Ranking the Star Trek Films

Star Trek is a cultural phenomenon, with five, soon to be six, TV series, more than a hundred books, plus an uncountable number of collectables. Considering that, and the quality of many of the Original Series episodes, the films often fail to raise to the level of their history. But there are some gems in the sand.

Now with the third J.J. Abrams-verse film out, it is time to rank the Star Trek movies, and give them all a quick critique in the process.

There are three groupings: The 6 Original Series films that use the cast from the first TV show, the 3 (or 4 depending on how you count Generations), Next Generation films, and the 3 Abrams reboot films.

Generally I find the Original Series movies work better than what followed. Partly that is due to the greater intent. When Star Trek The Motion Picture was produced, it was meant to be an epic film, taking the TV show as a starting place and expanding it to something much more. That didn’t work out as hoped, so the films that followed contracted, being less and less, but sometimes being the better for it. Still, there was generally the attempt to do something special in those first films. While little changed in the long run for the crew of the Enterprise, it felt like things could. And hidden in it all was meaning. The heart of Star Trek, the message, was there.

As the Original Series films seemed less and less like movies and more like television episodes with a larger budget as they went along, the Next Generation movies never had even the pretext of being anything more than big TV episodes, where “big” means “loud.” Watch them at a theater? Sure, but home viewing is just as good, right after rewatching a few seasons of the show. We know from the start that nothing will change, nothing will progress. Things will happen, but nothing that really matters. But since there is a larger budget, that nothing will happen with a lot more action. Shooting phasers will be more important than plot—a step toward what Abrams would later do. As Data was a fan favorite, the films become the Data and Picard show, leaving almost nothing for other characters to do. This is most noticeable with Worf, who not only is irrelevant to the movies, but is brought onto the Enterprise in awkward and unbelievable ways because the character was on the Deep Space 9 TV show.

The J.J. Abrams reboots are barely Star Trek, and not even science fiction. The heart is gone. The thoughtful (and sometimes not so thoughtful) political and social messages—the dream of a future better than now and the hope that humanity can rise above its current squabbles—are all gone. And he continued the move into action films. It’s all about the phasers, the running, and the explosions. His films are just big, loud, colorful adventure movies, with a sci-fi overlay for color. They are empty. But, a lot of movies are empty, and he can make a pretty exciting and attractive popcorn film. The failure in his films is in imagination, not in presentation. Star Trek has been mishandled—in different ways—far worse.

For the most part, my ranking won’t be a surprise. I’ve seen many other rankings by critics and fans and there is vague agreement. Three of the original series films are always toward the top (with one almost always taking the top spot). The first Abrams film fits somewhere closely after those, and then the Next Gen ones slot in, with Nemesis, Generations, and Star Trek V filling in the lower slots. The only big movers are Into Darkness (which some people hate while others merely don’t think much of it), Insurrection (which is pretty much in the same boat, but with less hatred directed at it), and Star Trek I (which everyone agrees is too slow, but for some, that is mitigated by its greater theme and scope). I suspect I’ll only get flack over my placement of First Contact.

 

#13 Star Trek: Generations 

Captain Kirk is pulled into a giant space-time ribbon so that he can later meet Captain Picard. There’s also some things about a mad scientist and grumpy Klingons, but they don’t matter.

Call it, Fan Service, The Motion Picture. The plot, what there is of it, is based on who signed a contract (Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and George Takei did not or in the first case, was not allowed to) and getting Kirk and Picard to meet. This isn’t story telling. It’s an hour and a half of goofing around with pop characters and trusting that fans will think it is cool.

It is not cool.

After an opening that lets us know that Kirk is old, again (haven’t we done this—and then redone it—enough?), we get a second opening, set in the holodeck, to introduce us to the Next Gen cast, which is supposed to be funny, but isn’t. Data asks why watching someone fall into freezing water is amusing. I ask why watching people watch someone falling into freezing water is supposed to be amusing.

This film’s version of character development is Data doing a bad comedy routine as his emotion chip is activated, and Picard throwing a fit because the writers had no idea how grief works.

