What the next "Trek" needs to do

The official numbers are in, and the J.J. Abrams reboot of "Star Trek" is a hit, having earned $75.2 million over the weekend in addition to $4 million in ticket sales on Thursday night. Paramount's ad campaign and the great reviews -- its Tomatometer score is at 95 percent -- must have convinced the uninitiated to come out in force.

So there's little doubt that we'll be taking another voyage on the USS Enterprise in two years; IMDB says the team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman will be joined by "Lost" showrunner Damon Lindelof in writing the script. Here's what I think J.J. and the gang need to do for the second (or make that twelfth) go-round:

Hire a new -- and respected -- director. I'm not saying this because Abrams did a bad job or because he's not respected. I'm saying it because this series, much like Paramount's "Mission: Impossible" franchise, could benefit from a fresh perspective on the material each time around. Six of the previous "Trek" films were directed by insiders (cast members Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and Jonathan Frakes; and "TNG" director David Carson), and the movie that almost killed the franchise, "Nemesis," was helmed by Stuart Baird, an editor who had previously directed two totally lame action movies. Of course, it's highly unlikely that a big-name director would step into a situation where Abrams and his buddies are still running the show, so I have a feeling we'll see "Cloverfield's" Matt Reeves or "Lost's" Jack Bender get the job. But still ... wouldn't it be amazing to see, say, David Fincher's "Star Trek"?

Ditch all the old actors. No Nimoy, no Shatner, no Brent Spiner, no Patrick Stewart. The bridge between old and new has been built, and the audience doesn't need any further distraction from what we really care about: Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Bones, Scotty and Chekhov. Sure, it was nice to see Leonard Nimoy play "Spock Prime," but his presence also brought the movie to a grinding halt. His expository scene was the worst in the film, and Nimoy appeared to have forgotten how to play the character he has been living with for so long. I suppose you could say Spock had lightened up in his old age, but that character sure didn't seem like Spock to me.

Don't go overboard with the villain. A complaint about pretty much all "Trek" films after "The Wrath of Khan" is that the villain is kinda lame. This complaint creeped into my mind while watching Eric Bana in new "Trek," but then I realized that I didn't really care about the villain at all. In fact, I don't know if I've ever cared about the villain in a "Star Trek" story. I watch "Star Trek" for the interplay between the characters I like, not for big dramatic standoffs between heroes and villains. So the worst thing you could do with this new, extremely likable cast is forcing them to the background with an overbearing villain played by a big name actor. Keep the focus on the crew; they are why we're watching.

More Spock and Uhura, please. It was maybe the biggest risk taken in the new film, and I think it worked beautifully. In a "Trek" timeline where Spock doesn't die fighting Khan and where he never loses touch with his humanity, a romance of any kind is a natural place for Spock's story to go; it is the one aspect of his personality that has never really been explored before. And of course, having Uhura be his love interest makes her character that much more essential to the story.

Watch those first ten minutes again. And again. The opening sequence of the new "Star Trek" feels like the culmination of everything a fan could have hoped for: It's a miniature epic of emotion and scale all unto itself. Now let's see storytelling and filmmaking that grand for an entire two-hour flick.