Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered country

Where Iman Has Dorn Before

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered country
USA 1991 Directed by Nicholas Meyer
Paramount Blu Ray B

Warning: A big spoiler in that I will name the character
who betrays the crew of the Enterprise in this film.

“There is an old Vulcan proverb...
Only Nixon could go to China.”Mr. Spock, Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

I’m gonna start this one by saying that David Bowie’s widow, Iman, plays a shape shifting alien in this movie and that Michael Dorn plays the grandfather of his Klingon character Worf, from Star Trek - The Next Generation, defending Kirk and McCoy in a trial scene about a third of the way through the film. So that’s explained my title to this one and you don’t have to hassle me about it anymore, right?

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country is a movie which is very much a farewell film for the original cast of the Starship Enterprise. All but four of the cast would not return to the film franchise in the future. Three of them, William Shatner, James Doohan and Walter Koenig would return for scenes in the next movie, which is a kind of transition story, handing over to the crew of the TV show Star Trek - The Next Generation, and Leonard Nimoy would, of course, return for Star Trek XI (aka Star Trek... reviewed here) and Star Trek XII - Into Darkness (aka Star Trek - Into Darkness... reviewed here).

The film is  directed by Nicholas Meyer, who did such a bang up job on Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan (reviewed here) and, as with that one, he does a pretty good job on this one too. Although the film has an epic storyline to it, dealing with the political backdrop to the Klingon’s pursuit for a Peace Treaty with Starfleet, the venue for that story is a lot smaller in scale and not necessarily what people would have been expecting from a Star Trek movie, although I remember it was well liked at the time and I suspect it did good business at the box office. This one is pretty much a ‘whodunnit’ in space, pitched against an older, more contemplative crew of the original series who, like the central protagonists in Sam Pekinpah’s The Wild Bunch, are aware that they are reaching the end of their usefulness, or at least the perception of it by others, and perhaps reaching the end of their days.

The real problem with this movie, at least for me, is that it’s not a very twisty turny plot in terms of finding the identity of the person on the Enterprise who has conspired to assassinate the head of the Klingon Empire (said victim being David Warner, again, this time as a Klingon) and framed Kirk and McCoy for it. Once the Vulcan Lt. Valeris, played by future Sex And The City star Kim Catrall, is introduced, you can pretty much work out she is the prime mover on the Enterprise end of the conspiracy and, it has to be said, she’s a pretty good character. However, dramatically it could have been a lot better and, perhaps, less obvious in terms of the villainess in question, if she’d have stayed, as originally scripted, a semi-regular character from the movie franchise. Catrall was originally down to play the character as a returning Lt. Saavik but she didn’t want to be the third actress to play her (after the character’s appearances in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th movies) and so she was rewritten. What a shame, though, because dramatically, the weight of the betrayal would have been a lot stronger if it had been Saavik who had been the driving force in the first set of murders in this film.

This aside, however, it’s a pretty good movie with Mr. Spock even quoting Conan Doyle as Leonard Nimoy relishes the role of playing detective on the Starship Enterprise, while Kirk and McCoy struggle to survive in hostile territory on the mining prison they have been sentenced to. The rest of the regular cast have some great lines and scenes too, with George Takei’s Mr. Sulu character promoted and commanding his own Starship for this one. There’s even a tiny cameo by Christian Slater, who apparently framed his $750 cheque for the brief appearance... he just wanted to be in a Star Trek production.

The film is heavy on the Shakespeare references and quotes, both in English and the ‘original’ Klingon and this spills over into the subtitle of the movie, The Undiscovered Country, which was originally writer/director Meyer’s title for the second movie, before it was changed to the more familiar one by higher powers in the company. There are also some good references to past episodes in the franchise, with Kirk referring back to the death of his son in the third film... something which is used against him at his ‘show trial’ on the Klingon planet of Kronos.

The film is fairly breezy, although not nearly as light hearted as Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (reviewed here) and it makes for some entertaining viewing, especially with Christopher Plummer hamming it up as a Shakespeare quoting Klingon General and, at one point, even spinning around in his chair. It’s also Mark Lenard’s last movie playing Spock’s father Sarek, although both he and Nimoy were filming their characters' appearances in consecutive Star Trek - The Next Generation episodes around this time. There are a lot of good things about this movie but there’s one member of the film’s crew who is absolutely amazing... composer Cliff Eidelman.

