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Wacky Reviews: Star Trek
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
- Start date
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
I knew she died quite young so I'd always assumed she was too ill to come back, but budget limitations are probably right. It's a shame because Carol was a really good character. She felt like an actual person, not some bimbo like all of Kirk's other hook ups.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
They had Alice Eve's Carol Marcus disappear with no explanation too as a tribute to her.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Bibi Besch played Carol in TWOK - she died of cancer in 1996, but she worked fairly steadily right till the end. So I don't think it was illness that kept her out of TSFS.
I remember her from that "groundbreaking" gay TV movie Doing Time On Maple Drive in '92, and as Maggie's mother on Northern Exposure.
I remember her from that "groundbreaking" gay TV movie Doing Time On Maple Drive in '92, and as Maggie's mother on Northern Exposure.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home - We start with a black female Captain (YES) detecting a mysterious probe heading for Earth. At Starfleet headquarters, a Klingon screens The Search For Spock for Starfleet command. Seriously, how would they have exterior shots of the Enterprise exploding? Sarek (YES) shows up and tells the Klingon he's full of shit. The Klingon says there will be no piece as long as Kirk lives. Kirk and friends have been on Vulcan for three months and have decided to come home. Some Vulcans in amazing hats are fixing up their Bird of Prey (renamed the Bounty.) Spock is doing three tests at once because he's cool. The only question he can't answer is "how do you feel?" He's been retraining his mind in the Vulcan way and his human mother Amanda (YES) tells him it's important to retrain the human part of his mind too. It's a good scene to reintroduce Spock to the audience and to the new audience this movie attracted.
Saavik makes a brief appearance, telling Kirk how brave David was. Her and Spock seem to be find with each other despite all the sex they had on Genesis. The probe (basically a big cigar with a tennis ball at one end) fucks up Spacedock with the signal its sending and starts to fuck up Earth too. McCoy asks Spock what it was like to die. No one on Earth can figure out how to answer the probe, but the Bounty picks up a distress signal from the Federation President (who is just some human guy, disappointingly.) Spock figures out that the transmission is whale song. But humpback whales are extinct! The logical solution is to travel back in time and get some whales! It's totally canon that you can travel back in time by slingshotting around the sun so it's a good plan. It's a pretty exciting scene too as the Bounty starts breaking up as it flies closer to the sun and then there's some spooky heads in clouds and a whale and everyone falls asleep. Obviously they couldn't do any of this in the original series so it makes sense to make the time travel visually interesting on a movie budget.
The Bounty arrives on Earth in 1986 (that's the year the movie came out!) and Uhura detects whale song in San Fransisco. Spock disguises his ears with a bandana. The cloaked Bounty lands in a park. A park nobody ever walks though, I guess? They scare some binmen. Kirk says "double dumbass on you!" to a driver as they walk around San Fransisco and funky eighties music plays. It's pretty great. He sells the reading glasses McCoy gave him in TWOK for a hundred dollars. I'm not really clear on if these glasses are part of a time loop or not. Chekov says "NUCLEAR WESSELS" a lot! It's funny! As good as that is, the next scene is even better as a punk(!) is playing loud music on a stupidly big boombox on a bus and Spock gives him a nerve pinch (YES.) The rest of the passengers applaud him, which is perfect. They go to the whale institute where a woman named Gillian is giving a tour. We all learn a thing or two about whales in this scene! Kirk talks to Gillian about George and Gracie (the whales) and Spocks shows up swimming in their tank, mind melding with a whale. That's the best possible thing that could have happened. The way Nimoy delivers Spock's lines with "damn" and "Hell" randomly inserted is also perfect.
Kirk tells Gillian that Spock did too much "LDS" back in the sixties and she drives them home. Spock is still having memory problems and keeps saying weird things. McCoy and Scotty are trying to build a whale tank. Scotty says "hello, computer" into a mouse and it's adorable. He gives the formula for "transparent aluminium" to a go, which is fucking with the timeline really! Sure, Scotty says "how do we know he didn't invent it?" but ah who cares it's a comedy. Kirk and Gillian go out for pizza. Kirk really does look like Tom Jones in this movie. Gillian is confused by his communciator because mobile phones aren't invented yet! Kirk says "I'm from Iowa, I only work in outer space" as this movie has a lot of classic lines. Chekov and Uhura try to steal nuclear material from a sub. That mission really seems too important and risky to leave it to Chekov and Uhura. Kirk should have done it himself instead of going out with a girl. Chekov is captured because seriously why did you send Chekov into a nuclear sub. He manages to escape but falls and is taken to hospital.
The whales are released early and Gillian goes and yells at the cloaked Bounty. But they also have to break Chekov out of hospital! Kirk and McCoy comically wheel Gillian about on a stretcher. They break out Chekov and we get more comical chase music. Also they have pills that can grow a new kidney in the 23rd century. Gillian jumps on Kirk as he's being beamed up and luckily they aren't merged into one person or something. They go to get the whales but a whaling ship is there! Uh oh! The Bounty uncloaks to scare them away. I guess it's okay if assholes see a spaceship from the future. They beam up the whales and Doohan gives a perfect reading of "Admiral, there be whales here!" Spock's character development throughout the movie is paid off as he "makes a guess" on his calculatons for returning home. The Bounty crashes into future San Fransisco bay (because the probe disabled all ships or whatever.) Kirk does some underwater swimming to save the whales. The whales finally answer the probe and it flies away (after a pretty long conversation.) What did it actually want? WE'LL NEVER KNOW. Earth goes back to normal and the lights on Spacedock come back on. The whales jump around having fun! Leonard Nimoy breaks character briefly when everyone starts falling in the water and it actually a really nice moment. Maybe the new Spock does laugh sometimes, who can say.
Oh yeah, Kirk and the others (not Spock but he stands with them) are stilll on trial for various crimes. But Kirk is just busted back down the Captain and given a new ship and everyone cheers. Sarek admits to Spock that he was wrong to oppose Spock's entry into Starfleet, paying off a plot point from 'Journey to Babel' twenty years earlier. The new ship is the Enterprise-A which I guess Starfleet just happened to have ready even though it's only been three months since the original Enterprise blew up. They take it out for a fly because it's fully operational the end.
Search for Spock was all about following up Wrath of Khan (and undoing its ending.) Voyage Home carries on some plot points from it, but also has to tell a completely new story. Instead of reusing the successful Wrath of Khan formula, as so many later Trek movies will attempt to do, it instead does something completely different: a comedy time travel movie. One of the best episodes of the original series ('The Trouble With Tribbles') was a comedy episode and they had several great time travel episodes as well (ignore Assignment: Earth please.) I have no idea if Trekkies at the time thought that this film wasn't "REAL STAR TREK" because of the comedy and lack of a serious science fiction plot, but really who cares if they did. The movie is great. The plot is basically an excuse to get the crew back into the eighties, but that's fine as all the eighties stuff is perfect. The comedy feels completely natural. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekove all get great moments (Uhura and Sulu...are in it too.) The whale story is pretty simple but it works because everyone likes whales! Well, I do. I assume everyone else does. And it feels very Star Trek to have a movie that's all about saving a species from extinction.
Everyone gives a strong performance under Leonard Nimoy's direction. Maybe he was better suited to comedy than space action (he'd direct 3 Men and a Baby a year later!) Spock himself actually gets a pretty good storyline as he continues to recover his memories and learn how to feel again after being resurrected. It's a smart move to have Spock not quite at his best mentally as it gives them an excuse to do more comedy with him, such a nerve pinching the punk and swimming with the whales. Gillian is...okay. She's a bit excitable? But I like the restaurant scene with Kirk.
