Star Trek

Rating:

* * * *

Verdict:

Near-brilliant reboot of the much-rejigged spaceship saga.

Jumping Jack Flash

may have been born in a crossfire hurricane but James T Kirk's life started out even rougher.

He was born in an escape shuttle as his father went down with his spaceship under attack by a Romulan ship which had seemingly arrived out of nowhere.

Growing up in Iowa an angry young hothead, Kirk finally gets some direction in life after an encounter with Captain Christoper Pike the first commander of the USS Enterprise who reminds him of his father's heroism.

Meanwhile on a Federation planet, many light years away a half -Vulcan half-human child was getting bullied at school for his mixed parentage.

But that doesn't stop him being brilliant and - in his own undemonstrative way - an angry young man too.

No wonder these two don't get along when they first clash at Starfleet Academy. There Spock is the guy runing the legendarily unwinnable Kobayashi Maru training exercise and Kirk is the one who solves it - by secretly reprogramming the simulator.

Likewise, director JJ Abrams has rewired

Star Trek

into an unlikelly triumph.

After all, making the 11th film inspired by a short-lived 60s tv series which has already spawned many small screen offshoots takesall sorts of risks - like having your movie fall down a black hole between those who care too much about all things Trek canon and those who never will.

Or like being just another

Star Trek

film, only with younger prettier faces, with one of them. Doing. His. Best. William. Shatner. Voice.

But no, this

Star Trek

is quite a wonder.

Yes it taps into all that Trek history but it bends it to its will while having much fun with some of its ancient quirks and the leading characters' younger selves.

Its cleverest move though is how the entire film pivots on a time travel loop - which has echoes of the one making Abrams' Lostseries so cofounding this season - as many of its previous Trek incarnations have. This also allows the movie to play two deft tricks - start the whole thing over again in a parallel time-space continuum unencumbered by the Trek-future and have Leonard Nimoy show up in his old ears but new teeth as Spock, the wise elder of the cosmos.

He's terrific and the scripting of when inevitably he delivers that famous Vulcan greeting is pop culture gold.

Sure this offers a good space battle or two and some spectacular aerial and terrestrial action along the way and Abrams keeps the pace on hard throughout. So much so that it actually reaches its natural climax a little early and can't quite sustain the excitement to its actual big ending.

But it's the new kids on the bridge which make this

Star Trek

so enthralling.

Heroes star Quinto makes a particulary volcanic Vulcan first officer, Pine might seem a little too Pitt-pretty at first but he gives Kirk a new swagger while our own Karl Urban's as Bones McCoy channels his predecessor's old adages - "My! God! Man! - frighteningly well.

Lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana) delivers the movie's single biggest suprise while the comic relief arrives in the form of Simon Pegg as the manic Scotty, who we first meet exiled on a distant Federation depot.

Once aboard the Enterprise - yes, Scotty beams himself up - Pegg's big scene shows this has also been influenced, by of all things, Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Even the "red matter" which the Romulans are using to do nasty things to Federation planets looks like nuclear gobstopper.

Led by a menacing Bana, the Romulans' intergalactic mission of destruction and the stopping of it is pretty much the story after the establishing chapters. So this

Star Trek

reboot isn't up to much so far as pondering big sci-fi posers, other than pondering the, er, logic of its time warps.

But it does answer the most important question about this series going back to the future: Yes,

Star Trek

's time has come again.

Russell Baillie