Meyer had originally wanted James Horner to return and score this film with him but, my sensors indicate that the composer’s ego had outgrown his usefulness to the franchise... or maybe he just didn’t want to work with Meyer again. When approached, Jerry Goldsmith also refused scoring duties, due to the terrible critical reception of the previous film in the series, or so I’m informed. Cliff Eidelman’s score, though, is easily one of the best in the series and I could never understand why he didn’t go on to score some major motion pictures after this, instead of having the career he’s had. Although the score is mightily reminiscent of Gustav Holst’s Mars, The Bringer of War from his Planet Suite (at the request of the director, is my understanding), it’s a major accomplishment and it manages to stay true to the style of scoring these films have had before... the big sprawling melodies, the small Vulcan atmospheres etc... while also giving it a lot of lift that a fair few other composers have failed to do in the history of the franchise. It’s always a pleasure to give this particular soundtrack album a spin because it’s also, as it happens, a great stand alone listen, too.

So there you have it. Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country is not my favourite of the films by any means but certainly one of the great, classic films of the Star Trek series and better than the majority of the movies that would come after (with one rare exception... when I get to the review, you’ll know which one I’m talking about, for sure). If you’re a fan of the original crew of the Star Trek universe then this is a definite must watch in the franchise and, despite a few future appearances by certain actors, a nice farewell to the original crew. May their memories live long and prosper.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek V - The Final Frontier

Judgement Deity

Star Trek V - The Final Frontier
USA 1989
Directed by William Shatner
Paramount Blu Ray

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I first saw Star Trek V - The Final Frontier at a preview screening at the Empire cinema in London (before it became a multiplex and was one big screen, if memory serves me correctly). It was part of an all-nighter Star Trek screening, starting around about 8pm at night and finishing roughly at 6am the next morning. All four of the previous films were showing, with about 10-15 minutes between each screening... culminating in the premiere of this brand new movie. The cinema was packed out with people cheering and laughing at accidental sexual connotations in the dialogue of the earlier films and we had a laser show in the intervals between each movie. The atmosphere was electric. If you got hungry... well, you had to go grab hot dogs or pop corn and the queues for the loo between movies were staggering but, other than that, it was a pretty good time.

I went to that event with a friend who was totally into Star Trek (probably more enthusiastic and wide eyed/naive about the series than I was) who I haven’t seen or heard of for at least a decade now (which I kind of regret). I knew this movie was going to get a bad reception after we’d seen it because, although I’d had quite a good time with the fifth one, my friend Andy, who would never say a bad word about Star Trek, was... well he didn’t seem all that into it, to be honest.

I actually feel a little sorry for William Shatner here as I have a bit of a soft spot for this movie and don’t think it deserves the reception it got. He was up against massive budgetary cuts on things like special effects as a result of the writer’s strike in Hollywood and it really couldn’t have been easy to keep this thing afloat. Looking at it again now, I still quite enjoyed the movie and I think one of the producer’s comments on why it failed may have been quite on the mark. Star Trek - The Next Generation had been a TV series for two years already at this point... in fact some of the sets even found their way into this production... and with brand new episodes of this showing, fans may have been less interested in going back for repeat viewings of this one (which is what the box office for a movie really makes its money on) when they could catch up on the crew of the USS Enterprise NCC1701-D in the comfort of their own homes.

I’d argue now though, having see this one again, that it’s one of the stronger Star Trek movies in the franchise’s long history and, certainly, much better than a few of The Next Generation movies that came along later. This one is the only one of the movies to date, unless you count the recap at the start of Star Trek III - The Search For Spock (reviewed by me here) to have a pre-credits teaser sequence and it’s a pretty good opening. Here we meet the prime... well I won’t say he’s a villain because he really isn’t... here we meet the prime mover of the movie, Mr. Spock’s half brother Sybock (The Laughing Vulcan) who was outcast from his people because his pursuit of knowledge brought him to embrace emotion and he is now assembling a small army so he can lure a starship to take him to the centre of the universe to... well, to basically meet up with God. In a scene which is almost straight out of Lawrence Of Arabia in tone, we see him ride up to a fairly striking looking character and recruit him by making him face his ‘secret pain’ and sharing it... presumably using skills similar to the Vulcan mind meld which we’ve seen both Spock and Sarek use in the series in the past.

