The movie made me nervous. I haven't seen it yet and I've heard mixed reviews.

But, I'm sort of an "old" Star Trek nerd (I've always said Daddy brought me up right =P) and so anything new with the way people have been butchering things lately scares me.

Also, what about Chekhov do you love? The Cherry Orchard? Three Sisters? Uncle Vanya? Or just the fact that he's adorably turn-of-the-century and Russian? =P <--(Anton Chekhov is a playwright. Lol.)

Well, it does mess around with... er, I don't want to give it away. There are a lot of throwbacks to the original series, they did a good job. They got a lot of the little details right, I think, while still making something new. Everything is shiny and pretty and epic, so it's all good. I grew up with Trek too, although admittedly I was always bored when my dad turned it on and therefore only payed attention to the shiny parts, but I still obviously love the new movie. So.

Chekov - Pavel Chekov, not Anton, haha - is just adorable With his little accent. Oh, you just have to see it. (Now McCoy's line "Oh good, he's seventeen" is running through my head and I have to stop giggling now so that I can go to sleep.)

How did it hold up for you the third time? I liked it even better the second time, but it lost a bit on me by the third viewing.

And i still owe you my short critcs of the "original" Trek movies. Later today.

First of all: Beware (and be aware) of the odd-numbered curse: Every odd-numbered "classic" Trek Movie sucks. More or less badly, but they all do suck. The "new" movie, being number one and number eleven at the same time, is an exception as one and eleven is twelve, making it even-numbered. Another way of dealing with this would be to ignore "Nemesis", but we'll come to this in a second.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Several years after the TV Series was cancelled, Paramount decided to revive the franchaise in the wake of sucessful reruns and the general revival of SF in the 70s. After the idea for a new Series (ST: Phase II) was scrapped, they took one of the series scripts and expanded it into a motion picture to at least get back some of the money invested in Phase II. Sadly, the film feels just like that: A mediocre TV series episode, expanded to feature length. While the plot drones on and on, the "updated" set design and "forehead alien" make-up seen in this film defined the Look of Trek until today, including even the JJ Abrams movie (there is a visible cut between pre-"2001" and post-"2001" SF set design). What it's about? Don't remember, don't care to even look it up.

By the way, i assume you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? If not, get it from Netflix (or a bay) RIGHT NOW.

At least, ST: TMP was succesful enough at the box office to warrant a sequel, ST II: The Wrath Of Khan. Generally considered to be the best Trek movie so far, and, on top of that, one of the best SF films in general, it heavily relies on Star Trek's roots in earth navys (all ranks and procedures in Starfleet are modeled after Earth, especially British Navy traditions, not Air Forces as one might expect) and takes the classic nautical adventure (think "Master And Commander" or Horatio Hornblower) story into space: A evil captain, after being marooned on a desert planet with his crew for years, goes mad and seeks revenge against the man who marooned him there when finally freed. This man, of course, is Kirk. Both men must go to the extremes, face their fears and make sacrifces in the ensuing chase and battles.
This movie is recommended viewing for everyone with the slightest interest in the genre of Science Fiction and set a standard for the Star Trek movies to come.

Sadly, ST III: The Search For Spock could not uphold this standard. All this movie does is employing stupid plot devices and shallow mythology to fix the worst mistake in Trek history: SPOILERS:

All in all, a mostly uninspired, but necessary (Spock has to be found!) movie.

Part of the real-life search for Spock was that Leonard Nimoy was given the director's chair and creative control over many aspects of ST IV: The Voyage Home. The first of many Trek movies to come featuring a time-travel storyline, it explores the light-hearted side of the Trek universe, facing various comedic challenges trying to blend in todays (1980s) San Francisco, including a now-legendary encounter with a punk rocker on a bus, Checkov, in his thick russian accent, asking a cop where to find the U.S. Navy's nuclear vessels and Scotty almost driven mad by the controls of an Apple Macintosh. Tapping on the 80's zeitgeist, it's plot is built around the environmentalist message of saving the whales, otherwise earth will be destroyed.
This movie is great fun to watch and takes Trek as much into comedy territory as possible without harming its foundations. Most funny moments of Abrams Trek rely on "fun" character traits first explored in this film, the obvious example being Checkov's accent.

