The first serious followup to the series (no, I don't include the animated series) was the series of 6 films, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. Then, came the films based on TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation).
Now that those film series have been over many years, I can now rank the films in the order from best to worst, and this ranking is likely to be different from what it would have been, say, when the last of the 6 films came out.
In order,
- Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock
- Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
- Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
- Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier
I'll explain the order, but will pay particular attention to the second film first.
Of all the films, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (also ST:TMP), was the most different. When Star Wars came out, people expected science fiction to be a romp, with great visual effects, a simple mythic story, and a lot of fun.
Oddly enough, perhaps due to the lack of good special effects, Star Wars lead to very few science fiction movies of note. Indeed, the only major movie to compete with Star Wars, from that era, is the very different Alien, which one has to admit, was far more influential that even Star Wars. There was Close Encounters, while very Spielberg, was not that much influenced by Star Wars. Perhaps Superman: The Movie was the closest in spirit, even if you couldn't quite call it science fiction (to be fair, Star Wars doesn't fit tradition SF themes either).
ST:TMP looked backwards to the most influential SF film since, hmm, Metropolis, namely, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's a pretty heady movie to be inspired by, especially considering the series cared more about social issues of its day (i.e., the 1960s) than deep science fiction issues (to be fair, genre fiction is often inspired by modern issues, cast in unusual settings, especially science fiction).
Guess I'll go over the basic plot. A strange cloud has been heading to Earth, and destroying things in its way, including some Klingons. The Enterprise has been sent to investigate with their recently refitted Enterprise, which makes it the best ship in the fleet (they never explain how Starfleet has this kind of money, but oh well). The ship is lead by Robert Redford look-alike, Stephen Collins, who plays the captain, Stephen Dekker. He's had a relationship with the very bald and sensual, Ilia.
As they head to this cloud, Ilia gets transformed into a "probe" (an android), as they head to the interior of the cloud. Eventually, they discover the secret of the cloud. The satellite, Voyager, sent in the 20th century, was captured by a planet of robots who discovered its mission, which was to seek and gather all information, and return it back to Earth. These robots fitted the robot with power to assimilate planets (thus, the prototype to the Borg) and their technology. At some point, it became so powerful, it gained a conscience. It wanted to find "God", which it assumes it at Earth, and in particular, feeling it is missing something, it wants to assimilate God.
To do this, the response code needed by Voyager (called V'ger throughout) needs to be transmitted by hand, which is where Dekker comes in. Having lost Ilia, Dekker (who's captaincy has been yanked by Kirk) seems ready to give his life to be part of this super being. He sets the connection, Ilia's consciousness returns, and the two, plus Voyager, become one happy super being, and transcend into some higher dimensional enlightenment.
The complaints of the film was, much like 2001, it was chilly and slow. It also had a pretty intellectual idea, which is the search for God, by a robotic entity. This is matched by Spock's storyline. Spock is going through a ceremony to exorcise his human half, which fails, and he decides to return back to the Enterprise. But he's become chilly, a robot. Thus, one of the major characters in the series has become weirdly distant, which had to disappoint fans, but in hindsight, is a pretty bold move for the character.
And, at the time, ST:TMP had really expensive special effects, which still look quite good over the years (unlike, say, The Black Hole which looks like a movie made in the 1960s, despite being made in the late 70s).
Despite being completely different from the series, and any movie that followed, it really was perhaps more influential to Star Trek than any other movie. In particular, Dekker and Ilia became Riker and Troi. The cloud creature was essentially the Borg.
It was slightly odd to see Kirk wearing a short-sleeved shirt, as if space were all nice and warm, but other than that, I have to say that the film still holds up, compared to the rest.
Let's quickly hit the rest. Star Trek 2 is still the best because it has the one big thing. Spock's self-sacrifice. Spock is back to being the Spock of the series. This film delves into Star Trek's own canon and picks out Space Seed and wonders what happens to Khan. Ricardo Montalban, at the time, was at the height of his popularity, starring in Fantasy Island.
This tells a revenge tale. Khan, who had been left to conquer a planet, with his band of 20th century genetically engineered super-humans, has been struggling to live, because the next planet over exploded and caused the planet he was on to shift orbit. Since then, Ceti Alpha 5 has been pretty much uninhabitable.
In the meanwhile, Checkov and his captain have been sent on a mission. Carol Marcus, Kirk's old flame, has been creating a device called the Genesis device, that will terraform a planet. The downside? It kills any life that was already there. They need to find a dead planet with certain requirements (no life being one). The Reliant has been searching for a long time, and stumble on Ceti Alpha 5, which happens to be where Khan is. He's got these tiny animals that have killed most of his crew (including his wife) and uses these to take control of the captain and Checkov and the crew.
Khan wants to get a hold of the Genesis device, but more than that, he wants revenge on Kirk. He does this despite the better advice of his second in command who tells him that he has power (though, you have to wonder) and doesn't need revenge. But Khan has been seething all these years, and now he has his chance.
This film has four pretty good ideas going on at once. First, there's Khan, who is a great villain. At the heat of ST2 is this revenge tale. Then, there's Kirk and his former fling and their son, who he's ignored for years (as she wanted), a modern comment on having children. There's the Genesis device, which gives the film its threat. Finally, there is Spock giving his life in the ultimate cat and mouse game at the end of the film. Oh, and I completely forgot about Saavik. It introduced a credible Vulcan (yeah, she's half Romulan) to the series.
While many people say this was a return to form for the film series (in a sense, it was), it represents a far superior film than any episode in the series, having far more story elements and intrigue. But more than that, it has McCoy being irascible, Spock debating with him, i.e., things people liked from the original series. Most of this was missing in the rather chilly original film. Indeed, series succeed because people care about the characters, which is what the producers of the first film failed to understand.
That made the first film a bit of a failure from a fan's perspective, but more fascinating as a film when you look back at it historically.
I'll quickly go over the other four. I put Star Trek 3 in third. It's kind of weak, but really plays to the one strong idea it has: what the crew will do for its friend. Even as Spock is hardly in the film, his is the central plot point driving the film. A few things are a bit silly, and Christopher Lloyd makes for an odd Klingon, so it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Star Trek 6 was seen as the third best, but honestly, it's not much more than a bad conspiracy film, mixed up with the fall of the Soviet Union. Star Trek 4 really ruined Star Trek by introducing humor, and bad humor at that, to the series. It was one of the more successful films, being a fish out of water idea. But 6, despite being better than 4, is still, in my mind, weaker than 3 and 1, and 3 is kinda weak already.
Of course, Star Trek 5 is dismal. Oddly enough, it had perhaps one of the headiest idea since Star Trek 1, but its execution was so horrid. Shatner was apparently fascinated by evangelists, and does a 23rd century equivalent of it, and it really is kinda lame. Part of the problem is just how casual Shatner, Nimoy, and McCoy take the whole thing, from its rather narcissistic intro (Kirk is climbing up some mountain face, a la Tom Cruise, showing he's a man's man) to an oddly-happy Luckinbill playing Spock's half-brother who has abandoned logic for emotion.
I write this because I just bought Star Trek 1 and want to go back and watch this, to see how well it really holds up. Easily the most eerie of the 6 films.
I don't even want to his TNG, which made a bunch of interchangeably forgettable extended episodes. There's some hope that the new Star Trek film being done by the Alias guy, JJ Abrams will be, at least, sophisticated and intriguing. As the creator of Alias and Lost and director of MI3, he's at least shown the kind of sophistication that's missing in many ST series, and so it's likely to look quite different and have a different flow from the ST films so far, and that, to my mind, after the TNG films, will be a welcome relief.
This is why I also like ST:TMP, because it pushed the series into areas that were unfamiliar, and occasionally, that's where it ought to go.
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