So basically we have a terrorist on a religious quest who rejects violence but is willing to look like he will stop at nothing to acquire the means to capture a starship and fly it straight to God, whom he saw in a vision. Along the way he recruits various people on his quest, including key members of the regular crew of the Enterprise and... the story is one where both heroes and villains are somewhat undefined with the one true bad guy of the piece being the ‘man upstairs’ who Sybock seeks and ultimately finds. Luckily, the shaky premise is given a shot in the arm because Sybock is played by a guy called Laurence Luckinbill who is absolutely perfect for the role, exhibiting just the kind of charisma you would want from somebody playing that kind of part and he seems more than enough of a person to give Kirk a run for his money. This was his last cinema movie but he still occasionally works in TV, apparently, and he’s also the son-in-law of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. He’s frankly brilliant and this movie would have been a lot worse if he’d not been in it.

But you know what else is brilliant about this movie?

Pretty much most of it. Yeah, I know I’m in a minority here but what do people have against Star Trek V? It’s got a bit of an anticlimactic ending, for sure, and that’s not the fault of William Shatner because the money was running out and the first attempt at some rock creatures chasing after Kirk just wasn’t working. However, it’s a good enough ending and the humour in the dialogue is at least the equal of the previous film, Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (which I reviewed here). Added to that you have the regular cast doing what they do best and they’re all brilliant. Everyone gets a chance to shine in this one and they certainly have some great moments among them. We even have David Warner joining the cast as a ‘terran’ (or human) character... the first of three different species he played for Star Trek in one form or another, if I’m remembering correctly.

Spock looks, perhaps, a little over made up compared to what he usually gets in the movies, maybe a deliberate attempt to make him look closer to how he did in the original show... so, yeah, he looks a little like a stylised version of himself sometimes. A caricature of Leonard Nimoy playing Spock, almost... but I think it really works here actually and I wish they’d have kept that kind of look for future installments of the film series.

My one big problem with it is that the scene where Sybock shows Kirk, Spock and McCoy each other’s ‘secret pain’ makes him look a little too much like a wizard with special powers. How a simple Vulcan is able to conjure up this kind of audio/visual hallucinatory experience is not fully explained... so I thought the character lost a little credibility at this point in the proceedings but this is only a small element of the film and it isn’t too jarring with the rest of it.

Also, Jerry Goldsmith finally returns to the movie franchise with this one... after his unbelievably cool score for the first movie, ten years prior to this. I think what had happened there is that his main theme for the original had become popular again, since it had been used with smaller orchestration, as the opening theme tune to the Star Trek - The Next Generation TV show. For the show it was wedded to a new version of the old classic TV opening moments before leaping into Jerry’s well known theme and, for this return to the franchise, this is exactly what he does with it here... before going into some beautiful music detailing Kirk’s ascent of a mountain. The score to this movie is pretty cool and has some glorious action moments... don’t get me wrong, it’s no Star Trek The Motion Picture and lacks that score’s power but... it’s still a pretty great piece with a lot going for it. He also brings back his Klingon music which he used to score the opening of that first film, here used as a regular theme for a bored Klingon who wants to defeat Kirk in battle, and it’s an interesting version of the music as used here. Very dynamic with ‘wails and clickety clacks’* thrown into the mix in a pleasing way.

I can only assume that the slightly anti-climactic ending of this movie, coupled with the blurring between who are the heroes and who are the villains, are the other main culprits as to why the film performed abysmally at the box office... along with the fact that there was also brand new Star Trek on television at the time. All in all, though, I think this is a movie which is vastly maligned by its fan base and deserves to be rediscovered as the fun movie it is at some point. Hats of to director Shatner for this one... I think he did a grand job. It holds up pretty well, as far as I’m concerned... one of the fun movies.

*obviously a well known musical term.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home

Brutish Whale Rays

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home
USA 1986
Directed by Leonard Nimoy
Paramount Blu Ray

Warning: Some spoilers here for Star Trek virgins.

And so on to the fourth and what is, in actual fact, my personal favourite of all of the Star Trek movies.

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home has a lot going for it with a brilliant script, mostly played for laughs, the usual solid performances from both the regular and guest cast and even Leonard Nimoy’s direction seems more confident in this one. The camera movement, shot set ups and editing seem a lot less ‘quick and dirty’ and more graceful. Some of the sets, effects and even alien make-up still seems a little less than special in this one... although nowhere near as ropey as some of the stuff in Star Trek III - The Search For Spock (reviewed here).

The story is a continuation and conclusion to the events depicted in the last two movies, with Kirk and his shipmates still fugitives from justice and on their voyage home from Vulcan to the planet Earth, ready to turn themselves in for their breaches of Federation law in the last installment. The scenes from Vulcan don’t look all that realistic in places, it has to be said, and the opening of the movie features the third and final appearance of Saavik, played for the second time by Robin Curtis. Again cut from the film, as it was cut from being mentioned in the last one, the reason Saavik stays behind on Vulcan (appearing in only a couple of brief scenes), is the detail that she is pregnant with Mr. Spock’s child, after helping him out through his ‘pon farr’ phases in the last cinematic installment.