OK, that’s more analysis than Generations requires. This film is a mess. It is mainly remembered for the drab, pointless death of Captain Kirk. He’d had a better sendoff in Star Trek VI.

#12 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) 

Spock’s brother and some space hippies want to find God who lives in Eden at the center of the galaxy. Naturally they need a star ship to get there and the Enterprise is the first available one they can take over. Oh, and there’s a punk Klingon following because…reasons.

It is hard not to be cynical about The Search for God, as it is often called. Perhaps William Shatner really was thinking about telling a good story and entertaining the fans. But I can’t get the image out of my head of Shatner jumping up and down yelling, “Look at me!” Leanard Nemoy had directed the two previous installments, and Shatner wanted his turn. Well, he got it.

At least if you are going to mangle a movie, Shatner does it with such foolishness that it can be enjoyed for the sheer spectacle of his ego. Kirk climbs rocks, sings songs, tells bad jokes, and acts both as action hero and as slapstick comic.

Looking and feeling like a weak TV episode rather than a film, the movie seems cheap and tiny. Shatner chose to remake The Way to Eden, perhaps the worst original series ep. The space hippies are now a Vulcan hippy and his religious followers, but they are still looking for Eden. Amazingly he’s managed to make it less sensical than it was forty years earlier.

It’s hard to determine which of horrendous camera angles or ineffectual lighting or the psychology of “everyone has a secret pain” is the worst part of the film. But why choose one when they are all so bad? Shatner even manages a potshot at those damn kids now-a-days on my lawn with their funny clothing and rock-n-roll, in the form of bratty Klingon youths.

The Planet of Galactic Peace being the armpit of the universe is clever and could have been the setting for a smarter tale. Plus, there’s Uhura’s fan dance and the line “What does God need with a starship?” so the film isn’t a complete loss. An embarrassment, certainly, but not a complete loss. Maybe I am a bit severe saying not to see this. When a film is so flamboyantly bad, there is some joy in watching the smoking ruins.

 

#11 Star Trek: Nemesis 

Nemesis is better than it has any right to be. This is faint praise as it shouldn’t be any good at all. That it is watchable (on free cable—it is not worth actually paying for) is a miracle. There were no good decisions made in constructing this film:

• An unemotional and unnecessary wedding scene.
• Yet another Data twin doing a jokey-idiot routine.
• That twin being detectable from many light years away (if androids emit that much radiation, Data should wipe out any planet he sets foot on).
• Picard driving a dune buggy.
• A species of nosferatu.
• An evil Picard clone.
• The Troi mind-rape scene.
• Picard questioning if rising up against slave masters isn’t too mean.
• Multiple clock-running-out plot points (the clone is just happening to die in a few days; the weapon will kill everyone in seven minutes).
• Picard doing the manly-man “this is something I have to do” action hero bit.
• Military officers (and they are military officers here, not explorers) who don’t give a damn when acquaintance die all around them but fall apart when anyone in the credits die. (I’m guessing no one invited those officers that got sucked out of the bridge to any poker games).
• A big death that obviously means nothing.
• Choosing a director who didn’t know the television show and had no interest in working in an established universe.

Normally I’d say that last one was the real problem, but this is a better film than it should be, so maybe not. It is horribly structured and poorly written. But, if you ask very, very little from it, you might enjoy it. It is bright and flashy. Lots of things blow up. Many weapons are fired. Lots of people die. It’s an action movie for toddlers who like shiny things that rattle about. But everyone, at sometime in their life, likes shiny things that rattle about, so at sometime in your life, you will find this mildly diverting. In that way, it is the inspiration for the J.J Abrams movies that were to follow.

 

#10 Star Trek: First Contact 

The Borg travel back in time to assimilate humanity and disrupt Earth’s first warp drive test. The Enterprise follows to stop them, with Picard having Borg flashbacks and the Borg Queen attempting to seduce Data.

Like multiple of the films that came before it, a cast member takes over the director’s chair. This time it is Jonathan Frakes, who knows what to do with a camera. He also knows how to follow studio desires to not do anything too interesting.

