Image credit: ILM

Recently, Hollywood has succeeded in zapping some comatose franchises back to life with fresh origin tales. Audiences were introduced to James Bond in Casino Royale as if they'd never met the man before, while the Caped Crusader became a new sort of brooding superhero in Batman Begins. But going dark and edgy, the way Bond and Batman did — that's not really an option for Star Trek. The original series was, after all, among the most optimistic shows in the history of television. Nobody wants to spend $9 on a moody Kirk. ''You've got apocalyptic movies like Watchmen and Dark Knight — movies that explore the darker side of human psychology — and they're great,'' says Pine. ''But this is not going to be one of those movies. This is not nihilistic. This is not grim. This is a bright vision of the future, full of hope and optimism.''

Abrams, a self-described nonfan of Star Trek — ''I always thought it was a little talky'' — was putting the final touches on Mission: Impossible III, his first big-budget production, in 2006, when Paramount knocked on his door dangling the keys to the Enterprise. Recent regime change on the backlot had shaken the property loose, and the studio was open to new ideas. Abrams only had an old one. ''My first reaction was that it should be a story about Kirk and Spock — because I didn't know anything else about Star Trek,'' he says. He signed on as producer and turned the project over to screenwriting partners Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who'd worked with Abrams since Alias. ''We tricked him into directing it,'' says Orci, who, as a fan of the original series, helped shape a script that revisits many of the high points of old Trek mythology. Expect, for instance, appearances by Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), the Enterprise's first commander, as well as Spock's ambassador dad and human mother (Ben Cross and Winona Ryder). ''We only let J.J. read 20 pages at a time,'' says Orci. ''It was like having Jaws on our line. We just kept reeling him in with pages.'' About 120 of them later, Abrams was hooked. ''I decided I would be jealous if anyone else directed it,'' he says.

NEXT PAGE: ''Exploring grand social issues can wait till the next movie. The goal this time was to make a Star Trek that wasn't alienating to nonfans.''