General Star Trek thread

Right, onwards to Search for Spock this time: definitely a distinct drop in quality compared with Wrath of Khan, but also not as egregiously terrible as I might have feared. Still dreading V but of the "bad ones" this was surprisingly better in places and hate to say it but didn't feel as slapdash and scruffy as WoK; clearly a few more shekels were allowed.

A very mixed bag: like WoK the strongest parts were the emotional wringers the crew (well, Kirk and McCoy really) went through; all the immediate post WoK stuff on Enterprise had a strong pulse of grief through the whole thing; while the actual heist and escape from Space dock tonnes of fun that offset the palpable gloom before then. Wish the movie also ended with Kirk coming to terms with the price paid for Spock's return: the death of his son and his beloved ship a huge price yet his last line on the topic rang false and glib. Kirk had been trying to reconnect with his son, and seemed genuinely anxious about roads not taken, and to make up time. The script was too eager to get through gang back together and kinda steamrolled the one-two punch.

But ye gods this was also Trek at its most magical. And that's not meant as a compliment. Vulcans turned into this race of wizards and mystics didn't work for me - and it's funny that was the path taken to cobble together an excuse to resurrect Spock. The Genesis planet causing the corpse to restart was a cute, and weirdly plausible idea - but using McCoy's brain as a USB key was just silly.

Oh and Christopher Lloyd was a lot of fun for what amounted to a token villain role.

Voyage Home next: wow, but that was silly with a capital S. Like, deeply and unashamedly as silly as I remembered it; certainly a gigantic whiplash of tone after what had been pretty straight-laced and often introspective first three films. Nope not here, it was Saves The Whales turned into a gigantic time-travel comedy adventure.

Kinda weird watching an early-doors environmentalist piece of media, given where things have gone in the interim 40 years. It all came off so goofily earnest, so naive that with a little awareness we'd suddenly change our ways. Christ that didn't work out, did it?

Still, by all accounts this has to rank high as the Trek movie series at its most indulgently fun; pure entertainment with absolutely zero attempts at profundity or characterisation. It knew its assignment and got the héll outta dodge, no fat no distractions. I'd put it beside First Contact for Trek just being in full-on space adventure mode, and to hell with the ethics.

If I had a Trek based quibble it'd be how Chekov's communicator and phaser were left behind, and in the hands of the US Government of the 1980s no less. Obviously it was of no concern to the writers & had no effect on the future - but still. I know of agents in Starfleet who'd have been unimpressed with that.