USA Today has full-cast dossiers on the new crew of the starship Enterprise. As is usually the case with these new-cast spreads, the Star Trek XI feature looks to me pretty much like a deck of SAG trading cards; I recognize only two of the people involved. Of those two, one choice — Simon Pegg as Engineer Scott — is nothing less than inspired. I'm not as encouraged by Lt. Uhura choice Zoë Saldana, who is button-cute but has a pretty serious known Star Trek deficiency that only YouTube commenter LMUli and I appear to have noticed.

In the Steven Spielberg joint The Terminal Saldana plays a CIS officer who is secretly a Star Trek fan. It's a fine plot device, but as you can see from this clip, when called upon to do the nearly universally recognized Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" salute, she completely screws it up! I suppose this problem could be spun in Trek XI into a variation on the hoary old joke about how humans have a hard time making the Vulcan (actually rabbinical) hand gesture. In any event, kudos to Saldana's agent.

This of course is not the end of the worries. There's the odd-number curse to consider. And this teaser trailer is a bit too fond of the dark-n-edgy trend for my taste: If anything needs to be recovered from the original Trek, it's the bright lighting, high-key color schemes and spare set decoration that make so much color TV from the sixties still so delightful to watch. Finally, having lived next door to Paramount pictures for a year and a half, I'm convinced there's nothing The House Popeye Built can fail to ruin. It's ominous that nobody on the mountaintop has thought to roll out the obvious tagline: "This is your father's Star Trek!" And if you really want to fear for the future of the Federation, hop on over to Trekkies Against Torture and sign up!