There's not much in the way of action but it's not needed at all a the comedy is all so funny. Some later Trek movies would have completely cringeworthy comedy (fucking Insurrection) but writers Nicholas Meye, Harve Bennet and director Nimoy get it so right here.
Any negatives? I don't like the kidney regrowing pill and umm...that's about it. The music (by someone named Leonard Rosenman, Tomtrek?) isn't as good as the previous three movies. But no, there's nothing majorly wrong with the film. What I like is that it's a completely feelgood movie that actually makes me feel good. I love it when all of Starfleet cheers Kirk getting a new ship. If you don't like that moment then you have no soul, really! Sorry, but it's true! Sometimes it's good to feel good.
SCORE: 9.5/10
Saavik makes a brief appearance, telling Kirk how brave David was. Her and Spock seem to be find with each other despite all the sex they had on Genesis. The probe (basically a big cigar with a tennis ball at one end) fucks up Spacedock with the signal its sending and starts to fuck up Earth too. McCoy asks Spock what it was like to die. No one on Earth can figure out how to answer the probe, but the Bounty picks up a distress signal from the Federation President (who is just some human guy, disappointingly.) Spock figures out that the transmission is whale song. But humpback whales are extinct! The logical solution is to travel back in time and get some whales! It's totally canon that you can travel back in time by slingshotting around the sun so it's a good plan. It's a pretty exciting scene too as the Bounty starts breaking up as it flies closer to the sun and then there's some spooky heads in clouds and a whale and everyone falls asleep. Obviously they couldn't do any of this in the original series so it makes sense to make the time travel visually interesting on a movie budget.
The Bounty arrives on Earth in 1986 (that's the year the movie came out!) and Uhura detects whale song in San Fransisco. Spock disguises his ears with a bandana. The cloaked Bounty lands in a park. A park nobody ever walks though, I guess? They scare some binmen. Kirk says "double dumbass on you!" to a driver as they walk around San Fransisco and funky eighties music plays. It's pretty great. He sells the reading glasses McCoy gave him in TWOK for a hundred dollars. I'm not really clear on if these glasses are part of a time loop or not. Chekov says "NUCLEAR WESSELS" a lot! It's funny! As good as that is, the next scene is even better as a punk(!) is playing loud music on a stupidly big boombox on a bus and Spock gives him a nerve pinch (YES.) The rest of the passengers applaud him, which is perfect. They go to the whale institute where a woman named Gillian is giving a tour. We all learn a thing or two about whales in this scene! Kirk talks to Gillian about George and Gracie (the whales) and Spocks shows up swimming in their tank, mind melding with a whale. That's the best possible thing that could have happened. The way Nimoy delivers Spock's lines with "damn" and "Hell" randomly inserted is also perfect.
Kirk tells Gillian that Spock did too much "LDS" back in the sixties and she drives them home. Spock is still having memory problems and keeps saying weird things. McCoy and Scotty are trying to build a whale tank. Scotty says "hello, computer" into a mouse and it's adorable. He gives the formula for "transparent aluminium" to a go, which is fucking with the timeline really! Sure, Scotty says "how do we know he didn't invent it?" but ah who cares it's a comedy. Kirk and Gillian go out for pizza. Kirk really does look like Tom Jones in this movie. Gillian is confused by his communciator because mobile phones aren't invented yet! Kirk says "I'm from Iowa, I only work in outer space" as this movie has a lot of classic lines. Chekov and Uhura try to steal nuclear material from a sub. That mission really seems too important and risky to leave it to Chekov and Uhura. Kirk should have done it himself instead of going out with a girl. Chekov is captured because seriously why did you send Chekov into a nuclear sub. He manages to escape but falls and is taken to hospital.
The whales are released early and Gillian goes and yells at the cloaked Bounty. But they also have to break Chekov out of hospital! Kirk and McCoy comically wheel Gillian about on a stretcher. They break out Chekov and we get more comical chase music. Also they have pills that can grow a new kidney in the 23rd century. Gillian jumps on Kirk as he's being beamed up and luckily they aren't merged into one person or something. They go to get the whales but a whaling ship is there! Uh oh! The Bounty uncloaks to scare them away. I guess it's okay if assholes see a spaceship from the future. They beam up the whales and Doohan gives a perfect reading of "Admiral, there be whales here!" Spock's character development throughout the movie is paid off as he "makes a guess" on his calculatons for returning home. The Bounty crashes into future San Fransisco bay (because the probe disabled all ships or whatever.) Kirk does some underwater swimming to save the whales. The whales finally answer the probe and it flies away (after a pretty long conversation.) What did it actually want? WE'LL NEVER KNOW. Earth goes back to normal and the lights on Spacedock come back on. The whales jump around having fun! Leonard Nimoy breaks character briefly when everyone starts falling in the water and it actually a really nice moment. Maybe the new Spock does laugh sometimes, who can say.
Oh yeah, Kirk and the others (not Spock but he stands with them) are stilll on trial for various crimes. But Kirk is just busted back down the Captain and given a new ship and everyone cheers. Sarek admits to Spock that he was wrong to oppose Spock's entry into Starfleet, paying off a plot point from 'Journey to Babel' twenty years earlier. The new ship is the Enterprise-A which I guess Starfleet just happened to have ready even though it's only been three months since the original Enterprise blew up. They take it out for a fly because it's fully operational the end.
Search for Spock was all about following up Wrath of Khan (and undoing its ending.) Voyage Home carries on some plot points from it, but also has to tell a completely new story. Instead of reusing the successful Wrath of Khan formula, as so many later Trek movies will attempt to do, it instead does something completely different: a comedy time travel movie. One of the best episodes of the original series ('The Trouble With Tribbles') was a comedy episode and they had several great time travel episodes as well (ignore Assignment: Earth please.) I have no idea if Trekkies at the time thought that this film wasn't "REAL STAR TREK" because of the comedy and lack of a serious science fiction plot, but really who cares if they did. The movie is great. The plot is basically an excuse to get the crew back into the eighties, but that's fine as all the eighties stuff is perfect. The comedy feels completely natural. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekove all get great moments (Uhura and Sulu...are in it too.) The whale story is pretty simple but it works because everyone likes whales! Well, I do. I assume everyone else does. And it feels very Star Trek to have a movie that's all about saving a species from extinction.
Everyone gives a strong performance under Leonard Nimoy's direction. Maybe he was better suited to comedy than space action (he'd direct 3 Men and a Baby a year later!) Spock himself actually gets a pretty good storyline as he continues to recover his memories and learn how to feel again after being resurrected. It's a smart move to have Spock not quite at his best mentally as it gives them an excuse to do more comedy with him, such a nerve pinching the punk and swimming with the whales. Gillian is...okay. She's a bit excitable? But I like the restaurant scene with Kirk.
There's not much in the way of action but it's not needed at all a the comedy is all so funny. Some later Trek movies would have completely cringeworthy comedy (fucking Insurrection) but writers Nicholas Meye, Harve Bennet and director Nimoy get it so right here.
Any negatives? I don't like the kidney regrowing pill and umm...that's about it. The music (by someone named Leonard Rosenman, Tomtrek?) isn't as good as the previous three movies. But no, there's nothing majorly wrong with the film. What I like is that it's a completely feelgood movie that actually makes me feel good. I love it when all of Starfleet cheers Kirk getting a new ship. If you don't like that moment then you have no soul, really! Sorry, but it's true! Sometimes it's good to feel good.
SCORE: 9.5/10
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
A great review of a great flick. :bigass:
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier - Nimoy's directed two movies now so Shatner's all "WELL I CAN DO THAT TOO" so here's his movie. Notably absent is Nicholas Meyer; the script is by someone named David Loughery. Let's see how this new creative team do!
