Star Trek Review

The latest Star Trek movie gets the Star Wars treatment, in that we see how it all started. Instead of starting out with Captain Kirk already manning the Enterprise, we start out with his father, Captain George Kirk, manning the USS Kelvin. They allow just enough background in early on for us to know there's a connection, yet not give it all away.

The USS Kelvin is attacked by Captain Nero of the Romulan mining ship Narada. Captain George Kirk orders everyone off the ship, including his wife who is going into labor. He's coaxed aboard the Nero, being asked if he knows the location of Ambassador Spock. Again, it's another connection that we know from earlier to prod us along. This Captain Kirk has a different first name, isn't piloting the Enterprise, yet there's the mention of Spock. His wife delivers a baby and names him James Tiberius Kirk, and we start to understand more and more.

As we meet the rest of the characters we remember from the original Star Trek series, we have to smile. They're younger and obviously not the same actors, but we see glimpses of the personality traits and quirks to let us know who they are and make us smile. We see James Kirk (Chris Pine) being "the only genius level repeat offender in the Midwest", we see a young Spock (Zachary Quinto) trying to balance his human and Vulcan sides, and Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban) untrusting of the ship they're flying in.

Where the writers truly succeeded with this Star Trek prequel was in connecting the stories and doing the original justice, yet doing so in just the right way that you don't have to have seen any of the original Star Trek series or movies to understand the characters and what they're there for, yet also not overtell the story to any of the "Trekkies" out there. It kept to the original, being intelligent and adventurous, yet funny at the same time. I think somewhere Gene Roddenberry is smiling.