A sequel to the two-part Best of Both Worlds Borg-centric TV episode, First Contact is primarily about Patrick Stewart overacting with Post-Borg-Traumatic-Stress syndrome, and Brent Spiner one-upping him as emotional Data being tempted. The first is annoying (really annoying as it goes on and on and on), with Picard throwing a tantrum, demonstrating that no one connected to the film had a firm understanding of psychology or character. The second brings the compensation of Alice Krige as the Borg Queen, which is a whole lot of compensation. The existence of the Borg Queen weakens the concept of the Borg, but less than later Next Gen episodes, and she’s worth it. In a film that flops between meaningless action, faux-tragedy, and weak comedy, she brings much needed sensuality and is a memorable villain, something too often lacking in Star Trek. Still, she has to ballance out silly scenes of Data moaning and pretending he’ll give in when we all know otherwise, and that’s too much to ask of her. (Hint to filmmakers: Do not make your film hinge around the suspense of a character’s temptation when we all know exactly what is going to happen.)

James Cromwell plays a funny drunk, which is amusing if you enjoy watching funny drunks. I could have skipped it, but it is a personal preference.

When it’s done, all is as it was (except for some continuity breaks with the character of Zefram Cochran). First Contact is an above average episode of the TV show. Not as good, or as epic as All Good Things, Yesterday’s Enterprise, Q Who, or its predecessor, Best of Both Worlds, but it’s enjoyable enough to make it to #10 on my list.

 

#9 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 

Kirk discovers that Spock’s soul is trapped in Bones, so the remaining bridge crew swipe the Enterprise to travel back to the Genesis planet to attempt to put Spock’s mind and body back together. Meanwhile a Klingon captain has set his sights on Genesis as a great weapon and will do anything to get it.

It didn’t take long for the jokes about “every odd number Trek film being bad” to start. I heard that when The Search for Spock came out, and it was solidified when Star Trek IV turned out to be a winner. It isn’t true, and is a bit unfair. The Search for Spock isn’t a bad film (nor is Start Trek: The Motion Picture). It is just a disappointing one. After the height of Wrath of Khan, this good but lesser film felt terrible at the time of its release. This is a smaller film and it doesn’t help that it undoes many of the great moments from Star Trek II. A great death is no more. Two new characters are dumped. Saavik has a new actress and either due to poor acting choices, poor scripting, or bad direction, the character no longer functions. Eliminating her Romulan half (which explained her emotional reactions in The Wrath of Khan) was a mistake.

We also get silly Vulcan mental transference that comes out of nowhere and a camp villain (played with gusto by Christopher Lloyd) who is fun, but a bit too arch, leaving the film feeling goofy. The lower budget is visible in the Genesis planet, which looks like the old series planets—tiny and filled with Styrofoam boulders.

The humor is more plentiful than in the previous two films, which is where Search For Spock works best. This is a very light weight flick. The best moments have nothing to do with excitement or drama or character. When the film tries for tragedy it only manages to be uncomfortable and false. Rather, it is Uhura pulling a phaser on an obnoxious Starfleet officer, Sulu telling a large security guard not to call him tiny, and Kirk stating that he will recommend them all in whatever fleet they end up serving where the film works. Plus there is the fan service unseen sex between Saavak and teen Spock that goes over the heads of the general public, but leaves geeks giggling.

The Search for Spock does complete the Vulcan civilization’s descent into absurdity. It’s hard to fathom what is illogical about returning the mind to a living body (sure, it hasn’t been done “since ages past” but how often do they have ghost minds with living bodies), but at least they have lines of Vulcan babes. For a logical race, they spend a good deal of effort on cute outfits. This is neither good nor bad, just amusing.

 

#8 Star Trek Beyond 

Kirk, tiring of the coolest job in the universe, and Spock, planning to help breed new Vulcans, are interrupted from their angst by the survivor of a crashed ship. Their rescue mission turns out to be a trap as a bland villain with a “must destroy everything for no good reason” plan takes much of the crew prisoner. Naturally they must be saved by a majority of the bridge crew who just happen to be the ones not captured.

