Star Trekkin' across the universe...

I went to see Star Trek last night. I feel I should mention at the outset, that this was the first Star Trek movie I’d ever seen, and I had never seen the TV series (not in any of its 500 different permutations). So basically, I know the character names, but otherwise I am a total Trek neophyte. They could have had Fraggles invade the USS Enterprise and I’d have seen nothing amiss. Oh, well, no—scratch that. I may not be up on my Star Trek lore, but I KNOWS my Fraggle Rock (in fact, I just gave Heather a rudimentary Fraggles 101 schooling over dinner last night) New example—the Enterprise crew could have made contact with planet Melmac and I woulda been all “OMG!! ALF was a Star Trek spin-off?? For reals? Wooow. I did NOT know that!’

So I went to the flick in this condition of near-total ignorance and that is either the perfect background for seeing it or the worst. Certainly a lot of inside jokes zinged waaaay o’er my head, but on the other hand, I had no expectations to be dashed if Abrams decided to stray from the established mythos.

Well, I enjoyed it. I probably loved Bones (played by Karl Urban) the best, even if his was a supporting role. He makes curmudgeonly sexy. And of course, I really dug Spock (Zachary Quinto…prob’ly my #1 reason for wanting to see this). And Chris Pine as Capt. Kirk wasn't the let down I thought it might be (perfunctorily, the guy gives me a pretty-but-vapid vibe. I am pleased to be mistaken though) The only crew member I was less than enthused about was Lt. Uhura. Even though there were a lot of nameless lady-extras on the Enterprise crew, somehow Uhura was still Star Trek’s answer to Smurfette. I suppose that could be why I disliked her (inadvertantly projecting my strong anti-Smurfette sentiments on to her) , because I did , indeed, dislike her even though I could not discern a viable reason for doing so. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t actively like or dislike her. She was sort of a zero…lacking that elusive charisma/ je ne sais quoi that would allow her to transcend her lame Smurfette role.
But overall, it was a good flick, definitely worth the price of admission (even if, like me, you are going with the blasphemous intent to ogle cute dudes in clingy Enterprise tees)