The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), directed by Nicholas Meyer

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Where No Man Has Gone Before", by Leonard Nimoy

      Talk about a legacy, huh? When I covered Star Trek: The Motion Picture all the way back in Marathon ‘15, that I would even do the other films was still a vague concept in my mind. You never really know what your situation is going to be in the future after all, and it’s certainly possible that in the intervening time between Octobers I could have lost interest in Star Trek, or found some other film to fill that spot on the card, or just covered them in a separate review altogether, or just fucking died and never got to watch them.  But no, every year the Marathon has come and gone, and every year for the past five years we have borne witness to the adventures of Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise, for better or for worse (looking at you Star Trek V). Now, after three seasons, an animated series, a couple albums and a shipload of homoerotic fanfiction, we’ve reached the end of the road. This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.

      Released in 1991, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country shows it’s not kidding right out of the gate by putting Nicholas Meyer in the director’s chair, who had previously brought great success to the franchise through Wrath of Kahn (Marathon buffs will also known him from Time After Time). With a tip of the hat to the then-recently departed Gene Roddenberry at the start, we join the USS Excelsior, where Captain Sulu is enjoying his ‘three days away from retirement’ status. Those good vibes are soon interrupted by the Excelsior being rocked by an energy wave, which as it turns out was the Klingon moon Praxis blowing the fuck up. Praxis was the main power source for the entire Klingon Empire as it turns out, their entire civilization is set to collapse in a couple decades with it gone, so with the sword of Damocles looming above their head they finally sit down to talk. The long conflict between the Klingons and the Federation seems to be coming to an end, but there are some among Starfleet that balk at the thought of diplomacy. Folk like Captain Kirk, who seems to be leaning towards the ‘genocide’ option, and thus the natural choice to break the ice with Chancellor Gorkon (played by David Warner is his second Trek role in a row) of the Klingon High Council before transporting him to a peace conference. When Gorkon is later assassinated and all the evidence points to the Enterprise being responsible, Kirk and McCoy (who was with him at the time) are arrested and put on trial for the crime. Yet if the Enterprise was not responsible for the attack, as the crew seem absolutely certain of, then that begs the question of who did? With the clock ticking ever closer to the start of the peace conference, it’s up to Spock and the rest of the crew to discover the true culprits behind Gorkon’s death, rescue Kirk and McCoy, and save both the Federation and the Klingons from falling back into war. All in a day’s work.

      With this film being released the year it was, it’s impossible not to draw parallels between the situation between the Federation and the Klingons with that of the United States and the Soviet Union, with the destruction of Praxis resembling the Chernobyl disaster and Gorkon being a stand-in for Gorbachev. What I appreciate about this story though, especially with the benefit of hindsight, is that Leonard Nimoy, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal do not make the Federation pure-hearted heroes or the Klingons dastardly bad guys, and in fact give the Klingons many reasons not to trust the Federation. Kirk outright advocates for the extinction of the Klingon race near the beginning of the film (I guess a dead son you talked to twice is equal to a couple million dead infants), and most of the crew is casually racist towards Klingons even up to the end of the film. The Klingons bring up how the Federation is a ‘humans-only club’, mirroring that of the U.S. and certain European countries influencing world affairs, and indeed as we see from later Trek series about 90% of the people we see are humans. The Klingons bring up that collaborating with the Federation will destroy their culture, and while they’re still going strong later in the Trek verse, in real life the U.S.-backed Boris Yeltsin regime caused such economic chaos and widespread misery that Russia to this day has never fully recovered, to say nothing of the other former Soviet Republics. Really the worst thing you could say about the Klingons in this film are their penal colonies, a reference to the infamous Soviet gulags, but considering the Federation also has penal colonies it seems like something of a moot point, and we’ve talked on the blog before on the United States’ hypocritical views on prison. You could argue that this goes against Gene Roddenberry’s vision of utopian human society, but I do prefer a Federation that isn’t perfect but is willing to do the right thing and go for peace over the Federation in The Final Frontier, who half-ass a planet-sized vanity project and then leave its citizenry to basically live like animals in a blighted wasteland.

