J.J Abram's Star Trek

The new trailer for J.J. Abrams' re-imagining of the classic Star Trek series is certainly a sight to behold. Actually, it's quite an aural experience with the excellent score by Michael Giachinno doing most of the emotional conjuring backed up by the impressive imagery and select snippets of dialogue. As trailer's go, it is definitely one of the best seen this year.

I have been somewhat skeptical of this project, mainly because I just didn't see a need to go back to the early days of the crew from the television series we'd come to be familiar with these odd 40+ years (!!). However, the selection of J.J. Abrams was at least the first right decision the producers made. His attention to detail and love for the original material was well on display in his turn at the helm of the most recent Mission:Impossible. He brought teamwork to the franchise and at least a sense of espionage that had made the television series enjoyable.

And yet, some doubts remained. The trailer sets up nicely the challenge to a young James T. Kirk to join Starfleet and live up to his father's reputation, and gives a glimpse at the epic scale to the threat they will face. However, the trailer seems to focus on a few, key segments of the film. The crux of the first and part of the second act, I believe, will be the cadets' time at Starfleet Academy, of which only brief instances are shown. How will this part play out? I certainly don't want something resembling a big budget version of adolescent themed shows that pepper the airwaves these days. It will also a very difficult task to wrangle all the threads of the canon which, over various television series and films, has quite a few loose threads. My main caveat, however, was that the characters are imbued with a real life that we hadn't heard of yet without relying too heavily on trying to connect them to the familiar. I think the Star Wars Prequels was severely weighted down by Lucas' attempts to make sure that he drew a bright, center lane line from things you saw in the Original Trilogy to the Prequels (and vice-versa).



The dread began to set in when I read that we were going to see how the young Kirk reprogrammed the computer for the Kobayashi Maru test. That doesn't need to be seen; it's best left as the legend it is referred to in dialogue in Wrath of Khan.

Then there are the personal nitpicks such as the set design of the Enterprise bridge which I find to be a little too "advanced" for the time period it is supposed to be set in. It looks more advanced than the bridge of the Enterprise-D from "Next Gen". How about some real buttons, switches and dials guys? At least the sight of Sulu using a chrome throttle at the helm is reassuring.
In the end, I hope moments like the scene above won't seem forced. I can already see from the trailer that the well worn Star Trek plot device of (highlight to read) time travel is central to the film's story, but I do think seeing how our young cadets rise to the occasion at an hour of need will be quite stirring. Consider me cautiously optimistic.