The year was 2009. It had been seven long years since the disappointing Nemesis that served as an extremely unsatisfying send off for the Next Generation crew that trekkies had fallen in love with over the course of 178 episodes and four feature films. When the Next generation first hit the airwaves in 1987, there was a buzz wondering if this new crew would ever be able to measure up to the quality of the original series and even though there are many die hard original crew fans in the world, it is commonly accepted that the Next Generation indeed reached that high bar that had been set by James Tiberius Kirk and his crew. So, it was in the face of these expectations that J.J. Abrams would direct a reboot of the Star Trek universe.
Fast forward 7 years and two movies and this author went to go watch the newest entry into the Star Trek universe, Star Trek: Beyond. The previous two Abrams' directed were good, but had felt a little "underwhelming" to put it kindly. There had just been something lacking from what we were seeing. A common comment I had made to friends when talking about those movies was that they were fine sci-fi space movies but that they just didn't "feel" like Star Trek movies, that there was something missing.
After watching Star Trek: Beyond, it is with a sense of satisfaction that I can say that I now know what it is that was missing because they fixed it with this movie. For the first time in this new era of Star Trek, this crew felt like a crew. This is the first time that it has felt like this group of Star Fleet officers seemed to actually care about one another. There were several scenes where this interaction among the crew seemed genuinely concerned for one another's welfare. Yes, it still felt a lot like the Fast and the Furious in space, but for the first time since the reboot in 2009 I can honestly say that it felt like I was watching a Star Trek movie.
