THE BEST OF STAR TREK PART 3

STAR TREK MOVIE REVIEWS
10/10 CLASSIC TREK
9/10 EXCELLENT
8/10 VERY ENTERTAINING
7/10 VERY GOOD
6/10 VERY WATCHABLE
5/10 AVERAGE
4/10 BORING
3/10 AWFUL
2/10 DREADFUL
1/10 UNWATCHABLE

STAR TREK VII GENERATIONS – 4/10
The "Star Trek" saga has always had a weakness for getting distracted by itself, and "Star Trek: Generations," the seventh film installment, is undone by its narcissism. Here is a movie so concerned with in-jokes and updates for Trekkers that it can barely tear itself away long enough to tell a story. From the weight and attention given to the transfer of command on the Starship Enterprise, you'd think a millennium was ending - which is, by the end of the film, how it feels. The movie opens during a maiden run for the Enterprise B; plans call for it to take a little dash around the solar system with some reporters on board. But then a call for help is received, and there's polite jockeying for position between the newly appointed Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the just-retired Capt. Kirk (William Shatner). Kirk is obviously better-equipped to handle the crisis, but alas the ship itself is unequipped, unmanned and unready for an emergency.The emergency involves a free-floating coil of space energy, which has captured two ships in what I think was called its Gravametric Field. ("Star Trek" has never been shy of polysyllabic pseudoscientific gobbledygook, and "Generation" bathes in it; the victims' "life signs are phasing in and out of our space-time continuum"!) One of the survivors is the intense Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell), of the El Aurian species, who insists he must get back to the ship. It explodes in the Nexus force field, however, and the story leaps forward 78 years. Capt. Picard now finds himself on a rescue mission to an observatory where Dr. Soran is again rescued, and again insists he must return, and lo, here comes the Nexus again, along with an explanation by Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), the Enterprise's resident mystic, who says that those caught in the Nexus are "bathed in joy." We learn that Soran will do anything for that joy, including destroying stars and their planets with millions of inhabitants, just to nudge the Nexus a little out of its way. His calculations are astonishingly precise: By using Solar Probes to destroy an entire solar system, he can steer the Nexus so that it brushes right above a rickety steel platform he has constructed in an alien desert, and he can sort of leap up into it and be absorbed in joy.Meanwhile, there is a lot happening aboard the Enterprise, which has a way of being constantly buffeted by force fields and Gravametric explosions ex cept when Quietly Meaningful Dialogue is being exchanged; at such times the ship is perfectly still. I would estimate that the command deck is being buffeted, filled with smoke, and showered with electri cal sparks, a good third of the time, with the computers all flashing superfluous "Alert!" warnings, just when you want them to tell you something helpful.The "Star Trek" series has always specialized in hilariously klutzy hardware, but outdoes itself this time; the TV cameramen in the opening scenes wear little lights on their heads which illuminate only the centers of the faces of their subjects (surely by the 21st century Man, even Newsman, will not have forgotten how to light a whole face?). And the computer controls aboard the starship now seem modeled on the multiple-choice cash registers at McDonald's, where you just push the Big Mac button instead of needing to know how much it costs.The running joke this time involves Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner), a computerized android who tries out a tricky emotion chip and suddenly understands jokes he was told years ago. This notion could have led to some funny scenes, but doesn't, and the scene where Data shorts out (or his chip crashes, or something) is acted and directed so uncertainly it is positively puzzling.The "Star Trek" movies and TV shows always consider at least one Big Important Human Question, and this time it has to do with the Choice Between Happiness and Reality. When you get sucked into the Nexus, see, you think you are living once again through the most joyous days of your life. This would be great, except you kinda know you're not, and so both Capt. Kirk and Capt. Picard must choose between the hazards of reality and the seductive dream world. There's a lesson here somewhere. Hell, there's a lesson here everywhere.I will not be giving away any secrets if I reveal that Capt.Kirk dies in the course of the movie. Countless Trekkers have solemnly informed me of this fact for months, if not years. Leave it to Kirk to be discontent with just one death scene, however. Kirk's first death is a very long silence, but he has dialogue for his second one. Oh, my, yes he does. And slips away so subtly I was waiting for more.I, for one, will miss him. There is something endearing about the "Star Trek" world, even down to and including its curious tradition that the even-numbered movies tend to be better than the odd-numbered ones. And it's fun to hear the obligatory dialogue one more time (my favorite, always said by someone watching the giant view screen, where an unearthly sight has appeared: "What . . . the . . . hell . . . is . . . THAT?")."Star Trek" seems to cross the props of science fiction with the ideas of Westerns. Watching the fate of millions being settled by an old-fashioned fistfight on a rickety steel bridge (intercut with closeups of the bolts popping loose and the structure sagging ominously), I was almost amused by the shabby storytelling. Why doesn't more movie science fiction have the originality and imagination of its print origins? In "Stargate," the alien god Ra was able to travel the universe, yet still needed slaves to build his pyramids. In "Star Trek: Generations," the starship can go boldly where no one has gone before, but the screenwriters can only do vice versa.