 

      Speaking of The Final Frontier, hoo boy, what a difference a change of directors makes. I’ve heard that William Shatner had requested and was denied an increase of budget for Star Trek V, which was why the special effects by the end weren’t that spectacular, but that doesn’t explain all the shitty attempts at comedy and the fact that a movie titled Star Trek spends most of its time in a desert. Not only does The Undiscovered Country look better all around (the Enterprise looks sleek and futuristic rather than a broken hunk of shit), not only does the story flow better, not only is there a bigger & better cast, not only do the crew actually get some dialogue, but Nicholas Meyer did it all for 6 million dollars less than Shatner. Hell, Wrath of Kahn, often regarded as the best Star Trek film, only cost 12 million! It worked, just as Star Trek VI works, because Meyer tells simple stories in extraordinary settings. Wrath of Kahn was a revenge story combat inspired by submarine combat, Star Trek VI is a mystery story and a political thriller. There are still the trappings of science fiction there, you’re still dealing with outer space and aliens and what have you, but the special effects are more enhancing the story than dominating it. Which has always been a major point of contention in the argument between Star Trek and Star Wars, but I think that sixth Star Star Trek movie has got me more invested in the political drama it was telling than the sixth Star Wars movie ever did, even if it had less pew pew lasers. 

      Hell, Nicholas Meyer even gets Kirk better than Shatner did during his time in the chair. Kirk in The Final Frontier was in full-on smarm mode for most of the film, and after a while he came across as a jackass. Kirk in The Undiscovered Country not only gets the denouement of his arc that’s been brewing since the second film, dealing with his son’s death and his feelings towards the Klingons, but in general he just feels more in line with the character we know as James T. Kirk. Stuff which doesn’t really play as well in 1991 than it did in 1969, like him beating 7 foot tall aliens and making out with sexy ladies, but since was to be the last ride for the OST crew you can forgive trotting out a bit of nostalgia.

      Of the rest of the main cast, Spock is the only other person to come out of this series a different person/Vulcan than when he went in, having mastered the ability to express his emotions without becoming a nutbar like other Vulcans (also Sherlock Holmes is real in the Trek universe and Spock is related to him). McCoy is just McCoy, and the rest of the crew, while more active this time around are just the crew, quirks and all. Again, if the intent is to play on OST nostalgia then it would be fine if we returned to the old characterization, but we never left it! In fact in some ways we’ve gone backwards, as that whole Uhura/Scotty romance thrown around in earlier movies has been completely dropped. It’s nice to see Sulu the captain of his own ship, even though it’s also a convenient excuse to write him out of most of the film, but one of the major things I wish these films had done was to utilize the opportunity to deepen those characters which might have been considered shallow in the original series rather than devote so much attention to Kirk and Spock. Trek has always been an ensemble-based show and I believe the writing should have reflected that in the transition to film, especially if they were planning on making half a dozen of them.

      I admit I also wasn’t all that impressed with our two major non-main cast characters in the picture, helmsman Valeris (played by Kim Cattrall) and the *SPOILER* antagonist General Chang. Apparently Kim’s direction on how to play a stoic alien zen buddhist was ‘regular person speaking at a formal function’, way too similar to Spock in temperament without having earned that development. As for Chang, visually he continues the theme of nostalgia by making him an OST-style Klingon, which means he basically looks like a dude dressed as a pirate in a room full of dudes dressed like aliens. His whole ‘quoting Shakespeare’ gimmick makes him more memorable than Christopher Lloyd’s character in Star Trek III, but he does it so often it gets tedious, and comes across as kind of a Kahn-lite. While the story itself has multiple layers to it, Star Trek VI opts instead to undercut that by making Chang into the tired ‘dastardly Klingon’ cliche. They could have easily used the mutual enmity between the Federation and the Klingons to make Chang a nuanced villain, a dark mirror of Kirk perhaps, but instead they have him twirling his metaphorical mustache (as opposed to his actual mustache) doing bad things for seemingly no other reason than that he’s an asshole. Rather bland when you consider that you could see more interesting Klingons just by staying at home and turning on TNG.

      It could be that extreme dislike of Star Trek V is causing my brain to overcompensate, but I’m going to give Star Trek VI the recommendation. Nicholas Meyer doesn’t blow the roof of the joint but he does manage to close this series out on a high note, and while I might have personally wanted more, it’s nice to see the crew of the old Enterprise ride off into the sunset one last time. Overall I’d say my experience with the OST Trek films hasn’t strayed too far from the popular consensus: I liked Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the only one on the planet seems like), liked Wrath of Kahn, can barely remember anything about Search for Spock, liked The Voyage Home, hated The Final Frontier, and now liked The Undiscovered Country. An above average experience! Does that mean then that next year’s Marathon will see us digging into the Next Generation Trek films? Maybe, but before that we’ve got one more book that needs closing…

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), directed by William Shatner

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Major Tom (Coming Home)" by William Shatner

In the years since the Marathon first set its eyes to the heavens, the humble crew of the USS Enterprise has been on quite a number of wild adventures. They managed to reunite after almost a decade and meet a godlike being made out of a satellite, managed to stop a genetically altered superman from unleashing a doomsday weapon on the Earth, Spock died and managed to come back, the Enterprise blew up and came back, Kirk found out he had a son and then managed to ditch that potential story avenue pretty damn quick, and of course there was that time the Enterprise altered the fabric of time and space in order to steal some whales. For a crew that was assigned to a five year mission and only managed to complete three, it’s managed to have quite the staying power, thanks in large part to a loyal and dedicated fanbase. Now, 10 years after the first Star Trek film, 23 years after the premiere of the original series, and two years after the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there came another; A fifth film to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them. Or something like that, I mean science fiction and fantasy are basically the same thing anyway. 

       Set, as you would expect, after the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier sees the intrepid crew of the updated Federation starship Enterprise enjoying a bit of shore leave. Captain James T. Kirk, Spock, and Leonard McCoy are enjoying some camping and renditions of children’s song in Yosemite National Park, Scotty is attempting to get the ship up and running, Sulu and Chekov are lost in the woods, it’s just one big party. Their revelry is cut short however when an urgent command comes in from Starfleet about some business in the Neutral Zone. Apparently a group calling itself the Galactic Army of Light, headed by a mysterious Vulcan by the name of Sybok, has taken over the lone settlement of a planet named Nimbus III, a failed attempt at cooperation between the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Empire which is otherwise unremarkable aside from the fact that an ambassador of each faction is located there. Starfleet sends the Enterprise to investigate, and because the Klingons are very much into the idea of Kirk’s head on a pike they follow suit, but it seems that everyone is playing right into Sybok’s hands You see Sybok has a plan, the fulfillment of which could have life-changing effects for every sapient being in the galaxy, and to do that he’s going to need one Enterprise-shaped ship to do it. What could that plan be, and how does he recognize Spock?

        The Final Frontier was made on a significantly lower budget than the filmmakers had originally intended, which is quite obvious on a technical level. While the continuity is consistent enough, it looks and sounds like Star Trek, there are several bad camera angles, poor cinematography decisions and outright mistakes that a couple more reshoots and run throughs in the editing room might have corrected. This is quite evident in the depictions Klingons, who seem to be comprised of a mishmash of their now iconic cinematic redesigns and something that looks like it was ripped off of an episode of Blake’s 7. Oddly though this seems to be compensated for by plenty of shots of their ship, the Bird of Prey, and even some stop-motion work. In fact you get a more detailed look of the Bird of Prey than you do of the Enterprise, which exists more as a series of rooms than it does a starship. Rooms that accurately represent the aesthetic of Star Trek, but rooms nevertheless.

       The problem, then, must be with the story itself. Star Trek V sees Leonard Nimoy, who directed the previous two films, step down in favor of William Shatner, who also co-wrote the story. One wonders how Shatner, a man who has had a hand in creating several novels, Star Trek books and his very own science fiction series, TekWar, and who presumably has something to prove in this, his directorial debut, could create a film that renders him and his cast completely impotent. I don’t believe I’m exaggerating either, the majority of the crew doesn’t really do anything aside from Kirk and Spock, and they don’t really accomplish anything of significance. Not that there haven’t been episodes of the original Star Trek where the Enterprise was held hostage, but it’s never felt quite so...simple before. I mean this is a machine capable of moving faster than light crewed by a seasoned team of officers, and they’re rendered completely useless by some crusty dudes with guns. Not phasers mind you, but straight up guns. Hell, Sybok has a better claim to being protagonist of this story than the actual protagonists.

