Star Trek   Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana and Karl Urban Director: J. J. Abrams Paramount Pictures Certificate: PG-13 Running time: 127 mins Opens 08 May 2009

Something nasty has emerged from a black hole, something that will change history forever... a rogue Romulan ship from the future, captained by a man set on revenge who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal - the destruction of Starfleet and its principal planets...

It’s hardly the most inventive of plots but the best Star Trek is about characters anyway - something that seems to readily get jettisoned when the show gets transferred to the big screen. So is the latest instalment a rebirth of the format, a padded and prolonged episode, a dud or a fully-fledged crossover success?

Well, clearly from the box office returns it’s the last on the list, but just how the movie’s managed to attracted the punters in such large numbers while also getting glowing reviews is simply impossible to understand. This movie, while not actually a bona fide stinker, comes pretty darn close.

Without wanting to dissect the plot in too great a detail - we’ll leave to that obsessive fans - there are a couple of points that are frankly so glaring that it’s impossible to understand how they every made it through to the final edit.

At the start of the movie the Romulan ship, the Narada, gets hit by a Star Ship and survives - however, by the time the last reel arrives the impact of a tiny shuttle can bring down the behemoth. And there’s also the whole planet drill thing...

Okay, so you drill a hole into a planet so that you can drop in a device that will suck the target world into oblivion. Not a bad idea. However, this drilling takes time and as the drill can be disabled by a few shots from a shuttle why didn’t the target planets - Earth and Vulcan - just launch a ship or two fitted with a phaser? Can we really be led to believe that civilisations capable of building starships have no planetary defences? 

As for the ‘one Spock, two Spock’ thing. Logic clearly doesn’t play much of a part in the proceedings. Why would the crazed Narada captain drop Old Spock [from the future] near a Star Base - within walking distance - just so that he can watch his world die? And why didn’t Old Spock simply make the walk, pick up a radio and warn his world? D’oh! Missed that one...

There’s been much made of the casting for this film and it does have some good performances. Zachary Quinto’s Spock is good but Chris Pine’s Kirk is wooden, even by Shatner standards. Karl Urban as McCoy is acceptable, but Zoe Saldana’s Uhura has no obvious character - a flaw that is manifest in the casting for Sulu and Chekov. You only get to realise just how bad some of the acting is when Simon Pegg arrives as Mr Scott. He moves while talking - he shows animation and character - he acts while many of those around him simply stumble.

However, the worst crime to credibility comes with the interior of the Enterprise. The top decks all look high tech and modern - a solid piece of design work - but down in the engine room we find stopcocks, ducting and miles of pipe. It looks like an old power station’s boiler house. Did the budget run out because I think it’s safe to say that warp drive isn’t derived from steam despite how it looks here.

There’s loads of back-story emotional guff about the first crew of the Enterprise that seems to have clouded the judgement of audiences as the plot is often so weak that under even cursory scrutiny it falls apart.

For example, acting Captain Spock stands down, feeling he’s unfit for duty. But how does Kirk claim the captain’s chair when a) he’s not supposed to be on board in the first place and b) he’s a cadet and therefore not the most senior person on the ship?

This film, despite the hype and positive reviews, is a turkey that tries far too hard. See it but be prepared to be disappointed.

3

Anthony Clark