We start on "The Planet of Galactic Peace" where someone in a cloak is riding a horse in slow motion through smoke. A guy who looks like he belongs in Mad Max aims a gun at him. Cloaked guy touches him and makes him cry. He takes his pain away and Mad Max guy is thankful. Cloaked guy takes his hood down and is revealed as a Vulcan. Then starts laughing. Vulcans don't laugh! This is actually a really good pre credits scene. It's well shot and mysterious and foreboding. What could this crazy Vulcan be up to?
Kirk is climbing a mountain. With no safety equipment. Bones is watching. Spock suddenly appears next to him on ROCKET BOOTS. Nimoy's voice sounds different? Kirk falls off the moutain and Spock saves him. It looks terrible. Like something from a Roger Moore Bond film (they were on my mind.) So if Spock hadn't been there in stupid rocket boots Kirk would have died falling off a fucking mountain.
Meanwhile David Warner (YES) is in an ALIEN BAR (because Star Wars) with a burping Klingon. An unconvincing Romulan female comes in and gives some badly delivered exposition about the planet (they're ambassadors who nobody cares about or something.) Sybok and his people take the bar and take the three ambassadors prisoner. The Romulan says that their governments will stop at nothing to ensure their safety so I guess they do care about them.
Also, it turns out the Enterprise-A is shit. When they took it out for a fly at the end of the last movie they were lucky it didn't fall apart. Scotty's fixing it with a big spanner. Uhura flirts with him(!?) and gives him crisps. Starfleet needs the Enterprise to respond to the hostage situation because they have NO OTHERS SHIPS and it's really stupid. Sulu and Chekov are lost in the woods because they're bumbling comic relief now. It's really horribly unfunny. Kirk, Spock and Bones eat beans with whisky in them. Kirk says he knows he'll die alone. They sing "Row, Row, Row your boat" for some reason. It's a pretty good scene, if a bit long (compare to the short, to the point scenes of TWOK.) I'm not sure what the point of it is but the actors always work well together. Spock still feels like he did at the start of Voyage Home as he's saying things like "life is NOT a dream."
A Klingon Bird of Prety decloaks and shoots an Earth probe (in another really bad specal effect.) The Klingon Captain wants to fight a Federation starship. For some reason.
The Enterprise is still falling apart but an Admiral tells them they have to go to the Planet Of Galactic Peace anyway because there's "no other experienced commanders" in the "quadrant." Seriously, Starfleet sucks in the movies. Suddenly everyone's talking about beating up Klingons. Is that what the movie's about? I guess?
Spock seems to recognise Sybok when he watches the hostage message. He explains that Sybok is a Vulcan who believe in emotions, while they stand in a room that looks a bit like Ten Forward from TNG but has a sailing ship steering wheel in it?
Holy fuck the visual effects in this movie are bad.
Chekov pretends to be Captain while Kirk and Spock sneak up on "Paradise City." THEN UHURA DOES A FAN DANCE AS A DISTRACTION. Luckily everyone on Sybok's crew is a heterosexual male with a thing for sixty year olds so they all go running over to rape her or something and get captured. There's an action scene involving horses. Spock nerve pinches a horse. Yeah. Kirk fights a cat girl and beats her by throwing her in some water which knocks her out somehow.
Turns out the ambassadords are on Sybok's side and this was a plan all along to capture Kirk. Sybok wants a starship. Couldn't he have just gone up to a Starfleet Captain (or any Captain) in a space bar and brainwashed them instead of this elaborate plan?
Sulu pilots the shuttle back to the Enteprise and it warps away when the Klingons fire on them in what could have been an exciting scene in a better movie.
Spock refuses to kill Sybok while Kirk shouts "SHOOT HIM" because this is one of those space guns that doesn't have a stun setting (and he can't just shoot Sybok in the balls or something.) Spock explains that Sybok is his never before mentioned half brother. Sybok's mother is a Vulcan princess. Sarek was a top shagger. This is all stupid.
Sybok takes the secret pain of Sulu, Uhura and Chekov away and they all instantly betray Kirk. Why would not having a "secret pain" suddenly make you disloyal to your friends? Sybok makes a speech where he finaly explains what this movie is about (an hour into it): he's trying to find Sha Ka Ree (LIKE SEAN CONNERY but he didn't want to be in this shit) a planet that "lies beyond the great barrier at the centre of the galaxy." The what? I thought the great barrier surrounded the edge of the galaxy?
Scotty breaks Kirk, Spock and McCoy out. He says "I know this ship like the back of my hand" then bangs his head HAHAHAHA SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE. I probably found this funny when I was young but now I find it A DISGRACE to the proud character of Scotty. And it looked really bad as he was walking slowly when he hit his head.
Now it's time for the fucking rocket boots to return! IT'S SO BAD. They fly by the same "Deck 78" sign twice and how the fuck can the ship have 78 decks. Those shitty Klingons from earlier somehow intercept Kirk's distress call and I guess they're going to come back into the movie now.
Uhura gets sexy with Scotty again. I really don't like this.
In what is by far the best scene of the movie, Sybok attempts to remove McCoy's secret pain by letting him revist the moment where he ended his dying father's suffereing. It's very well acted by DeForest Kelley and effectively shot by director Shatner. A good scene! In this movie!
Then he takes Spock back to his birth on a stone slab in a cave (doesn't Vulcan have hospitals?) where a disgusted Sarek said "SO HUMAN" on looking at him for the first time. And the movie's back to being shit again because Sarek fucking married a human woman and is hardly going to have reacted like that to Spock's birth.
Shatner does some decent acting saying "I NEED MY PAIN" and Bones and Spock stick with Kirk. Which only makes Uhura, Sulu and Chekov seem like even bigger weak-willed traitors.
The Enterprise flies through the Great Barrier. On the plus side, this doesn't last as long as flying through the V'Ger cloud did. On the minus side it looks terrible.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sybok fly down to "Eden" and...it's just another deseret planet like Nimbus 3. But through a purple filter. They all have to pretend that the planet is something special.
Rocks rises up out of the ground. A light shines out of it and a big scary face talks. It must be God! There's no other explanation! It doesn't remind me of The Wizard of Oz at all! Kirk asks a much quoted question. God instantly turns heel by shooting Kirk and Spock. Seriously we only got about thirty seconds of "maybe this is God!" before he turned out to be evil. We wasted a whole movie on that! It's just some fucking alien who wants to have sex with a starship.
Sybok attacks God and Kirk orders the Enteprise to fire a torpedo on them (yeah, fuck Sybok!) Spock and McCoy are beamed up but the Klingons (yes, them) attack that this exact moment. Kirk keeps running away from God and it's really lame because there's supposed to be a Rock Monster chasing him but they couldn't get the Rock Monster to look good. The Klingon ship shoots God and for some reason that kills it even though the Enterprise's torpedo didn't.
Turns out the old burping Klingon general managed to convince the Klaa (the Klingon Captain I guess he had a name) not to be a dick anymore, even though burping Klingon fell out of favour years ago so I'm not sure why Klaa would listen to him. And Spock's the one who fired the guns that killed God because the Klingons don't have anyone who can shoot straight I guess. Kirk goes to hug Spock(!) but Spock says "please Captain, not in front of the Klingons" which is a funny line but when has Kirk ever hugged him before?
Kirk, Spock and Bones have a final talk about God being in the human heart and Spock is sad he lost a brother. Kirk says he lost a brother once (he remembered George Samuel!) but he got him back (oh he meant Spock.) Then they go back to Earth and Spock plays "row row row your boat" on his Vulcan loot and it's a nice moment but what does it actually mean in the context of the movie? I don't know, it's over now so I don't have to think about it anymore.
