uss enterprise flies anew

The entirety of Trek-dom is buzzing with excitement with the announcement that a new Star Trek movie is just on the horizon -- to be precise, about 11 months away on a Christmas Day. Alas, here in the P.I., I will most probably be shouting my invective P.I.s to the organizers of the Metro Manila Film Fest as the launch date of the 11th Star Trek movie coincides with the MMFF. Similar to the movie launches of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this meant the new ST movie will be deferred until probably the 3rd week of January (now, that's crap!).

As mentioned, this installment of the Gene Roddenberry franchise is the 11th and rather than move forward into the timeline, the movie simply entitled "Star Trek" (fondly called Star Trek XI by Trekkies) goes back in time to showcase a younger USS Enterprise crew of Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Sulu.

According to websites I've read, the new movie will deal with the earlier adventures of the Star Trek crew captained by James Kirk, back to the Romulan wars which according to the Star Trek timelines where just about the time USS Enterprise was launched.

Expect no William Shatner in here as the young Captain Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (Just My Luck) and the young Spock will be none other than Heroes supervillan Sylar aka Zachary Quinto. On the other hand, LOTR veteran Karl Urban (Eomer) sheds his Rohan armor for a Starfleet issued-uniform as Doc McCoy. While Shatner will not be in the film, the original Spock will be. Leonard Nimoy reprises his role as Spock (the opening voice-over is Nimoy's saying the iconinc "where no man has gone before") in what is presumably a flash-back sort of intro for the film. Other notables in the new film are Eric Bana (lead villain of the film), Winona Ryder, and Ben Cross.

After an absence of two years on both the small and big tubes (the last being Star Trek: Enterprise), Star Trek returns anew and Trekkies all over the world are getting giddy. And what makes this version of the film more anticipated is that it is being produced and directed by J.J. Abrams, the well-known writer, producer, director of such greats as Forever Young, Armageddon, Mission Impossible 3, and most recently, the monster thriller Cloverleaf. On TV, he's the success behind popular series Felicity, Alias and Lost.

Here's the trailer for the latest Star Trek flick: