Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Jim, There is a Historic Opportunity Here

The time has finally come for me to complete the original series of Star Trek movies.  It’s been a fairly decent run thus far.  Though I’ve really only found two of the movies to be fairly disappointing, I still don’t think I’ve seen one of these movies capable of making me understand how a Trekkie could possibly consider this series to be superior to Star Wars.  Even the best ones I’ve seen so far pale in comparison to the best Star Wars movies, in my opinion.  But they still have one movie left, and that movie is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, written by Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, directed by Nicholas Meyer, and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Kim Cattrall, Christopher Plummer, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, David Warner, Rosanna DeSoto, Iman, Brock Peters, and Michael Dorn.

One of the Klingon moons explodes, throwing the Klingon Empire into turmoil and causing them to call the United Federation of Planets and suggest that they enter into some peace negotiations.  Spock (Leonard Nimoy) recommends Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) to escort the Klingon Chancellor, Gorkon (David Warner), to the negotiations.  Kirk resents the assignment, still harboring a lot of resentment for the Klingons because they killed his son.  After a tense meal with the Klingon’s on board the Enterprise, the Enterprise appears to inexplicably fire upon the Klingon ship and, while the gravity is down, two Enterprise crew members beam on board and kill most of the Klingons, including Gorkon.  The Enterprise is blamed and Kirk, along with Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), is sentenced to life imprisonment on a mining planet.  Kirk and McCoy have to try to survive imprisonment while Spock and the Enterprise crew try to find out what happened to clear their names.

I wasn’t really feeling this movie, but I suppose I’d relent as far as to say that it was an acceptable sendoff for the original Enterprise crew.  It just felt so uneventful.  I guess there were technically a lot of things happening, what with the peace negotiations, the framing of Kirk, the attempted assassination, etc., but I’m also not that interested in watching interstellar politics.  I found it mostly boring and did not inspire me to give it too much attention.  I think one of the things that kept annoying me is that they wouldn’t stop quoting Shakespeare.  That stuff barely keeps me interested when it’s an actual Shakespeare play!  And they just do it way too much.  I get it, you all like Shakespeare, and we’ve all cumulatively agreed to not pay attention to how the Klingon’s would get that interested in Shakespeare, but you can knock it off already.  And then, when they got bored of that, they started quoting Peter Pan, which is basically the same thing, I guess.  And when they end their movie with Kirk telling them to fly toward the “second star to the right and straight on till morning” made me think that it was their intention to have Star Trek VII take place in Neverland.  They’ve done more ridiculous things in the TV show.  But, best I could tell, I had not misplaced another movie, so they may not have made that movie.  Some of the non-classical quotes were also irritating.  The biggest one for me was when Spock decided that whoever they were looking for (the two killers) were still on board the Enterprise.  Yeah, they would logically still be on board the Enterprise … IF they didn’t teleport off already, as they’ve proven themselves able to do.  I also got annoyed at the end when they said they wanted to decommission the Enterprise again at the end of the movie.  Why does Starfleet have such a hard-on for getting rid of their most effective vessel?!  This is the second time they’ve tried that in these movies.  And after they said they wanted to decommission it, it got destroyed, and then they STILL rebuilt it!  Make up your mind!

This was the best looking Star Trek movie that I’ve seen until the J.J. Abrams joints.  It looked really good.  It started off really well too with that giant energy wave thing that looked great, even though it was very, very pink.  I guess I didn’t like it because I didn’t really see the point of it.  I understand that the Klingons needed some reason to talk peace with the Federation, but they didn’t really need something so elaborate.  The action was decent enough when it happened, but I got to thinking that the shields are nowhere near as effective as they should’ve been.  They announce that the shields are in the process of weakening, but then they show the hull and there’s physical damage on it.  So the shields when only slightly depreciated are only really good enough to keep out 10% of incoming damage?  And after that, I thought that it was cute that the movie ended with the signatures of the main crew before the credits began.  It’s a nice little finishing touch.

The cast still brings it to the best of their ability, but the bulk of them are showing their age at this point.  I guess I can’t really blame them for that.  Not everyone can age as gracefully as I have.  I did feel like it didn’t really fit the character of Kirk to have him mutter some insult about one of the Klingon’s resembling Hitler under his breath without having the balls to repeat it when he was called on it.  I also thought it was a little over the top for DeForest Kelley to jump up on the Klingon and straddle him as he pounded on his chest to revive him.  I don’t know if I could call it cliché since I don’t know if this movie was one of the first to do it or not, so I’ll just say it was a little much.  I also thought Iman was good in the role of Martia, but mostly because she was hot.  It was a little strange that she still talked in her own voice in all the different forms she took until she took the form of Kirk, but I didn’t care that much.  Then I got really confused because Michael Dorn plays Colonel Worf in this movie, the Klingon that defends Kirk and McCoy at the trial.  This didn’t seem to make any sense chronologically for me since the same actor plays a Klingon with the same name hundreds of years later in The Next Generation, but they had already finished airing The Next Generation by the time this movie came out.  I guess they just never had the opportunity to explain it.  Had they mentioned it in this movie, it would’ve been predicting the future.  And TNG was already done, so they couldn’t mention it there.  Maybe just not worth the trouble.

Though I found myself somewhat bored with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, I felt as if it was an acceptable way to send off the series.  The story was a little boring and based mostly around interstellar politics, but the action and the performances were all good, and the story did succeed at what it wanted to do by closing out the original series with a nice little bow.  I wouldn’t recommend this movie on its own, but I would recommend the whole set of the original series movies.  They’re more good than bad, and overall worth watching.  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country gets “Once more unto the breach, dear friends” out of “Let them die!”

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

We Have Found the Nuclear Wessel.

I do find myself a little impatient to reach the end of my run with the Star Trek movies.  I’ve been reviewing and watching so much Star Trek stuff recently that girls literally run at the sight of me, whereas before they just laughed and walked calmly away from me.  I guess they can smell it on you.  But I also hate leaving a series unfinished, so I must continue on.  It’s not as if it’s that painful to make it through these movies.  Thus far, I’ve enjoyed two out of three of the Star Trek movies, but I’m still waiting for the drastic drop in quality I’ve heard about with them.  Could this be one such movie?  We’ll find out as I review Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, written by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, and Nicholas Meyer, directed by Leonard Nimoy, and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Catherine Hicks, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Mark Lenard, Jane Wyatt, Majel Barrett, and Robin Curtis.

After the events of the last movie, the crew that survived the destruction of the USS Enterprise – Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), helmsmen Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), Commander Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), and communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) – agree unanimously to return to Starfleet headquarters on Earth to face prosecution for the crimes they committed.  But on their way back, they receive a distress signal from Earth, saying that they’re about to be destroyed because a tube in space is trying to find whales and we killed them all.  The only way for the Enterprise crew to save the planet is to travel back in time to the present (or this movie’s version of the present 1986) to when whales still existed and bring two of them back to their time.  In 1986, they find two whales that are about to be released into the wild under the care of Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), but convincing her to give up the whales is not their only concern.  They must also repair and repower their ship while fitting it to handle whales in a time where the technology doesn’t exist to accomplish any of those things.

I would say that I now enjoy three of the four Star Trek movies that I’ve seen.  This one is still good.  I’m really waiting to see that drop in quality I keep hearing about.  Most of the movie was light-hearted and fun, and the movie was based around a message I agree with, but it was a little heavy-handed.  The movie was basically all about how we need to save the whales, all set into a Star Trek back drop.  I agree with your message, and I even think that it’s a proper enough premise to base a movie around, but it doesn’t really feel like a Star Trek movie.  And the probe didn’t even come to take the whales back.  It just showed up to check to make sure we hadn’t fucked up too badly.  So their motivation was basically just to see what big jerks humans would be.  But though I was torn about the premise the whole movie was based on, I still found it an enjoyable experience.  A lot of the moments when the Enterprise crew were trying to get around in 1986 were amusing and made the heavy-handed message the movie was beating me over the head with much more tolerable.  Time travel can also be dangerous in movies, making overcoming obstacles a little too easy.  That could be considered the case with this movie as well.  All they have to do is fly around the sun and they’re back in the 80’s?  That’s like Superman problem solving.  If it’s that easy then why don’t they just do it every time they need a second chance at something?  Also, I know that Kirk’s line to Spock where he says, “Start your computations for time warp,” was a second draft.  The original line was obviously, “Let’s do the time warp again.”  I also took issue with how incompetent they made the “present” day military seem.  They announced a security breech and yet none of the military people walking through the halls of the ship seemed to be that interested in the stranger in street clothes running past them.  I think military people are trained better than that, even back in 1986.

The movies still seem to be improving visually.  Even though I still think that green is an odd style choice for Klingons, the ship looked good.  They still have not really figured out a good excuse for how they’re able to watch the previous movies though.  They start out the movie watching scenes from the previous movie, but never think of a good reason that all of those camera angles were recorded by security cameras.  Are we to believe that the vessels of Starfleet have cameras in a constant orbit to get the camera angles to make security footage more interesting?  It also made me wonder why there are always such fights between Trekkies and Star Wars fans when Industrial Light and Magic did the visuals for this movie.  I also took issue with the audio in some parts of the movie.  First, the first thing I thought when I heard the probe was that it sounded like a robotic whale.  About 10 minutes later, the Enterprise crew figured out the same thing.  I can’t necessarily say that I’m smarter than them though because I vaguely remember hearing that whales took some part in the movies.  Later, I also took issue with the shitty, 80’s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style music they drop.  I know they’re in the 80’s, but I also know that some good music came out of that decade.  The worst issue with the music was the music they played when they were running around the hospital.  Think of the worst, most corny and on the nose music you can think of for a goofy chase scene.  …You got it.  It was ridiculously close to Yakety Sax or something.

Again, the performances are mostly unchanged and offer not much to say other than what I’ve already said about them.  Though they had done it frequently in the television show, I don’t recall Spock having too many humorous moments in the previous movies, but it was the greater majority of what he did in this one.  As humorous as I found it to see some of the other Enterprise crew interact with the people of 1986, Spock topped it out.  Well, there was at least one moment I found amusing with George Takei, but I’m not sure it was intentional.  It was when he said he was born in San Francisco.  Sulu may have been born in San Francisco, but there’s also a chance Takei was just dropping hints before he was ready to kick open the old closet doors.  I liked Catherine Hicks well enough.  She was cute in personality and in appearance, and she got inexplicably nipply around the end of the movie.  I was also entirely confused by the guy that owned the factory that Doohan visited.  What was the reason for the giant “I Quit Smoking” pin that he was wearing?  Good for you, buddy.  But what does that have to do with the manufacturing of Plexiglas?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was a solid enough movie.  The story was fun in the parts where they weren’t trying to make a point, and the point they were trying to make – though it was a good one – was a little heavy-handed and perhaps not best suited for a vaguely goofy science fiction movie.  But the cast still does a great job, and I’d say I’d be able to recommend this movie for a watch as well.  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home gets “They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales” out of “Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word.”

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!

With my nerdiness still boiling to a critical point, I’ve finished the entire original series of Star Trek and moved into Next Generation.  Watching the original series made me aware of the fact that a review was necessary because there were lots of easy jokes that just demanded to be made.  And my favorite jokes are the easy one.  But that review is for later.  For now, I feel the need to continue onward with the movies.  The first Star Trek movie was entirely underwhelming, being comprised mostly of glory shots of the Enterprise.  But that’s pretty much what I had heard about the movie.  But I’ve also heard that that every even numbered Star Trek movie is awesome, and I think the movie that I’ve heard most about when it comes to Star Trek is up for review today.  That movie is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Jack B. Sowards, directed by Nicholas Meyer, and starring William Shatner, Ricardo Montalbán, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig, Paul Winfield, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Kirstie Alley, Bibi Besch, and Merritt Butrick.

The USS Reliant is on a mission to find a dead planet to try out the experimental Genesis Device, a device that reorganizes matter to create habitable worlds.  Commander Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) beam down to the surface to investigate the planet Ceti Alpha V, but they find that it’s very much inhabited already.  Unfortunately, this desolate planet is inhabited by Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán), a genetically engineered tyrant stranded on the planet with his fellow supermen by Chekov’s former captain, James T. Kirk (William Shatner).  And, since being stranded there led to the death of most of Khan’s men and his wife, Khan wants revenge on Kirk in a big bad way.  He uses mind-controlling eels on Chekov and Terrell and gains control of the Reliant, which he then uses to assault Space Station Regula I, where the Genesis Device is being stored.  Their distress signal brings Kirk and crew back into Khan’s sights.

This movie was indeed superior to the original movie, but I don’t know if I’d quite say it lived up to the hype.  I guess most of the hype I’ve heard about it was that it was the best Star Trek movie (before the J.J. Abrams movies), and I guess I’d agree with that.  It is indeed the better of the two that I’ve seen.  The story was fine, but it didn’t exactly blow my mind.  It felt to me like a pretty standard revenge tale.  It is cool that they dug back into the recesses of the Star Trek episodes for the basis of their story, to an episode that wasn’t even drastically important in the series where Khan first appeared.  Having made my way through the series already, it was interesting for me to see the series and to realize that I’ve technically met the woman that married Khan and died, creating the motivation for Khan in this movie.  I guess the thing that makes the movie important is the ending, which is a spoiler but you have already seen this movie if there’s any chance of you seeing it now.  Spock dies.  It is a very emotional scene, especially since I had already spent 80 episodes getting attached to Spock as a character by the time I saw this.  They handled the whole thing with a lot of gravitas and really sold it.  Then again, I already know he comes back in the next movie, so I couldn’t be nearly as affected by it as I would have the day it was released.  I also would have been surprised by the reveal of the outcome of the Kobayashi Maru test had I not seen the new Star Trek movie.  If I had seen it back then, I probably would’ve thought the solution had something to do with eating hot dogs.  There were a couple of things that gave me pause in the movie as well, such as seeing a rat on board Regula I.  How does a fuckin’ space rat make it on board a space station?!  Also, doesn’t it seem slightly less than dignified for the Enterprise to shoot Khan’s ship in the back like it did?  I understand it finally got the tactical advantage it needed, and that logically it should take it, but we’re also making a movie here.  We should endeavor to make our heroes seem heroic.

The look of the movie still holds up, and they still like to show it off by having lots of glory shots of the Enterprise doing nothing particularly interesting, but thankfully they do limit themselves from masturbating over their craftsmanship too much.  I hear you can go blind from that.  They also drastically improved the effects of the phaser blasts from the TV show.  And though I found the ending scene very effective when they had the little space funeral for Spock, I did wonder if that room had a secondary purpose.  It seemed to be specifically designed to fire dead bodies out into space.

I liked all the performances in the movie.  William Shatner may still arguably be over the top at times, but I still like it.  No one yells Khan like he does.  Speaking of Khan, Ricardo Montalbán was also very good in this movie.  He was pretty charming, intimidating, and imposing.  I liked the entire cast of the Enterprise.  Leonard Nimoy is still great.  As is Walter Koenig.  I did take issue with a scene involving Chekov though.  It was the scene where they asked Chekov under what authority he was taking Khan into the Genesis facility.  How the hell did they not think anything was up when it took him a full minute to answer their question about Kirk giving them the orders, let along how robotic he was acting?  Also, how did the ear bug just decide to crawl out of Chekov’s ear?  Didn’t Khan say they would kill when they were done manipulating their host?  Perhaps it just wouldn’t be as threatening if he told him that it would control his mind for a little while until it got bored and climbed out his ear, allowing him to go about his business.  James Doohan was also great, especially at the emotional scenes when his trainees died.  Kirstie Alley was also in this movie, and I was a little surprised to find that she was kinda hot back in the day.  I also always like DeForest Kelley as Bones.  He’s good at being funny and at delivering some emotional lines, even though the line, “He’s not really dead as long as we remember him,” is more of a spoiler than an epitaph.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a really good movie, but I’m sure it was even better when it originally came out.  Since then, I have seen movies that have spoiled some big reveals in this movie, thus making some of them slightly less impactful when watching it for the first time now.  I still appreciate the movie.  The story was pretty simplistic, but enjoyable, and the ending of the movie was still fairly emotional and was handled very well, even though I not only knew it was going to happen, but I know it’s not going to stick.  The look is still pretty solid and the performances were alright in my book.  I’d still say this movie was worth checking out if you hadn’t seen it already.  And if you had, it’s still a good watch.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan gets “Let me show you something that will make you feel young as when the world was new” out of “It had the virtue of never having been tried.”

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