Star Trek Revisited Part II
Decided to re-watch the Star Trek films in order. It's been some time since I've seen them, and I never did watch the last two Next Gen films. Here's a few quick thoughts:
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock: A/K/A "Nimoy Changed His Mind". This movie gets a bad rap for being a not very interesting middle piece of a trilogy, but I disagree. It's still one of my favorite Trek flicks because it's the middle bit, and it's a fine story, but also done on the cheap. Lots of dynamics here, and some cheese. The film picks up literally where Wrath of Khan leaves off with a tidy summation and into the next part of the story. Pretty decent effects, though all of the Enterprise sets are re-used out of necessity (no time for refits here). I noticed a trend in these films: each one seems to introduce some new actress. Persis Khambatta, Kirstie Alley, and now Robin Curtis, playing the role Alley originated (apparently she wanted too much money). Curtis's Saavik is more mechanical and ice queen and less interesting. There's good solid stuff in this flick and also some ham to pass around as Kirk gets to beat up Reverend Jim/the future Doc Brown playing the lead Klingon baddie (Chris Lloyd - certainly the least ferocious Klingon ever), and that son of Kirk's introduced in the previous film gets offed, because, you know, Kirk can't have anything nice. Bonus: John Larroquette plays Maltz, the only apparently Jewish Klingon. Some dismissive technobabble about proto-matter explaining the premature breakup and rapid aging of both the Genesis planet and the resurrected Spock, but we're used to that sort of thing in Star Trek. Honestly though, these films look and feel like extended episodes. Maybe that's just because of my association of this franchise and setting with television, but they really should have spent more money on costumes and makeup. Seriously, what the fuck is Checkov wearing for half this film? It looks like a Little Ensign Fauntleroy outfit, complete with gigantic white collar that probably substitutes as a flotation device. All the secondary crew get some fun things to do (especially Uhura, whose sequence I just love), and Sulu gets to lay down some karate moves. Overall, a solid and fun flick and a good carryover to the next. Dame Judith Anderson rocks the Vulcan priestess thing. Vulcans, however, in this movie anyway, seem like a mashup of ancient Jews, Asians, and smurfs.
Story: Decent. Good pacing and action. Good character stuff.
Effects: Par for the course.
Acting: Fine. Shatner hams it up a bit, and Chris Lloyd chews up every scene he's in. Props to Dee Kelley for some breakout crazy acting and his gut wrenching confession to Spock about not wanting to lose him again.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None. No redshirts on the stolen Enterprise. However, all the Klingons but one bites the galactic weenie, and the Enterprise itself is blowed up all good.
Chekov Injury: No physical injuries, but man, that wardrobe of his is awful. Two strikes against Pavel's dignity. :(
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: A spectacular cheese fest. At the time of its release, I really loved this movie, but now it just seems really silly, goofy and, well, sub par. Perhaps the most ridiculous Star Trek storyline to date, but I haven't watched #5 yet, and only saw it once, on VHS, and I fell asleep after the first 15 minutes. A galactic stripper pole shows up at Earth to apparently call on their homies, humpback whales, but -- whoops! -- we offed them in the 21st century. So sad, too bad. Soccer ball on a stick keeps pumping out some bad vibes fucking up everything on Earth, so Kirk & crew, in their acquired Klingon Bird of Prey, on their way home to face the music after the events of #3, decide the obvious: let's go back in time and rescue some humpbacks from the 20th century, bring them back to the 23rd century, and they'll tell their distant cousins to knock it off. Sure. Why not. I won't even go into the utter ludicrousness of "slingshot around the sun to enter a time warp". As Trek fans, we've learned to just nod our heads and overlook the often truly regrettable non-science involved in the show. After all, we swallowed warp drive, transporters and Spock's brain in jar, why not this, too? The "floating heads" sequence makes me laugh every time. Who the fuck came up with that? The middle of the film is one long, extended joke sequence as, once in the past, Our Heroes make asses of themselves attempting to find "nookleear wessels", mind-meld with captive whales while wearing Vulcan hotel bath robes, and Kirk tries in vain to mack up a 20th century hottie, cetacean biologist Gillian Taylor (played by the horribly over-acting and hysterical Catherine Hicks). The film is a festival of throw-away gags: Scotty and McCoy con a plexiglass manufacturing overlord into manufacturing huge sheets of transparent aluminum to convert half the Klingon ship into a whale tank (with Scotty gleefully altering history by giving the guy the formula for the material). Scotty's interaction with a "Banana Junior" all-in-one Macintosh computer is funny, but only because what he does could never be done on a home personal computer at that time. Uhura and Chekov get stuck with obtaining protons (or something) from a nuclear powered ship in order to somehow re-crystallize the burnt out dilithium crystals on the Bird of Prey. How does that work? Don't ask, and they certainly don't tell. Spock and Kirk engage in some "colorful metaphors" with locals and Spock gives the Vulcan nerve pinch to an obnoxious punk rocker on a bus. There are some glaring inconsistencies: the "footprint" of the Bird of Prey, so glaringly obvious when it lands, disappears on long shots of the alleged cloaked ship in Golden Gate Park, only to re-appear handily when Gillian attempts to get Kirk's attention. When he is captured on the aircraft carrier Enterprise (see what they did there? Huh? Huh? *wink-nudge*), why is Chekov interrogated by a pair of slimy looking lawyer types and not military personnel? How does Sulu manage to get a hold of that Huey helicopter after a brief chat with its pilot? How do Scotty and McCoy pay for all that transparent aluminum they con that dude into making, and why, when installed, does it look about 9 feet thick when Scotty claims it would only need to be one inch thick? The film is slabbed with cheeky product placement (Chevy, Pacific Bell, Michelob), and just doesn't hold up as well as some of the others primarily due to it's time travel plot device and hyper-extended forays into 1980s America. There are some fun bits (in particular, McCoy's ranting when inside the hospital to rescue Chekov) and great lines, but, overall, feels horribly dated. However, where else but San Francisco could anyone walk around in a hotel bath robe and a white headband and not be out of place or arrested? I thought so. Nowhere else. The whole film is a ham-fisted, anvil-to-the-face ecological message picture, which is fine, but man, I got a headache from it.
Story: Feh. Goofy.
Effects: Pretty decent overall, except that floating heads bit. WTF?
Acting: Ham and cheese. Nimoy has almost all the best lines.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None, not counting obnoxious punk rockers.
Chekov Injury: Falls off the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise (lols) and is taken to primitive Earth hospital, where an agent of the Spanish Inquisition almost drills holes in his head until Kirk & McCoy show up to fix him with something that looks like a fold-out Sony Walkman. :(
Bonus: Veteran character actor John Schuck takes a turn as the Gayest Klingon Ever. Blink and you'll miss Janice Rand's cameo, and Majel Barrett-Roddenberry has a line. Go-Go Jane Weidlin appears briefly as an officer at Starfleet Command. Presumably, she did not sing "We Got the Beat".
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock: A/K/A "Nimoy Changed His Mind". This movie gets a bad rap for being a not very interesting middle piece of a trilogy, but I disagree. It's still one of my favorite Trek flicks because it's the middle bit, and it's a fine story, but also done on the cheap. Lots of dynamics here, and some cheese. The film picks up literally where Wrath of Khan leaves off with a tidy summation and into the next part of the story. Pretty decent effects, though all of the Enterprise sets are re-used out of necessity (no time for refits here). I noticed a trend in these films: each one seems to introduce some new actress. Persis Khambatta, Kirstie Alley, and now Robin Curtis, playing the role Alley originated (apparently she wanted too much money). Curtis's Saavik is more mechanical and ice queen and less interesting. There's good solid stuff in this flick and also some ham to pass around as Kirk gets to beat up Reverend Jim/the future Doc Brown playing the lead Klingon baddie (Chris Lloyd - certainly the least ferocious Klingon ever), and that son of Kirk's introduced in the previous film gets offed, because, you know, Kirk can't have anything nice. Bonus: John Larroquette plays Maltz, the only apparently Jewish Klingon. Some dismissive technobabble about proto-matter explaining the premature breakup and rapid aging of both the Genesis planet and the resurrected Spock, but we're used to that sort of thing in Star Trek. Honestly though, these films look and feel like extended episodes. Maybe that's just because of my association of this franchise and setting with television, but they really should have spent more money on costumes and makeup. Seriously, what the fuck is Checkov wearing for half this film? It looks like a Little Ensign Fauntleroy outfit, complete with gigantic white collar that probably substitutes as a flotation device. All the secondary crew get some fun things to do (especially Uhura, whose sequence I just love), and Sulu gets to lay down some karate moves. Overall, a solid and fun flick and a good carryover to the next. Dame Judith Anderson rocks the Vulcan priestess thing. Vulcans, however, in this movie anyway, seem like a mashup of ancient Jews, Asians, and smurfs.
Story: Decent. Good pacing and action. Good character stuff.
Effects: Par for the course.
