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martinlivingsDay Six- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
I have such a soft spot for this film. Sure, its whodunnit mystery plot peters out without any real resolution, and some of the film is heavy-handed and unsubtle. But after the disaster that was The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country is a joy. Helped, in no small part, by the return of Nicholas (Wrath of Khan) Meyer to the director's seat, and with a good solid script, very good performances all round, and special effects that are, for the most part, actually special. I think it's even the first time ILM used the "ringed explosion" effect, which they then re-used ad infinitum after that, but in this film it was incredibly effective. I remember seeing this in the cinemas and being blown away.
The spirit of the film is what makes it good, though. A nicely hammy foil to Kirk in Christopher Plummer, the Shakespeare-spouting mad general (and, of course, David Warner's gently-mocking comment, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon"). The crew being... the crew. Kirk even gets off with an alien woman. It felt like old times, a beautiful piece of nostalgia. And a fitting end to the original crew's voyages on the Enterprise.
Oh, and Captain Sulu in command of the Excelsior. That was a film series I wanted to see.
Four Starfleet badges out of five.
Quote of the film:
Bones, after Kirk and Martia kiss: "What IS it with you, anyway???"
Day Seven - Star Trek: Generations
So, it starts with Kirk, Chekov and
Then it flashes forward to the Next Gen crew.
Has anyone else seen Red Dwarf? There's an episode when the crew watch a movie, and the Cat's comment on it was "All the stuff about the ducks getting into trouble - that was great. But then it went black and white and I fell asleep!"
That's how I felt watching Generations. The moment it switched to the NG crew, it just became so incredibly boring. I'd forgotten how dull Picard's crew are. Not Picard himself, mind you, he kicks all kinds of ass, but his crew are just so... so DULL. There's the unneccessary macguffin of Data's emotion chip, so cliched and awkward, and Ryker is a plank of wood, and the empath keeps asking people if they're alright... hello? You're an empath, you know if they're alright or not. it just dragged on and on.
Then Kirk came back, and even slow, pudgy and bloated, he's got more charisma in his pinkie than the entire crew of the NCC-1701D combined. It's depressing.
Malcolm MacDowell was wasted, barely utilised his genuine insanity. Patrick Stewart seemed to be sleepwalking through it. And Kirk's inevitable (and, in light of possible cameos in the new Star Trek film, ill-advised) death was perfunctory and mostly unaffecting, as was yet another destruction of the Enterprise.
Easily the least of the Trek films up until that time, though from there it was a gradual descent downhill. I'm not even going to watch them, I've decided. Without the original crew, it's just a lifeless rehash.
One Starfleet badges out of five.
Quote of the film:
Data: "Oh SHIT!"