Okay, this movie isn't very good. I don't think anyone can defend it as being some misunderstood work of genius. It's objectively bad in many ways. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with enjoying it, of course! There are good things in it: I like the Sybok character, for example. The actor does a good job playing a "villain" who isn't actually a bad guy and who sees his whole belief system turn out to be false. There's some good lines. The McCoy flashback scene is genuinely very good. A few of the comedy moments are funny (mostly because of the actors.) Jerry Goldsmith returned to do the score so it has far better music than The Voyager Home.
BUT there's a lot more bad than good. I can't say for sure if Shatner did a bad job directing it, really. I feel like the script and the troubled production hurt it more (then again he could have picked a better script and maybe the production wouldn't have been as troubled with a better director.) The really bad special effects definitely hurt. They couldn't afford ILM so they got...some other company. Who were shit. It really shows.
The whole thing with the Enterprise being barely functional is stupid and pointless (it's pretty much forgotten halfway through the movie.) The fake God storyline feels like something out of a season three episode of TOS. As I mentioned above, we get about thirty seconds of God trying to fool the crew before he says "fuck it, I'm evil" and is easily killed. What even was he? We're left to assume he was some evily entity locked up in planet in the centre of the galaxy but why didn't whoever locked him up just kill him since it's apparently so easy? Why did no one else find him before now? How did he even find Sybok? It's just bad!
As far as characters go, it's an okay movie for Kirk but Shatner isn't as impressive as the previous three. Spock feels regressed from where he was at the end of TVH and very little is done with his relationship with Sybok. McCoy, as I have pointed out twice, gets the best scene, but in other scenes DeForest Kelley seems pretty frail? Like obviously that can't be helped but it's really noticable now that the crew are getting older. When you realise that this movie is only set about six months after Wrath of Khan it feels pretty weird since they all look quite a bit older than even in that film. Scotty is fatter than ever and mostly treated like a joke, this is the "SHE CANNAE TAKE MUCH MORE!" fat stereotype Scott non-fans remember. Uhura, Chekov and Sulu all betray their ship just because Sybok gives them a happy feeling. And why is Chekov still on the ship anyway when he was the first officer on the Reliant not too long ago? Why haven't he and Sulu got their own comands yet?
Klaa is a complete nothing. The three ambassadors are introduced like they're going to be important then barely do anything (a waste of David Warner...but the Romulan actress was terrible so it's for the best in her case.)
So yeah this is definitely the worst of the movie so far (and maybe ever, because at least the bad J.J. films have some great special effects) with very little to recommend it.
SCORE: 3/10
We start on "The Planet of Galactic Peace" where someone in a cloak is riding a horse in slow motion through smoke. A guy who looks like he belongs in Mad Max aims a gun at him. Cloaked guy touches him and makes him cry. He takes his pain away and Mad Max guy is thankful. Cloaked guy takes his hood down and is revealed as a Vulcan. Then starts laughing. Vulcans don't laugh! This is actually a really good pre credits scene. It's well shot and mysterious and foreboding. What could this crazy Vulcan be up to?
Kirk is climbing a mountain. With no safety equipment. Bones is watching. Spock suddenly appears next to him on ROCKET BOOTS. Nimoy's voice sounds different? Kirk falls off the moutain and Spock saves him. It looks terrible. Like something from a Roger Moore Bond film (they were on my mind.) So if Spock hadn't been there in stupid rocket boots Kirk would have died falling off a fucking mountain.
Meanwhile David Warner (YES) is in an ALIEN BAR (because Star Wars) with a burping Klingon. An unconvincing Romulan female comes in and gives some badly delivered exposition about the planet (they're ambassadors who nobody cares about or something.) Sybok and his people take the bar and take the three ambassadors prisoner. The Romulan says that their governments will stop at nothing to ensure their safety so I guess they do care about them.
Also, it turns out the Enterprise-A is shit. When they took it out for a fly at the end of the last movie they were lucky it didn't fall apart. Scotty's fixing it with a big spanner. Uhura flirts with him(!?) and gives him crisps. Starfleet needs the Enterprise to respond to the hostage situation because they have NO OTHERS SHIPS and it's really stupid. Sulu and Chekov are lost in the woods because they're bumbling comic relief now. It's really horribly unfunny. Kirk, Spock and Bones eat beans with whisky in them. Kirk says he knows he'll die alone. They sing "Row, Row, Row your boat" for some reason. It's a pretty good scene, if a bit long (compare to the short, to the point scenes of TWOK.) I'm not sure what the point of it is but the actors always work well together. Spock still feels like he did at the start of Voyage Home as he's saying things like "life is NOT a dream."
A Klingon Bird of Prety decloaks and shoots an Earth probe (in another really bad specal effect.) The Klingon Captain wants to fight a Federation starship. For some reason.
The Enterprise is still falling apart but an Admiral tells them they have to go to the Planet Of Galactic Peace anyway because there's "no other experienced commanders" in the "quadrant." Seriously, Starfleet sucks in the movies. Suddenly everyone's talking about beating up Klingons. Is that what the movie's about? I guess?
Spock seems to recognise Sybok when he watches the hostage message. He explains that Sybok is a Vulcan who believe in emotions, while they stand in a room that looks a bit like Ten Forward from TNG but has a sailing ship steering wheel in it?
Holy fuck the visual effects in this movie are bad.
Chekov pretends to be Captain while Kirk and Spock sneak up on "Paradise City." THEN UHURA DOES A FAN DANCE AS A DISTRACTION. Luckily everyone on Sybok's crew is a heterosexual male with a thing for sixty year olds so they all go running over to rape her or something and get captured. There's an action scene involving horses. Spock nerve pinches a horse. Yeah. Kirk fights a cat girl and beats her by throwing her in some water which knocks her out somehow.
Turns out the ambassadords are on Sybok's side and this was a plan all along to capture Kirk. Sybok wants a starship. Couldn't he have just gone up to a Starfleet Captain (or any Captain) in a space bar and brainwashed them instead of this elaborate plan?
Sulu pilots the shuttle back to the Enteprise and it warps away when the Klingons fire on them in what could have been an exciting scene in a better movie.
Spock refuses to kill Sybok while Kirk shouts "SHOOT HIM" because this is one of those space guns that doesn't have a stun setting (and he can't just shoot Sybok in the balls or something.) Spock explains that Sybok is his never before mentioned half brother. Sybok's mother is a Vulcan princess. Sarek was a top shagger. This is all stupid.
Sybok takes the secret pain of Sulu, Uhura and Chekov away and they all instantly betray Kirk. Why would not having a "secret pain" suddenly make you disloyal to your friends? Sybok makes a speech where he finaly explains what this movie is about (an hour into it): he's trying to find Sha Ka Ree (LIKE SEAN CONNERY but he didn't want to be in this shit) a planet that "lies beyond the great barrier at the centre of the galaxy." The what? I thought the great barrier surrounded the edge of the galaxy?
Scotty breaks Kirk, Spock and McCoy out. He says "I know this ship like the back of my hand" then bangs his head HAHAHAHA SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE. I probably found this funny when I was young but now I find it A DISGRACE to the proud character of Scotty. And it looked really bad as he was walking slowly when he hit his head.
Now it's time for the fucking rocket boots to return! IT'S SO BAD. They fly by the same "Deck 78" sign twice and how the fuck can the ship have 78 decks. Those shitty Klingons from earlier somehow intercept Kirk's distress call and I guess they're going to come back into the movie now.
Uhura gets sexy with Scotty again. I really don't like this.
