Star Trek Beyond review: Boldly going through the motions

We never needed old-school Star Trek more. With the world in its current banjaxed state, Gene Roddenberry's original aesthetic – social analysis dispensed by Wagon Train in Space – would surely have softened the edges just a little.

Mind you, this year's villain really could have been called Brexit of Farage. An unrecognisable Idris Elba, lizard skin framing shark's teeth, plays an angry soul-sapping insurgent who pours scorn on the Federation's commitment to peaceful co-existence. Krall's bellicosity makes him very much a man (or thing) of the era. I'm willing to bet he's even said awful things about Ghostbusters on Twitter.

That is, however, just about the only bit of accidental topicality in the film. JJ Abrams, who retooled the TV series so successfully in the first two episodes, has handed directing duties over to Justin Lin. Best known for four Fast & Furious movies, Lin is not at home to drawing-room restraint or tie-died meditation. He is the star in the expensively priced car and, after ramming it into fifth gear, has no reservations about driving it straight over a cliff.

Following an excellent prologue that finds Capt Kirk (Chris Pine) on a diplomatic mission to a cadre of aggressive toothy things, the team is dispatched to rescue a ship stranded within the 13th screen of an Asteroids game.

The mission turns out to be a trap and the senior crew get split up into discordant pairs on an unfriendly planet. Scotty (Simon Pegg) makes uneasy truce with an elegant alien named Jaylah (the excellent Sofia Boutella). An injured Spock (Zachary Quinto) is lucky to be stuck with Dr McCoy (Karl Urban).

The series always had the unreadable nature of friendship as a bubbling sub-theme. (Remember how touching it was when Spock dropped the formalities and called his superior “Jim”?) In Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s script, the buddy politics are pushed all the way downstage. Spock may be temporarily estranged from Uhuru (Zoe Saldana), but that doesn’t excuse the naked sexual tension between him and Bones. Remember how you always teased the girl you fancied at school? Spock and Kirk remain complementary halves of the perfect Starfleet officer.

We have been here many times before. Indeed, there are, figuratively speaking, no new worlds visited in Star Trek Beyond. (Beyond what, exactly?) We do get to see a beautifully realised city in the stars. Kirk and Spock face personal dilemmas. The Enterprise gets torn apart in ways that will make long-term fans wince, as if watching a close friend suffering castration without anaesthetic.

But there are no great revelations or narrative swerves to put the Spoiler Police on high alert. Extract the lengthy action sequences and you have just enough plot for an episode of the original series – and one short on philosophical curiosity.

There are worse things. If we must sit in a juiced-up holding pattern, then Lin will do well enough as traffic controller. The battles, explosions and chases are orchestrated with a humour that compensates for their occasional incoherence. Lin is an expert on something that never much concerned the original set-bound Roddenberry creation: momentum. One doesn’t worry much about intellectual shallowness when trapped in a go-kart on a lunatic gradient.

Abrams’s brilliant recasting insures that there is always emotional foundation to the thin narrative. Pine misses Shatner’s pomposity, but brings youthful impetuosity in its place. Quinto’s Spock is still visibly battling with the human genes within. We should also make mention of the delightful Anton Yelchin. The Russo- American actor, who died in a recent accident, lights up every scene with his comically unamused Chekov.

The film is dedicated “For Anton”. As it should be.