Still Trekkin'

SamuraiFrog has a nice post wherein he runs down his thoughts upon a re-viewing of the first six Star Trek movies, otherwise known as the "Original Cast" films. I'm in partial agreement with him on certain points, partial disagreement on others (my views can be found in my STAR TREK Redux series of posts from the early days of this blog; links are in the sidebar). I do have a few random thoughts:

:: TMP is a good movie, and I've never much disliked all the effects stuff in the film. Few of the Trek films take their time. Does this one take too much time? It's possible, I guess. But I don't mind it.

:: I did rewatch Wrath of Khan recently and I'm still of two minds on the movie. It's very well-made, but it's not as perfect as many think.

:: Search for Spock really is uneven -- the inexperience of its director is evident, as is its small budget, and parts of its plot are terribly, terribly thin. But the last ten minutes make up for a lot, in my view.

:: Voyage Home is really good.

:: I like Final Frontier more than SamuraiFrog did. There is a ton of stuff wrong with that movie, but I still feel that it's an ambitious failure. I don't hate it at all. I also don't agree that the film missteps in 'resurrecting' Spock's inner turmoil at his father's rejection of him; Sybok thinks he's hit on Spock's secret anguish, but he doesn't know that this has been resolved for Spock through his death and resurrection and his father's acceptance. Spock needs no prompting at all from Kirk to tell Sybok that no, he's still not joining Sybok's cause.

:: Undiscovered Country is not, for me, quite the "fan service" film that SamuraiFrog believes it to be. It only partly serves to bridge the Original Series and TNG, but that's really only a tiny piece of the movie's subtext, and only intense fans are going to recognize Michael Dorn as Worf's grandfather. Any "fan service" subtext is more from the film's clear intent to retire the original cast The film is topical to a higher degree than any Trek film before or since, though -- it came out in 1991, hot on the heels of the end of the Cold War.

And the last ten minutes or so of Undiscovered Country is one of my favorite movie farewell scenes, ever.

So there!