The Trek Movies: Best to Worst, pt. 1

It's been a few years since my last Trek Movies rankings. It's six years later and there have been a couple of other movies so let's do the more definitive up-to-date version. 

Usually I do these sorts of things least to most favorite. But I think there's mostly agreement on which ones are best but considerable arguing to be done about which ones are the worst, and why. So let's start at the top and work our way to the bottom. 

1.

1982

A villain from the Enterprise's past returns and completely overwhelms the ship's defenses. The Captain must reconcile his present with his past and get over himself or everyone is going to die. Sacrifices are demanded; a new planet forms.

Not much argument here. Or at least there shouldn't be. Well-made movie? You bet. Well-made Trek? There can sometimes be an important distinction. Insurrection, for example, is probably not a well-made film; it is, however, great Trek. We'll get there. As for TWOK, though, the answer is: unquestionably. 

Good performances, score, fx, etc.? (Nothing like a big umbrella) Absolutely. Too many cliches or broad strokes? Well...

...

...

I mean, on one hand, there are no cliches here, only the re-enactment of ritual, the glorious embrace of every dramatic trick in the book. We love this stuff. We need this stuff. On the other, well sure, the less beholden you are to the genre or the cast, maybe a few. If you were just a standard genre fan you might be able to guess along. New wine from old decanters and all that. But that's not the sort of thing one deducts points for; in fact, let's add a thousand just for the heck of it. TWOK rules.

2.

1979

A voyager from Earth's past returns and completely overwhelms everything in its path. Starfleet sends the Enterprise to intercept. Kirk and Spock must reconcile their respective mid-life crises, or everyone dies. A sacrifice is demanded. A new lifeform emerges.

Here's a film that was everyone's least favorite Trek film until The Final Frontier came out. Its reputation has steadily grown since then, although there are still some who stubbornly hold to the original impression it made on moviegoers at the tail end of the 70s. I'd like to see the overlap between people who still hate TMP and the people who still hate disco. I bet there's something there.

Anyway, ain't a trace of disco in The Motion Picture, although the whole thing is pretty damn 70s.

Gloriously 70s, even.

Is it a well-made movie? Well - yes and no. On one hand, I'm certainly engaged by it and admire almost every aspect of its production. I agree with whomever described it as a tone poem about self-actualization. I think there's stuff to pick at here and there, but overall I love it. On the other, it seems to be somewhat baffling to non-Trek people. Which isn't necessarily an indicator of how well-made anything is. Plenty of masterpieces (Tokyo Story, Barry Lyndon, 2001) are baffling or uninteresting to plenty of different people. Ahead of its time but perfectly of its time. Not for everyone. 

Most importantly for our purposes here, its Trek fundamentals are warp factor nine. It's some of Spock's greatest stuff, it's a rom-com where Kirk-loses-ship-then-they-get-back-together, it's got Bones with a beard and "Torpedoes... a-WAY!" It's Roddenberry's last original cast hurrah, and its Trekkiness is self-evident. It should be the standard of calibration anytime the question of Trek fundamentals is posed, even. 

3.

1986

A visitor from Earth's past returns and completely overwhelms Starfleet's defenses. It wants to talk to the humpback whales, but the whales are all dead. Kirk and the gang time-travel to 1986 to convince two of them to come back to the future to save the species that hunted them to extinction. The whales agree, and a new cetacean dynasty is formed off the coast of San Francisco.

"One little mistake."

One of many favorite Spock moments.
"Tell her... I feel fine."

Den of Geek says it almost perfectly: "There's really very little to pick at in the film. You could argue it's not Trek enough, but it's still a great story, it's an enormous amount of fun, and it nicely ties up all the loose ends from the previous two films."

Hear, hear. Except that one-could-argue-its-Trekness part. No one can argue that. People could, I guess, in the physical sense of moving their lips and emitting vocal noises, but it's an absurd argument. What could possibly not be Trek-enough about The Voyage Home? I like to think about the Vulcans and other Federation telepaths that come to talk to the whales. Do the whales know what they're getting into? I suppose it was better than being harpooned. Hopefully with the immediate threat overcome, Earth can time travel back to the past a few more times and save a few more. And let's just move along before we ask any further questions about what the people of the future can and can't do and "Say if that's the case, why -" (door shuts.) 

Catch me on a different day and this might be my favorite Trek movie. Same thing goes for the next one:

4.

1984

Spock's katra is banging around McCoy's brains like a Rigellian ox in a tea shop. To save his friend, Kirk must sacrifice his ship, his son, and his career. (Temporarily, permanently, and temporarily, respectively.) An old friend is reborn.

"Maltz! JOLLLLL ICHUU'!"

Shatner's finest acting? Possibly. Not in every scene, but in at least two places. For my money it's more like ten or eleven places, but here are two that exemplify how important his character is to making this film work. 

(1) "Jim - you do this, and you'll never sit in a Captain's chair again." I don't have a screencap for it, but it's a great moment. And he never will sit in that Captain's chair again, as it turns out.

(2) "The word? Is no. I am therefore going anyway." 

As Nimoy said in I Am Spock about this moment: "That's our hero."

Everyone involved with the art direction and production design deserves special commendation. The soundstage is like a TOS set on steroids. And everything is lit with a real theatrical eye, with the Vulcan set in particular a real stand-out. It's a great character movie. Trek fundamentals times a thousand. The ending! So much more!

"You! Help us or die."

"I do not deserve to live."

"Fine, I'll kill you later."

Search for Spock was the first (and should have been the last, certain episodes of TNG notwithstanding) place this happened:

It's said in the commentary track that the reason this works is because no one thinks of the Enterprise as just a ship; it was a founding member of the cast.