In what is by far the best scene of the movie, Sybok attempts to remove McCoy's secret pain by letting him revist the moment where he ended his dying father's suffereing. It's very well acted by DeForest Kelley and effectively shot by director Shatner. A good scene! In this movie!
Then he takes Spock back to his birth on a stone slab in a cave (doesn't Vulcan have hospitals?) where a disgusted Sarek said "SO HUMAN" on looking at him for the first time. And the movie's back to being shit again because Sarek fucking married a human woman and is hardly going to have reacted like that to Spock's birth.
Shatner does some decent acting saying "I NEED MY PAIN" and Bones and Spock stick with Kirk. Which only makes Uhura, Sulu and Chekov seem like even bigger weak-willed traitors.
The Enterprise flies through the Great Barrier. On the plus side, this doesn't last as long as flying through the V'Ger cloud did. On the minus side it looks terrible.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sybok fly down to "Eden" and...it's just another deseret planet like Nimbus 3. But through a purple filter. They all have to pretend that the planet is something special.
Rocks rises up out of the ground. A light shines out of it and a big scary face talks. It must be God! There's no other explanation! It doesn't remind me of The Wizard of Oz at all! Kirk asks a much quoted question. God instantly turns heel by shooting Kirk and Spock. Seriously we only got about thirty seconds of "maybe this is God!" before he turned out to be evil. We wasted a whole movie on that! It's just some fucking alien who wants to have sex with a starship.
Sybok attacks God and Kirk orders the Enteprise to fire a torpedo on them (yeah, fuck Sybok!) Spock and McCoy are beamed up but the Klingons (yes, them) attack that this exact moment. Kirk keeps running away from God and it's really lame because there's supposed to be a Rock Monster chasing him but they couldn't get the Rock Monster to look good. The Klingon ship shoots God and for some reason that kills it even though the Enterprise's torpedo didn't.
Turns out the old burping Klingon general managed to convince the Klaa (the Klingon Captain I guess he had a name) not to be a dick anymore, even though burping Klingon fell out of favour years ago so I'm not sure why Klaa would listen to him. And Spock's the one who fired the guns that killed God because the Klingons don't have anyone who can shoot straight I guess. Kirk goes to hug Spock(!) but Spock says "please Captain, not in front of the Klingons" which is a funny line but when has Kirk ever hugged him before?
Kirk, Spock and Bones have a final talk about God being in the human heart and Spock is sad he lost a brother. Kirk says he lost a brother once (he remembered George Samuel!) but he got him back (oh he meant Spock.) Then they go back to Earth and Spock plays "row row row your boat" on his Vulcan loot and it's a nice moment but what does it actually mean in the context of the movie? I don't know, it's over now so I don't have to think about it anymore.
Okay, this movie isn't very good. I don't think anyone can defend it as being some misunderstood work of genius. It's objectively bad in many ways. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with enjoying it, of course! There are good things in it: I like the Sybok character, for example. The actor does a good job playing a "villain" who isn't actually a bad guy and who sees his whole belief system turn out to be false. There's some good lines. The McCoy flashback scene is genuinely very good. A few of the comedy moments are funny (mostly because of the actors.) Jerry Goldsmith returned to do the score so it has far better music than The Voyager Home.
BUT there's a lot more bad than good. I can't say for sure if Shatner did a bad job directing it, really. I feel like the script and the troubled production hurt it more (then again he could have picked a better script and maybe the production wouldn't have been as troubled with a better director.) The really bad special effects definitely hurt. They couldn't afford ILM so they got...some other company. Who were shit. It really shows.
The whole thing with the Enterprise being barely functional is stupid and pointless (it's pretty much forgotten halfway through the movie.) The fake God storyline feels like something out of a season three episode of TOS. As I mentioned above, we get about thirty seconds of God trying to fool the crew before he says "fuck it, I'm evil" and is easily killed. What even was he? We're left to assume he was some evily entity locked up in planet in the centre of the galaxy but why didn't whoever locked him up just kill him since it's apparently so easy? Why did no one else find him before now? How did he even find Sybok? It's just bad!
As far as characters go, it's an okay movie for Kirk but Shatner isn't as impressive as the previous three. Spock feels regressed from where he was at the end of TVH and very little is done with his relationship with Sybok. McCoy, as I have pointed out twice, gets the best scene, but in other scenes DeForest Kelley seems pretty frail? Like obviously that can't be helped but it's really noticable now that the crew are getting older. When you realise that this movie is only set about six months after Wrath of Khan it feels pretty weird since they all look quite a bit older than even in that film. Scotty is fatter than ever and mostly treated like a joke, this is the "SHE CANNAE TAKE MUCH MORE!" fat stereotype Scott non-fans remember. Uhura, Chekov and Sulu all betray their ship just because Sybok gives them a happy feeling. And why is Chekov still on the ship anyway when he was the first officer on the Reliant not too long ago? Why haven't he and Sulu got their own comands yet?
Klaa is a complete nothing. The three ambassadors are introduced like they're going to be important then barely do anything (a waste of David Warner...but the Romulan actress was terrible so it's for the best in her case.)
So yeah this is definitely the worst of the movie so far (and maybe ever, because at least the bad J.J. films have some great special effects) with very little to recommend it.
SCORE: 3/10
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Yeah Leonard Rosenman was Nimoy's composer pal so he got him in to do the film. He wanted him to do Search for Spock as well but Paramount told Nimoy he had to keep James Horner WHICH WAS GREAT because Rosenman's score - while not terrible - is pretty blah and feels like a really awkwards retread of his (not amazing) music for the animated Lord of the Rings. It's easily the worst score to a Star Trek film!
But at least The Final Frontier brought back Goldsmith and his score is easily one of the best parts of the entire film.
I don't think Shatner's direction is actually that terrible? When he's not focusing on the shitty special effects he can actually make the film look pretty good sometimes??
I also think that, like a lot of people say, the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic is actually pretty good in this film. It doesn't save it, but it's fun to watch! Sometimes!
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Is climbing the moutain a metaphor for man's never ending search for God?
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
I remember seeing this as a matinee in 1989 a few days after it was released and I was THE ONLY PERSON IN THE THEATER. So that was kinda cool.
whisky
Boobie inspector
I'm the lone guy who likes this film, and you already hit the nail on the head, for me, this is the one film in the entire run of the original cast, that feels like an episode of the series, not do good special effects, the enterprise taken over by bad guys, exteriors shot in a desert, actual fist fights!
If you've read about the making of this film you know about the problems with the budget, most of the money went to the actors, the teamster strike which slowed down production, the sfx being shipped out to another company because they couldn't afford ILM any more, even down to stuff like stuntmen getting stuck in traffic so Shatner himself had to do the horse ride at the start of the movie, and the studio and other actors fighting with him on the script.
This isnt the film Shatner wanted to make, and he is probably more disappointed than most of you in how it turned out.
At the end of the day he and Nimoy had a mutal contract, meaning anything one got paid, the other did too, any extras given, the other one got too, because of that Shatner could have directed another star trek film after this, but didn't
The real surprise about this film is how well it turned out, considering all the obstacles in its path.
Plus for the first time since the original series there was a full sized shuttle prop, which later got reused by TNG.
If you've read about the making of this film you know about the problems with the budget, most of the money went to the actors, the teamster strike which slowed down production, the sfx being shipped out to another company because they couldn't afford ILM any more, even down to stuff like stuntmen getting stuck in traffic so Shatner himself had to do the horse ride at the start of the movie, and the studio and other actors fighting with him on the script.
This isnt the film Shatner wanted to make, and he is probably more disappointed than most of you in how it turned out.
