Fairly spoiler-free review, I promise.

Sci-fi geeks have reason to celebrate! The new Star Trek movie is great fun — it manages to incorporate just enough of the familiar to satisfy long time Trek fans (of which I am one) with just enough of the big summer blockbuster aesthetic (can you say, “explosions”?) to be entertaining.

I have never been a huge Kirk fan (my heart belongs to Picard, thank you very much) so I don’t have a stake in the “can he replace Shatner?” debate — but I thought that overall the casting was the high point of the film. The actors were beautiful to look at and enjoyable to see in these new/old roles. Yes, I was even able to forget Sylar when I watched Zachery Quinto playing young Spock. There are a couple of poor casting choices in terms of minor characters — including one egregious “Cornel West in The Matrix” moment that will make you scratch your head and wonder what the hell they were thinking — but overall, I give the film and the acting high marks.

Unfortunately, feminist sci-fi geeks have less to be excited about. There is a conspicuous lack of female characters and the ones there are fall into one of two classic categories: loving but doomed or inexplicably absent mothers or love interests/sex objects. There has been an attempt made to give Uhura an actual area of expertise, rather than just being a glorified telephone operator, but she still doesn’t do much except be ogled at by one male lead or gaze affectionately at another. And yes, she’s still in the micro-mini skirt — when she’s not in her underwear. Sigh. Given that so much of contemporary sci-fi is dominated by ass-kicking females (Starbuck, Echo, that Terminator chick), you’d think they could have given Uhura some previously unknown fighting skills. But, I hope that now that this origin story is done, the film makers can put a little bit more thought into female characterization in the next film. (Are you listening, J.J. Abrams?)

In the end, though, I enjoyed the movie, enjoyed being back in that universe I know so well, and watching it with a huge laughing and applauding crowd who got all the in-jokes (red shirt, anyone?) made it all the more fun.