This third film in the reboot series is much like the second (which will be coming up shortly) in that it is loud, and fast, and flashy, and quite dumb. It is different in that it gives the characters a chance to be characters while also dialing down the most grievously annoying traits that Abrams added to Kirk and Spock.

Primarily, this is an action film with few pauses between explosions, crashes, phaser blasts, punches, kicks, motorcycle riding (I wish I was kidding on that one), falling, sliding, and all the running. All that activity is filmed well and looks good, though it is empty. None of it matters, but if you like lots of movement and special effects, then you’ll get all you could desire.

In the occasional lulls, the film does better, though not in plotting, but in conversations between the crew. This is the first time in the Abrams-verse that any of them feel like the characters I loved from the old show. They are witty, sometimes funny, and pleasant to listen to. McCoy is the standout, more so as this is the first chance he’s had to be more than window dressing. Star Trek Beyond would have been massively improved by cutting twenty minutes of fighting and replacing it with character interaction.

The villain is weak, which is saying something for a modern Star Trek film. He has little personality and a motivation that made me roll my eyes. The film suggests a great mystery but doesn’t deliver and his magic bio weapon is an insignificant McGuffin; a standard bomb would have been far more effective. He’s the creation of lazy plotting. The climax is both meaningless and particularly high on the stupid scale as none of it would have happened if anyone realized, “Hey, we have transporters.”

Since so little time or thought is given to any of the personal problems (Kirk being bored with outer space, Spock feeling responsible for his species, the female-add on character of the week’s upset over her dead family, Spock and Uhura’s relationship issues, the villain’s loss of purpose) I cannot figure why they were scripted at all. Dropping most to give some weight to one is scriptwriting 101. As is, nothing feels earned, be it humans blurting out life decisions or yet another destruction of the Enterprise. Kirk’s ennui is the silliest as it paints him as a whiny entitled fool—it’s like the many superhero flicks that try to make us feel sorry for people with extraordinary abilities because, gosh, they just want to be normal.

So, it is pretty, with some nice chatting between characters, and that earns Star Trek beyond the #8 slot.

 

#7 Star Trek Into Darkness 

After a terrorist kills Christopher Pike and escapes with extra-super-duper beaming to the Klingon home world, Kirk is sent to kill him. Kirk decides instead to capture this mysterious man… OK, it’s Khan. We all know it is Khan.

The second Abrams-verse Trek film has all the same positives as the first, and all the same negatives, except the negatives are magnified. Over and over again, things do not make sense. Emotions bounce around to fit the action instead of approaching anything human, and there is so much fan service. By the end it feels like a fan film, just playing out a silly “what if” hypothesis a couple of Star Trek fans might discuss over pizza. “Hey, how about if Kirk was Spock and Spock was Kirk in Wrath of Khan! Cool!” The movie is devoted to mentioning, discussing, or just stopping and gazing at Star Trek’s past. Let’s name drop Nurse Chapel and Harry Mudd. Let’s bring in Carol Marcus (Mother of Kirk’s son in that other reality). And, of course, there’s Khan.

Once again (following the 2009 film), we have a petulant, illogical Spock and an immature Kirk. They are both terrible officers and their characters do not so much develop as flop around.

I suppose I should point out that this film also completely destroys the Trek universe, but they’ll forget that by the next film. The tech developed makes star ships obsolete (you can beam across the galaxy instantaneously) and death has been completely defeated.

But like 2009’s Star Trek, the point is not message or plot (though the basic one is stronger here even if the particulars are just as stupid) or character or sense. The point is mindless, lowest common denominator adventure delivered with pretty lights and lots of movement. And that’s what we get. It’s exciting and fun in a meaningless way. The score is operatic, the explosions are big and flashy, and it is all very pretty. Some people complain about Carol Marcus stripping down to her bra and panties, saying it is gratuitous, but they are missing the point. It is not gratuitous, because it is the entire reason for everything in this film. Pretty things happen because they are pretty. Ships zoom. Pretty! Guns fire. Pretty! Girl changes clothing. Pretty! Benedict Cumberbatch pouts at the camera. Pretty! Yeah, this isn’t a film to be proud of, but it succeeds in what it is trying to be, and sometimes, that’s enough.

