Pun Salad

Another Star Trek movie. Some people say: stop, already. I say: bring it on!

Although I feel a touch of geezerhood seeing all the "Star Trek 50th Anniversary" notices slapped on all the merchandise lately. Yes, I was there at the beginning. It's beginning to look as if I won't be there for the end. Because Star Trek will never end.

In this dandy entry, both Kirk and Spock are experiencing midlife crises. Kirk is finding that the Enterprise's five year mission is getting a tad boring. (Boring? The recent movies take place in an alternate timeline from the Original Series, more boring, but with superior special effects.) And Spock is shocked by the passing away of the Spock from the TOS timeline, and wonders if it's not time to turn his efforts into preserving Vulcan heritage.

After a brief but amusing (seemingly irrelevant) diplomatic mission, the Enterprise visits Yorktown, a fabulous Death-Star-sized space station. Also arriving, a tiny ship inhabited by a desperate alien, requesting that the Federation help rescue her crew, inexplicably taken hostage on a planet hidden inside a mysterious nebula.

Sure thing, Kirk says, we can do that. But (guess what) it turns out to be more than he bargained for. Things don't go well for the Enterprise, way too many of the crew are wearing red shirts, and Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, and Scotty are split up, some held in captivity by the mysterious villain Krall, others merely in mortal danger.

It's a fine entry in the continuing series. Oh, yeah: Sulu is totally gay. I would have thought Chekov, but…