       This is no more evident than the way Star Trek V handles tone, or mishandles it as the case may be. What few moments of genuine characters moments there are, primarily the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, as well as a couple moments of unearned drama that are pulled out of the writer’s ass and tossed here and there across the script, is undercut by some truly abysmal attempts at comedy. Apparently Shatner saw how successful The Voyage Home was and decided that his film would have comedy in it too, without understanding why it was that the comedy in that film worked. It was silly seeing the Enterprise doing the Back to the Future culture shock thing yes, but it made sense in the context of the film and it was never so ridiculous that it felt like the filmmakers were insulting your intelligence. Not so with The Final Frontier. Case in point: There’s a scene where Scotty has just broken Kirk, Spock and McCoy out of the brig (which was also painfully unfunny but whatever), and they’re walking through some service tunnels. Kirk and the guys go one way, Scotty goes another, and almost immediately smacks his head on an overhang and knocks himself the fuck out, 3 Stooges style. Does this add anything to the plot, is Scotty being unconscious a major plot point that affects the outcome of the story? No, it’s a random bit of slapstick that only really serves to make Scotty look like a fucking idiot and to feel like Shatner attempting to haphazardly film around plot holes in his script rather than just writing a new one.

This ties into what I said a paragraph or so ago, but I don’t think William Shatner really understands what Star Trek is, or what made it great at all. I’m not the biggest fan of TOS, more of a TNG and DS9 guy personally, but as campy as that series could be it was understandable how and why James Kirk was such a popular character. He wasn’t just some space swashbuckler or strong-jawed cowboy, he was a man of intelligence, conviction and compassion who respected those who worked with him and was in turn respected by them. It was easy to understand how this man became a captain, and ultimately an admiral. In Star Trek V Kirk comes across mostly as a wise-cracking buffoon who is nonetheless treated to sycophantic comments like ‘failing you was worse (than endangering the safety of the Enterprise)’, and one who always manages to turn everyone’s focus towards himself. That is not James T. Kirk to me, that is William Shatner wanting the spotlight without having to work for it. Also, and this might seem extremely nerdy to some people, I don’t the Federation would allow a situation like Nimbus III to happen, with people living in abject poverty. Yeah it’s not exactly a perfect organization, and I could believe a joint diplomatic experiment between them, the Klingons and the Romulans (who never show up once in this entire movie for whatever reason) could fall apart, especially with Scotty’s overtly racist ‘Klingon devils’ comment at one point in the movie, but I cannot see them just dumping a bunch of people on a barren wasteland and leaving them to suffer. In the real world sure, but then the Star Trek world is better than ours in just about every way, so you expect them to act better..

       If you’ve ever heard that thing about the even numbered Star Trek films being better than the odd numbered ones, this is the one who invented it. Star Trek: The Motion Picture might not have been great, but at least it hit that classic science fiction beat of the universe being a mysterious place full of unknown wonders. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock might not have been great, but at least it tied up the loose ends from Wrath of Khan in a suitably dramatic way. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, on the other hand, seems to be a toxic jambalaya of everything we’ve seen before, the cosmic wonder of TMP, the comedic nature of TVH, etc., a tone-deaf mess of sudden backstory and ill-timed attempts at levity that falls flat for Trekkers and non-Trekkers alike. It’s not Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi bad, if you’re one of those morbidly curious types, but if you’re going to skip any of the TOS Star Trek movies, then make it this one. You won’t be missing out on much, trust me.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Star Trek IV: The Journey Home (1986), directed by Leonard Nimoy

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Music to Watch Space Girls By", by Leonard Nimoy