 

#6 Star Trek: Insurrection 

In Perfectlandia, where the perfect people live their perfect lives, the outside world upsets perfection when a damaged Data reveals a Federation spy mission. The Federation is working with the Son’a, an aggressive species that violates many Federation rules, to screw with the perfect folks. Captain Picard and company must discover why Data was damaged, what he was trying to protect, and what The Federation and Son’a are attempting to achieve.

Star Trek returns to its roots: An exciting science fiction tale that exists to wrap a message. The message this time deals with the problems of colonizing and taking the lands of “less powerful” peoples. The point isn’t made subtly, but is no less effective. And the personal stories are more than normally moving. It is the most romantic Star Trek film.

Insurrection is just a nicely done TV episode, and how you feel about that will determine how you would rank it. It tries less to be a big action epic, and more to be about ideas and character. It does not try to do anything radically new. I’d have liked it to be more than it is (but only The Motion Picture really tried to be something grander, and more isn’t better if you fail), but for what it is, it is pretty good. The focus on explosions gets pretty tiring in Star Trek films, so I am happy to relax with a quieter film that is the only Next Gen film not to mutilate the characters—the number of embarrassing things they do is way down from First Contact and miles away from Nemesis.

People who like their Star Trek to be loud tend to rank Insurrection much lower. This is the least flashy Star Trek film, but that appeals to me.

 

#5 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 

The destruction of the Klingon moon, Praxis, leads to peace negotiations between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. But the assassination of the Klingon Chancellor, blamed on Captain Kirk, threatens that peace, and Spock and crew must determine the truth while Kirk and McCoy must escape their prison.

The Undiscovered Country is a fine final outing for the Original Series crew. Not a great final, but a fine one. All the regular players do what we’ve learned to expect from them—no more and no less. It had been clear for several films that Paramount was finished doing anything interesting with Star Trek, nor were they likely to change anything. Here, even in a finale, everything is as expected. It’s a bigger budget episode of the old show. A good episode, to be sure, but an episode. Everything we expect will happen. Kirk learns a lesson about humility and Spock learns one about humanity. Bones is grumpy and Uhura says wise things while not being allowed to do much. There’s a fist fight, a space battle, the bad guys die. Kirk even kisses an alien girl. It’s a greatest hits movie.

Luckily, the greatest hits of Star Trek are fun. Spock’s sleuthing is engaging. The emotional moments almost have weight…almost. The jokes are humorous for the most part and the action is exciting if not meaningful.

If Star Trek VI stands out in any way, beyond being a massive improvement over its predecessor, it is in its supporting cast. Kim Cattrall’s Vulcan navigator has excellent interactions with the rest of the cast and Rosanna DeSoto makes a powerful and emotional Klingon Chancellor/Chancellor’s daughter. Even better is David Warner as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon who steals every scene except when Christopher Plummer is stealing the scenes from him. Plummer is the joy of this picture. He’s acting large here, but Plummer is an expert at that.

Which leaves us with a good episode with fine crew performances and an above average villain. It also leaves this picture at #5.

 

#4 Star Trek: The Motion Picture 

The Original Series crew reunites to stop an all-powerful alien spacecraft headed for Earth. Kirk has weaseled his way back onto the bridge, demoting its new Captain, Decker. Along for the ride is new navigator Lieutenant Ilia, an empath, who has a romantic history with Decker.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the most cinematic feature in the Trek series, in every way that can be taken. It is by far the most competently made film. It has the finest direction, due to having the finest director in Robert Wise, and it out performs the other films in basic qualities such as camera angles, lighting, over all cinematography, sound design, and scene transitions. No Star Trek film looked better till Abrams threw loads of money at the franchise. The scoring is superb, giving the project a sense of power. This is an epic film, dealing with aliens, gods, the breadth of the universe, massive powers, love, aging and acceptance, and the meaning of life. It also contains a sense of wonder almost completely lacking from the later films. This is a science fiction film with purpose, not just the action popcorn movies that would come later. And it is more than an overlong episode of the TV show. This is a movie of grand scale. It introduces us to new characters, who could have taken their place amongst the original series pantheon if their path did not lead them elsewhere—and did pop up slightly altered in the Next Gen as Riker and Troi. There is emotion here.

