Star Trek

Apologies for taking so long to get round to writing this one up, having caught up with it a couple of weeks ago now. Even then I was a bit worried that it had been overhyped, but you know what, all the hype is pretty much well-deserved. This is one hell of a reboot of a franchise that had long become too tired and, heck, old. Having transmuted from Kirk and co into the somewhat po-faced Next Generation crew, it's great fun to be back with the original bunch, looking all young and sexy and stuff.

Of course, from a mathematical perspective, things get interesting even before the movie starts. Some are counting this as Star Trek XI, which means that finally we have an odd-numbered Trek movie which is actually any good, after such snooze-fests as Star Trek I: The Slow-Motion Picture and Star Trek V: the one they never should have let Shatner direct. Just goes to show that you shouldn't be too quick to think you've seen a mathematical pattern or rule.

Even better, the moive gets bonus points for including a bit of real maths, in the form of a Proper Maths Question, for when we drop in on Spock as a young 'un, he's in the middle of a Vulcan school lesson, and is busy being asked the formula for the volume of a sphere. Good to see that these Vulcans clearly take education seriously - no formula sheet for these bad boys! (I'll leave more detailed discussion on Vulcan educational techniques for another time, but let's just say that I can think of quite a few teachers who'll like the approach seen here, where the pupils are in individual pods while the teachers are, presumably, off drinking tea. Green tea, I suppose.)

Kudos too to the cast, who offer a mix of close imitations of the original (whatsisname from Heroes as Spock is a given, but Karl Urban is uncanny as Bones too) and modern re-interpretations (see Uhura, Sulu and Chekov). Kirk is deservedly in a class of his own, though Chris Pine perhaps wisely decides not to try to outchew both scenery and dialogue the way only old tubby Shatner could. And mention too of course for Simon Pegg, who's decided to go for Scotty as a sort of Billy Connolly in space. Which is fine for cheap laughs, but surely it's wrong not to have him shouting "the engines canna tak it, Cap'n" at least once.