Sleek and stylish, but lots of empty space - the cover is representative of the film as a whole.

Just a few years ago, following a disastrous serialized television prequel, Star Trek looked like it was ready to keel over after spending the better half of a century on television and movie screens.

In walks J.J. Abrams.

At the eleventh hour, Paramount made a desperate hail mary for the ailing franchise by giving complete control of the property to the esteemed television producer; the same J.J. Abrams who immediately sent fans into a tizzy with reports that he didn’t watch Star Trek, didn’t care about precious canon and didn’t want to make another sequel.

That’s right, he was going to reboot the entire thing from scratch, using the original crew.

[Nerd side bar: The cries of Internet blasphemy about this were only rivaled to when reports surfaced that Abrams was actually planning on not destroying Krypton in his now-defunct remake of Superman.]

Turns out, it didn’t matter.

With frequent Abrams collaborators Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman at the keyboard, the Bad Robot alumni single-handedly resuscitated the franchise and made it – dare I say – cool.

The downside is that Trek’s new mass appeal has been achieved with the exclusion of franchise’s meatier elements; the film is now essentially a fluff piece.

The 3-disc Blu-ray release both amplifies the film’s strengths and its flaws; complimented by an incredible audio and visual presentation, along with a strong set of supplemental material.

And while the additional content offsets the picture’s strong emphasis of style over substance, it’s mileage will vary depending on your affinity for a time when science-fiction actually meant something.

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