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Star Trek, by the Numbers.

Jimmie | May 7, 2009 | Comments (0)

Glenn Reynolds definitely knows how to throw out the geek-bait: link to someone’s ranking of all the Star Trek movies.

Yes, I’m going to quibble with that post and re-rank them myself. I’m a geek. I can’t really resist.

I will say this first. If you haven’t seen the first three Star Trek movies in my list, I recommend them highly. You don’t have to be a Trek fan to enjoy them (but you do have to like sci-fi). They are good movies that stand on their own. If you aren’t a Trek fan, don’t watch them for the first time in the presence of other Trek fans. They will be unable to resist giving you the back stories involved in every movie. You’ve been warned.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: This is, by far, the best Trek movie ever made. There can be no debate. I doubt that anyone will make a better one. I could go on, quite easily, for a thousand words, with YouTube video examples, about why this is such a good movie, but I won’t subject you to that. I will say, though, that it is one of few movies that made me cry and gasp out loud.
Star Trek VI – The Undiscovered Country: I liked this movie a lot. There was a little of everything in it: action, mystery, comedy, drama, and Christopher Plummer playing a very good Klingon. It also fit itself into a nice little hole in the history of the Trek universe — not an easy task. There was also a little bit of Trek justice here as well. If I had to pick one of the bridge crew from the original series to be a captain, it would have been Sulu. Sure enough, there he is with his own ship and I liked him there. Oh, and also a Christian Slater cameo.
Star Trek – The Motion Picture: Okay, Trekkies, I can almost hear you gnashing your teeth. How can he rank this one third. I mean, c’mon dude. V’ger?? Bear with me, though. Remember how the mission of the Enterprise was to “explore strange new worlds”? Well, that’s what this movie is all about. There’s an air of mystery, of apprehension. For the first time since I saw all the original Trek episodes, I felt like the cocksure Kirk was up against something he couldn’t simply run over. Stephen Collins was also the only other person who played a starship captain in the Trek movies who I believed deserved to sit in the Big Chair. Yeah, there are some contrivances, but how many contrivances have you endured as a Trek fan, hmmm?
Star Trek – First Contact: I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I really wanted it to go in the slam-bang action direction and was a bit miffed when it headed in another direction entirely. The first twenty minutes or so of the movie are incredible — the big space battle that I think almost every Trek fan wanted when they first heard the words “Wolf 359″ in that TNG episode was stunning (and I got a happy chill when the Klingon Theme from the first movie made its appearance). The strength of the movie, though, is in the acting of Patrick Stewart and James Cromwell. The character studies of Picard and Cochrane just worked.
Star Trek III – The Search for Spock: This movie won’t make a lot of sense unless you see Khan, but if you watch them back-to-back, this isn’t a bad movie by any stretch. It is the cheesiest-feeling of all the movies and you will have to deal with some odd casting choices (Where did Kirstie Allie go? Why is Miguel Ferrer on a starship? John Larroquette and Christopher Lloyd as Klingons??) but they could have stopped the Star Trek movies right there and I would have been satisfied.
Star Trek – Generations: This is the first Trek movie with the new cast and much of the plot essentially involved passing the torch. It could have done better but it could also have done a lot worse. The pacing of this movie felt very slow to me and there was entirely too much of Guinan playing Basil Exposition. Remember my earlier note about starship captains? Well, this one had the guy who played Cameron as the Captain of the Enterprise. ‘Nuff said.
Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home: I said earlier that the Trek folks could have stopped after Star Trek III and I would have been happy. Well, they didn’t. After the drama and action of Khan and Search for Spock I guess the decided we needed a little comedy break. Also, whales apparently had to be saved. So, we got the Earth being menaced by what looked like a giant hand-rolled Arturo Fuente, Scotty talking to a computer using the mouse like a communicator, and the legendary “nuclear wessels”. and oh my did we get whales. I know a few folks who liked this one and they’re not insane, so there’s something there to like. Just not for me. A little bit of trivia here at the end. The parents from Seventh Heaven both had feature roles in Star Trek movies. Stephen Collins was in the first one and Katherine Hicks plays a big role in this one.
Star Trek – Nemesis: I have to admit, I’ve not seen this movie all the way through and what bits I have seen, I can’t really remember. So why am I reviewing it? Because it’s better then the last two Trek movies on my list. Someone, either Picard or Data if the DVD cover is to be believed, has a nemesis. Romulans were involved. James Lileks didn’t hate it, and he has a pretty good eye for the movies. Beyond that, I got nothing.
Star Trek – Insurrection: Apparently, there’s a rule that every Star Trek franchise that gets its own movie must include one movie long on comedy. This is the one for TNG. There are jokes about Klingon acne and breasts (though the joking is being done between Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden, which made it at least tolerable) and a scene where Data sings Gilbert and Sullivan. Maybe Brent Spiner needed an off-Broadway audition tape. I don’t know. The villains are aliens who can’t survive without frequent facelifts and none of them are Joan Rivers. Since Jonathan Frakes directed this one, we get obligatory scenes of him denigrating the backup Alpha Male to establish his masculinity in front of the newly-bosomed babes and a finale where he gets to blow up the bad guys. And the whole thing is basically the hoary tale of how imperialist aggressors despoil the technologically superior and staunchly pacifistic natives using corrupt Federation officials as their willing dupes.
Star Trek V – The Final Frontier: As bad as Generations was, it is Citizen Kane compared to this steaming pile of plot holes, laughably implausible physics, and main character humiliation. If James Doohan had killed the director and screenwriter in righteous anger, not a person who saw this movie would have convicted him. They would have awarded him punitive damages. I won’t say more, save to send you to this far longer and much funnier review to see just how bad this movie really was.