf in the Fold’, but he likely would’ve been if not for Spock and his relentless probing of the Big E’s library computer, exposing the erstwhile prosecutor Mr Hingist, who was, perhaps unwittingly, the otherwise non-corporeal ‘Redjac’ (Redjac! Redjac! Redjac!”), who had also been Jack the Ripper some 400 years before, as well as many others.
Transporter wide dispersal was the only way to get rid if him…let’s hope!
Red Jack – get it? I liked that…
~Johnny
@ All:
BTW, Temporal Prime Directive aside, Spock Prime could set a lot of things straight, since he was after all there, such as warning the gentle, loving people of that little pleasure planet in ‘Wolf in the Fold’ of their prosecutor Mr Hingist! He almost has a duty to do some of that, if it will saves lives, right? Who agrees with me that the altered timeline sort of puts all that Temporal Prime Directive crap out in the street?
Just a thought, let me know…
~Johnny
I think that Spock cannot be held in violation of a law that does not yet exist. That’s my thought.
Having said that, I don’t think it is incumbent, or wise, for Spock to do anything untowards in the new timeline. As Spock said himself in the new movie, events will no longer unfold as they were “meant to be” due to Nero’s arrival. I think with Nero gone, Spock Prime’s primary duty is to “help rebuild the Vulcan race” and let Spock live his own, new life.
@ Steve:
You probably already know this, but the author of the screenplay for ‘Balance of Terror’ (I believe it was DC Fontana, I may be wrong about that) was in fact inspired by CS Forester’s ‘The Enemy Below’, a work I consider very like ‘Run Silent, Run Deep’; you really cannot beat the unrelenting tension of two ship captains pitting their respective wits against each other.
I always considerd cloaked ships of the ST Universe as the submarines of the 23rd/24th Centuries, the ships of the surface (uncloaked Starfleet vessels) pitted against the submarines under the surface (cloaked Romulan ships – or the Defiant, at least in the Delta Quadrant, also the alt future Ent-D of ‘All Good Things’, with it’s third warp nacelle and massive ‘Uberpulsecannon’).
The tension and climax of a Federation/Romulan space battle would be awesome!
~Johnny
PS: Sure right about Nicolas Meyer! They should do whateer they have to do, kiss his ass, whatever, to get him on Abram’s team again. Also, I heartily add my voice to all of yours who wants Abrams to spend some of the new budget on actual sets of Main Engineering this time, NO MORE DAMN BREWERY! Industrial is nice, yes, but do they HAVE to be so blatant about it???
Besides, I liked the Sovereign’s engine room! So sue me.
L8r!
@ Steve:
Hmmm, you know, I believe you are right again, about the Temporal Prime Directive, I mean, after all, the ‘lab types’ didn’t really formulate that sort of thing until the Big E broke away from the black hole and found itself three days earlier (The Naked Time’) – or maybe it was after they first got back from Earth of the year 1968 (’Tomorrow Is Yesterday’); by the time of their meeting with Supervisor Gary Seven (’Assignment Earth’), where they were supposed to be merely observing, that policy had by then likely been imposed, or at least considered.
None of this had happened yet, in 2250, the time of the Reboot, so you no doubt are right about that.
Having said that, wouldn’t Spock still have a moral & ethical responsibility to intervene in events of the past that would have happened anyway? Like the murders on another planet? Or the progress of the Botany Bay? Or V’ger?
If I were him, I’d have Starfleet Intelligence debrief me for six months!
Then after that, THEY could deal with it…
~Johnny
@ Steve:
Whoops, turns out I was wrong about the screenwriter of ‘Balance of Terror’ being DC Fontana – I found this on IMDb:
Writers: Gene Roddenberry, Paul Schneider
Somehow comforting to know that Roddenberry had a hand in it, however.
I did confirm that the episode was modeled after CS Forrester’s ‘The Enemy Below’, a natural, really, since a hunt is a hunt.
~Johnny
I think DC Fontana co-wrote “The Enterprise Incident” although I’m not certain of that.
And just because I’m still waiting…
“No, no particular person, just people in general.”
~Doc
It’s too hard Doc.
We all gave it multiple shots.
@ Doc:
Okay, I’ll take one more shot, obscure Star Trek dialogue for $400, Alex?
What did Bones say to Mr Atoz, Chief Librarian in ‘All Our Yesterdays’, about Spock’s apparent diffidence to being ‘prepared’ for a trip into the past, in order to escape the coming supernova of that planet’s sun?
The Librarians of that world had a way of sending people back into their world’s past, as a way of escaping the nova, but it required ‘preparation’, which prohibited any return – this is why Zarabeth could not return with Spock and was trapped in their Ice Age past.
~Johnny
Close enough. It was McCoy to Atoz asking where all of the people had gone. It occurs within the intro scene of the episode. But, that means you’re up, Johnny! (Thank God)
Cheers,
~Doc
1383, wow, just checking in to see where we’re at, lol. Nice job guys, nobody at each other throats yet, haha.
@ Steve:
F*** me, now I have to come up with one???
Okay, gimme a minute, I’ll man up…
~Johnny
@ Ken J:
Give us time…
HAHAHAHAHA!
~Johnny
@ All:
“It just killed one of my men and now you’re telling me YOU CAN’T TURN IT OFF?”
Easy one!
~Johnny
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