STAR TREK VIII FIRST CONTACT – 5/10
“Star Trek: First Contact” is one of the best of the eight “Star Trek” films: Certainly the best in its technical credits, and among the best in the ingenuity of its plot. I would rank it beside “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986), the one where the fate of Earth depended on the song of the humpback whale. This time, in a screenplay that could have been confusing but moves confidently between different levels of the story, the crew of the Enterprise follows the evil Borgs back in time to the day before mankind made its first flight at warp speed.That flight, in 2063, was monitored by an alien race, the Vulcans, who took it as evidence that man had developed to the point where it deserved to meet another race. But now the Borgs, starting from the 24th century, want to travel back through a temporal vortex (how I love the “Star Trek” jargon!), prevent the flight and rewrite history, this time with Borgs populating the Earth instead of humans.The latest edition of the starship is the “Enterprise E” (and there are plenty of letters left in the alphabet, Capt. Picard notes ominously). It is patrolling deep space when it learns the Borgs are attacking Earth. The Enterprise is ordered to remain where it is--probably, Picard (Patrick Stewart) notes bitterly, because he was a prisoner of the Borgs some six years ago, and “a man who was captured and assimilated by the Borg is an unstable element.” These Borgs are an interesting race. They are part flesh, part computer, and they “assimilate” all the races they conquer into their collective mind, which organizes their society like a hive. There is even a queen (Alice Krige), although she is not fat and pampered like an ant or a termite, but lean, mean and a student of seduction. One of the movie's intriguing subplots involves Data (Brent Spiner), the Enterprise's android, who is captured and hooked up to a Borg assimilating machine--which fails, because it can't crack his digital defenses. Then the Queen tries some analog methods all her own.The central plot takes place as the Enterprise follows a Borg ship back through time to Earth, which, the Trekkers are dismayed to learn, is now populated by Borgs. To turn history around again, they need to be sure man's first warp flight succeeds. Earth is recovering from World War III, and a brilliant inventor named Cochrane (James Cromwell, the tall farmer from “Babe”) has adapted a missile for this historic flight.He leads a commune that seems to be part hippie, part survivalist, and spends much of his time listing to rock 'n' roll and drinking, to the despair of his associate Lily (Alfre Woodard). These two do not believe the weird story they get from the starship crew, and at one point Lily nearly fries Picard with a stolen gun. (He: “Maximum setting! If you had fired, you would have vaporized me.” She: “It's my first ray gun.”) The plot moves deftly between preparations for the Earth launch, Data's assimilation tortures on the Borg ship, and a fight against a Borg landing party on the Enterprise, which Picard personally directs, overruling doubts expressed by his second-in-command, William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and their own assimilated Klingon, Worf (Michael Dorn).Some of the earlier “Star Trek” movies have been frankly clunky in the special-effects department; the first of the series came out in 1979 and looked pale in comparison to “Star Wars.” But this one benefits from the latest advances in f/x artistry, starting with its sensational opening shot, which begins so deep inside Picard's eyeball, it looks like a star-speckled spacescape and then pulling back to encompass an unimaginably vast Borg starship. I also admired the interiors of the Borg probe, and the peculiar makeup work creating the Borg Queen, who looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of, but inspires me to keep an open mind.“Star Trek” movies are not so much about action and effects as they are about ideas and dialogue. I doubted the original Enterprise crew would ever retire because I didn't think they could stop talking long enough. Here the story gives us yet another intriguing test of the differences among humans, aliens and artificial intelligence. And the paradoxes of time travel are handled less murkily than sometimes in the past. (Although explain to me once again how the Earth could be populated with millions of Borgs who are expected to vanish--or never have been--if the Enterprise succeeds. Isn't there some sort of law of conservation of energy that requires their physical bodies to come from, or be disposed of, somewhere, somehow?) “STFC” was directed by Frakes, who did some of the “ST Next Generation” shows for television, and here achieves great energy and clarity. In all of the shuffling of timelines and plotlines, I always knew where we were. He also gets some genial humor out of Cromwell, as the inventor who never wanted fame but simply enough money to go off to a “tropical island with a lot of naked women.” And there is such intriguing chemistry between Picard and the Woodard character that I hope a way is found to bring her onboard in the next film. “Star Trek” movies in the past have occasionally gone where no movie had gone, or wanted to go, before. This one is on the right beam.
STAR TREK IX RESSURECTION – 1/10
A funny thing happened to me on the way to writing this review of "Star Trek: Insurrection"--I discovered that several of the key filmmakers disagree with the film's plot premise. Maybe that's why this ninth "Star Trek" saga seems inert and unconvincing.Here's the premise: In a region of space known as the Briar Patch, an idyllic planet is home to a race known as the Ba'ku. They are members of a placid agricultural commune, tilling the neat rows of their fields, and then returning to a city whose neo-Greco-Roman architecture looks uncannily like the shopping mall at Caesar's Palace. The Ba'ku are a blissful people, and no wonder: They have the secret of immortality. The "metaphasic radiation" generated by the planet's rings acts like a fountain of youth on their planet.The planet and the Ba'ku are currently the subject of a cultural survey team, which looks down on them from something like a stadium press box, but remains invisible. Then Data (Brent Spiner), the android, goes berserk and makes hostages of the survey team. The Enterprise speeds to the scene, so that Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) can deal with the crisis. The plot thickens when it is revealed that the Son'a race, which is also part of the Federation, was once allied with the Ba'ku. But the Son'a choose a different path and are now dying out--most visibly in the scrofulous countenance of their leader Ru'afo (F. Murray Abraham).The Son'a want the Ba'ku kidnapped and forcibly ejected from their planet. There are, after all, only 600 of them. Why should their little nature preserve be more important than the health and longevity of the Son'a and billions of other Federation citizens? Picard counters with the Federation's Prime Directive, which instructs that the natural development of any civilization must not be interfered with.The plot of "Star Trek: Insurrection" deals with the conflict between the desperate Son'a and the blissful Ba'ku and is further complicated when Picard falls in love with the beautiful Ba'ku woman Anij (Donna Murphy). "You explore the universe," she tells him, "but have you ever explored a single moment in time?" (Picard is so lovestruck he forgets that his answer would be "yes!") Further complications result when the metaphasic radiation leaks into the Enterprise and inspires Riker and Troi to start acting like horny teenagers.As the best minds in the Federation wrestled with the ethical questions involved, I was also asking questions. Such as, aren't the Ba'ku basically just living in a gated community? Since this Eden-like planet has only 600 inhabitants, why couldn't they use the planet as a spa, circling inside those metaphasic rings and bathing in the radiation, which is probably faster-acting in space than down on the surface? After all, we're not talking magic here, are we? Above these practical questions looms a larger philosophical one. Wouldn't it be right to sacrifice the lifestyles of 600 Ba'ku in order to save billions? "I think maybe I would," said Jonathan Frakes, the film's director and co-star, when I asked him that question after the movie's press screening."You've got to be flexible," Stewart said. "If it had been left in the hands of Picard, some solution could have been found." "Absolutely!" Spiner said. "I think I raised that question more than once." "I had to be very narrowminded to serve the character," Murphy confessed.I agree. Our own civilization routinely kills legions of people in wars large and small, for reasons of ideology, territory, religion or geography. Would we contemplate removing 600 people from their native environment to grant immortality to everyone alive? In a flash. It would be difficult, indeed, to fashion a philosophical objection to such a move, which would result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.But what about the rights of the Ba'ku? Shouldn't they volunteer to help us all out? Especially since they need not die themselves? The plot of "Star Trek: Insurrection" grinds through the usual conversations and crises, as the evil Ru'afo and his men carry forward their insidious plans, and Picard discovers that the Federation itself may be willing to play fast and loose with the Prime Directive. That's not exactly new; in the previous eight movies, there have in fact been many shots fired in anger at members of races who perhaps should have been left alone to "develop naturally"--presumably even if such development involves aggression and hostility. The overriding principle, let's face it, has been the Federation's own survival and best interests. So why not allow the Son'a the same ethnocentric behavior? The movie is a work of fantasy and these questions are not important unless they influence the film's entertainment value. Unfortunately, they do.There is a certain lackluster feeling to the way the key characters debate the issues, and perhaps that reflects the suspicion of the filmmakers that they have hitched their wagon to the wrong cause. The movie is shorter than the usual "Star Trek" saga, at 103 minutes, as if the central issue could not bear scrutiny at the usual length. Think how much more interesting it would have been if the Ba'ku had joined an interracial experiment to share immortality. What would happen if everyone in the Federation could live forever? Think how many more sequels there'd be.
THE END SHALL COME