I have been and always shall be a Star Trek fan

I wondered about kicking off my NerdBlog talking about the new Star Trek film. Lots of people are talking about it, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to add anything new. Then I thought, a) is there a better way to start a NerdBlog than with a Star Trek one and b) it's such a frickin awesome film that I want to talk about it.

So in brief summary, I started watching Trek with The Next Generation 20 years ago. Instantly hooked, watched religiously, then the original, DS9 on launch, through Voyager and Enterprise. There's a lot of things I love about Trek, it has spaceships and explosions, it tells stories with a moral meaning and it has awesome characters and great relationships between them. It's difficult to briefly sum up Star Trek and it's affect without going on for seventy squibillion pages, there's a lot to it and it means different things to different people. My briefest summary could be it shows the human race as I'd hope it could be, as I'm sure it should be and there's spaceships and explosions!

I don't want to go into my thoughts and feelings on the decline of Trek right now, (but I imagine I will in the future!), but suffice to say I was apprehensive about this new film, not because of it's recasting the roles or changing the design, but because I worried it was just an attempt to wring some money out of the franchise again. Yeah, I'm cynical like that.

So I refused to become excited by it. When I heard the plot was looking like involving time travel I became extremely cynical. No way was I going to get excited by this only to be disappointed if it was bad. (see Indiana Jones 4) I had to grudgingly admit that the trailers were pretty good, but hey, that doesn't mean anything, the whole point of trailers is to make a film look good.

Then last week, I woke up on the day I was to go see it and damn, I was excited! I couldn't help it, it was new Star Trek after a long drought. I was getting a Christmas type feeling. So I plodded through my day at work, wishing everyone a 'Happy New Star Trek Day' and made my way to Nottingham where I was to meet up with friends to go see it.

Armed with a pretty immense bag of popcorn, I settle in my seat and once again tried to dispel feelings of excitement. Nope, no chance, I'm properly excited now.

And it starts. Excellent opening sequence, and I'm immediately drawn in. This movie clips along at a really good pace, we're soon at the Academy. And oh my god, is Karl Urban channelling the spirit of Deforest Kelley? Cos it's eerie, but he's a perfect McCoy. Like spot on. Then we're into the Kobayahshi Maru sequence and obviously it's a nostalgia kick, and really really fun. You can see Chris Pine perfecting that Kirk cockiness as the movie progresses.
Enjoyed the sequence when Kirk is brought onboard the Enterprise, we get to see Sulu and Chekov. Even found the giant hands bit funny. The sequence on the drill was incredible. Crap, did they just blow up Vulcan? Shit, they actually destroyed Vulcan? That's a bit brave. Then the cynical voice pops up, 'unless they bring it back with time travel…' Well, we'll see…

So at this point, I'm loving what is a brilliant, fast paced, sci fi movie with awesome effects. It's so very close to feeling just like Trek should.

Then Kirk's in the ice cave, and he meets 'Old Spock'.

Shit.

Ok, you got me. Every doubt, every cynical thought, it's wrong! I apologise for doubting.

This is the point I engaged with it as Star Trek. This is the point I relaxed and stopped looking for flaws.

So the Movie continued, came to a satisfying and action packed conclusion, and had Spock recite the 'Space, the Final Frontier' speech.

Now this speech is a very important to me. To my mind, not just anyone can say it, it's gotta be an Enterprise Captain and one of note. Kirk, Spock, Picard. Not the one on the Enterprise-B from Generations. Not Jellico. And for the first 3 series of Enterprise, not Archer. Ok, the 4th series picked up and I relented, when he did it for the finale I was happy with it. So I was quite interested that Leonard Nimoy did this one. In terms of the movie acting as a hand-off to this 'alternate universe' crew, I saw it as a nice touch, maybe having Chris Pine do it for the next film. Most importantly though, this film earned that speech at the end.

Obviously there's a couple of bits, tiny niggles really, that I'm not happy with. Scotty's appearance on the Enterprise, when he's stuck in the pipes, oh. Oh dear. Sorry, but I hated it. It's slapstick, and to my mind, the best humour on Trek comes from the characters. But it's a tiny sequence in all. I'm also not entirely happy with the Enterprise design. It's a minor thing, but the nacelle struts and the point where they join the engineering section. Overall, I'm perfectly happy with the design, and I'm not the type to get up in arms about re-designs etc. It's just I really don't like that small section of it.

But hey, if those are the biggest complaints I have about the film, I think it's done pretty good really.

So after the film, with us all agreeing it was awesome, we proceeded to stay up until 5 in the morning watching episodes of various trek series, which was super awesome fun times!