THE BEST OF STAR TREK PART 2

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 IV THE VOYAGE HOME – 9/10
When they finished writing the script for "Star Trek IV," they must have had a lot of silly grins on their faces. This is easily the most absurd of the "Star Trek" stories - and yet, oddly enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms. I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way.The movie opens with some leftover business from the previous movie, including the Klingon ambassador's protests before the Federation Council. These scenes have very little to do with the rest of the movie, and yet they provide a certain reassurance (like James Bond's ritual flirtation with Miss Moneypenny) that the series remembers it has a history.The crew of the Starship Enterprise is still marooned on a faraway planet with the Klingon starship they commandeered in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." They vote to return home aboard the alien vessel, but on the way they encounter a strange deep-space probe. It is sending out signals in an unknown language which, when deciphered, turns out to be the song of the humpback whale.It's at about this point that the script conferences must have really taken off. See if you can follow this: The Enterprise crew determines that the probe is zeroing in on Earth, and that if no humpback songs are picked up in response, the planet may well be destroyed. Therefore, the crew's mission becomes clear: Because humpback whales are extinct in the 23rd century, they must journey back through time to the 20th century, obtain some humpback whales, and return with them to the future - thus saving Earth. After they thought up this notion, I hope the writers lit up cigars.No matter how unlikely the story is, it supplies what is probably the best of the "Star Trek" movies so far, directed with calm professionalism by Leonard Nimoy. What happens is that the Enterprise crew land their Klingon starship in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, surround it with an invisibility shield, and fan out through the Bay area looking for humpback whales and a ready source of cheap nuclear power.What makes their search entertaining is that we already know the crew members so well. The cast's easy interaction is unique among movies, because it hasn't been learned in a few weeks of rehearsal or shooting; this is the 20th anniversary of "Star Trek," and most of these actors have been working together for most of their professional lives. These characters know one another.An example: Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Nimoy) visit a Sea World-type operation, where two humpback whales are held in captivity. Catherine Hicks, as the marine biologist in charge, plans to release the whales, and the Enterprise crew need to learn her plans so they can recapture the whales and transport them into the future.Naturally, this requires the two men to ask Hicks out to dinner.She asks if they like Italian food, and Kirk and Spock do a delightful little verbal ballet based on the running gag that Spock, as a Vulcan, cannot tell a lie. Find another space opera in which verbal counterpoint creates humor.The plots of the previous "Star Trek" movies have centered around dramatic villains, such as Khan, the dreaded genius played by Ricardo Montalban in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." This time, the villains are faceless: the international hunters who continue to pursue and massacre whales despite clear indications they will drive these noble mammals from the Earth. "To hunt a race to extinction is not logical," Spock calmly observes, but we see shocking footage of whalers doing just that. Instead of providing a single human villain as counterpoint, "Star Trek IV" provides a heroine, in Hicks. She obviously is moved by the plight of the whales, and although at first she understandably doubts Kirk's story that he comes from the 23rd century, eventually she enlists in the cause and even insists on returning to the future with them, because of course, without humpback whales, the 23rd century also lacks humpback whale experts.There are some major action sequences in the movie, but they aren't the high points; the "Star Trek" saga has always depended more on human interaction and thoughtful, cause-oriented plots. What happens in San Francisco is much more interesting than what happens in outer space, and this movie, which might seem to have an unlikely and ungainly plot, is actually the most elegant and satisfying "Star Trek" film so far
STAR TREK V THE FINAL FRONTIER – 5/10
There was a moment in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" - only one, and a brief one, but a genuine one - when I felt the promise of awe. The Starship Enterprise was indeed going where no man had gone before, through the fabled Great Barrier, which represents the end of the finite universe. What would lie beyond? Would it be an endless void, or a black hole, or some kind of singularity of space and time that would turn the voyagers inside out and deposit them in another universe? Or would the Barrier even reveal, as one of the characters believes, the place where life began? The place called by the name of Eden and countless other words? As the Enterprise approached the Barrier, I found my attention gathering. The movie had been slow and boring until then, with an interminable, utterly inconsequential first act and a plot that seemed to exist in a space-time singularity all its own. But now, at last, the fifth "Star Trek" movie seemed to be remembering what was best about the fictional world of "Star Trek": those moments when man and his ideas are challenged by the limitless possibilities of creation.As I've said, my awe was real. It was also brief. Once the Enterprise crew members (and the Vulcan who was holding them hostage) landed on the world beyond the Barrier, the possibilities of god or Eden or whatever quickly disintegrated into an anticlimactic special effects show with a touch of "The Wizard of Oz" thrown in for good measure. I do not want to give away important elements in the plot, but after you've seen the movie, ask yourself these questions: 1) How was it known that the voyagers would go beyond the Barrier; 2) what was the motivation behind what they found there; 3) how was it known that they would come to stand at exactly the point where the stone pillars came up from the Earth; 4) In a version of a question asked by Capt. Kirk, why would any entity capable of staging such a show need its own starship; and 5) is the Great Barrier indeed real, or simply a deceptive stage setting for what was found behind it? (What I'm really complaining about, I think, is that "Star Trek V" allows itself enormous latitude in the logic beneath its plot. If the Barrier is real, what exactly are we to make of the use to which it is put?) Before we get to ask those questions, "Star Trek V" spends much of its time meandering through some