The newest Star Trek film—if you’re counting, it’s the 13th in the series and third in the reboot timeline—opens with a modern take on the ’50s TV series’ Tribbles. A tribunal of CGI creatures, which look like a cross between Muppets and the Murloc specimens from World of Warcraft, surround James T. Kirk and argue over his latest diplomatic gesture. It’s classic Trek. Kirk wheels and deals, making sense of a newly discovered world, and he clearly keeps one eye out for plan B. He’s a modern conquistador, flashing a smile and proving likable when the weird scene doesn’t pan out his way.

It’s a good start for Star Trek: Beyond. But if you find yourself hating the film by its end, you can blame this opening—a cute, energetic, and personality-loaded scene when isolated—for getting your hopes up about Justin “Fast & Furious” Lin’s first directorial take on Trek. More so than the other reboot films, Star Trek: Beyond does the series a great disservice by focusing on the known and thus leaving discovery, personality, and stakes in the dust.

Live long and plot-less

After the opening sequence plays out, Kirk narrates in his captain’s log about feeling bored with the day-to-day Enterprise grind. It’s his 966th day on a five-year, deep-space mission, and he says it’s “a challenge to feel grounded in zero gravity.” (He also complains about life feeling “episodic,” the first of the film’s many on-the-nose quips.)