Welcome to the extreme nerd portion of our retrospective. There's a theory about Star Trek films: the even numbered ones are better, case in point: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, excepting Generations, First Contact and Nemesis and again, excepting the reboot. Now, in the odd numbers you have Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (completely worthless except for the scene at Yellowstone, Uhura's fan dance and where Kirk wants to ask God a question), then Insurrection. Why did they even make Insurrection? Can someone explain that to me? You may have noticed by now that three is an odd number, so allow me to make a case for it. By the way, you may have noticed that between this and the constant Doctor Who references, I am actually a nerd.
Nowadays, every movie comes in a trilogy. Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, X-Men, well, at least until they make another one and ruin my trilogy theory. Star Trek III is the center of a trilogy. Now Star Trek II ended a little like this:
So, Spock is buried on Genesis, Kirk has a son and the movie ends. Until next time, turns out Spock has left part of himself in Bones and now we all have to go to Genesis in order to reunite Spock with his body, because oh yeah, dead Spock has regenerated and some stuff is happening. So, to make this happen, we're going to have to break some laws. Like really. we're going to have to bust McCoy out of jail and steal the Enterprise because the head of Starfleet said no and chided Kirk because he has a career based on rationality. Dude, what show has that guy been watching? I remember it something like this:
Okay, maybe there was a little less Ke$ha on the original series, but the visuals still stand. Oh, yeah, we're going rogue. I love when the old school Star Trek goes rogue. It's almost a shame they're ever on Starfleet's good side. Also, they are much better at it than the Next Generation. On TNG, it's always, Prime Directive this, can't rescue Picard from the Cardassians, Counselor Troi saying something stupid like, "I sense deception from the Romulans." Well, DUH! If she had done that on the old school Star Trek, everybody would have turned and said "No shit, Sherlock!" Especially McCoy. I got off track, let's go rogue.
Uhura should have had her own damn ship. She is such a badass.
Bad news, though, the Klingons are at Genesis and this causes complications. Like, they want to use it as a weapon, which the Federation doesn't think it is, but guess what? The Klingons are right because this shit doesn't work! Pardon the language, nothing else seemed to fit. Mostly, Kirk's kid screwed it up which you probably guessed from the words "Kirk's kid." This is why you don't try to play God and when you play God, don't name stuff Genesis! That band is lucky they got away with that. Lots of stuff happen as the Enterprise arrives to try to save David, not Kirstie Alley and hormonal Spock. Oh, the Klingons kill Kirk;'s son, but what I forgot is that Kirk actually kills Klingon Christopher Lloyd's dog first, so now I'm thinking he kind of had it coming. So, we blow up the Enterprise, kill Christopher Lloyd in a fight that I'm pretty sure George Lucas ripped off for Episode III. Man, thinking about Episode III makes me angry.
So, we all head to Vulcan to get Spock out of McCoy's brain. What really struck me in this viewing is that in spite of everything, you can genuinely feel the friendship and camaraderie between the characters. I mean, there's Shatner's acting to overlook, but that's never really bothered me. You don't want him playing Hamlet, but somehow this works. McCoy's still my favorite, love seeing him go crazy. I had a clip earlier, but Paramount found it. Also, this is the first one directed by Leonard Nimoy, who directs the next one as well.
So, that movie ends and we get Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which will end up being my favorite movie of 1986 because something came up.
So, topics for discussion, you're angry about what I said about The Next Generation. You would love to see William Shatner as Hamlet. You have a defense of another odd numbered Star Trek film. You prefer the reboot, don't get me wrong, I do like the reboot. Or you hate this movie, but why? Explain yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment