Am I the only one who didn't love the new Star Trek film?

For the standard summer popcorn flick, it was watchable and better than X-Men Orings: Wolverine. Unfortunately, it lived up to my lowered expectations and worst fears of what would happen if they were to make a big screen Trek movie. They catered to the lowest common denominator, in order to bring the traditional non sci fi audience on board, with a cast full of up and coming familiar, pretty actors, lots of explosions, battles with generic CGI monsters, and contrived plot devices. In doing all this they lost the essence of a Star Trek film and failed to leave any kind of interesting moral, something which even the worst of the previous Star Trek films, Final Frontier managed accomplish. I'm willing to admit that most of the time Star Trek The Next Generation was often annoying with the anvil of morality. However the anvil of morality did add something to the show and to the big screen films.

Kirk wasn't quite Kirk. It wasn't until Boston Legal where I realized that for all his ego, Shatner has a certain gravitas which he brings to most of his performances, he really did give the Captain Kirk character a certain edge. Chrisotpher Pine lacks the charisma possessed Shatner, and the character comes off as just a bit too much of an arrogant prick, instead of the James T. Kirk we have come to know and love.

I'll give this a second chance, and hope that perhaps that the next film will iron out some of the kinks, and feel more like a Star Trek film. I also hope that by the second film the ensemble is able to develop the same chemistry I sensed in the TOS and TNG movies.

Fans of Doctor Who have always complained about Star Trek ripping off ideas, something which to some extent I've never paid attention to, until now. The destruction of Vulcan, and the Spocks being the "last of their kind," is just too much of a rip off of The Doctor being the last of the Time Lords. Could Sci-Fi please stop using this cliche?

Talking about Doctor Who was it just me or was Simon Pegg channeling David Tennant in his portrayal of Scotty? There was just something about his performance which seemed like David Tennant's natural accent, mixed with the Tenth Doctor's wild boyish enthusiasm.

Also was that beer I saw Kirk drinking in the "not cantina"? I know this is a reboot, but things seemed to be fairly parallel both versions of the 23rd century. However I seem to recall once scene in The Voyage Home where Kirk is taken to dinner, sips a Michelob, and clearly isn't used to the taste of 20th/21st century beer.