Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah is back with the second part of his Star Trek review.  Spoil long and prosper.  For part one, click here.

The great thing about Star Trek — the franchise, not Star Trek the movie — is that it’s an enormous universe, and you can pick and choose how involved you want to get in it.  For the most casual fans, there are the movies, which offer more or less self-contained adventures.  Next level, the television series; if you don’t feel the need to see all of them, that’s fine, pick any single one of the five, and you can get a seasons-long experience.  Next level, completist urges toward seeing all five series; that’ll set you back about a year even if you watch several episodes each day, but you may find tantalizing connections that reward that type of commitment.

From there, there is the expanded universe of the hundreds and hundreds of original novels, comics, and games, which will take you literally years to fully digest.  After that, Trek ceases to become a hobby, and becomes instead a full-fledged lifestyle.

Any new Star Trek production has to sort of choose where it wants to land on the fan-level spectrum in terms of its appeal.  The new movie has clocked in at the first level, opening itself up to untold millions of people who never wanted to get involved in the franchise before (some of them may not have any clear idea that there even is a franchise outside of this movie).  This is the first time in a long while that that has been the case; the last was probably 1987, when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in syndication.  Each successive film and series has been insular in a way that kept most audiences at arm’s length.

In deciding to reboot the franchise, Paramount has made an interesting decision: they’ve risked the abandonment of the most devoted fans in favor of courting an entirely new fan base.  The initial announcement of the reboot idea drew widespread ire from the fan community, who were unclear how anyone could even consider casting new actors for the iconic roles of Kirk and Spock?

If this gamble had failed, not only would Paramount have failed to win over new fans, it would probably also have lost the existing fans forever.  This was no gamble; this was a game of Russian roulette.

Luckily, the people making the movie — director J.J. Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman — were canny enough to realize that that gamble was just too great.  So they set about tailoring the movie to appeal to new audiences, while simultaneously bringing along old fans by casting the new movie not as a reboot but as an alternate-universe tale, complete with the inclusion of Leonard Nimoy as Spock, thereby making the movie a sequel (from a certain point of view).

So the question is now hanging out there: did they succeed?  I’ve already given you my thoughts on how successful the film is as a standalone film (very).  So how is it as a part of the Star Trek franchise?

The short answer: terrific.

The long answer follows.

First things first.  This movie is a departure from the pre-existing stories, and in major ways.  Star Trek canon has now been fundamentally split into two parts.  For the record, we will refer to everything prior to this movie as having occurred in Universe A; this movie’s setting is in Universe B.  Also, I will refer to this movie as Star Trek (2009), and to the original series as Star Trek (original).  (Fuck…!  When you’ve got to glossarize things in that fashion, you know you should probably find a new hobby.)

The most fundamental change to the franchise made in the creation of Universe B is the style of the filmmaking.  Star Trek (2009) feels rather like a response to the documentary-style approaches of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (2003), both of which have siphoned off significant portions of the Trek mystique over the past few years.

First, Firefly became the Little Show That Could; its followers were so rabid that they convinced Hollywood to make a movie out of the show only a few years after Fox canceled it.  This level of fan devotion and organization was territory Star Trek (original) had always claimed as its own; its tales of letter-writing campaigns of yore were, after Firefly, no longer quite as legendary as they once had been.

Then, Battlestar Galactica (2003) became a darling amongst fans, critics, and the media for dealing with social issues in a unique, provocative way.  Man, that show was relevant.  When was the last time Star Trek had been socially relevant?  All of the spinoff series took occasional stabs at it, but rarely did anyone take notice outside of fan circles; now, here was a new show, getting mentioned in Time magazine and getting its cast and crew invited to the United Nations to give a lecture on humanitarianism (!).

One common denominator between Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (2003) was that sort of shaky-camera visual approach, as well as a greater realism in the cinematography, effects, and acting.  Oh, and no doofy-looking aliens with bumpy foreheads. This had been coming in space-based sci-fi television for a long time.  In a very real way, nearly every sci-fi show from the late ’70s on was a reaction to Star Trek (original) in one way or another. And mostly, they could only approach Trek by going away from it.

