Star Trek!

I've been meaning to watch the new star trek movie for the longest time. But never seem to get around to it. I had been keeping up with the production news and fawning over movie trailer as soon as they were available. As a die hard fan I was anxious to watch and finally got a chance.

Usually I buy a DVD of a movie that I want to watch, rarely do I go to the theaters. However this time things were different. I screened the film on a flight from Doha to NY. I really liked how they revisualized the original series (the new warp effects were cool...ping!). But when you find out that this is all just happening in an alternate dimension its kind of a let down. We invest so much emotion into what's happening to the characters all to find out it really doesn't matter because they're not the real crew.

Star trek movies have mostly relied on the TOS & TNG crew to carry the franchise onto the silver screen. I would have liked to seen Paramount take a chance on some of the other series, perhaps a tie in with DS9?

The great thing about Star Trek is that it really does have universal appeal. If humanity is to unite for a common good then all must be represented. DS9 featured the first black captain, VOY featured the first female captain. And now with the release of Star Trek we have our first South Asian captain. Captain Robau's screentime is limited but it shows that the Federation was progressive enough to include a representative from this major race of humans.

The best part was finding out that the character was protrayed by a Muslim actor. Faran Tahir did us proud by securing this role. It was good to see a Muslim being something else besides a terrorist. A chance to show that we too can faithfully serve humanity as we have done in the past and continue to do so today. Of course Hollywood does not offer too many positive roles and quickly used Faran's talents to protray a baddie in Iron Man. Faran talks about his two major appearances so far.


Find more videos like this on Multipleverses

And Ahmed Ahmed from Axis of Evil explains why Muslim actors take on such lousy roles (2:55) plus some other explosvie issues.