My own review of the new Star Trek movie

Spoiler warning

I saw the new Star Trek movie on Friday (5/8) and overall I was pleased with it. I’ve been a Star Trek fan for years and since the end of DS9 I’ve been disappointed with the franchise – so I was really hopeful to see a successful adaptation produced.

I’ll come out and say JJ Abrams did an awesome job with the graphics, cast, and cinematography of this movie. Honestly, the lighting alone in this movie was nothing short of art. The camera movements and dynamics of each shot were so perfectly arranged they could have made drying paint exciting to watch. The costumes didn’t disappoint either. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie so perfectly create a retro yet futuristic look (two worlds which are difficult to combine). However, the set design, specifically the engine room sets, had me scratching my head a bit. This is supposed to be 200 years into the future, why does the engine room look like a low budget chemical plant complete with manual controls and hand valves?

Regarding the plot, I thought it was ambitious to take on an issue as difficult as time travel. Ambition in this case might not be a good thing. I can’t lie; ever since I read The Universe in a Nut Shell by Stephen Hawking I’ve been obsessed with black holes and time travel. So in the beginning I was kind of excited about the whole alternate universe idea. However, the complete destruction of Vulcan and all Vulcans aside from a few thousand? A little over the top in my opinion. Also, it’s a bit too convent to playoff such a major change in Trek lore to the simple fact that this Trek is in a parallel timeline than the one we are accustom to. Putting that aside for now, I was happy to see Nero’s ship time travel via a black hole and not just some ‘device’. Since Einstein’s theory of general relativity black holes have been linked to time travel – “a clock in a strong gravitational field would tick more slowly” – I was glad to see Trek add some elements of science (the Red Matter maybe a reference to the dilation effect in special relativity ‘gravitational redshift’, maybe?). Going back to the messiness of time travel, a lot of the situations centered around Leonard Nimoy’s involvement in the movie seemed messy: Revealing to Scotty his yet-to-be formula for transporting at warp, saving Kirk from the ice monster and telling him about the future, talking to his past self, etc…I agree that theoretically multiple timelines could continue to exist but there are many Star Trek episodes (not to mention the Temporal Prime Directive), ranging from just about every Star Trek series, that spent a lot of time desperately trying to preserve the “natural” timeline and not "changing history”. If it is not a big deal to change timelines and have all these different timelines coexist, then what is the point of making the “preservation” of the timelines in each of these Star Trek episodes a central plot point about which much suspense is generated? There were other points in the movie where I couldn’t help but think “lame”. Such as Kirk jumping all the way from a cadet on academic probation to a Captain, that’s just sloppy plot development. In fact all the major characters went from cadets to senior level offers within one mission – lame. I also thought the 2min lackluster back story on Nero was lame. I would have liked to seen more of his story. Learn about his planet’s destruction and his reasons for wanting to destroy the Federation. So yeah, the plot could have been better but I concede that it was still overall a good Star Trek movie.

One last point, I remember a few years back, after Enterprise the series was canceled, reading that Star Trek was no longer supported by Paramount, a finical burden, and was basically dead. It’s now been brought back to life and we have this movie and JJ Abrams to thank for it. If creating a new timeline provides Trek the momentum it needs to stick around (out with the old and in with the new) than I’ll happily support it. I think Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek to be about human experience in a world where humans understand the inherent value of knowledge and the search thereof. I’m not saying this intellectual message can’t be done within the context of a high budget action movie, I’m just saying I think the heart of what Star Trek needs to stay intact for this new crew to truly succeed.

A DS9 movie would have still kicked ass – but I wont’ go into that.

This article was edited after publication by the author on 11 May 2009. View changes.