     Another year, another Star Trek movie. It sounds a bit cynical, but actually this was actually one of the films I’ve been looking forward to the most, given the disappointing lack of Trek in my life. I mean I’m still not interested in Discovery, and I doubt that’s going to change soon, which leaves me with the extended universe content of books and games that comes with its own set of infeasibility, so I’m pretty much shit out of luck. I mean I may not have liked most of Voyager or Enterprise, but at least it was a world that I was familiar with that I could relax in for a short while. Hell I can’t even be bothered to finish a season of anything these days, my watch queue is a killing field of dozens of unfinished shows, plotlines left dangling, character arc undeveloped. Shows, even sci-fi shows, just can’t seem to capture my interest the way that Star Trek did. Yes, even Spock’s Brain.

     SPOILERS, just in case.


     Much like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (which Nimoy also directed, by the by) was set directly after the events of Wrath of Khan, The Journey Home deals with the aftermath of Search for Spock. The Enterprise destroyed, Kirk and crew stuck on Vulcan after breaking all of the rules to shove Spock’s soul back in his body, Kirk’s son dead, and the Klingons calling for blood over the Genesis Project. It’s looking like a long trip back to Starfleet HQ and a court martial when an enormous ship emitting bizarre signals enters Federation space. No one can communicate with it, ships and electrical devices all fail in its wake, and when it finally reaches Earth initiates an environmental catastrophe that threatens to kill all human life on the planet. Kirk and crew are the only folks with a working ship, and it is Spock who figures out the truth: The mysterious signal the aliens are sending out is in essence a whale song, specifically that of the humpback whale. Apparently these aliens had visited Earth a long time ago, long before shitty humans showed up, and they really got along well with the whales. Trouble is, because humans are so shitty humpback whales went extinct a long time ago, and now there’s no one to call off the thousand mile wide death machine from shuffling man off of this mortal coil. So obviously the only thing you can do is slingshot around the sun in order to travel through time, grab a couple of humpback whales from wherever, slingshot around the sun again back to the future, drop ‘em off and hope they feel like putting a good word in for humanity. Simple, right?

     As I’ve likely said before, the common line with the Star Trek movies is that the odd-numbered ones are bad and the even-numbered ones are good. It’s a absolutist blanket statement that I don’t find helpful at all, but I will say that the films contrast each other in such a way that you can have a clear division between audiences. For example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I believe deserves far more love) is a slow-burn of a film, focusing more on gravitas and the visual spectacle above all else. By contrast, The Wrath of Khan is a tense, explosive action thriller, Das Boot in space you could say, with epic lines and character deaths and everything. Neither are bad movies, in fact they deal with a lot of the same things, like man and mankind’s legacy and dealing with mortality, just one is presented in such a way that it appeals to the Star Wars cult crowd. They compliment each other rather well, actually. Philosophy and action, the two sides of the

     Similarly, while both Star Trek III and IV are both ostensibly stories about death and rebirth, The Journey Home has a much different tone than The Search for Spock (Search is also probably the weakest of the four films, adding fuel to the fire). Where Search for Spock is this climactic, dramatic film, Journey Home is much more of a feel-good romp. While the stakes are technically much higher here than in III it never feels that way, preferring instead to breeze through an adventure packed with hijinks and stranger in a strange land type social satire. It’s like they decided that after all the heavy stuff we’ve been up to over the last three films they decided to step off of the gas a bit and let us cruise for a while. Remind the fans of the good old days, you know?

     If there’s anything overtly negative I can say, it’s that at times things feel a little bit too light and goofy. I mean stuff like the ‘nuclear wessels’ scene is great, and I think Spock in general is on-point the whole time, but then you’ve got things like Kirk being so ignorant of money that he doesn’t understand the concept of ‘exact change’ despite having been to the past several times and overall bumbling about with basic time travel rules that just comes across as lazy and unprofessional for what is supposed to be the finest members of Starfleet around. This goes for the female lead as well, our resident whale biologist Gillian Taylor(a name I had to pick out of the credits because I think they only mentioned it once or twice), who seems to exist only for Kirk to awkwardly hit on her from time to time. Another remnant from the ‘good ol’ days’ perhaps, but otherwise she’s not really all that exciting or compelling a character, to the point that she could have probably been excised completely from the script without too many issues. That’s not to knock the actress, I think she was fine, it’s that she’s essentially the woman guest star from every TOS episode, and thus unfortunately rather one-note.

