Last night I embraced my inner geek and went to see Star Trek. I'm no Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination - my knowledge extends to Spock, Captain Kirk, William Shatner and being able to identify a Star Trek uniform by it's trademark block colour and the little upside-down V badge.I couldn't tell you anything else. I didn't know when it was set, which characters were in which series or that Spock is in fact a Vulcan - all I knew was he had funny ears. I was blissfully ignorant of any details about the TV show beamed into my living room every weekend as a child.
So it was with some apprehension that I agreed to join a group of my twentysomething friends - half of whom revealed themselves to be closet Trekkies while my ignorance shone through.
And I was pleasantly surprised. Even I, with my limited knowledge of Star Trek, was impressed at how well cast the characters were, with the new actors matching up pretty well with the original TV cast.
Couple that with a good script - "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" and "I'll be monitoring your frequencies." - even if the plot is a little formulaic (token space bad guy causes problems, USS Enterprise comes to the rescue, bad guy gets upper hand, USS Enterprise wins in the end ready to defend the federation again) - and you're on to a winner. The applause at the end of the particular screening I was at would back that up too.
From Zachary Quinto's performance as Spock (better known as Heroes psycho-character Syler) to Simon Pegg's Scotty, the film is full of fantastically brilliant characters pulled off by actors you wouldn't necessarily expect.
You don't need to be a Trekkie to enjoy the 11th Start Trek film. (Yes 11th, according to Wiki, the Guiness Book of Records claims that the original Star Trek series has the largest number of spin-offs of all TV shows.) Whether you know that "Live long and prosper" is a Vulcan farewell or not, let Scotty beam you aboard the USS Enterprise and enjoy the film.
