Talk of McCoy reminded me: it was so brilliant on how the director coached the actors to
channel, but not
imitate or
parody the original actors' take on those roles.
-- Pine's Kirk was arrogant and cocky but also quick-thinking, tough & charismatic. But he did it without resorting to Shatner-esque :ahem: "acting"
-- Quinto's Spock was intelligent, thoughtful, (mostly) emotionless, but he clearly delivered his lines like Quinto and not like Nimoy
-- Urban did this the best IMO. He not only channeled the grumpy yet supportive nature of McCoy, but he also was scripted to explain the origins of so many of McCoy's famous lines, including why he was called "Bones". I missed this on the first viewing, but on later ones, I realized that McCoy's character was written to channel, not parody, the best out of all of them.
-- Sulu was cool and confident but also ambitious. You saw that fire only a few times in TOS, but here, they really went for it. He's definitely a future captain now, something you might not have guessed with Sulu in TOS.
-- Scotty was very interesting. First, I'm a huge Simon Pegg fan, he's wicked brilliant at roles like this and was a perfect choice. But it doesn't appear he actually channels the TOS Scotty ... or does he? I think I've grown too used to Doohan's fat & slow Scotty from the movies, and forgot what a character he was in TOS. A boozer with a big heart, a brilliant engineering mind who really can't get his point across, but will break the rules to get stuff done. On reflection, Pegg does channel that pretty well.
So that leaves two characters I felt didn't "channel" well. First was Uhura. The sad truth is, there wasn't much to channel. Yes, Uhura was the first black female supporting character on TV that wasn't a maid or other lowly profession. But still, she was so underused back then. This Uhura rocked the screen, I'd say she was the third most interesting character on the screen. Terrific job!
The only one who left me cold was Yelchin's Chekov. He irritated me through most of the movie. It's sad, really. Koenig's Chekov was a weak character, too, primarily put there to attract Monkees fans to TOS. So they had to figure out how to do New Chekov. But they had to do it so he didn't come across as Wesley Crusher. In the end, I think he was written the worst of all of them. They just didn't make it work very well.
But hey, can't have everything I suppose.
He was the Quincy of Star Trek 
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