Review of Star Trek III : The Search For Spock

Introduction

I`m a Star Trek fan. There, I`ve said it, got it out of the way. You`ll know to subtract a few points from the final score.

I`ve never seen the first three Star Trek movies in the cinema and I was really looking forward to this DVD release. I`ve never been one to subscribe to the odd number curse in Star Trek movies. I agree that The Motion Picture was dull and The Final Frontier was pathetic, but Generations and Insurrection were passably good films. I guess what I`m getting at is that The Search for Spock is one of my favourites. It helps if you view it directly after The Wrath of Khan and treat them both as one movie. I admit it doesn`t stand up well alone. The story so far, Spock`s dead, Kirk`s son made a weapon, Genesis that makes planets, kind of a reverse Death Star, The Enterprise got battered in a battle and is falling apart, and Spock did a mind meld on McCoy before he snuffed it.

The movie begins when the Enterprise returns to Earth. McCoy is acting weird doing Spock impersonations. Kirk is told the Enterprise will be scrapped, and to keep his and his crews` mouths shut about Genesis. He and his crew are having a wake on Earth when Sarek, Spock`s dad (pay attention at the back there) turns up to find Spock OS v 1.0. Basically when Vulcans die they download their brainwaves into someone else so they can be put on a collective hard drive back on their planet. It turns out that this is why McCoy was acting nuts, his hardware was incompatible with Spock`s software. For some reason they need Spock`s corpse to facilitate the download, so they steal the Enterprise to go to the Genesis Planet to get him. Meanwhile, Kirk`s son, David and his bit of Vulcan, Saavik are in another ship investigating the Genesis Planet. They go down to the planet to investigate some life forms when they find a Vulcan child who is aging as rapidly as the planet. They surmise that he is Spock regenerated and resurrected by the Genesis effect, but his mind is a total void. Do you see where this is going? Before they can get excited, some Klingons show up and blow up their ship leaving them stranded. The Klingons want Genesis so they can be Galactic bad-asses. They beam down and start hunting for the scientists. Kirk and the Enterprise show up and batter the Klingons, but the Klingons batter back and the Enterprise gives up the ghost. The Klingons demand Genesis and to prove a point kill Kirk`s son. Kirk swears a lot. He lures most of the Klingons on to the Enterprise and then escapes blowing the ship up. On the Planet he finds Spock and Saavik, Spock`s all grown up now and the planet is about to blow up. Kirk fights the Klingon Captain, pushes him into some lava. They all escape and go to Vulcan where some MCSE certified engineers take McCoy and Spock and using a serial cable and a couple of modems restore the back-up of Spock-OS to the rebuilt hardware. Happy ending.

Video

This is the way that Star Trek was meant to be seen, anamorphic widescreen, DVD clarity. All the techy stuff looks great in hi resolution. A few of the effects look a tad ropey in this age of CGI, but nothing too obvious and the vast spacedock looks spectacular.

Audio

Sound is great DD 5.1 just as you would expect. I love the wooshy warp drive effects and Captain "Mumbles" Shatner is greatly helped by the clarity of DVD. I didn`t need the subtitles once.

Features

Extras: Wow Paramount in extras shock! O.K they`ve stuck the trailer on the DVD and nothing else. They have bundled a CD ROM with the film. Not just a demo as they have previously done, but a whole game. Admittedly it`s pretty useless if you are lacking a PC, but when you consider that to get Starfleet Command: Gold Edition in the high street you would have to part with a tenner, it presents a welcome change in Paramount`s policy regarding extras. I bet you never thought that you would read a game review here. O.K, only a little one. Starfleet Command is a strategy game where you micromanage a fleet of starships in a series of adventures and battles. Presented in realtime pseudo 3D you can command fleets from any one of 6 empires. It has nice visuals and a complicated control system. Unfortunately the 100 odd page manual is on the CD, so be prepared for some task switching or a lot of printing. The game is a little old, not exactly cutting edge anymore and can be best described as mediocre. I gave up after playing 20% of it.

Conclusion

Oh I get it. It`s true that Star Trek films rely on established mythos and backstory before boldly going. This charge especially applies to Star Trek III, you definitely need to see the previous movie as well as the 79 episodes of the original series. This film falls down completely by itself. But as a fan, I love it, it`s got drama and action by the bucketloads. The main cast do what they have done for 20 years before this film. Christopher Lloyd is the best Star Trek alien I have ever seen, his portrayal of the Klingon captain, Kruge is noteworthy, just by altering his speech and expressions, he becomes a totally convincing alien. He hardly needs the Cornish pastie on his forehead. Christopher Lloyd has had a lot of practice playing strange characters since Taxi, Doc Brown and Uncle Fester spring to mind. Watch for an early appearance by Miguel Ferrer. He`d go on to play Bob Morton in Robocop, and plays the producer on the brilliant Lateline. If anyone unfamiliar with the Star Trek vernacular wants to watch this then I urge you to watch this back-to-back with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, it makes sense that way.

I just love this movie. It`s hard for me to find fault so I`m not even going to try. It`s classic Trek that the modern series never got close to. The assumption that all Trek fans own PC`s is probably on the money, but it still is restrictive, I would have preferred extras on the movie itself.