Next week we catch up on Trek news for the year but for now let's focus on the highly anticipated movie. "Star Trek" has appeared on IMDb and in a warm way that realizes the film like I haven't felt since the dawn of the Star Trek movie era. God willing a year from today a favorably revivified franchise garners great reviews and millions of new fans and satisfied fanatics.
On the good side the cast looks magnificent. May they share that same special chemistry that famously energizes the original series. The camaraderie of that cast well represents Trek (with exceptions) and TNG casting caught even brighter bottle-lightning (with even less exception). The production demands of weekly television promote a social atmosphere unlike movie production but we'll see what they make of it. Also the original cast was dealing with brand new material to blaze their own inimitable trail while these fresh young professionals are enlisted to retrace that trail, at least at first. In time may they define their own new path. Welcome to the Star Trek family!
On the not-so-good side, the mysterious entanglement of Writer's Guild strike and Hollywood task parceling has ossified the script with over a year to go. I understand these terms that the production delivered to screen will present a script with barely-dried ink. The impact of this effect cannot be underestimated. Exacerbating this are the spoilers out (though none much beyond rumor status) involving Romulans mucking with the past in order to change the future of their arch nemesis James T. Kirk.
I hope that's wrong and by hope I mean sweat through every pore. What concerns me right away is the structural misstep of making this a Trek through Time instead of through the Stars. Bermaga tried that and today you can go read the tombstone. Pilfering the plot from First Contact would be another strike against success. New viewers will be confused if not bored, and experienced fans will be bored if not insulted.
The idea that an academy story once again draws breath staggers me after it should have been buried under a Mitchell-sized rock long ago. Maybe it really shouldn't, after a string of conspicuous remake tragedies that disgrace their inspiration and condemn the industry for unoriginality. Before TMP fans had high hopes that were in ways rewarded, in other ways unresolved, but at that point no one thought the show prime for pasture. Should this title fizzle and piddle embarrassing all, at least the family will remain.