Acting: Fine. Shatner hams it up a bit, and Chris Lloyd chews up every scene he's in. Props to Dee Kelley for some breakout crazy acting and his gut wrenching confession to Spock about not wanting to lose him again.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None. No redshirts on the stolen Enterprise. However, all the Klingons but one bites the galactic weenie, and the Enterprise itself is blowed up all good.
Chekov Injury: No physical injuries, but man, that wardrobe of his is awful. Two strikes against Pavel's dignity. :(
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: A spectacular cheese fest. At the time of its release, I really loved this movie, but now it just seems really silly, goofy and, well, sub par. Perhaps the most ridiculous Star Trek storyline to date, but I haven't watched #5 yet, and only saw it once, on VHS, and I fell asleep after the first 15 minutes. A galactic stripper pole shows up at Earth to apparently call on their homies, humpback whales, but -- whoops! -- we offed them in the 21st century. So sad, too bad. Soccer ball on a stick keeps pumping out some bad vibes fucking up everything on Earth, so Kirk & crew, in their acquired Klingon Bird of Prey, on their way home to face the music after the events of #3, decide the obvious: let's go back in time and rescue some humpbacks from the 20th century, bring them back to the 23rd century, and they'll tell their distant cousins to knock it off. Sure. Why not. I won't even go into the utter ludicrousness of "slingshot around the sun to enter a time warp". As Trek fans, we've learned to just nod our heads and overlook the often truly regrettable non-science involved in the show. After all, we swallowed warp drive, transporters and Spock's brain in jar, why not this, too? The "floating heads" sequence makes me laugh every time. Who the fuck came up with that? The middle of the film is one long, extended joke sequence as, once in the past, Our Heroes make asses of themselves attempting to find "nookleear wessels", mind-meld with captive whales while wearing Vulcan hotel bath robes, and Kirk tries in vain to mack up a 20th century hottie, cetacean biologist Gillian Taylor (played by the horribly over-acting and hysterical Catherine Hicks). The film is a festival of throw-away gags: Scotty and McCoy con a plexiglass manufacturing overlord into manufacturing huge sheets of transparent aluminum to convert half the Klingon ship into a whale tank (with Scotty gleefully altering history by giving the guy the formula for the material). Scotty's interaction with a "Banana Junior" all-in-one Macintosh computer is funny, but only because what he does could never be done on a home personal computer at that time. Uhura and Chekov get stuck with obtaining protons (or something) from a nuclear powered ship in order to somehow re-crystallize the burnt out dilithium crystals on the Bird of Prey. How does that work? Don't ask, and they certainly don't tell. Spock and Kirk engage in some "colorful metaphors" with locals and Spock gives the Vulcan nerve pinch to an obnoxious punk rocker on a bus. There are some glaring inconsistencies: the "footprint" of the Bird of Prey, so glaringly obvious when it lands, disappears on long shots of the alleged cloaked ship in Golden Gate Park, only to re-appear handily when Gillian attempts to get Kirk's attention. When he is captured on the aircraft carrier Enterprise (see what they did there? Huh? Huh? *wink-nudge*), why is Chekov interrogated by a pair of slimy looking lawyer types and not military personnel? How does Sulu manage to get a hold of that Huey helicopter after a brief chat with its pilot? How do Scotty and McCoy pay for all that transparent aluminum they con that dude into making, and why, when installed, does it look about 9 feet thick when Scotty claims it would only need to be one inch thick? The film is slabbed with cheeky product placement (Chevy, Pacific Bell, Michelob), and just doesn't hold up as well as some of the others primarily due to it's time travel plot device and hyper-extended forays into 1980s America. There are some fun bits (in particular, McCoy's ranting when inside the hospital to rescue Chekov) and great lines, but, overall, feels horribly dated. However, where else but San Francisco could anyone walk around in a hotel bath robe and a white headband and not be out of place or arrested? I thought so. Nowhere else. The whole film is a ham-fisted, anvil-to-the-face ecological message picture, which is fine, but man, I got a headache from it.
Story: Feh. Goofy.
Effects: Pretty decent overall, except that floating heads bit. WTF?
Acting: Ham and cheese. Nimoy has almost all the best lines.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None, not counting obnoxious punk rockers.
Chekov Injury: Falls off the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise (lols) and is taken to primitive Earth hospital, where an agent of the Spanish Inquisition almost drills holes in his head until Kirk & McCoy show up to fix him with something that looks like a fold-out Sony Walkman. :(
Bonus: Veteran character actor John Schuck takes a turn as the Gayest Klingon Ever. Blink and you'll miss Janice Rand's cameo, and Majel Barrett-Roddenberry has a line. Go-Go Jane Weidlin appears briefly as an officer at Starfleet Command. Presumably, she did not sing "We Got the Beat".