Beam Me Up!

I am so ready for this movie. SO READY! Star Trek has long been in need of a set of fresh eyes and a total reboot and looking at this trailer, I think there's a very decent chance that J.J. Abrams may have worked his mojo again and done something that could be beyond kick-ass. Everybody looks perfect: Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto of 'Heroes' fame as Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty, John Cho as Sulu! Hell, even the almost unrecognizable Eric Bana as the villain Nero. It just looks so damn good!

One tiny little quibble though: The World knows (and if it doesn't, then it's about too) that James T. Kirk was born in the town of Riverside, IA and grew up there. I'm willing to allow for a suspension of a certain amount of disbelief, but having grown up not 20 minutes from Riverside, I'm hard pressed to think of a gigantic gaping hole in the Earth akin to the one that Kirk's car gets flung into in the opening moments of the trailer.

However: this is what? The 23rd Century, I believe- and I'm willing to allow for the fact that enterprising Iowans might have gone out to the stars and taken their ag skills with them, hence, the lack of copious amounts of corn on the landscape. And Kirk's gaping chasm looks fairly artificial in nature. But all in all, it didn't scream 'Iowa' to me. But for one tiny little quibble, it's not that big of a deal- I'll admit. Just my inner nerd alarm going off.

As for Star Trek: this is really long overdue. I wasn't sure about the decision to make a prequel, hoping instead that Trek would mine it's most creatively fertile territory (Deep Space Nine) for future movies. But having kept half an eye on this movie and seen the casting in action, I think it was the right move. Everything that I see in this trailer seems so new and different and yet so familiar at the same time- in other words, the potentially perfect combination to bring new fans to the franchise and keep the old ones on board.

I'm sure there will be die-hard Trekkers that nit-pick this movie to death- but rest assured, I'm not one of them. I grew up on the movies, flirted with 'The Next Generation' but really fell in love with Trek when I started seriously watch 'Deep Space Nine.' A darker, more dystopian view of the future, DS9 wrestles with political, moral and philosophical questions untouched by most other incarnations of Trek- and while not as grandiose or epic as the other 'space station' show, 'Babylon Five', to me, Deep Space Nine represents the high point of Star Trek.

'Voyager' wasn't all bad- but they should have had the sense to stop after that, and 'Enterprise' just seemed like something we had seen before over and over again- and came close to riding the franchise right off of the cliff. Fresh eyes, fresh thinking and fresh creativity were all called for- and Abrams and Company looked to have delivered just that.

(Though I'm not above hoping for maybe a TV movie or two tying up or revisiting some DS9 and Voyager story lines- provided, of course, that they don't overdo that idea as well.)