Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Director: Leonard Nimoy
Writers: Harve Bennett
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley,James Doohan, Walter Koenig George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Robin Curtis
Genre: Sci Fi

"Admiral Kirk and his bridge crew risk their careers stealing the decommissioned Enterprise to return to the restricted Genesis Planet to recover Spock's body."

Much better than most people think! I use to say this was the worst of the original ST movies, but after a rewatch I have to say I liked it! It's the most Star Trek of the Star Trek movies.


At it's heart is the continuation of the story that was started in Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan. At the end of the second ST movie Spock dies...that was because Leonard Nimoy had said he was done making Star Trek movies. That's also why a Spock replacement was introduced with Kirstie Alley as Saavik. For Search of Spock Saavik is played by Robin Curtis who makes a good Vulcan female and plays the character purely as a Vulcan. And in one of the more interesting scenes she has Pon Far sexual relations with the young Spock, thus getting pregnant (all done off screen). The discussion of her pregnancy was cut from the final edit leaving us to wonder what Kirk meant when he ask Saavik "If she has told Spock yet?"

I found Search for Spock to be the ST movie most like an original ST episode. The original TV series had some pretty outlandish ideas but they most often always worked because of the comradery between the crew. The cast had great chemistry and that's what made some of the original story ideas, no matter how outlandish, work so well. During the movie I thought of the episode Spock's Brain.


Christopher Lloyd better known as Jim on Taxi or Doc in The Back to the Future movies made a really good Klingon! This is the first time that Klingons and Klingon culture was brought to the forefront...and they got it right and for that reason alone ST III deserves respect.

Leonard Nimoy turns up the heat in his second outing as director on the Star Trek movie franchise and scores a hit with 1986's Star Trek The Voyage Home...The fourth film in the Star Trek movie series.

What colored me impressed is the levity and chemistry between the cast members. That chemistry was paramount to making the original TV series a cultural phenomenon and at times was lacking in the other Star Trek movies. Is The Voyage Home silly at times? You bet it is! And thank goodness it's whimsical at times as that 'fun factor' allows the film to have a high rewatchability. At the same time it scores high on the goose bump rating, especially the scenes about the whales and how they were being hunted to extinction. Those sentimental moments brought a near tear to this reviewer's eye. I read that this movie was responsible for bringing a new awareness into the plight of these intelligent beings that we call whales. And for that the movie gets my highest praise, and that message made this one of the best of the ST films.


Another thing that I loved was for once the other ST crew members got some real air time. Especially Walter Koenig as Chekov. Chekov gets his own story arc and we get to see him do some real acting, as opposed to just delivering static exposition about navigation or shields. In the DVD extras Koenig was interviewed and he was quite happy that he had a chance to shine for a change. I liked that there were multiple story arcs based on the exploits of the ST crew as they went about trying to bring a pair of humpback whales into the 23rd century. So often the ST films only revolve around Kirk and Spock. So it was nice to see the 'little people' get their 15 minutes of fame for once!


I really like the setting of the film on contemporary Earth, that's 1986 and the past to us but present time when the film came out. That setting allowed for the film to contrast how things were, compared to how we hope they well be in the 23rd century and allowed for some humor too. I liked the casting of Catherine Hicks as the biologist and love interest of Captain Kirk. She was our proxy into the film and so was easy to relate too.

Walter Koenig also got some "real air time" as Chekov in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, even though he wasn't in the original episode "Space Seed". Koenig said that he knew he wasn't in that episode when he got the script for ST2, but he didn't tell anyone because he didn't want to lose that juicy role. Even thought he wasn't in the original episode, he explained how Khan recognized him by explaining that Chekov wasn't a member of the bridge crew yet. He was just a lowly crew member who happened to be in the bathroom when Khan really really had to go very badly. When Chekov finally came out of the bathroom, Khan looked at him and said, "I will remember your face."

Had it not been for bad luck ST V: The Final Frontier might have been the best of the original cast Star Trek movies. First time feature film director William Shatner had grand visions for his movie but a 'starship load' of misfortune followed him.

For starters there was a writer's strike that curtailed the planned big ending for the film, and the special effects budget was reduced so that the entire big finale was cut down to a mere whisper of it's planned opulence. If that was enough to thwart Shatner's grand film ideas the studio demanded his film be edited down by some 20 minutes from the original 2 hour movie he had shot. Despite the fact Shatner insisted all the material was necessary to the movie, the film was heavily edited. And that's why the 5th film in the original ST franchise is considered the weakest of the bunch.


The story premise is a good one: Spock's long estranged half brother Sybok reappears as a renegade Vulcan who's embraced emotions as a way of discovering a profound metaphysical truth. The most interesting aspect is the way Sybok delves into people's minds revealing their inner fears, so that they can conquer and be free of their inner pain, thus achieving a higher state of inner peace. Now that's a cool concept! Laurence Luckinbill as the messianic Sybok is both engaging and likable...that's important because he's a big part of the film and for the audience to accept him, as does most of the Enterprise crew, he has to seem both amicable and wise.

I wonder just how more fleshed out the film would have been with the missing 20 minutes restored to it. As it is some of the scenes seem abbreviated and don't fully achieve the emotional resonance that leaves the viewer in awe. There were several key scenes where I had an innate sense that an extra line was needed to bring the scene to it's emotional peak.

I hated this Star Wars bar room scene rip off. Actually I thought the same scene in Star Wars was kitschy stupid too, so no reason to copy it. It felt like it didn't belong and they had already done a similar scene in ST III The Search for Spock.


I liked David Warner's character as a Federation envoy. But whoever decided to make this human smoke cigarettes in the 23rd century doesn't understand Star Trek canon. Gene Rodenberry had resisted all attempts by commercial interest to have cast members smoke on the original TV series, as he felt no one in the 23rd century would be smoking. Not a deal breaker but disappointing for a ST fan. The actress who played the Romulan woman in the above photo, is pretty alright but made one of the worst Romulans I've seen.

Had the film's budget not been drastically cut, had there been no writer's strike, had the studio allowed Shatner's full 2 hour version of the movie...then The Final Frontier with it's unique themes might have gone down in ST history as one of the great films...but as it is I rate it a respectable: