[Note: spoilers.] Bones did it for me. As soon as he sat down next to Kirk on the shuttle, I was hooked. Loved Star Trek, wanted to go again as soon we got out.
J.J. Abrams did something kinda crazy with the film though. He took the entire Star Trek canon and tossed it out the window. Because of the whole time travel thing, the events that occurred in The Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, DS9, and the previous 10 movies will not happen. Which means that in terms of sequels to this film, the slate is pretty much clean for Abrams or whomever he passes it off to.
Well. Almost. Events in this alternate timeline unfold differently but the same. Even though the USS Kelvin was destroyed with Kirk?s father aboard, Kirk and the rest of the gang somehow all still end up on the Enterprise. But the destruction of an entire planet and 6 billion people should have a somewhat larger effect going forward.
Also worth noting is how the time travel in Trek compares with that on Lost, a show Abrams co-created and currently executive produces. On Lost (so far), the universe is deterministic: no matter who travels when, not much changes. Time travel can affect little details here and there, but the big events unfold the same way each time and every character remembers events unfolding in the same way, no matter when they are on the timeline. Star Trek?s universe is not that way; characters before time travel events remember events unfolding differently. According to the older Spock, the Romulan ship going back in time changed things. Kirk knew his dad, Vulcan wasn?t sucked into a black hole, etc.
On the excellent Bad Astronomy blog, Phil Plait doesn?t cover the time travel aspect of the film but reviews the rest of the science in the film.
And yeah, we do hear ships whoosh as they go to warp and all that, but that?s what we expect to hear, having evolved in an atmosphere which whooshes when things fly past us. I?d prefer that we hear nothing, but I accept that as a filmmaker?s prerogative to make the audience comfortable.
But I?ll add that for years I have complained about sounds in space, saying that done correctly, making things silent can add drama. That sentiment was proven here; the sudden silence as we leave the ship and fly into space with the doomed crewmember is really eerie and unsettling.
In the NY Times, David Hajdu tackles time travel of a different kind, arguing that the original Star Trek was not about science or the future; it was a nostalgic lens through which to view pop culture.
?Star Trek? was an early manifestation of our contemporary absorption with the pop culture of the past. The show?s creator, Gene Roddenberry, was a gifted hack writer for TV Westerns like ?Have Gun, Will Travel? and cop shows like ?Highway Patrol,? and ?Star Trek,? though set in a nominally stylized future, was essentially a Western cop show. In fact, Roddenberry pitched the series to NBC as ?Wagon Train? to the stars; and, as Captain Kirk noted in his log, the ship would venture out on ?patrol,? cruising the galaxy like a city beat.