It's Doctor Who meets Star Trek: with a plot a little more fantastic than usual, but with a grounding in Star Trek lore that makes the bitterness in my mouth left by Star Trek: Nemesis fade, the new Star Trek movie is off to a grand start.

First off, I am a Trekkie. So this review obviously is filtered through my perceptions as a Trekkie. There were only two possible outcomes for the Star Trek movie after so long being a franchise: either it would be an EPIC WIN, or an EPIC FAIL.

When I heard it was to be a reboot, I naturally got terrified. What would be the outcome? Every fan worries about franchise reboots, but I can say that I can completely accept this movie into my Star Trek Personal Canon Space without reservations. And I would happily watch it again. And again.

It's an excellent movie; full of the humor of the original series and the deep storyline that Star Trek was good for. Under the explosions and the womanizing, the plot usually had a very important message to carry; racism, ecological ignorance, free trade, cold war, it's all there, in the episodes of the Original Series.

This movie, claimed to be a reboot of the franchise, has the same effect. Humans, stuck against a rock and a hard place, have to fight their way through an enemy from the future who has come to destroy the Federation. Peaceful attempts are tried at first, but when it becomes clear that there is no negotiating, the crew go in, phasers and katana (yes...) blazing.

There are excellent name-drops in the show; Officer Uhura complains about being assigned to the USS Farragut instead of the Enterprise. Some name drops are EPIC FAILS; the planet Delta Vega, for example, was a planet near the edge of the galaxy in TOS; for the movie, they moved it to the Vulcan system and gave it a Hoth-like icy coating over it's original dry climate. The writers named it after the original planet but moved it for convenience, believing that the name drop would be more important as an Easter Egg compared to just giving it a new name.

ATTENTION REBOOT WRITERS; a fan who would recognize the name of the planet from the second pilot episode for Star Trek will be the one who is pissed that you just up and changed it for your own purposes. FOR EVERYONE ELSE it's a "new name with no importance."

Luckily, the occurances of stupidness of this magnitude is very limited, and I dare say that a real Trekkie who enjoys the franchise for the franchise will be very satisfied with the experience. I know I was.

My biggest complaint, however, belongs to the new Enterprise model used for the movie... it's the original ship, but whacked way too hard with the retro stick. G4 TV has an excellent reference image: Reference.

Now it's a pretty ship, yes, but frankly I felt let down that they would change the ship so far. It'd be like redoing Star Wars, but making the Death Star a pointy top-of-the-christmas-tree star shape instead of a sphere.

Nitpicks aside, the movie is excellent and fun. The characterizations of the characters we know and love are top, top notch. Kudos go to Karl Urban, who's performance of Leonard McCoy was so spot on I kept forgetting that DeForest Kelly wasn't part of the cast. And props to Simon Pegg, who's version of Scotty was so believable.

If you haven't seen it and love Sci-Fi, go see it as soon as you can. It's an excellent extension of the franchise, and I can say with all honesty... if they expand this into a series of movies, or into a TV series, I would be a fan.