I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going a little crazy right now.  I can’t wait until next week, when the new Star Trek movie opens.  I’ve been a Trek fan for forty years and I’m thrilled about the new film.  A new Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock?  Bring ‘em on!  After all this time, from the original series through the various big screen adventures of that same crew, they’re like family.  We’re not about television here at the Morlocks, but suffice it to say that Star Trek ran a meager three seasons — the first unusual and groundbreaking, the second colorful, exciting and near perfection, the third goofy, kind of slapdash, but sometimes charming — then went on to six movie versions, the first one ten years after the series left network TV in 1969.

After growing into a genuine cultural phenomenon during its first ten years in syndication on television stations all over the world, it was time to reunite the crew.  Oh, the excitement!  I vividly remember the expedition that a group of co-workers and I made to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture the day it opened at a Hollywood theatre.  I also vividly recall the vague feeling of disappointment afterwards — what had they done to our favorite show?  Slow, deliberate, with the characters decked out in new pajama-ish uniforms, their vibrant colors replaced by the palest blue you’ve ever seen, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was more than a little disappointing.  It seemed to be all about overblown special effects — which the TV series was never about — and long meandering endless-feeling shots of space vistas and Enterprise glamor shots which could only impress avid readers of the 23rd century version of Jane’s Fighting Ships. 

Oh, the dismay!  The characters and actors were all there, but they weren’t themselves.  (Though I understand that the extended version of the film is better, with many of the more personal moments back in, restoring the balance between pomp and personality.)  Directed by Robert Wise, who evidently was up against a studio release date, ST:TMP was better than nothing, but didn’t feel like Trek, not to devoted fans.  Just as we were falling more and more in love with these characters through constant syndicated exposure, Paramount seemed to have forgotten what they were all about.  It was like the moviemakers never saw an episode of the original show.  Years later, what sticks with me is that the lovely Indian actress Persis Khambatta, who played the mysterious and ultra-sensuous Ilia and was a former Miss India, died of a massive heart attack in 1993 at only 47 years of age.  And of course Stephen Collins, who would became a big TV success with his multi-year run in Seventh Heaven (as a minister), has a weird kind of pyrotechnic love scene with Ms. Khambatta.  Oh, and a couple of people get garbled up in a transporter accident — quite creepy, actually.

The second Trek film was much more successful.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a continuation of the series’ first season episode “Space Seed” starring Ricardo Montalban as a genetically superior human who tried to take over the Enterprise and was banished to a distant planet.  Well, he survived if not prospered, so the story of the second film goes, and Montalban’s overwhelmingly entertaining portrayal of the evil Khan was part of what made STII such a delight.  Writer and director Nicholas Meyer managed to recapture the spirit and the camaraderie of classic Trek, and fans were delighted.  Newcomer Kirstie Alley made a splendid Vulcan in her role as Saavik, too. 

The movie is bursting with emotion, with themes of friendship, aging, death, and renewal bundled into its tight plotline.  The 1982 release was a big success at the box office plus with the critics, and most significantly with the loyal fans who had been somewhat letdown by the first movie.  Highlights in the film are the squiggly worm creatures that get dropped into various ears, Khan’s sculpted chest, Kirk and his reading glasses, the disclosure of Kirk’s son, Kirk’s impassioned and much-imitated “Khaaaaan!” scream, the planet-making Genesis device, and, most significantly, the death of Spock and his funeral.  And it’s a great death scene, too, Spock sacrificing himself in a bath of deadly radiation as he repairs the ship’s power source.  It’s gruesome and completely fascinating, Spock almost a walking corpse, flesh burning off, blinded, bumping into the glass separating him from his friend Captain Kirk.  The scene is worth watching again.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock followed two years later.  We’ve got Klingons again, with Christopher Lloyd starring in a very entertaining turn, we’ve got Spock’s father, we’ve got Vulcan mind melds galore, we’ve got a young Spock and a whole planet going through puberty, we’ve unfortunately got a different Saavik — not nearly as much charisma as Ms. Alley — we’ve got Kirk’s son (for a while, anyway).  Leonard Nimoy directed, and the film was also a success. 

Probably the most fondly recalled Trek movie is 1986′s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the one with the whales.  Filled with comedic elements and placing our heroes in a lively time travel scenario which lands them in 1980s San Francisco, Star Trek IV was also directed by Nimoy.  There’s something kind of adorable about the movie, thanks in part to a sweet performance by Catherine Hicks (also later to star in TV’s Seventh Heaven) as a 20th Century marine biologist who befriends Kirk and Spock in their quest to rescue a pair of whales and thereby save the universe.  It was this movie that sort of cemented the “the even-numbered Trek movies are the best” superstition.   Highlights would probably be Spock jumping into the Monterey aquarium, Spock giving an obnoxious punk on the bus a nerve pinch, lots of cute business for all the actors, and everybody jumping into the ocean at the end of the movie.   Shatner and Hicks have a charming chemistry together and though Kirk doesn’t get the girl, this one would really have been worth it.

Why don’t I remember very much about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier from 1989?  I know I’ve seen it several times, and it’s all about Spock’s half-brother Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill)  looking for God or something.  It starts with Spock, Kirk and McCoy vacationing at Yosemite — Spock wears rocket boots — and ends with them back in Yosemite, with travels to the center of the galaxy filling up the rest of the movie.  William Shatner directed this one, and though it’s not quite universally beloved as some of the other films, it’s appreciated for some good characterizations.  This one merits re-watching, at least I know I’ll be doing that soon.  Is this the one where Uhura does a fan dance?  If so, that’s not such a good scene.

The last film with the whole Trek gang was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country  from 1991, also directed by Nicholas Meyers.  Conceived and sold as the final film from the original series cast, the movie boasts a terrific scenery-chewing performance by Christopher Plummer as a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon, plus Kim Cattrall as a Vulcan no-goodnik.  Neither this film nor the one before worked at the box office; by this time the new Trek Next Generation TV cast was established and classic Trek was not quite the syndication workhorse it once had been.  The film was respectful and even reverential to the series, though, and if it wasn’t an astounding success was not an embarrassment by any means.  The first trailer here is particularly moving, if you’re a fan of the series.

And what of the brand new movie?  Let’s look at one of the trailers and get an idea of what’s in store for us.

And here’s a newer one.

I’m in.  How about you?

And just in case you like it old school, here are a few more pictures from the earlier days, lest we forget.