movie coverI'd rather be watching TV![IMDB link] [Netflix link] Nine days of Star Trek movies continue!

PEOPLE: Most of the same people, but a new director (Nicholas Meyer, who also directed Star Trek 6). And Kirstie Alley. I laughed that Carolyn didn’t recognize her. I like to always remember the HOT Kirstie Alley, not the FAT Kirstie Alley.

QUIRKS: Finally, some space battles! Star Trek 1 deliberately did not have any, as Star Wars came out, and they wanted to poise themselves as more significant. But let’s face it: A movie in space without battles is like… a movie in the ocean without sailing. Or a college movie without drinking. This actually has some of my favorite battles.

Also, this is really a sequel to the Star Trek episode “Space Seed”, which was Khan’s first appearance, 15 years ago (in the Star Trek universe). I think this might be the only Star Trek movie that is so directly tied in to events in the series.

VISUALS: You will never look at bugs, or bugs inside a spacesuit helmet the same way again. And that Nebula? Pretty cool.

LESSONS LEARNED:
1) If a ship wont identify itself as it moves towards you slowly — raise your shields, for chrissakes!
2) Beware of bugs.
3) If you exile someone on a planet, it’s nice to check up on them every once in awhile. You never know what’s going to happen to a planet.

GOOD STUFF: This doesn’t drag like Star Trek 1, and it doesn’t feel like 2001 either. Many people consider this the best Star Trek movie ever, and certainly the best Star Trek movie with the original Enterprise crew (i.e. before they switched over to Next Generation movies, none of which we’ve seen).

BAD STUFF: The Genesis process is just a little bit too convenient for me, and the special effects didn’t really start to get good until Star Trek 3. You can only do so much with special effects in 1982.

CONCLUSION: Great closure to a Star Trek episode. Really, they could have revisited a lot of past villains and ended up with a LOT of movie fodder, had they really wanted to. Too bad there was only so much money to go around in the early 1980s…

RECOMMENDATION: See it! Of all the Star Trek movies to see, this is the only one that gives real closure to an episode of the 1960s series! But I’d still recommend watching Star Trek 1 first, just to feel the huge improvement.

MOVIE QUOTE: Mr. Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” (Or the one.)

COINCIDENCES:

1)Sometime between obtaining all 9 movies and watching them, Ricardo Montalban died.

2)2 days after watching this (Carolyn’s first time), we watched the latest Robot Chicken episode, which had a sketch that was an opera version of this movie! This was over at Angel & Ian’s, with Shannon & Christian and Radha hanging out as well. We all laughed our asses off. My skull hurt afterwards from the shape of my head being so changed by the laughing…

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Nobody rates this 5 stars? But me, Ian, Dad, Jordan, Glen, and Tatiana all really liked it (4 stars). Chris Z and Christian D all liked it (3 stars). Benj didn’t like it, which is insane. The bug scene alone has haunted me for almost 30 years.

Mood: mood? what’s that?
Music: Kreator – Black Sunrise