Back in the day, the message of Star Trek: Generations (1994), the one where Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) and his successor, Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) join forces, was that Enterprise captains may come and go, but Star Trek is forever.
Still, a Trekker can't be blamed if she prefers the original crew to the subsequent commands. By casting rakish Chris Pine as the young Jim Kirk and wry Zachary Quinto as the brainiac Spock, Abrams infuses familiar characters with fresh blood.
To go back to the future, the director tapped Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the Transformers screenwriting team.
Their story opens with Kirk's birth aboard a starcruiser that is under attack. It hits cruising speed with parallel stories of Kirk's and Spock's rebellious childhoods. And it jumps to warp 10 when the Enterprise battles the nefarious Romulan, Capt. Nero (Eric Bana), whose spaceship resembles a tangle of barbed-wire tentacles.
The happy result is action-friendly, nerd-friendly, and fundamentally optimistic. What Trekkers love about these stories is that they don't reduce everything to the Fight Between Good and Evil. "The Federation is a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada," Capt. Pike (Bruce Greenwood) explains to young Kirk.
Still, that peacekeeping mission does not preclude starfighting action. A double duel with Kirk and Sulu (John Cho) engaging two Romulans ranks up there with the light-saber face-offs of Star Wars.
Star Trek imagines its characters in a way that should delight fans while drawing in audiences unfamiliar with the Enterprise crew.
