Star Trek Beyond

A truth about Star Trek that holds for every incarnation: It’s good and bad. At its best, it’s capable of smart sci-fi, at different times cerebral and emotive. But the films as well as each individual series have also presented their share of frankly idiotic premises, forced and silly allegory, and flat-out bad stuff. And after two good movies, that truth is catching up with this rebooted series. Star Trek Beyond isn’t close to depths of, say, “Spock’s Brain” bad, but there is a noticeable leveling-off.

Instead of rebuilding continuity, this one returns to a standalone episodic structure that served the old films (mostly) well. But its plotting is as generic, bad-guy-of-the-week as it gets: While on their five-year exploration mission, the Enterprise crew travels into uncharted space in response to an alien distress call. Predictably, they come across a hostile enemy, get stranded and separated on a distant planet, and must race against time to stop an alien menace (Idris Elba) from unleashing an unspeakably destructive ancient weapon on the worlds of the Federation.

And, that’s about all there is to it. Oh, it looks good. There are some creative and uniquely designed environments and spaceships, which make for some exciting battles. But beyond the blockbuster flash, the film has nothing to say, none of the big, interesting ideas (even interestingly bad ones) that are the Trek brand. The closest thing to one is a last-minute twist, but it’s a twist so weak and inconsequential that the movie would have played little different if it were written out of the script.

Rather, director Justin Lin tries to apply his ensemble action-comedy formula he perfected with the Fast & Furious series. The results include admittedly good sequences (the initial attack on and boarding of the Enterprise in particular). But a dirt bike chase in the 23^rd century? It was already ridiculous when they did it with a dune buggy in the Next Generation crew’s kiss-off Nemesis. An even worse sin is making a Beastie Boys song into, quite literally, an integral plot device. Going gleefully silly and over-the-top and relishing in it works for a franchise built on car chases, but it just seems off for Star Trek. Way off.

Another thing that’s true of all Trek is that, like a starship, it’s only as good as its crew. This is why the original 1960s cast still ranks as the best, as they could do the good stuff but also ride out the bad as comedy, and sometimes even turn dreck into gold. This crew, while far from the icons their predecessors were, is pretty damn good, which is good news for Beyond. Pine makes a fun and solid Captain Kirk, if decidedly un-Shatner-like. Also, the cantankerous interplay of Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), the comedic heart of the series when the late Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley played the roles, is played to the fullest, giving the picture its best source of humor. The cast makes a completely average summer product eminently watchable, which is more than can be said about some of the lowest points this franchise has seen over 50 years.