At the end of the day he and Nimoy had a mutal contract, meaning anything one got paid, the other did too, any extras given, the other one got too, because of that Shatner could have directed another star trek film after this, but didn't
The real surprise about this film is how well it turned out, considering all the obstacles in its path.
Plus for the first time since the original series there was a full sized shuttle prop, which later got reused by TNG.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
The Rock Monster would have certainly had the authentic TOS feel.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
I liked the scene where Kirk asked "What does God need with a starship?" But yeah, TWOK and The Voyage Home are my favorites.
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
That rock monster actually looks pretty cool, it's just the jerky movements that look lame. Still, it would've been sort of odd for a "God like being" to only have one henchman (why not an army of rock men?).
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
I did enjoy the film, by the way. It's a little underrated, buried under all that garbage, but there are some classic character bits, which I think was the point.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country - "For Gene Roddenberry" is the first thing to appear on screen. So this is the first Star Trek I've watched in this thread that was released after Gene died. Even though he hasn't actually been involved since TMP (and reportedly hated the cut he saw of this movie before dying) that still feels significant.
After the credits something explodes! Sulu has been Captain of The Excelsior for three years now. It's good move to show that time has passed since TFF as the previous four movies all covered a pretty short time span. ANYWAY, George Takie's delivery of "my GOD" as the explosion approaches the Excelsior is pretty great. Hey, there's Janice Rand. She's still around. The Klingon moon Praxis has blown up. Rand stupidly asks "do we report this?" as if a moon exploding isn't a big deal. Anyway this is a great opening scene.
Spock gives a briefing on the exploded moon at Starfleet Headquarters. He's been negoitiating peace with the Klingons. Admiral Cartwright (Brock Peters) from Star Trek 4 is there and is against it. Kirk isn't too happy about it either, especially since he's to take the Klingon Chancellor onboard the Enterprise. Spock says the Klingons are dying and Kirk says "LET THEM DIE." But what's good about the line is that you can kind of see that Kirk regrets saying it after. So he's not just mindlessly hating the Klingons.
A cute Vulcan girl named Valeris (Kim Cattrall from that sex with cities show) pilots the Enterprise out of Spacedock. Kirk records a Captain's log where he says he can never trust the Klingons after the death of his son. Spock tells Valeris (his new protege, KIND OF LIKE SAAVIK) that logic is the beginning of knowledge (her learned that from V'Ger! This is like the first time ever another movie has referenced TMP) and also he hopes she'll replace him on the Enterprise.
The Enterprise meets with Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner in a much better part than the previous movie) and Kirk invites him to dinner. Gorkon brings his daughter with him and General Chang (Christopher Plummer, who has one eye and not as many ridges as other Klingons.) Some crewmembers make racist remarks about the Klingons and Valeris appears to tell them off, but maybe this scene can be viewed in a different way later! The dinner party has Gorkon saing you haven't experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingon. It starts off nicely with everyone drinking Romulan ale, but it soon turns super awkward. Kirk even brings up Hitler, which is never a good move. It's a very good scene as the humans are just as responsible for the argument breaking out as the Klingons. Chang has now decided to constantly quote Shakespeare at all times, by the way. More on that later!
The Enterprise apparently fires on the Klingon ship. The gravity goes out and two people in magnetic boots start killing Klingons. Klingons have pink/purple CGI blood so there's a Klingon fact to remember! Kirk has the Enterprise surrender to the Klingons and Kirk and McCoy beam aboard the Klingon ship to help. McCoy not knowing Klingon anatomy is slightly weird? Gorkon dies after pleading with Kirk not to let it end this way. Even though Gorkon isn't in the movie very much he leaves an impression thanks to David Warner's trustworthy voice. You believe his commitment to peace.
There's a scene with the Klingon ambassador talking to the Federation President (now an alien) and Sarek, where a sketchy looking Romulan is present. I have no idea why he's there! Also it's really obviosu the president's office is just the Ten Forward set from TNG redressed.
Kirk and McCoy are put on trial for Gorkon's death. Chang is the prosecutor and they're defended by...Colonel Worf? Who has the exact same voice as his grandson? Okay, sure. I like how it's a showtrial with everyone watching on tv. I like how one Klingon laughs at McCoy's joke. I'm not really sure why Kirk and McCoy have to hold translators up to their ears when they have universal translators. But I think there's some things Nicholas Meyer puts in because he likes how they look (and because he wanted to do the "don't wait for the translation" line.) Somhow the Klingons have the recording of Kirk's log where he says he never trusted Klingons. We'll find out how they get it later! Kirk and McCoy are found guilty (obviously) and sent to work in the dilithium mines on the "penal asteroid" of Rura Penthe.
Spock is in command of the Enterprise now and he's calm and logical and he's getting to the bottom of this shit. Also Sherlock Holmes is an ancestor of his.
Rura Penthe is really cold. There's lots of weird aliens inside. Kirk does mention that their universal translators have been confiscated but why would they do that before the trial? WHATEVER IT ISN'T A BIG DEAL. They meet David Bowie's wife.
Valeris destroys some kitchen equipment to demonstrate to Chekov (who is kind of dumb) that an alarm goes off if anyone fires a phase on the Enterprise.
Kirk wins a fight with a tall alien (who looks a bit like a Jem Hadar) by kicking its genitals which happen to be in its knees. He admits to to McCoy that he's scared of the future. Iman kisses Kirk and McCoy rolls his eyes which is funny. They're going to break out.
Christian Slater wakes up Sulu.
Chekov accuses a guy with big weird feet of wearing the magnetic boots. It's funny but another chapter in the "Chekov is an idiot" story.
Martia is actually a shapeshifter and helps Kirk and McCoy escape. It's strangely easy to escape, actually. I mean, apart from the fact that they nearly freeze to death. The Enterprise goes to rescue them and can't use the universal translator...so they have to search BOOKS for translation Okay, sorry for being A MOANER but why would they need books to translate. Why can't the computer do it fo them? Or at least read the translation off an electronical device. Books were show to be outdated even in the original series when Samuel T. Cogley had a library. It's really silly.
The next scene is a lot better as Kirk has figured out Martia is setting them up and punches her. She shapeshifts into Kirk which means we get a classic TOS style scene of two Kirk's fighting (and that great line about the kiss.) The Klingons kill Martia and are about to tell Kirk and Bones who the evil mastermind is (it's obviously Chang though) when Spock beams them up.
I like that Scotty still reads blueprints when off duty. Like in 'The Trouble With Tribbles'!
The assassins are killed but Kirk cleverly tricks Valeris into thinking they're still alive. That's right, Valeris is the traitor. She gave Kirk's log to the Klingons and she conspired with Klingons who didn't want peace to kill Gorkon. Spock is really pissed off with her. Nimoy is great playing a Spock who is barely controlling his rage. He forces a mind meld on her to get the names of the conspirators (turns out that creepy Romulan really couldn't be trusted!) It gets pretty intense as Valeris screams in pain when Spock tries to get the location of the peace conference out of her. I know this scene is considered controversial by some but no lasting damage is shown to have been done to Valeris. Obviously torturing someone isn't something I'd want Spock to do a lot but they were really desperate and I dont think it was too out of character for Spock at this point. Of course it turns out they just ask Sulu for the location of the peace conference so Spock didn't really have to go so far.
Kirk and Spock talk about the mistakes they've made.
The peace conference is going on at Camp Khitomer as Gorkon's daughter wants peace too but Chang is headed there in his bird of prey whicn can fire when cloaked. Chang attacks the Enterprise while the Excelsior rushes to help (Sulu's suggestion to "fly her apart then!" isn't a very good one!) Chang is just constantly throwing out Shakespeare quotes now. At least he's having fun! But McCoy would give real money for him to shut up. The Enterprise is badly damaged but Spock and Bones manage to do surgery on a torpedo (don't think about it too much) to fight back and the Excelsior and the Enterprise blow up the bird of prey.
