I liked "Star Trek" .... but it's not Star Trek.

Spoilers for the movie will follow, so if you haven't seen the film but plan to, you might want to stop reading. You've been warned -- and here's a cool poster from the Spanish version of the movie to provide some "spoiler space":

OK. As I've posted previously on this blog, I'm a Star Trek fan. Trekkie, Trekker, fanboy, whatever -- the terminology is not important. I grew up watching reruns of the original series with my dad, who'd watched them first-run in the 60s.

I was a huge fan of The Next Generation when it came out, even though the first couple of seasons were not great. But eventually TNG grew into its own, and it led into Deep Space 9, my favorite Star Trek incarnation ever (I would have loved to see Captain Sisko, Major Kira, and the rest of the DS9 crew get their own feature film!)

I watched Voyager for a while, but quickly got bored, and I never could stand watching Enterprise. (Like this new film, Enterprise played fast and loose with Star Trek "canon," which is why I had a hard time with it.)

I've read dozens of Star Trek novels, I've been to the (now-closed) "Quark's Bar" and Star Trek exhibit in Las Vegas, I've participated in Trek-based online role playing games.

In short, I'm a fan. And as a fan, I feel a little taken advantage of by this movie. Because although it wasn't really made for Trek fans, J.J. Abrams and his crew certainly didn't mind taking our money!!

That brings me to my first point: this was an incredibly lazy way to write a screenplay. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman took these characters and this setting that everyone understands, at least a little.

They didn't have to spend plot time explaining what a Vulcan was, or who Kirk and Spock were, or what the "Federation" is, or what "Romulans" are. Because everyone, at least on some passing level, is familiar with the Star Trek mythos.

Yet, at the beginning of the film, they throw in the ultimate overused sci-fi cliche, time travel. Which brings us to an "alternate universe." So now, the writers get to use these characters that we've all come to know over the past 40 years. But they get to completely and utterly disregard the "canon" of some 600+ TV episodes, 10 films, and countless novels, video games, and comic books.

In short, they got the best of both worlds. They got to use Trek characters without having to pay any attention whatsoever to their backstory. This was an incredible shortcut for the writers, a cheap writer's gimmick, allowing them to write a lazy, nonsensical plot, featuring the following nonsense:

• Kirk goes straight from cadet to captain? Come on! He wouldn't have been as effective of a captain if he didn't spend years working his way up, learning how a starship works.
• What the heck was Kirk's mother (pregnant with him) doing onboard the USS Kelvin with Kirk's father? The first episode of Next Generation made it very clear that having families onboard a starship was a new and controversial idea. Yet, 130 years in the past, here was Kirk's mom, giving birth onboard.
• Why would you build a HUGE starship on Earth, in full gravity? It's a cute plot point that both Kirk and the Enterprise are from Iowa. But even 21st-century humans aren't this stupid -- we didn't assemble the International Space Station on the ground, then launch it into space!! You build the components on the ground, and assemble in space.

I could go on and on, but I won't. The movie wasn't written for fanboys. I get it. But I wish they hadn't called it "Star Trek," then; hadn't used characters named Kirk, and Spock, and Uhura and Sulu, and a ship called Enterprise.

The best episodes of Star Trek were the ones that raised interesting philosophical or intellectual questions, or provided social commentary on our own world. Gene Roddenberry was a master at this. He used the original Trek to raise social awareness during the turbulent 1960s. Episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (which pointed out the dangers of hate and bigotry) and "The City on the Edge of Forever" (which examined the concept of a necessary war) made Star Trek more than just a silly sci-fi show with cheesy special effects. It was true social commentary, set 175 years in the future to give Roddenberry some cover to talk about uncomfortable or controversial topics.

TNG and DS9 continued that tradition, with episodes examining the morality and effectiveness of torture, the definition of sentience, euthanasia, the concepts of honor, duty, vengeance, and mercy, and too many more to list.

The TOS and TNG films continued this tradition; Star Trek IV showed the consequences of hunting a species to extinction; Star Trek VI made end-of-the-Cold-War commentary, wondering if longtime adversaries can become allies; Star Trek: First Contact showed Picard still struggling with his desire for vengeance against the Borg.

Star Trek was at its best when it made the viewer think. When it raised concepts or ideas that were a bit uncomfortable. Heck, I once took a community education class entitled "The Philosophy of Star Trek."

This 2009 "Star Trek" film had no philosophy, no intellectualism, no moments that make the viewer think about anything. They had a golden opportunity to make a statement about a very relevant topic -- torture -- when the Romulans captured Captain Pike. Was it effective? Was it cruel? Did it work? Did Pike even know the codes that Nero was after? Did he make things up, say whatever his captors wanted to hear, just to end his suffering?

Who knows. Because J.J. Abrams and the other makers of this film didn't give it any depth whatsoever. They simply made a film that had fast cars, loud music, bloody noses, make out scenes with green aliens, planets exploding, and spaceships blowing the living hell out of each other.

And I like all those things. But from Star Trek, I expect more. And I suspect Gene Roddenberry would have been sorely disappointed in this film, in seeing his franchise turned into another generic big screen shoot-'em-up.

A friend asked me last night if I would have liked the movie better if it had been called something else, if it had featured new characters. And I would have -- but I probably wouldn't have gone to see it, either. A movie called "Space Wars" with totally unknown characters wouldn't have attracted my attention. So again, I say -- I feel used.

I will probably choose to ignore the rest of this "alternate universe" created by J.J. Abrams. Leonard Nimoy was the saving grace of this film, and he will likely not be in the sequel or sequels when produced. I don't really care about what "new adventures" this new "cadet-to-captain" Kirk will have, don't really care about Spock and Uhura's love affair, don't really care about the "new" Enterprise, with its bridge that looks like an IKEA and an engineering section that looks like a brewery. (Why does a starship need so many pipes?)

I choose to remember Star Trek as it was, not this retcon/reboot/rewrite or whatever we're supposed to call it. The "original" Star Trek universe as created in the TV shows and the first 10 films lives on in a very prolific series of novels, written by some incredible authors who, unlike J.J. Abrams, respect the canon of the Star Trek universe, and don't use gimmicky plot points as a cheap and easy way to make a lot of money.

When J.J. Abrams was first announced as the director, he admitted he hadn't watched many episodes of the original series, and said "I was always more of a 'Star Wars' than 'Star Trek' fan."

We can tell, Mr. Abrams. We can tell.