     If you’ve already come this far into Trekland then you might as well come one more step, but that step is a pretty easy one. The Journey Home is not a mind blowing experience, it’s not going to get you on the edge of your seat like maybe The Wrath of Khan did, but if you’ve got it, a cold drink and a bowl of popcorn you’re going to have an enjoyable evening. Star Trek IV gets the recommendation, and hell, so does Star Trek in general. Maybe this Halloween it’ll bring you as much enjoyment as it has brought me.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), directed by Leonard Nimoy

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "By Myself", by Leonard Nimoy

     At the time I’m writing this, things are pretty nebulous in the world of Star Trek. The latest in JJ Abrams lens-flaring, Beastie Boys-blaring, wishing they were Star Warsing film series, Star Trek Beyond, has been out for a while, and despite a decent showing at the box office it seems unlikely that we’ll see another one. The newest addition to the Star Trek TV canon, Star Trek: Discovery, seems to be suffering from a multitude of problems; Loss of its showrunner, being locked behind CBS’ streaming service, and being yet another prequel series set before TOS being just some of the more noticeable issues. Add in the general lack of supplemental material, video games, comic books and other franchise type things, and it seems like Trek’s star has definitely diminished since the glory days. Which is saying something, since that glory is in spite of Voyager and Enterprise.

     Perhaps Trek fans in the 1970s felt much the same way as we do now. After all the show had been canceled near the beginning of the decade, a rather meek ending to the show that not only helped to popularize sci-fi TV in America, but had also been saved once before from the executioner’s axe by an outstanding level of fan support. There was an animated series in 1973 which was okay, it even featured Will Shatner and the rest of the cast as voices, but it was a far cry from the Trek that we had grown accustomed to up till that point. Plus it’s a bit hard to call Ruby-Spears does ‘animation’ with a straight face. Other than that though, the future of Star Trek was far less optimistic than the future in Star Trek.

     Then in 1979, it all changed. Star Trek: The Motion Picture arrived in theaters, solidifying Trek’s position in pop culture that had begun a decade or so previous. Although a bit heavy on the philosophy and light on the action, recalling 2001: A Space Odyssey more than new competitor Star Wars, TMP was a visual spectacle and a love letter to those long suffering fans who were hoping beyond hope to see Kirk behind the wheel of the Enterprise again. It was also the first time the Trek audience got to see the new and improved model of Klingon, spikes, head ridges and all, which would later become their standard look in the franchise moving forward. No matter what your opinion of the film, the spirit of Star Trek, ‘seeking new life and civilizations, where no one has gone before’ is undoubtedly there.

     The success of Star Trek: The Motion Picture meant a sequel was more or less inevitable, and a few years later movie audiences received Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Starring Ricardo Montalban as the genetically augmented villain Khan Noonien Singh (reprising his role from the TOS episode “Star Seed”), WoK could be seen as a reaction to the criticism of the first movie. While both film feature theme of mankind’s grand aims being used against them, V’GER in TMP and the Genesis Project in WoK, Khan is dedicated much more firmly to action than its predecessor, with plenty of shooting, killing, and ship combat to go around. Which totally worked, as it turns out. Wrath of Khan not only was a huge success at the time, it has since become known as arguably the best Star Trek film in general. Certainly it has the strongest presence in our collective consciousness, with Kirk’s tortured scream of ‘Khan!’ having achieved gold-level meme status in the years since. A bit dodgy in the plot department, I mean this is Star Trek not Cervantes, but overall I found Wrath of Khan just as entertaining as The Motion Picture, and in some areas even moreso. A worthy addition to the canon.