Sadly, William Shatner's ego is as big as Kirk's, so he bullied Paramount into letting him make "ST V: The Final Frontier". With Spock's evil brother Sybok (at least they are not twins) hijacking the Enterprise to meet god face-to-face, this film shows how far into the mainstream esoterism went in the late 80s. Having to recycle many special effects from older movies and being shot on a hectic schedule due to a laughably small budget did not help the film either.
While some people blame it's poor reception partly on the disappointing first seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation (fun fact: ST:TNG almost got cancelled after its first and second season due to poor ratings, only to rise to the to of the ratings under a new writing team, running for nine seasons and spawning two spin-offs), which were on TV at the films release, the film is so universally hated among fans that general consensus is that the destruction of Vulcan in the new timeline was a small sacrifice if it kills Sybok and thus makes ST V undone.

ST VI: The Undiscovered Country, again directed by TWOK's Nicholas Meyer, centers around the peace talks between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, which hardliners on both sided try to sabotage by assasinating a Klingon leader and putting the blame on Kirk. The Enterprise's crew is challenged to free Kirk and McCoy from Rura Penthe, the Klingon prison planet (referenced in Abrams Trek) and save the peace talks.
An obvious allegory on the fall of the Soviet Union, this film closes the gap from the rather stupid TOS Klingons to TNG's Klingon society and thus became a fan favourite, cause everybody loves the (new) Klingons.
Trek creator and godfather Gene Roddenberry, who saw the film days before his death, reportedly hated it. thinking of it as "too dark" and "too militaristic". Lucky Gene didnt live to see Deep Space 9, which is very dark and IMHO the only watchable TV series in the Trek canon.

Which brings us to Star Trek Generations, intended as a "change of guards" film for Kirk and Picard. What it did was introduce the TNG crew to the big screen, get rid of the sequel numbering in Trek movie titles and kill off Kirk that thoroughly, not even JJ Abrams and his team could come up with a way to bring "old Kirk" back for their reboot.
Eventhough it's not named Star Trek VII, it's still odd-numbered. The plot is hardly believable, it's use of time travel is poorly executed and Kirk's death scene is unworthy of such a major character.

Eventhough Jean-Luc Picard is bald, the first "real" TNG movie, Star Trek: First Contact was arguably the last great, even the last good Star Trek film. Going back in time to prevent the TNG era's fan favourite enemy, the Borg ("sounds swedish") from getting in the way of Humanity's first contact with an alien race, assimilating Earth before they become technologically advanced enough to fight back.
The post-apocalyptic setting of a nuclear war-torn, devastated world full of drunks, mistrust, violence and cynism did not only show how far humanity will evolve in the centuries to come, but also provided the gritty realism and conflict the "we all love each other" hippie world of Starfleet certainly lacks. Add a 70s-rock loving, hard-drinking, foulmouthed genius engineer for the fanboys old and young to idolize and you got another favourite of the Trek crowd, while the "even from it's darkest hour, mankind will rise and advance to become better"-message went down well with the mainstream critics. On top of that, it's the first feature directed by Trek main actor Jonathan "Two Takes" Frakes, who right now works on the fourth part of HBO's "The Librarian" TV adventures.

From here, it could only go downhill (and the length of this reviews will go down, too): Star Trek: Insurrection, again directed by Frakes, confronts the crew with a morale dilemma that had to split up audiences if the actions the crew took were right. That alone would not be so bad, but as the script (as even Frakes admitted) again was more worthy of a mediocre TV episode than of a movie, the final product was a big letdown after "First Contact". On top of that, the schoolboy humour that plagued most attempts of TNG to be light-hearted (and mostly involved Data) was all across the movie, which copletely ruined the film for me.

