Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

Just starting Search For Spock.

Doc Brown is a Klingon? :lol:

The thing that pisses me off about later trek films is they mostly have to pull the old LET'S BLOW UP THE ENTERPRISE as a finale, which ends up being done to death. When it happens in KHAAAN it's properly shocking, destroying the symbol of the show is what it took to bring the villain down.

Later films? BLOW IT UP LOL

Moggy wrote:Just starting Search For Spock.

Doc Brown is a Klingon?

Leonard Nimoy specifically wanted Christopher Lloyd for the role of a villain too.

Not as good as the first two films, but decent enough.

I liked Lloyd's character. Ruthless and cruel, while not being too over the top hammy.

And the Frodo v Gollum at Mount Doom fight was fun!

Victor Mildew wrote:The thing that pisses me off about later trek films is they mostly have to pull the old LET'S BLOW UP THE ENTERPRISE as a finale, which ends up being done to death. When it happens in KHAAAN it's properly shocking, destroying the symbol of the show is what it took to bring the villain down.

Later films? BLOW IT UP LOL

The original 10 don't do it too much.
It only gets properly destroyed in two of them and in the rest it gets the gooseberry fool knocked out of it to varying degrees, but is mostly able to get away under it's own steam afterwards.
Even in the newer movies they only do it once. So three times out of thirteen isn't too bad. Especially since they are substantially spaced out in terms of release dates.

It is a little bit of a Star Trek trope, but I always though it was a bit exagerated how often it happens.

One thing I noticed was how little the TV show actually seemed to care about the ship itself. You never really saw Kirk talking about it as anything other than a ship, whereas the movies really seem to fetishise it far more. Just look at the 4-5 minute sequence in TMP where they show off the new model they made for it and they way they talk about the Enterprise. Its far more personal compared to the show.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:It is a little bit of a Star Trek trope, but I always though it was a bit exagerated how often it happens.

Maybe I just wasn't noticing, but the biggest ST trope that's exaggerated seems to be the redshirt thing. To hear people talk about it, it sounds like hundreds of redshirts are dying every episode/movie. But I really don't think anybody (that isn't a super fan) would have noticed redshirts die (slightly) more often.

Moggy wrote:
Cheeky Devlin wrote:It is a little bit of a Star Trek trope, but I always though it was a bit exagerated how often it happens.

Maybe I just wasn't noticing, but the biggest ST trope that's exaggerated seems to be the redshirt thing. To hear people talk about it, it sounds like hundreds of redshirts are dying every episode/movie. But I really don't think anybody (that isn't a super fan) would have noticed redshirts die (slightly) more often.

There are definitely noticeably more red shirt deaths than those of any other colour - I think the stats are something like 7 "gold" deaths, 7 blue and about 25 red.

But there are also way more people wearing red that we see over the run so as a percentage I think they actually don't do too bad!

kerr9000 wrote:
Jenuall wrote: I do still wonder why they just let Chekov and the Captain tag along with them even when they'd warned them about the mind control bugs, but that's a minor quibble!

I am asuming they believed that someone mind controlled would be the more obvious zombiefied ''yes my Master'' sort of thing so thought well there talking away seeming normal so there not mind controlled.

Yeah I can see what you're saying, they just seem a bit "spaced out" when they get found. But the fact McCoy is there and didn't even think to do a bit of a check of them to see if this brain worm was still a problem is a bit of an oversight!

For me Search for Spock and Voyage Home I always found to be a bit more "meh" as films, especially when compared against Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country.

I often hear a lot of people describe Voyage Home as either their favourite Trek movie, or second favourite after Wrath of Khan, and I can just never understand why.

Oh, also we should have this as the 'trailer' for our GR Movie watchthrough

(Even if it does make V look way better than it actually is :slol:

)

Star Trek III - The Search For Spock

Definitely a more reserved outing compared to Wrath of Khan, but still pretty decent.
My favourite bit is always going to be the sequence of breaking out McCoy and stealing the Enterprise.
Everyone gets a moment to shine. Which is a nice change from TMP and WOK, where Bones, Uhura, Sulu and to a lesser extent Scotty and Chekov, really have very little to do. The first two are really very focused on Kirk and Spock.
Bones gets the best line of the movie as well "That green-blooded bastard. It's his revenge for all those arguments he lost." :lol:

Always great to see Mark Lenard showing up as Sarek too.
Christopher Lloyd is great as Kruge, even if he's fairly standard villain fare.
It's a shame to see the ship get destroyed, especially having been with it all through TOS, but it's done well enough and it's still a bit sad to see it streak across the sky as it goes down.

It's firmly middle of the pack compared to the other original cast movies, but it's still good.

Lagamorph wrote:Oh, also we should have this as the 'trailer' for our GR Movie watchthrough

(Even if it does make V look way better than it actually is )

I love the epic countdown of the numbers. :lol:

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (aka the one with the whales)

It's straightforward and all a bit silly, but it's a nice throwback to episodes like City on the Edge of Forever, Assignment: Earth and Tomorrow is Yesterday.

A nice change of pace from the other, more action oriented, movies and while not as good as WOK and Undiscovered Country, is very comfortably in the good column.

