Spoilers within!

[dc]

Star Trek — brilliant! I had heard it was going to be good, but I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It is a fast-moving film, entirely (well, almost) faithful to the original while completely rebooting Trek. Things I loved about it:

• Simon Pegg is staggeringly good as Scotty. The only thing wrong with his performance is there isn't more of it.
• The shots of Iowa, very reminiscent of old Chris Foss covers, with vast structures on the horizon.
• The characterisation of all the main characters — well, almost all — is spot-on, very well done. It's so well done that when Leonard Nimoy turns up as Spock, he seems like the impostor.
• No one is safe! Anyone can get killed! Vulcan gets destroyed! (And that looks visually very impressive — although they haven't shrugged off Trek's tendency to put planets too close together, to judge by the view from Delta Vega.)
• Red-shirt parachutist!
• The new Enterprise is very impressive; the bridge actually looks futuristic. OTOH, I like the grungy engineering section — I always felt the TV series' engine rooms were far too clinical.
• Young rebellious Kirk.
• Spock and Uhura (something that the original series occasionally seemed to hint at).
• Scotty (Simon Pegg really is superb as Scotty) being obsessed with food: Are there sandwiches in the future?
• Shuttle Gilliam.
• The end titles are beautiful, with the Alexander Courage music...
• Did I mention Simon Pegg and how awesome he is as Scotty?

There was very little I didn't like. Sulu's sword being vaguely Oriental was disappointing (Takei rejected a Samurai sword in the original series, preferring to fence like a Musketeer and avoid the racial stereotype), but only slightly; the design of sword used made more sense in this context, and there's no reason Sulu couldn't master more than one style of fencing. I didn't like the Nimoy voice-over at the end: I did think they should have got the new Kirk to do that, if they were going to do it.... Or maybe have got Pike to do it. But that's incredibly trivial.

The one thing I thought was wrong was Sarek. Ben Cross's portrayal just did not come across as the formidable figure we know from the TV series and earlier films. I cannot imagine Mark Lenard's Sarek ever saying he married Amanda because he loved her. But given how right everything else was, this is forgiveable.