But that could not prepare for what was to come: Star Trek: Nemesis was basically a bad remake of TWOK with a "evil twin" storyline thrown in for good measure, directed by an inexperienced director who won the job as a thank you for a last-minute editing chop job on "Mission Impossible II". What Paramount were thinking when giving away one of their most valuable franchaises as a thank you pat on the head is beyond anyone's understanding, but the film was universally panned by the critics, a major flop at the box office and finished the Star Trek franchaise off for good....

...at least until JJ Abrams and his crew resurrected it.

CLAPCLAPCLAP.

I'm, er, clapping for Abrams and his successful revival. Though I am grateful for the time you took to write these reviews!

I might skip the TNG movies altogether, because I don't really want to get started on 9 seasons of the series. :/ Who knows, maybe I'll go crazy. TNG is what I mostly remember watching when I was younger, anyway, so I'm a little more familiar with it.

Anyway, I keep hearing about more a more little things that Abrams put in the new movie as a nod to all the others, and I think that's awesome. He could so easily have tried to make it something different and screwed everything up, but I really think he knows what he's doing. And by creating an alternate timeline, he's kind of covering his ass - nobody will be able to say that so-and-so would never say/do this or that, because their experiences are different now. Spock, for instance - maybe Spock wouldn't have shown as much emotion as he did in the new movie, but the original Spock didn't watch his planet be destroyed and his mother die, did he? So it's all new.

General consensus is that the destruction of Vulcan in the new timeline was a small sacrifice if it kills Sybok and thus makes ST V undone.
HAHAHAHAHA. That's brilliant.

Sorry for multiple comments instead of one, I am distracted very easily and I would forget to say things if I tried to save them all until the end. :)

I was so disappointed in Kirk's death. Picard just kind of buries his body under rocks and stares off into the sunset, and then they continue on with the movie and nobody seems to care anymore. Sad.

I'm finally getting around to reading your comments, yay!

Considering the fact that I've never seen any of the Trek movies (apart from the last 15 minutes of Generations, which you can image left me going, "Wha-... Kirk? And the Enterprise? Gone?" followed by a sad face), I knew a surprising amount about the first 4 movies. Mostly because of all the Trek I have been immersed in since seeing the new movie. I like your explanation for the new one escaping the 'odd number' curse. And thinking of Chekov asking for "nuclear wessels" makes me smile.

Oh, and Spock's death, I knew about that too. What were they thinking?!

Don't worry, I've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey about a zillion times. :D

There were a couple scenes where I sort of zoned out for a bit, but I still love it. I still teared up when Spock's mother died and I still felt like cheering when Kirk was made captain of the Enterprise, so it amounts to holding up pretty well with me.

Yes, those critiques/synopses would be nice. I fully intend to spend this summer catching up on classic Trek and classic Dr Who. :)

Err... my spoiler warning on ST III is what i'd call a fail. Sorry for that.

No worries! I already knew and I'm not too concerned with spoilers for past Trek movies. :)

or at least something other than 'pretty young girl', but whatever. We'll see, yeah?

I'm with you there. But hey, at least she's ginger. *g* The Doctor should like her. :))

Yey for nb. 3!

A ginger! I didn't make that connection, awesome!

I read an article that was like, "she'll be the Doctor's first ginger companion!"

Sounds like a certain journalist missed season four... ;)

Oh my god how could they miss Donna? Hahahaha, seriously.

Having nothing better to do on a sunday afternoon, i just re-watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. All i can say is that not only it's an even better movie than i remembered, but it makes it obvious what JJ Abrams, Bob Orci and the others were watching every night while working on their "new" Star Trek. Thinking of it, even if the Trek movies would never have been without The Original Series, JJ Abrams' Trek works much better if watched as a prequel to the "old" movies, not to the TV series, alternate reality or not.
And don't even get me started how many TWOK references are in Abrams' Trek film. Just watch it... ;)

Well, you know who's the companion for the last special, right? (the news made me go: ":D!!!! YAY")

Yeah, that's pretty :D worthy, but it's still just one episode.

I actually don't care all that much, it just would have been a nice change to have a permanent companion that doesn't quite fit the mold.

SPEAKING OF, HAVE YOU SEEN THE 'CHILDREN OF THE EARTH' TRAILER? I want more Torchwooood.