They arrive at the peace conference just in time to save the Federation president from being assassinated and arrest the conspirators including that nice Admiral Cartwright and the slimey Romulan. Kirk makes a nice (but pretty short?) speech about the future and everyone claps.
The Enterprise is to return to spacedock to be decomissioined. Which seems a bit extereme when it doesn't even look that badly damaged. But it makes thematic sense! Spock says if he was human his response would be "go to Hell!" Kirk takes the Enterprise out for one last fly and says "where no one" instead of "where no man" has gone before to really show that the Enterprise belongs to a new crew now.
Much like TWOK this movie was in a rough position, having to follow a disappointing movie, though obviously TFF was a much bigger disaster than TMP. They went through various story ideas (including a Starfleet Academy movie with younger actors playing the characters...that would never work!) and Harve Bennet got fired/quit. It was actually Leonard Nimoy who came up with the ripped from the headlines plot about peace with the Klingons/Soviet Union and Nicholas Meyer ran with it and ended up directing again. (I was just reading the wikipedia article; obvously there's a lot more to it including details of Meyey and Roddenberry's explosive arguments but you can read it yourself!) It also had to serve as a final adventure for the original cast as it was known it would be the final movie with them all together. COULD IT PULL IT OFF?
Well yes, it mostly does! The biggest strength of the movie is the story. The Klingons have been Kirk's enemy since the original series twenty five years before this movie's relase. David's death at the hands of the Klingons is smartly used to make it more understandable why Kirk wouldn't ever trust the Klingons. Like TWOK age comes up again with Kirk and Spock feeling that the universe might be passing them by. Really everything about the story works. It's a perfect ending for the original crew as they finally make peace with their oldest enemy and show they still have somethign to give to the galaxy (before they're decomssion at the end anyway!)
The character stuff is good for all the original cast. Obviously Kirk and Spock get the best stuff, but I like seeing Sulu have his own ship. Uhura doesn't get much but at least she doesn't fan dance again. Chekov is a bit dumb. But everyone comes across as likable and the viewer's affection for these character goes a long way to making the movie feel like satisfying ending to this era of Trek.
Saavik was originally supposed to return as the tratior but she was replaced by the new character of Valeris rather than recasting Saavik again. I think that works out pretty well. If it had been Saavik then yes it would have felt far more personal for Spock and everyone else if she had betrayed them, but I don't know if I would have wanted to see Saavik as a trator? She doesn't seem the type. I suppose seeing David killed by a Klingon would have been the reason she didn't trust them. I think Kim Cattrall made a pretty good Vulcan and it makes sense that Spock would go on to mentor another young Vulcan officer after his success with Saavik.
I liked the characters of Gorkon and his daughter whose name I can't remember. Christopher Plummer is a lot of fun as Chang but...there isn't really much to the character? After the trial literally every line he has is a Shakespearce quote. Meyer used Moby Dick quotes in TWOK because it parraleled the story playing out on screen, here Chang just seems to be quoting Shakespeare a lot because...he likes Shakespeare? But as I said Plummer is obviously having a great time and is fun to watch.
Where I think the movie fails a bit is that it looks pretty cheap. That's because the failure of TFF meant they weren't going to get the money to make this movie look great. It's obvious that everything in the movie is reused from somewhere, be it sets from TNG or models from previous movies (Gorkon's ship is the Klingon battlecruiser from TMP!) TWOK similarly had a low budget but managed to looking really good somehow, this one doesn't quite pull it off? But that's probably because TWOK mostly took place on the bridges of two starships whereas this has more locations. Look at Rura Penthe: it's a fun sequence because of Shatner and Kelley's charm, but imagine if they'd had some money to spend on an elaborate minecart escape squence or something.
The final space battle between the Enterprise and the cloaked bird of prey isn't much either, especially if you compare it to the space battles in TWOK. But it is fun seeing Chang blown up!
And I hate the part with the books.
But yeah this is still very good, one of the best Trek movies. Maybe that's partly because you know it's the last time you're going to see this cast together. It doesn't matter, really! I still like it a lot.
SCORE: 9/10
After the credits something explodes! Sulu has been Captain of The Excelsior for three years now. It's good move to show that time has passed since TFF as the previous four movies all covered a pretty short time span. ANYWAY, George Takie's delivery of "my GOD" as the explosion approaches the Excelsior is pretty great. Hey, there's Janice Rand. She's still around. The Klingon moon Praxis has blown up. Rand stupidly asks "do we report this?" as if a moon exploding isn't a big deal. Anyway this is a great opening scene.
Spock gives a briefing on the exploded moon at Starfleet Headquarters. He's been negoitiating peace with the Klingons. Admiral Cartwright (Brock Peters) from Star Trek 4 is there and is against it. Kirk isn't too happy about it either, especially since he's to take the Klingon Chancellor onboard the Enterprise. Spock says the Klingons are dying and Kirk says "LET THEM DIE." But what's good about the line is that you can kind of see that Kirk regrets saying it after. So he's not just mindlessly hating the Klingons.
A cute Vulcan girl named Valeris (Kim Cattrall from that sex with cities show) pilots the Enterprise out of Spacedock. Kirk records a Captain's log where he says he can never trust the Klingons after the death of his son. Spock tells Valeris (his new protege, KIND OF LIKE SAAVIK) that logic is the beginning of knowledge (her learned that from V'Ger! This is like the first time ever another movie has referenced TMP) and also he hopes she'll replace him on the Enterprise.
The Enterprise meets with Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner in a much better part than the previous movie) and Kirk invites him to dinner. Gorkon brings his daughter with him and General Chang (Christopher Plummer, who has one eye and not as many ridges as other Klingons.) Some crewmembers make racist remarks about the Klingons and Valeris appears to tell them off, but maybe this scene can be viewed in a different way later! The dinner party has Gorkon saing you haven't experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingon. It starts off nicely with everyone drinking Romulan ale, but it soon turns super awkward. Kirk even brings up Hitler, which is never a good move. It's a very good scene as the humans are just as responsible for the argument breaking out as the Klingons. Chang has now decided to constantly quote Shakespeare at all times, by the way. More on that later!
The Enterprise apparently fires on the Klingon ship. The gravity goes out and two people in magnetic boots start killing Klingons. Klingons have pink/purple CGI blood so there's a Klingon fact to remember! Kirk has the Enterprise surrender to the Klingons and Kirk and McCoy beam aboard the Klingon ship to help. McCoy not knowing Klingon anatomy is slightly weird? Gorkon dies after pleading with Kirk not to let it end this way. Even though Gorkon isn't in the movie very much he leaves an impression thanks to David Warner's trustworthy voice. You believe his commitment to peace.
There's a scene with the Klingon ambassador talking to the Federation President (now an alien) and Sarek, where a sketchy looking Romulan is present. I have no idea why he's there! Also it's really obviosu the president's office is just the Ten Forward set from TNG redressed.
Kirk and McCoy are put on trial for Gorkon's death. Chang is the prosecutor and they're defended by...Colonel Worf? Who has the exact same voice as his grandson? Okay, sure. I like how it's a showtrial with everyone watching on tv. I like how one Klingon laughs at McCoy's joke. I'm not really sure why Kirk and McCoy have to hold translators up to their ears when they have universal translators. But I think there's some things Nicholas Meyer puts in because he likes how they look (and because he wanted to do the "don't wait for the translation" line.) Somhow the Klingons have the recording of Kirk's log where he says he never trusted Klingons. We'll find out how they get it later! Kirk and McCoy are found guilty (obviously) and sent to work in the dilithium mines on the "penal asteroid" of Rura Penthe.
