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Star Trek Film Series

“…to antiquity its due reverence”: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

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There was a time when being the sixth film in a motion picture franchise would have been the subject of mockery. Once considered a laughingstock, a movie with five sequels all set in the same continuity is completely unheard of nowadays, being as we are in an era where it’s rare to go two films without getting a full-on “reboot” or “reimagining” with a new cast and director and suspiciously returning everything else.

So Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country feels oddly and quaintly dated today. It’s a film that sets about closing a story decisively for no other reason than it’s the artistically and creatively right thing to do, and that’s just something you won’t see today in the age of Cinematic Universes that are unfinished by design and consecutive reboots within three or four years of one another that all tell variations on the same stock plot. And make no mistake, it absolutely is and does: In 1991 there were not yet any plans for a second Star Trek film series, so this was a movie made for the express purposes of thanking the fans for their support and bringing the Original Series story to a dignified close. A lot of received fan wisdom seems to posit this film was greenlit to “make up” for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which would otherwise have been the final Trek movie, but from the studio’s perspective the past *three* Star Trek movies had all underperformed at the box office and they didn’t see much difference between them one way or the other. But this was the 25th Anniversary, and the Star Trek film team felt something needed to be done.

(This also explains why the movie looks somewhat stunningly cheap: While I remember the VFX shots having been breathtaking and they’re certainly impressive when it counts, everywhere else the fact Paramount only allowed this movie to be made if it was produced on the thinnest of shoestring budgets plainly shows. Most notably, while I slagged off Star Trek V: The Final Frontier for reusing the sets from Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s actually way more egregious in this movie. I mean, they didn’t even try to hide the fact the transporter room, corridors, observation lounge and ten-forward are painfully obviously from Captain Picard’s Enterprise. More on that later, actually.)

You might think a movie with that pedigree would be cripplingly fanwanky, and there are a whole slew of references on display here. But none of them feel like forced name-drops done simply for the sake of pandering. Everything feels organic and freeform, with the grand finale that takes centre stage flowing seamlessly into a prequel for the story that’s playing out for us elsewhere. Leonard Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer are back behind the camera, and the end result is much of what you would expect from the team: It’s Meyer’s name on the director’s chair, but it’s clearly Nimoy’s deft eye for cinematic photography that elevates the look and feel of The Undiscovered Country *substantially*: There was a chance the film could have worn its bargain-basement trappings a little too obviously, but Nimoy gives the movie a grandiose, epic sense of scale befitting the send-off of such iconic folk heroes of modern myth.…

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“Picture yourself in a boat on a river”: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

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I’ll be perfectly blunt. I’m *not* thrilled to be back with the Original Series cast here. The world has changed under their feet, and even though 1986 was only two years ago it seems more like an eternity. Having them slot themselves into Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s summer hiatus feels presumptuous, redundant and really, a bit tragically out of style: The Original Series no longer has its hands on the pulse of Star Trek, and one sort of wishes this crew world butt out and retire with dignity, especially considering how absolutely perfect an ending to their story Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was.

If there’s one aspect of Star Trek’s media artefact wing that demonstrates how incestuous Star Trek fandom is, it’s unquestionably the Original Series and its associated characters, as, no matter what the generation, Trekkers are frustratingly unwilling (or unable) to move beyond them. This has to be something stronger than fealty to the original work or simple nostalgia, because this is a phenomenon that spans several different age groups and, more to the point, *doesn’t* happen with any other franchise of comparable scope. Nobody privileges the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who above all else, for example, and while the original three Star Wars movies are considered the best, that’s only because Star Wars fans are far more critical of their own franchise and will readily admit the original films hold that position merely by virtue of being slightly less shit than the others.

I’m not entirely certain what the reason for this is myself, but, either due to someone’s deliberate intent or purely through a particularly horrific example of the fan-industrial complex, Star Trek: The Next Generation and its ilk have utterly failed to take substantial root in the pop consciousness such that it’s the Original Star Trek, and *only* the Original Star Trek, that remains universally beloved, embraced and affectionately quoted and memified. This will be an unending sore spot for those of us (like, oh I don’t know, me, for example) for whom Star Trek actually does mean Star Trek: The Next Generation, because we’ll forever feel like our memories and feelings will never be considered legitimate by an *overwhelming majority* of the contemporary discourse.

