Star Trek: The Wrath Of The Search For The Voyage To The Final Undiscovered Country

I don't know if you've seen the new Star Trek trailer, but I have and... well, it looks kind of kickass. I was already looking forward to the new movie even though I thought it would probably suck, but now I think it has a good chance of mostly not sucking. To celebrate my newfound hope of a non-sucky Star Trek movie, I thought I'd do a little Star Trekrospective (do you see what I did there?). This should be interesting, since I have a really shitty memory, yet I refuse to plan or research anything in advance and I haven't actually watched any of these movies in at least a decade (except for part 1 which I last saw about 3 years ago).

Star Trek (or as the nerds call it, Star Trek: TOS)
To be honest, I never watched Star Trek when I was a kid. Star Wars was my favorite movie at that time, so Trek just looked cheesy. Around high school age, I finally got around to watching a few episodes and discovered that they were, in fact, very cheesy. And boring. I know I saw the tribbles episode, and thought that one was okay. I don't remember anything else from the other maybe 3 or 4 other episodes I've seen. Except that Kirk has awesome kung-fu skillz.


Star Trek: The Motion Picture
I saw Motion Picture a few times before adulthood. I always thought of it as pretty boring and I never really got it. The bald lady always freaked me out. A couple of years ago I decided to watch the special edition DVD and I found that, now that I'm old, it's pretty awesome. Especially that part where Spock flies through Vger's butthole. One thing that always struck me as odd about the Star Trek movies is that, very much unlike the series, the ship interiors are dark as fuck. It's like they're in an after hours space nightclub the whole time. At one point in this movie they go into the Enterprise's space nightclub after hours and 7th Heaven guy plays a video game with Bald Lady and I think it's actually brighter in there than on the bridge. Also, they all appear to be wearing pajamas with pagers attached to their bellybuttons. Space pagers.


Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Part 2 is typically the fan favorite of the series (mine as well), and that's thanks in no small part to a disconcertingly muscled Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonian Singh. Seriously, they could have made two hours of Khan quoting mean sounding Shakespeare lines and threatening Kirk with violence and it would have been almost as badass. This movie has so much awesome jam packed in it, even the unawesome parts become awesomer by osmosis. Or awesomosis. Anyway, between ear-loving bugs that turn people into Khan-loving jerks, the most badass bomb ever made, Khan having his face half burned off and Spock getting his face all gross and melted by radiation, this could very well be one of the best movies ever. And it set the Star Trek precedent for having space battles that come off like WWII submarine duels with starships flying within 50 feet of eachother incredibly slowly while taking turns shooting until someone loses, much like the old "punch eachother in the arm until one guy cries" game we used to play when we were kids. Oh, and their uniforms had built-in space napkins!
Here's some super nerdy trivia: In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Khan's son and Kirk's son play a couple of space drug addicts that hate eachother. It's a really lame episode though.


Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
This is one of my least favorite Trek movies. I remember when I was in junior high I had a poster for III on my wall that I'd gotten for free from a video store. I kept it up just because it was a Star Trek poster, but whenever I looked at it, I felt angry that the movie sucked so much. I think I've only seen it one time all the way through, and all I can remember is that it involves a lot of naked Teen Vulcan grunting and the Genesis planet looked really shitty and cheap. And Pon Farr is fucking stupid.


Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
As a child, I loved The Voyage Home because it was funny and parts of it happened in space. As an adult I came to realize that, while it is funny, it's also retarded and sucky and a total rip-off because it barely happens in space. And it coincidentally co-stars the mom from 7th Heaven, who is not nearly hot enough to be a Kirk love interest. Also, whales don't have galactic pen pals. That's just dumb. Whales are losers who are too stupid to grow legs and walk around like the rest of us mammals. Fuck whales. Right in the blowhole.


Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
This is the worst of all the original cast Star Trek movies in my opinion. I think I've seen it twice, the second time just to make sure it was still as torturously boring as I remembered it. I don't remember anything about it except that Spock's half-brother is a hippie douchebag and that at the end Captain Kirk kicks God's ass.


Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The third best original Trek movie, after Khan and Motion Picture. The Klingons decide to put Kirk on trial for being too awesome and because he's totally racist against Klingons. What they don't realize is that Kirk is so awesome, a Klingon prison can't possibly contain his awesomeness. So Kirk has to single-handedly (with his friends' help) save the universe from a racist Klingon plot to assassinate Clarence Boddicker, that guy that tried to kill Robocop. Or something. It's been a while since I've seen it. Kim Cattrall is really weird looking and it's incredibly stupid that Klingons somehow think Shakespeare was from planet Kling or whatever.

Did I miss any? I think that's it. So that's 3 good movies, 2 shitty movies and 1 dumb movie. Not bad. Next Generation didn't have any good movies. Now we just have to wait until May with our fingers crossed and eagerly anticipate the Hayden Christensen-esque Chris Pine hatred that is sure to come. He ain't no Shatner.