Stars Chris Pine, Zachery Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, Lydia Wilson and Shohreh Aghdashloo Directed by Justin Lin If this current iteration not Star Trek were a TV series, with this particular cast and crew, we would be subjected to the typical adventure where the crew would find some mystery on some planet, beam down and then take care of the problem before returning to the ship. Week after week… So, Star Trek: Beyond is very much in spirit of the TV show in that we’re in the middle of the 5-year mission and the ship is given an assignment to check out an unknown part of space, hidden in a nebula. What would take it beyond the typical TV adventure is simply that several members of the crew are at turning points and the scale of the danger would burst beyond the confines of a typical TV episode. But it still feels rather like a TV episode. Sure, they won’t blow up the Enterprise (again!) for a TV episode, but given the ‘alien’ and unknown territory the crew finds themselves in, it simply means there’s no safe haven to retreat to and there’s no back-up coming. They’re on their own in enemy territory, and to make matters a little more skewed, the usual pairings we’ve come to expect have been thrown for a loop too. This gives some of the lesser highlighted members of the cast a little more opportunity to shine - and in that, there’s brilliance. How the usual fans would accept it, well… Granted, a Spock (Zachary Quinto) and McCoy (Karl Urban) team-up was going to be fun simply because they’re constantly at loggerheads in philosophy, while pulling a “Defiant Ones” scramble to stay ahead of their pursuers. But then you get Sulu (John Cho) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) doing the legwork of finding out what the main villain Krall (Idris Elba) is up to, while Kirk (Chris Pine) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) handling the MacGuffin of the piece while trying to reassemble the crew. Then there’s Scotty (Simon Pegg) hooking up with Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) who happens to be in possession of a possible means of escape. So, everyone gets a piece of the action. So what we get is a romp of an adventure that fits in very nicely as a typical Summer Movie Adventure; it’s a thrill ride, dolly enhanced by Michael Giacchino’s rousing score and returning themes. Incoming director Justin Lin gives the movie a very different air from the previous instalments even if the story itself doesn’t quite hold up against the reintroduction two movies ago. But by getting away from the typical Star Trek conventions of the Starfleet home-base, the familiar aliens and the politics, we are left with a streamlined story and a straightforward villain with a singular (if misguided, perhaps?) purpose. Lin manages to juggle his cast and their characters deftly (if there was anything he carried over from the Fast and Furious franchise, this was the boon) and along with the script by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, everyone gets their moment. In all, there’s fun to be had, something that was lacking in the last entry. The sense of being a throwback to the television adventures is a welcome change and it works well here. Just don’t expect anything to be majorly in-depth even with the double acknowledgement of the passing of two major cast members / characters. Rating: ***1/2 / 5
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