Battlestar Galactia (1978) was mostly an attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars, but they turned to the planet-of-the-week format of Star Trek for story ideas, most of them strictly barrel-bottom in quality.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, which debuted in 1987, refined some of the ideas of Star Trek (original) by expanding the types of jobs the crew performed; that show also put families aboard the ship, and advanced the technology to reflect the ’80s idea of what the future might hold.  Up to this point, Trek was still the primary idea of what televisied outer-space sci-fi could (and should) be.

When Babylon 5 came along in 1993, however, creator J. Michael Straczynski constructed a conscious jazz riff on those notions.  He made the setting a contentious, dangerous environment, as opposed to the plush, comfortable, (mostly) secure Starfleet trappings of The Next Generation.  Instead of characters who (mostly) got along all the time, he populated his show with characters who (mostly) never got along; sometimes, they were actively trying to kill each other.  This show was also set on a space station, rather than on a starship; the characters would have to actually deal with their problems, rather than fly away from them every week.  The biggest change was that Babylon 5 was (supposedly) a single long story, with a pre-determined beginning, middle, and end; this was a response to criticisms that on The Next Generation, the reset button got pushed at the end of each episode.

Debuting at about the same time as Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was also a space-station-set story, and this one was also somewhat grittier than The Next Generation, with characters who didn’t all like each other.  (Claims have circulated for years that Straczynski pitched his ideas for Babylon 5 to Paramount during the ’80s, and that they purloined that pitch for Deep Space Nine; the two shows do share some striking surface similarities, but they differ wildly in execution.)  Deep Space Nine had a spiritual element to it, something that had been mostly lacking in Star Trek up until that point.  Eventually, the show even became highly serialized, with stories taking multiple episodes to play out. 

Star Trek: Voyager was essentially The Next Generation with a thin coat of character conflict.

Stargate SG-1 set its action on Earth, at Stargate Command … and rather than using a starship to send people out exploring, it used, well, a Stargate.  This story was not set in the future, but in our present, and featured military characters interacting with scientists.  There was plenty of character conflict, but the focus was still primarily on exploration.  Also, the show featured the same flat, television-style cinematography that all the previously mentioned shows featured.  It also featured aliens that weren’t particularly alien (with the occasional exception).

Farscape turned that on its head somewhat, offering up both a more rich visual palette and an increased diversity in the type of aliens it portrayed.  It featured a wide variety of puppetry techniques courtesy of the Henson company, and while they might have always looked like puppets, they also generally looked like damn good puppets.

When Enterprise debuted, it offered up a slightly more advanced visual style, but it also returned to the same type of storytelling its Star Trek brethren had been doing for the past fourteen years; nobody was thrilled.  It was only during the show’s final season, when writers began trying to tonally link the show with Star Trek (original) that fans really began to embrace the show, but by that point there were too few of them left to make an impact on the ratings.

When Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (2003) came along, those show’s producers decided to ditch the concept of aliens altogether, instead focusing on the human characters and using every filmmaking technique at their disposal to create a storytelling universe people could very much relate to.  The widespread feeling was that the storytelling approach of shows like The Next Generation had become irrelevant.  Fans responded with wild enthusiasm.

That’s part of the sci-fi climate into which Star Trek (2009) entered when production began.  That’s the television side.  The cinematic side included the successful but also very criticized Star Wars prequels, which seemingly sacrificed fidelity to the original series (and its fans) in favor of appealing to a new generation children.  Apart from that series and the dystopian action flick trilogy of The Matrix and its sequels, sci-fi movies were more or less extinct.

Abrams and company seem to have paid close attention to all of these lessons, and they began by focusing on the visuals.  The cinematography in Star Trek (2009) is rich, deep, unafraid of shadow and of “accidental” lens flares.  Abrams doesn’t go quite as far into docu-realism as, say, Battlestar Galactica (2003), but he goes much, much further than any Star Trek series or film had ever gone before, and really, there’s no going back.  This is a good thing, as it beckons the viewer — the modern viewer, at least — into the story; the flat, blandly lit visuals of The Next Generation and Voyager and the two Stargate series have long since lost their appeal, and only a fool would fail to recognize that.  Abrams is no fool.

And yet, by making his film look so different from the many episodes of television which comprise the Trek era of 1987-2001, Abrams is in some ways blatantly disrespecting a sum total of 21 seasons worth of franchise continuity.  That’s bound to ruffle a few feathers, or at least to create a sort of optical disconnect for people who go back and watch those hundreds of episodes.

What Abrams has actually done is marry the docu-realism of modern sci-fi television with the hyper-colorful design approach which was frequently taken by Star Trek (original).  He’s toned both down, and met somewhere in the middle, armed with a $150 million budget and the good sense to not allow the CGI to overwhelm things the way George Lucas did in his Star Wars prequels.  The result, from a visual standpoint, is nirvana.

In order to make that goal a reality, Abrams has also had to refine the way many things within Universe B look in comparison to how the same things look in Universe A.  For one, he’s done away with the many years of changes to Starfleet uniforms: though this film’s costume designers make their own mark on the Trek franchise with their red Starfleet cadet uniforms (as well as black uniforms, and color-coded spacesuits), what we get in Star Trek (2009) are essentially the gold, blue, and red uniforms from Star Trek (original).  This is both an implicit criticism of the Next Generation-era uniforms and a welcome return to the style of the ’60s, and it’s more successful than I’d have ever thought possible.  Abrams seems to have intuited that those designs mean something to people; it was a great decision.

Most of the other elements, though, are in for a major redress.  Sickbay looks basically the same, and the transporter room is simply a variation on the same theme, but the bridge is astonishingly different, and engineering may as well be a different thing altogether.  The bridge, with its shiny white surfaces, has been called an Apple store in space, and I was skeptical of it based on the photos first revealed to the public.

However, in the finished film, this new bridge becomes far and away my favorite starship bridge of the entire franchise, mainly due to how very busy it is.  There seem to be about a dozen people working at various stations at any given time, and somehow you get the sense that what each one of them is doing is of key importance.  But the layout is basically the same, with the captain’s chair still commanding the center of attention.  Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (2003) had done away with this style of ship’s bridge design, but Abrams correctly realizes that that would have been a major miscalculation for a Star Trek movie.

Best of all is the new viewscreen.  The viewcreen in the previous series had always been just large, multifunctional computer screens which could receive video signals.  This one is also literally a window onto space; when it’s not in use, you can see out of it (or into it from outside).  There are some great background shots of the ship’s hull as seen from the viewscreen; this gives a tremendous amount of depth to the image, and is a huge step in making outer space seem realistic.  Whoever made this decision deserves applause.

As for engineering, it is likely to prove to be the most controversial design element in the film.  It appears to be a redressing of a factory, or some other industrial site, but I suspect that the thing is just a set made to remind us of an industrial setting.  There are pipes running every which way, and the whole thing has a lived-in, cluttered look that is entirely alien to Star Trek.  Truthfully, I haven’t yet decided whether I like this as a Star Trek design element.  But on their own, I like the lower-deck sets quite a lot, so I’m inclined to go with it.

The design changes to the Enterprise itself, of course, have been widely debated by fans.  The nacelles, which are oversized and perhaps reminiscent of hairdryers, are the major point of contention.  Personally, I do not care about these elements.  I never much liked how the Enterprise-D looked, nor did I care for the Voyager design; didn’t stop me from liking those shows, and I’d say this new Enterprise design is more successful than either of those ship designs.

Other refinements include Abram’s approach to the way Star Trek aliens look.  Firefly could skip having aliens; Star Trek cannot, and should not.  But they don’t have to look like garbage, and Abrams seems determined to avoid that trap without falling in the alternative trap of overly-CGed aliens that you get in, say, Attack of the Clones.  I mentioned in the first part of my review how much I like the alien nurse in the opening sequence; I’d like to reemphasize it here.  There is also a CGI alien on the crew of the Kelvin; he looks a bit like Lt. Arex from the animated series.  The only other particularly alien aliens we see (that I remember, at least) are a brown-skinned alien on the Enterprise and Keenser, Scotty’s colleague on Delta Vega.  Both of these are full-head makeup jobs, and they both look quite good.  Otherwise, we get a green-skinned Orion and bunches of Vulcans and Romulans whose ears look surprisingly good.  And the Romulans — thank  you, J.J., — do not have the retarded forehead ridges they had during the Next Generation era (nor do they wear those wretched gray suits with shoulder pads).

