Let’s continue to evolve this.

How is it?

It’s pretty good!

Pretty, good, or both?

Both! STAR TREK BEYOND is an impeccably produced motion picture. It moves and breathes like a movie, or better still (in this writer’s opinion) an actual episode of Star Trek on a HUGE budget. It’s fun to watch.

Chief qualm, then?

I dunno. This feels like a weird criticism to level against a movie that tries this hard to be actual Star Trek, but it all feels kind of inconsequential. Maybe it’s just the thirteenth-go-round-ness of it. Or maybe it’s the oft-cited scientific theory that at the end of the day, good Star Trek is just a thing that works better at a TV scale.

Does BEYOND effectively appropriate the bubble gum pop aesthetic of the 1960s TV series?

More than any Star Trek movie since literally ever.

Bright colours? Ray guns? Exciting spacefaring swashbuckling?

All of those. Plus uniforms I want to cosplay, an alien character I want to see on the bridge of the Enterprise next time out (in the dear, departed Anton Yelchin’s seat, I mistily add), and a bad guy who legit makes you go “huh.” (In a good way.)

What about optimism? The exploration of the cosmos? Big ideas about where we’re going?

ALL OF THOSE TOO. I gotta hand it to Scotty, he actually wrote a Star Trek movie here, and a timely one at that. This one gets at “the message of Star Trek” by straight up creating tension between the Roddenberry Box (no conflict in the future!) and the eminently arguable counterpoint that conflict doesn’t just lead to good drama, it actually leads to good everything. No growth, change, or evolution without it, even if we – as Our Mister Kirk mentions in the film – have to actually change against that conflict, unless we want to spend the rest of time fighting the same stupid fights forever. (Looking at you, America.)

So it’s not really Star Trek then?

I already said that it is. Ok this review format may have outlived its usefulness…

Is it sexy?

Not even slightly. This is the least lusty Trek since the Next Gen gang were running things. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, the O.G. crew never managed to hit their own series’ saltiness in their feature films, either. Guys, Star Trek is about getting your shirt ripped, not about jokes about getting your shirt ripped.

So no gays?

DUDE THERE ARE TOTALLY GAYS

What about people of colour?

THEM TOO

Hispanics? Asians? Arabs?

I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING YOU THEY ARE ALL IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER

Jews?

Ok not them.

So the galaxy continues to be run by white men?

SHOHREH AGHDASHLOO IS THE PRESIDENT Y’ALL

How is Our Mister Kirk?

Seems a bit diminished this time round, but he’s doing what he needs to do. No complaints. His occasional unintentional Shatnerishness is divine. 

How are the others?

They’re okayyyyy. This is really Scotty’s movie, from an amusing vignette perspective, which I guess makes sense cuz he wrote the dang thing. Chekov, Sulu and Uhura help move the plot along and/or provide someone for more important characters to talk to, but that’s all. Bones and Spock, fuckin’ finally I might add, get some alone time and it’s all great. If Karl Urban can’t get DREDD off the ground as a TV show, he should seriously consider doing LEONARD MCCOY, FRONTIER DOCTOR.

Whose action figure will you be buying, and in what scale?

Look, I ain’t proud of it given the obvious demisexual pandering, but I have a crush on Jaylah.

And the fair lady Enterprise herself?

Welp. They’ve blown up that damn ship too many times now for me to even care any more.

Is there opportunity to grab dinner while the director indulges in extensive, porny, SFX ship fly-bys?

More like bite-size snacks. Justin Lin really likes “swoopy,” but they’re fast, occasionally stomach-churning, swoops.

How does the flick look?

Like TOMORROWLAND fucked a Horta.

And the plot?

Alien planet adventures starring the NuTrek crew. Kind of perfect summer movie stuff, actually.

At any point, does Kirk talk a computer into self-destructing?

They continue to miss this very important, and very obviously relevant to our current Pokemon Go-ing society, plot idea.

Does Spock mind-meld with a piece of rock?

Another miss.

Are there Tholians?

These fuckers!

Best part?

Well for me, it’s “Giant Green Space Hand.” But I’ll also say that the first fifteen minutes or so are astonishingly great, presenting a texture (warp speed actually warping space, for the first time in fifty years!) and emotional rhythm (actual scenes! Full, serious, quiet, emotionally trenchant scenes!) that a Trek movie hasn’t even attempted since STAR TREK: NEMESIS… and there, it was awful. I’ll also allow that the last five minutes of BEYOND goddamn near ended me, for a variety of reasons. The manner in which this movie tipped its cap to the fiftieth anniversary of the franchise, and the crew that started this journey, is elegant, and beautiful.

Worst part?

I think we all know how I feel about J.J. Abrams’ weird Beastie Boys thing.

You gonna buy this sucker on blu-ray?

Sure am.

Will you go see Star Trek 14?

Inviting Thor back into the franchise – and telling us all they were gonna do that before STAR TREK BEYOND even had a chance to hit the screens – sort of seems like an “in case of emergency break glass” option, but obviously I’m in it for the long haul with these things. I am, of course, much more excited about Bryan Fuller’s forthcoming television series. Kick its ass, man.