This is also the only film in the franchise to feature both Spock’s father and mother as played by the original actor and actress returning from their TV appearance in the Star Trek episode Journey To Babel, in the same film... although they never actually appear on screen together. This was Jane Wyatt’s last performance before she died but Mark Lennard would, of course, play Sarek at least four more times... twice in the next two Star Trek movies and twice in episodes of Star Trek - The Next Generation. I always find Sarek a reassuring presence in these moves as he seems to lend an instant sense of gravitas to any given situation.

The plot of the film is very simple... the scriptwriters needed to devise a way of having the crew of the now destroyed Enterprise redeem themselves and be able to continue serving in starfleet. Nimoy also throws in a very clear and present plea to “save the whales” and although some people might find this absolutely noble message a bit preachy... well, it may be but it’s a welcome message for a Star Trek movie to deliver and its obviously pursued and presented with a lot of passion.

And so we have an alien vessel beaming down sound rays to the oceans of planet Earth and almost destroying our planet in the process. Kirk and his chums make it back to Earth in time to witness this near ‘destruction by accident’ but Mr. Spock realises the probe is trying to communicate with hump backed whales, a species now extinct in this future era. So the crew of the H.M.S Bounty, as McCoy christens our heroes’ ‘acquired’ Klingon Bird Of Prey (which was never supposed to be a Klingon ship but that’s another story) realise they have to go back to Earth’s ancient history and bring back some whales to the future... which they do. By calculating a time warp (something they’d done before in the TV series and which would be done again in a later Star Trek productions) and landing in San Francisco in 1986.

And , of course, like the various episodes of the original TV show where the crew of the starship Enterprise found themselves either back in Earth’s history, or on a planet mimicking Earth’s history, the script writers have a field day using various ‘fish out of water’, future versus the ‘present day of the contemporary audience’ jokes... making this movie a very light hearted affair and that’s possibly why I like this one so much. The writers, quite frankly, seem to be having a whale of a time with this one and the humour is infectious.

Another thing that’s infectious is the music but it’s also problematic. Rather than keep musical continuity with the previous two films in the franchise, which form an unofficial trilogy within the movie series, Nimoy wanted to use his friend Leonard Rosenman to do the score. This means that, once again, the only musical continuity with the other movies is a few quotes from Alexander Courage’s original Star Trek TV series theme... but the tone of the rest of the score is completely different, once again, from any of the previous films in the series.

Now some of my regular readers might remember I have some personal problems with Leonard Rosenman’s music which, I have to say, is absolutely nothing to do with his ego and more about his use of those damn, irritating ‘tone pyramids’ which have always sounded so dated and clichéd to me. Rosenman is, of course, noted for being a composer who uses a lot of atonality in his work and this is a style which I love, although for some reason I always seem to be less than inspired by this composers own explorations of that style of music. That being said, there are also some great melodies in this one including two truly great pieces of music for when Chekhov is being chased by the navy and a second when he is being rescued from a hospital.

Rosenman’s main titles are also great but they’re similarly problematic in that they’re very close, in some sections, to the main titles for his score to the 1978 version of Lord Of The Rings. I know some people who can’t even tell the difference although they aren’t that used to listening to ‘scores’ and any similarities are usually picked up on. But, yeah, play them both together and some sections do sound almost identical... which is unfortunate because it’s really not a bad piece of music. I do enjoy certain sections of Rosenman’s score for this film, tone pyramids aside, but I do think the choice to use him was possibly a bad decision in the case of this one and its ‘shared story’ with the previous two installments, both of which were scored by James Horner using the same themes (not necessarily all his themes but the less I say about that the less I’m going to get in trouble, methinks).

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one. A greatly entertaining movie which even has a cool trick ending...