Star Trek III - The Search For Spock

I always remember this as being worse than it is so was pleased to find myself having a great time watching it! :toot:

It's no WOK of course but it's still a good yarn with this crew and has a solid mix of character work, expanding the lore and world with some better insight into the Federation, Klingons and Vulcans, some decent tension in the ship battles, and a nice dose of humour. Kirk in particular gets to show a good deal more charm here, "I'll kill you later" being a highlight for me!

Always feel that David gets a but of a rough deal here, they could have at least made his fight sequence more exciting when he sacrifices himself. Good that we don't just see Kirk blow it off as well, we get a genuine reaction from him. :cry:

Doc Brown does a good job here, again his battle with the Enterprise and dialog with Kirk is great, but they never quite flesh him out enough to make it really shine. It's telling that at the end I still just think of him as Klingon Commander, rather than actually knowing who he is!

On to The Voyage Home....

Bird of Prey is also the best looking ship in star trek, narrowly beating the excelsior class.

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home

It's not the most high octane movie, or the one with the best story. It's not got a huge amount to say about the franchise, the world it's set in or the various species/factions involved. It's far from being the best made of the Star Trek movies. It's core plot idea is, frankly, stupid.

But strawberry float the naysayers, it's still a lot of bloody good fun to watch! :lol:

They have fun with the concept really well, giving us a series of entertaining "fish out of water" scenarios (pun intended) and just letting the cast milk them for all they're worth.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

I definitely watched this as a kid but I remembered nothing about it other than the whales.

It's a bloody stupid movie and I have no idea why it works, but it does!

Chekov was hilarious all the way though. "Where are the nuclear wessles" :lol:

And I agree with Ad7 ( :dread:

), the bird of prey is a great looking ship.

I remember not liking Search for Spock all that much as a Kid, it just felt kind of anticlimactic after Kahn but in honesty it has grown on me with repeat viewings, I didn't like the recasting of Lt. Saavik I found Kirstie Alley to be really good in that role and replacement actress just felt kind of flat and personally if Alleys management wanted too much money I would have not used the character and replaced her with some other character.

I also am very fond of the whole stealing the Enterprise sequence and yep the film does feel a little bit more like an ensemble movie rather than just one or two people being focused on completely, Deforest Kelly is probably my pick for the best performance in the film although I will also give Christoper Lloyd a big thumbs up, I don't think his part is written that great or that his lines are that good, the characters not really deep enough but Lloyd performs the hell out of it and makes it work

I really enjoy this film now I still think its not as good as Kahn but I have been overly harsh in the past not being as good as a near perfect film doesn't stop another film from being a great film.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (aka the one with the whales)

It's straightforward and all a bit silly, but it's a nice throwback to episodes like City on the Edge of Forever, Assignment: Earth and Tomorrow is Yesterday.

Some great throwaway lines and moments making it genuinely amusing.

I especially like when Scotty and McCoy are trying to get the plexiglass made and just decide they don't give a strawberry float about changing the future.
Kirk selling his glasses to the pawn shop is a nice touch too, as it means those glasses are now going round and round in a perpetual time loop.
Kirk sells them in the past, McCoy buys them in the future, gives them to Kirk, repeat forever.
The thunk when the whalers harpoon bounces off the hull at the end gave me a chuckle as well.

EDIT: Also loved that the doctor woman (Gillian I think it was) got to the future with her "No one in the 23rd century knows anything about these animals" then promptly hops on to the first science vessel she can find and strawberry floats off into space.

A nice change of pace from the other, more action oriented, movies and while not as good as WOK and Undiscovered Country, is very comfortably in the good column.

Not only is Bones involved in potentially messing up the timeline with the Transparent Aluminium, but he just gives zero strawberry floats in the hospital and casually cures a woman of Kidney failure, despite Kirk essentially doing something similar when he went back in time previously and causing the Nazis to win World War 2 in the process :slol:

Another thing I love is that one of the Star Trek Card Games had some Mirror Universe Lore based on Voyage Home, where the Cetacean Probe turned up in the Mirror Universe to the same effect, so Mirror Kirk and co had the same idea to go back in time and grab a pair of whales. When they got back to their own time though the Whales didn't tell the probe that humans were chill now and all was good, but instead explained how humans were the biggest banana splits in the galaxy, so the probe turned the Whales into armoured Godzilla monsters that went on a rampage and basically destroyed every coastline on Earth :lol:

kerr9000 wrote:I will also give Christoper Lloyd a big thumbs up, I don't think his part is written that great or that his lines are that good, the characters not really deep enough but Lloyd performs the hell out of it and makes it work.

That's exactly why Nimoy wanted Christopher Lloyd for the part.

kerr9000 wrote:I didn't like the recasting of Lt. Saavik I found Kirstie Alley to be really good in that role and replacement actress just felt kind of flat and personally if Alleys management wanted too much money I would have not used the character and replaced her with some other character.

I didn't even notice that was supposed to be the same character :lol:

So Star Trek 4 is a film I always always loved, to me it is very much the most comedy based film of the entire StarTrek franchise and so its an easier watch for none fans.

Next week is going to be so weird as we have the second worst Trek movie followed immediately by one of the top 3.

Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

Who is online

Affiliates