Yes it is the most Star Trek of Star Trek films. It is hopeful without making excuses. It points to a better tomorrow while acknowledging our flaws. It suggests that battle is not the answer to our problems.

The Motion Picture could have been, and should have been, the finest Trek picture, but everything didn’t quite work out. It has become a much maligned film, often for silly reasons. The uniforms come in for a fair amount of derision, as if modern fashion sense is a clever basis for judging clothing three hundred year in the future (take a look at three hundred years in the past). Sure, to my eyes, the uniforms adopted for the follow-up film look better, but they only make sense if Star Fleet really is a military organization (which was not the original idea) that spends most of its time fighting on ice planets. I’d rather wear the breezier clothing here than the winter-wear that they went to. And people complain that the special effects have not aged well, which is true, but a trivial matter.

But there are two problems that do weigh the film down. One is understandable; the other is not. The first is the reintroduction of everything. A lot of time is spent showing us who these people are and what the Enterprise is. Each character is given a moment to do something stereotypical so that we know them, and the story slows to a crawl as they do. That seems absurd now, but in 1979, Star Trek was not so well known. The average person did not know what the Enterprise was, or who Kirk and Spock were, and even a majority of science fiction geeks were unlikely to have seen all of the old series. The problem never occurred again, with Star Trek rising out of the SF gutter to the heights of pop culture, but that came later. For this film, the studio felt it necessary to start from scratch and talking to people at the time, I’d say they were right. Unfortunately, these reintroductions are carried out in a clunky fashion. And perhaps things would have been fine if we didn’t know that Nurse Chapel was now a doctor and that Bones hates transporters and that Kirk really wants a Vulcan as a science officer. Yes, they did have to squeeze in a lot, but it wasn’t done with finesse.

That could have been excused if Wise wasn’t so infatuated with the sheer spectacle. Following in the mold of Close Encounters and 2001, the film expects the audience to be in awe of space and the enterprise and the great alien V’ger, but we’re not. Shots linger, then hover, then die, showing us gruesomely unending wiggly lines and clouds, and of course, the Enterprise itself. And because we, as the audience, need time for our reverence, we are joined in this by the crew. For every far-too-long shot of V’ger, there’s two painfully long shots of Kirk and company reacting to the shot.

Even now I suspect Star Trek: The Motion Picture could be the best of the series and generally great science fiction if Paramount was willing to do a new cut that took a hacksaw to the picture and chopped out thirty minutes. But for now, it’s a good, but too slow, movie.

 

#3 Star Trek (2009)

A Romulan travels back in time and sets out to take revenge upon Spock, Vulcan, and the Federation, in that order. His initial attack changes the timeline as we know it, giving particularly Kirk and Spock altered lives and personalities. The young crew of the Enterprise, Captained by Christopher Pike, responds to a distress call from Vulcan and ends up being the only hope to save the Federation.

Well, it is pretty. This reboot of the franchise brought in new actors and a new non-Star-Trek point of view. It gave us a petulant and illogical Spock and an immature Kirk. Pretty much everything else was borrowed from an earlier Star Trek film (and in several cases, from Star Wars films—points for working out the two most obvious cases of Star Wars invasion). We have the home world of a major enemy of The Federation destroyed (Star Trek VI). An enemy, driven insane by grief intends to avenge himself on a member of the bridge crew (Star Trek II, Nemesis). That enemy goes back in time when destroying the Federation is easier to accomplish (First Contact). He captures a captain and uses a mind altering pincer bug to force him to talk (Star Trek II). He has an unstoppable weapon that will destroy everything and plans to use it on Earth (Star Trek I, II, IV, Nemesis). The Enterprise is forced to set out with cadet crew (Star Trek II). I could go on.

What isn’t swiped plot points is fan service. The sexy green alien is one of the more blatant cases, but almost every scene has something. Sulu caries a sword… Really?