Spock is in command of the Enterprise now and he's calm and logical and he's getting to the bottom of this shit. Also Sherlock Holmes is an ancestor of his.
Rura Penthe is really cold. There's lots of weird aliens inside. Kirk does mention that their universal translators have been confiscated but why would they do that before the trial? WHATEVER IT ISN'T A BIG DEAL. They meet David Bowie's wife.
Valeris destroys some kitchen equipment to demonstrate to Chekov (who is kind of dumb) that an alarm goes off if anyone fires a phase on the Enterprise.
Kirk wins a fight with a tall alien (who looks a bit like a Jem Hadar) by kicking its genitals which happen to be in its knees. He admits to to McCoy that he's scared of the future. Iman kisses Kirk and McCoy rolls his eyes which is funny. They're going to break out.
Christian Slater wakes up Sulu.
Chekov accuses a guy with big weird feet of wearing the magnetic boots. It's funny but another chapter in the "Chekov is an idiot" story.
Martia is actually a shapeshifter and helps Kirk and McCoy escape. It's strangely easy to escape, actually. I mean, apart from the fact that they nearly freeze to death. The Enterprise goes to rescue them and can't use the universal translator...so they have to search BOOKS for translation Okay, sorry for being A MOANER but why would they need books to translate. Why can't the computer do it fo them? Or at least read the translation off an electronical device. Books were show to be outdated even in the original series when Samuel T. Cogley had a library. It's really silly.
The next scene is a lot better as Kirk has figured out Martia is setting them up and punches her. She shapeshifts into Kirk which means we get a classic TOS style scene of two Kirk's fighting (and that great line about the kiss.) The Klingons kill Martia and are about to tell Kirk and Bones who the evil mastermind is (it's obviously Chang though) when Spock beams them up.
I like that Scotty still reads blueprints when off duty. Like in 'The Trouble With Tribbles'!
The assassins are killed but Kirk cleverly tricks Valeris into thinking they're still alive. That's right, Valeris is the traitor. She gave Kirk's log to the Klingons and she conspired with Klingons who didn't want peace to kill Gorkon. Spock is really pissed off with her. Nimoy is great playing a Spock who is barely controlling his rage. He forces a mind meld on her to get the names of the conspirators (turns out that creepy Romulan really couldn't be trusted!) It gets pretty intense as Valeris screams in pain when Spock tries to get the location of the peace conference out of her. I know this scene is considered controversial by some but no lasting damage is shown to have been done to Valeris. Obviously torturing someone isn't something I'd want Spock to do a lot but they were really desperate and I dont think it was too out of character for Spock at this point. Of course it turns out they just ask Sulu for the location of the peace conference so Spock didn't really have to go so far.
Kirk and Spock talk about the mistakes they've made.
The peace conference is going on at Camp Khitomer as Gorkon's daughter wants peace too but Chang is headed there in his bird of prey whicn can fire when cloaked. Chang attacks the Enterprise while the Excelsior rushes to help (Sulu's suggestion to "fly her apart then!" isn't a very good one!) Chang is just constantly throwing out Shakespeare quotes now. At least he's having fun! But McCoy would give real money for him to shut up. The Enterprise is badly damaged but Spock and Bones manage to do surgery on a torpedo (don't think about it too much) to fight back and the Excelsior and the Enterprise blow up the bird of prey.
They arrive at the peace conference just in time to save the Federation president from being assassinated and arrest the conspirators including that nice Admiral Cartwright and the slimey Romulan. Kirk makes a nice (but pretty short?) speech about the future and everyone claps.
The Enterprise is to return to spacedock to be decomissioined. Which seems a bit extereme when it doesn't even look that badly damaged. But it makes thematic sense! Spock says if he was human his response would be "go to Hell!" Kirk takes the Enterprise out for one last fly and says "where no one" instead of "where no man" has gone before to really show that the Enterprise belongs to a new crew now.
Much like TWOK this movie was in a rough position, having to follow a disappointing movie, though obviously TFF was a much bigger disaster than TMP. They went through various story ideas (including a Starfleet Academy movie with younger actors playing the characters...that would never work!) and Harve Bennet got fired/quit. It was actually Leonard Nimoy who came up with the ripped from the headlines plot about peace with the Klingons/Soviet Union and Nicholas Meyer ran with it and ended up directing again. (I was just reading the wikipedia article; obvously there's a lot more to it including details of Meyey and Roddenberry's explosive arguments but you can read it yourself!) It also had to serve as a final adventure for the original cast as it was known it would be the final movie with them all together. COULD IT PULL IT OFF?
Well yes, it mostly does! The biggest strength of the movie is the story. The Klingons have been Kirk's enemy since the original series twenty five years before this movie's relase. David's death at the hands of the Klingons is smartly used to make it more understandable why Kirk wouldn't ever trust the Klingons. Like TWOK age comes up again with Kirk and Spock feeling that the universe might be passing them by. Really everything about the story works. It's a perfect ending for the original crew as they finally make peace with their oldest enemy and show they still have somethign to give to the galaxy (before they're decomssion at the end anyway!)
The character stuff is good for all the original cast. Obviously Kirk and Spock get the best stuff, but I like seeing Sulu have his own ship. Uhura doesn't get much but at least she doesn't fan dance again. Chekov is a bit dumb. But everyone comes across as likable and the viewer's affection for these character goes a long way to making the movie feel like satisfying ending to this era of Trek.
Saavik was originally supposed to return as the tratior but she was replaced by the new character of Valeris rather than recasting Saavik again. I think that works out pretty well. If it had been Saavik then yes it would have felt far more personal for Spock and everyone else if she had betrayed them, but I don't know if I would have wanted to see Saavik as a trator? She doesn't seem the type. I suppose seeing David killed by a Klingon would have been the reason she didn't trust them. I think Kim Cattrall made a pretty good Vulcan and it makes sense that Spock would go on to mentor another young Vulcan officer after his success with Saavik.
I liked the characters of Gorkon and his daughter whose name I can't remember. Christopher Plummer is a lot of fun as Chang but...there isn't really much to the character? After the trial literally every line he has is a Shakespearce quote. Meyer used Moby Dick quotes in TWOK because it parraleled the story playing out on screen, here Chang just seems to be quoting Shakespeare a lot because...he likes Shakespeare? But as I said Plummer is obviously having a great time and is fun to watch.
Where I think the movie fails a bit is that it looks pretty cheap. That's because the failure of TFF meant they weren't going to get the money to make this movie look great. It's obvious that everything in the movie is reused from somewhere, be it sets from TNG or models from previous movies (Gorkon's ship is the Klingon battlecruiser from TMP!) TWOK similarly had a low budget but managed to looking really good somehow, this one doesn't quite pull it off? But that's probably because TWOK mostly took place on the bridges of two starships whereas this has more locations. Look at Rura Penthe: it's a fun sequence because of Shatner and Kelley's charm, but imagine if they'd had some money to spend on an elaborate minecart escape squence or something.
The final space battle between the Enterprise and the cloaked bird of prey isn't much either, especially if you compare it to the space battles in TWOK. But it is fun seeing Chang blown up!
And I hate the part with the books.
But yeah this is still very good, one of the best Trek movies. Maybe that's partly because you know it's the last time you're going to see this cast together. It doesn't matter, really! I still like it a lot.
SCORE: 9/10
SAUSAGEMAN
Registered User
TUC is the only TOS movie I've seen and i dislike it a lot.
SAUSAGEMAN
Registered User
tbf I was v high at the time