Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies: #6 - Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Everyone thanks the most popular character for returning to save their careers

We continue one with our Trekkie countdown of Trekkie movies. We're just about done with the bottom-five and boy there have been a couple real shit-suckers in our midst. Or as a helmsman would say, "off our starboard bow". See? These movies do teach me something after all. Continuing on, we find ourselves stuck in the middle chapter of a housed trilogy. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan gave us the first chapter while Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home will give us the final chapter. So now, we must nosedive into the middle chapter and review its contents. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock came off the widely successful entry Star Trek II, so it definitely had some big shoes to fill. Ultimately, it couldn't quite live up to the action-packed glory and compelling story that Star Trek II gave us. The only way Leonard Nimoy would continue playing Spock is if the production team let him have director's chair over the film, so they did. Let's dive in and review this silly space story, shall we?

The Excelsior trying to find the drive thru window

So the movie opens as the Federation starship Enterprise returns to Earth following a battle with the superhuman Khan Noonien Singh, whom we'll discuss another time. Who knows, we might touch upon him when we do Star Trek II, but all remains to be seen. Wink. As I said, this is the middle part of a trilogy of one story. A story revolving around the mysterious and powerful terraforming device known as "Genesis", whose detonation at the end of II (Spoiler alert) caused the birth of a new planet. The casualties of the fight include Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner)'s Vulcan friend, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) (Also, Spoiler alert) whose casket was launched into space and eventually landed on the newly terraformed Genesis planet (Triple Spoiler alert). Kirk gives a Captain's Log where he claims he feels uneasy, even after beating Khan. God only knows why. Perhaps its because your best friend died, but it could also be the Jalapeno bean chili dip that you washed down with a gallon of gin at lunch. It's a coin flip. Upon arriving at Earth, Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) begins to act strangely and is detained, believing himself to be Spock. Meanwhile, after disembarking the Enterprise, indiscriminate Starfleet Admiral #247 visits the Enterprise and informs the crew the ship is to be decommissioned; the crew is instructed not to speak about Genesis due to political fallout over the device. Funny, who would've thought such a powerful weapon that could create entire worlds would divide people so politically? You'd think everyone would be behind that kind of power one-hundred percent.

Genesis is what makes time travel possible!

Elsewhere in the galaxy, Kirk's son David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), who was a key scientist in Genesis's development joins Lieutenant Saavik (who underwent plastic surgery to turn from Kirstie Alley into Robin Curtis) as they investigate the Genesis planet on board the science vessel Grissom. "Science vessel" in Star Trek basically means "Expendable as fuck". Discovering an unexpected life form on the surface, Marcus and Saavik transport to the planet to begin searching for it. They find that the Genesis Device has resurrected Spock in the form of a child, although his mind is not present. That may be a bad way of putting it, but it's the movie's fault. "Mind not being present" is like a computer without a hard drive. Spock would just shove sticks in his eyes and shit all over himself without his mind, but I may also be reading into this too much. Oh well, moving on. Marcus admits that he used unstable "protomatter" in the development of the Genesis Device, causing Spock to age rapidly and meaning the planet will be destroyed within hours. So basically, the entirety of the Genesis project is a failure because David was an impatient douchebag. Thanks a lot, adolescent angst. Meanwhile, The Klingons (who else?) and their captain Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), intercept information about Genesis. Believing the device to be potentially useful as a weapon (or a good ingredient for his next time machine, waka waka), Kruge takes his cloaked ship to the Genesis planet, destroys the Grissom (told you) and searches the planet for the survivors.

The Enterprise dies...it doesn't blow up. It dies.

Back on Earth, Spock's father Sarek (Mark "Why the fuck am I still doing this?" Lenard) confronts Kirk about Spock's death. After refusing to believe that Leonard Nimoy didn't want to come back for more brainless sequels and that he demanded Spock be killed, Sarek mind melds with Kirk. After viewing all the dirty thoughts in Kirk's head, the pair learn that before he died, Spock transferred his katra, or living spirit, to someone. Kirk has trouble figuring out who, completely forgetting that, oh gee, I don't know, fucking McCoy thinks he's Spock. So...why not start there? Spock's katra and body are needed to lay him to rest on his homeworld, Vulcan, and without help, McCoy will die from carrying Spock inside him (Giggity). Disobeying orders, Kirk and his B-reel officers Scotty (James "Why the fuck am I still doing this?" Doohan), Sulu (George Takei), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) spring McCoy from detention, disable the USS Excelsior, and steal the battle-damaged Enterprise from Spacedock to return to the Genesis planet to retrieve Spock's body. Why they didn't just hijack the technologically advanced Excelsior and give the Enterprise the finger on the way out is beyond me. As Tony Stark would say, "Not a great plan".

