Star Trek - So good, you'll ignore the stupid plot.

And when I say the plot is stupid, I mean it’s more than just “Star Trek bad”. No one involved put more than two seconds of thought into how black holes or time travel might actually work. The science has always been a little flimsy in this franchise, but usually when they wrote themselves into something that might seem nonsensical the TV show could always be counted on to throw some magic wand at it in the form of “warp fields”, or “calculations”, or even “miraculously, it worked”. But this is J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, where science does not even warrant a nod and a wink.

Fortunately, it has always been the characters that made Star Trek such a lasting American icon, and here their recast counterparts are used to their fullest. It is a treat to watch all the beloved characters interacting with each other. The action, spirit, and whimsy of the original show has truly been recaptured (for the whimsy, sometimes even too much.) The film opens with an attack on Kirk’s father’s starship by a vastly superior vessel, and then follows Jim Kirk as he grows up as a juvenile delinquent and cajoled into joining Starfleet. We meet several of the other characters along the way, including the Deforrest-Kelley-channeling Doctor McCoy, the incredibly hot Uhura, Harold- I mean, Sulu, the cast-for-his-voice-only Chekov, and the fabulous Zachary Quinto as a perfectly recreated Mr. Spock.

Events unfold in a way that will have diehard Trekkies scratching their heads, but halfway through the film there is a wonderful scene on the bridge of the Enterprise where they all realize they are dealing with time travel, and therefore the timeline and all their actions and destinies have changed from what they were meant to be. It could not have been more direct if they had looked right at the camera and yelled “Things are different! They’re gonna stay different! Deal with it!”

Unfortunately, right after that scene the audience is informed of the entire story behind the plot by a foreshadowed guest star. The problem is the flimsy story he gives falls right into that paper-thin plot development I was complaining about above. Seriously, the explanation for what is really going on will have small children asking “But if he has a time machine why doesn’t he just…?”

Still, there is enough here to keep fans and first-timers happy. The story may be bad, but that’s okay. The characters were always the real story anyway, and the one they tell is rich and exciting.