Star Trek

There's a wonderful moment in the making-of documentary where director JJ Abrams confesses that his vision for a new Star Trek took its cues from the original Star Wars trilogy, and you can almost hear the sound of nerd heads exploding around the world. That might explain, of course, why the rebooted Star Trek is also, y'know, good.

The fact that the technology has now caught up with the ambitions of the show helps, although the spirit of the series – a diverse group working together to explore the universe – remains. As does Kirk's fondness for green-skinned chicks.

Essentially an origin story, the film pits the Federation against a Romulan renegade named Nero (played by Eric Bana with scene-devouring glee) who wishes to avenge the destruction of his homeworld in a supernova by travelling back in time and destroying Vulcan, home of Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who failed to save Romulus with a red "red matter" bomb (which seems to be some sort of hyper-gravity liquid that would have the folks at the CERN laboratories rubbing their hands with glee). Meanwhile, in this timeline, the young James Tiberius Kirk (the remarkably good Chris Pine) is joining Starfleet, meeting irascible medico Leonard "Bones" McCoy (played with near-parodic relish by Karl Urban) and xenolinguist/total hottie Uhura (Zoe Salanda) and locking horns with this Vulcan dude named Spock (Zachary Quinto, whose resemblance to Nimoy is downright uncanny) and with whom he develops a grudging friendship. The cast is fantastic, the plot cunningly provides a way forward without being locked to the previous Trek films (we're in an alternate timeline to the original series now, y'see) and Abrams keeps things barrelling along without sacrificing character, sentiment or humour. And it's worth adding that the decision to shoot primarily on actual sets gives it a grounding that so many CGI-fests lack (reading this, George Lucas?).

In short the film is great, the DVD extras are considerable, and Simon Pegg plays Scotty. Let's face it: you'll be buying this the second you see it.

Extras Commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes, gag reel, webcam-enhanced 3d tour of the Enterprise and more.

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