On Genesis, Saavik discovers that Spock is going through Vulcan puberty (P'on Far, so the nerds don't yell at me) and realizes that in order for Spock to survive, she must mate with him. Imagine if that were true for humans. Like if guys are going through puberty and had to fuck something or else they'd die. There would be sexual harassment suits up the ass, even in high school. Plus, Vulcan mating is bizarre to say the least. I guess I use the term "mate" very loosely here. They just touch fingers and knuckles in a provocatively stupid manner and WHAM! Vulcan mating. I guess that was kind of an erotic scene...but Star Trek and erotica don't go together, so I wouldn't expect anything more. Hell I would hope and pray for nothing more. Anywho, the Klingons and Emmett L. Kruge then surprise and capture Marcus, Saavik and Spock. Poor timing hits them like a freight train as before Kruge can interrogate them their ship signals that the Enterprise has arrived and Kruge immediately beams back to the Bird of Prey.

Shatner, Doohan and Kelley reading the reviews

In orbit, the understaffed Enterprise initially gains the upper hand in battle, but the Klingons return fire and disable the ship. Probably the weakest battle in Star Trek history. Both ships fire one shot at each other, and then both ships sit disabled. The Enterprise automation system overloads and renders it helpless. In the standoff that follows, "Doc" Kruge orders that one of the hostages on the surface be executed, just for Kirk being a pain in his ass. Saavik is chosen, but Marcus is killed defending Saavik and Spock. Kirk mourns his son's death for about thirty seconds, acted out in a very Shatner-style manner, before Kirk and company then feign surrender and activate the Enterprise's self-destruct sequence, killing the Klingon boarding party while the Enterprise crew transports to the planet's surface to find Spock and Saavik. James Kirk, ladies and gentleman. He sacrificed a multi-billion dollar starship to kill six Klingons that he and his crew of middle-aged, typecast actors couldn't subdue if their lives depended on it. On the planet's surface, and promising the secret of Genesis, Kirk lures Kruge to the planet and has him beam his crew to the Klingon vessel. As the Genesis planet disintegrates, Kirk and Kruge engage in a fistfight; Kirk emerges victorious after kicking Kruge off a cliff into a lava flow. Kirk and his officers take control of the Klingon ship and head to Vulcan. 

There, Spock's katra is reunited with his body in a dangerous procedure called fal-tor-pan (You're welcome again, basement dwellers). The Vulcan village elder warns that what they're are trying has not been attempted "since ages past", but Sarek is getting pretty desperate to want to keep Leonard Nimoy in these movies and persists. Since both McCoy and Spock could die in the procedure, it totally works and Spock is resurrected, alive and well, though his memories are fragmented. At Kirk's prompting, Spock remembers he called Kirk "Jim" and recognizes the crew. His friends joyfully gather around him, even as Takei weirdly places his hand on Nimoy's chest for some reason...and that's where the movie ends, with the Enterprise crew stranded on Vulcan in a Klingon starship. Some ending. Now there had to be a sequel just to get them out of this mess.

That's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It's corny at times, it's mundane, and its action moments, while compelling, don't quite follow up what awesomeness that Star Trek II delivered. It continues the Genesis story in an interesting way, even culminating in the theft of the starship Enterprise, something we thought we'd never witness, and even a semi-decent hand-to-hand combat scene between William Shatner and Christopher Lloyd. Kruge makes a great villain, but I'll be damned if I can't watch this movie once without making Back to the Future jokes. Leonard Nimoy's first of two directed Star Trek movies, and it isn't half-bad, it just could've been a hell of a lot more action-packed and a little less droning. Still, if I had to describe it in just one word, I'd say "decent".