Star Trek - 2009

Paramount Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment, Bad Robot

Directed by J. J. Abrams

Cast:

• James Tiberius Kirk – Chris Pine
• Spock – Zachary Quinto
• Spock Prime – Leonard Nimoy
• Captain Christopher Pike – Bruce Greenwood
• Bones - Karl Urban
• Uhura – Zoe Saldana
• Sulu – John Cho
• Chekov – Anton Yelchin
• Montgomery Scott – Simon Pegg
• Gaila – Rachel Nichols
• Sarek – Ben Cross
• Amanda Grayson – Winona Ryder
• Nero – Eric Bana
• George Kirk - Chris Hemsworth
• Winona Kirk - Jennifer Morrison

Story: Before the Enterprise of Star Trek fame was created, the famous James T. Kirk's father, George Kirk, and his mother, Winona Kirk, served on the Kelvin, a scientific exploration ship of the planet Earth. [Remember, Earth was not a member of the Federation yet.] Far in the distant future, the planet Romulus is destroyed by an exploding sun before the aging Ambassador Spock can arrive to save the planet. The captain of a Romulan mining vessel blames Spock for his planet's destruction and while battling, both vessels are pulled through a wormhole back in time. Nero, the commander of the Romulan vessel, arrives 25 years before Spock and spots the Kelvin. He attacks, disables the ship, and nearly succeeds in killing everyone aboard but for the actions of the brave George Kirk, who fights off the Romulans while the shuttles and escape pods get away. With this single act, the future is irrevocably altered and we spend the rest of the plot getting James T. Kirk back into the Captain's chair of the the Enterprise.

Review: I remember sitting in the living room in Norwalk, California watching the original series with my parents. While my favorite characters were Sulu, Kirk, Spock, and Bones, the show was one of the first “ensemble” casts that made a real impression on me, and thousands, hell, millions of others. Remember, we were the generation who had seen man land on the moon, and not so very long ago. Star Trek was just the next obvious step to us, and we were happy to imagine the kinds of beings we might meet and the situations we might encounter. And apparently, this impression has spanned the years to include J. J. Abrams and the young cast of this excellent “re-vision” of the Star Trek series.

All of these young actors are particularly good at creating the personae of the original characters, with some slight anomalies. Mr. Chekov, played with exceptional skill by Anton Yelchin, was not a member of the original cast, not did he ever serve with Captain Pike. And while this timeline has a romantic liaison between Uhura and Spock, the original series had a romance of sorts between Nurse Chappell (an apparently forgotten homage, as Majel Barrett Roddenberry was also Mrs. Gene Roddenberry, wife of the creator and producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation and other sci-fi series, such as Andromeda), and our Vulcan Science officer. Another interesting character is Gaila, the green skinned girl from Orion who was never on the original series as a permanent cast member, but the persona did appear in a two part episode where Spock returns the invalid Christoper Pike to a planet where he can live out his life in his mind.

Be that as it may, the film is entertaining and concludes with death and destruction of Nero, the saving of Earth (Vulcan was not so lucky), and James T. Kirk back in the Captain's chair of the Enterprise. An excellent film for all the right reasons and a pleasure to watch.