Shatner writes in Movie Memoirs that the death of the Enterprise was "an exciting and unexpected plot twist in light of a seemingly unwinnable situation (that) made the film better."

Agreed. But, it points to a new problem, namely now you've got to blow up the ship all the damn time. Like rebooting your comicsverse or having someone who isn't Thor * pick up Mjolnir, the first time it happens, it's an exciting an unexpected plot twist, but it inevitably leads to it happening again and again, at shorter intervals with less and less impact. 

* In the comics, I mean. Although I guess now it'll be a problem for the MCU. 

5.

1996

A villain from Picard's past returns and brings a Borg armada with her. After almost totally overwhelming Starfleet's defenses, they time travel to Earth's past to try and stop First Contact between Vulcans and Humans. One half of the crew fights the Borg for control of the ship while the other drinks tequila with Zefram Cochrane, the alleged inventor of warp drive. The captain must reconcile himself or everyone dies.

I say alleged inventor up here because the way he is portrayed in First Contact is Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, pretty much. No one was pretending Chuck Yeager personally engineered mach-one aircraft. Plus "Metamorphosis" established a whole different character, which shouldn't matter but kind of does to me. James Cromwell gives a spirited performance, and this movie's probably more interesting with his being a drunken hillbilly who loads up the jukebox with the incidental music from Third Rock from the Sun. But if they wanted to make him this guy, why still pretend he invented warp drive and keep him a doctor? It seems unlikely this is the same guy we saw in "Metamorphosis." Although if so, it makes "Metamorphosis" even more interesting. 

Of course, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy swore never to tell what happened to Cochrane, so no one present (including Cochrane) could reference the events of "Metamorphosis." Though frankly it seems unlikely they would never tell anyone; maybe Kirk told Picard about it in the Nexus or Picard gleamed it from his mind or whatever nonsense you want. Someone could have made some crack about shimmering energy blobs and made me happy.

Enough "Metamorphosis" talk. This is a fun movie on its own merits with great performances and nice blend of monster movie with TNG-era Trek and was a big, well-deserved hit for its cast and crew.

6.

1998

When Data goes native on a covert observation op, the Enterprise is called in to extract him. They join him instead and lead the Ba'ku (caretakers of an interphasic fountain of youth) against the conspiracy between Starfleet and the Son'a (the survivors of a failed insurrection from the Ba'ku's past) to displace them.

Most people hate this one, but I've always had warm feelings towards it. Still do. I concede most of the criticisms, even if some of them are kind of over the top. I've certainly spilled my fair share of digital ink on the topic, so I'll just quote some sections from Ryan Britt's review of it over at Tor. He speaks for me (so say we all) on this matter.

"In almost every way that matters, I unabashedly love Star Trek: Insurrection. Instead of space murders, revenge, and a bevy of bad guys, this movie mostly concerns people sitting around and talking about the ethics of messing with other cultures, the attainability of near immortality, and the dangers of technology moving our lives so quickly that it destroys aspects that really matter. (...) And yet, this movie won’t work for a viewer without that person already being into this weird touchy-feely Star Trek crap. "Am I really going to watch a movie about a bunch of outer space Amish people getting screwed with by Star Trek people? Is this really what this movie is about?" Yes, poor Trek lay person, this is what this movie is about. 

"With perhaps the exception of The Motion Picture, and aspects of The Final Frontier, Insurrection is the most representative of what an episode of TV Star Trek would be like if translated to the big screen. But because of its confused attempt to also be an action movie at times, it comes across a bit messy. However, if you truly love Star Trek, some of that messiness is sort of sweet. The “action” in Insurrection feels like Star Trek got a little drunk and tried to dance to a cool song, with cringe-worthy Napoleon Dynamite results.

"But maybe that’s okay. Because love is all about liking something because of its flaws. And in most ways, Insurrection is one big mess that makes me think awwww that’s the Star Trek I know and love. Because it’s not cool. It’s not focused. And some of it doesn’t make sense."

7.

2009

When a vengeful Romulan from a sideways future-present suddenly appears and overwhelms Starfleet's defenses, Kirk and Spock must overcome their own inner conflicts to beam aboard and shoot the bad guys. Punch it!

I've grown a bit ambivalent on this one. I still really enjoy it, overall. It's fun seeing these new, youthful versions of the TOS cast in a more contemporary reformulation. And it's more like an action comedy caper than anything, right down to Kirk-gets-big-hands or the eject-from-the-ship-onto-ice-planet or so many other things. Nothing wrong with that - in fact, quite a bit right. It hoovered up box office receipts by the hundreds of millions the world over.

Great casting, memorable sets, effective score, and just enough color of the familiar TOS-verse to justify the title. In hindsight, though, this signaled the end of the kind of Trek Ryan Britt was talking about up there. A lot of the good feelings I had leaving the theater in 2009 were diffused by subsequent events. While this is a great commercial for New Kelvin-U Trek, it's really just that: a commercial for a Trek they never quite delivered.

Again, not this film's problem, just a good deal of its appeal is its "Trust us, we got this" chumminess, which seems a bit insincere in retrospect.

Even the bridge to the past - nice because it's Nimoy, obviously, I'm glad he's here - feels a bit by-the-numbers. I remember people saying the same about TNG's "Unification" back in the day, but that one seems like a sweet send-off for the character compared to his "good luck, fellas" role here.

Anyone who thinks I'm slagging it off, I've put it ahead of Insurrection, sheesh. (EDIT: Narrator voice: He actually did not. Please see comments.) That might mean nothing to you, but to me it's a clear sign I'm being as objective as possible. (He clearly was not.) Here's a rare nod to conventional wisdom.

~

So much for those big-screen Treks I'd deem the good half. Next time: the rest. Hope to see you there.