The reason why this is relevant to the topic du jour is, aside from the obvious “I really, really don’t want to be writing about the Original Series at the moment”, is because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a movie that very plainly would not exist if not for the curious gravity the Original Star Trek exerts over the rest of the franchise. It was put into production essentially as a favour to William Shatner thanking him for bothering to show up for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, because he almost didn’t given he was A. getting too big for Paramount to afford and B. understandably dissatisfied with the anemic and fannish Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.…

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“I was quite the swinger back in my day”: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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The 1980s were a good time for someone with a developing interest in oceanography. In 1984, archaeologist Barry Clifford found the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship captained by Black Sam Bellamy during the Golden Age of Piracy, off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, a stretch of coastline that’s a notorious navigation hazard and the site of many wrecks. It’s also a coastline that happens to be six hours away from me and a place I consider a second home. The discovery of the Whydah by Clifford and his team was the result of an extensive search up and down Cape Cod’s Atlantic coast and marks the first, and to date only time, an authentic pirate shipwreck has been located by marine explorers. Clifford founded a museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts (just north of Wellfleet) dedicated to Bellamy and the Whydah that remains open to this day, and while he’s a local hero in New England, neither him nor the story remains well known outside of the region.

In 1985, Robert Ballard and a team of oceanographers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod made world headlines by locating the much sought-after wreck of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic. Ballard’s discovery captured the imagination of people all over the world (myself included), it remains possibly the most famous exploration and recovery mission in the history of oceanography, and the story of the Titanic would inspire director James Cameron to create one of the two highest-grossing movies of all time over a decade later. It’s since been revealed Ballard’s expedition was actually a front, and that throughout 1985 he had been secretly in the temporary employ of the United States Navy. The true purpose of his mission to clandestinely search for two missing US submarines, the USS Scorpion and USS Thresher, which had sunk in the same waters in the 1960s before they got to test the experimental nuclear reactors they had been outfitted with.

Also in 1985, a humpback whale nicknamed Humphrey attracted heavy media attention after he got “lost”, travelling through the Golden Gate to end up in San Francisco Bay. Marine biologists grew concerned when he further deviated from his normal migratory patterns by swimming up the freshwater Sacramento River before getting himself trapped at the other end of the Rio Vista Bridge, putting his life in danger. In order to get Humphrey to safety, humpback researcher Louis Herman and acoustical engineer Bernie Krause played recorded songs of whales feeding on high-power underwater speakers provided by the US Navy to get Humphrey to retrace his steps and return to the Pacific Ocean. My interest in whale songs and whale behaviour was fostered by the story of Humphrey (adapted into a wonderful book called Humphrey the Lost Whale) and other whales in the news at the time (including the sadly near-annual tradition of pilot whale beaching themselves on Cape Cod), helped cultivate my interest in the ocean and a living ecosystem and is but one facet of the link I share with it.…

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“…through death and life together”: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

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Let’s be perfectly honest here. This movie exists for only one reason, and it’s obviously well aware of this itself as well.

So, right away we have a situation that’s manifestly different than last time. To the point where Star Trek III: The Search for Spock isn’t really even a film it’s possible to critique: It’s quite clearly not trying to be anything other than what it self-evidently is: Episode two of what’s become an unfolding serial. I’ll return to this theme a bit later, but first of all, there’s a curious observation I’d like to make here: If Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a B-movie that didn’t want to admit it was a B-movie, this film, by contrast and inversely, is a B-movie that doesn’t actively try to punch above its weight class, but somehow succeeds in doing so anyway. Yes, against all odds, I’d have to say this is the best Star Trek movie we’ve looked at to date.

Part of this is that, unlike the previous two efforts, this movie actually feels like Star Trek. From Kirk’s opening Captain’s Log recap of the events of the last film’s climax and aftermath, there’s a heart to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock utterly absent in either of its predecessors. Kirk isn’t just blatantly stating emotions and themes like he’s reading from the SparkNotes version of the script, he actually seems like he’s experiencing those emotions and attempting to deal with them. Kirk, and everyone else in this movie, feels like an actual character this time instead of a mouthpiece spouting Big Important Themes. It helps that the dialogue is considerably more naturalistic this time around, but I think what really salvages the show here are the actors themselves, who seem visibly energized in a way I don’t really think I’ve ever seen this cast behave before. Sure, they’ve conveyed loyalty, friendship and camaraderie and all those Important Star Trek Buzzwords in the past, but this is the first time they seem to openly embody and embrace them (or at least the first time since Star Trek: The New Voyages) and this gets written back into their performances: There’s a genuine, heartfelt sense that they finally understand why what they’re doing is so important.

Which is only fitting considering this movie is ultimately about the fact Star Trek is a beloved thing important to many people. The reaction to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan supposedly was what convinced Leonard Nimoy to come out of retirement again, and request the directorial gig on this film to boot (Nimoy, by the way, is a thoroughly capable director, makes an utterly more visually interesting film than young Nicholas Meyer did and paves the way for future Star Trek actors to make the switch to behind-the-camera work too). This translates to a genuine sense of fun in front of the camera, with each of the principle characters getting plenty of moments to be funny or do something cool (Uhura’s scene in the transporter room is an absolute moment of triumph: Seriously, you want to just cheer for Nichelle Nichols).…

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“Khan, nothing more?”: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

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I don’t like it.

