New stars, new 'Trek': A young cast boldly goes where others have gone before - just faster

MODERN innovations inspired by the old "Star Trek" show: the cell phone, the flat-screen TV and the Obama presidency.

The latter occurred to me as I watched J.J. Abrams' dandy new "Star Trek" movie, which arrives amid polls showing that 80 percent of Americans continue to find President Obama personally likable.

The findings jibe with the phenomenon that led to his electoral landslide - the feeling among people, all sorts of people, that somehow they knew the guy.

I now believe that this is because Obama is Spock.

Let's review: He's smarter than everybody else and favors logic over emotion, especially in a crisis. Pandemic? Depression? Cool as a cucumber. He's tall and thin, he's got big ears, a deep voice, and he's famously mixed-race - a creature of two worlds. Mom an American, dad from another realm. (And some people can't get over the fact that he's an "alien.")

And what are Obama's main policy initiatives?

Health-care reform, economic recovery.

He wants us to live long and prosper.

That clinches it.

Or maybe I've just got Spock on the brain - Abrams' new "Trek" is a kind of Spock-tacular. Yes, it's a prequel that starts with the adventures of young Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) in Iowa, but it rapidly moves into the origins of the Kirk/Spock bromance, and concludes with a focus on Spock (as a young man, portrayed by Zachary Quinto).

The movie is, contrary to disclaimers, very Trek-ish. You can't do "Trek" this well without understanding and enjoying the gist of the old show.

For instance: The coolest thing Kirk ever did was make out with that foxy green alien chick (on her planet, you're allowed to call them chicks). In one early scene, Abrams has young Jim doing exactly that in his Star Fleet dorm room (talk about going green).

I think Abrams' disclaimers ("I never watched it") are spin - a sop to young audiences who regard the old show as corny, which it most certainly is. That said, I think Abrams tells the truth when he said that "Trek" is also a tribute to the movies he grew up loving as a kid, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" chief among them.

"Trek" has that pell-mell, seat-of-the-pants, action-serial rhythm, moving madly from Kirk's days in Star Fleet Academy (where he meets McCoy and Uhura) to his first mission as a cadet and his decisive role in a desperate mission to save the earth and other planets from a time-traveling Romulan madman (Eric Bana, finding a happy home as a villain).

The writers find a way to link nascent Kirk with mature Spock, and, of course, this involves a bit of time travel. Time-warp movie schtick has always baffled me, and it baffled me here - I left not knowing whether an important planet had been permanently destroyed.

In that sense it's exactly like the original show - the last thing we wanted was for the show to conform to some dreary scientific reality.

Abrams has a knack for big-screen story momentum (I've always thought his "Mission: Impossible III" was underrated), and his "Trek" almost never stops being good, kinetic fun.

Everybody's in the spirit of the piece - Pine as young Kirk is a pile of testosterone and impulsiveness, which the narrative keeps in check by having him endure regular beatings and humiliation, all for laughs.

Young Spock is well played, and there's plenty of room for Simon Pegg ("Shaun of the Dead") to exercise his natural comic charm as young Scotty.

As for the Spock/Obama link, I think Abrams senses it too, whether he realizes it or not. It's revealed in Spock's choice of girlfriend, a twist that fans of the original "Trek" will enjoy, even if they voted Republican. *

Produced by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, directed by J.J. Abrams, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, music by Michael Giacchino, distributed by Paramount Pictures.