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Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Certainly, the most cinematic of the Trek films in terms of scope, but then again, this was the movie once lovingly referred to as “The Motionless Picture” for, shall we say, its deliberate pace. TMP never did get a proper shakedown though because it was rushed to theatres in December 1979 while the negatives were still wet. A greater number of the pacing problems were resolved in the 2001 special edition supervised by the late Robert Wise, the film’s director; the result wasn’t a Star Wars–like hatchet job but rather a much more clear and focused film. Still, it’s not hard to tell why Trek creator Gene Roddenberry lost creative control of the films after this one, although he did lay a lot of the ground work for Star Trek: The Next Generation a decade later with the characterization and focus on more cerebral storytelling.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Still the monster of the Treks and it still holds up and holds up well almost 25 years after its initial release. The film immediately shakes off the stagnation of TMP by embracing the things that made Star Trek great in the first place: tension, pathos, action, and the central relationship of the Big Three: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Taking it to the next level is Ricardo Montoban’s scenery devouring return as transplanted 20th century, tin-plated dictator Khan Noonian Singh, who’s madness is mesmerizing every second he’s on screen. The bare knuckle fire fight between Reliant and Enterprise is still a masterstroke of special effect chicanery and this was before CG, too. Spock’s death scene still gets you every time as Shatner, on one of the few occasions in his whole career, hits all the right beats without ever over doing it.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Like it’s predecessor, Search for Spock sticks close to the source material by including nods to the original series with cameos by Tribbles, Grace Lee Whitney (Yoeman Rand) and the tremendous Mark Leonard as Spock’s father Sarek. SFS also features the return of the badass Klingons; this time led by Christopher Lloyd as the maniacal Capt. Kruge and a pre-Night Court John Larroquette as his Lieutenant, I-do-not-deserve-to-live Maltz. Nimoy makes the jump to the director’s chair and proves why the original crew is the best crew while creating a number of well-crafted set pieces including the theft of the Enterprise sequence and Kirk’s hand-to-hand throwdown with Kruge. Harve Bennett’s script manages to undo every major plot turn of Wrath of Khan, but he also left the end open to any number of possible avenues for the franchise to go down next.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Remains to this day the most successful of the Trek films thanks to a crossover appeal of it’s time travel concept and a timely message about saving the whales. A probe of unknown origin enters Earth’s orbit and begins wrecking havoc on the planet’s environment. Kirk and crew, in a stolen Klingon vessel, travel back to 20th century Earth to find the one creature that can respond to the probe’s hail: the Humpback whale, which, according to Trek lore, is hunted to extinction some time in the 21st century. Voyage Home has serious thematic issues but a light tone as the civilized Starfleet officers from the future must deal with 20th century barbarism like punk rockers, exact-change buses, and Macintosh computers.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Final Frontier imploded for two reasons, neither of which had to do with the fact that this was Shatner’s first turn at the helm as director. Basically the studio rushed the development of the film while skimping on the special effects budget and profoundly undermining what was probably the most ambitious Trek since TMP: the search for God. A terrorist and his cult of personality take over a planet in the Neutral Zone, necessitating an immediate response from Starfleet’s frontline ship, the Enterprise. But the Enterprise itself is taken over by the terrorist, a Vulcan named Sybok who also happens to be Spock’s half-brother; he demands that the ship be taken to the centre of the galaxy, where he believes God waits. Heavy stuff, but much of the film feels like the cast’s hearts just weren’t in it.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Although it could have suffered as another rush job, the combined skill of Nimoy and Khan director Nicholas Meyer resulted in a pitch-perfect send off for the Original Series cast. Modeled on the real world thaw of the Cold War, Kirk and crew must unravel a high-level conspiracy that seeks to destabilize galactic peace talks by assassinating the Klingon Chancellor. Shatner is given the perfect foil as his old Stratford castmate, Christopher Plummer, takes up the role of Klingon nemesis General Chang, who appropriately, quotes Shakespeare while blasting away at the Enterprise from his invisible spaceship. The film hits all the right notes and the fading shot of the Enterprise flying off into that good night still gets me everytime.

Star Trek: Generations

It should really be called Star Trek: Purgatory because this passing-of-the-torch story doesn’t really know what it wants to be. Honestly, it should have just been called Star Trek: Two Captains Are Better Than One for all the interacting between the Generations. And to say that there’s still some resentment over the completely anti-climactic death of Kirk is something of an understatement—falling off a cliff!? That’s not how Jim Kirk dies dammit! Getting Malcolm McDowell to play the sociopathic bad guy was a good idea; it’s just too bad he wasn’t given something more interesting to do. Brent Spiner is thrown an acting bone as his android character Data is given emotions, but this is usually played as horrid comic relief with the exception of Data’s expletive during the Enterprise’s crash scene.

Star Trek: First Contact

Like Nimoy and Shatner before him, Next Gen’s Jonathan Frakes takes the helm for this surprising and effective entry into the Star Trek canon with a level of skill he has yet to capitalize on as a director in the ten years since this film’s release. TNG bad guys the Borg attack Earth by going back in time and assimilating humanity in the past, the all-new Enterprise follows the Borg back to the mid-21st century just days before the first warp flight and first contact with the Vulcans. You can blame the success of this movie for the oversaturation of the Borg on Star Trek Voyager, which basically emasculated the once fearsome, half-mechanical aliens, but Frakes gives these Borg the right tone as a kind of Day of the Dead in space with the Borg as zombies. Patrick Stewart’s Capt. Picard is given some dramatic new dimension as he single-mindedly leads the Enterprise crew in a vengeance-driven retaliation against the Borg.

Star Trek: Insurrection

Michael Piller wrote some of the finest hours of Star Trek as executive producer of TNG and co-creator of Deep Space Nine; unfortunately, Insurrection can’t be counted among them. The idea of a planet where unique conditions create a fountain of youth–like paradise is an interesting one, but a lighter-than-it-should-have-been tone and a romantic B-story that never materializes turns this movie into a fizzle. F. Murray Abraham hams it up but good as the head of the villainous Son’a, but for a race that’s supposed to be literally coming apart at the seams, the Son’a just aren’t gross enough. And the title’s called Insurrection, but you never get the feeling that Picard and crew are really in any kind of danger because they are, with little doubt, on the side of right; ironically, the insurrection of Insurrection is also a fizzle.

Star Trek: Nemesis

Nemesis probably would have been a perfectly serviceable Trek film if not for all the promises made and the fact of its ill-timed release roughly a week and a half before the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. With seemingly everything going for it—a new director and a new writer, both having never before been affiliated with Trek, as well as the promise of a send-off to remember for the Next Gen crew—Nemesis proved to be a crushing disappointment. Lifting the overture of peace themes from Undiscovered Country (this time with Romulans) and borrowing everything else from Wrath of Khan (doomsday device, revenge-minded villain, death of key crew member), Nemesis is oddly stale with barely a trace of originality. Coupled with the disastrous second season of Enterprise, the franchise was starting to show its age and in the midst of Rings, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels, the look and feel of sci-fi had gotten more sophisticated. Hopefully, Abrams can do better in 2008.