Spoiler free Star Trek review

So, the Star Trek reboot is here. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are all back in their pre-original series forms and the whole canon has been rewritten to give us a brand new start. The wilful destruction of Trek history, leaving everything that came before irrelevant, can't help but sting a little; but the truth is, Trek was going to die unless it could bring in new fans and it's never felt this exciting or down-to-earth.

The film opens with a huge battle sequence and the pace literally doesn't let up for two solid hours. The effects are stunning, with the much-maligned lens flares nonetheless giving the film a distinctive feel, and the new set and costume design manages the impossible task of keeping the feel of the 60s show and yet making it feel more up to date than ones in Enterprise. Okay, so Abrams is still stuck in TV mode, never letting the camera move more than a few inches from the actors - which gives the film a claustrophobic air when the scale of the piece really requires it to breathe - but so much happens that you barely notice.

The characters have so little in common with the originals that they could just as easily be Galaxy Quest-style parodies of themselves, but the new crew are much more fleshed out and real than their counterparts and the cast is, without exception, brilliant. Zachary Quinto makes a better Spock than Leonard Nimoy himself and even fears that Simon Pegg was just taking the piss are allayed by a Scotty that steals every scene he's in.

However, whilst it may be good, it just isn't Trek. You can't help but feel that the film is a little dumbed down. No-one misses the technobabble, but you'd still like the technology to amount to more than “red stuff that makes black holes.” This is barely scifi and when it comes to the ending, with that iconic Final Frontier speech being unfurled, it just doesn't fit the new tone. This film isn't about “going boldly where no one has gone before,” it's not about meeting “new cultures and civilisations.” The aliens in the film come down to nothing more than Guy With Lizard Skin and Freaky-Eye Woman., even the Orion Slave Girl is just a normal woman with green skin. Whilst Abrams has put the adventure and the sex back into a franchise that had forgotten how to be fun or sexy, he's also lost that sense of wonder and exploration. The phrase that rings most true is “thrown out the baby with the bathwater.”

Still, the sequel is already in the pipeline and now we're done with the origin, maybe these things can be addressed. The James Bond reboot radically altered the series, then took it all back with the follow up. That was a mistake, but I'd like to see that here. Otherwise you might as well just not call it Star Trek at all. Either way, if it's this good, I'll be in the audience and glad, if still a little sad, to be there.