Yeah, I said it. As far as I’m concerned, the consensus-best Star Trek EVER is a bunch of *ridiculously* overrated tat. But honestly, you must have expected this by now. Was there really ever any suspense over how I was going to read this? Surely, there was no way I was ever going to taken in by Star Trek going whole hog into Horatio Hornblower naval pomp and circumstance? Not after everything I’ve yelled and screamed about here for the past year. I think it’s a mistake, I think it gets Star Trek’s philosophy utterly wrong, I honestly don’t think its a particularly captivating movie in its own right and I can’t in good conscience recommend it. So there. You can all close the book or the browser tab or whatever, as I’m sure my yay or nay on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is what you’ve been waiting breathlessly all this time to find out about.

Anyone still here? Good. Then we can continue.

The first, most obvious problem I have with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is in fact bringing Khan back in the first place. “Space Seed” was an utterly abhorrent episode that posited Star Trek’s utopian future would be built on the back of Philosopher Kings and enlightened despots who benevolently oppress us while they squabble over turf by manipulating catastrophic gang wars and indulging in extravagant, overblown dick measuring contests. It also made the passionate claim that women gain their inner strength through submissiveness and subservience and that rape culture is the natural hierarchy of humanity. And Khan himself was a spectacularly racist amalgamation of generically “exotic” nonwhite, nonwestern motifs the script bewilderingly seems to think will add to his “charm”. Charm, incidentally, is the one thing Khan wasn’t hurting for simply because the show hired Ricardo Montalbán to play him, who was an amazing stage presence and the one likable thing in that whole dreadful hour.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan does at least manage to be better than “Space Seed” as it drops pretty much all of the symbolism and themes Khan was originally written with in mind, bringing him back simply to exert gravity as a powerful antagonist, which is a role he’s perfectly suited for. No, Khan does work here, which is more than can be said for any of his other appearances in Star Trek, but the problem this movie has is that, by virtue of being so obviously a sequel (something I’ll talk more about later on) and because it was so phenomenally well received, this retroactively makes “Space Seed” seem like it was actually a good idea to any generation of Trekker who grew up with this movie, and in doing so renders both stories completely untouchable. And *that* has done provable harm to Star Trek’s legacy, because any version of Star Trek that takes “Space Seed” as the definitive display of its philosophy is a Star Trek that’s inherently wrongheaded and toxic.…

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“It’s only human”: In Thy Image (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

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We are urgently requesting backup and further advice…Intel on the ground indicates that this timeline has been effectively secured by our forces for the moment, though installing a permanent presence here seems unlikely…While they’ve been mostly keeping quiet for the moment, there’s no doubt The Empire will eventually take notice of what we’re doing here and strike back with a vengeance, and skirmishes with the other renegade factions are a constant problem…We followed your instructions and The Prototype codename “VOYAGER” is complete and ready for a shakedown cruise, though we are concerned as to its structural stability and overall viability and worry it may not yet be capable of fulfilling The Purpose for which it was designed, and that activating it will alert The Empire as to our whereabouts…Please inform as to further action ASAP…

At some point it became inevitable.

While a tenaciously niche property throughout the 1970s, Star Trek gave no indication of ever going away, especially once new generations of fans started to get introduced to it. It had a uniquely built-in self-regenerating audience, and one that was big enough to eventually attract the attention of the higher-ups. It was never a question of if Star Trek would come back, but how and when. The answer to all of those questions eventually came in 1977, when Paramount announced plans to enter the television market with their own network, and a new Star Trek series as its flagship programme. The series, chronicling a second five-year mission of the newly-refitted USS Enterprise under the command of Admiral James T. Kirk, eventually got the name Star Trek Phase II and premiered the following year.

Star Trek Phase II was not the first idea Paramount had for ways to revive the franchise: Originally, there were plans for a British-produced feature film called Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, to be handled by a pre-Star Wars Ralph McQuarrie. This film was in development throughout 1976 and 1977, but was eventually abandoned in favour of doing this show instead (and, presumably, due to McQuarrie’s commitments to the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg camp). It was an interesting story, involving heavily redesigned Enterprise following the original five-year mission involved in a territorial dispute with the Klingons over a planet rumoured to be home to a mythical race of cosmic Titans, who apparently were very influential in the history of life in the galaxy. After a brief dust-up involving a black hole and time travel, the Enterprise finds itself back in time and orbiting prehistoric Earth, where the crew soon discover that they are in fact the mythical Titans.

But returning to Star Trek Phase II, the series premier, “In Thy Image”, was a real event: Unlike the Original Series, which sort of just appeared out of nowhere, Star Trek Phase II was hyped up with a big PR machine and took off with a massive two-hour pilot movie. With much of the original creative team returning, as well as the addition of talented and professional new team members like Andy Probert and Robert Wise, who will go on to leave their own marks on the history of the franchise, this is as good an introduction to the new Star Trek as we could have hoped for, showing genuine maturation and development of themes we’ve seen explored before, and that most Star Trek of promises to continue growing and learning along the way.…

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