But enough of how Abrams has changed the look of the Trek universe.  The big question on a lot of people’s minds prior to the movie’s release revolved around what, if any, changes Abrams might have made to the philosophical underpinnings the franchise always had.  Roddenberrianism, we’ll call it, by which I mean: the fundamental belief that by the time in which Star Trek (original) is set, mankind will have solved its societal and political problems, united under one worldwide government, and become a progressively-minded race which roams the stars not for militaristic or economic gain, but for scientific purposes.  In other words, human civilization has become a utopia, and one which holds as its highest law the principle of the Prime Directive: thou shalt not interfere with the development of alien civilizations who have not yet achieved warp capability.  How, many fans wondered, would J.J. Abrams and his writers integrate these fundamentally Roddenberrian philosophies into the new Universe B?

This is a difficult issue to wrestle with, in some ways, because the franchise’s approach to Roddenberrianism has not always been consistent.  Even during the three-season run of Star Trek (original), the Prime Directive would occasionally be forgotten about, and the series completely dodged answering questions about how humanity had gotten to this utopian ideal, or about how human society actually functioned back on Earth.  Few, if any, fans seemed to care, either.

By the time Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came about, Roddenberry had been forced out of the franchise by Paramount.  They brought on board a new production team, headed by Harve Bennett, who was a complete Trek neophyte.  In developing the movie, Bennett brought a more militaristic edge to the proceedings, one which viewed Starfleet as being something of a naval force in space.  These elements were not heavy-handed or belabored, and fans bought them immediately … perhaps because the original series episode “Balance of Terror” (long a fan favorite) had already contained such elements.  Bennett was simply emphasizing one of the elements he himself responded to most strongly when he finally got around to watching the series.

Over the course of the next few films, the militaristic aspects would be more subdued, but they certainly made a return in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  In this film, Starfleet personnel collaborate with Klingon traitors to keep peace talks between the Federation and the Empire from succeeding.

In part, this film was a reaction to the Roddenberry-created Star Trek: The Next Generation, which jumped forward decades into the future, and contained elements such as a Klingon Starfleet officer.  In virtually all respects, The Next Generation represented a refinement and furthering of Roddenberrianism, sometimes (so go the complaints of dissenters) to the detriment of the series.  The show was often criticized for having a lack of conflict between its key personnel; the characters, some said, were simply too perfect to be interesting.  (This isn’t the venue for me to say why that opinion is a load of horseshit, but it was a frequent complaint, and a perceived problem for the franchise.)

The Undiscovered Country does not play terribly well when viewed through the lens of Roddenberrianism.  The notion that a widespread conspiracy could exist within Starfleet and the Federation runs completely contrary to that philosophy.  Even worse, Captain Kirk — though never himself a conspirator — spends the first two-thirds of the movie on a racist rant against the Klingons, due to the death of his son at their hands three films earlier.  This is not the James T. Kirk I know and love.  Members of his crew follows suit; this is not my Enterprise crew.  Valeris, a Vulcan, is a key member of the conspiracy; this is not my brand of Vulcan logic.  The Undiscovered Country is what happens when you completely forget the principles upon which the franchise was founded.

Roddenberry died in 1991, and it was not long after that the franchise began to show signs of wanting to drift away somewhat from his philosophies.  By the time the second spinoff series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, premiered, the producers were actively seeking out ways to side-step Roddenberrianism.  If we can’t have a troubled human society, they figured, we’ll just set the series near a troubled alien planet.  Deep Space Nine would eventually encompass all manner of societal defects that the other series could never fully wrestle with, and that is likely a big part of the reason why many fans hold this as their favorite of all the series.  The militarism runs rampant, as well; the Federation even becomes involved in a series of major wars, offering many opportunities for battles both in space and on land.

I, too, am a Deep Space Nine fan, but I have to wonder: if you have to run away from the Roddenberrian philosophies, are you truly doing Star Trek anymore?  For my tastes, Deep Space Nine strays too far too often to be fully satisfying as a Star Trek series.  Both Voyager and Enterprise are more restrained in their approach to that subject; instead, they try to defeat the curse of being stale and emotionless (a complaint unjustly tossed at The Next Generation during its seven seasons) by bringing in more sex, more character conflict.  They were mildly successful in retaining the Roddenberrian ideals, but for all intents and purposes, the ideals died with the man.

Which brings us to Star Trek (2009).  In some ways, Abrams has dealt with the issue of Roddenberrianism by simply not dealing with it.  At no point is the Prime Directive mentioned in this film.  Starfleet is referred to as a “peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.”  What does that mean?  It seems to mean an armada that is dedicated to peace but totally prepared to open up a can of whoop-ass if opening up a can of whoop-ass is necessary.  To me, that seems to be a direct return to how Starfleet was portrayed in the original series: vaguely.  These people seem to be essentially well-armed scientists, which fits in nicely with Roddenberrianism as seen in, say, “Errand of Mercy.”

Most importantly, Abrams has allowed the characters to be thoroughly flawed (or otherwise complicated) and, therefore, interesting.  I say “allowed,” but he’s really just amplified their original characteristics.  Kirk here is a brash hothead, but he’s generally not wrong; Spock is wrestling with his human side; McCoy is a bitter, paranoid divorcee; Uhura is a brilliant linguist with a compassionate nature; Scotty is a work-obsessed genius with an obliviousness to social niceties; Chekov is a wet-behind-the-ears whiz kid (who has as much in common with Wesley Crusher as he does with the Chekov of Universe A).  Only Sulu here is bereft of any real character traits, unless badassery is a character trait; perhaps sequels will do better by him.

There have already been complaints from long-time fans over the decpictions of some of these characters.  Spock’s emotionalism, and his romantic relationship with Uhura, have drawn the most complaints.  But the humans in general are more rough around the edges, and less idealized, than maybe we’re used to seeing in Star Trek.  The bar full of brawling cadets, for example, might seem a bit out of place.  Until, that is, you remember the bar full of brawling officers in “The Trouble With Tribbles”; and those fellows were Starfleet graduates.

The fact of the matter is that J.J. Abrams has changed nothing, from a standpoint of Roddenberrianism.  What he’s done is to make the characters more recognizably human, and by doing that, he actually makes the whole endeavor seem more optimistic, more bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm for the future.  Those people are us! They’re not just some futuristic version of us; they curse, they drink, they fight, they fuck, they get sick, they get angry … but they get the job done.  They know their stuff, and they concentrate on doing what needs to be done.  And when they do their jobs well, they’re rewarded for it.

I was initially thrown off by the apparent ease with which Kirk (and some other officers) are promoted during the course of this movie, but then I thought about it.  Kirk, during the events depicted here, literally saves Earth, and possibly the entire Federation.  If that doesn’t merit an instantaneous promotion to Captain, well, I don’t know what does.  And if Pike’s ability to recognize that potential in him doesn’t merit an instantaneous promotion to Admiral…?  Same deal.

There is, of course, a lot to pick through in this movie; we’ll be doing it or years to come.  But here are a few more points I want to briefly touch upon before winding this thing down:

• The casting, top to bottom, is perfect.  Chris Pine is an excellent Kirk, and an instant movie star; Zachary Quinto, though not blessed with Nimoy’s awesome voice, makes a wonderful Spock; Karl Urban is perfect as McCoy; Zoe Saldana is sexy, empathetic, and wonderfully  snarky as Uhura; Simon Pegg makes for fine comic relief as Scott; Anton Yelchin makes me actually like Chekov; John Cho does fine as Sulu, though he has little to do; Bruce Greenwood makes you want to see a prequel series with him as the star; Eric Bana is menacingly effective; Leonard Nimoy, though obviously an elderly man at this point, is dignified and funny and moving; Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Morrison make fine parents for Kirk, while Ben Cross and Winona Ryder make fine parents for Spock.  I also enjoyed seeing Rachel Nichols as a scantily-clad, big-bosomed Orion lady; Clifton Collins Jr. as a Romulan; and Faran Tahir (of Iron Man) as the ill-fated captain of the Kelvin.  And heck, even Tyler Perry did fine in his role as the head of Starfleet Academy.  J.J. Abrams is a genius when it comes to casting; I’ll probably never doubt his instincts again.
• If you had told me a year ago that the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage” would be included in this film, and that I would not only accept it, but feel like applauding while it was playing, I’d have said you were all kinds of “Naked Time”-like crazy.  Well, silly me, because that scene is fucking awesome.
• The casual racism of the Vulcan sitting at the head of the Vulcan Science Academy (that’s W. Morgan Sheppard, who played the warden of Rura Penthe in The Undiscovered Country; he also played the first Soul Hunter on Babylon 5) is not the most plausible plot point this film has to offer.  Racism would never be logical to these people, and while I understand the necessity of that sequence to the film’s overall structure, I don’t think it works very well.  Therefore, I shall now pretend that that fellow was a Romulan in disguise.  (The scene is, however, a nice callback to “Journey to Babel.”)
• The destruction of Vulcan (and death of Amanda) is a monumental event in Trek history.  Again, if you’d told me a year ago that this was happening, I’d have crapped in my hand and then slapped you.  But as amusing as that might have been, I’d have been wrong.  The potential for stories for sequels (and potential television spinoffs) is bountiful, and since the strain of being the member of an endangered species will almost certainly result in added pressure on Spock to honor his Vulcan heritage, it’s going to be interesting to see where Abrams and co. take this.
• McCoy is depicted as a divorcee in this movie … will we get to see his daughter, Joanna?  Joanna is never mentioned in this movie, and might well not exist in Universe B (she didn’t technically even exist in Universe A!).  She is a character in at least one novel, and one of the episodes planned for the never-filmed season four of the original series was for Captain Kirk to become romantically involved with McCoy’s daughter.  Might Abrams go down this road at some point?
• Admiral Archer’s beagle, huh?  Now, this comment is interesting for at least two reasons.  One: it means that Enterprise can be considered canon for both Universe A and Universe B, as the events depicted in this movie could have had no impact on what happened during the course of that series (excepting the Next Generation sequences of the series finale).  Two: this cannot have been Porthos that Scotty beamed out of existence, since he would have been much too old to still be alive.  Also, might we see Scott Bakula reprise his role at some point in a future sequel?  Probably not, but such fun ideas are part of the appeal of this franchise.
• I love that they slapped a uniform from Star Trek: The Motion Picture on Pike at the end of the movie.  But I’m confused; am I supposed to assume that he has been crippled, or is this merely a callback to “The Menagerie”?  Pike appears to be walking, though with help, when he and Kirk are escaping the Narada, so until I get proof to the contrary, I’m going to assume that he’s not crippled.  Like I said, the prequels are calling you, Bruce.
• The Kobayashi Maru sequence is nearly perfect … except I’d like to know how Kirk cheated.  Did he reprogram the test himself?  Was Gaila the Orion somehow implicit?  (Also, is she now dead?  What ship was she assigned to?)  Kirk eating the apple is a fantastic callback to The Wrath of Khan, and is one of the best bits of staging in the movie.  Kirk is so confident that he brought a snack; now that’s cocky.  On the other hand, why are the cadets during this sequence wearing Kelvin-era uniforms?  I get why they’re doing it from a thematic point of view (to emphasize that Kirk is thinking about his father); but why are they doing it from a plot point of view?
• Nero’s obsessiveness is believable because, as Spock says, Romulans and Vulcans share a common ancestry, and as Sarek says, Vulcan emotions run deeper even than human emotions.  Thus, both Nero’s blind fury and Spock’s more contained fury feed off of each other and achieve believability in the process.  You can argue that it doesn’t belong in Universe A, but over here in Universe B, it suits me just fine.
• The bar in Iowa serves something called “Budweiser Classic,” which is cool.  They also serve the Abramsverse drink Slusho, as well as a Cardassian beverage.  But aren’t the Cardassians too far away for the Federation to have encountered them at this stage of warp-speed development?  Isn’t that a plot hole?  I’m just sayin’.
• Love the new transporter effect.  Love it.

At the end of the day, I find it hard to call this movie anything other than a complete success.  A few minor plot points aside, this is a dynamically entertaining film, one that re-energizes the franchise of which it is a proud new component.  After the twin failures of Nemesis and Enterprise, it would have been easy for Paramount to let the whole endeavor fade away into memory, but instead, here we have a probable smash hit that will almost certainly make Trekkies out of millions of new fans.

Some of those new Trekkies are bound to become smitten by the original series and movies, and by The Next Generation and its movies.  Some of them will even discover Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Enterprise – which has the virtue of being the most recent of the series — is also rediscovered in a major way.  In all respects, this is a new lease on life, not just for the franchise overall, but for each of its individual components.  Even if this new film chucked the entire history of the franchise out the window, it would have been worth doing if regenerating the rest of the franchise had been the result.  The fact that the new movie — and Universe — is instead respectful of what came before it, well, that’s icing on the cake.

It’s a good time to be a Star Trek fan.