After saving the Earth from certain doom, all charges are dropped against our heroes apart from one remaining charge for Kirk. However, as his punishment, he is demoted in rank back to Captain and once more given a starship to command... something he’s been trying to get back to in his rank of Admiral since the first movie. He even gets given a new Starship Enterprise, the first of the ships to end with a letter in its serial number... NCC 1701-A (the one Captain Pickard commands in Star Trek - The Next Generation is NCC 1701-D). So a crowd pleasing end all round in a Star Trek movie that pretty much gives the audience everything they could want from it and, as it turns out, was the highest grossing of all ten of the first wave of movies... something which was finally toppled with J. J. Abrams reboot of the movie series a few years back. Regardless of the back story being somewhat essential in terms of picking up the constant references, if you see only one Star Trek movie in your life and you are looking for something to give you a way in, then Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home is the one to go for.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek III - The Search For Spock

Spock It To Me

Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
USA 1984
Directed by Leonard Nimoy
Paramount Blu Ray

Warning: Some spoilers here if you’ve never seen the Star Trek movies, I guess.

So Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan was a big success (read my review here) and everyone was suitably moved by the ‘death of Spock’ scenes. However, Nimoy himself had actually started to get into the character again when he was making that film and was now wondering how he could return... at least that’s my understanding of it. I suspect he also kept that to himself when negotiations for this next movie were under way.

Certainly the fans of the original show wanted him back and, since the fans were the ones paying the dollars which made the previous movies such a success, the brass at Paramount were presumably happy to swerve on the side of caution, if they could somehow convince Nimoy to return. There was that little, non-sequitur moment in the last movie where Spock quickly mind melded with McCoy before going into the radiation flooded chamber to save the ship which didn’t make much sense and which could be utilised in the storyline at a later date if needed. The writers didn’t waste much time in doing just that when Nimoy agreed to return to the role of Spock. Using his return as a bargaining chip and parlaying the deal into the opportunity to direct his first feature length movie (although he’d done a few TV shows in the past).

The result was Star Trek III - The Search For Spock, which is rather a sombre affair on many levels and which uses the death of everyone’s favourite Vulcan protagonist from the previous movie as the full plot driver in this one. You also have Kirk going up against a pre-Back To The Future Christopher Lloyd as the Klingon bad guy Commander Kruge. In addition to the main, regular returning cast (including a very brief cameo from Grace Lee-Whitney as Yeoman Rand but with the character unnamed in the credits) we have Merrit Butrick returning as Captain Kirk’s son, David. We also have a returning Saavik, with Robin Curtis replacing Kirstie Alley in the role, as Alley was apparently holding out for more money.

Although Mark Lenard returns after playing a Klingon in the first movie, this is the first time he reprised his role from an episode of the TV show... that of Spock’s father, Sarek. It wouldn’t be the last time he played the role on film nor, indeed, on TV (he also continued the character in a further two more movies and in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation). He’s pretty good here and lends the utter tomfoolery of the ridiculous plot line a certain gravitas which I’m not sure William Shatner and De Forrest Kelly could have necessarily compensated for on their own. He performs this role pretty well and he’s had the privilege of playing a Romulan, a Vulcan and a Klingon between the TV series and the films... a pretty good track record, I guess.

The film and the miracle of Spock’s rebirth involves the placing of his spiritual soul in Doctor McCoy’s head from the end of the last film and the joining of it with a reborn Spock. As you may recall, Spock’s lifeless body was fired onto the newly created Genesis planet in a photon tube as a makeshift coffin at the end of the last movie. It turns out that Kirk’s son had used dangerously unpredictable ‘proto-matter’ in the making of the Genesis torpedo and therefore it’s highly unstable but, conveniently, also has the properties of regenerating whatever organic material is already on the planet. So we watch many versions of Spock as he grows rapidly from child to Leonard Nimoy within the space of a day, as the planet begins to break down. The tricky idea of the old Vulcan sex drive during their “once every seven years after adolescence” state of Pon Farr is also invoked, a condition that was established in the 1960s TV episode Amok Time. Luckily, young Spock has Saavik to help get him over this. That being said, the fact that this involves having groovy Vulcan sex with him every condensed version of the seven years cycle is kinda glossed over on-screen and symbolised with something which looks more like futuristic hand sex straight out of Barbarella than anything else. Apparently, Saavik falling pregnant with young Spock’s child was cut from an earlier version of the script.

With some fairly fake looking sets and a storyline which brings up convenient plot elements just to reach the end goal of rebirthing a major character, it’s not the best of the Star Trek films, for sure. That being said, Nimoy’s direction is, at the very least, highly competent and this must have proved a good training ground for him when it came to his absolute masterpiece... the very next film in the franchise. Kirk’s reaction to the cold blooded murder of his son is dramatic but, as in a lot of Hollywood movies, the grieving process one might expect from this is forgotten about fairly quickly in the name of ticking off the next box in the ongoing plot line.

