I’m a bit late with this, but the new trailer for the upcoming Star Trek reboot is finally online, giving us more than just a nicely shot tease of the Enterprise being constructed. The whole prequel ‘Young Kirk’ idea did originally have me rather worried, and I’m still somewhat concerned about the Time Travel element of the story, as it’s a device that can backfire and overcomplicate very easily (Yes, we’re looking at you, Heroes), but J.J. Abrams getting the gig was something that gave me confidence that we might at least get an enjoyable film. Then, the first pictures started coming out, and one of the things that pleased me most of all was the fact that they’ve actually gone for the original uniforms. Yes, there’s some redesigning here, and yes the sets themselves are bigger and more spangly, but the look of the costumes simply shrieks ‘Original Series’– and it’s exactly what I wished they’d done with Enterprise, the amazingly dull prequel that simply ended up looking like all the other Trek series. I wanted them to go retro, and with the new movie, it looks like that’s exactly what they’ve done.

The other thing that’s really notable about the new movie is that it’s the first time since Star Trek: The Motion Picture back in 1979 that Trek has actually been treated as a blockbuster, and not as a relatively low budget production that’s really mainly for the fans. Here, Trek is getting the chance to be big, epic and genuinely widescreen (something you could never have said– frankly – about the last four Next Generation movies (Let’s face it, even First Contact was just a glorified episode)), and by the look of the trailer it could be an awful lot of fun. It’s Star Trek that actually feels grand and epic, on a tremendous scale (one of my favourite shots is Kirk on the bike, with those barely visible but actually ginormously huge sci-fi constructions lurking on the horizon). Yes, there are bits in it that feel a little OTT, and there’s no guarantee that I’m going to love what I see next May – but it does look like the dull beige-ness that had infested the franchise has been swept away, and they’ve let a bunch of filmmakers loose who simply want to tell an enjoyable story with the original series (and the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvurate) as their benchpole. Right now, it’s one of those trailers that simply makes me want to see the rest of the movie RIGHT NOW, and while I am mildly curious about Watchmen, I’m actually excited about Trek – and that hasn’t been true for a very, very long time…