Star Trek is looking good!

Yes, old Spock is there to set Kirk back on track, telling him it’s imperative that he be in command of the Enterprise for what is coming up. It’s actually a rather emotional scene, as old Spock tells Kirk how to remove his younger self from command, using a clause that allows the removal of emotionally compromised officers, “… and I assure you, I am emotionally compromised.” The trailers certainly suggest that the film will as much be about Spock as Kirk, so this promises some interesting character development (or is that pre-development?).

This scene also introduces us to a cantankerous engineer called Scotty. Never heard of the character.

The final scene of the preview is a rip-roaring action piece, with a space drop from shuttle onto some large orbital to surface mining platform. It’s a great effects piece, and stirring piece of cinema. When Kirk, Sulu and a poor red-shirt (yeah, he don’t last long) hit their target there’s a fight, of course, and we get to see (again) what a great swordsman Sulu is. Why he’s carrying a space Katana I’m not sure, but I’m not going to argue much, either.

It’s hard to walk away from the footage without thinking that Abrams is on to something here. Each actor brings a lot of new depth to the characters, but in all of them you can still quite clearly see the original actor’s influence. Hell, they’re *still* playing Chekov’s accent for laughs! Karl Urban as Bones is particularly good, and his cries of “Damn it, Jim!” will cause pangs of nostalgia in anyone. In particular, the decision to not immediately make Kirk and Spock friends takes a lot of pressure off the actors, who can now instead work on building their own chemistry, much as Shatner and Nimoy did before them.

And let’s not forget one of the most important stars… the Enterprise herself. Abrams has gone in a very different direction in presenting the ship’s interior and locales. While the upper decks are suitably gleaming and bright, below desks is a little more cramped, and engineering spaces are positively crammed with piping and machinery. It gives the ship a look that is at one and the same time futuristic, but also still sort of… primitive when compared to the tech we’ve seen in previous films set later in the Trek timeline.

We’re quietly confident that come March next year, we’ll be thrown back into Trek fandom, and be loving every minute of it.


Star Trek (Trailer C) (Paramount Pictures Australia) - Funny home videos are a click away