SPOILERS BELOW


     Star Trek III: The Search for Spock takes up pretty much directly where Star Trek II left off. Spock is dead, having sacrificed himself to save the crew after the end of the last film. The Genesis Project has transformed a once dead moon into a vibrant garden of Eden, which is now the subject of scientific studies by Kirk’s son David. Enterprise and her crew manage to limp all the way back home, but what they find there is no hero's welcome. Turns out that Genesis is somewhat of a controversial issue in the Federation, and Starfleet is eager to keep a lid on it. Not only are Kirk and the crew ordered to keep quiet on the issue, but they’re being reassigned as well, pushed off to desk jobs and other such exciting tasks. Enterprise, after 20 years of service, is set to be dismantled. The dream is dead, and life goes on.

     Or so it would seem. Just as Kirk seems to accept his new fate, Spock’s father Sarek arrives and drops a bombshell. Although Spock’s body may be dead, according to Vulcan religion his katra (the equivalent of a soul, basically) is still alive, just transferred into the mind of another, in this case Leonard McCoy. The rules dictate that Spock must be taken to Vulcan so that he can be laid to rest and his katra removed from McCoy, and it just so happens that Spock’s coffin landed on Genesis. Of course, Starfleet has forbidden Kirk from going to Genesis. Not to mention that the Klingons (led by Kruge, played by the great Christopher Lloyd) have found out about Genesis, and they’re very interested in weapons that can destroy entire planets. Oh, and it turns out that Spock may not be as dead as events would imply. Still, when has something like insurmountable odds bother James T. Kirk?

     If Star Trek I was Asimov/Matheson style science fiction, and Star Trek II was the big budget action thriller, then Star Trek III is the TOS call back. It’s all your favorite cast members having one last adventure on the Enterprise (in fact it’s pretty much only your favorite cast members, apparently you only need three people to pilot a starship), fighting classic Star Trek villains for serious but largely personal stakes, all the loose ends from Wrath of Khan are all tied up with a nice little bow, and we leave off on a happy ending. Well, aside from the fact that Kirk and the others are likely headed to space prison for a very long time.

     However, although Star Trek III is pretty fun, it also feels rather superfluous. While The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan had the benefit of being their own separate stories, Search for Spock is stuck stitching together the leftover bits from the previous movie without being given the chance to stand on its own two feet. Not to mention, honestly, those loose ends are tied up pretty sloppily. Kirk’s son,which is a nice change of status quo? Abandoned. Genesis? Abandoned. Spock being dead, the biggest bombshell of Wrath of Khan? Nah, we’re bringing him back, even if it smacks more of Doctor Who than Star Trek. Sure, bringing back Kirk vs. the Klingons is fun in theory, but they don’t really do all that much to be honest, and they’re not nearly as bloodthirsty and ridiculous as Klingons eventually became. Kruge is the only one with any sort of personality, Christopher Lloyd earning that paycheck, and even he ends up falling short as a primary antagonist. I mean compared to Khan, who was eating up as much scenery as he could every time he was on camera, blowing up ships, sticking worms in people, Kruge seems downright tame in comparison. They’re so extraneous that I believe it’s fully possible to remove them from the film entirely and there’d barely be any difference. Not so good for one of the major member of the Federation rogue’s gallery.

     That’s not to say it’s a bad movie. The visuals and the music are up to par with previous Trek films, and despite the serious events that happen on screen there’s a general feeling of humor and light-hearted adventure that wasn’t apparent in its predecessors. However, as I said Star Trek III feels like a film made specifically to appeal to fans of the original TV series, and not necessarily to build potential new fans like the first two films. Whether or not you decide to watch The Search for Spock then is dependent on how interested you are in the TOS-era, or how invested you are in the events of Wrath of Khan. The choice is yours, as it always is, but as someone who got into the franchise through Star Trek: The Next Generation, I’d say you’re not missing much by skipping out on this one.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), directed by Nicholas Meyer

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Difference Between Us", by Leonard Nimoy

     So the last time we discussed Star Trek in the Marathon, which was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I believe I said something along the lines of not being sure whether or not I was really a Trek fan. After all, I was a fan of The Next Generation and mostly of TOS (still am), but I never really felt much of a desire to explore much beyond that. I wasn’t very interested in the games or the expanded universe, I didn’t really feel a need to watch the films beyond the first,and I had read enough bad press about Enterprise and Voyager that I was probably better off marathoning the last two season of Sliders instead (don’t try that at home folks). I dunno, is it just a symptom of our modern times that to be a fan of something, you must absorb all the media connected to that thing? Is sitting through Voyager some kind of test to prove my opinion is worthwhile, even if I would ultimately regret the experience? Is my enjoyment of Trek invalid, am I a lesser person because I work within a certain amount of material and content to leave things at that? The answer would generally be no, but you never can tell in these modern times. You either love it or you hate it, and no one is allowed to hear the end of it until everyone is sick of it.

