Contains spoilers.

I saw Star Trek last night and although it was great fun it was certainly not the best of the franchise. However, the guy who does Lost and the guys who wrote Transformers did do something very intelligent. This Star Trek is not a reboot in a Batman Begins sense. It’s a reboot in a Back to the Future alternate timeline, Biff Tannen-in charge sense.

There were quite a few moments in the movie where I was completely ready to call “bullshit”, but the movie’s one saving grace appears: Leonard Nimoy as Spock. And he’s not J. J. Abrams’ Spock. This is Gene Roddenberry’s Spock from the future; the same future timeline as the original series, movies and The Next Generation era. In that timeline everything we know and love about the established Trek universe is still going on. But some shit goes down and the bad guy and Spock are thrust back in time where the bad guy kills Kirk’s dad, among many others: an event not supposed to happen, and thereby changes the Trek timeline at least 25 years before the events in the original series. That’s ample time for production design to change.

Once Leonard Nimoy’s Spock tells young Kirk that all the shit happening in this movie never actually happened in his timeline and it’s all a completely alternate universe where now anything can happen (including newly reimagined encounters with Khan, the Borg or a new Federation-Klingon war), Abrams and company have a fresh, clean slate to do ANYTHING they want and it’s ok to the die hard Trekkies and Trekkers who, like me, would have called this film an abomanation — Star Trek 90210, for instance — because it’s an alternate timeline. And if Tasha Yar can come back in an alternate timeline and give us Sela in the established timeline, then why not an alternate universe where Spock gets to flesh meld Uhura?

After that explanation, I could totally buy Abrams’ Star Trek, but I couldn’t get over how EVERY scene had to be filled with action. Not only are we about to be destroyed by an alien vessel but my wife’s gonna give birth. Not only do I have to walk through the snow for 18 miles to call for a taxi but I have to be chased by carnivorous alien creatures. And even a mellow exposition scene like like two dudes chatting in a bar has to be shot with nervous energy; like they handed the camera to a starving Ethiopian.

Still, even this grotesquely overly epic little movie pays homage to Roddenberry’s Trek like red shirts being inexplicably dispatched in the first two seconds of an away mission, Scotty being taken for granted and Sulu being a gay fencer. Because fencing is gay. Unless you’re Rob Roy.

Also, I really enjoyed the few moments where Kirk got his Shatner on: the head bobbing and casual, badass delivery. I think the movie tried too hard to be cute for teen audiences like Kirk eating an apple during the Kobiashi Maru test, the Scotty in the “why is this here?!” dangerous water chopping thing scene, Kirk being tongue-numbingly, hand-bloatingly sick scene and others. Felt like a loud teen comedy, J. J. But hey, they’re alternately young so of course they won’t act EXACTLY like the established and mature crew we all know and love…yet.

With a wisely manufactured alternate timeline, this “not really a reboot” reboot can deliver something fresh and exciting for today’s Michael Bay-loving audience while still not completely flipping off the original fans. A smart move from J. J. “I like Star Wars more” Abrams.