The Star Trek reboot: it was time

I recently saw the new Star Trek film and I have to say, it was what the series needed.  Let me clarify before I get going that I am a long time fan of the series, I grew up watching the original series in reruns and caught all of Star Trek: The Next Generation when it came out.  I am a huge fan of the movies, I owned quite a few Star Trek models, I had all the technical manuals and blue prints, I even belonged to the Star Trek fan club.

Suffice it to say, I was a hard core Trekker - although not hardcore enough to play dress up or learn Klingon.  There are many that are angry with the series restart, I read an article on a Star Trek fan page where the writer was so incensed by the idea that this new series had created an alternate timeline and that everything this person had spent the majority of his life watching and dissecting  was suddenly rendered invalid that he refused to accept the new movie as “canon”.  This highlights the problem with Star Trek as a series, it is too big and has too much history and mythology that goes with it that it makes the series boring and hard to keep up with.  There was the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and Enterprise - not to mention 10 movies to keep up with.

The series had been allowed to bloat itself to the point that it was no longer enjoyable to watch.  Voyager, DS9, and Enterprise ran for quite some time but never seemed particularly relevant or enjoyable to watch.  Once something gets that big and that out of hand then it is time for a restart, and that is what we have with the new movie.  Not only did they give the series a fresh start, they did one better by inventing the alternate timeline story - which admittedly is overused in Star Trek but this one was different, this one did not end with the timeline being restored.  What that does is gives the series a fresh start with no more of the mythology that is so tedious.  It takes the Star Trek universe back to its beginnings and erases the bloated mess that the television shows have created over the past decade.