Does all that make it a bad film? No, although the nonsensical way the plot is stitched together doesn’t help (Spock maroons Kirk on a nearby planetoid that happens to be in sight of Vulcan and also happens to be where old Spock was marooned by Nero and where Scotty was stationed—ummm…Wow, that might be the definition of lazy writing), but in the end this film isn’t about sense or thought or originality. It is lowest common denominator fun. And as I will mention again a few films up this list, it is more important to get a bullseye with an easy target than to miss a harder one—less interesting, but more important. Star Trek 2009 might not have gotten that bullseye (Abrams’s love of annoying lens flairs—that make it impossible to see half of what is going on in early scenes—is enough to dock the film a few points), but it is a solid hit. It’s supposed to entertain and nothing more. It’s fast paced, occasionally funny, reasonably exciting, and, minus those lens flairs, it looks good. And if you are a fan, a little fan service is kinda nice.

 

#2 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 

The most enjoyable film in the franchise, The Voyage Home was a huge hit and it is easy to see why. While The Search For Spock is mostly fluff, this film went further to become a comedy. There’s some action and quite a bit of adventure, but the jokes are the point and they are really funny.

The setup is very much like Star Trek: The Motion Picture. An alien vessel appears on a course for Earth. It is unstoppable and the planet will not survive unless a way is found to communicate and give the aliens what they want. But in The Voyage Home, they answer “what” right away, and then go on a mission to make it happen, to find a pair of Humpback whales in the past who can talk to the space probe.

While the crew of the Enterprise sometimes had problems with drama, they are adept at comedy and every one excels as a fish out of water. Uhura and Chekov have a great routine where they come off as terrorists, asking the police and pedestrians where they can find the “nuclear wesles.” Spock and Kirk do a comedy bit on lying as they try and fail to answer simple questions. They also comment on the literary giants of our age (including Harold Robbins) and deal with an overly loud punk rocker which resulted in cheers and roars of laughter in the theater back in 1986). Bones shines as he discusses the barbarism of modern medicine and Scotty tries to chat with an old Mac. Only Sulu lacks a really crack routine.

The film carries a strong message too, which it sledgehammers into the viewer. This would have been a major annoyance in a drama, but as a comedy, it works, giving us some meat to support the action while defusing the weight with a few jokes.

This is the most feel-good of all Star Trek films, and the one that best deals with what good there might be in man and that maybe our humanity truly is a good thing. The Voyage home would top my list, but a few minor items bring it down. Though softened, the message could have used a bit of subtlety, and while whale biologist Gillian is a great addition when with the regular crew, the few scenes of her on her own should have been cut. This has always been my “favorite” Trek film, but I will place it as second “best.”

 

#1 Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan 

A sequel to the old TV episode Space Seed, Wrath of Khan sees the return of the genetic supermen that Kirk left on planet to make their own way. Things didn’t work out well for them and Khan has slipped from megalomania into just being crazy.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture aimed high, and missed. Wrath of Khan lowered the target, and hit a bulls eye. The scale is smaller and the themes are less, but it all works. The actors are sure of their parts and all the characters both fit their well known personalities and are given the opportunity to expand. Plus we have a new one in Saavik, whose only flaw is not continuing through the rest of the series. The pace is nearly perfect with plenty of drama, a bit of comedy, and as much good old fashioned adventure as anyone could ask for.

There are some nods to aging, but it is less a theme than a motif. If there is a theme, it is friendship, and don’t worry about that as there are submarine battles in space, witty lines fired off one after an other, alien brain parasites, romance, and heroic suicides (a pair of them). There’s no time for thinking till it is over, and then you’ll just want to see it again.

And of course there is Khan Noonien Singh. Who’d have thought the greatest Star Trek villain, and one of the great villains of all time, would be a mad, Indian, genetic superman played by a scenery-chewing Latin American. But Khan is everything you’d ever want in a villain and even though he is a racist, murdering, sociopath, it is impossible not to sympathize with him.

Yes, I like a bit more message with my Star Trek, but there is enough here. This is a duel is space and it is a lot of fun.