Ending at the beginning

While the X-Men franchise is exploring its characters' back stories individually, the Star Trek series has taken on the Enterprise crew's early years in one fell swoop. The new Star Trek film, which comes without secondary titles or numbers, attempts, without any signs of desperation, campery or imitation, to segue into where the famed '60s television show first began.

There are, however, some notable changes to the various starship biographies: Spock's human mother (played on TV and in a few of the film sequels by Jane Wyatt) will die earlier. Perhaps even more surprising to both Trekkies and civilians, Spock and Lt. Uhura are lovers. These alterations and others are all the result of a black hole that has created an alternate universe - one that will actually allow Spock to meet himself as an old man.

Director J.J. Abrams wastes no time in throwing his audience into the action. One of Starfleet's ships suddenly finds itself under attack by a rogue Romulan craft that's much more sophisticated and lethal than any starship. When the starship's captain, who had been summoned aboard the Romulan craft by its captain, is murdered, his second, George Kirk, briefly takes command. Kirk orders the evacuation of the ship while manfully staying on the bridge to fight an obviously losing battle. In one of the pod craft departing the doomed ship is Kirk's wife, who is inconveniently giving birth to their first son, James T. Kirk.

In the ordered universe of the original Star Trek, James Kirk would know his father. Indeed, within Trek lore, there was a strong father-son bond. But, in this altered world, young James Kirk is a fatherless juvenile delinquent. In his mother's native Iowa, he gains a reputation as a hellion, albeit a rather brilliant one.

After a fistfight with a few Starfleet cadets in a star-truck stop out on the plains, Kirk is collected off the floor by his future mentor, Captain Christopher Pike. Pike tries to reason with this young rebel without a pause, telling Kirk that he knows his history - but more importantly, he knows his father's history. Late in the young Kirk's life, he finally finds a proper father figure to lend him guidance.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, a young Spock has had to contend with abuse and bullying on Vulcan for being a half-caste. Though Spock's genius is hard for Vulcans to deny, the fact that he comes with the weak genes of a human is thought a hindrance, for that species' inability to master both emotions and logic. It is the young man's "wayward" affection for his mother that will set him toward leaving Vulcan for Starfleet.

Once the two principal Star Trek characters are established, they have only to meet. Yet in this new reality born in a black hole, the great friends collide as hostile enemies. Kirk (Chris Pine) is far too cocky for Spock (Zachary Quinto), who believes the future captain to be both immature and a cheat. Soon, they will be introduced to the people who will boldly go with them into the final frontier of the future: the sarcastic young Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), the beautiful linguist Uhura (Zoe Saldana), martial arts master Sulu (John Cho) and an earnest 17-year-old named Pavel Chekhov (Anton Yelchin). As for Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (marvelously played by Simon Pegg), his entrance occurs later, and memorably so.

Even for someone who has escaped making Star Trek a religion or followed the series with faint interest, this "origins" film will still make compulsive viewing. First, the action and suspense that director Abrams begins with is never lessened in more than two hours, with enough perils and cliffhangers for mobs of Pearl Whites and Harold Lloyds to endure.

More importantly, the script is literate, often reaching a level of profundity - not something typically found in American action features. The characters, too, are finely delineated. However much we may think we know them, new facets are introduced that actually complement (and compliment) the past work of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, et al.

While adopting some of the mannerisms and vocal qualities of their forbearers, the young Enterprise crew never falls into the trap of aping or imitation. What they've taken, they use as nuances - the exception being Yelchin's Chekhov, who overplays Walter Koenig's original Russian accent to the point of parody.

The auxiliary characters to the original crew are equally strong, particularly an unrecognizable Winona Ryder in the Jane Wyatt role of Spock's mother, and the dependable Bruce Greenwood as Captain Pike (played in the TV series on occasion by Jeffrey Hunter). As Nero, the menacing Romulan, Eric Bana, head shaved and Vulcanized, comes close to matching what has hitherto been the fiercest Trek villain, Ricardo Montalban's wrathful Khan.

Finally, there's the great Nimoy himself, the connecting tissue between what was and what is. His Spock is, as always, a logician's logician, who can only arch a brow over the twists of time that have landed him back in his own past. His performance, indeed the final frames of the film, are valedictory, as of a great epic completed. Hollywood will surely have other plans, which is a shame, as Star Trek perfectly ends here at its beginning.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com