Our film buff, Austin Lynch, looks at the latest Star Trek film to reach the big screen…
IT’S BEEN four years since Trekkies like me got a chance to see how Star Trek would look when brought up to date.
I’m too old to be a fan of the original TV series – starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly but I jumped onboard when it came around to the big screen adventures for Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
After the hit TV series, which ran from 1966 to 1969, it was felt there was a bigger market for Kirk and co and in 1979 ‘Star Trek – the Motion Picture’ was released on a cinema audience hungry for science fiction.
The gamble to move the cult TV series, with its dodgy special effects, to the big screen paid off and space looked better, and cooler than ever before.
This movie spawned five sequels – and a few other cross-over movies with ‘The Next Generation’ TV series.
It all came to an end when Captain Kirk (played by Shatner) finally died in Star Trek ‘Generations’.
Fast forward a few years and it was decided their might be a whole new audience who could appreciate adventures in space so it was decided to go back to the start and follow a young Captain Kirk from the start in an origins type movie simply called ‘Star Trek’.
‘Star Trek’ was released in 2009 and featured a fresh new cast, and a starship Enterprise which had a few tweeks and revisions.
It had been rumoured at the time that Shatner may have made a cameo somewhere in the movie but in the end it was a brief, but memorable cameo by Leonard Nimoy that was all there was to connect the old with the new.
In ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ which has just gone on release, Chris Pine returns as the young Captain James Kirk with Zachary Quinto once again playing his friend Mr Spock with Zoe Saldana once again makes space look sexy as Uhura. Simon Pegg also returns as chief engineer Montgomery Scott.
The crew of the Enterprise, under Kirk, are never the most popular kids on the block but they are the best in a crisis – and in ‘Darkness’ they face their toughest challenge yet – to save their race and their planet.
The plot for this one is fairly complex but it begins on a mission during which Kirk has to take drastic measures to save Spock – measures which are outside the Starfleet rule book, and which lead to Kirk being demoted from his command of the Enterprise to first officer, with Admiral Pike assuming command of the iconic starship.
When a Starfleet target in London is attacked by agent John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Pike is killed, Kirk is given ordered to go in search of this guy.
The crew of the Enterprise soon find themselves heading for Klington territory and they are soon to realise the enemy they are facing is one that will be very familiar to Star Trek fans.
The film buzzes along at a great pace with first rate special effects and enough action to keep even the most space-sceptics entertained.
‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ looks to continue the standard set by the first ‘new’ move four years ago, so expect this franchise to run for quite a few more episodes yet.
