Star Trek Into Darkness

As the open­ing frames of JJ Abrams’ 2009 fran­chise reboot flashed past at bone-vapor­is­ing warp speed, Trekkies around the world, still clutch­ing their asth­ma pumps in sweaty appre­hen­sion, wiped the pho­ton dust from their glass­es and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Jump for­ward to 2013 and the stakes have nev­er been high­er. Not for Starfleet’s mav­er­ick rook­ie cap­tain and his loy­al crew. And not for Abrams, whose own stew­ard­ship has come under increased scruti­ny since ris­ing to the unen­vi­able chal­lenge of re-ener­gis­ing anoth­er hal­lowed space opera. Of course, the director’s stock has risen sub­stan­tial­ly over the last few years – most recent­ly after his spell­bind­ing post-mod­ern block­buster Super 8. Even the most obsti­nate Star Wars fanat­ic would be hard pushed to argue that Episode VII looks in dan­ger of being chebbed up.

But enough fan­dom pan­der­ing. Not because this isn’t the time or place to dis­cuss the fate of sci-fi cinema’s most exten­sive­ly char­tered fron­tiers, but because Star Trek Into Dark­ness sim­ply doesn’t afford you the time to do so. This is, after all, a JJ Abrams movie, and in JJ Abrams movies, break­neck pac­ing and breath­less set pieces are par for the course. Some­times even the char­ac­ters strug­gle to keep up. In this instance, how­ev­er, it’s our hero’s overea­ger­ness that proves his undoing.

After pulling off a reck­less manœu­vre in order to res­cue his lat­est mis­sion (and his best friend in the process) James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) is sum­moned back to Earth and prompt­ly stripped of his com­mand. Then, just as Kirk’s bit­ter­ness turns to self-reflec­tion, Starfleet HQ is com­pro­mised by a rogue asset and before you can say ​‘trib­ble’ he’s slip­ping back into his mus­tard over­alls and set­ting off across the galaxy in hot pur­suit of the perpetrator.

The USS Enterprise’s new mis­sion: to take out John Har­ri­son, a mer­ci­less defec­tor of super­hu­man cun­ning and strength played with thes­py malev­o­lence by ​“the high-cheek­boned, blue-eyed sexbomb that is Bene­dict Tim­o­thy Carl­ton Cum­ber­batch”, as he’s gush­ing­ly described on the @Cumberbitches pro­file page. Revenge is high on the menu, but in order to get his man Kirk will have to adopt a more pru­dent lead­er­ship style, not least because Har­ri­son has tak­en refuge on the plan­et Kro­nos. One thing’s for cer­tain, Kirk can’t afford to be Kahless.

Where Eric Bana’s trib­al inked evil­do­er Nero was large­ly side­lined by Rober­to Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s ori­gin script, Cum­ber­batch is the sequel’s MVP. For fans of TV’s Sher­lock and mem­bers of the above­men­tioned Twit­ter appre­ci­a­tion soci­ety, this will come as sweet val­i­da­tion. But while Cum­ber­batch steals the show, it’s the cen­tral pair­ing of Chris Pine and Zachary Quin­to that remains the beat­ing heart of Abrams’ series.

If the first film occa­sion­al­ly felt like a Mup­pet Babies ver­sion of Star Trek, the sec­ond is more mature and – as the title sug­gests – dark­er. Pos­si­bly due to the influ­ence of long-time Abrams col­lab­o­ra­tor Damon Lin­de­lof, the Prometheus scribe who comes onboard as co-writer with the return­ing Orci and Kurtz­man, the threat lev­el is more pal­pa­ble, the con­flicts more per­son­al. The char­ac­ters are old­er and wis­er too (some more so than oth­ers) and to that end it is remark­able how much the cast have grown into their respec­tive skins. Karl Urban as the Enterprise’s res­i­dent physi­cian ​“Bones” McCoy and Simon Pegg as its excitable engi­neer Scot­ty are par­tic­u­lar­ly good. But it’s Pine and Quin­to whose stormy onscreen bro­mance once again pro­vides the emo­tion­al hook, remind­ing us why these icon­ic pro­tag­o­nists have endured for so long.

Con­verse­ly, it’s a shame that Zoe Sal­dana is giv­en so lit­tle to do here, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing her rise to ass-kick­ing promi­nence in James Cameron’s Avatar. Sad­ly Uhura’s main con­tri­bu­tion is to bick­er with Spock; bar one unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly impas­sioned mono­logue their rela­tion­ship trou­bles are played for laughs, the run­ning gag being that Vul­cans are hard­wired to sup­press their strongest emo­tions. New recruit Alice Eve (as Dr Car­ol Mar­cus) ini­tial­ly looks poised to usurp Uhu­ra as the film’s dom­i­nant female force, but her impact dimin­ish­es over the course of the film’s two-hour-plus run­time. Effec­tive­ly she’s the eye can­dy. But then Star Trek always was some­thing of a boys’ fantasy.

As a refresh­ing coun­ter­point to the Christo­pher Nolan school of clin­i­cal sci-fi auteurism, Into Dark­ness is an acces­si­ble, inter­tex­tu­al­ly rich and above all immense­ly fun addi­tion to a fran­chise. There’s a self-aware­ness to its sense of humour, a can­dour to its wit. Whether it’s Bones fir­ing off anoth­er elab­o­rate metaphor or Scot­ty spit­ting a famil­iar catch­phrase, nods to the orig­i­nal series are met with rib-nudg­ing affec­tion as much by the oth­er char­ac­ters as the audience.

Yet any­one still hop­ing for a more rad­i­cal rein­ven­tion will be left drift­ing hope­less­ly through out­er space. Abrams has suc­ceed­ed in updat­ing Star Trek for a 21^st cen­tu­ry crowd while keep­ing hard­core fans hap­py, but expec­ta­tions were low­er before and his fail­ure to raise the bar sec­ond time round sug­gests he’s lost sight of the series’ orig­i­nal mis­sion state­ment. Is Abrams a vic­tim of his films’ suc­cess? Maybe so. Con­sid­er­ing the tal­ent and bud­get at his dis­pos­al though, you’ve got to say he’s guilty of play­ing it safe.