Robin Curtis – Tripping Through Gateways

Picking up right after the Search for Spock,, the Voyage Home has the crew preparing to return home and face their punishment for the actions they took to save Spock. But as they near Earth, they find a strange ship has arrived at the the planet. Causing devastation across the planet from the attempts to communicate, the Enterprise Crew discovers the only way to solve the problem is to locate hump backed whales. However, the whales went extinct. This forces the crew to attempt to go back to the 1980’s.

They discover that there is a pair of whales in captivity. Kirk sets about having the group split up to prepare the spaceship to transport whales back to the future.

Star Trek the Voyage Home is interesting. On the one hand, it ties back to a popular trope of the series, with time travel. It also returns to the idea of a mysterious and destructive probe threatening the earth. But it has a rather large tonal shift. There are no space battles and the film largely plays out as a fish out of water comedy.

This causes the film to rely heavily on character moments. We see this mainly in Kirk’s attempts to convince a young scientist to help him with the whales. The Voyage Home really mines a lot of humor from the whole “out of their time” bit. Really, this is such a warm hearted romp, and is sort of outside of any of the other Trek films. I love how the film never really explains the mysterious probe. It fits in with a point that Spock makes early in the film. It is arrogance to assume that an alien presence seeking to communicate with intelligent life would automatically be trying to communicate with humans. Keeping that a mystery for the audience just as much as the characters in the movie is a stroke of perfection.

As I noted, this is a really unique film in the Star Trek film franchise. It is a lot of fun, and is a well loved entry in the franchise for good reason.

So, as Leonard Nimoy grew older, he had a desire to direct. He set forth to get the option to direct the third film, and bring Spock back to the family.

Now, the Wrath of Khan ended with Spock sacrificing himself to save the crew of the Enterprise. They shot his casket to a nearby lifeless planet with the Genesis project.

Back on Earth, they discover that McCoy is… not himself. It is discovered that Spock actually transferred his soul into the body of Bones. The crew of the Enterprise steal their ship to head to the Genesis Planet and see what became of Spock’s body.

Meanwhile, Klingon Commander Kruge is convinced that Project Genesis was a federation weapon with the aims of destroying the Klingon Empire and he is determined to get ahold of the weapon.

Mr. Saavik and David are exploring the planet surface, noticing many anomalies. But then they discover a Vulcan child. They realize this is the body of Spock…and he is aging rapidly. The source of this is that he is connected to the planet itself, and the planet is coming apart at the seams.

It is interesting that while Klingon’s were always a threat, other than their brief appearance in the motion picture, this film is the one that sets them up as a bigger focus of hate for Kirk. Christopher Lloyd is great as our main villain, Commander Kruge. I am always amused that when they got movie budgets, the franchise remade the Klingon race. This has lead to all sorts of retcons (the most fun being the Deep Space 9 Tribble episode where Worf basically tells Sisko that the Klingon’s do not talk about it).

This one aims to be a bit smaller in scale, but it is exciting and a solid feature film debut for Nimoy as a director. DeForest Kelley is really entertaining as Bones, who is struggling with the second person occupying his body.

I feel bad for Nichelle Nichols, because at first she has a decent sized presence, but then she disappears after they take the Enterprise and shows up “at the rendezvous point” on Vulcan at the end.

I always remembered the Search for Spock as being a bit weaker than it actually is. And it certainly got treated as such with the old adage that the even numbered films are “the good ones”. But this is entertaining, and has some neat moments. And also begins the Star Trek trope of “We gotta blow up or crash the Enterprise!” But I like this entry.

Tag: Robin Curtis

Boldly Going Pt 4 (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986)

Boldly Going Pt III (Star Trek III: the Search for Spock, 1984)