Ahead of the release of Star Trek Into Darkness in cinemas on Thursday 9 May, each week we’re rewatching a classic Star Trek movie, continuing this week with 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock…

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The story

Battered, bruised and bewildered, the crew return to Earth in a nearly wrecked ship, only to discover that the Enterprise is to be decommissioned, the Genesis Project is already a guilty and embarrassed secret, and that Spock’s life-force still has a chance of rescue – but is trapped on an exploding planet. All the elements are in place for a tightly wound, tension-filled race against time. The result is not that movie…

Best moments

Bones spends most of the movie channelling Spock and resigning himself to the fact that he will have to offer himself up to a dangerous procedure in order to save the Vulcan. At the very last moment, he’s asked if he wants to go ahead, thereby risking death or insanity. With all the crew looking at him, he nods dumbly, before snarling ‘helluva time to ask…’

George Takei, clearly relishing the chance to wear civvies, looks very suave in his lounge-lizard style outfit, which certainly looks better than the ill-fitting costumes everyone else has to wear that have been recycled from Wrath Of Khan. Yes, we’re discussing the wardrobe. That’s how good this movie is.

The sequence in which the Enterprise crew steal the ship from under the Federation’s noses is very well realised, and one of the most dramatic scenes in the film. Speaking of the Enterprise, Kirk’s plan to escape capture sets up the idea that, even if the studio doesn’t have the courage to kill off Spock, anything else is up for grabs.

Trivia

» Kirk decides that the best plan of action is to set the USS Enterprise to self-destruct, herby beginning an almost-running joke that will continue far into the Next Generation series.

» Leonard Nimoy, absent for most of the film, voices an intelligent elevator.

» When Genesis’ jungle is first seen, a highway filled with traffic can be glimpsed at the edge of the screen.

» There’s a pause in the opening credits, where Leonard Nimoy’s name would usually appear.

Best quotes

» Kirk: ‘How much refit time before we can take her out again?’
Scotty: ‘Eight weeks, sir… but y’don’t have eight weeks, so I’ll do it for ye in two.’
Kirk : ‘Mr Scott, have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?’
Scotty: ‘Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?’

» Kirk (who has just been told he can’t go back to Genesis): ‘The word is “no”. I am therefore going anyway.’

» Torg: ‘They outnumber us.’
Kruge: ‘WE ARE KLINGONS!’

» Kirk: ‘Help us or live.’
Maltz: ‘I do not deserve to live.’
Kirk: ‘Fine, I’ll kill you later.’

» Kirk (having just destroyed the Enterprise): ‘My God, Bones. What have I done?’
Bones: ‘What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live.’

The verdict

The first thirty minutes is actually quite promising, in spite of – no, because of – not much happening. Everyone is so shell-shocked by the events of the last movie that the mood is very much of stunned grieving.

Since one of the franchise’s themes has rapidly shaped up to be that of loss, aging, and regret, this seems perfectly pitched. The movie cleverly trades on the fact that, in Spock’s absence, the real heart of the franchise is not, as you might think, Kirk, but Bones, due largely to DeForest Kelley’s huge charisma. It’s also clear that he’s the best actor on board the Enterprise.

The film stumbles terribly when it starts trying to do stuff. This is the point in the franchise in which the money begins to run out for special effects and the cast is required to begin wearing slightly too much pancake to hide the aging process. There are plenty of sequences in which lots of things are blowing up and people are shouting at one another, with the net result of absolutely no dramatic tension whatsoever.

The previous one was called ‘Wrath’. That’s a whole movie filled with wrath. This movie is called ‘Search’. You can see the problem. If the whole point of the plot is to find Spock, then there’s a narrative need to delay that discovery (because the film will end as soon as it happens), but it means that the cast are pretty much spinning their wheels for an entire movie with no plot to play with.

Even worse, the cheapness of it looks like the worst clichés of what people think Star Trek is: stunt doubles in bad Shatner wigs in carefully rehearsed fights with this week’s villain behind some Californian hillside. Seriously, if the Gorn turned up for a scrap, it wouldn’t look out of place.

That said, Christopher Lloyd’s villain is fun – even though it’s clearly phoned in – and despite the skimpy FX, Leonard Nimoy directs certain sequences (the Klingon attack on the USS Grissom, for instance) with flair and energy. But such positives are drowned under a film that sags terribly for much of its running time.

An entire planet blows up and it’s tedious. A major character is murdered and it’s perfunctory. Since the franchise is so fond of quoting Shakespeare, here’s one for you: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We’re gonna stick our heels in, and say that The Motion Picture is still – by some way – a better film. Seriously.

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What do you think of the movie? Let us know below…