One of the big things this movie had going for it back in the day, possibly to compete with killing off Spock in the previous movie, was the destruction of the famous Starship Enterprise. To paraphrase another character, Kirk “turns death into a fighting chance to live” by evacuating the small crew of the Enterprise and destroying the majority of his enemy in the process. This is the last time an Enterprise would bear the markings NCC-1701 without the addition of a letter after the last digit. It was actually quite a spectacle when this was released and it still looks good today. Alas, the destruction of the Enterprise has become a bit of a dramatic crutch/cliché in the franchise over the years since but, people should remember that this was the first time the unthinkable act was first executed on film (or TV for that matter). It had some impact.

Although, as a whole, the movie hasn’t necessarily stood the test of time, there are some really great scenes in here for some of the ‘second tier’ regular actors such as Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei and Walter Koenig and, for a couple of them, quite possibly the best moments their characters have had over the years. It’s also nice that this movie turns the crew into fugitives from the Federation... something that would have long term effects on the characters but would be resolved in terms of their allies/enemies of the Federation status at the very end of the next movie in the cycle, which forms a kind of unofficial trilogy with this and the previous movie.

James Horner returns to score this movie and, barring a few bars of Alexander Courage’s original TV show theme in the first three, this is the first film in the franchise to maintain a sense of musical continuity with the previous one, with Horner reusing his themes (and possibly a few other composers’ too, maybe) and delivering a beautiful but, perhaps, more sluggish score than he did on The Wrath Of Khan. Some people mistakenly call the score to The Search For Spock a basic retread of the music he provided for the previous movie but I think there’s a little more to it than that, to be honest. It’s not a bad score but, at the time, I was still reeling from it not being anywhere near as cool as Goldsmith’s score for the first movie. To be fair though, that first one is a masterpiece of music that would be hard for even Goldsmith to top when he returned to the movies for the fifth, eighth, ninth and tenth films.

And that’s that for me and Star Trek III for at least another 5 or 10 years I reckon. It’s a film which hasn’t really aged all that well but which is certainly a crucial watch because it’s the less satisfying filling in the sandwich created by the two much more interesting films on either side of it. Not one you can miss if you’re a fan of the show and movies, for sure, but not the most exciting time committed to celluloid in the name of Starfleet and which leads on directly into, arguably, the highlight of the entire series... so I’ll be reviewing that one soon I guess.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan

Khan But Not Forgotten

Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
USA 1982
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
Paramount Blu Ray

Warning: Some spoilers, I guess.

Okay. So the first sequel to Star Trek The Motion Picture was also a sequel to the original series’ first season episode Space Seed, which starred Ricardo Montalban as Khan, the leader of a group of super-intelligent, genetically enhanced people up to no good. At the end of that week's exciting adventure, Khan and his gang of super soldiers had been marooned on a planet which, in the intervening 15 years between that episode and this movie sequel (in both real time and story time) had shifted orbit and become almost unlivable, killing the majority of Khan’s people, including the love of his life.

That’s the set up and the plot is one of revenge, of course, in the film which really brought the Star Trek franchise back in a big way, after the success of the previous adventure (reviewed here). I think this one was generally well received by most people at the time and it made a huge profit, partially because the cost was around a quarter of the previous film... although to look at it you might assume it had a larger budget than the previous one.

This is the one that brings all the action back into the mix, although a lot of the action is from William Shatner’s Kirk going viewscreen to viewscreen, ship to ship, with the titular villain of the piece. It’s basically a science fiction version of Hornblower with phasers and photon torpedos replacing the ships cannon’s trading shots across the water and it works pretty well. It’s fairly violent and less toned down in terms of grimness than you might expect from something which is generally perceived to be part of a family franchise and I believe both this movie and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (reviewed here) ran into some problems with the American board of censors at the time. Both of those films suffered from enforced cuts, from what I remember (or the choice to cut down or go with a higher rating... which, frankly, amounts to the same thing in my book) and were released in cinemas in significantly compromised versions.

That being said, I also remember reading the fairly fleshed out novelisation by science fiction writer Vonda N. McIntyre at the time and marvelling at just how overly dark and bloody the novel was in comparison to the movie. The pages were pretty much running red with scarlet ooze in terms of scenes where, for example, characters are strung upside down and interrogated while having their throats cut, if I remember correctly (cut me some slack here... it was 32 years ago since I read it) and although the aftermath of scenes like these turn up in the movie, it was the novelisation that portrayed these actual scenes in all their violent glory. Whether any of these scenes were actually shot for the film or not is something I don’t know about.