     Still, since I’m close to finishing up Deep Space 9 and thus closing the book on Star Trek for the time being, I decided to try out what is probably the most well-regarded film in the series: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also directed Time After Time earlier on this list. Normally I try to avoid things like that, having multiple films by the same director on the same list, but it is the unexpected bits of whimsy that make the days bearable, am I right?

     In the entire Federation of Planets, there are few names that are respected as highly as that of James Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise. It’s been years since those halcyon days however, and the aging Admiral can’t help but wonder if the advancement of his career was worth giving up command of a starship, of the Enterprise for the safety of a desk. This realization happens to coincide with the discovery of a blast from Kirk’s past: Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically-engineered megalomaniac from Earth’s past (1996, to be precise) who had been thawed out by the Enterprise crew, defeated, and left on a deserted planet to make do with what he could find. Which might have worked, if only the planet next door hadn’t exploded and turned Khan’s planet into a wasteland, which ultimately lead to his wife’s death. Khan is not a forgive and forget kind of guy, and it doesn't take long before he procures a ship and starts on his path of vengeance. A path that involves a mysterious device known as Project Genesis, a fantastical that would be able to bring life to dead worlds and death to living ones. It’s up to Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise to stop Khan, get back Project Genesis and save the known galaxy one more time. It’s not like they aren’t used to it by now.

     Although they are both Trek films, in many ways Wrath of Khan is a sharp contrast to its predecessor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Whereas TMP could be considered a more traditionally minded science fiction film, heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Golden Age sci-fi, WoK is very much an action movie, packed full of all the explosions and starship combat (which is remarkably like fighting in a submarine) that you might have missed. Similarly, the story in Khan is also far more streamlined and far more direct than it was in the original, which was much more slower-paced and interested in building atmosphere. Simplifying the ploy and focusing on action makes Khan a relatively easier film to get into than TMP, and I can see why pop culture would gravitate towards it as the ‘first good Trek film’, even if I don’t quite agree with it. Personally, I see Wrath of Khan as more of a companion piece: Star Trek: The Motion Picture represents the wonder of discovery, the drive for knowledge and understanding that has pushed humanity to progress further and become better (hopefully) as the years go by. Wrath of Khan looks back at our past, a history of war and hatred and self-destruction that needs to be overcome for us before life can begin to move forward (or so I theorize). The metaphysical(some might say spiritual) and the corporeal, both channeled through Gene Roddenberry’s idealistic vision in the potential of mankind, and the importance of working for the future. And maybe I’m at optimist at heart, because that’s how I like to view it, instead of believing they dumbed things down in order to sell more tickets.

     Wrath of Khan has its flaws, of course. The titular Khan has a tendency to come off as a bit of a dunce despite being a genetically enhanced super-genius (that’s called situational irony folks) and it doesn’t really feel like they make full use of the TOS cast aside from Kirk. Even Spock, despite being one of the most important characters in the film, feels far more ephemeral than you might expect given what happens. Maybe they didn’t really feel the need to do anything like that, because just getting to see the original cast was enough? I dunno, it’s not really a damning criticism, but it was obvious enough that I noticed it.

     If you’re looking for a film that captures that unique beauty of the late 70s/early 80s sci-fi aesthetic without getting bogged down too many messages and themes, then it’s hard to go wrong with Wrath of Khan. You don’t even have to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture if you don’t want to, since there’s nothing that carries over plot wise as far as I can recall, so there’s no excuse not to see it. Unless you have an extreme phobia of insects crawling into your ear canal, but that only happens a couple times, and they only linger on it squirming into a person’s brain for a couple seconds at most. It’s fine.

     Totally fine.