Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
(I originally wrote this while furloughed in January 2019, during which I decided to re-watch — or in the case of the final two in the series watch, since I hadn’t gotten around to seeing them yet — all the Star Trek TOS and TNG movies.)
So, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. Not a bad film, but after the roller coaster of Wrath of Khan, this one can’t help feel a little unfocused in comparison. The movie has a few good to excellent set pieces; it just doesn’t seem able to sustain itself the way that Wrath of Khan grabs the audience and doesn’t let go.
For my money the entire 14-minute stealing the Enterprise sequence (starting with “The word is ‘no’; I am therefore going anyway” and ending with “I intend to recommend you all for promotion, in whatever fleet we went up serving. Best speed to Genesis!”) is likely the finest 14 minutes in the entire Star Trek franchise. So many classic moments in those few minutes. Scotty’s “Up your shaft” under-his-breath line. Sulu’s “Don’t call me ‘tiny’.” Nichelle Nichols actually getting material that she can sink her teeth into and locking Mr. Adventure in the closet. McCoy’s “That green-blooded son of a bitch! It’s his revenge for all the arguments he lost.” And maybe my favorite bit of underrated dialog:
KIRK: Unit two, this is unit one. The Kobayashi Maru has set sail for the promised land. Acknowledge.
CHEKOV (voice over): Message acknowledged. All units will be informed.
McCOY: You’re taking me to the promised land?
KIRK: What are friends for?
McCOY: *beams*
And of course, there’s the Enterprise / Excelsior chase in Spacedock that is remarkable for how tense and exciting it is despite being just two slow moving ships that travel mostly in straight lines. (Scotty’s Just In Time approach to hacking the space doors contributes to that.)
Speaking of McCoy, I don’t think I fully appreciated how good DeForest Kelley is in this before. There’s a moment where the doctor is having his personality filtered through Spock’s katra and has the line: “To expect one to order poison in a bar is… not logical.” Kelley verbalizes it as McCoy would… but his face does an absolutely spot on impersonation of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. The eyebrow, the jaw. Perfect.
I do like the way some of the themes from Wrath of Khan are subverted here. In Wrath of Khan the Genesis Project is “life from lifelessness” which fits one of that movie’s themes. In Search for Spock, Genesis is life from lifelessness and then quickly back to lifelessness again. Kirk’s reversal of “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one” argues against Spock’s “it is logical” assertion; sometimes friendship and loyalty are more important than logic.
Sarek gets one of the best entrances of a Star Trek character. His first appearance in 15 or so years, he marches into Kirk’s awesome San Francisco condo looking as pissed off as a Vulcan can, with no greetings or hello. “I will speak with you alone, Kirk.”
A nice touch in the opening credits… The pause between the names “William Shatner” and “DeForest Kelley” is juuuust slightly longer than one expects.
[Originally written in January of 2019.]