What I do know is that it’s a pretty entertaining slice of Star Trek we have here. Most of the regular actors are back... William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan and George Takei are all present and correct and we also have a nicely expanded role for Walter Koenig as Chekov... he being the person who discovers Khan on the planet’s surface. Kind of an irritating point for fans of the show when you realise Walter Koenig was never in Season One of Star Trek and therefore technically never met Khan... but that doesn’t really matter here and Koenig does a damn fine job of the material he’s given to work with.

There’s lots of action, some very witty dialogue and although the shot set ups are not really anything to write home about, the way they are edited into a tight and fast paced movie, for the most part, is pretty good. Unlike Robert Wise in the last movie, Meyer doesn’t waste time with his effects shots... directors were finally beginning to treat the post Star Wars effects industry in a way that was less reverent to the actual on screen effect (just as George Lucas had done right from the get go)... which of course made the impact of the effects in the context of the action all the more potent.

And, of course, you had the death of Spock...

Yep. Everyone knew that Spock was going to get killed in this one, way before the movie was released. Leonard Nimoy’s first autobiographical book was famously called I Am Not Spock and it was quite a few years after this movie that his more upbeat titled sequel memoir, I Am Spock, was released into the world. Meyer uses the expectations of Spock’s death in the opening Kobayashi Maru scene, a no-win scenario training test for Starfleet cadets introduced in this film (with many mentions in movies and TV spin offs for years to come) and Spock, along with most of the regulars, are ‘fake killed’ in the opening sequence. This was presumably an attempt to try and have Spock’s real death at the end of the story be a bit of a surprise to some people... but it was perhaps too famously publicised for most of us not to expect it. His ending here is dramatic, moving and it was somewhat parodied a couple of years ago in a reverse version of the same scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness, which also had Khan as the villain... this time played by Benedict Cumberbatch (my review of that one here). We all had tears in our eyes when Spock met his end back in 1982 though.

However, the sharp eyed among us remembered a little non-sequitur moment that the writers put in and, of course, it wasn’t too much to expect that this movie wouldn’t be the last we heard from Spock. Of course, we’d have to wait a couple of years to find out for sure.

The music for this movie is one of James Horner’s greatest but I pretty much ignored it when it first came out. The memory and power of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Star Trek The Motion Picture was what I was waiting for and that score is not referenced or tracked in here at all. So I was kind of resentful of somebody else writing the music for this one at the time. I didn’t really discover Horner until ALIENS in 1986, by which time all his truly great scores such as Battle Beyond The Stars, Humanoids From The Deep, Gorky Park and Wolfen were in his past. However, it’s one of Horner’s finest and, despite having the usual Horner plagiarisms and self referencing, not to mention stealing from Prokofiev (well if you’re going to steal, steal from some of the best), it’s a powerful score in its own right and Horner built on this in his score for the next movie in the franchise.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one other than I am still angry that the Star Trek II fotonovel was published in black and white. Seriously? Why? However, it’s a truly great film and, although it’s not my personal favourite, it’s pretty high on my list and, for many fans of the series, this is their best one. Of course, we still had to find out if Spock was really dead. When the box office results were in, logic dictated that, you know, reports of his death may have been greatly exaggerated. 

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek - The Motion Picture

Slow Motion

Star Trek - The Motion Picture
USA 1979
Directed by Robert wise
Paramount Pictures Region B Blu Ray

So... I got a boxed set of Blu Rays of the first ten Star Trek movies for Christmas 2015 so you can bet I’ll be slowly posting reviews as I watch through them for the next couple of months. I saw all of these movies at the cinema on their initial releases and again on VHS tapes over the years but never got around to getting them again in the DVD age... so it’s been almost two decades since I last watched this one. I remember it being a big deal at the time though.

The original Star Trek TV show was one of the few of its kind where at least some small amount of fan merchandise was available for people to buy in the years before the first Star Wars movie made the secondary spin offs as important as the actual movies. I remember owning the original TV show blue prints pack and the original photonovels... not to mention the old Mego action figures... before then picking up stuff based on this movie such as another photonovel, Weetabix cards, Topps Bubble Gum cards, the Star Trek The Motion Picture blueprint pack and so on. I still have most of this stuff, by the way, although the Mego action figures were a casualty of my past and my Dinky Starship Enterprise exploded when it was thrown at a family member in a fit of rage when I was a young ‘un (not by me, I might add).