of the goofiest scenes in the entire series. The movie opens with the taking of three hostages on a desert planet, who have been captured for the sole purpose of luring Capt. Kirk and his starship to the planet so that the ship can be commandeered for the voyage through the Barrier. I have explained these plot details in one sentence. The movie takes endless scenes, during which the key crew members of the Enterprise need to be summoned back to their ship in the middle of a shore leave. And that process, in turn, requires interminable scenes of Kirk, Spock and Bones on a camping trip in Yosemite, during which they attempt to sing "Row, row, row your boat" and nearly succeed in sinking the entire movie. If there is a sillier and more awkwardly written scene in the entire "Star Trek" saga than this one, I've missed it.After the pointless opening scenes, the movie begins to develop a plot of sorts, but it is so confused and inadequately explained that there are times when we simply give up and wait for what's next. That was particularly the case during the inexplicable closing scenes, where the humans and the Klingons seem to join sides after an off-camera speech by a former Klingon leader who had been put out to pasture. Since this leader is identified as having been badly treated by the Klingons in his retirement, how did he suddenly regain the authority to negotiate a truce? And do we really want to see the mighty Klingons reduced to the status of guests at a cocktail party? One of the trademarks of the "Star Trek" saga has been the way the supporting characters are kept alive in little subplots. In "Star Trek V," the Enterprise starts its voyage while the shop is suffering a series of mechanical failures, and that involves countless brief scenes in which Scotty, the chief engineer, emerges from beneath a piece of equipment, brandishes his wrench and says he'll have things fixed in a moment. Two or three of these scenes might have been enough.Another irritation is the way in which we meet apparently major characters, including those played by David Warner, Laurence Luckinbill and Cynthia Gouw, who are introduced with fanfares of dialogue and then never developed or given anything to do. The entire movie seems crowded with loose ends, overlooked developments and forgotten characters, and there are little snatches of dialogue where some of these minor characters seem to be soldiering on in their original subplots as if unaware that they've been cut from the movie."Star Trek V" is pretty much of a mess - a movie that betrays all the signs of having gone into production at a point where the script doctoring should have begun in earnest. There is no clear line from the beginning of the movie to the end, not much danger, no characters to really care about, little suspense, uninteresting or incomprehensible villains, and a great deal of small talk and pointless dead ends. Of all of the "Star Trek" movies, this is the worst.
STAR TREK VI THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY – 10/10
At the end their signatures are written large across the screen: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and the others who have been playing the crew of the Starship Enterprise for the past 25 years. The implication is that the original voyage of “Star Trek” has come to an end--that the characters and players of the first television series and the six “Star Trek” movies will now go where no “Star Trek” actor has gone before, into retirement, and that if there is another “Star Trek” movie it will star, perhaps, the cast of TV’s “Star Trek” The Next Generation.”I am not so sure, however. This sixth “Star Trek” film has so much more life and interest than the dreary “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” that perhaps it will tempt Paramount into still another story for Captain Kirk and his crew (perhaps a training voyage for the new generation?). “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” begins, as so many “Star Trek” stories do, with a story set in the future but parallel to contemporary developments. In this case, as the Klingon empire begins to self-destruct after a Chernoble-type explosion on one of its moons, the obvious reference is to the disintegration of the Russian empire.As the Klingons sue for peace, the Enterprise is assigned to go out to the edges of Federation space and negotiate with them. Captain Kirk is bitterly reluctant; he doesn’t believe the Klingons can be trusted, ever. But Mr. Spock informs him of an alleged ancient Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon can go to China.”There are a lot of lines like that in the script by Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, and a lot of lines by Shakespeare, too, who supplies not only the movie’s subtitle but also many references from “Hamlet” and elsewhere (“He is better in the original Klingon,” one of the enemy snorts.) At one point two of the supporting actors, the distinguished Shakespearians David Warner and Christopher Plummer, seem to be trading familiar quotations instead of dialog, but the strange thing is, it’s effective; in its pop-culture way, “Star Trek” has taken on a kind of epic quality over the years, and such references help establish the notion that the story really does take place in a future that remembers the past.If the dialog is from Shakespeare, the plot seems borrowed more from an old British country house mystery; one or more disloyal members of the Enterprise crew fire on a Klingon star cruiser and then port themselves on board to murder those who have come to ask for peace. Through plot complications that would have made Agatha Christie proud, the clues to the identify of the killers depend on bloody boots and bootprints, and figuring out who was where, and when.“Star Trek” has always been more allegory than science fiction. There is a kind of integrity, indeed, in the deliberately low-tech sets; the movies have always remained true to the klutzy art direction of the TV series, and in a post-”2001” and “Star Wars” age the bridge of the Enterprise still looks as if it were made out of old Captain Video props and a 1950s housewares show.It doesn’t matter, because the movies aren’t really based on sets, or even much on action; they’re about ideas and relationships and here we see the old friendships of the Enterprise tested, and hear new versions of the same old jokes about how Vulcans don’t understand jokes. It’s entertaining, and reassuring.Why on earth (or anywhere else) would Paramount want to retire this crew, which is as familiar and comforting as old family friends, and which does its job with the effortless grace of long familiarity? In Shakespeare, the “undiscovered country” is death. And elsewhere trhe bard refers to one who dies as being like an actor who goes off to “study a long silence.” I don’t know if that will work here. I doubt frankly that the crew of the Enterprise can stop talking long enough to die.
TO-BE CONCLUDED