I think they could have learned from BSG and perhaps cast a woman in one of the primary, formerly male, roles.

That's really not an option. BSG was completely starting over, Star Trek was an alternate timeline that was still part of the whole Star Trek universe that has been established. If Old!Spock had run into Scotty, for example, and he'd changed gender, Spock would have to suspect there was a whole lot more going on than a pissy miner on a vengeance kick.

Anne, yeah, neither party seemed particularly concerned about being seen in their underwear. Awesome!

Jessica, you're right that fuckbuddy is too strong a word. It just frustrated me that the only main female character was there primarily as a sex object. She was hit on by Kirk, shown in her underwear, and dating Spock. It bugged me.

I thought that was great. Added real emotional depth to the story and both characters and it was surprising and right.

Agreed.

And while they could have, in theory, brought on Number One and Nurse Doppelganger Chapel (and the casting suggestions I've seen for those roles have been great--especially the Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Garner + Blonde Wig one), I'd rather see either or both of them in a sequel. TOS had one core female character in Uhura. To give each core character a critical moment in the span of about 2hrs, when you have Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Chekov, Bones, Uhura, and Scotty all needing one (PLUS Spock Prime), you wouldn't have had time to do more than nod to them in passing (which I hear was done with Chapel, but in two viewings, I haven't managed to catch that). They populated the ships and the Academy with a lot of women, which was pretty cool. And Uhura got to punch Kirk. Which was AWESOME.

So what I'm saying is, given the existing structure they had to work with, they did a better job than I expected.

And what's with not liking Simon Pegg?! I vote wrongcakes.

I like Simon Pegg fine in Shaun of the Dead. Here, his tonally jarring and inappropriate-to-character slapstick made it seem like he'd been cut and pasted from an episode of Red Dwarf and made me wish Scotty had been left in exile on the ice planet.

Or on Vulcan .

But McCoy and Kirk were equally slapstick. So I don't think that was tonally jarring. That was the movie's tone. The movie had a surprising amount of broad comedy that I thought worked.

I had a big WTF reaction to Winona Ryder, though. To which I amend: What the fucking Fuck?!

But McCoy and Kirk were equally slapstick.

Disliked that too. I almost walked out of the movie when Kirk's puffy cartoon hands first appeared. If I hadn't known Leonard Nimoy had a substantial role, I would have .

One word: Tribbles.

TOS: often goofy.

Hec, this is close to an exact text of an IM between a friend and myself after we first saw it:

me (after IMDB check, because she looked familiar and I couldn't place her--they did a good job on the age makeup): Huh, Spock's Mom was Winona Ryder. Him: No way. You're making that up. Me: I'm serious [link to IMDB]. Him: that is messed up.

I enjoyed the broad comedy in Trek and, like Hec, thought it worked surprisingly well. Although I do agree with Matt that Scotty, tonally, was a little different. I mean, I love Simon Pegg and I love the sandwich line, but it did feel like he'd walked in from a different movie, a little.

I just watched Gosford Park, which I liked more than The Player, even though there was so much shit going on that I didn't catch all of it. But I could follow the most important things.

I loved all of Morris Weismann's phone conversations. "They have accents! They sound like they're from London!" "What about Claudette Colbert? She sounds British. Is that an affect or is she British?" Haaaa ha ha ha.

Just saw Star Trek, and we're more on Matt's end of things. It didn't *look* good and it was sillier than Cocktail.

Was happy to see that Bob's work survived as the Starfleet academy, even if apparent global warming moved it to SF.