Born from the ashes of the original TV show and the aborted Star Trek Phase 2 TV show (reviewed by Tim Pelan at Cinetropolis here), the movie was really only made possible when it was seen as something that could bandwagon off of the popularity of the space opera genre that Star Wars had created two years earlier... although it absolutely wasn't trying to be a close copy of that movie like so many were. I remember first seeing it advertised on an episode of either Tizwas or Multicoloured Swap Shop and I was so struck by the snippets of Jerry Goldsmith’s score in the clips they showed that I even entered a competition for the soundtrack recording on vinyl for one of those shows (I didn’t win so I eventually had to track down a copy for myself a few years later from soundtrack specialist shop, Dean Street Records... but it’s an amazing score and it was well worth it).

The film itself is... well it’s kinda slow. I remember it being a criticism at the time that the long special effects sequences which are dotted throughout the movie drag on interminably and, even then, I guess I kinda agreed with that diagnosis... although to be honest, the scoring in those sequences is so sublime, it really didn’t bother me the way it obviously did some people. Looking back on it now... yeah, it really drags with these long sequences of 5 or 6 minutes of, basically, looking at how good the effects photography is. It’s a bit like the director thought he was making 2001: A Space Odyssey but the gravitas that made viewing the effects work compelling in that one is not present in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Still, it really doesn’t bother me to this day because... well, like I said, the music is so good in this one and I’d be foolish to deny that I’m watching it now with a certain sense of nostalgia. It probably really doesn’t hold up these days for a lot of people but I’m still good with it. I can only imagine what younger generations who are used to seeing special effects handled less reverently than they are here must think of this movie. It probably bores a lot of people silly these days, I suspect.

The story was, and still is, the key to this one, though. Partially based on/inspired by the 1967 Star Trek episode The Changeling... well, I wont spoil the final revelations of the movie here for you but I will say that the threat to mankind in this one is partially of it’s own making, to an extent... although plain random luck completes the rest of that equation. It’s really not an action movie either and I suspect this disappointed a lot of people who went to see it when it came out... although some of the sequels certainly took care of that element, for sure.

The other main strengths of this movie, asides from the story and music, comes from the cast. All of the original regulars from TV were back including William Shatner (in a highly improbable wig), Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Grace Lee Whitney, Majel Barret and even Mark Lenard in a sort of cameo as a Klingon Commander (as opposed to his more familiar Star Trek role as Spock’s father Sarek). The film also stars Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta in new roles and, luckily, their chemistry and the well written dialogue for all the old crew members certainly does a lot to make up for the movie’s rather obvious shortcomings in the pacing department. Something which Goldsmith’s monumental score also does a lot to hide.

Director Robert Wise uses a lot of classic triangular/pyramid style set ups in terms of the height of the actors and their placement in the foreground and background... everything seems to tend to gravitate to the middle of the shot and it pulls your eyes right to the centre of the widescreen frame a lot of the time... but the way the camera moves through these compositions is not very dynamic, it has to be said. There seems... at least this is the way I generally perceived it... to be a lot of static set ups which the camera moves into or out of, rather than centering around moving content and following that for a lot of the time. Not true for all the film, to be sure, but it certainly seems to be the way a lot of it is put together. It certainly is a slow one and I’d have to say that, although I’m personally fine with the movie and will always have some time for it, I have to agree with the detractors on the general sluggishness of the finished result. I find it fascinating that the director of what I consider to be the scariest horror movie ever made, the original 1963 version of The Haunting, not to mention well loved classics such as West Side Story, The Sound Of Music and the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, did a fairly bland job, in some ways, with this assignment. After all, this was the guy who edited Citizen Kane for Orson Welles.

What people these days fail to take into account, though, is the general zeitgeist of the era when the very first Star Wars film had just came out. This was one of the better “riding on George Lucas’ coat-tails” movies out there at the time and the financial rewards bore this out. It was successful enough to make a big amount of money and, as a result, they still haven’t stopped making sequel movies and TV shows to this one, still, to this day. So dull or not, in places, it did the numbers and ensured a future for the franchise, forging a steady income stream for the regular actors (who I guess got along just fine with money from various convention appearances over the years).

This is not the greatest Star Trek movie by a long chalk but... it did revive the franchise from the cancelled original TV show over a decade after it had been killed off. It could have remained a much loved but ultimately forgotten footnote if it hadn’t been for this movie rescuing it from TV Hell... so, you know, it deserves some of your time and respect, I think, if you are a fan of Star Trek. It lives long and prospers in the hearts of many, still, I suspect.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond