As I understand the movie is using Nimoy’s Spock just to provide an anchor for longtime fans, but the intent is to tell a story of Kirk’s early years post-Academy, pre-command. From what I’m told, it’s going to show Kirk getting to know the people who ultimately will become his trusted inner circle — Scotty, McCoy, Spock and Mitchell — and thus flesh out their characters at an earlier point in their development. You’re better connected than I on these things, and doubtless you’ll know if I’m mistaken.

As for continuity, I think the movie represents a solid opportunity, if Paramount were to play its cards right, to reinvigorate the Star Trek franchise by using it to launch a reimagined Classic Trek with its own continuity. ST10 could be a touchstone or bridge between the two incarnations of the franchise … but of course, Paramount won’t play its cards right, because Star Trek is the cash cow, and if they knew how to play their cards right they wouldn’t have milked the cow to death in the first plcae with the meretricious writing that became the hallmark of Voyager and the bulk of Enterprise as well.

The smart thing to do would be to wait another ten years or so, and give people time to forget the Star Trek cliches of time travel, sound effects in space, appalling neglect of physics, Treknobabble, incredible coincidences, happy humanist philosophizing, aliens that look like humans with funny hats, and so on. The fans who stayed through “Spock’s Brain,” who endured a lounge singer dominating an entire season of DS9, and who wrote a 120-page paper on Star Trek’s religious themes — those fans aren’t going anywhere. They just need time to forget how godawful the franchise became, and then they’ll provide the core base for a new series, even if it’s a total relaunch.

Aside from that, I’m disappointed in the sense that I think a movie would have far more creative potential if it drew its cast from TNG, Voyager and DS9. In an organization like Star Fleet, it makes little sense to keep everyone in the same position for their entire careers. (One of the nicer elements of ST:TMP was that Kirk actually had to draw his crew back together again, from all the placs they had wandered to.)

Just my 2 cents.

Regardless of how they work in the older Spock, the casting of a younger crew implies that this film is going to take place earlier in the franchise’s timeline. The <sarcasm>wild success</sarcasm> of the first three seasons of Enterprise should have shown the studio the big risks to that strategy. When it’s all said and done, you have to put the pieces back where you found them or else you risk breaking continuity and alienating the fans.

The one idea that seems to get overlooked in the movies is the idea that the Star Trek universe does have ships other than Enterprise and command crews others than Kirk’s and Picard’s. They’ve done this already with Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and in the case of DS-9, it worked out pretty well. (Voyager had other issues.) Starship Farragut is another example of how a new ship and crew can work. Same timeline, but different stories. And no continuity with existing films to worry about.

Or maybe Old Spock only appears in a dream sequence of Young Spock in a future he imagines.

Or Young Spock suffers a disease that ages him quickly, until the antidote is found.

One thing that’s probably certain, there won’t be a Spock/Spock scene. But if there were, the movie would be protested, and people might actually go see it.